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ST. PATRICK'S PURGATORY;
AN
ESSAY ON THE LEGENDS
OF
Purgatory, Well, and Paradise,
CURRENT DURING
THE MIDDLE AGES.
BY THOMAS WRIGHT, ESQ. M.A., F.S.A.
CORRESPONDING MEMBER OF THE ROYAL INSTITUTE OF FRANCE,
(ACADÉMIE DES INSCRIPTIONS ET BELLES LETTRES.)
QURICE OF
OF
THE
CAMDEN
ANTIQUITIE
LONDON:
JOHN RUSSELL SMITH,
1, OLD COMPTON STREET, SOHO.
MDCCCXLIV.
C. AND J. ADLARN, PRINTERS, BARTHOLOMEW CLOSP.
10-6-38 JA
то
JAMES HEYWOOD, ESQ., F.R.S., F.S.A,
&c &c.
"
This little Volume
IS DEDICATED,
AS A TESTIMONY OF. SINCERC RESPECT,
BY
THE AUTHOR.
ВХ
4700
P31
W95
9.17-38
2003
23
2.000
Preface.
A considerable portion of the following Essay--the first
three chapters and a part of the fourth-was written out in
a condition nearly ready for the press several years ago,
when I was resident at Cambridge. Finding the manuscript
accidentally among some neglected papers, I showed it
to one or two friends, who encouraged me to complete
and publish it. I have only to hope that my readers in
general will not find reason to blame their partiality. I
have been obliged to complete and print the volume very
hurriedly, under disadvantages which I trust will be an
excuse for the errors of a more trifling character.
It appears to me that the subject is not without interest,
in whatever point of view we take it. I have treated it
merely as a curious chapter of medieval literature. It
might have been taken up as a ground of religious contro-
vi
PREFACE.
versy. And there is still another point of view in which
these legends have their importance : compared minutely
with one another and with the ancient penitentials, they
would furnish most valuable materials for the statistical
history of crime. By the researches and observations
which I have made myself, I am satisfied that crime and
vice were infinitely more prevalent and in their worst
forms, during the ages of papal supremacy than at any
other period of history, if we except, perhaps, the most
degenerate period of the Roman Cæsars. I can add,
both from my own observations, and from those of a
friend who has passed much of his life in examining the
judicial records of the English local courts, that the
amount of crime diminished in our own country con-
stantly from the Reformation to the end of the reign of
Elizabeth ; that it appears to have risen again very sud-
denly under James I and Charles I; that it began to dimi-
nish quickly again under the Commonwealth ; and that,
in spite of the immorality in the higher classes after the
Restoration, the general morality of the people has been
continually improving down to the present time. A series
of researches carried on with the especial object of illus-
trating this subject would be exceedingly interesting; and
the visions of purgatory would have great value in the age
PREFACE.
vii
when our judicial records are imperfect, because, by the
proportioned scale of punishments in each, they would
help to show the classes of crimes most prevalent at dif-
ferent periods.
The following pages have also their importance in a
historical point of view. They show how, during the middle
ages, the Christian religion was gradually corrupted by
adventitious and superstitious legends. Nothing was ever
more true than the stigma of idolatry applied by the
earlier reformers to the religion of papal Rome. The
Roman Catholic system was (and continues to be) a
mixture of Christianity with Paganism, in which too
generally the pure religion of the gospel is stifled under
the weighty superstructure. Superstitions, such as those
described in the present Essay, were at first tolerated
among a newly converted and ignorant people; but they
were subsequently approved and encouraged by a political
priesthood, as a powerful instrument of domination and
oppression, till they were finally accepted as an integral
part of the doctrines of the church.
Although it has been my object to treat the subject
generally, I have taken for the title of this Essay a special
viii
PREFACE,
case, that of St. Patrick's Purgatory in Ireland, because it
is the most remarkable of all the purgatory legends, and
it is the only one which has remained in force to the
present day. Unhappy Ireland has suffered more, perhaps,
than any other country from the religious system just men-
tioned. Romanism has been there for centuries a religion
of sedition; and we may there contemplate, in as great a
degree as modern laws and the condition of modern society
will permit, the social evils which accompanied it in the
middle ages. We see there a Catholic priesthood using
the grossest means, and practising the most vulgar decep-
tions, to keep in ignorance and dependence the miserable
population.
London, Nov. 28th, 1813.
51
CONTENTS.
CHAPTER I.
Lough Derg and its legends: story of the Hag with the finger-
Purgatory legends : St. Paul's vision-Furseus--Stories illustrative
of the connexion between the English and Irish churches-
Dribthelm- Vision of the emperor Charles-Ancient burlesque upon
these visions-Anglo-Saxon notions of Purgatory, and of Paradise
The sea above the sky, and stories illustrative of it
P. ]
CHAPTER II.
Purgatory legends of the twelfth century— Vision of the child William,
of Tundale-Devils and hob-goblins; story of Ketel the "elf-
seer” _Vision of the monk of Evesham, of Thurcill, of Guy (spiritus
Guidonis)—Burlesque descriptions of Purgatory and Paradise in
the Norman fabliaux-St. Peter and the Minstrel-The court 0
Paradise Land of Cocaigne-English Cocaigne--Cocaigne of the
ancient Greek poets
P. 30
Х
CONTENTS.
CHAPTER III.
Henry of Saltrey, and his legend of the descent of the knight Owain-
French: metrical versions of Henry's legend --- English metrical
versions—Ivain the son of Urien-Story of Arthur and Merlin-
Abstract of the English poem of Owayn Miles,' from the Cota
tonian manuscript
P. 60
CHAPTER IV.
Situation of purgatory, &c.--Saints' legends and fairy tales-Story of
St. Columba and the milkman--Fairy-land—Romance of Orfeo
and Herodys-Story of the green children-Song of the visit of
the youth to purgatory and Paradise - Ballad of Thomas and the
elf-queen-Purgatory in the air--Story of the Norwegian archbishop
and bis clerical elf-Voyage of St. Brandan–Legendary navigators
-Situation of paradise-Journey of the three monks to paradise
-The soul in the ice-Purgatory within the earth-Cosmographical
notions-Entrance to purgatory
P. 79
CHAPTER V.
