The story of Caedmon, the illiterate cowherd who received the gift of song from God, is told in Book Four, Chapter 25 of Bede's Ecclesiastical History of the English People. It was translated into English, probably during the reign of King Alfred the Great, by an anonymous Mercian scholar. This text is based on the earliest manuscript of the Old English text: Oxford, Bodleian Library, Tanner 10, probably written in the first quarter of the tenth century.
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