The Abbess listened to the strange tale.  Then she commanded Caedmon, “in the presence of many learned men, to tell his dream 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.

We can imagine the pious, humble monk listening while another read and translated to him out of some Latin missal.  He would sit with clasped hands and earnest eyes, intent on understanding.  Then, when he had filled his mind with the sacred story, he would go away by himself and weave it into song.  Perhaps he would walk about beneath the glowing stars or by the sounding sea, and thank God that he was no longer dumb, and that at last he could say forth all that before had been shut within his heart in an agony of silence.  “And,” we are told, “his songs and his verse were so winsome to hear, that his teachers themselves wrote and learned from his mouth.”

“Thus Caedmon, keeping in mind all he heard, and, as it were, chewing the cud, converted the same into most harmonious verse; and sweetly repeating the same, made his masters in their turn his hearers.

“He sang the creation of the world, the origin of man, and all the history of Genesis; and made many verses on the departure of the children of Israel out of Egypt, and their entering into the land of promise, with many other histories from holy writ.”

As has been said, there are lines in Beowulf which seem to have been written by a Christian.  But all that is Christian in it is merely of the outside; it could easily be taken away, and the poem would remain perfect.  The whole feeling of the poem is not Christian, but pagan.  So it would seem that what is Christian in it has been added long after the poem was first made, yet added before the people had forgotten their pagan ways.