Allegorical, satirical, and political applications of the visions--The
pilgrimages of William de Deguilleville--Vision of Barontus
-Raoul de Houdaing-Le songe d'enfer -La voie de paradis-
Rutebeuf-Le salut d'enfer—Hugh de Berti : the tournament of
Antichrist-Grecian visions- the cave of Trophonius—The Frogs
of Aristophanes—Dante, the Divina Commedia-Vision of Alberic
Brunetto Latini-Comparison of the Divina Commedia with tbe
older visions
.
p. 104.
CONTENTS.
xi
..
CHAPTER VI.
St. Patrick and his Purgatory; recapitulation-Giraldus Cambrensis
-Lives of tbe Saint-First publication of the legend ; Gilbert de
Luda and Henry of Saltrey–Visits to Patrick's Purgatory in the
Fourteenth Century--Raymond de Perilhos - The Romance of
Guerrino il Meschino-Froissart-Vision of William Staunton in
1409
p. 129
CHAPTER VII.
The pope orders St. Patrick's Purgatory to be destroyed; its restora-
tion-Calderon's play of the Purgatorio de San Patricio-Vision of
Louis Enius-Modern history of St. Patrick's Purgatory—Removal
of the site-Proclamations against the pilgrimage in 1632, and
by Queen Anne-Modern superstitions
p. 152
CHAPTER VIII.
Influence of these legends on the literature of the sixteenth century-
Vision of Lazarus--Scottish poets: Dunbar and Sir David Lindsay
-Burlesques: Rabelais—Spanish Ballads-English Ballads : the
dead man's song
p. 166
APPENDIX OF ILLUSTRATIVE PIECES.
Icelandic Vision
0
.
p. 177
183
An Early Burlesque
Anglo-Saxon Description of Paradise
German Ballad on Paradise
186
191
ERRATA.
p. 23, l. , for prefect, read archbishop. See Appendix, p. 183.
30, note l. l, for 1273, read 1259.
St. Patrick's Purgatory.
CHAPTER 1.
Lough Derg and its legends: story of the Hag with the Finger -
Purgatory legends : St. Paul's vision-Furseus–Stories illustrative
of the connexion between the English and Irish churches
Dribthelm-Vision of the emperor Charles---Ancient burlesque upon
these visions-Anglo-Saxon notions of Purgatory, and of Paradise
-The sea above the sky, and stories illustrative of it.
AMONG the dreary and barren mountains and moorlands
in the south of the county of Donegal, at no great dis-
tance from the county town, is a lake which contains an
island that was long famous throughout Europe. But who
has not heard of St. Patrick's Purgatory?--of its myste-
rious wonders and of the crowds of devotees who have
for ages been attracted by its reputed sanctity? There it
stands, with its chapels and its toll-houses—and thither
still repair yearly crowds of pious pilgrims, who would
wash away at once, by a visit to these holy shores, the
accumulated sins of their lives.
The lake did not always bear its present name, Lough
Derg, or the Red Lake—it was, we are told, before the
1
2
LEGEND OF LOUGH DERG.
arrival of St. Patrick on its banks, called Lough Fin, or
Fin Mac Coul's Lake, and the cause of its change of name
is still remembered in the legends of the neighbouring pea-
santry. Once there lived in Ireland an old hag, and a
great giant her son, whose lives were spent in contriving
and doing every kind of mischief. The witch, who knew
the virtues of every herb that grows, brewed in a silver pot
a baleful poison, in which the son dipped the points of his
arrows, and which rendered mortal the slightest wound
they inflicted. The mother was called the Hag with the
Finger, for she had but one long and pliant finger on each
hand. At this time there was a king of Ireland called
Niul; and he called together his druids, and demanded of
them by what means he might rid the land of these two
pests. Their answer was, that one of the Fions only could
destroy the hag, and that she must be shot with a silver
arrow. The king immediately sent for Fin Mac Coul, the
most famous and powerful of the Fions, who, with his son
Ussheen (Ossian), and Gal Mac Morni, and Cuneen Miul,
proceeded to hunt her. They found her and her son on a
little green hill in East Munster, on which is said to grow
every plant that is a native of Ireland; she was gathering
deadly herbs, and had with her the pot in which she boiled
them. As the party of heroes approached, Gal Mac Morni,
who was foremost, shot an arrow at her, but, his aim being
bad, he only overturned her pot and spilt the poisonous
mixture which it contained. The giant, the moment he
saw the pursuers, threw his mother over his shoulders, and
fled with astonishing speed through woods and bogs; but
before he had gone far from them, Fin had let fly his silver
arrow, and pierced the old hag to the heart. Still the
giant carried along with him his burthen, till he came to
LEGEND OF LOUGH DERG. ,
3
the mountains of Donegal, when, stopping to take breath,
he turned round and discovered, with astonishment, that
nothing remained but her legs, her back bone, and her two
arms, the rest having been worn away in his long flight
through the woods. The giant threw down the remains
of his mother, continued his flight, and was never heard
of afterwards.
Some years after this, as the same party of Fions were
hunting a broad-horned deer in that part of the country,
they came to the spot where lay the bones of the hag, and
as Ussheen, like a poet as he was, stood moralizing over
her rem
mains, a little red-headed dwarf made his appear-
ance, who told them to beware of meddling with the old
hag's bones, for in the thigh bone, he said, there was con-
cealed a worm, which, if it once got out, and could find
water enough to drink, would be likely to destroy the whole
world. The dwarf disappeared, but his counsel was not
regarded; for Cuneen Miul, who was a wild careless blade,
broke the thigh bone with his hunting spear, and, truly
enough, out crawled a long hairy worm, which writhed
about just as if it were seeking for water. Whereupon
Cuneen, taking it on the end of his spear, and exclaiming
“there is water enough for you," threw it
into the lake. Immediately there rushed out an enormous
beast, so terrible, that all the party, heroes as they were,
lost no time in hiding themselves from its fury, and the
monster overran the country, spreading destruction on
every side, and swallowing hundreds of people at a
mouthful.
In this extremity, Fin Mac Coul had recourse to the
oracular operation peculiar to himself of chewing his left
thumb, and immediately he knew that the beast was vul-
with a sheer,
4
LEGEND OF LOUGH DERG.
x
nerable only in one spot, where was a mole on its left side;
and armed with a short sword he hastened to attack it, and
succeeded, by his knowledge of the position of the afore-
said mole, in disabling his formidable adversary. He left
it struggling and bleeding on the shore of this same lake,
its blood streaming down and colouring the waters—hence
it was called the Red Lake. There the beast lay writhing
and bellowing with pain, till Saint Patrick came and found
it, and, to show the power of the faith he was preaching,
ordered it to go to the bottom of the lake, where he ef-
fectually secured it. When the lake is ruffled by tempest,
the monster is still sometimes seen rolling and roaring
among the waves, to the terror of any solitary traveller
who may chance to behold it as he hurries his way through
the storm.
