Biography of Caedmon – The earliest English

Caedmon is the earliest English poet known to us by name. What little we know of Caedmon, the Anglo-Saxon Milton, as he is properly called, is taken from Bede’s account [Ecclesiastical History, IV, xxiv.] of the Abbess Hilda and of her monastery at Whitby. Here is a free and condensed translation of Bede’s story: