Just How Old is Old English?

Happy Throwback Thursday! Most weeks our throwbacks (throws back?) are more like tosses, taking us a few years into the past to reflect on books that affected us in childhood. However, this Thursday, I’m flinging us as far back as I can — to “Cædmon’s Hymn,” perhaps the first English poem.

Cædmon’s Hymn was written in Old English, but the term “Old English” confuses a lot of people. One friend of mine, when I told her I was taking a class on Old English, thought that meant the sort of English in which people said “ye olde” a lot. As a matter of fact, nobody ever said “ye olde,” which is a fake archaism based on a spelling error (if you want to read about that, here’s the Wikipedia article). But when people do use “ye olde” they’re trying to mimic the sort of English used in, say, Shakespeare’s time. Here’s a proper quote from Romeo and Juliet, which most of you have heard:

“O Romeo, Romeo! Wherefore art thou Romeo?
Deny thy father and refuse thy name;
Or, if thou wilt not, be but sworn my love,
And I’ll no longer be a Capulet.”

The quote is English. And it is old, written in the late 1500s. However, it’s not Old English. Shakespeare wrote in what we call “Early Modern English,” which, though it differs from what we speak today, is still mostly understandable. In the quote above, “thou” is recognizable as meaning “you;” it is simply an extinct, informal form of the word. In Spanish, the distinction still exists, and the informal “tú” is equivalent to “thee/thou,” while “usted” represents “ye/you.”

“Wherefore” just means “why,” and even though it is no longer used, “therefore” still is and explains “why” something is true. Once you get a couple tough words explained, Early Modern English is easy to follow.

Others, when they think of Old English, may think of Chaucer. Here are the first lines of the Canterbury Tales:

“Whan that Aprill with his shoures sote
The droghte of Marche hath perced to the rote,”

This English is even older, from the late 1300s, but it’s still not Old English. Chaucer wrote in “Middle English,” which refers to the various forms of English spoken from the 1066 Norman Invasion until some point near the end of the 1400s. Middle English is a lot tougher to follow than Shakespeare, and of the sixteen words in the quote above, only six are spelled as we would spell them today. We get “whan” for “when,” “shoures” for “showers,” “sote” for “sweet,” and more unfamiliar spellings for “drought,” “pierced,” and “root.” “Hath” appears where we would say “has,” and “his” where we would say “its.”

But as much as the language has changed since Chaucer’s time, plenty has stayed the same. Middle English was already a mix of Germanic and French roots, and most of its words look like contemporary words misspelled, not like different words entirely. With a little practice and some marginal notes, you can read Middle English.

Ready for the genuine Old English? Here is “Cædmon’s Hymn:”

Nū sculon heriġean heofonrīċes weard,
Meotodes meahte ond his mōdġeþanc,
weorc wuldorfæder, swā hē wundra ġehwæs,
ēċe Drihten, ōr onstealde.
Hē ǣrest sceōp eorðan bearnum
heofon tō hrōfe, hāliġ Scyppend;
þā middanġeard monncynnes weard,
ēċe Drihten, æfter tēode
fīrum foldan, Frēa ælmihtiġ.

Old English began during the 400s, when the Germanic Angles, Saxons, and Jutes started migrating onto the British Isles, and it lasted until the Norman Invasion of 1066. As you can see, it is basically impossible for a modern English speaker to read. In the poem above, you may have recognized the words “his” and “he.” Well done. You may also think you recognize “or,” but it actually means “beginning.” “To,” in this context, means “as a.”

Old English has not only a vastly different vocabulary from our own, but also a vastly different grammar. To read Old English, one must understand grammatical gender, and be able to determine the “case” of a word (the options are genitive, dative, accusative, nominative, or, in a few tricky cases, instrumental).

There are also four unfamiliar letters to keep track of: æ, or “ash,” pronounced like the “a” in “ash;” þ, or “thorn,” pronounced like the “th” in “thorn;” ð, or “eth,” pronounced like the “th” in “that” (though sometimes þ and ð are interchangeable); and ȝ, or “yogh,” pronounced like nothing you’ve ever heard.

The earliest surviving record of Cædmon’s hymn is a Latin translation written by the venerable Bede in his Historia Ecclesiastica Gentis Anglorum (Ecclesiastical History of the English People) circa 731. The poem itself could be decades or even centuries older.

I hope I haven’t thrown you all back too far. To start your return to the present day, here is my translation of the poem.

Now shall we praise the heaven-kingdom’s guardian,
The Measurer’s might, and his mind-thoughts,
The work of the Wonder-father, when he, eternal Lord,
Established the beginning of every wonder.
He first shaped, for the children of the earth,
Heaven as a roof, the holy Creator,
Then the earth. Mankind’s guardian,
Eternal Lord, then prepared
Earth for people, the Lord Almighty.

Written by Joseph Benevento
Blooming Twig Editorial Team