This, or some similar legend, seems to have existed at a
remote period, for in the early part of the seventeenth cen-
tury the rocks about the entrance of the island were shown
as the entrails of a great serpent turned into stone, and “a
certain kuotty bone of some bigness, hollow in the midst
like the nave of a wheel, and out of which issue, as it were,
natural spokes,” was said to be a part of the “great ser-
pent's tail."* A multitude of medieval legends were
founded upon geological phenomena.
But it was the legend of the cave on the island which
made Lough Derg famous; a legend of so extraordinary a
kind, that it cannot be considered a waste of labour to seek
* These bones, &c., are mentioned in an Account of St. Patrick's
Purgatory, published, in 1617, by bishop Jones: the tail bone is men-
tioned by Messingbam, in bis Florilegium Insulæ Sanctorum, published
in 1624, p. 96. The legend of the Hag was related to the Rev. Cæsar
Otway twice. (Sketches in Ireland, p. 180, 192.)
PURGATORY.
5
after the materials on which it was formed, as well as its
origin and its connexion with the place. The origin of the
popular notions of purgatory during the middle ages, and
of its situation, is not an uninteresting subject. The latter
is immediately resolved into the original mythology of the
people : the formation of the story of purgatory itself seems
to have been gradual—it was a work of the imagination-
and every artist who copied the picture added some fresh
touches of his own. This we can easily understand, when
we but consider the extreme love of metaphor which could
make the writers of the middle ages talk of “the trans-
parent eye-balls of virgin bashfulness,” or “the purple
flowers of modesty,” or “the plentifull plantations of
apple-trees fertilizing the mind with flourishing leaf !”
Let us but imagine such phrases as “the dragon of glut-
tony,” or “the shrubbery of pride," to be taken literally,
and we have at once created no small part of purgatory.*
But to see perfectly the development of the legend, we
must trace downwards the different forms under which it
has appeared at different times, we must in fact have its
history. In the instance of which we are now speaking, 7
the later legend of the place was founded on a mixture of
legends connected with its physical character and the
popular mythology of the ancient inhabitants.
The fables of western paganism furnished sufficient ma-
terials for the foundation of these legends. We liave there
a place of punishment (hell), of which even the name was
* These phrases will all be found in the writings of Aldbelm.
The English writers seem to have far exceeded those of any other
country in their partiality for such metaphors, and it is remarkable
that nearly all the purgatory legends which exist are English or
Irisb.
IN
6
NORTHERN LEGENDS.
A father ap-
adopted by the Christian missionaries, and a place of hap-
piness, after this life. The former was a gloomy comfort-
less region, like the shades of the ancients -perhaps if we
were better acquainted with the details of the Teutonic
mythology, we should find there some of the torments of
the hell of later times. * At the end of the Sæmundar Edda
of the Northerns, we find a legend on this subject, entitled,
the Solar-liodh,' which presents an early mixture of the
Christian and pagan doctrines of the west.
pears to his son in a dream, and describes to him the state
of the souls after death: he informs him, that after quitting
the body, he first passed through the seven zones of the
lower world; that he then came to the mouth of the abyss,
where he saw multitudes of black birds as thick as clouds
of flies these were souls. He then describes the different
punishments of various classes of sinners; impure women
were seen dragging sorrowfully heavy stones; wicked men
covered with wounds were walking along paths of red-hot
sand; envious men had runes of blood imprinted on their
breasts; those who had sought worldly pleasures were con-
demned to pass their time in painful pursuits which had no
object; robbers, bending under burthens of lead, marched
towards the castle of Satan ; venomous reptiles gnawed the
hearts of assassins; the ravens of Tartarus tore out the eyes
of liars. The vision closes with a prospect of the splendour
of paradise.tThe primitive form of the legend is here
probably smothered under the details of a comparatively
late period.
On the Hell and Paradise of the Teutonic Mythology, see Grimm,
Deutsche Mythologie, pp. 461-76.
† See the end of the present volume.
VISION OF ST. PAUL.
7
Lorem
The earlier visions of purgatory and paradise are distin-
guished from those which followed by the simplicity of
their details. The first, of which we have any knowledge,
is that of Furseus, which is alluded to by Bede, and must
have been extremely popular amongst our Anglo-Saxon
forefathers. There still exist manuscript copies of the
same history which Bede saw, and which appears to have
been written soon after the date of the vision.* In the
tenth century it was translated into Anglo-Saxon, in the
form of an homily, by Archbishop Alfric, the most cele-
brated literary man of his time; and we have a manuscript
of it which, there are reasons to think, is in his own hand-
writing. Alfric introduces the subject by an allusion to a
similar vision, said to have been granted to St. Paul ; but
he, as well as the other earlier writers who allude to this
latter vision, pretend to no further knowledge of it than
what may be gathered from the apostle's own words, who
mentions a person that had been carried up in the spirit to
the third heaven. Among the manuscripts of Trinity
College library, however, there is a short relation, entitled
• Visio sancti Pauli Apostoli de penis purgatorii ;” it was
perhaps a work of the twelfth century, when such legends
were most fashionable. At the entrance of purgatory St.
Paul saw growing fiery trees, on which people were hanging
by their different members, or by their tongues, eyes, or
hair, according to the crimes they had committed on earth.
Within was a great furnace, with a dreadful fire, and be-
yond it a fiery lake. After having witnessed the operations
* One is in the Bodleian library, MS. Rawlinson, No. 505, fol.
174. Bede's account of Furseus will be found in bis Hist. Eccl., lib.
șii, cap. 19. The Anglo-Saxon legend of Furseus is printed in the
· Reliquiæ Antiquæ,' vol. i, p. 276.
8
VISION OF ST. PAUL.
of purgatory, he was taken to paradise to see the condition
of the saints.*
* MS. Trin. Coll. Cant. 0. 8. 26. Another copy occurs in the
same collection, 0..... There appears to be a poetical version of
the vision of St. Paul, in English, in the Vernon MS., in the Bodleian
Library at Oxford. Warton, in bis History of Poetry, vol. i, p. 19,
(8vo. edit. 1840,) quotes the beginning of it as an argument that these
religious poems were sung by the minstrels to the barp on Sundays,
instead of the romantic subjects usual at public entertainments:
“ The visions of Seynt Paul wan he was rapt into Paradys.
