Side by side with this historical exactness are marvelous stories of saints and missionaries.  It was an age of credulity, and miracles were in men’s minds continually.  The men of whom he wrote lived lives more wonderful than any romance, and their courage and gentleness made a tremendous impression on the rough, warlike people to whom they came with open hands and hearts.  It is the natural way of all primitive peoples to magnify the works of their heroes, and so deeds of heroism and kindness, which were part of the daily life of the Irish missionaries, were soon transformed into the miracles of the saints.  Bede believed these things, as all other men did, and records them with charming simplicity, just as he received them from bishop or abbot.  Notwithstanding its errors, we owe to this work nearly all our knowledge of the eight centuries of our history following the landing of Caesar in Britain.

CAEDMON (Seventh Century)

    Now must we hymn the Master of heaven,
    The might of the Maker, the deeds of the Father,
    The thought of His heart.  He, Lord everlasting,
    Established of old the source of all wonders: 
    Creator all-holy, He hung the bright heaven,
    A roof high upreared, o’er the children of men;
    The King of mankind then created for mortals
    The world in its beauty, the earth spread beneath them,
    He, Lord everlasting, omnipotent God.[28]

If Beowulf and the fragments of our earliest poetry were brought into England, then the hymn given above is the first verse of all native English song that has come down to us, and Caedmon is the first poet to whom we can give a definite name and date.  The words were written about 665 A.D. and are found copied at the end of a manuscript of Bede’s Ecclesiastical History.

LIFE OF CaeDMON.  What little we know of Caedmon, the Anglo-Saxon Milton, as he is properly called, is taken from Bede’s account[29] of the Abbess Hilda and of her monastery at Whitby.  Here is a free and condensed translation of Bede’s story: 

There was, in the monastery of the Abbess Hilda, a brother distinguished by the grace of God, for that he could make poems treating of goodness and religion.  Whatever was translated to him (for he could not read) of Sacred Scripture he shortly reproduced in poetic form of great sweetness and beauty.  None of all the English poets could equal him, for he learned not the art of song from men, nor sang by the arts of men.  Rather did he receive all his poetry as a free gift from God, and for this reason he did never compose poetry of a vain or worldly kind.