Saints of Song: Britain's Singing Saints and Where to Find Them

St Cecilia may be music's patron, but Britain has singing saints of its own: a shy cowherd who became our first poet, an abbot who sang like a minstrel on a bridge, a harp that played itself, and a hermit taught a song by the Virgin Mary. Here are their stories, and the holy places where you can still walk to them.

In our St Cecilia's Day story we explored music's patron saint and the long marriage of music and pilgrimage. But Cecilia is a Roman saint, and her shrine is in Rome. Closer to home, the early British church was full of singers. Its saints sang the psalms through the night, carried chant across the sea from Rome, and made new songs in the language of the people.

Their stories are worth walking to. Most of these saints are tied to particular places: a cliff-top abbey, a riverside hermitage, a holy well. Many are still places of song. Visiting them is a way to hear how the land and its music grew up together.

Caedmon and Hilda: the first English song, Whitby

The best-known story of song in early Britain comes from Bede. In the seventh century, Abbess Hilda ruled a double monastery of men and women on the cliffs at Whitby. Among its farm workers was a cowherd called Caedmon. At feasts, when the harp was passed round and each guest had to sing, Caedmon would quietly get up and slip away to the cattle shed, ashamed that he knew no songs.

One night, asleep among the animals, he dreamed that someone stood beside him and said, "Caedmon, sing me something." He said he couldn't. "Yet you shall sing to me," came the reply. "Sing about the beginning of created things." And Caedmon sang, in verses he had never heard before. Its first line in Old English is:

Nu sculon herigean heofonrices weard
(Now we must praise the guardian of heaven's kingdom)

In the morning he remembered the song and added more. Hilda heard it, recognised a gift from God, and welcomed him into the monastery. He spent the rest of his life turning the stories of scripture into English song. Caedmon is the first English poet we know by name, and his short hymn is one of the oldest surviving poems in the language.

It is a story for anyone who has ever thought they cannot sing. St Hilda's feast falls on 19 November, the same week as St Cecilia's Day. Walk into Whitby along the Cleveland Way cliffs, climb the 199 steps past St Mary's Church, and stand in the abbey ruins where Caedmon first found his voice.

Aldhelm and Dunstan: minstrel and harper of the south-west

St Aldhelm (c.639–709) was the first abbot of Malmesbury and later the first bishop of Sherborne, and one of the most learned men of his age. According to William of Malmesbury, he also wrote songs in English, still sung in King Alfred's day, and set them to music. One story says that his people were slow to come to church, so he stood at the end of a bridge and sang songs in English like a minstrel. When a crowd had gathered to listen, he turned the songs to sacred things. It is a lovely picture of a saint meeting people where they were, with music they already loved. Aldhelm was also credited with a great organ, "blown with bellows, and enclosed in a gilded case". He died at Doulting in Somerset, where St Aldhelm's Well still flows beside the church, and his name lives on in St Aldhelm's Head on the Dorset coast. Check out the St Aldhelm's Way.

St Dunstan (c.909–988), abbot of Glastonbury and Archbishop of Canterbury, was a harpist, a metalworker and a reformer of monastic life. His medieval biographers tell how, while visiting a devout noblewoman to design a vestment for her, his harp hung on the wall and began to play by itself. It played an antiphon about the saints who rejoice in heaven, which Dunstan took as a message meant for him alone. Tradition also says he learned a Kyrie from the angels in a vision and taught it to his monks. In folklore he is the smith who seized the Devil's nose with red-hot tongs, a story told at Mayfield in East Sussex, where the tongs are still shown.

Walk to Doulting's well and on to evensong at Wells Cathedral; or climb Glastonbury Tor and come down to the Abbey, where Dunstan was a boy. On the Glastonbury Water Way.