Lusteneth lordynges leof and dere,
Ye that wolen of the Sonday here;
The Sonday a day bit is
That angels and archangels joyen i-wis,
More in that ilke day.
Then any odur." &c.
The Anglo-Norman poetical version of this legend, of which there
are several copies preserved in manuscript, (two, I believe, at Cam-
bridge,) was written by Adam de Ros, an Anglo-Norman trouvère
of the thirteenth century. The deeper the saint descends into the
infernal regions the more terrible are the punishments. By tbe inter-
cession of St. Paul and the angels, the torments of the damned are
remitted every week from Saturday evening to Monday morning. This
will explain why the English poem commences with the praise of
Sunday.
There is a manuscript of the Anglo-Norman poem in MS. Cotton.
Vespas. A. vii, illustrated with curious pictures of the punishments
of the condemned souls. There are other MSS. at Oxford. The
.
Latin original, wbich is brief, is found in the British Museum, MSS.
Harl., Nos. 2851 and 3776, MSS. Reg. 8 C. vii, 8 E. xvii, 8 F. vi,
11 B. iii, 11 B. x, and 13 C. vi, and in various other manuscripts. The
oldest copies are of the thirteenth century. The Anglo-Norman
poem has been printed from an imperfect MS. in the Bibliothèque Royale
at Paris, by A. F. Ozanam, Dante et la Pbilosopbie Catholique au
treizième siecle, 8vo, Paris, 1839, pp. 343-55.
VISION OF FURSEUS.
9
Furseus was an Irishman, of a noble and wealthy family,
and had been from his boyhood conspicuous for his piety.
His love of contemplation led him to desert his father and his
mother and all his kindred, in order to dwell in solitude as a
stranger in a distant part of the land. Afterwards he built
a monastery in the place which he had thus chosen for his
abode, and placed in it a society of men pious like himself.
On a time sickness fell on him, so that he was near death,
and he wished to go home and die among his relatives.
As he was carried thither by his companions, when he was
not far from the end of his journey, and was singing the
vesper hymn, he was suddenly surrounded by darkness, in
the midst of which he beheld four hands stretched down
towards him, which took him by the arms, and which
seemed to be supported by four white wings. After a while
his
eyes became more used to the darkness, and he could
distinguish the forms of two angels, to whom the arms
and wings belonged, and then he saw that a third angel
preceded them, armed with a white shield and a shining
sword. And the angels sang sweetly as they went along,
and their song was,
“Ibunt sancti de virtute in virtutem :
videbitur Deus deorum in Sion.' Then after a while he
heard hosts of angels singing above, and one of them came
forward and ordered the armed angel, who preceded
Furseus, to take his soul back to his body, which he did,
to the soul's great dissatisfaction. After this, Furseus lay
sick for two days, and on the night of the second day he
seemed to die, and then the three angels came to him again
and led him forth as before. And now he heard the howl-
**
* Psal. lxxxiii, 8, in the Vulgate.
IS
10
VISION OF FURSEUS,
The angel
ings and crying of demons, who were ready to stop his
progress. Their bodies, as far as he could see them, were
deformed, and black, and scranny, with long extended
necks and swollen heads. They threw at him fiery darts,
but they were all warded off by the angel's shield, and the
devils were driven away. Then the angel told him to look
down to the world : and when he looked down he saw a
dark vale far below them, and in the vale four vast fires
burning at some distance from each other.
said, " There are the four fires which will burn the world.
The first fire burns the souls of men who have loved false-
hood ; the second, the souls of those who have been ava-
ricious; the third, of those who have been stirrers up of
strife and discord; and the fourth, of those who have prac-
tised fraud and impiety. Fear nothing; for these fires
will only burn the souls of sinners." And thereupon they
approached the fire, and it separated and left them a path
through the midst. In the fire. Furseus saw devils flying
abou and fighting terribly, and some came and shot at
him, and tried a second time to molest him, but were de-
feated by the angel who attended him. They now ascended
again, and he beheld the hosts of angels and heard their
songs. And there he met with two venerable saints of his
own country, by name Beanus and Meldanus, who were
in full enjoyment of the fellowship of the angels, and
from them he heard much comfortable doctrine. He was
then carried back by the angels through the fires and re-
stored to his body.*
* We find an instance, in the twelfth century, of the story of Fur-
seus being worked up and told again of a monk of Canterbury, wbich
seems to sbow that the original story was not then so popular as it
VISION OF A MONK.
11
After this vision Furseus lived among the Irish twelve
years, preaching and declaring to them the wonders which
had been. This story occurs among some French metrical saints'
legends, in a MS. in the library of Trin. Coll. Camb, marked B, 14,
39, of the end of the twelfth or beginning of the thirteenth century.
" Dunc avint jadis à un prestre,
Ke de Canterbury ert mestre:
Quant lunges i out conversé,
Ci est cuntre lit cuché.
Quant il quida devier,
Devant lui vint un bachiler,” &c.
The 'bachiler' took him to hell and to paradise, and he saw a great
fire, wbich did not, however, burn bim, and many burning souls, who
bowled terribly, and devils pursuing them with their crokes.'
- Ert li prestres en grant turment:
Quant il vint en le fu ben avant,
Este-yus un deble vint fort corant,
Les oils ardanz must roilant,
E de sa buche eschivant:
Un alme ardant en sun croc tint,
E vers le prestre grant curs vint,
E criebeit fort en sun esleis,
Diva! treiturs fel mauveis!
Prene celui ke tu as tué !'
Cy at sur lui le alme rué.
L'alme descent sur le prestre,
E si li ard la paume destre,
Li arsun ke ad feit mal li feseit,
Ceo li fu vis murir deveit.
The mark of the burning remained, and was afterwards a proof of
the truth of his relation.
An exactly similar accident happened to Furseus, except that the
burning soul scorched not his hand but his shoulder and cheek. The
soul was that of a sinner, from whom, wbile dying, Furseus bad
accepted a garment, and hence it was that tbis soul had power to burn
bim.
