Cædmon ( or ) is the earliest English (
Northumbrian)
poet whose name is known. An
Anglo-Saxon who cared for the animals at the
double monastery of Streonæshalch (
Whitby Abbey) during the abbacy (657–680) of
St. Hilda (614–680), 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 historian
Bede. He later became a zealous
monk and an accomplished and inspirational
Christian poet.