Part 9

The imagination of Brendan was fired; he set to work to construct three large vessels of wickerwork, and he covered them with skins; each vessel contained thirty men—some were clergy, a good many laymen—and he took a fool with him, because he begged hard to be admitted. Brendan was absent three or five years, it is uncertain which—for apparently the time of his absence in Brittany is included in one of the computations.

Wonderful stories are told of what he saw and did, but no trust can be put in the narrative. On his return he went to Itha to report himself. She received him with great pleasure, but objected that he had not literally obeyed her, for his sails had been made of the skins of beasts, so had been the covering of his boats, and cattle had been slaughtered for the purpose, so that he had not wholly abstained from blood.

But it is doubtful whether this is what she really said. It is probably the legend writer’s explanation for what follows. “Why,” asked Itha, “should you risk these lengthy voyages in such frail vessels as coracles made of basket-work covered with hides? Next time build boats of wood.”

This was a new idea. The Irish, like the Welsh, had hitherto used large coracles, and the only wooden boats they had employed were trunks of trees hollowed out, and these only on lakes.

Brendan at once seized on the suggestion, and constructed ships of wood, which were the first ever built in Ireland, and these were due to the idea of S. Itha.

Brendan made a second voyage to the land beyond the ocean, and it is possible that he may have actually reached America; but, as already said, nothing trustworthy has come to us of the result of his attempts.

Itha had a brother, S. Finan, and she was related to S. Senan of Achadh-coel.

Itha in her old age was attacked by perhaps the most terrible and painful disease to which poor suffering mortality is subject, and it is one to which women fall victims more often than men. She was attacked in her breast, but endured her pains night and day with the utmost patience and trust in God’s mercy. Her nuns were affected to tears at her sufferings, but she had always a smile and cheerful words on her lips to banish their discouragement.

She died at length on January 15th, in the year 569 or 570, and was laid in her church of Cluain Credhuil, which has since borne the name of Killeedy or the Church of Ida.

She must have been known beyond the island of Ireland, for in the Salisbury Martyrology she is entered in strange form as “In Ireland the festival of S. Dorothea, also called Sith (S. Ith)” on January 15th.

In Cornwall a lofty and bare hill, that commands the Atlantic and the coast, is crowned by a great ruined camp. It had belonged to the British, but was wrested from them and became a stronghold of the Saxons, who held it so as to dominate the entire neighbourhood. This is Hellborough, not far from Camelford. It continued to be a royal castle, the property of the Crown, though it does not seem that any mediæval castle was built upon it. Now, curiously enough, in the midst of this great camp is a mound of stone or cairn, and on this cairn is a little chapel, at present in ruins, dedicated to the saint whose life has just been given. And on the river Camel, that flows into the Padstow estuary, is a parish that bears the name, though corrupted into S. Issey. But near Exeter is a parish church that has her as patroness with the name unmutilated, as S. Ide.

How came these dedications in Cornwall and Devon? Either because S. Brendan on his way home from Brittany founded the churches in memory of his dear foster-mother, or else because here were colonies of holy women from the mother-house in Limerick.

In or about 656 Cuimin of Connor wrote the “Characteristics of the Irish Saints” in metre, and this is what he says of Itha:—

“My (dear) Itha, much beloved of fosterage, Firmly rooted in humility, but never base, Laid not her cheek to the ground, Ever, ever full of the love of God.”

XII

_S. HILDA_

Hilda was born in 614. She was the daughter of Hereric, nephew of Edwin, king of Northumbria.

Her childhood was darkened by the civil wars that rent Northumbria, at this time divided into two kingdoms, each engaged in fighting the other for supremacy.

In 627, when aged thirteen, she received baptism, along with her uncle Edwin, at the hands of S. Paulinus. She lived thirty-three years in her family, “very nobly,” says Bede, and then resolved to dedicate the rest of her life to God. Her intention was to go to Chelles, in France, for her training; and, for this purpose, she went into East Anglia to its queen, her sister.

