Old English Written Records

Old English written records which are rather numerous are generally classified either in accordance with the alphabet used or in accordance with the dialect of the scribe who wrote the record.

If we speak about the first criterion – the alphabet (runic or insular) – the first group is rather scarcely represented (Frank’s casket, Ruthwell cross), the other group having many written records. But generally the records are classified in accordance with their dialect: Northumbrian (Frank’s casket, Ruthwell cross, Caedmon’s hymns), Mercian (translation of the Psalter), Kentish (psalms), West Saxon (the Anglo-Saxon chronicle, the translation of a philosophical treatise Cura Pastoralis, King Alfred’s Orosius – a book of history).

There were also many translations from other dialects, an example of which is Bede’s Ecclesiastical History of the English People (731 AD). Bede, a learned monk at Jarrow, is said to have assimilated all the learning of his time. He wrote on language, science and chronology and composed numerous commentaries on the Old and New Testament.

With the rise of Wessex to the dominant position among the Old English kingdoms in the 9^th and 10^thcenturies, and thanks to the powerful influence of their learned King Alfred, the West Saxon dialect became the chief vehicle of literature. All the works of literary importance that have survived, both prose and poetry, are written in West Saxon, with only occasional traces of other dialects, and in this sense it may be regarded as typical of the Old English period.