ose lips during the reign of Oswiu flowed the first great English song.
Though well advanced in years, Caedmon had learned nothing of the art of
verse, the alliterative jingle so common among his fellows, "wherefore
being sometimes at feasts, when all agreed for glee's sake to sing in
turn, he no sooner saw the harp come towards him than he rose from the
board and went homewards. Once when he had done thus, and gone from the
feast to the stable where he had that night charge of the cattle, there
appeared to him in his sleep One who said, greeting him by name, 'Sing,
Caedmon, some song to Me.' 'I cannot sing,' he answered; 'for this cause
left I the feast and came hither.' He who talked with him answered,
'However that be, you shall sing to Me.' 'What shall I sing?' rejoined
Caedmon. 'The beginning of created things,' replied He. In the morning the
cowherd stood before Hild and told his dream. Abbess and brethren alike
concluded 'that heavenly grace had been conferred on him by the Lord.'
They translated for Caedmon a passage in Holy Writ, 'bidding him, if he
could, put the same into verse.' The next morning he gave it them
composed in excellent verse, whereon the abbess, understanding the divine
grace in the man, bade him quit the secular habit and take on him the
monastic life." Piece by piece the sacred story was thus thrown into
Caedmon's poem. "He sang of the creation of the world, of the origin of
man, and of all the history of Israel; of their departure from Egypt and
entering into the Promised Land; of the incarnation, passion, and
resurrection of Christ, and of His ascension; of the terror of future
judgement, the horror of hell-pangs, and the joys of heaven."

[Sidenote: Synod of Whitby]

But even while Caedmon was singing the glories of Northumbria and of the
Irish Church were passing away. The revival of Mercia was as rapid as its
fall. Only a few years after Penda's defeat the Mercians threw off
Oswin's yoke and set Wulfhere, a son of Penda, on their throne. They were
aided in their revolt, no doubt, by a religious strife which was now
rending the Northumbrian realm. The labour of Aidan, the victories of
Oswald and Oswin, seemed to have annexed the north to the Irish Church.
The monks of Lindisfarne, or of the new religious houses whose foundation
followed that of Lindisfarne, looked for their ecclesiastical tradition,
not to Rome but to Ireland; and quoted for their guidance the
instructions, not of Gregory