STORY OF CAEDMON that the Celtic monks, though employing Latin in the services of the Church, would be much less Latinised than the Italian missionaries in the south. Comparatively exempt from classical influences, they at the same time were by no means animated by a fraternal spirit towards the Romans, and the flight of the Roman Archbishop Paulinus from York in 633 for long left them a clear field. Celtic clergy came to Northumbria in 634 on the invitation of King Oswald, and it was not until 664 that they finally retreated. Under these circumstances, it is comprehensible that Anglo-Saxon literature might grow up in Northumbria while it was elsewhere repressed by the addiction of the reading and writing classes to Latin literature, and that Anglo-Saxon minstrels would feel at liberty to versify Biblical narrative in their own manner. This would seem to have been the extent of the service rendered to AngloSaxon poetry by the British clergy: nothing of the visionary and delicately fanciful Celtic cast of thought is to be detected in it at any period. If the circumstances related of Caedmon's initiation into the poetic art are mythical, they at least attest the celebrity of the poems which gave birth to the legend; if, on the other hand, they are authentic, they are a poem in themselves. Whichever view is taken, they at all events serve to show the prevalence of minstrelsy at AngloSaxon banquets in the seventh century, and disclose the very interesting fact that the minstrel was not invariably a professional bard, but that music and singing were sufficiently cultivated to warrant the expectation that every guest would be able to bear a part in them. Caedmon, Beda tells us, lived nigh the abbey of Streoneshalch (Whitby) in the time of the Abbess Hilda (658-680). A farm servant in all probability, at all events a simple and unlettered man, he was unable to play or sing, and whenever he saw the harp approaching him at a banquet he was accustomed to withdraw in haste. Having on one of these occasions fled from the banqueting-room to the stable where he was engaged in tending cattle, he fell asleep and dreamed that he heard a voice commanding 19 nufcrlunhqigan “he fa&picaquard maudas maŵr &id his modgidane uge uuldur Paduj Caedmon's Hymn, the oldest Christian poem in Anglo-Saxon From an eighth-century MS, in the University of Cambridge Caedmon him to sing. His excuses not being accepted he made the attempt, and to his astonishment found himself hymning the praise of the Creator. On awakening he remembered the verses he had composed, and recited them to the steward under whom he served, who brought him to the Abbess. His poetical gift was duly attested and authenticated, and he spent the remainder of his life in versifying Scripture under the patronage of the abbey. There is really no reason to doubt the substantial veracity of the story; although, were it now possible to investigate the circumstances on the spot, we should probably find that Caedmon was already versed حاسمة Poems altributea to Caedmon Expulsion of Adam and Eve from Paradise From the Caedmon MS. (tenth century) in the Bodleian Library in the Scriptures as an auditor if not as a reader, and that his reluctance to perform his part as a minstrel was rather the effect of timidity than of absolute inability. The endeavour to make him a mythical personage may safely be dismissed. It would be impossible to find a more trustworthy authority than Beda, who was actually the contemporary of Caedmon's latter years. The poetry attributed entirely or in part to Caedmon has come down to us in a single manuscript, discovered by Archbishop Ussher, and now preserved in the Bodleian Library. It nowhere claims to be the work of Caedmon, and the ascription of a large portion of its contents to him by its original editor, Franciscus Junius, is grounded upon their substantial agreement with the description of Beda, who actually gives the general sense CAEDMON'S PARAPHRASES 21 of the exordium in a Latin version sufficiently in accord with the diction of the Bodleian MS. to render it, all discrepancies notwithstanding, nearly certain that he is following the same text. King Alfred, or the translator who worked under his direction, rendering Beda into Anglo-Saxon, gives indeed quite a different text as Caedmon's; but it seems almost certain that, not having the poet himself to refer to, he is merely turning Beda's Latin back into the vernacular. Beda further gives an account of Caedmon's Anglo-Saxon representation of Musicians From a manuscript Psalter (eighth century) in the British Museum writings which agrees with the contents of the MS. to a considerable extent. He describes them as paraphrases of Genesis and Exodus, "with many other histories of holy writ," also of the New Testament, and of poems on the world to come. So far as Genesis is concerned, the description, with one remarkable exception to be noticed, tallies exactly; and "the other histories" may be thought to be represented by a paraphrase of Daniel, also in the MS. The Caedmonian authorship of the Exodus is questioned on the ground of its superior poetical merit, and the internal evidence it seems to afford of the poet's having been a warrior. The poems contained in the MS. which relate to the New Testament and the invisible world. do not agree so well, there are also linguistic variations, and the hand Poem on the writing is that of a different scribe. There seems, therefore, good reason for concluding that Genesis, with one important exception to be named immediately, and possibly Exodus and Daniel, were written by Caedmon; Ruthwell Cross and the other pieces by poets of his school, who, Bede says, were nu merous. The exception we have noted to the generally Caedmonian authorship of the Genesis is the remarkable history of the Temptation of Adam and Eve, commonly known as "Genesis B.," which it is difficult to believe unknown to Milton. Critics are nearly unanimous in regarding it as improbable that this striking poem should have been written by the paraphrast of Genesis and Exodus, and the improbability is increased by its evident relation to the old German poem of the Heliand, written in the eighth century, whose author author was sufficiently erudite to have been indebted to to the the Latin poems of Avitus, Bishop of Vienne. The Heliand ("Saviour") is of course solely concerned with the New Testament, but seems to imply a corresponding poem on the Old, existing at present solely in the Anglo-Saxon fragment known as "Genesis B." In any case this is at least two centuries later than Caedmon. As might be expected, the gentle diffident minstrel, whose doubts and fears kept him back from song for half a century, excels chiefly in tender passages, such as the following description of the Dove and the olive tree, thus rendered by Mr. Stopford Brooke : Far and wide she flew, Glad in flying free, till she found a place |