63 Colloquial and Li.. - Ganino.com

Conversations in Bede’s Historia Ecclesiastica 423
for Simon: quem corde toto abominaris, cuiusque horrendam faciem videre
refugis.
Moving to the bottom of the social scale, we come to the famous conversation
between the cowherd Cædmon and a dream apparition. Through
embarrassment at his inability to sing at a feast, Cædmon had left the room
as the harp, being passed around the room, was approaching him; later that
evening the famous dream took place.
(3) ...adstitit ei quidam per somnium, eumque salutans ac suo appellans
nomine ‘Caedmon,’ inquit ‘canta mihi aliquid’. at ille respondens,
‘nescio’ inquit ‘cantare; nam et ideo 12 de convivio egressus huc secessi,
quia cantare non poteram.’ rursum ille qui cum eo loquebatur ‘at tamen’
ait ‘mihi 13 cantare habes.’ ‘quid’ inquit ‘debeo cantare?’ et ille ‘canta’
inquit ‘principium creaturarum’. quo accepto responso, statim ipse coepit
cantare in laudem Dei Conditoris versus quos numquam audierat, quorum
iste est sensus: ‘nunc laudare debemus auctorem regni caelestis . . . ’
(4.22.2 (259–60))
Both speakers speak simply. ideo ...quia is not markedly high in tone
(at least to judge from Pl. Mer. 31–3 hoc ideo fit quia | quae nihil attingunt ad
rem...| tam [ea Ritschl] amator profert). Equally cantare habes (‘you must
sing’, as the reply shows) 14 is not markedly low. 15 The plain and unaffected
words contrast with the grand topic of the dreamt song. 16
An equally simple exchange involves much more exalted persons. Herebald,
later to be abbot of Tynemouth, relates the outcome of a riding
accident, 17 brought upon himself in his youth through neglect of the
advice of his bishop, John of Beverley.
12 ‘For it is precisely for this reason that . . . ’ Compare in Homilies 2.7, 211–13 Hurst nam et
ideo...ut...
13 mihi is emphatic: Cædmon cannot sing for the feasters, but he must for his divine interlocutor.
14 Contrast (king to Colman at Whitby) habetis vos proferre aliquid . . . Columbae datum? (3.25.11
(188)), ‘can you’; 3.22.3 (174) tu in ipsa domo mori habes (solemn words of bishop to king: see below,
p. 427), ‘you will’; 4.22.5 (261) neque enim mori adhuc habes (those in the infirmary to Cædmon),
‘you are not going to die yet’. See also 1.7.3 (19) (judge to Alban), cited below, p. 428. For the different
senses see e.g. Rönsch 1875: 449 n. 13, commenting on abundant biblical and patristic material.
15 Note in a different genre Homilies 2.17, 103 Hurst dolere prout decebat habebant.
16 Nothing could be simpler, too, than the words uttered during the ensuing death scene of Cædmon
(§§5–6 (261–2)). In the last exchange (‘non longe est.’ ‘bene; ergo exspectemus horam illam’) longe est is
not common in this sense (cf. however Cic. Sen. 66 mortis, quae certe a senectute non potest esse [v. l.
abesse] longe; Ambrose, Expositio psalmi cxviii 8.48 (Corpus scriptorum ecclesiasticorum Latinorum 62,
p. 180, 7–8) differ aliquantulum, non longe est finis diei); the reply bene is naturally conversational
(e.g. Apul. Met. 1.22 ‘en’ inquit ‘hospitium.’ ‘bene’ ego), though not in any way ‘low’. The usage at
2.1.11 (80) (twice) is different (‘it is well that they are called . . . ’).
17 John at the time commented: o quam magnum vae facis mihi sic equitando! (§2 (290)), relaxed and
conceivably colloquial in tone. vae is not paralleled in HE,thoughcf.Homilies 2.4, 135 Hurst, where
it is an exclamation, repeated in anaphora; CETEDOC gives a much later example with magnum.
As for o, the only parallels in HE are the striking repetition in the agonised words of Æthelhun to
Egbert at 3.27.4 (193): o frater Ecgbercte, o quid fecisti? . . . (note the reaction of the OE translator: