Here's the old English poem! https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/47296/caedmons-hymn-5... Should be in the public domain by now eh?
Nu scilun herga hefenricæs uard
metudæs mehti and his modgithanc
uerc uuldurfadur sue he uundra gihuæs
eci dryctin or astelidæ.
he ærist scop ældu barnum
hefen to hrofæ halig sceppend
tha middingard moncynnæs uard
eci dryctin æfter tiadæ
firum foldu frea allmehtig
I couldn't make hide nor hair of it without the translation, but with the translation I see quite a few more words than just "and his" that have stayed around: hefen: heaven
uerc: work
uard: guard/ward
hrofæ: roof
æfter: after
middingard: Earth, to Marvel
allmehtig: almighty
I think also there's barnum = bairn's (as in children), and foldu = fold (as in sheepfold). Or just field, same thing.
Despite what The Poetry Foundation claims, and despite the Modern English translation by one of their own, the Early West Saxon text is Public Domain.
Although The Poetry Foundation still promises to track all your content
The OP article, published by Trinity College Dublin, and the original, and the photograph, are expressly CC-BY-ND 4.0. This is not a "free license", but it is a Creative Commons License.
https://theconversation.com/we-found-a-lost-copy-of-the-earl...
It looks to me like Poetry Foundation did it right. The modern translation has a copyright notice, the Early West Saxon version has none. I was being a little coy as anything older than Mickey Mouse is fair game. It's not a particularly marginal call, if you know what I mean
The separate copyright notice is because an individual wrote the translation, and this individual holds the copyright, and they claim that the publisher has licensed it to TPF.
There is no copyright notice on Ben Libman's original articles. Libman wrote them for TPF, apparently, and their blanket copyright notice makes the individual ones unnecessary.If the text is public domain and TPF knows it, where is the declaration of Public Domain? Where is the list of exemptions from "Everything Else We Are Hosting"?