straw.

After a while he slept, and in his sleep some one of lofty stature, and
with kindly-beaming eyes, stood beside him, and commanded him to sing. "I
cannot," replied Caedmon, despondingly.

"Sing!" was the uncompromising answer.

"What shall I sing?"

"The origin of all things."

Immediately before his quickened sense swept a vision of Creation, and to
his glad surprise he described it all in song. The next morning he
remembered, and repeated it; and the monks, hearing of it, took him into
the monastery, and taught him scenes and sentences from the Bible, which
he rendered into verse, and so became the first of the long line of sacred
poets.

It was Christmas Eve, and the great hall of the Abbey was decked with the
Druids' sacred mistletoe with its pearly fruitage, the bright green of the
ivy, and branches of holly, with scarlet, shining berries. Great logs were
heaped on the broad stones in the middle of the hall, and jets of flame
leaped up to brighten the low, smoke-stained ceiling, and restless shadows
flitted along the wall, while the smoke escaped through the opening in the
roof, for chimneys were then, and for many centuries after, unknown. The
unglazed windows were closed at nightfall by wooden shutters, and rude
comfort cheered the inmates. A robin, who had fluttered in at dusk, and
found Christmas cheer on the holly boughs and warmth for his numbed little
feet, trilled a song of gratitude that winter had made such speed to be
gone.

Two nights before, a company of pilgrims from the convents of Palestine,
had come to the monastery. They had been many months on their way, eagerly
welcomed wherever they stopped, for journeying was both difficult and
dangerous, and travellers from such a remote region were rarely met. Their
dark complexions, hair and beards; their bright, mobile expression; their
manners toned by the graces of Eastern civilization, were a strange
contrast to the shaggy, elfish, ruddy-faced throng about them. This
Christmas Eve they were telling the monks wonderful stories of the Holy
Land; its beautiful, vine-clad hills; its tropical, luscious fruits; its
towering, plumy palms and hoary cedars; the long lines of caravans that
wound over the silent, pathless deserts to bring to its cities the riches
of Oriental commerce; the palaces and heathen temples of those cities, and
the traditional glory of _the_ Temple, with its magnificence of gold, and
precious stones, and woods and ivory. O