CAEDMON, the earliest English Christian poet. His story is known to us only from Baeda (Hist. Eccl., iv. 24). He was (see BEDE) a herdsman, who received a divine call to poetry in a dream. One night, having quitted a company because, from want of skill, he could not comply with the demand made of each guest to sing, he dreamed that there appeared to him a stranger, who com manded him to sing of "the beginning of created things." He pleaded inability, but the stranger insisted, and he was compelled to obey. He found himself uttering "verses which he had never heard." Of Caedmon's song Baeda gives a prose paraphrase, which, he says, represents the sense only, not the arrangement of the words. When Caedmon awoke he remembered the verses and added others. He related his dream to the farm bailiff under whom he worked, and was conducted by him to the monastery at Streanaeshalch (now called Whitby). The abbess Hild re cognized that the illiterate herdsman had received a gift from heaven, and, to test his powers, proposed that he should render into verse a portion of sacred history which the monks explained. By the following morning he had 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 expounded to him Scripture history, and all he heard he reproduced in poetry.
All his poetry was on sacred themes, and its unvarying aim was to turn men from sin to righteousness. Although many amongst the Angles had essayed to compose religious poetry, none of them, in Baeda's opinion, had approached Caedmon.
Baeda's account of Caedmon's deathbed has often been quoted, and is of singular beauty. It is commonly stated that he died in 68o, in the same year as Hild, but for this there is no authority. All we know of his date is that his dream took place during the period (658-68o) in which Hild was abbess of Streanaeshalch, and he must have died before Baeda finished his history in 731.
The hymn said to have been composed by Caedmon in his dream is extant. A copy of it, in the Northumbrian dialect, and in a handwriting of the 8th century, appears on a blank page of the Moore ms. of Baeda's History; and five other Latin mss. have the poem (transliterated into a more southern dialect) as a mar ginal note. In the Old English version of Baeda, ascribed to King Alfred, it is given in the text. Probably the Latin ms. used by the translator contained this addition. It was formerly maintained by some scholars that the extant Old English verses are not Baeda's original, but a mere retranslation from his Latin prose version. The argument was that they correspond too closely with the Latin; Baeda's words, "hic est sensus, non autem ordo ipse verborum," being taken to mean that he had given only a free paraphrase. But the form of the sentences in Baeda's prose shows a close adherence to the parallelistic structure of Old English verse, and the alliterating words in the poem are in nearly every case the most obvious equivalents of those used by Baeda. The sentence quoted above can therefore have been meant only as an apology for the absence of those poetic graces that disappear in translations. Even if the existing verses are a retranslation, it would still be certain that they differ very slightly from the orig inal. It is of course possible to hold that the story of the dream is pure fiction (a similar story is told of the Icelandic poet Halebjorn Hali), and that the lines which Baeda translated were not Caed mon's at all. But there is little to justify such scepticism. As the hymn is said to have been Caedmon's first essay in verse, its lack of poetic merit is really an argument for its genuineness. There is then no reason to doubt that the nine lines are Caedmon's.
THE "CAEDMON POEMS"The"CAEDMON POEMS" This poor fragment is all that can with confidence be affirmed to remain of the voluminous works of the man whom Baeda so highly admired. A considerable body of verse has been known by his name; but among modern scholars the use of the designation is merely a matter of convenience. The so-called Caedmon poems are contained in a ms. written about A.D. I000, which was given in 1651 by Archbishop Ussher to the famous scholar Francis Junius, and is now in the Bodleian. They consist of paraphrases of parts of Genesis, Exodus and Daniel, and three separate poems, the first on the lamentations of the fallen angels, the second on the "Harrowing of Hell" and the third (a fragment) on the tempta tion. The subjects correspond so well with those of Caedmon's poetry as described by Baeda that Junius unhesitatingly attributed the poems to him. The ascription was rejected in 1684 by G. Hickes, whose chief argument, based on the dialect is now known to be fallacious, as most "West Saxon" poetry is certainly of Northumbrian origin. Since, however, we learn from Baeda that Caedmon had many imitators, the abstract probability is unfavour able to the assumption that a collection of poems contained in a late loth century ms. contains any of his work. Modern criticism has shown that the "Caedmon ms." cannot be all by one author. Some portions of it are plainly the work of a Latin scholar. It is possible that some of the rest may be genuine ; but in the absence of any basis of comparison, the internal evidence can afford no certainty. On the other hand, the mere unlikeness of any par ticular passage to the nine lines of the Hymn is no reason for denying it to Caedmon.
