Andrea Rosa writes: “The researchers in Ireland looked at their computer screen, marveling at a 9th-century book in a Roman library. They flipped through its digitized pages and found their treasure: the oldest surviving English poem. Composed in Old English by a Northumbrian agricultural worker in the 7th century, ‘Caedmon’s Hymn’ appears within some copies of the Ecclesiastical History of the English People. The discovery sheds light on the English language’s wide diffusion, long before what was previously understood,” The earliest printed version of the poem previously known dates from the 12th century, although two earlier texts included it as marginalia.