Cædmon

Comprehensive information about Cædmon including biographical information, facts, literary works, and more. CÆDMON (Caedmon), the earliest English Christian poet. His story, and even his very name, are known to us only from Bæda (Hist. Eccl. iv. 24). An Anglo-Saxon who cared for the animals at the double monastery of Streonæshalch (Whitby Abbey ) during the abbacy (657–680) of St. Hilda (614–680), he was originally ignorant of "the art of song" but learned to compose one night in the course of a dream, according to the 8th-century monk Bede. This educational Cædmon resource has information about the author's life, works, quotations, articles and essays, and more.