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If that pagan, cried the exasperated Oswy,
gpt
So he vowed, if he defeated the
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to dedicate his baby daughter to the cloister and give sites for twelve monasteries. This bleak cliff, then called Streaneshalch, the Bay of the Lighthouse, was one of the sites he gave when he had killed Penda,
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as William of Malmesbury calls him; and on it a monastery was built by the royal and saintly Abbess Hilda,
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Here she ruled for many years, teaching peace and charity, training holy men--St. Wilfrid of Ripon, St. John of Beverley--and even conquering snakes and birds, it was said. Important things took place here during her rule. It was here that the great synod was held concerning the keeping of Easter, when St. Wilfrid quoted St. Peter and Colman quoted Columba till King Oswy closed the discussion by saying,
gpt
Peter is an officer whom I am not disposed to contradict ... lest when I come to the doors of the kingdom of heaven there may be no one to open them to me. And it was here, somewhere within a stone's throw of this actual spot, that Cædmon, the lay-brother, the herdsman
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stood before St. Hilda in the presence of learned men, and told his vision and recited the verses that were the first English poem.
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And his song and his verse were so winsome to hear, that his teachers themselves wrote and learned from his mouth. It was somewhere close at hand, too, that this earliest of our poets lay down to die in the infirmary,
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gpt
I am in charity, my children, he said,
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Then he crossed himself,
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St. Hilda herself,