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Feast day
Our venerable and God-bearing Father '''Cædmon''' is one of only two Anglo-Saxon poets whose names are known (the other being Cynewulf). The author of the first recorded poem in English, he is known as the ''Father of English Poetry''. His [[feast day]] in the Church is [[February 11]].
According to [[Bede]], writing in the 7th century, Cædmon was a cow-herd at a Yorkshire [[monastery]], who was unable to sing in public until he miraculously found himself able to sing the ''Creation'', a poem of nine lines. St. [[Hilda of Whitby|Hilda]], the abbess of [[Whitby Abbey]], encouraged his new calling and asked him to join the monastery. The poem we know as "Cædmon's Hymn" was written down by [[Bede]] in Latin in his ''[[Ecclesiastical History of the English People]]''. The Anglo-Saxon version commonly read today is not, in actuality, Cædmon's own work, but comes from an Anglo-Saxon translation of Bede's history made sometime during the reign of St. [[Alfred the Great]].
