Caedmon, Sing Me Something

Some time in the mid-seventh century, an Anglo-Saxon herdsman living in the monastery of Streonæshalch (on the north-east coast of England) had a dream. The monks of the monastery were at feast that night, singing and harping, but because he knew no poetry, Cædmon had wandered off early to sleep in the cattle stall with the animals he tended. In his dream, "someone" approached him, calling him by name and beckoning: "Cædmon, sing me something."

Knowing no songs, Cædmon refused, but the "someone" insisted: "All the same, you have to sing for me."

"And what must I sing?"

"Sing principium creaturarum"-- The beginning of Created Things.

Immediately Cædmon's mouth was opened and he began to sing praises to the Creator. Verses he had never heard before sprang out of him, verses for the Christian God, but sung in the (till then mostly pagan) poetic tradition of his country-men.

Translated into modern English, this is what he sang:

Now must we praise heaven-kingdom's Keeper,
the Measurer's might and his mind-plans,
the work of the Glory-Father, when he of wonders every one
eternal Lord, the Beginning established.
He first created, for men's sons,
heaven as a roof, holy Creator,
then the middle-earth, mankind's Keeper,
eternal Lord, afterwards he made--
for men, earth, the Master Almighty.
Cædmon woke with this song ringing in his head, and shared it with his foreman. The foreman took him to the abbess of the monastery, who in turn affirmed it as a gift from God. Cædmon took monastic vows and began to receive instruction in Christian doctrine, learning the "whole sequence of sacred history" which he would convert into sweetest song, song "so delightful that he made his teachers, in their turn, his listeners."

He died a revered poet-saint.

And the song he received that night in the cattle-stall of a seventh-Century Christian monastery on the north-east coast of England is thought by many to be the earliest example of Anglo-Saxon poetry we have on record. You can click here to listen to a reading of Cædmon's Hymn in the original Old English. (If you've never heard Anglo-Saxon poetry before, it's worth a listen. I got my English students to listen to a bit once when we were studying poetry-- they said it sounded like Elvish from the Lord of the Rings movies.)

But there's something haunting here in this ancient story of a simple herdsman, meeting with the Christian God and finding his mouth filled with distinctly Anglo-Saxon praise. "Cædmon, sing me something" called the Spirit of Christ in the stable that night; like an altar-hot coal he touched Cædmon's lips, inspiring him to translate that touch into the rich poetic tradition of his own culture.


And there, in the alliterated syllables and Old English kennings of Cædmon's hymn- now must we praise heaven-kingdom's Keeper- the Measurer's might and his mind-plans- we can hear the Spirit calling out once more to all the nations, tribes and tongues of the Earth. "Come," it cries: "Bring to me the richest and finest and most lovely your culture has to offer- its verse, its song, its art, its craft. Bring it now through the gates of the New Jerusalem. Lay it here at the feet of the Christ of God and find it divinely-claimed, blood-bought, purified and perfected there."

"Come Cædmon, sing me something."