It predates rhyme and takes us back to the oldest English and Celtic poetries,вЂќ as Edward Hirsch writes in A PoetвЂ™s Glossary. Gray described this genesis of English literature: A herdsman sang in a вЂњNorthumbrian dialect of Anglo-SaxonвЂќ to an amanuensis вЂњwho got learning from the Irish Scots,вЂќ his narrative being a вЂњJewish creation story transmitted to him through at least three other languages by a Graeco-Roman-Celtic-Christian churchвЂќ with verse forms вЂњlearned from pagan German warrior chants.вЂќ The migrations of peoples and stories would, as with all languages, contribute to the individual aural soul of English, so that the result was an Anglo-Saxon literature that sounded like wind blowing in over the whale-road of the North Sea, reminding us that вЂњAlliteration is part of the sound stratum of poetry. Hilda, who declared this delivery a miracle (preserved only in 19 extant manuscripts). The other monks brought CГ¦dmon to the wise abbess St. That bright night in a dark age, what was delivered unto the shepherd were the first words of English poetry: вЂњNЕ« scylun hergan hefaenrД«caes Uard, / metudГ¦s maecti end his mЕЌdgidanc, /uerc Uuldurfadur, suД“ hД“ uundra gihwaes, / Д“ci dryctin ЕЌr ДЃstelidГ¦ / hД“ ЗЈrist scЕЌp aelda barnum / heben til hrЕЌfe, hДЃleg scepen,вЂќ and so on and so forth. When CГ¦dmon awoke, he was possessed with the consonantal bursts of a hot, orange iron bar being hammered against a glowing, sparkly anvil the sounds in his head were the characteristic alliteration of his native English. Bede records that in those nocturnal reveries вЂњsomeoneвЂќ came to CГ¦dmon asking the herdsman to sing of вЂњthe beginning of created things.вЂќ Like his older contemporary, the prophet Muhammad, some angelic visitor had brought to CГ¦dmon the exquisite perfection of words, and with a commission most appropriateвЂ“to create English verse on the topic of creation itself. CГ¦dmon went to sleep among his mute animals, but in the morning he arose with the fiery tongue of an angel. Bede described how the monks were вЂњsometimes at entertainmentsвЂќ and that it was вЂњagreed for the sake of mirth that all present should sing in their turn.вЂќ But in a scene whose face-burning embarrassment still resonates a millennium-and-a-half later, Bede explained that when CГ¦dmon вЂњsaw the instrument come towards him, he rose up from the table and returned home.вЂќ Pity the simple monk whom Alasdair Gray in The Book of Prefaces described as a вЂњlocal herdsman wanted to be a poet though he had not composed anything.вЂќ An original composition would wait for that night. In his Ecclesiastical History of the English People, St. A lay brother, CГ¦dmon feasted and drank with his fellow monks one evening when they all took to reciting verse from memory (as one does), playing their harps as King David had in the manner of the bards of the Britons, the scops of the Saxons, the Makers of songвЂ“for long before poetry was written it should be plucked and sung. There among his sheep at the Abbey of Whitby in the rolling Northumbrian countryside, CГ¦dmon served a clergy whose prayers were in a vernacular not their own, among a people of no letters. Pope Gregory I, having seen a group of them sold as slaves in the markets of Rome, had said вЂњThey are not Angles, but angels,вЂќ and yet these seraphim did not sing (yet). In the seventh century, the English, as they had yet to be called, may have had Christianity, but they did not yet have poetry. When the first English poetry was given by the gift and grace of God it was imparted to an illiterate shepherd named CГ¦dmon and the register that it was received and was alliterative. Robert Louis Stevenson, вЂњOn Some Technical Elements of Style in LiteratureвЂќ (1905) The beauty of the contents of a phrase, or of a sentence, depends implicitly upon alliteration.вЂќ None the less for that, was it abominable nonsense, and the mere raving of those blindest of the blind who will not see. вЂњIt used to be a piece of good advice to all young writers to avoid alliteration and the advice was sound, in as much as it prevented daubing.

W.h auden age of anxiety