His story is recounted in Bede the Venerable’s Historia Ecclesiastica
Gentis Anglorum, or Ecclesiastical History of the English People, written around 731.
Caedmon lived in the seventh century as a lay brother in the community of Abbess Hilda of Whitby.
Bede tells us, ‘He had lived in the secular habit until he was well advanced in years and had never learned any songs.’ The singing of psalms and hymns played its normal central role in a Celtic establishment, and often at a feast for the sake of providing entertainment, it was an accepted tradition that all present should all sing in turn. That he knew no songs and could not sing bothered Caedmon so much, that whenever he saw the harp approaching him, he would quietly rise up even in the middle of the feasting, slip out, and return home.
Once, during the singing, Caedmon was so frustrated by his inability to contribute to the praises of the community he left the gathering, went to the stables and fell asleep among the horses.
As he slept, he dreamt that someone addressed him by name, saying, “Caedmon, sing me something.” Caedmon answered, “I cannot sing; that is why I left the feast and came here, because I could not sing.” The voice replied, “Nevertheless, you must sing.”
Feeling strangely compelled to obey, he asked, “What shall I sing?” and heard the voice say, “Sing about the beginning of created things.”
At that, Caedmon immediately began to sing out in praise of God:
Now we ought to praise Heaven-kingdom’s guardian,
the Maker’s might and his mind’s thoughts,
the work of the glory-father, as he established
the beginning of every wonder.
He first shaped for men’s sons
Heaven as a roof, the holy Creator;
then middle-earth mankind’s guardian,
eternal Lord, afterwards prepared,
for men the earth, the Lord almighty.
Waking from his sleep, Caedmon remembered all that he had sung in his dream; his hymn was new, pouring forth from his heart. The next morning he went to his superior and told him of the dream. His superior took him to Hilda.
The abbess, who recognized the grace of God at work, instructed Caedmon to set aside his secular habit and to take monastic vows. She and all her people received him into the community of the brothers, and ordered that he should be instructed in the whole course of sacred history. He learned all he could by listening to them, and then, Bede tells us “.. memorizing it and ruminating over it, like some clean animal chewing the cud, he turned it into the most melodious verse: and it sounded so sweet as he recited it that his teachers became in turn his audience.”
He composed more verses in the same manner, “praising God in a worthy style,” and went on to become a great creative and dynamic force in the spiritual community, a poet and a prophet.
Caedmon is the very first English poet whose name we know; and so English poetry, it is said, began with a vision of God.
Caedmon’s story tells us too of our ordinary selves, afraid to find our ‘true voice’; but by heeding the call of ‘the other’ - divine prompting, sometimes simple inner prompting - we can give voice to our previously withheld beautiful creativity – whatever shape or form this takes.
Other poets find commonality with Caedmon’s story.
Susan Mitchell's dwells on Caedmon's story, and the prompting of ‘the other one’ in her beautiful poem ‘Rapture’:
“Sing me something'' is what the other keeps saying
night after night, regular as a pulse.
And when this one is alone, there's no problem.
He sings. He takes the lute-like
into his hands and plucks. Yes, he hears it.
What sounds like a sound. But when he opens his mouth,
it's different, it's the wrong sound.
And when this one is alone, there's no problem.
He sings. He takes the lute-like
into his hands and plucks. Yes, he hears it.
What sounds like a sound. But when he opens his mouth,
it's different, it's the wrong sound.
Is it the acoustics inside
his head that make the difference? And who keeps
urging, making impossible demands
of him? ``Come on,''
the other one is saying like
a faucet dripping, like a branch beating the window.
The window in his head. He opens it.
“Come on, Caedmon, sing me hwaethwugu.'' Yes,
that's how it sounds, like another
language, like gibberish, like
talking in his sleep. Remember the eensy-weensy
spider that climbed the water spout? That's how
he tries. His hands try. His lips.
It falls down. He tries. It falls down.
It's that regular. But when he makes it that regular
it's no good. It's not the same regularity.
I can't, he says, filling his mouth
with a big hole. Refusing, it begins for him.
Protesting, it swings itself up, it gets
going. It comes to him coming.
Or, it comes to her. What she lacks.
What hasn't happened in her
entire life, now it's coming, its absence
spread everywhere like a canyon in waves
of magenta and purple and gold.
The voice spreading before her. ``Forget
outside. Forget sky outside and clouds outside.''
This is what the voice spreads
before her, so she can look at what
it is saying. …
And one of my favorite poets, Denise Levertov has these words (from her ‘Breathing the Water’) on Caedmon discovering his:
All others talked as if
talk were a dance.
Clodhopper I, with clumsy feet
would break the gliding ring.
Early I learned to
hunch myself
close by the door:
then when the talk began
I’d wipe my
mouth and wend
unnoticed back to the barn
to be with the warm beasts,
dumb among body sounds
of the simple ones.
I’d see by a twist
of lit rush the motes
of gold moving
from shadow to shadow
slow in the wake
of deep untroubled sighs.
The cows
munched or stirred or were still. I
was at home and lonely,
both in good measure. Until
the sudden angel affrighted me—light effacing
my feeble beam,
a forest of torches, feathers of flame, sparks upflying:
but the cows as before
were calm, and nothing was burning,
nothing but I, as that hand of fire
touched my lips and scorched my tongue
and pulled my voice
into the ring of the dance.
May each of us discover the courage to find our true voice.
Marguerite Theophil
Stories live in your blood and bones,follow the seasons
and light candles on the darkest night
-every storyteller knows she or he is also a teacher...
~Patti Davis
