Old english vocabulary

There are only a few named figures in the history of writings in Old English. In the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography you can read about: Ælfric of Eynsham, Wulfstan [Lupus], Alfred [Ælfred], Æthelwold, Cædmon, and Cynewulf.
Old English verbs
Verbs in Old English show an extensive range of inflections, reflecting distinctions of person and number (e.g. first person singular, first person plural, etc.), tense (present or past), and mood (indicative, subjunctive, or imperative); many other distinctions are realized by periphrastic constructions with be v., worth v., will v., or shall v. as auxiliary in combination with non-finite forms of the verb.
With the exception of some (mostly high frequency) irregular or anomalous verbs, Old English verbs belong to one of two main groupings: strong verbs and weak verbs.
The strong verbs realize differences of tense by variation in the stem vowel. They are assigned to seven main classes, according to the vowel variation shown. Thus RIDE v., a Class I strong verb, shows the following vowel gradation in its “principal parts”, from which all of its other inflections can be inferred:

• 
  infinitive: rīdan
  
• 
  past tense singular: rād
  
• 
  past tense plural: ridon
  
• 
  past participle: (ge)riden
  

Similarly, the Class III strong verb BIND v. shows the following principal parts:

• 
  infinitive: bindan
  
• 
  past tense singular: band (or bond)
  
• 
  past tense plural: bundon
  
• 
  past participle: (ge)bunden
  

The principal parts of the various classes can simply be memorized as fairly arbitrary sets (with various subclasses and exceptions). To understand the causes of this variation we need to go back to a much earlier system of vowel gradation called ablaut, which Germanic inherited from Indo-European, and which Germanic made extensive use of in the strong verb system.
Since ablaut also ultimately explains the relationships between many other Old English words, it can be very useful to have some understanding of how it works, although it is far from simple. See the text box for a very short sketch.