This is a short chapter with only three sections - the boldface subheads on pages 1, 5, and 7, plus the Conclusion.
Be sure to master the content of these sections. You will be using these concepts, and those in the next two chapters, throughout this course and throughout your career.
Listen to Caedmon's Hymn on this audio recording.
(If you are interested in this famous poem, go to the Wikipedia page on it. If you are still interested, read this article.)
The Wikipedia page uses the Northumbrian version -- one of the dialects of Old English.
Here is the "standard" West Saxon version (from this page):
- Nu sculon herigean heofonrices weard,
meotodes meahte and his modgeþanc,
weorc wuldorfæder, swa he wundra gehwæs,
ece drihten, or onstealde.
He ærest sceop eorðan bearnum
heofon to hrofe, halig scyppend;
þa middangeard moncynnes weard,
ece drihten, æfter teode
firum foldan, frea ælmihtig.
You can follow allong with the text as Jess Bessiniger reads it.
Get started with your practice in using the Oxford English Dictionary by looking up in it the following words: (NOTE: We can only access the OED from on campus -- it is a paid site, and MSU pays for it, for all of us.)
middangeard
(This is the word that J.R.R. Tolkien translated as "Middle Earth" in his Lord of the Rings trilogy. Tolkien was a famous medievalist at Oxford University, England.)
bearnum -- just look up "bearn" (without the quotation marks)
fold - in the sense meant in this poem.
("meotod", originally meaning "Fate", used by Christians to mean "Lord", is hard to find in the OED. You can see it in the OE Dictionary Bosworth-Toller) It isn't in the OED because the OED only indexes words that continued in the English language after the year 1200 -- and "metod / meotud", etc. did not.
Your writing assignment: After doing these exercises, write 300 words. Write 150 + on what you think are the most important points raised in this chapter. Then write 150+ words on the points that interested you the most.
Be thoughtful!
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