Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 08.djvu/200

 it strange that such a wish should be expressed by one who seemed so full of cheerfulness, and who showed no indication of the approach of death; but he insisted, and his desire was granted. He then inquired of those present whether they were in peace and charity towards him. They replied that they were so, and in answer to their inquiry he said, ‘My mind is in perfect peace towards all the servants of God.’ Having partaken of the Eucharist, he asked how long it was till the hour at which the brethren were called to their nocturnal psalms. He was informed that the time was near. ‘It is well,’ he said; ‘let us await that hour.’ He then made the sign of the cross, and, laying back his head on the pillow, shortly afterwards passed away in sleep.

William of Malmesbury informs us in his ‘Gesta Pontificum,’ which was written about 1125, that the bones of Cædmon, together with those of other holy persons buried at Whitby, had recently been discovered, and had been removed to a place of honour, probably in the abbey church of Whitby. He adds that Cædmon's claims to be recognised as a saint had been attested by many miracles which had been wrought through his intercession. Like most of the other early English saints, Cædmon seems to have obtained his place in the calendar not by any formal act of canonisation, but by the general voice of his countrymen. The Bollandists place his festival on 11 Feb., on the authority of John Wilson's ‘Martyrology,’ and they remark that, owing to a misprint in the margin of Wilson's book, the date is frequently given as 10 Feb. Other writers have mentioned 12 Feb.

It is difficult to read the vivid and beautiful account given by Bæda without feeling that it bears in general the stamp of truth. The nearness of Bæda's place of residence to Streaneshalch would give him ample opportunities of obtaining information from persons to whom Cædmon had been intimately known, and the diligence which he bestowed on the collection of his materials must be evident to every student of his works. The story of the beginning of Cædmon's poetical career is no doubt more or less legendary, but the facts that he was an inmate of the abbey of Streaneshalch, and that he was of humble origin and unlearned, are too well attested to admit of any reasonable doubt. Sir Francis Palgrave, however (Archæologia, xxiv. 341), has attempted to show that the history of Cædmon is entirely fictitious. He refers to a Latin fragment entitled ‘Prefatio in Librum antiquum Saxonice conscriptum,’ which states (to quote Palgrave's account of its contents) that ‘Ludovicus Pius, being desirous to furnish his subjects with a version of the scriptures, applied to a Saxon bard of great talent and fame. The poet, peasant, or husbandman, when entirely ignorant of his art, had been instructed in a dream to render the precepts of the divine law into the verse and measure of his native language. His translation, now unfortunately lost, to which the fragment was prefixed, comprehended the whole of the Bible. The text of the original was interspersed with mystic allusions, and the beauty of the composition was so great, that in the opinion of the writer no reader perusing the verse could doubt the source of the poetic inspiration of the bard.’ It thus appears that the metrical paraphrases of Scripture current in Germany were, like those current in Northumbria, ascribed to the authorship of an unlettered peasant who had received his poetical vocation in a dream. From this fact Palgrave infers that the history of Cædmon is ‘one of those tales floating upon the breath of tradition, and localised from time to time in different countries and in different ages.’ This argument, however, is entirely without weight. The document quoted by Palgrave is well known to scholars. It was first printed in 1562 by Flacius Illyricus from an unknown source, and has been prefixed by modern editors to the Old-Saxon poem of the ‘Heliand,’ which is a paraphrase of the gospel history written in the ninth century. There is sufficient reason for believing that the ‘Heliand’ is really a part of that metrical version of the Bible with which the fragment originally stood in connection. Now when we examine the ‘Prefatio’ and the older ‘Versus de Poeta’ printed along with it, it is obvious that the story which they contain is simply an inaccurate version of Bæda's own account of Cædmon. The testimony of these documents, indeed, practically amounts to ascribing the authorship of the ‘Heliand’ to the Northumbrian poet. Whether this testimony is entitled to belief is a question which we shall afterwards have to consider.

The incident of Cædmon's dream is on other grounds open to strong suspicion. The story is just such a legend as would be naturally suggested by the desire to account for the wonderful phenomenon of the display of great poetic genius on the part of an unlettered rustic, and closely similar traditions are found in the literature of many different nations and periods. Palgrave's argument against the authenticity of Cædmon's biography is supposed to derive support from another consideration. He points out