She spent a year in preparation for her final exile; but her purpose was frustrated by a summons from S. Aidan, the Apostle of Northumbria, to return to her own country and settle there. She obeyed at once, and was placed by Aidan as superior over a few sisters in a small monastic settlement on the north bank of the Wear. But she was there for a year only, when she was called to replace S. Heiu, the first Abbess of Hartlepool. This was in 649.

At Hartlepool, the Saint’s care was to introduce order and discipline, which had, apparently, been relaxed under Heiu. Hither came her mother, who passed the rest of her days under the rule and care of her daughter, and there she died and was buried.

In some excavations carried on at Hartlepool on the site of the old abbey, between 1833 and 1843, among a number of Anglo-Saxon tombs that were discovered, some bore the names of Berchtgitha, Hildigitha, and other members of the sisterhood.[5]

So great was Hilda’s reputation for spiritual wisdom, that when King Oswy, in fulfilment of his vow, consecrated his daughter, Elfleda, to Almighty God, as a thank-offering for his victory over Penda, King of the Mercians, it was to S. Hilda’s care that he committed her.

Whether now or later is uncertain, but she had a second convent at Hackness, where some very remarkable relics of the ecclesiastical foundations of Hilda still remain.

In 658, the peace and security of Northumbria had been secured by the final victory gained by Oswy over the Mercians, at Winwaed. Hilda at once took advantage of the king’s vow to give a certain number of farms to God, to secure Streaneshalch, now Whitby, for the establishment of a new and larger monastery.

M. de Montalembert, the historian of Western Monachism, says that: “Of all sites chosen by monastic architects, after that of Monte Cassino, I know none grander and more picturesque than that of Whitby. Nothing now remains of the Saxon monastery, but more than half the Abbey-church, restored by the Percies in the time of the Normans, still stands, and enables the marvelling spectator to form for himself an idea of the solemn grandeur of the great edifice.... The beautiful colour of the stone, half-eaten away by the sea-winds, adds to the charm of these ruins. A more picturesque effect could not be imagined than that of the distant horizon of azure sea, viewed through the gaunt, hollow eyes of the ruinous arches.”

Here, for thirty years, the great Hilda ruled. She must have been a woman of commanding character, and of no mean mental power, for she exercised a really marvellous influence over bishops, kings and nobles. They came to consult her, and received her advice with respect. “All who knew her,” says Bede, “called her Mother, on account of her singular piety and grace. She was not merely an example of good life to those who lived in her monastery, but she afforded occasion of amendment and salvation to many who lived at a distance, to whom was carried the fame of her industry and virtue.”

The story went that before her birth her mother had dreamt that she had in her lap a jewel that sent forth streams of light; and it was proudly thought that this meant that she would nurse Hilda, precious as a gem, and diffusing the light of divine truth through dark Northumbria.

Under Hilda’s charge at Whitby was the little Elfleda, daughter of Oswy, who was to succeed her in the abbacy.

The monastery was a curious institution. It was double. There was a community of women and another of men. There was, however, but one church in which they met for prayer. If we may judge by the Celtic monasteries elsewhere, a wall separated the monks from the nuns, so that they could hear but not see each other.

The monastery for men under Hilda became a nursery for bishops. Thence issued Bosa, who became Bishop of York,—Hedda, Bishop of Dorchester, but afterwards translated to Winchester; Oftfor, Bishop of Worcester, and John of Hexham,—all saints; also Wilfrid II., afterwards of York.

How these double monasteries were managed one would have been glad to learn, but very few details concerning them remain.

At Whitby, where she had to govern both men and women, her powers of organisation and control were conspicuous. But she had others under her beside monks and nuns: she ruled a large number of serfs with their families, attached to the soil and tilling it.

Amongst these was an old cowherd, named Caedmon. He was, as a serf, very ignorant and uneducated, but he had rare natural gifts, long unsuspected. He attended the carouses so dear to the beer-drinking Saxons and Angles, but he was unable to take his part, whenever the harp was handed to him and it was his turn to sing a ballad. On such occasions, mortified, he had been wont to rise from his place, and retire to his own reed-thatched cottage, where he slept beside the cows in their stall.

