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Updated: May 25, 2025
"Having done so at a certain time, and gone out of the house where the entertainment was, to the stable, where he had to take care of the horses that night, he there composed himself to rest at the proper time; a person appeared to him in his sleep, and, saluting him by his name, said, 'Caedmon, sing some song to me. He answered, 'I cannot sing; for that was the reason why I left the entertainment and retired to this place, because I could not sing. The other who talked to him replied, 'However, you shall sing. 'What shall I sing? rejoined he.
Caedmon or Cynewulf might have said: "It is given to none of us to be secure against fate; but we have many recompenses." How different the note of Milton: "Those other two, equal with me in fate, So were I equal with them in renown " or: "Unchanged, though fallen on evil days; On evil days though fallen, and evil tongues, In darkness, and by dangers compassed round."
"The gentle cows will not ask a song of me," said the poor man. He soon found a warm corner, and there he lay down, covering himself with the straw. Inside of the great kitchen, beside the fire, the men were shouting and laughing; for the blacksmith had finished his song, and it was very pleasing. "Who is next?" asked the woodman. "Caedmon, the keeper of the cows," answered the chief cook.
The learned philologist Grimm again printed the longest of the poems in 1840, but it was Kemble who identified the fourth poem of the series The Dream of the Rood with the runic inscription on the Ruthwell Cross, and it was he who first suggested that all the poems in the Vercelli Codex, consisting of 135 leaves, were by Cynewulf, who like Caedmon was a Northumbrian, and lived in the second half of the eighth century.
And when Caedmon saw the harp coming near him, he would get up, feeling ashamed, and go home to his house. Now once upon a time he had done this and had left the house where they were feasting, and gone to the stall where the cattle were, which it was his duty that night to attend to.
We owe to him the translation of the account of the first English poet, Caedmon, from which I have quoted in my first chapter. But rightly, he felt the very great importance of learning Latin, and so he learned it himself, and made others learn it too.
And Caedmon, the poor cowherd of the abbey, was the first great poet of England. In the Far East there was once a prince whose name was Gautama. He lived in a splendid palace where there was everything that could give delight. It was the wish of his father and mother that every day of his life should be a day of perfect happiness.
There, when his work was done, he lay down and slept, and in a dream he saw a man standing by him, who hailed him and greeted him and called him by his name, saying: 'Caedmon, sing me something. And Caedmon answered and said, 'I can sing nothing, and therefore did I go from this feast, and depart hither, because I could not. And again he that was speaking with him, said: 'Nevertheless, thou must sing for me."
The story is familiar: on one occasion when the feast was over, he left the hall as soon as he saw the harp being passed, according to custom, from hand to hand. He went out to the cattle-sheds, tended the beasts and lay down to sleep. In a dream he heard a voice, "Caedmon, sing me something."
Caedmon gladly did her bidding, and when he had been received among them, his brother monks taught to him all the Bible stories. But Caedmon could neither read nor write, nor is it at all likely that he ever learned to do either even after he became a monk, for we are told that "he was well advanced in years" before his great gift of song came to him.
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