Editing Cædmon (section)

===Sources and analogues===
In contrast to his usual practice elsewhere in the ''Historia ecclesiastica'', Bede provides no information about his sources for the Cædmon story. Since a similar paucity of sources is also characteristic of other stories from Whitby Abbey in his work, this may indicate that his knowledge of Cædmon's life was based on tradition current at his home monastery in (relatively) nearby [[Wearmouth-Jarrow]].

Perhaps as a result of this lack of documentation, scholars have devoted considerable attention since the 1830s to tracking down possible sources or analogues to Bede's account. These parallels have been drawn from all around the world, including [[Bible|biblical]] and [[classical literature]], stories told by the aboriginal peoples of [[Indigenous Australians|Australia]], [[Indigenous peoples of the Americas|North America]] and the [[Fijians|Fiji Islands]], mission-age accounts of the conversion of the [[Xhosa people|Xhosa]] in Southern [[Africa]], the lives of English [[Romantic poetry|romantic poets]], and various elements of [[Hindu scripture|Hindu]] and [[Qur'an|Muslim scripture]] and tradition.<ref>Good reviews of analogue research can be found in [[#pound1929|Pound 1929]], [[#lester1974|Lester 1974]], and [[#odonnell2005|O'Donnell 2005]].</ref> 

Although the search was begun by scholars such as [[Sir Francis Palgrave]], who hoped either to find Bede's source for the Cædmon story or to demonstrate that its details were so commonplace as to hardly merit consideration as legitimate historiography,<ref>[[#palgrave1832|Palgrave 1832]]</ref> subsequent research has instead ended up demonstrating the uniqueness of Bede's version: as Lester shows, no "analogue" to the Cædmon story found before 1974 mirrors Bede's chapter in more than about half its main properties;<ref>[[#lester1974|Lester 1974]], p. 228.</ref> the same observation can be extended to cover all analogues since identified.<ref>[[#odonnell2005|O'Donnell 2005]].</ref>