But one evening, when he had done this, as he was lying among the straw, and the oxen were beside him chewing the cud, and the air was sweet with their breath, he fancied, half-asleep and half-awake, that he heard a voice say: “Sing me something.”

Then he replied: “How can I sing? I have left the feast because I am so ignorant that I cannot.”

“Sing, nevertheless,” he thought the vision said.

“But—what can I sing about?”

“Sing the story of the World’s Birth.”

Then, somehow, an inspiration came on him, and in the night, among the cows, out of the straw, he raised his voice, and began to throw into rude verse the story of Creation. It was very rugged, but very fresh, and it welled up from his heart; in the morning he thought over the lines he had composed, and during the day talked of his newly-acquired powers.

The Abbess Hilda heard of it, and she sent for him, and he recited his poem before her.

Whether at the time he twanged the harp we do not know; probably he drew his fingers across the strings as he finished each line, so as to give time for him to form or remember the next.

Now, in this poetry there was no rhyme, as we understand it. The musical effect was produced by alliteration—that is to say, by the repetition of some ringing consonant or broad diphthong, usually at the _beginning_ of a word. If we understood Anglo-Saxon music, we should understand the charm to the ear of this alliteration.

Hilda at once recognised the genius of the old cow-herd; she took him into her household, and bade him devote himself to the cultivation of his talent. Thus it is due to her that Anglo-Saxon poetry took its rise—or, at all events, was recognised as literature deserving of being preserved. Caedmon’s poems are the earliest specimens we have.

But Hilda, with real genius, saw at once in the faculty of the old peasant a great means of conveying to the rude people the story of Scripture and the lessons of the Gospel. They were quite incapable of reading. Priests were few, and widely scattered. The people loved ballads; they would hearken for hours, sitting over the fire, to a singer who twanged the strings and then sang a stave or a line. They loved a long story. It could not be too long for them, having no books, nothing wherewith to relieve the tedium of the long winter evenings.

Now, thought Hilda, if we can run the Bible stories into ballad form, these will be sung in every cottage and farm wherever a gleeman can go certain of welcome; they will be eagerly listened to. So she gave to Caedmon clergy who translated the Scripture narrative from Latin into homespun Saxon. He listened, took his harp, the fire came into his grey eyes, and he sang it all in verse. Ninety-nine out of a hundred other women would have said, “This is very interesting, but the man must be snubbed; he is only a keeper of cows, and he must be taught not to presume.” Hilda, however, was above such pettiness: seeing a divine gift of song, though granted to quite a common poor man, she at once endeavoured to ripen it, and to turn it to a practical, good end. How to seize an occasion, an opportunity, and make use of it, is not given to all.

Another instance of Hilda’s clear mind and sound sense was in the settlement of the vexed question of Easter.

About that I shall have more to say when we come to the story of S. Elfleda.

The British-Irish Church did not observe Easter on the same day as the Roman Church; and as the Mercians and Northumbrians had received their Christianity from Iona, the metropolis of the Scottish Church, they kept the festival at one time, when the men of Kent and Wessex kept it at another. This produced discord at the very season when minds should be awed and calm; and it was a constant source of bickering and religious quarrels. The situation was intolerable, and, probably at the instigation of Hilda, a parliament was convoked at Whitby in 664 to settle the difficulty. This was the _Witenagemot_, composed of the principal nobles and ecclesiastics of the country, and presided over by the king.

Hilda was now fifty years old, and one would have supposed at that age would have adhered with the utmost tenacity to the rule in which she had been brought up, and which had been observed by her Father-in-God, S. Aidan, and by S. Cuthbert, whom she revered as a saint and a prophet inspired by the Divine Spirit. But she was a woman too sensible and too forbearing to force her own likings on the Church, against what her judgment told her was right. Pope Honorius had written in 634 to the Irish, exhorting them “not to think their small number, lodged at the utmost fringe of the world, wiser than all the ancient and modern Churches throughout the earth.” Even in Iona great searchings of heart had begun. S. Cummian had written to the abbot there, explaining how the error arose whereby the two Churches were separated, and he entreated the Celtic clergy to give way. “What,” he asked, “can be worse thought concerning the Church, our mother, than that we should say, Rome errs, Jerusalem errs, Alexandria errs, Antioch errs, the whole world errs; the Scots and Britons alone know what is right.”

