THE ENGLISH VIA DOLOROSA.
(1884.)
I.
An English Epiphany.
About the year 680 there lived near the monastery of Whitby a herdsman who knew so little of music and singing that when he saw the harp coming towards him at festival gatherings, he, for shame, rose up, and went home.
Having on one occasion thus left his companions, he withdrew to the stable to tend the cattle. Here he lay down to rest, and dreaming saw a man standing by his bedside, who said, "Cœdmon, sing me something;" to whom he answered, "I cannot sing anything; therefore it was that I left my companions and came hither." "Yet thou must sing to me," the visitor replied. "What must I sing?" said the dreamer. "Sing me the origin of created things." Thereupon the herdsman began to sing verses in praise of God the Creator, the words of which he had never before heard. Then he arose from his sleep, and having in mind all that he had sung, he added to the words many others worthy of God in the same measure.
In the morning he went to the town-reeve, under whose authority he served, and told him of the gift he had received, who forthwith brought him to the abbess. St Hild caused Cœdmon to sing the poem in the presence of all the learned men in the monastery, to whom it seemed that the herdsman had, from the Lord Himself, received a heavenly gift. So they expounded to him more of the sacred history, bidding him, if he could, turn the words into melody of song, which he did, returning the next morning with another poem. Then the abbess began to make much of and to love the grace of God that was in the man, exhorting him to forsake the secular life and to become a monk. And she
3
