Moore MS. of Baeda's History; and five other Latin MSS. of Baeda have the
poem (but transliterated into a more southern dialect) as a marginal note.
In the old English version of Baeda, ascribed to King Alfred, and certainly
made by his command if not by himself, it is given in the text. Probably
the Latin MS. used by the translator was one that contained this addition.
It was formerly maintained by some scholars that the extant Old English
verses are not Baeda's original, but a mere retranslation from his Latin
prose version. The argument was that they correspond too closely with the
Latin; Baeda's words, "hic est sensus, non autem ordo ipse verborum," being
taken to mean that he had given, not a literal translation, but only a free
paraphrase. But the form of the sentences in Baeda's prose shows a close
adherence to the parallelistic structure of Old English verse, and the
alliterating words in the poem are in nearly every case the most obvious
and almost the inevitable equivalents of those used by Baeda. The sentence
quoted above[1] can therefore have been meant only as an apology for the
absence of those poetic graces that necessarily disappear in translations
into another tongue. Even on the assumption that the existing verses are a
retranslation, it would still be certain that they differ very slightly
from what the original must have been. It is of course possible to hold
that the story of the dream is pure fiction, and that the lines which Baeda
translated were not Caedmon's at all. But there is really nothing to justify
this extreme of scepticism. As the hymn is said to have been Caedmon's first
essay in verse, its lack of poetic merit is rather an argument for its
genuineness than against it. Whether Baeda's narrative be historical or
not--and it involves nothing either miraculous or essentially
improbable--there is no reason to doubt that the nine lines of the Moore
MS. are Caedmon's composition.

This poor fragment is all that can with confidence be affirmed to remain of
the voluminous works of the man whom Baeda regarded as the greatest of
vernacular religious poets. It is true that for two centuries and a half a
considerable body of verse has been currently known by his name; but among
modern scholars the use of the customary designation is merely a matter of
convenience, and does not imply any belief in the correctness of the
attribution. The so-called Caedmon poems are contained [v.04 p.0935] in a
MS. wr