Hilda’s leanings were entirely to the Scottish side, but Oswy strongly adopted the other, and the nobles and freemen, not caring much one way or the other, held up their hands to express their willingness to observe Easter at such time as pleased the king.

Hilda seems at once to have submitted, and to have introduced the observance of the Roman computation at Whitby, but the northern bishops withdrew, unconvinced and discouraged. Hilda was almost certainly alive when Caedmon died, but she was not long in following him. For the last seven years of her life she suffered greatly; then, says Bede, “the distemper turning inwards, she approached her last day, and about cock-crow, having received the Holy Communion, to further her on her journey, and having called together the servants of Christ that were in the same monastery, she admonished them to preserve evangelical peace among themselves and with all others; and as she was speaking she saw Death approaching, and—passed from death to life.” She died in 680.

XIII

_S. ELFLEDA_

When the terrible Penda had advanced into Northumbria, against Oswy, destroying homesteads and harvests with fire, and butchering all who fell into his hands, then the Northumbrian king sent presents to him, and asked for peace. The fierce Mercian refused the presents offered: nothing would satisfy him but the absolute subjection of the Northern Kingdom. Then, in despair, Oswy vowed to God that, as the old Pagan had rejected his gifts, he would dedicate his little one-year-old daughter to Him, together with twelve farms, if He would bless his arms in battle.

The odds were against Oswy. The host opposed to him was thrice as numerous as his own. Ethelhere, King of the East Angles, had come to the aid of Penda; and Odilwald, son of S. Oswald, who had been given an underlordship of part of Deira, and who thought he ought to have succeeded his father in kingship, went over to Penda.

The battle was fought on the Winwaed, near Leeds; the Mercians and their allies in their confidence had incautiously put the river at their back. Heavy rains filled it to overflow; it became a deep and boiling torrent, cutting off retreat. The Mercians were defeated. A panic fell on them, and as they fled they were swept away by the swollen river. Of the thirty eorldormen who marched with Penda, hardly one survived. The King of the East Angles and the savage old Mercian were among those who were slain. Odilwald did not enter the battle. He was well aware that when Bernicia had been eaten, Penda’s next mouthful would be Deira. He bore a bitter grudge against Oswy, but for all that did not care to put the knife into the hand of the Mercian king wherewith to have his own throat cut.

A battle song was composed on the occasion, of which a snatch has been preserved:—

“In the river Winwaed is avenged the slaughter of Anna, The slaughter of Sigbert and Ecgric as well, The slaughter of Oswald and Edwin who fell.”

The battle was fought in 655, consequently S. Elfleda was born in 654.

Oswy faithfully kept his vow. He set apart twelve estates to be thenceforth monastic property—six in the north and six in the south of his double kingdom. He then surrendered the little Elfleda to be brought up to the service of God.

Her mother was Eanfleda, daughter of Edwin, the first Christian King of Northumbria. It was, in fact, her birth, on Easter Day, 626, which was the occasion of the subsequent conversion of her father, and of his subjects; and Eanfleda was the firstfruits of her nation to receive baptism on the Whit Sunday following.

Oswy, the father of Elfleda, was a dissolute and murderous ruffian, who in cold blood had murdered the gallant Oswin, King of Deira, the kinsman of his own wife.

Oswy gave his daughter to S. Hilda, at Hartlepool.

In the furious and fratricidal wars which were waged in England by the conquerors of the British, each kingdom was animated by a blind instinct that the unity of the race should be effected somehow; but each understood this only as by bringing the rest under subjection.

Elfleda is described by Bede as a very pious princess. She had a sister, older than herself, Alcfleda, who had been married to Peada, son of the ravager Penda. But Alcfleda bore no love to her husband, and had him assassinated whilst he was celebrating Easter.

