Cædmon
Cædmon is the earliest of three historically accepted Anglo-Saxon poets. He was a herdsman in the monastery known as Whitby Abbey. Cædmon ‘s earliest recorded date would place him during the abbacy of St. Hilda (657-680).
Probably getting on in years, Cædmon believed he was unable to sing with the brothers; as a herdsman, he slept with the animals. In a dream one night, he had a vision of a male figure directing him to “sing his own song”. After weighing his attitude regarding being unable to sing, he did sing as he was charged, "the beginning of created things" which he completed with additional verses when he woke. Word of Cædmon’s ability reached the abbess who charged him to write a poem entitled “a passage of sacred text or doctrine”. Impressed with his heart-felt results, she then directed him to take monastic vows, and she assigned scholars to teach sacred history and doctrine to this new monk in their midst.
Avoiding heroic or worldly stories, Cædmon ‘s poetry is purely religious. He built on moral teachings and directives from the Bible. Bede stated that many other English writers fell short in trying to imitate Cædmonian sacred verse. His works featured his daily English life and monastic surroundings, vivid picturing of the armies heightened in comradeship and battle in the flight of
Israel, and the dramatic upholding of Christ and put-down of Satan in Genesis.
This was the beginning of a long history of English sacred poetry. Cædmon died in ecclesiastical care in about 680.
Here is a West Saxon rendition of Cædmon ‘s only surviving hymn:
Now (we) must praise the Protector of the heavenly
kingdom,
the might of the Measurer and His mind’s purpose,
the work of the Father of Glory, as He [made] each of the wonders,
the eternal Lord, established a beginning.
He shaped first for the sons of the Earth heaven as
a roof,
then the Middle-World, mankind’s Guardian,
the eternal Lord, made afterwards,
solid ground for men, the almighty Lord, (The Holy Maker).
Alex Malloy