flourished 658–680
Earliest known Old English Christian poet.
According to Bede , he was a herdsman who received a divine call in a dream to sing of "the beginning of things" and began to utter "verses which he had never heard." He entered a monastery, where he produced vernacular poetry on sacred themes expounded to him by more learned brethren. Only the nine-line original dream hymn can be confidently attributed to him, but it set the pattern for almost all of Anglo-Saxon religious verse.