The Old English Period

 Poetry

The Angles, Saxons, and Jutes who invaded Britain in the 5th and 6th centuries brought with them the common Germanic metre; but of their earliest oral poetry, probably used for panegyric, magic and short narrative, little or none survives. For nearly a century after the conversion of King Aethelberht I of Kent to Christianity about 600, there is no evidence that the English wrote poetry in their own language. But St. Bede the Venerable, in his Historia ecclesiastica gentis Anglorum, wrote that in the late 7th century Caedmon, an illiterature Northumbrian cowherd, was inspired in a dream to compose a short hymn in praise of the creation. Caedmon later composed verses based on Scripture, which was expounded for him by monks at Streaneshalch, but only the ''Hymn of Creation'''survives. Caedmon legitimized the native verse form by adapting it to Christain themes. Others, following his examples, gave England a body of vernacular poetry unparalleled in Europe before the end of the 1st millennium.