язо Cllllllll TABLE BOOK OF TRADITIONS, LEGENDARY POETRY, &c., &c. INTRODUCTION OF CHRISTIANITY INTO NORTHUMBERLAND. URING the period of the occupation of the Northumbrian throne by Edilfrid, Edwin had passed the greater part of his youth as a fugitive and an exile, continually exposed to the machinations of his relentless enemy. Driven from the protection of Cadwallon, the king of North Wales, he wandered from court to court, until at last he seemed to have found a permanent shelter with king Redwald in East Anglia. But his haunt was discovered by Edilfrid, who thereupon sent to Redwald demanding that Edwin should be given up. As the power of Edilfrid was terrible throughout the Heptarchy, the heart of Redwald failed, and he resolved to secure his safety at the expense of hospitality, justice, and religion. A faithful friend advertised Edwin of the deliberation within the palace, and exhorted immediate flight, offering, withal, to conduct him to a place of safety; but the spirit of the noble exile, that had contended so long against misfortune, was weary of the struggle. He declared that he would fly no further; and that it was better to perish by the treachery of his host, and the cruelty of his enemy, than continue the life of disquietude which he had hitherto led. In this gloomy spirit of resignation he sat down near the gate of the palace, prepared for whatever might await him. . B In the mean time, while his friend left him to gain further intelligence of the deliberation, and Edwin remained thoughtful and alone, revolving the bitterness of his fate, amidst the gloom of the approaching midnight, a stranger (continues the story) advanced, and demanded wherefore he sat there, and awake, at an hour when other men were asleep? Edwin, raising his head, abruptly asked, in turn, how it could concern his questioner whether he passed the night under shelter or in the open air? The stranger then told him that he knew well the nature of his present condition, and the causes of his disquietude."Now tell me," he said, "what thou wouldst give to him, whoever he might be, who should deliver thee from these calamities, and so persuade Redwald that neither he nor his enemies should do thee hurt?" Edwin, encouraged by the prospect, replied that he would show all the gratitude in his power to him who should render him such a benefit. "And what wouldst thou give," again demanded the mysterious stranger, "if he should truly promise thee the destruction of thy enemies, and the possession of a kingdom, so that thou shouldst surpass not only all thy predecessors, but all the kings of England who have gone before thee?" To which Edwin replied, that to him who should render him such favours, he would answer by corresponding actions. A third time the strange visitant propounded a prophetic question: "If he who procured such blessings should truly foretell to thee what is to come, and give thee, for the security of thy life and fortunes, such counsels as none of thy fathers and kindred ever heard, wouldst thou follow them? and dost thou promise to receive his salutary directions?" Edwin joyfully declared that he who conferred upon him such distinguished benefits should from thenceforth be his guide. The stranger then placed his right hand upon the head of Edwin: "When this sign," he said, “shall come upon thee, remember this time, and our conversation, and the promises thou hast made." When he had uttered these words, he suddenly disappeared; so that Edwin perceived he had been talking, not with a man, but a spirit. His friend who had lately left him now returned from the palace with joyful intelligence. The timid Redwald had been awakened to shame, and roused to courage, by the remonstrances of his high-spirited consort, so that he determined rather to brave the vengeance of Edilfrid than incur the reproach of treachery, and had dismissed the ambassadors with a bold refusal of their demands. Aware of the position in which he had placed himself, he lost no time in mustering his army, and marching against Edilfrid. The victory which followed, and the death of Edilfrid, placed Edwin on the throne of Northumbria. The persecuted wanderer thus suddenly raised to an eminent station among the kings of the Heptarchy, evinced the excellence of the lessons of adversity by the prudence and prosperity of his government. After a reign of nine years he sought in marriage Ethelberga, the daughter of the late Ethelbert of Kent. But the princess was a Christian, and Eadbald, her brother, was averse to her union with an idolater. This difficulty was removed by the agreement of Edwin, that she should be allowed the free profession of her religion; and he even promised to embrace the same faith himself, if, on examination, he should find it worthy of adoption. The queen was accompanied to Northumbria by Paulinus, one of the last of the missionaries whom Gregory had sent to Augustin; and as, by rather a rare chance, the prudence of this ecclesiastic was equal to his zeal, he forbore to press the subject of Christianity prematurely upon the mind of Edwin, but left the matter to time and opportunity. On the other hand, the king still adhered to his idolatry, and seemed to have forgotten both the vision and his marriage agreement. At length a narrow escape which he made from the dagger of an assassin, happening at the same