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Remembered as the earliest English poet known by name, this 7th-century singer stands at the very beginning of English literature. His surviving hymn is brief, but the story behind it has echoed for centuries.
Cædmon was a 7th-century Anglo-Saxon poet, usually linked with Whitby Abbey in Northumbria and known today as the earliest English poet whose name survives. Most of what is known about him comes from the historian Bede, who describes him as a herdsman attached to the monastery community.
According to that account, he had no gift for singing until a visionary dream changed his life. Afterward, he became known for turning Christian stories into vernacular verse, helping bring religious teaching into a form ordinary listeners could understand. Only one poem is securely attributed to him today: the short but famous Cædmon’s Hymn.
Even with so little surviving work, his place in literary history is huge. He is often seen as a starting point for Old English Christian poetry and as an early symbol of how oral song, faith, and storytelling came together in the beginnings of English literature.