Caedmon's Hymn (7th century)

Nū sculon heriġean heofonrīċes weard,
Meotodes meahte ond his mōdġeþanc,
weorc wuldorfæder, swā hē wundra ġehwæs,
ēċe Drihten, ōr onstealde.
Hē ǣrest sceōp eorðan bearnum
heofon tō hrōfe, hāliġ Scyppend;
þā middanġeard monncynnes weard,
ēċe Drihten, æfter tēode
fīrum foldan, Frēa ælmihtiġ.

(Can you find any familiar words?)

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I don't know half of you half as well as I should like; and I like less than half of you half as well as you deserve.

þakka þér - læsileg, síðir

thank you - at last literature using an intelligent alphabet that distinguishes the hard and soft 'th' sound!

but it was meant to be said aloud, so here it is (in the best West Saxon accent on the internet?? I am sure this bloke thinks so, he seems takes this very seriously!)

just do not peek at the modern version! Listen only

http://youtu.be/29v_adW9dn0

I think the sound is sort of like a Seurat painting - if you blur and soften it all out it becomes more recognisably English....

edit - and, at least in Norse, Freyr is the brother of Freyja, and is an important fertility god! But isn't this Christian??

middanġeard = middle garden?

wundra ġehwæs = has been wondrous or has been wounded?

ǣrest = first?

Scyppend = creating (adj.) ?

æfter tēode = after death?

Some very wild guesses; didn't peek.

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The opposite of hatred is love; the opposite of tyranny is love; the opposite of censorship is love; the opposite of evil is love; the opposite of politics is love; the opposite of war is love; the opposite of god is love.–– Salman Rushdie
Broadly speaking, it is held that getting money is good and spending money is bad. Seeing that they are two sides of one transaction, this is absurd; one might as well maintain that keys are good, but keyholes are bad. Whatever merit there may be in the production of goods must be entirely derivative from the advantage to be obtained by consuming them. –Bertrand Russell
Never believe a liar. Papa, angry people burn our home.

@JJ
do you have any views on the meaning of Frēa as Lord, as chuck brought up?
I am thinking it cannot Frejr, as suggested. My first thought it was Father (surely the same thing as Lord, that is basic Christianity)
but elsewhere father is fæder.

so, variant spelling, a word Frēa for Lord (dei?), or am I missing something simple?

So they really were using a word with the same root as the Norse word to name their own God? Did they realise this? I am sure Bede at least must have been aware of Freyr as a pagan god. And he certainly did not like Vikings!

I know religions do blend and Christianity has spread by settling in on top of native religions, but still, I am surprised that a word that would be known to them as a pagan god could still be used by them as their word for God. I would have thought you would want to differentiate yourself from other gods. Maybe they were isolated from the connection.

ah well, it answers that question, anyway. But the next question of course, would be, when did that word get dropped from English? I cannot think of a modern derivation from that root fraho, frao.