12
LEGEND OF FURSEUS.
he had heard and seen. And then, unable to bear any
longer the violence and envy of his countrymen, with a
few of his companions he went to a small island on the
coast, and thence, after a while, he passed over to Wales,
and travelled through the territory held by the Britons to
England, where he was honorably received by Sigebert,
king of the East Saxons. To this people he preached the
gospel zealously and successfully; and afterwards, on a
plot of ground granted to him by the king, pleasantly
situated near the sea and surrounded by woods, which was
then called Cnofesburh or Cnobbesburh, now Burgh, in
Suffolk, he built a monastery, which was afterwards adorned
and enriched by the East Saxon king Anna. Thence, leaving
his monastery to the care of his brother, he went over to
France, where he was kindly treated by King Hlodowic,
or at least by a man whom Alfred, in his translation of
Bede, calls his ealdorman,' Ercenwald. He there died,
and was buried at Peronne. The date of the arrival of
Furseus in England is fixed by Bede to the year 633.*
We have another Irish version of the life of Furseus,
which is published in the collection of the Bollandists, t
in which the Irish origin of much of the history is mani-
fested by the wildness of its details. His father's name
was Phyltan, who was the son of Fundloga, king of
* In the Anglo-Saxon Menology, MS. Cotton. Jul. A. x, Fursens
is mentioned at fol.51, rº. where it is observed, “ þes Fursing ge-wat eft
of Scottum on Brytone, and on East-Engla mægde he ge-timbrado
æger mynster þæt is ge-ceged Cnofesburb, tæt he dyde on Sigeberhtes
dagum þæs cyninges, and þanon he ge-wát ofer sæ in Gallia mægde to
Clodfeo Francna cyninge, and 8ær bis dagas ge-endade, and his licboma
rested on Jæm tune Ferano, and bis ge-earnunga þær wæron oft
beorhte ge-cybed."
† Acta Sanctorum, Januarii, tom. ii, p. 41.
- )
LEGEND OF FURSEUS.
13
Munster. Phyltan had been married privately to Gelgehe,
the daughter of Aelfiud and the niece of Brendin, another
Irish prince. The intercourse of this pair was secret, but
the lady became pregnant, and her father, enraged at the
discovery, condemned her to be burnt alive—the common
punishment of her sex in the middle age romances. The
infant in her womb bore his testimony against the judg-
ment, declaring that it was "wrong for a man in autho-
rity to burn his daughter without sufficient cause." The
angry judge persisted in his determination, and the of-
fender was led to the place of punishment, where three
fires instead of one had been made ; but her prayers for
the safety of her offspring were heard, and from the spot
where her tears touched the ground a fountain suddenly
arose and extinguished the flames. The heart of the father
was somewhat softened by this double miracle, and the
punishment of Gelgehe was commuted to banishment along
with her husband. They went to Phyltan's uncle, the
famous St. Brandan, who then resided in his monastery in
the isle of Cluainfort, where he received them with kindness,
and where the child was born. His sanctity was mani-
fested, previous to his birth, by a supernatural light which
surrounded the mother in her bed; and St. Brandon bap-
tized the child by the name of Furseus, which was intended
to be significant of the virtues with which he was en-
dowed.
The circumstance of so many of the earlier visions of
purgatory having been seen by Irish monks or by English
monks who had resided in Ireland, makes it interesting
to trace the intercourse between the two people.* From
• The authorities are Bede, wbo finished bis bistory in 731 ; the
Saxon Chronicle, which is brought down by various bands to 1154;
14
ENGLISH INTERCOURSE
the very old metrical romance of King Horne’ it would
seem that the nations of the north of Ireland were friendly
towards the English of the opposite coast : they kindly
received the hero when a fugitive, and the “Yrishemenne'
readily assisted him against the 'Saracens' or pagan Danes
who had invaded his own country. The romance of
Tristrem,' on the other hand, seems to manifest a well-
known feeling of enmity between the Cornish and the Irish
of the south. This difference of feeling may perhaps be
caused by the different ages of the two poems, King
Horne' being without doubt of a much earlier formation
than the other. But we trace something of the same kind
in the historians and chroniclers, from whom it appears
that the shores of the Severn were frequently infested by pre-
datory parties of Irishmen. The ecclesiastical history seems
to show a more friendly intercourse in the north. We might
judge, from Bede's history, that Ireland owed very much
of its Christianity to its Saxon neighbours. The history
of the saints Colman and Cedda and Ceadda and also of
Egbert belong almost as much to Irish as to English
story. In 667 the first of these returned from England
into Ireland, taking with him thirty Angles, and built a
monastery in a small island on the west coast, called
Inisboufinde, or the Island of the White Calf, and placed
in the monastery both Irish and English monks. But the
Irish then, as now, were improvident people : during the
summer months they left the monastery to live on the
the history by Florence of Worcester, wbich closely follows the Saxon
Chronicle in general, and which ends in 1]18, and is continued by an
anonymous monk of Worcester to 1141; and the Legenda Nova
Angliæ, printed by Wynkyn de Worde, and published under the name
of John Capgrave, but really composed by John of Tynemouth.
WITH IRELAND.
15
fruitful parts of the neighbouring coast, where they wan-
dered about eating all they gathered, and then, when sum-
mer was ended, returned to share with the English the
stores which the latter had been industriously laying up
for themselves against winter. Discord soon appeared
amongst them, and Colman left the monastery on the
small island to the Irish monks, and took the English with
him into Ireland, where they built a new monastery in a
place then called Mageo, now Mayo. Here, at a later
period, in the time of Adamnan, we are told that there
were “ a hundred Saxon saints." Adamnan himself was
residing at the monastery of Coludesbyrig, now Coldingham,
near Berwick, a short time before it was burnt, in
679. In 664 a violent epidemic raged over England,
which also reached Ireland, where it proved very destruc-
tive. At that time it is incidentally noticed that there
were in Ireland “very many Angles," as well of noble as
of mean birth, some of whom went thither for religious
instruction, and others that they might live there a quiet
and a continent life. Some of them settled in a monastery
and bound themselves to observe its rules, while others
wandered from one to another, learning a little here and a
little there, as they found instructors who pleased them.
The Irish everywhere received them with hospitality, not
only giving them to eat and drink, but lending them books
to read and teaching them gratuitously.
In 684 Egfrith, king of the Northumbrians, sent an
army into Ireland, under the command of his ealdorman
Briht (or Berht), which committed dreadful ravages,
sparing neither churches por monasteries, among "a harm-
less people who,” Bede tells us, “had always been most
friendly to the English.” The historian exults over the
16
GUTHLAC AND BERTELLIN.
punishment with which God visited the Northumbrian
king, when the year following he was killed in a battle
with the Picts, whose territory he had invaded, against the
urgent remonstrances of St. Cuthbert, who had just been
made bishop of Lindisfarne. Cuthbert himself, if we
believe his legend, was an Irishman, and of royal blood.
