re, of twelve beneath the stars, heroes gloriously
blessed." These "heroes," these "warriors," are the twelve apostles. One
of them, St. Andrew, arrives in an uninhabited country; not a desert in
Asia, nor a solitude in Greece; it might be the abode of Grendel: "Then
was the saint in the shadow of darkness, warrior hard of courage, the
whole night long with various thoughts beset; snow bound the earth with
winter-casts; cold grew the storms, with hard hail-showers; and rime and
frost, the hoary warriors, locked up the dwellings of men, the
settlements of the people; frozen were the lands with cold icicles,
shrunk the water's might; over the river streams, the ice made a bridge,
a pale water road."[86]

They have accepted the religion of Rome; they believe in the God of
Mercy; they have faith in the apostles preaching the doctrine of love to
the world: peace on earth to men of good will! But that warlike race
would think it a want of respect to see in the apostles mere _pacifici_,
and in the Anglo-Saxon poems they are constantly termed "warriors."

At several different times these new Christians translated parts of the
Bible into verse, and the Bible became Anglo-Saxon, not only in
language, but in tone and feeling as well. The first attempt of this
kind was made by that herdsman of the seventh century, named Caedmon,
whose history has been told by Bede. He was so little gifted by nature
that when he sat, on feast days, at one of those meals "where the custom
is that each should sing in turn, he would leave the table when he saw
the harp approaching and return to his dwelling," unable to find verses
to sing like the others. One night, when the harp had thus put him to
flight, he had, in the stable where he was keeping the cattle, a vision.
"Sing me something," was the command of a mysterious being. "I cannot,"
he answered, "and the reason why I left the hall and retired here is
that I cannot sing." "But sing thou must." "What shall I sing, then?"
"Sing the origin of things." Then came at once into his mind "excellent
verses"; Bede translates a few of them, which are very flat, but he
generously lays the fault on his own translation, saying: "Verses, even
the very best, cannot be turned word for word from one language into
another without losing much of their beauty and dignity,"[87] a remark
which has stood true these many centuries. Taken to the abbess Hilda, of
Streoneshalch, Caedmon roused the admiration of all, becam