time with the birth of a daughter, appeared to Paulinus to afford a fit occasion for remonstrance, and in such a susceptible moment the heart of the king was touched. He allowed the infant to be baptized; and he promised that, should he return victorious from an expedition on which he was about to set out against the king of Wessex, he would himself submit to the same ceremony. He was successful; but still he hesitated. A thoughtfulness and caution, unusual among the royal converts of the Heptarchy, retained him in painful suspense, to the great regret of the Pope, his consort, and Paulinus. At length Paulinus one day entered the apartment while Edwin was absorbed in thought, and, laying his right hand upon the head of the king, he solemnly said, "Dost thou remember this sign, and the engagement it betokened?" In an instant the king fell down at the feet of Paulinus, who, immediately raising him up, reminded him that all which had been promised by the heavenly stranger was now fulfilled. The result was Edwin's instant determination to fulfil also his own part of the engagement. Such is the story. How far it is a mere fiction, or how far the facts related were the result of contrivance or of chance, it is now impossible to determine.— It comes down to us on the Authority of Bede, who was incapable of inventing it, but whose credulity was equal to any demands of that superstitious age. Bede was born within half a century of the date (A.D. 627) assigned to the conversion of Edwin. Before he was actually baptized, however, Edwin called an assembly of his nobles, that they might discuss the claims of the new faith and the old; and, having announced his sentiments, he desired each member to deliver his opinion upon the subject. Coifi, the high-priest, was the first to speak, and, to the surprise of the whole assembly, he declared that the gods whom they had hitherto worshipped were utterly useless. None, he proceeded, had served them with greater zeal than himself, and yet others had prospered in the world far more than he had done; he was, therefore, quite ready at least to give a trial to the new religion. One of the nobles followed in a wiser and purer spirit. Comparing the present life of man, whose beginning and end is in darkness, to a swallow entering a banquetting-hall to find refuge from the storm without, flitting for a moment through the warm and cheerful apartment, and then passing out again into the gloom, he proposed that if Christianity should be found to lighten this obscurity, and explain whence we came and whither we departed, it should immediately be adopted. Coifi, upon this, moved that Paulinus should be called in to explain to them the nature of Christianity, which was immediately done; and so cogent were the arguments of the missionary, that the impatient Coifi declared there was no longer room for hesitation. He proposed that the national idols should be immediately overturned; and, as he had hitherto been the chief of their worshippers, he offered to be now the first to desecrate them. He therefore threw aside his priestly garments, called for arms, which the Saxon priests were forbidden to wield, and for a horse, which they were not permitted to mount, and thus accoutred he galloped forth before the amazed multitudes, who thought he had become frantic. Advancing to a temple in the neighbourhood, where the chief idol stood, he hurled his lance within the sacred enclosure, by which act the building was profaned, No lightning descended, no earthquake shook the ground; and the crowd, encouraged by the impunity of the daring apostate, proceeded to second his efforts. The temple and its surrounding enclosures were levelled with the ground. The conversion of the king was followed by that of multitudes of his subjects; so that Paulinus, who was afterwards consecrated Archbishop of York, is said to have baptized twelve thousand converts in one day in the river Swale.Bede Ecc. His. John Fitz Marmaduke, lord of Hordon, in the parish of Easington, descended from a nephew of bishop Flambard, and the "tres cher Bachelier" of bishop Beck, was, at the time of his death, governor of St. John's Town [Perth,] in Scotland, under Edward II., and according to a custom then not uncommon, his attendants, finding it impossible to comply with that clause in his will which enjoined his sepulture at Durham, literally boiled his dead body in a large cauldron, and preserved his bones till an opportunity for burying them in the Cathedralyard of Durham presented itself.-Surtees Soc. Pub. THE LAIDLEY* WORM OF SPINDLESTON-HEUGH. Virgo jam serpens sinuosa volumina versat, Arduaque insurgens navem de littore pulsat. A song about 500 years old, made by the old mountain-bard, Duncan Frasier, living on Cheviot, A.D. 1270. First printed from an ancient manuscript. BY THE REV. ROBERT LAMBE, VICAR OF NORHAM. HE king is gone from Bambrough Castle, Long may she stand on the castle wall, She has knotted the keys upon a string, She tripped out, she tripped in, She tript into the yard; But it was more for the king's sake, It fell out on a day, the king Brought the queen with him home; Oh! welcome father, the lady cries, And so are you, my step-mother, A lord said, wondering while she spake; Surpasses all of female kind In beauty, and in worth. * This is a northern corruption for loathly, i.e. loathsome. |