The Book-Hunter - John Hill Burton (13 ebook reader .TXT) 📗

"Of leather cases the cover of the Book of Armagh is the most interesting example now remaining. It came, together with its inestimable enclosure, into the writer's possession at the end of 1853, and is now lying before him. It is formed of a single piece of strong leather, 36 inches long and 12 broad, folded in such a way as to form a six-sided case 12 inches long, 12-3/4 broad, and 2-3/4 thick, having a flap which doubles over in front, and is furnished with a rude lock and eight staples, admitted through perforations in the flap, for short iron rods to enter and meet at the lock. The whole outer surface, which has become perfectly black from age, is covered with figures and interlacings of the Irish pattern in relief, which appear to have been produced by subjecting the leather, in a damp state, before it was folded, to pressure upon a block of the whole size, having a depressed pattern, and allowing it to remain until the impression became indelible."

A pleasing peculiarity in the personal habits of these recluses is their frequent communion with birds and the gentler kind of beasts. Their legendary histories speak of these animals as apt mediums of vaticination and miraculous intervention; but we must be content, in the present age, to suppose that their frequent appearance, their familiar intercourse with the saints, and the quaint and amiable incidents in which they figure, are in reality characteristic memorials of the kindly feelings and the innocent pursuits natural to men of gentle disposition and retired life. Thus Columba one day gives directions to a brother to be on the watch at a certain point in the island of Iona, for there, by nine o'clock on that day, a certain stranger stork will alight and drop down, utterly fatigued with her journey across the ocean. That stork the brother is enjoined to take up gently, and convey to the nearest house, and feed and tend for three days, after which she will take wing and fly away to the sweet spot of her native Ireland, whence she had wandered. And this the brother is to do because the bird is a guest from their own beloved native land. The brother departs, and returns at the proper time. Columba asks no questions—he knows what has taken place, and commends the obedient piety of the brother who had sheltered and tended the wanderer.

Another saint, Ailbhe, had a different kind of intercourse with certain cranes. They went about in a large body, destroying the corn in the neighbourhood, and would not be dispersed. The saint went and delivered on oration to them on the unreasonableness of their conduct, and forthwith, penitent and somewhat ashamed, they soared into the air and went their way. "St Cuthbert's ducks" acquired a long celebrity. When that reverenced ascetic went to take up his residence in the wave-bounded solitude of the Farne Islands, he found the solan-geese there imbued with the wild habits common to their storm-nurtured race, and totally unconscious of the civilisation and refinement of their kinsmen who graze on commons, and hiss at children and dogs. St Cuthbert tamed them through his miraculous powers, and made them as obedient and docile a flock as abbot ever ruled. The geese went before him in regular platoons, following the word of command, and doing what he ordered—whether it might be the most ordinary act of the feathered biped, or some mighty miracle. Under his successors their conduct seems to have been less regular, though certainly not less peculiar; for we are told that they built their nests on the altar, and around the altar, and in all the houses of the island; farther, that, during the celebration of mass, they familiarly pecked the officiating priest and his assistants with their bills. It is curious enough that the miraculous education of these birds makes its appearance in a Scottish legal or official document at the close of the fifteenth century. It is an instrument recording an attestation to the enormous value of the down of these renowned birds; and seems, indeed, to be an advertisement or puff by merchants dealing in the ware, though its ponderous Latinity is in curious contrast with the neat examples of that kind of literature to which we are accustomed in these days.[82]

One of the prettiest of the stories about birds is divided between St Serf, the founder of a monastery in Loch Leven, and St Kentigern, the patron of Glasgow, where he is better known as St Mungo. Kentigern was one among a parcel of neophyte boys whom the worthy old Serf, or Servanus, was perfecting in the knowledge of the truth. Their teacher had a feathered pet—"quædam avicula quæ vulgo ob ruborem corpusculi rubisca nuncupatur"—a robin-redbreast, in fact, an animal whose good fortune it is never to be mentioned without some kindly reference to his universal popularity, and the decoration which renders him so easily recognised wherever he appears. St Serf's robin was a wonderful bird; he not only took food from his master's hand and pecked about him according to the fashion of tame and familiar birds, but took a lively interest in his devotions and studies by flapping his wings and crowing in his own little way, so as to be a sort of chorus to the acts of the saint. The old man enjoyed this extremely; and his biographer, with more geniality than hagiographers usually show, sympathises with this innocent recreation, applying the example of the bow that was not always bent, in a manner suggestive of suspicions that he was not entirely unacquainted with profane letters. One day, when the saint had retired to his devotions, the boys amused themselves with his little pet; and a struggle arising among them for its possession, the head was torn from the body—altogether a natural incident. Thereupon, says the narrator, fear was turned to grief, and the avenging birch—"plagas virgarum quæ puerorum gravissima tormenta esse solent"—arose terribly in their sight. It was at this moment that an unpopular pupil, named Kentigern—a new boy, apparently—a stranger who had not taken in good-fellowship to the rest of the school, but was addicted to solitary meditation, entered the guilty conclave. Their course was taken—they threw the fragments of the bird into his hands, and bolted. St Serf enters, and the crew are awaiting in guilty exultation the bursting of his wrath. The consecrated youth, however, fitting the severed parts to each other, signs the cross, raises his pure hands to heaven, and breathes an appropriate prayer—when lo! robin lifts his little head, expands his wings, and hops away to meet his master. In the eucharistic office of St Kentigern's day, this event, along with the restoration to life of a 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:—