Editing Cædmon (section)

====Manuscript evidence====
All copies of ''Hymn'' are found in manuscripts of the ''Historia ecclesiastica'' or its translation, where they serve as either a [[gloss (annotation)|gloss]] to Bede's Latin translation of the Old English poem, or, in the case of the Old English version, a replacement for Bede's translation in the main text of the History. Despite this close connection with Bede's work, the ''Hymn'' does not appear to have been transmitted with the ''Historia ecclesiastica'' regularly until relatively late in its textual history. Scribes other than those responsible for the main text often copy the vernacular text of the ''Hymn'' in manuscripts of the Latin Historia. In three cases, ''Oxford, Bodleian Library, Laud Misc. 243'', ''Oxford, Bodleian Library, Hatton 43'', and ''Winchester, Cathedral I'', the poem is copied by scribes working a quarter-century or more after the main text was first set down.<ref>See [[#ker1957|Ker 1957]], arts. 341, 326 and 396; also [[#okeeffe1990|O'Keeffe 1990]], p. 36.</ref> 

Even when the poem is in the same hand as the manuscript's main text, there is little evidence to suggest that it was copied from the same exemplar as the Latin ''Historia'': nearly identical versions of the Old English poem are found in manuscripts belonging to different recensions of the Latin text; closely related copies of the Latin ''Historia'' sometimes contain very different versions of the Old English poem. With the exception of the Old English translation, no single recension of the ''Historia ecclesiastica'' is characterised by the presence of a particular recension of the vernacular poem.<ref>Compare the recensional identifications for witnesses to the Old English Hymn in [[#dobbie1937|Dobbie 1937]] with those for manuscripts of the Latin ''Historia'' in [[#colgraveandmynors1969|Colgrave and Mynors 1969]], pp. xxxix–lxx.</ref>