Two years after Elfleda had been placed at Hartlepool, S. Hilda obtained a grant of land where now stands Whitby, but which was then called Streaneshalch. She moved thither, and there constituted her famous monastery. This was in 658.

With Hilda remained Elfleda till the death of the great abbess in 680. On the death of Oswy in 670, ten years before, her mother Eanfleda came there; but when Hilda died, the young Elfleda, and not her mother, was elected to be the second abbess. As she was scarcely twenty-five, she was guided and assisted by Trumwin, who had been Bishop of Witherne, but had been obliged to leave his diocese by the unruly Picts, and he had withdrawn to the monastery of Hilda to remain under her rule.

Like all the Anglo-Saxon princesses of the period who retired into the cloister, Elfleda did not cease to take a passionate interest in the affairs of her race and her country, and to exercise a very remarkable influence over the princes and the people. When in 670 Oswy died he was succeeded by his son Egfrid, as unprincipled a man as his father. In 674, at Easter, S. Cuthbert was drawn from his island and cell and was ordained Bishop, with his seat at Lindisfarne, to rule the Northumbrian Church, in the presence of the king, at York. It was then that Cuthbert, knowing what was in the heart of the turbulent king, urged him to refrain from attacking the Picts and Scots, who were not molesting the Northumbrians. He would not, however, hearken. He had already despatched an army under Beorf to wantonly ravage Ireland. This had, as Bede said, “miserably wasted that harmless nation, which had always been friendly to the English; insomuch that in their hostile rage they spared neither churches nor monasteries.” The expedition against the Picts was determined on against the advice of all his friends, and of the Bishop of York, and of Cuthbert.

Elfleda was in great anxiety about her headstrong brother, and she went to see Cuthbert concerning him. He and the abbess met, having gone by sea to the place appointed for the interview. She threw herself at his feet and entreated him to tell her what the issue would be—would Egfrid have a long reign?

“I am surprised,” answered Cuthbert, “that a woman well versed, like you, in the Scriptures, should speak to me of length of human life, which lasts no longer than a spider’s web. How short, then, must life be for a man who has but a year to live, and has death at his door!”

At these words Elfleda’s tears began to flow. She felt that the wise old hermit saw that the mad as well as wicked expedition of her brother must end fatally.

Presently, drying her tears, she continued with feminine boldness to inquire who would be the king’s successor, since he had neither sons nor brothers.

“Say not so,” replied Cuthbert. “He shall have a successor whom you will love, as you as a sister love Egfrid.”

“Tell me,” pursued Elfleda, “where can this successor be?”

Then he turned his eyes to the islands dotting this coast, and said: “How many islands there be in this mighty ocean! Surely thence can God bring a man to reign over the English.”

Elfleda then perceived that he spoke of a young man, Alcfrid, supposed to be the son of her father Oswy by an Irish mother, and who had been a friend of Wilfrid, and was now in Iona, probably hiding from his brother, whom he could not trust.

The venerable Cuthbert was not out in his conjecture. On May 20th, 684, Egfrid was drawn into a pass at Drumnechtan, in Forfar, was surrounded by the Scots and Picts, slain, and the great bulk of his men cut to pieces.

“From that time,” says Bede, “the hopes of the English crown began to waver and retrograde; for the Picts recovered their own lands, which had been held by the English.”

Alcfrid at once left Iona, and was chosen king. He was a good and just prince, much under the influence of Wilfrid and inclined to adopt Roman fashions.

It becomes necessary now to speak of a controversy that rent the unity of the Church in England.

All Northumbria, Mercia and Essex had received the faith from Iona, the monastic capital of the Scots, whereas Kent and Wessex had received it from Rome.

Iona had been founded in 563 by S. Columba, an Irishman; and it was from Iona that S. Aidan, the Apostle of Northumbria, had been sent. Lindisfarne, the seat of the Bishops of Northumbria, was a daughter of Iona.

Now, there were certain differences between this Celtic Church and that of Rome and Gaul.