ight all judge what this might be and whence the gift had
come. And they were all sure that a divine gift had been bestowed on
Caedmon by God Himself. They gave him a holy story and words of divine
lore, and bad him sing them if he could, putting them into the measure
of verse. In the morning he came back, having set them in most beautiful
poetry. And after that the Abbess had him instructed, and he left the
life in the world for the religious life. We are told by St Bede that he
made much beautiful verse, being taught much holy lore and making songs
so winsome to hear that his teachers themselves learned at his mouth.

"He sang of the creation of earth and the making of man, and the history
of Genesis, and the going out of the Israelites from the land of the
Egyptians, and their entering into the Land of Promise, and many other
stories told in the Books of the Canon. He also sang concerning the
Humanity of Christ and about His Passion and His Ascension, and about
the coming of the Holy Ghost, and the teaching of the Apostles. And he
sang also of the Judgement to come and of the sweetness of the Kingdom
of Heaven. About these things he made many songs, as well as about the
Divine goodness and judgment. And this poet always had before him the
desire to draw men away from the love of sin and of evil doing, and to
make them earnestly desire to do good deeds."

At last a fair end was set upon his life when, glad of heart, full of
love to those around him, he received Holy Viaticum, and prayed and
signed himself with the Holy Sign, and entered sweetly into his rest.

This is the story told for the most part, as it is best to tell it in
the way in which St Bede recorded it; and Alfred rendered it into the
English of his day, from which English I have now taken it.

CHAPTER II

Caedmon and his influence. Poem, "Genesis." "The Fall of The Angels."
"Exodus," English a war-loving race. Destruction of the Egyptians,
Fate and the Lord of Fate.

We possess poems on the subjects which St Bede tells us that Caedmon
wrote upon, but we cannot be sure that any of these are actually that
poet's work. St Bede tells us that many others after him wrote noble
songs, but he sets Caedmon's work above that of all those others as
having been the product of a gift direct from God. In any case he must
have influenced those who wrote later than he. All our work whether we
are poets, thinkers, fighters, craftsmen, servants, trade