Legends of the Saxon Saints Part 13

Page 116. _'None loveth Song that loves not Light and Truth.'_

This is one of the poetic aphorisms of Cadoc, a Cambrian prince and saint, educated in the Irish monastery of Lismore, and afterwards the founder of the great Welsh monastery of Llancarvan, in which he gave religious instruction to the sons of the neighbouring princes and chiefs.

Page 120.

_True life of man Is life within._

This thought is taken from one of St. Teresa's beautiful works.

Page 141. _Ceadmon, the earliest bard of English song._

'A part of one of Ceadmon's poems is preserved in King Alfred's Saxon version of Bede's _History_.' (Note to Bede's _Ecclesiastical History_, edited by Dr. Giles, p. 218.)

Page 180. _Who told him tales of Leinster Kings, his sires._

'L'origine irlandaise de Cuthbert est affirme sans reserve par Reeves dans ses _Notes sur Wattenbach_, p. 5. Lanigan (c. iii. p. 88) constate qu'Usher, Ware, Colgan, en ont eu la meme opinion.... Beaucoup d'autres anciens auteurs irlandais et anglais en font un natif de l'Irlande.'--Montalembert, _Les Moines d'Occident_, tome ii. pp. 391-2.

Page 191. _The thrones are myriad, but the Enthroned is One._

Oft as Spring Decks on thy sinuous banks her thousand thrones, Seats of glad instinct, and love's carolling.'

Wordsworth (addressed to the river Greta).

Page 208. _Saint Frideswida, or the Foundations of Oxford._

Saint Frideswida died in the same year as the venerable Bede, viz. A.D.

735. Her story is related by Montalembert, _Les Moines d'Occident_, vol.

v. pp. 298-302, with the following references, viz. Leland, _Collectanea_, ap. Dugdale, t. I. p. 173; cf. Bolland, t. viii. October, p. 535 a 568. I learn from a Catholic prayer book published in 1720 that the Saint's Feast used to be kept on the 19th of October. Her remains, as is commonly believed, still exist in the Cathedral of Oxford.

Page 240. _Your teacher he: he taught you first your Runes._

'The Icelandic chronicles point out Odin as the most persuasive of men.

They tell us that nothing could resist the force of his words; that he sometimes enlivened his harangues with verses, which he composed extempore; and that he was not only a great poet, but that it was he who first taught the art of poesy to the Scandinavians. He was also the inventor of the Runic characters.'--_Northern Antiquities_, p. 83.

Mallet a.s.serts that it was to Christianity that the Scandinavians owed the practical use of those Runes which they had possessed for centuries:--'nor did they during so many years ever think of committing to writing those verses with which their memories were loaded; and it is probable that they only wrote down a small quant.i.ty of them at last....

Among the innumerable advantages which accrued to the Northern nations from the introduction of the Christian religion, that of teaching them to apply the knowledge of letters to useful purposes is not the least valuable. Nor could a motive less sacred have eradicated that habitual and barbarous prejudice which caused them to neglect so admirable a secret.'--P. 234. Mallet's statement respecting the Greek emigration of the Northern 'Barbarians' from the East is thus confirmed by Burke.

'There is an unquestioned tradition among the Northern nations of Europe importing that all that part of the world had suffered a great and general revolution by a migration from Asiatic Tartary of a people whom they call Asers. These everywhere expelled or subdued the ancient inhabitants of the Celtick or Cimbrick original. The leader of this Asiatic army was called Odin, or Wodin; first their general, afterwards their tutelar deity.... The Saxon nation believed themselves the descendants of those conquerors.' Burke, _Abridgment of English History_, book ii. cap. i.

Page 252. _Like hunters chasing hart, to sea-beat cliffs._

This is recorded by Lingard and Burke.

Page 259. _Bede's Last May._

This narrative of the death of Bede is closely taken from a letter written by Cuthbert, a pupil of his, then residing in Jarrow, to a fellow-pupil at a distance. An English version of that letter is prefixed to Dr. Giles's translation of _Bede's Ecclesiastical History_.

(Henry G. Bohn.) The death of Bede took place on Wednesday, May 26, A.D.

735, being Ascension Day.

Page 265. _They hunger for your souls; with reverent palms._

'But in a mystical sense the disciples pa.s.s through the cornfields when the holy Doctors look with the care of a pious solicitude upon those whom they have initiated in the Faith, and who, it is implied, are hungering for the best of all things--the salvation of men. But to pluck the ears of corn means to s.n.a.t.c.h men away from the eager desire of earthly things. And to rub with the hands is, by examples of virtue, to put from the purity of their minds the concupiscence of the flesh, as men do husks. To eat the grains is when a man, cleansed from the filth of vice by the mouths of preachers, is incorporated amongst the members of the Church.'--Bede, quoted in the _Catena Aurea_. _Commentary on St.

Mark_, cap. ii. v. 23.

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