Muriardach, a rich and powerful king, who, in a manner,
ruled over all the other kings of Ireland, was surprised in
the night time by another Irish king, who envied his pros-
perity, and, with all his family excepting one daughter,
put to death. The beauty of the princess excited the lust
of the murderer: she was violated, and became the mother
of Cuthbert. Another story is told in the same collection
of legends. St. Guthlac was born in the days of Ethelred,
king of the Mercians, who reigned till 704. Guthlac and
Bertellin (? Berthelm went together to Croyland. Bertellin,
says the legend, was "son of the king of the people of Staf-
fordshire;" fearing to be led astray by the wicked example
of his own countrymen, he went when young to Ireland, and
there was in great favour with an Irish king. His piety,
however, did not render him proof against the charms of the
young princess: she became pregnant, and he took her
away secretly and brought her into England, where they
concealed themselves in the most unfrequented parts of a
vast forest. Here, when the time of her delivery ap-
proached, while Bertellin was gone in search of a midwife,
a savage wolf came and devoured the mother and her child.
Stung with remorse, Bertellin spent the rest of his life in
solitary penitence.
Ireland once looked upon the English church as the
mother and protector of her own. In 1073, the fourth
year after Lanfranc was consecrated archbishop of Canter-
VISION OF DRIHTHELM.
17
bury, Patrick came to London to be ordained bishop of
Dublin, and took back with him from the archbishop letters
to the kings of Ireland, whose contents were “very worthy
to be held in memory.” A few years after this Lanfranc sent
to the Irish bishop Donald “letters filled with the fatness
of holy doctrine;" and about 1085 he consecrated to the
bishopric of Dublin the monk Donatus, at the desire of
the king, the clergy, and the people of Ireland, who also
carried back with him letters of exhortation. At the date
1121 the monk who wrote the continuation of the Chro-
nicle of Florence of Worcester,' says : " This year a cer-
tain Irishman named Gregory, elected by the king, the
clergy, and the people of Ireland to the bishopric of
Dublin, came, according to custom of ancient standing, to
be ordained by the archbishop of Canterbury, the primate
of England.” By the precept of the archbishop, Roger
bishop of Salisbury, at his castle of Devizes, raised him to
the grade of deacon and presbyter in the August of that
year, and he was consecrated bishop shortly after by Ralf
archbishop of Canterbury, at Lambeth. Before his return
to Ireland he assisted at the consecration of the church of
Tewkesbury.
Our next vision of purgatory, which is also related by
Bede, differs considerably from the former, and is impor-
tant as containing circumstances which are repeated in
nearly all the later purgatory legends. Drihthelm was a
Northumbrian, of the town of Cununing, perhaps the same
which is now called Cuningham, within the borders of
Scotland. He had lived a pious life, and in his later days
was favoured with a vision like that of Furseus. On the
return of his soul to its body he became a monk in the
abbey of Mailross. He told his story to Hamgils, from
18
VISION OF DRIHTHELM.
✓
whom Bede seems to have learnt it, and who, when Bede
wrote his history, was a hermit in Ireland.*
When his soul first left its body, he said he was led in
silence by a shining angel in a white garment. They went
towards the north-east; and as they walked along they
came to a valley which was broad, and deep, and infinitely
long. One side of this valley was filled with roaring flames,
the other side was not less intolerably cold,+ with furious
storms of hail and snow driving about in all directions.
The whole valley was full of souls, who were tossed con-
stantly from one side to the other, and were equally tor-
mented in each by the heat and the cold, as well as by the
foul spirits which were everywhere flying about. Drihthelm
began to think this must be hell ; but his conductor said
to him, “ Think not so, we have not yet come there.” It
was indeed only purgatory : so they went onwards, till
they came into a region of extreme darkness, where he
could hardly distinguish the shining form of the angel
which accompanied him. And suddenly he saw as it were
globes of dusky flame, rising apparently from a great pit,
and constantly falling down into it again. When he ap-
proached it, his guide suddenly left him in the midst of the
darkness, and he now saw that the globes of fire were full
of souls, which were thus continually tossed up from the
pit, the stench of which filled the country around. And
as he stood terrified and doubtful which way to turn, he
suddenly heard behind him a sound of miserable wailing,
* Tbe vision of Dribthelm, like that of Furseus, was the subject of
a hom ily of the Saxon church, of which a copy is preserved in a MS.
of the public library of Cambridge, Ii. I, 33.
+ Extreme cold, instead of fire, is the common instrument of punish-
ment in the northern legends.
VISION OF DRIHTHELM.
19
and mixed with it laughter, “like that of churls exulting
over their captured enemies." Then he saw a crowd of
evil spirits dragging along five souls, who were lamenting
grievously, whilst the fiends were mocking at them. When
these had gone down into the pit, several fiends rushed out
from the flames and surrounded Drihthelm: he was scorched
by the stinking flames which issued from their mouths and
their eyes and their nostrils, and they were on the point of
dragging him into the pit with their red-hot forks, when
suddenly a light appeared at a distance, which proved to
be his former guide, who had come to his rescue. The
assailants were disappointed, and fled. The pit was hell,
out of which no one returned.
They now went towards the south-east; and there was
a clear light, and before them a wall, which seemed in every
direction of unbounded extent, and without any apparent
gate or window. In an instant he was, he knew not how,
at the top of the wall, and beheld a vast and pleasant
plain, full of fragrant flowers, and the light was brighter
than that of the sun at noon; and there were innumerable
assemblages of people in shining vests, and all was joy and
delight, so that it appeared to Drihthelm as though he
were in heaven. But this was not heaven: it was the
place where dwelt those who had done good works during
their abode on earth, but were not sufficiently perfect to
enjoy at once the immediate fellowship of Christ. After
this he approached a country where the light was much
brighter, and he heard beautiful singing, and perceived a
smell of ravishing fragrance, when his guide suddenly
stopped, and led him back by the way he went, after he
had heard at a distance the songs of the saints of heaven.