As Genesis begins with a line identical in meaning with the opening of Caedrnon's Hymn, we may perhaps infer that the writer knew Caedmon's genuine poems; but when, after treating of the revolt of Lucifer, the paraphrast comes to the biblical part of the story, he follows the sacred text with servile fidelity. The ages of the antediluvian patriarchs, for instance, are accurately rendered into verse. In all probability Genesis is of Northumbrian origin. The names assigned to the wives of Noah and his three sons (Phercoba, 011a, 011iva, 011ivani) have been traced to an Irish source, and this seems to point to the influence of the Irish missionaries in Northumbria.
Exodus is a fine poem, strangely unlike anything else in Old English literature. It is full of martial spirit, yet makes no use of the phrases of the heathen epic. The condensation of the style and the peculiar vocabulary make it somewhat obscure. It is probably of southern origin, and can hardly be supposed to be even an imitation of Caedmon.
Daniel is not a great poem, but the narration is lucid and inter esting. The author has borrowed some 7o lines from a poetical rendering of the Prayer of Azarias and the Song of the Three Children, of which there is a copy in the Exeter Book. The bor rowed portion ends with verse 3 of the canticle, the remainder of which follows in a version for the most part independent. Else where the paraphrast draws only from the canonical book of Daniel. The poem is obviously the work of a scholar.
The three other poems, designated "Book II." in the Junius ms., are characterized by considerable imaginative power and vigour of expression, but show an absence of culture and are somewhat rambling. They abound in passages of fervid religious exhortation. On the whole, they are such as we should expect in the work of the poet celebrated by Baeda, and it seems just pos sible that we have in these pieces a comparatively little altered specimen of Caedmon's compositions.
Of poems not included in the Junius ms., the Dream of the Rood (see CYNEWULF) is the only one that has with any plausi bility been ascribed to Caedmon. It was affirmed by G. Stephens that the Ruthwell cross, on which a portion of the poem is in scribed in runes, bore on its top-stone the name "Cadmon" ; but the traces of runes that are still visible exclude all possibility of this reading. The poem is certainly Northumbrian and earlier than Cynewulf. It would be impossible to prove that Caedmon was not the author, though his authorship of such a work would rank among the miracles of genius.
Certain similarities between passages in Paradise Lost and parts of the translation from Old Saxon have given occasion to the sug gestion that some scholar may have talked to Milton about the poetry published by Junius, and that the poet may thus have gained some hints. The parallels, however, though interesting, are only such as might be expected to occur between two poets work ing on the same traditional material.
The name Caedmon (in the mss. of the Old English version of Baeda written Cedmon, Ceadmann) is not explicable by means of Old English ; the statement that it means "boatman" is founded on the corrupt gloss liburnam, ced, where ced is an error for ceol. It is most probably the British Cadman, intermediate between the Old Celtic Catumanus and the modern Welsh Cad f an. Possibly the poet may have been of British descent, though the inference is not certain, as British names may sometimes have been given to English children. The name Caedwalla was borne by a king of the West Saxons. The initial element Caed—or Cead (probably adopted from British names in which it represents catu, war) appears combined with an Old English terminal element in the name Caedbaed (cf. however the Irish name Cathbad), and hypo coristic forms of names containing it were borne by the English saints Ceadda (St. Chad) and his brother Cedd, called Ceadwealla in one ms. A Cadmon witnesses a Buckinghamshire charter of about A.D. 948.
The oldest edition is that of F. Junius (1655). See R. Wiilker's re edition of Grein's Bibliothek, Bd. ii. (1895). This work contains also the texts of the Hymn and the Dream of the Rood. The pictorial illus trations of the Junius ms. were published in 1833 by Sir H. Ellis.