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The Fight at Finnsburh [all]

A notoriously disputed fragment, the original manuscript of which is now, sadly, lost (though I keep thinking it might be behind the couch cushions somewhere in Lambeth Palace. If they would only let me wander around and ransack the place… ), the Fight at Finnsburh describes some of the events also depicted in the Finnsburh episode in Beowulf.

The fragment depicts part of the fight in the hall when Hnæf is killed but his men successfully defend the hall for five days, leading to the uneasy and temporary truce discussed in Beowulf.

Caedmon’s Hymn [West Saxon]

[N.b.: I am posting Caedmon’s Hymn out of sequence (its regular place is in ASPR volume 6, Anglo-Saxon Minor Poems), but my students need to memorize it as part of English 208: Anglo-Saxon Literature.]

Now we must praise the keeper of the heavenly kingdom

The power of the Measurer and his mind-thoughts,

The work of the glory-father; as he, each of wonders,

the eternal Lord, established from the beginning.

He first shaped, for the children of men,

Heaven as a roof, the Holy Shaper,

Then middle-earth, man-kind’s Guardian,

The eternal Lord, afterwards created,

The earth for men, the Lord Almighty.