![]() It seems to me thus, dearest king, that this present life of men on earth, in comparison to the time that is unknown to us, as if you were sitting at your dinner tables with your noblemen, warmed in the hall, and it rained and it snowed and it hailed and one sparrow came from outside and quickly flew through the hall and it came in through one door and went out through the other. Here is the Old English version of the counsellor’s speech, from an 11th-century manuscript: Bede’s parable of the sparrow in an 11th-century manuscript the scribe accidentally copied a line twice (‘heall gewyrmed 7 hit rine 7 sniwe’) and underlined the second instance. ![]() In Bede’s story, one of Edwin’s counsellors compares the life of a pagan to the flight of a sparrow through the king’s warm hall. It is found in his Ecclesiastical History of the English People (731), when he discusses how King Edwin of Northumbria was converted to Christianity in the year 627. This blog post looks at how Bede’s famous parable of the sparrow was reused in the 19th, 20th and 21st centuries.īede’s famous parable of the sparrow is a common text in many introductory courses of Old English. ![]()
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