Bodleian: Cædmon's Hymn

Our first foray into the special medieval holdings of the Bodleian Library is Cædmon's Hymn.Bede wrote that Cædmon was an illiterate man in the late 7th century who cared for the cows at what is now Whitby Abbey. One night, in a dream, he was approached by "someone" who asked him to sing about the beginning of the world. In the dream he first refused, then did create a poem.When he woke up the next morning, he wrote down the remembered poem. Taking it to Abbess Hilda of Whitby (658–80), it was declared a gift from God. They gave him a test to make a new poem, which he did so well that they had him join the abbey and take monastic vows. They taught him history and citrine, after which he would compose beautiful poems. (This was all in Anglo-Saxon.)Cædmon's Hymn is considered the oldest surviving English poem, and one of the oldest surviving samples of Germanic alliterative verse. It is also the second most numerous of surviving manuscripts; there are 22.The Bodleian Library has four…