How early the movement for an English Bible
began, it is impossible now to say. Certainly
just before 700 A.D., that first singer of the English
tongue, Caedmon, had learned to paraphrase
the Bible. We may recall the Venerable Bede's
charming story of him, and how he came by his
power of interpretation. Bede himself was a
child when Caedmon died, and the romance of
the story makes it one of the finest in our literature.
Caedmon was a peasant, a farm laborer
in Northumbria working on the lands of the great
Abbey at Whitby. Already he had passed middle
life, and no spark of genius had flashed in
him. He loved to go to the festive gatherings
and hear the others sing their improvised poems;
but, when the harp came around to him in due
course, he would leave the room, for be could not
sing. One night when he had slipped away
from the group in shame and had made his
rounds of the horses and cattle under his care,
he fell asleep in the stable building, and heard
a voice in his sleep bidding him sing. When he
declared he could not, the voice still bade him
sing. "What shall I sing?" he asked. "Sing
the first beginning of created things." And
the words came to him; and, still dreaming, he
sang his first hymn to the Creator. In the
morning he told his story, and the Lady Abbess
found that he had the divine gift. The monks