The Hermits Part 16

{260a} In the Barony of Longford, County Galway.

{260b} 3,000, like 300, seems to be, I am informed, only an Irish expression for any large number.

{269} Some dim legend concerning icebergs, and caves therein.

{270} Probably from reports of the volcanic coast of Iceland.

{272} This part of the legend has been changed and humanized as time ran on. In the Latin and French versions it has little or no point or moral.

In the English, Judas accounts for the presence of the cloth thus:-

"Here I may see what it is to give other men's (goods) with harm.

As will many rich men with unright all day take, Of poor men here and there, and almisse (alms) sithhe (afterwards) make."

For the tongs and the stone he accounts by saying that, as he used them for "good ends, each thing should surely find him which he did for G.o.d's love."

But in the prose version of Wynkyn de Worde, the tongs have been changed into "ox-tongues," "which I gave some tyme to two preestes to praye for me. I bought them with myne owne money, and therefore they ease me, bycause the fysshes of the sea gnaw on them, and spare me."

This latter story of the ox-tongues has been followed by Mr. Sebastian Evans, in his poem on St. Brendan. Both he and Mr. Matthew Arnold have rendered the moral of the English version very beautifully.

{274} Copied, surely, from the life of Paul the first hermit.

{283} The famous Cathach, now in the museum of the Royal Irish Academy, was long popularly believed to be the very Psalter in question. As a relic of St. Columba it was carried to battle by the O'Donnels, even as late as 1497, to insure victory for the clan.

{290} Bede, book iii. cap. 3.

{292} These details, and countless stories of St. Cuthbert's miracles, are to be found in Reginald of Durham, "De Admirandis Beati Cuthberti,"

published by the Surtees Society. This curious book is admirably edited by Mr. J. Raine; with an English synopsis at the end, which enables the reader for whom the Latin is too difficult to enjoy those pictures of life under Stephen and Henry II., whether moral, religious, or social, of which the book is a rich museum.

{299} "In this hole lie the bones of the Venerable Bede."

{303} An English translation of the Anglo-Saxon life has been published by Mr. G.o.dwin, of Cambridge, and is well worth perusal.

{312} Vita S. G.o.drici, pp. 332, 333.

{316} The earlier one; that of the Harleian MSS. which (Mr. Stevenson thinks) was twice afterwards expanded and decorated by him.

{323} Reginald wants to make "a wonder incredible in our own times," of a very common form (thank G.o.d) of peaceful death. He makes miracles in the same way of the catching of salmon and of otters, simple enough to one who, like G.o.dric, knew the river, and every wild thing which haunted it.

{330} That of the Salisbury Manual is published in the "Ecclesiologist"

for August 1848, by the Rev. Sir W. H. Cope, to whom I am indebted for the greater number of these curious facts.

{331} I owe these facts to the courtesy of Mr. John Stuart, of the General Register Office, Edinburgh.

{333} "History of England," vol. iii. p. 256, note.