Columba, Bede and Godric: song in the north

St Columba (d.597) sailed from Ireland in 563 and founded the monastery on Iona. His biographer Adomnán says that when Columba sang the psalms in church, his voice could sometimes be heard clearly a mile away, every syllable distinct. Outside the fortress of the Pictish king Brude, near Inverness, local druids tried to silence his evening hymns. He began Psalm 45, and his voice rang out "like pealing thunder". The Latin hymn Altus Prosator is attributed to him. Iona remains one of Britain's great pilgrim destinations, and its abbey is still a place of daily worship and song. See St Columba's Way.

St Bede (c.673–735) tells us how chant itself came north. Benedict Biscop, founder of the twin monastery of Wearmouth and Jarrow, brought John, the archcantor of St Peter's in Rome, to teach his monks the Roman way of singing through the year. Bede spent his whole life in that singing community. According to his pupil Cuthbert, he died on the floor of his cell at Jarrow in 735, singing the Gloria. Bede's Way, a 12-mile path, links the two monasteries.

St Godric of Finchale (c.1065–1170) began as a pedlar and a sailor, and made pilgrimages to Rome, Compostela and Jerusalem. He then spent sixty years as a hermit beside the River Wear, a few miles north of Durham. The Virgin Mary, he said, appeared to him and taught him a song to sing whenever he was tempted, weary or in pain. It begins:

Sainte Marie virgine,
moder Jesu Cristes Nazarene

The monk Reginald of Durham wrote down four of Godric's songs with their music. They are among the earliest songs in English whose melodies survive. Walk from Durham Cathedral along the Wear to the ruins of Finchale Priory, and try singing Godric's song where he sang it.

One last song comes from the Fens. The twelfth-century Book of Ely tells how King Cnut, rowing towards Ely at Candlemas, heard the monks singing in St Etheldreda's church on its island, and made up a song on the spot:

Merie sungen ðe muneches binnen Ely
ða Cnut ching reu ðer by

("Merrily sang the monks in Ely as King Cnut rowed by.") It is probably later than Cnut himself, but it captures something every pilgrim knows: the joy of hearing a holy place before you reach it.

Walking to the saints of song

• Whitby Abbey, North Yorkshire. Caedmon's first hymn; St Hilda (feast 19 November). Walk: the Cleveland Way along the cliffs, then the 199 steps.
• Malmesbury Abbey, Wiltshire. St Aldhelm, the singing abbot. Walk: along the River Avon into the hilltop town, on St Aldhelm's Way.
• Doulting, Somerset. St Aldhelm's Well, where he died. Walk: on to evensong at Wells Cathedral on St Aldhelm's Way.
• Glastonbury, Somerset. St Dunstan, harpist and smith. Walk: up the Tor and down to the Abbey on Glastonbury Water Way.
• Mayfield, East Sussex. St Dunstan's tongs legend. Walk: through the High Weald to the village.
• Iona, Argyll. St Columba, whose voice carried a mile. Walk: across Mull and over the sound by ferry, on St Columba's Way.
• Jarrow and Wearmouth, Tyne and Wear. Bede and the Roman chant. Walk: Bede's Way, 12 miles between the two monasteries.
• Finchale Priory, County Durham. St Godric's hermitage and songs. Walk: from Durham Cathedral along the River Wear.
• Ely Cathedral, Cambridgeshire. Cnut's song of the singing monks. Walk: along the River Great Ouse, as Cnut came by water.

Keeping the saints' songs

• Sing Caedmon's line. Learn the first line of his hymn and say or sing it at Whitby, or anywhere you see the sea and sky.
• Sing Godric's song at Finchale. Recordings are easy to find and the tune is short and simple.
• Sing on a bridge. Like Aldhelm, try a song on a bridge on your route, and see who stops to listen.
• Listen for a place before you arrive. Like Cnut, notice the first bell or the first sound of singing as you approach.
• End at evensong. The chant that John the archcantor brought north still underlies the music sung in Britain's cathedrals every day. Find a service at choralevensong.org.

For St Cecilia, Tallis and Byrd, and the British saints whose stories echo Cecilia's, read our St Cecilia's Day story.

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