Cædmon, OSB was a Benedictine monk and the earliest English poet whose name is known. He was a Northumbrian cowherd who cared for the animals at the double monastery of Streonæshalch during the abbacy of Hilda. He was originally ignorant of "the art of song" but learned to compose one night in the course of a dream, according to the 8th-century Christian historian Bede. He is venerated as a saint in the Eastern Orthodox Church, Catholic Church and Anglicanism, with a feast day on 11 February.
