Editing Bede (section)

=== Vernacular poetry ===
According to his disciple Cuthbert, Bede was ''doctus in nostris carminibus'' ("learned in our songs"). Cuthbert's letter on Bede's death, the ''Epistola Cuthberti de obitu Bedae'', moreover, commonly is understood to indicate that Bede composed a five-line vernacular poem known to modern scholars as ''[[Bede's Death Song]]''
{{blockquote|
And he used to repeat that sentence from [[Paul of Tarsus|St Paul]] "It is a fearful thing to fall into the hands of the living God," and many other verses of Scripture, urging us thereby to awake from the slumber of the soul by thinking in good time of our last hour. And in our own language—for he was familiar with English poetry—speaking of the soul's dread departure from the body:
{{Verse translation|
{{lang|ang|Fore ðæm nedfere nænig wiorðe
ðonc snottora ðon him ðearf siæ
to ymbhycgenne ær his hinionge
hwæt his gastæ godes oððe yfles
æfter deað dæge doemed wiorðe.}}<ref name="ColgraveMynors1969pp580-3">{{harvnb|Colgrave|Mynors|1969|pp=580–583}}</ref>
|
Facing that enforced journey, no man can be
More prudent than he has good call to be,
If he consider, before his going hence,
What for his spirit of good hap or of evil
After his day of death shall be determined.}} }}

As Opland notes, however, it is not entirely clear that Cuthbert is attributing this text to Bede: most manuscripts of the latter do not use a [[finite verb]] to describe Bede's presentation of the song, and the theme was relatively common in Old English and Anglo-Latin literature. The fact that Cuthbert's description places the performance of the Old English poem in the context of a series of quoted passages from Sacred Scripture might be taken as evidence simply that Bede also cited analogous vernacular texts.<ref name="Opland140">{{harvnb|Opland|1980|pp=140–141}}</ref>

On the other hand, the inclusion of the Old English text of the poem in Cuthbert's Latin letter, the observation that Bede "was learned in our song," and the fact that Bede composed a Latin poem on the same subject all point to the possibility of his having written it. By citing the poem directly, Cuthbert seems to imply that its particular wording was somehow important, either since it was a vernacular poem endorsed by a scholar who evidently frowned upon secular entertainment<ref name="Mccready14">{{harvnb|McCready|1994|pp=14–19}}</ref> or because it is a direct quotation of Bede's last original composition.<ref name="Opland14">{{harvnb|Opland|1980|p=14}}</ref>