The Book-Hunter
meritorious cook, and other miracles, inspired a canticle which, for
long subsequent ages, was exultingly sung by the choristers in the
saint's own cathedral of Glasgow, thus:--
"Garrit ales pernecatus.
Cocus est resuscitatus.
Salit vervex trucidatus
Amputato capite."
A bird proper, on the shield argent of the city of Glasgow, has been
identified with the resuscitated pet of the patron saint. The tree on
which it is there perched is a commemoration of another of the saint's
miracles. In a time of frost and snow his enemies had extinguished his
fire; but immediately drawing on the miraculous resources ever at the
command of his class on such emergencies, he breathed fire into a frozen
branch from the forest; and it was centuries afterwards attested that
the green branches of that forest made excellent firewood.
Another element in the blazon of the Venice of the west is a fish, laid
across the stem of the tree, "in base," as the heralds say, but not, as
generally depicted, conformable either to their science or that of the
ichthyologist. This fish holds in its mouth something like a dish--in
reality a ring--and thus commemorates a miraculous feat of the same
saint, which has found its way into the romances of the juvenile portion
of the reading public, where it is a standard nuisance. Queen Cadyow,
whose conduct was of such a character that it is wonderful how any
respectable saint could have prevailed on himself to serve her, gives
her bridal ring to a paramour. Her husband lures the rival away to the
bank of the Clyde, to sleep after the fatigues of the chase, and there,
furtively removing the ring, pitches it into the river. The reader knows
the result by instinct. St Kentigern, appealed to, directs the first
salmon that can be caught in the Clyde to be opened, and there, of
course, is the ring in the stomach. This miracle is as common in the
"Acta Sanctorum" as in the juvenile romances. It served St Nathalan in
such a manner as to preclude the supposition that the saint had invoked
it on the occasion. He locked himself into iron chains, and threw their
key into the river Dee, in order that he might be unable to open the
fetterlock before he had made a pilgrimage to the tombs of St Peter and
St Paul; but the water did its duty, and restored the key in the stomach
of a fish.
We have naturally many fishing anecdotes connected with the northern
saints. Columba is described as out a-fishing one day with a parcel of
his disciples, who are characterised as "strenui piscatores," a term
which would be highly applicable to many a Waltonian of the present day.
The saint, desirous of affording them a pleasant surprise, directs them
to cast their net where a wonderful fish was prepared for them; and they
drag out an "esox" (whatever that may mean) of wonderful size.
Some of the inhabitants of the deep familiar to these saints were
animals of a formidable kind. Columba and a band of his disciples are
going to cross the river Ness, when they meet those who bear on their
shoulders the body of one who, endeavouring to swim across the same
river, had been bitten to death by a monster of the deep. The saint, in
the face of this gloomy procession, requires that one of his disciples
shall swim across the Ness, and bring over a boat which is on the other
side. A disciple named Mocumin, whom the saint had miraculously cured of
a bleeding of the nose, confident in the protecting power of his master,
pulls off all his clothes save his tunica (whatever that may be--coat,
kilt, or leathern shirt), and takes to the water. The monster, who is
reposing deep down in the stillness of the profoundest pool, hears the
stir of the water above, and is seen to rise with a splash on the
surface, and make with distended jaws for the swimmer. The saint, of
course, orders the beast back just at the moment when all seemed over,
and is instantly obeyed. The characteristics of the monster could not be
more closely identical with those of the crocodile or alligator, had the
incident been narrated in Egypt or America.
Adventures with such monsters in our northern waters supply many of the
triumphs attributed to the saints. St Colman of Drumore actually
extracted a young girl alive from the stomach of an "aquetalis bestia."
She had been swallowed while standing on the edge of a lake, "camisiam
suam lavantem"--washing her chemise, poor simple soul. St Molua saw a
monster, of the size of a large boat, in pursuit of two boys swimming
unconscious of danger in a lake in the county of Monaghan. He showed
good worldly sense and presence of mind on the occasion; for, instead of
alarming them with an announcement of their perilous condition, he
called out to them to try a race and see which would reach the bank
first. The beast, balked of his prey, took in good part an admonition by
the saint, and returned no more to frighten boys.
From fishes and aquatic monsters the law of association naturally leads
us to the waters themselves. There are throughout the United Kingdom
multitudes of wells, still bearing the names of the saints to whom they
were dedicated. The legends of miracles performed by their waters,
through the intercession of their special saints, are countless. It is,
perhaps, because cures effected by the use of waters may be accounted
for otherwise than by supernatural intervention, that modern writers of
the old faith speak with less reserve of the miracles at fountains than
of the others they have to record, and even bring them down to modern
times. Many of them may be found recorded in his usual slipshod manner
in the amiable pages of Butler--as, for instance, in the life of St
Winfrid (November 3), where we are told how "Roger Whetstone, a Quaker,
near Bromsgrove, by bathing at Holywell, was cured of an inveterate
lameness and palsy by which he was converted to the Catholic faith."
