Not much is known for certain of Cuthbert's youth. Variously, he has been thought to have been of Irish origin, named "Mulloche" and descended from Irish royalty, or of Northumbrian birth of well-to-do English stock, with either warrior or sheep-herding training. He was raised in the Scottish lowlands by a poor widow named Kenswith. His date of birth is given as 634 or 635. His course in life seems to have turned on an experience when he was tending sheep one night. Cuthbert saw lights in the sky that he interpreted to be an angel descending to earth and returning to heaven with the soul of St. Aidan of Lindisfarne, whom he found later to have died that evening, August 31, 651. Through this event he decided to go to the Melrose Abbey on the Tweed River and become a monk.