The visions of Furseus and Drihthelm are the only two
20
VISION OF THE EMPEROR CHARLES.
mentioned by writers older than the Conquest; but we
have in William of Malmesbury's history an account of a
visit to purgatory by the emperor Charles the Fat, who
came to the throne of France in 884. The simple fact of
its being attributed by so late a writer* to Charles would
not prove its antiquity ; but there are some circumstances
in it which seem to me to go far towards showing that it
was written before the time of the Norman invasion. It
appears in the form of a declaration under the emperor's
own signature, and its object was to make over the crown
after his death to his nephew Louis, which was done by
the express order of his brethren in purgatory. Charles
was deposed, Louis fled to England and was received at
the court of Athelstan, and the throne of France was
occupied by an interloper; but, after one or two brief
reigns, Louis obtained the crown, and the vision of his
uncle was probably the work of some monk of his party,
who thought thereby to give additional weight to his
claims.
“I was carried away," says Charles, “in the spirit :
a very bright angel came to me, bearing in his hand a
ball of thread, which emitted a bright ray of light, and
he began to unrol it, and said to me—“Take the thread
of the shining ball, and bind it and knot it firmly on the
thumb of thy right hand, for by it thou shalt be led into
the labyrinthine punishments of hell.'+ He was led by
the thread through deep vallies of fire, with innumerable
* William of Malmesbury's history ends in 1143.
t" Accipe pilum glomeris micantis, et liga et noda firmiter in pol-
lice tuæ manus dexteræ, quia per illum duceris in labyrintbeas inter-
norum pænas." The allusion to the thread of Ariadne is sufficiently
evident.
VISION OF THE EMPEROR CHARLES.
21
pits full of sulphur, and lead, and pitch, and oil. In
these were punished bishops who had stirred up war
between princes, instead of urging them to preserve peace;
and they told him that there were pits prepared for his
own bishops, who were still following their example.
Then, while he was talking, several black fiends came and
endeavoured to take the thread and pull him to them, but the
light it emitted defended him. They next came behind
him and tried to pull him into a pit with their fiery hooks,
but his guide, who still held the ball, twisted the thread
round him and over his shoulders, and dragged him away
over fiery mountains, out of which issued scalding streams
of boiling metal, in which stood people, some up to their
hair, some up to their chin, and others only up to their
navels. These were his father's nobles and their soldiers,
who had made wars and used violence for the gratification
of their avarice. There were also chaldrons of boiling
pitch and sulphur, full of dragons and scorpions, and the
souls in them were those of malicious and proud barons,
who had given evil counsel to their king. Thence he was
dragged to a valley, one side of which was dark and full
of fires, and there kings were tormented by black giants;
the other side of the valley was beautiful and pleasant.
And next he saw two fountains, one of boiling water, the
other pleasant and cool, and there was his father Louis,
who passed a day alternately in each, the liberty of entering
the cool one having been obtained for him by the inter-
cession of St. Peter and St. Remigius, the patrons of the
royal family: and he told him moreover, that if he and
his bishops and priests prayed steadily, they would in time
get him out altogether, and he would go to paradise.
Then Louis showed Charles the two boilers which were
22
BURLESQUE ON THE VISIONS.
ready for him if he did not mend his life, at which he was
much grieved, until he understood that he might be relieved
by the same means. Charles was led to see paradise, and,
as was right for such an emperor, only visited that part of
purgatory which was especially set apart for the punish-
ment of kings and princes, barons and prelates."
The vision of Charles, in its details, resembles more the
later legends than those of Furseus and Drihthelm; and,
from this circumstance, we should be led to suppose that
many more such visions had been published at the time
when it was composed than now exist. ( It affords us also
an early instance of the corruptions of our western super-
stitions by the introduction of names and incidents from
Grecian and Latin stories. However, the writer of this
legend had evidently an imperfect idea of the use of the
thread or the nature of the labyrinth in the classic fable.
le.)
But we have a much more convincing proof that before
the time of the Norman Conquest, such legends were com-
mon as well in England as in the neighbouring parts of
Europe, in the fact, that at the beginning of the eleventh
century they had already become an object of ridicule. In
a manuscript volume, preserved in the public library of the
University of Cambridge, which bears internal evidence of
having been written by an English monk in Germany about
the middle of that century, among several Latin rhyming
songs, there is one which tells the story of a “prophet”
who had lately visited the infernal regions. Among other
circumstances of their geography, he described them as
surrounded on every side by thick woods. He had after-
wards been to heaven, and there he saw Christ sitting and
eating: Peter, he said, was head cook, and John the
Baptist was butler, and served round the wine to the saints
ANGLO-SAXON PURGATORY.
23
in a glorious cup. On being pressed for an account of the
repast which he himself had made there, our "prophet
confessed that in a corner of the kitchen he had stolen
from the cooks a piece of liver, and after devouring it had
slunk away. The delinquent was punished in this world
for his offence in the other ; for Heriger, the prefect of
Mentz, ordered him to be publicly flogged, advising him
at the same time that “when Christ invited him to dinner,
it would be well for him if he would in future keep from
stealing."*
The doctrine of purgatory appears to be the oldest of
those which distinguish the Romish from the Protestant
churches. It is now generally known that the Anglo-
Saxon church did not hold many of what are called the
Romish doctrines, but, on the contrary, that towards the
tenth and eleventh centuries its orthodox teachers opposed
them as growing heresies. Purgatory, however, may be
traced a long way back in the Anglo-Saxon divines. In
Bede's time (the eighth century) it seems to have been a
matter of speculation whether there existed such an expi-
atory place or not, but the two visions which the historian
has recorded, perhaps went further than any reasoning to
dispel the doubts which might exist. The Anglo-Saxon
notions of purgatory, indeed, have generally these visions
for their model. The earliest and most popular doctrine
was that which was pointed out by Furseus, that in the
end of the world the earth would be occupied by a great
purgatorial fire, which would cleanse it from all sin, and
leave it renovated and purified. This was the doctrine
taught by Alfric. In one of his humilies he says, “God's
This song will be found in the Appendix.
24
ANGLO-SAXON PURGATORY.
day will show them, for then he is manifested in fire, and
the fire will prove what is the work of each of them. And
he whose edifice lasteth through and withstandeth the fire,
then receiveth the work-man from God reward of his work:
if any one's work burns, he hath the harm of it, and so is still
held through the fire."* But the vision of Drihthelm
shows that already the more enlarged notion of a purgatory
immediately after death was getting ground, and that the
belief in the power of helping people through it by masses
and the alms of their friends was beginning to be esta-
blished. In Bede, the angel is made to say to Drihthelm,
“The great burning vale which you saw is the place in
which are punished the souls of those who, neglecting to
confess and amend their sins till their last day, have been
penitent at the moment of death. All, however, who have
confessed and repented, even in death, will come to heaven
at the day of doom. Many, however, are helped by the
prayers of the living, and by alms and fasts, and above all
by the celebration of the mass, so that they are delivered
before doomsday.” In a homily preserved in the Bodleian
library at Oxford, (quoted in Soames's Bampton Lectures,)
which is probably not much older than the beginning of the
eleventh century, this doctrine is still more fully developed.
