Page:The Dream of the Rood - ed. Cook - 1905.djvu/16

Rh Again, writing in 1861, he said : 'The poem of which these are fragments was probably one of those which Cædmon, who was living at the time when these monuments were erected, composed. That they belong to the seventh century cannot be doubted; they contain forms of the language which are evidently earlier than those which occur in the contemporary version of Bæda's verses in a MS. at S. Gallen, and the copy of Cædmon's first song at the end of the MS. of the Historia Ecclesiastica, which was completed two years after its author's death.'

This view of Haigh's was supported by George Stephens (1813–95), the runic collector, a friend and correspondent of Haigh's, and it is with Stephens's name that the theory is usually associated. Stephens, like Haigh, referred the cross to the seventh century, and ascribed the authorship of the verses to Csedmon. Stephens wrote as follows :

'There is no doubt of the reading, though a letter or two is now injured. It is, on the right side:

and, on the left side:

That is, the MÆ being a bind-rune:

'So, by another form of the same verb, King Alfred has the expression ged gefegean for "to indite, compose, make, a song. . . ."

'This, then, is clear, outward evidence that Cædmon, whose name is also spelled Cedmon, here found in its North English and more original shape as Cadmon, was the author of these runic verses.

'But we have three arguments or proofs that the Rh