Some of the old saints' wells, remote from cities and advanced opinions,
are still haunted by people who believe them to be endowed with
supernatural healing virtues. It is in Romish Ireland, of course, that
this belief has its most legitimate seat; but even in the most
orthodoxly-Presbyterian districts of Scotland, a lingering dubious trust
in the healing virtues of sanctified fountains has given much perplexity
to the clergy.
Some of these fountains are in caverns, and if in any one of these the
well falls into a rude-hewn basin like a font, we may be sure that a
hermit frequented the cave, and that it was the place of worship of
early converts. Such a cave was the hiding-place, after the '45, of the
worthy single-minded Lord Pitsligo, no bad prototype of the Baron of
Bradwardine. It is entered by a small orifice like a fox's hole, in the
face of the rugged cliffs which front the German Ocean near Trouphead.
Gradually it rises to a noble arched cavern, at the end of which is the
font cut into the stone, where it would catch the outpourings of a small
spring. When I saw it long years ago, it was filled with clear living
water, which, save when it had been the frugal drink of the poor
Jacobite refugee, had probably been scarcely disturbed since the early
day when heathen men and women went thither to throw off their idolatry
and enter the pale of Christendom. The unnoticeable smallness of many of
these consecrated wells makes their very reminiscence and still
semi-sacred character all the more remarkable. The stranger in Ireland
or the Highlands of Scotland hears rumours of a distinguished well
miles on miles off. He thinks he will find an ancient edifice over it,
or some other conspicuous adjunct. Nothing of the kind--he has been
lured all that distance over rock and bog to see a tiny spring bubbling
out of the rock, such as he may see hundreds of in a tolerable walk any
day. Yet, if he search in old topographical authorities, he will find
that the little well has ever been an important feature of the
district--that, century after century, it has been unforgotten; and,
with diligence, he may perhaps trace it to some incident in the life of
the saint, dead more than 1200 years ago, whose name it bears.
Highlanders still make pilgrimages to drink the waters of such
fountains, which they judiciously mix with the other aqua to which they
are attached. They sometimes mimic the spirit of the old pilgrimage, by
leaving behind them an offering at the fountain. I have seen such
offerings by the brink of remote Highland springs, as well as in
Ireland. The market value of them would not afford an alarming estimate
of the intensity of the superstition still lingering in this form in the
land. The logic of the depositors probably suggests, that the spiritual
guardians of the fountain, though amenable to flattery and propitiation
by gift, are not really well informed about the market value of worldly
chattels, and are easily put off with rubbish.
A historical inquiry into the worship or consecration of wells and
other waters would be interesting. In countries near the tropics, where
sandy deserts prevail, a well must ever have been a thing of momentous
importance; and we find among the tribes of Israel the digging down a
well spoken of as the climax of reckless, heartless, and awful
destructiveness. To find, however, how in watery Ireland and Scotland a
mere dribblet of the element so generally abounding should have been an
object of veneration for centuries, we must look to something beyond
physical wants and their supply.
The principal cause of the sanctification of springs must, of course, be
explained by the first of Christian ordinances. The spring close by the
dwelling or cell of the saint--the spring on account of which he
probably selected the centre of his mission--had not only washed the
forefathers of the district from the stain of primeval heathenism, but
had applied the visible sign by which all, from generation to
generation, had been admitted into the bosom of the Church. This might
seem to afford a cause sufficient in itself for the effect, yet it
appears to have been aided by other causes more recondite and
mysterious. Notwithstanding all the trash talked about Druids and other
persons of this kind, we know extremely little of the heathenism of the
British Isles. The little that we do know is learned from the meagre
notices which the biographers of the saints have furnished of that
which the saints superseded. It is not their function to commemorate
the abominations of heathenism; they would rather bury it in eternal
oblivion--_premat nox alta_--but they cannot entirely tell the triumphs
of their spiritual heroes without some reference, however faint, to the
conquered enemies.
The earliest recorded conflicts between the new and the old creed are
connected with fountains. In one page of the Life of Columba we find the
saint, on a child being brought to him for baptism, in a desert place
where no water was, striking the rock like Moses, and drawing forth a
rill, which remained in perennial existence--a fountain surrounded by a
special sanctity. In the next page he deals with a well in the hands of
the Magi. They had put a demon of theirs into it to such effect, that
any unfortunate person washing himself in the well or drinking of its
water, was forthwith stricken with paralysis, or leprosy, or blindness
of an eye, or some other corporeal calamity. The malignant powers with
which they had inspired this formidable well spread far around the fear
of the Magi, and consequently their influence. But the Christian
missionaries were to show a power of a different kind--a power of
beneficence, excelling and destroying the power of malignity. The
process adopted is fully described. The saint, after a suitable
invocation, washed his hands and feet in the water, and then drank of it