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Updated: May 25, 2025
This man was called Caedmon. He could not sing, and although he loved to listen to the songs of others, "whenever he saw the harp come near him," we are told, "he arose out of shame from the feast and went home to his house." Away from the bright firelight out into the lonely dark he crept with bent head and lagging steps.
"If," he continues, "we consider Bede's account of Caedmon, we are struck by one analogy at least: in each case a command is imparted to the poet to celebrate a particular theme in the first, the creation of the world; in the second, the redemption of mankind by the death of the cross. As the one stands at the beginning of the Old Testament, the other epitomises the New.
He is the mighty power, the chief of all exalted creatures, Lord Almighty. The Paraphrase is really composed of three separate poems: the Genesis, the Exodus, and the Daniel; and these are probably the works of different writers. Critics are not agreed whether any of these poems in their present form can be ascribed to Caedmon.
The singing in the kitchen was ended, the fire had burned low, and each man had gone to his place. Then Caedmon had a strange dream. He thought that a wonderful light was shining around him. His eyes were dazzled by it. He rubbed them with his hands, and when they were quite open he thought that he saw a beautiful face looking down upon him, and that a gentle voice said, "Caedmon, sing for me."
He answered, "I know not how to sing; and for this cause I came out from the feast and came hither because I knew not how." Again he who spoke with him said, "Nevertheless, thou canst sing me something." Caedmon said, "What shall I sing?" He answered, "Sing me the Creation."
But it is well to remember that Caedmon wrote in Anglo-Saxon and Bede in Latin. There were others who wrote history before Bede, but he was perhaps the first who wrote history in the right spirit. He did not write in order to make a good minstrel's tale. He tried to tell the truth. He was careful as to where he got his facts, and careful how he used them.
Ramsay's The Foundations of England. Cambridge History of English Literature, Vol. Brooke's History of Early English Literature to the Accession of King Alfred. Morley's English Writers, Vols. I. and II. Earle's Anglo-Saxon Literature. Ten Brink's Early English Literature, Vol. Gurteen's The Epic of the Fall of Man: A Comparative Study of Caedmon, Dante, and Milton. Cook's The Christ of Cynewulf.
Finally, he was something more: he was what not one of the great Latin poets was, a Christian; that is, in his latter days, when he began to feel the vanity of all human pursuits, when his nerves began to be unstrung, his hair to fall off, and his teeth to drop out, and he then composed sacred pieces entitling him to rank with we were going to say Caedmon; had we done so we should have done wrong; no uninspired poet ever handled sacred subjects like the grand Saxon Skald but which entitle him to be called a great religious poet, inferior to none but the protege of Hilda.
"Then the chief of seamen knew that gladness was at hand, and he sent forth after three weeks the wild dove who came not back again; for she saw the land of the greening trees. The happy creature, all rejoicing, would no longer of the ark, for she needed it no more."* *Stopford Brooke Besides Genesis many other poems were thought at one time to have been made by Caedmon.
He considers that The Dream belongs to the age of Caedmon, and that the poetry of Cynewulf was an adaptation of older compositions. * Anglo-Saxon Reader, p. 154, 7th edition. There can be now no possible doubt but that the poems in the Vercelli Codex are by Cynewulf, the controversy henceforth being as to whether The Dream of the Rood or the inscription on the cross is the older.
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