and repeat the verses that they might all give their judgment
what it was and whence his verse came."

So the simple farm laborer, who had no learning of any kind, sang
while the learned and grave men listened. And he who was wont to
creep away in dumb shame, fearing the laughter of his fellows,
sang now with such beauty and sweetness that they were all of one
mind, saying that the Lord Himself had, of His heavenly grace,
given to Caedmon this new power.

Then these learned men repeated to Caedmon some part of the
Bible, explained the meaning of it, and asked him to tell it
again in poetry. This Caedmon undertook to do, and when he fully
understood the words, he went away. Next morning he returned and
repeated all that he had been told, but now it was in beautiful
poetry.

Then the Abbess saw that, indeed, the grace of God had come upon
the man. She made him at once give up the life of a servant
which he had been leading, and bade him become a monk. Caedmon
gladly did her bidding, and when he had been received among them,
his brother monks taught to him all the Bible stories.

But Caedmon could neither read nor write, nor is it at all likely
that he ever learned to do either even after he became a monk,
for we are told that "he was well advanced in years" before his
great gift of song came to him. It is quite certain that he
could not read Latin, so that all that he put into verse had to
be taught to him by some more learned brother. And some one,
too, must have written down the verses which Caedmon sang.