A little English

I am posting this today because I thought it nice. It is from a site I go to often, //http://aclerkofoxford.blogspot.com/. It is a lady from Oxford, England, and she has things on her site concerning English saints from way back. This was posted on Tuesday which, apparently, in England was the feast day of St. Hilda, who was in that area in the 5th century. She was an Abbotess, and founded monasteries and taught the Faith. She was also an seeress, had visions to help others, and it sounds like a very good Catholic. Anyway...this is just a short part of the post concerning St. Hilda. In their history, this Caedmon was an illiterate, who thought himself unworthy to participate in the rejoicing of the day, because he couldn't sing like the others. Hilda took him under her wing and taught him that singing God's praises was a worthy thing to do, and God doesn't care if you can sing or not.


St Hilda's day seems as good a reason as any to post a short extract from an Old English poem which I've been meaning to post here for a while. It comes from a text which rejoices in the modern title 'Instructions for Christians', but it's much less dull than that title makes it sound. It provides counsel on how to live a virtuous and holy life, and is particularly concerned with the proper use of wealth and of learning; the two seem to be associated in the poet's mind, as the first lines of the extract below demonstrate. The poem survives in a twelfth-century manuscript, and therefore comes from the very end of the Anglo-Saxon period, a good five hundred years after Hilda. But that makes it all the more a reminder of the strength and endurance of the poetic tradition for which Cædmon's story is such a powerful origin-legend - five centuries of English poetry of the kind fostered in Mother Hilda's monastery, and it would still be another two centuries before the birth of the man who's today called 'the Father of English poetry'.

The text comes from Old English Short Poems: vol. I, Religious and Didactic, ed. Christopher A. Jones (Cambridge, Mass., 2012), pp. 143-4, but the translation's mine.

Se forholena cræft and forhyded gold
ne bið ællunga ungelice.
Betere bið þe dusige, gif he on breostum can
his unwisdom inne belucan,
þonne se snotere ðe symle wile
æt his heah-þearfe forhelan his wisdom.
Ac þu scealt gelome gelæran and tæcan,
ða hwile þe ðe mihtig Godd mægnes unne,
þe læs hit þe on ende eft gereowe
æfter dæg-rime, þonne þu hit gedon ne miht.
Onlær þinum bearne bysne goda,
and eac swa some eallum leoda;
þonne ðu geearnost ece blisse
and æfter þisse weorlda weorðscipe mycelne.
Se ðe leornunge longe fyligeð
halgum bocum her on worulde,
heo ðone gelæredon longe gebetað,
and þone unlærdan eac gelæreð.
Heo geeadmodað eghwylcne kyng,
swilce þone earman eac aræreð
and þa saula swa some geclensað
and þæt mod gedeþ mycle ðe bliðre.
And heo eac æþelne gedeð þone ðe ær ne wæs;
eac heo þrah-mælum þeowne gefreolsað.


Concealed skill and hidden gold
are not entirely unalike.
Better the fool, if he can in his heart
seal up his lack of wisdom,
than the wise man who ever wishes
to hide his wisdom in his greatest time of need.
But you should always be teaching and instructing
for as long as mighty God grants you strength,
that you may regret it the less in the end,
after the course of your days, when you can do so no longer.
Teach your children with a good example,
and all peoples likewise;
then you will earn eternal joy
and great honour after this world is past.
He who long follows learning
in holy books here in the world,
she [i.e. learning] will always be improving the learned
and instructing the unlearned.
She humbles every king;
so too she raises up the poor,
and souls she cleanses,
and makes the mind much the happier;
and she makes a man noble who was not so before,
and many times she sets the handmaid free.

('handmaid' isn't a very good translation, but the word þeowne here means 'a female servant'. As Bede notes in apology for his translation of Cædmon, 'verses, though never so well composed, cannot be literally translated out of one language into another without losing much of their beauty...').


I hope you go to her site, as it is pretty interesting, at least to me. What I get from this is that nobody, even if they deem themselves unworthy of anything, can do all if they praise and honor God, and teach their children the Truth so that they can also grow up to be good Catholics.