Bede's Historia Ecclesiastica

ff 90v–1v

In this abbess's monastery there was a certain brother by divine grace particularly renowned because he was wont to make songs suited to religion and piety, so that whatever he learnt from divine scripture through translators he would after a short time utter in his own tongue – that is English – in poetic words composed with the greatest sweetness and compunction. By his songs the souls of many were often incited to contempt of the world and desire for the life of heaven. And to be sure after him others among the English people also attempted to make religious poems but none was able to equal him. For he did not learn the art of singing instructed by men nor through a man, rather, divinely assisted, he freely received the gift of singing. Therefore he could not make any frivolous or vain poem, but only those which pertained to religion befitted his religious tongue. Since having been settled in the secular way of life until he was of an advanced age, he had never learnt anything of songs, therefore sometimes, at a feast, when it had been decided for the sake of mirth that all in their turn ought to sing, he, when he saw the harp approach him, would rise from the midst of the dinner and, leaving, return to his house.

On one occasion when he did this, having left the banquet house, he went out to the oxen's stable, the care of which that night had been delegated to him, and there at the appropriate hour he gave up his limbs to sleep. Someone stood before him in a dream and, greeting him and calling him by his name, said 'Sing something for me.' But he said in response 'I don't know how to sing and for that reason I left the feast and took myself here because I could not sing.' In turn, he who was speaking with him said 'Nevertheless you have to sing for me.' 'What,' he said, 'should I sing?' And that one said 'Sing the beginning of created things.' And when he heard this response, at once he began to sing verses in praise of God, the maker, which he had never heard, the sense of which is this:

Now ought we to praise the author of the kingdom of heaven,

The power of the creator, and his purpose,

The deeds of the father of glory, how he,

Since he is eternal God, has been the author of all wonders,

Who first for the sons of men

Heaven for the summit of a roof,

Then, the earth, the guardian of the human race,

The all powerful created.

This is the sense, however, not the actual order of the words he sang while sleeping, for songs, be they never so well composed, cannot be transferred from one language to another without detriment to their beauty and dignity.

Rising from sleep, moreover, he retained in his memory all the things which he had sung while sleeping and soon added to them many more words in the same manner of a song worthy of God.

In the morning, coming to the steward, who was his superior, he made known what gift he had received and, having been led to the abbess, he was ordered | to make his dream known and to recite the song to the many learned men who were present so that it might be shown to the judgement of all what that which he related was or of what origin it was. And it seemed to all that heavenly grace had been bestowed on him by the Lord. And they set forth a certain passage of sacred history or doctrine instructing him, if he could, to transform the same into the modulation of song. But he, having accepted the task, went away and when he came back in the morning returned what he was ordered composed in the most excellent song. Whereupon the abbess, soon embracing the grace of God in the man, instructed him to give up the secular way of life and to undertake the monastic rule, and, having taken him in, she added him to the company of brothers with her all her own and ordered that he be taught the series of sacred history. But by rehearsing with himself and like a clean animal chewing the cud, he converted all the things which he was able to learn by hearing into the sweetest song, and by sweetly resounding made his teachers in their turn his hearers. He sang moreover about the creation of the world and the origin of humankind and whole story of genesis, about the exodus of Israel from Egypt and the entry into the promised land and many other stories of holy scripture, about the Lord's incarnation, passion, resurrection, and ascension into heaven, of the coming of the Holy Spirit and the teaching of the apostles; likewise he made many songs about the terror of future judgement and the horror of the punishment of hell and sweetness of the kingdom of heaven, but also many others about the divine benefits and judgements in all of which (songs) he endeavoured to draw people away from the love of sin and spur them to the love but also the skilled application of good action. For he was a very religious man, humbly submissive to the disciplines of the order, but inflamed with a zeal of great vehemence against those who wished to do otherwise, for which reason he concluded his life with a beautiful end...