ement of the words, because no poetry, however
excellent, can be rendered into another language, without the loss of its
beauty of expression. When Caedmon awoke he remembered the verses that he
had sung and added to them others. He related his dream to the farm bailiff
under whom he worked, and was conducted by him to the neighbouring
monastery at Streanaeshalch (now called Whitby). The abbess Hild and her
monks recognized that the illiterate herdsman had received a gift from
heaven, and, in order to test his powers, proposed to him that he should
try to render into verse a portion of sacred history which they explained
to him. On the following morning he returned having fulfilled his task. At
the request of the abbess he became an inmate of the monastery. Throughout
the remainder of his life his more learned brethren from time to time
expounded to him the events of Scripture history and the doctrines of the
faith, and all that he heard from them he reproduced in beautiful poetry.
"He sang of the creation of the world, of the origin of mankind and of all
the history of Genesis, of the exodus of Israel from Egypt and their
entrance into the Promised Land, of many other incidents of Scripture
history, of the Lord's incarnation, passion, resurrection and ascension, of
the coming of the Holy Ghost and the teaching of the apostles. He also made
many songs of the terrors of the coming judgment, of the horrors of hell
and the sweetness of heaven; and of the mercies and the judgments of God."
All his poetry was on sacred themes, and its unvarying aim was to turn men
from sin to righteousness and the love of God. Although many amongst the
Angles had, following his example, essayed to compose religious poetry,
none of them, in Baeda's opinion, had approached the excellence of Caedmon's
songs.

Baeda's account of Caedmon's deathbed has often been quoted, and is of
singular beauty. It is commonly stated that he died in 680, in the same
year as the abbess Hild, but for this there is no authority. All that we
know of his date is that his dream took place during the period (658-680)
in which Hild was abbess of Streanaeshalch, and that he must have died some
considerable time before Baeda finished his history in 731.

The hymn said to have been composed by Caedmon in his dream is extant in its
original language. A copy of it, in the poet's own Northumbrian dialect,
and in a handwriting of the 8th century, appears on a blank page of the