“Some men's souls," it says, "go to rest after their de-
parture, and those of some go to punishments, according to
that which they wrought before, and are afterwards released
*“Godes dæg bí ge-swutelad, forðan þe bé bið on fyre æteowod,
and þæt fyr afandað hwilc beora ælces weorc bid. Gif hwæs ge-tim-
brung turhwunað and Jam fyre widstent, bonne underfeld se wyrhta
edlean at Gode bis weorces. Gif hwæs weorc for-byrnd, be bælt bone
hearm, and bið swa deab ge-healden Gurb þæt fyr.” (MS. Bibl.
Pub. Cantab. Gg. 3, 28, fol. 490.)
ANGLO-SAXON PARADISE.
25
through almsdeeds, and especially through the mass, if men
do these for them: and some are condemned with the devil
to hell. They come never thence; and he who once cometh
to rest will never come to punishments. The soul hath truly,
even as books tell us, the likeness of the body in all its
limbs, and it feels softness or soreness wherever it is, ac-
cording to that which it earned before. Light crimes and
little sins are then purged through the penal fire: and there
is a punishment of no kind in this world so severe as that
aforesaid fire which purgeth the negligent.
Some are
there long, some a little while, according to what their
friends do for them here in life, and according to what
they earned before in life. Each knows another, and those
who come to rest know truly both those whom they knew
before and those whom they knew not, because they were
in good deeds before alike."
Many of the popular ideas which were held by our Saxon
forefathers concerning the actual situation and appearance
of purgatory, and more especially of paradise, are not easily
to be accounted for, unless we suppose them derived from
some of the sectarians of the eastern church. A manu-
script in the British Museum furnishes the following in-
formation respecting the latter place: “Paradise is neither
in heaven nor on earth. The book says that Noah's flood
was forty fathoms high, over the highest hills that are on
earth; and paradise is forty fathoms higher than Noah's
flood was, and it hangeth between heaven and earth won-
derfully, as the ruler of all things made it. And it is per-
fectly level both in length and breadth. There is neither
hollow nor hill; nor is there frost or snow, hail or rain ;
but there is fons vitæ, that is, the well of life. When the
calends of January commence, then floweth the well so
2
26
LEGENDARY SCIENCE.
beautifully and so gently, and no deeper than man may
wet his finger on the front, over all that land. And so
likewise each month once when the month comes in the
well begins to flow. And there is the copse of wood,
which is called Radion Saltus, where each tree is as
straight as an arrow, and so high, that no earthly man ever
saw so high, or can say of what kind they are. And there
never falleth leaf off, for they are evergreen, beautiful and
pleasant, full of happiness. Paradise is upright on the
eastern part of this world. There is neither heat nor
hunger, nor is there ever night, but always day. The sun
there shineth seven times brighter than on this earth.
Therein dwell innumerable angels of God with the holy souls
V till doomsday.
Therein dwelleth a beautiful bird called
Phoenix, he is large and grand, as the mighty one formed
him; he is the lord over all birds." And so the writer
runs on in praise of the phenix.*
The Anglo-Saxons appear to have been attached to these
strange tales.
In the dialogue between Saturn and
Solomon, which is printed in Mr. Thorpe’s ‘Analecta
Anglo-Saxonica,' one question, and its answer, are, “Tell
me why is the sun so red in the evening ?-Because shet
looketh down upon hell.” In a similar dialogue between
Adrian and Ritheus, the same question occurs, and is
similarly answered ; and we have also another ques-
tion,—“Tell me where shineth the sun at night?”—The
answer is—“I tell thee, in three places: first, in the belly.
• MS. Cotton. Vespas. D. xiv, fol. 163. It is a prose paraphrase
of the pseudo-Lactantius de Phenice. See the corresponding portion
of the metrical paraphrase at the end of the present volume.
† Among the Anglo-Saxons, the sun was always feminine, the
moon masculine.
LEGENDARY SCIENCE.
27
of the whale, which is called Leviathan; and secondly,
she, shineth on hell: and the third time she shineth on
that island which is called Glith, and there resteth the
souls of holy men till doomsday."* Where such tales
originated, it is impossible to say till we know more of
theni. Some may have come from the eastern Christians
others probably originated in a mixture of the preexisting
myths of the Saxons with Christianity--and not a few from
a too literal interpretation of scripture language. Of the
latter class, we have a remarkable instance in the belief
which prevailed during the midde ages, that there was
actually a sea above the sky, which was founded on the
mention made in Genesis of the separation of the waters
above the firmament from those below. This belief is curi-
ously illustrated by two legendary stories preserved by
Gervase of Tilbury. One Sunday, he says, the people of a
village in England were coming out of church on a thick
cloudy day, when they saw the anchor of a ship hooked to
one of the tomb-stones; the cable, which was tightly
stretched, hanging down from the air. The people were
Saga me, hwær scyne seo sunne on nibt?--Ic pe secge, on prim
stowum: ærest on þæs hwales innode be is cweden leuiathan; and on
odre tid heo scynd on helle; and þa Gridda tid beo scynd on þam
calonde, þæt is Glið nemned, and þær restað haligra manna saula od
domes dæig." (MS. Cotton. Julius, A. ii, fol. 137, vº, printed in the
Reliquiæ Antiquæ.) Tbere are, in almost every language of Western
Europe, collections of questions like these, which seem to bave been
intended to exercise the ingenuity of our forefathers. Among the
Anglo-Saxons the interlocutors were generally Solomon and Saturn;
in Germany and France, at a later period, they were Solomon and
Marcoll the fool. A similar collection of questions were printed in a
small black-letter tract, by Wynkyn de Worde, under the title of The
Demaundes Joyous,' published also in the Reliquiæ Antiquæ.
28
LEGENDARY SCIENCE.
}
astonished, and while they were consulting about it, sud-
denly they saw the rope move as though some one
laboured to pull up the anchor. The anchor, however, still
held fast by the stone, and a great noise was suddenly heard
in the air, like the shouting of sailorsPresently a sailor
was seen sliding down the cable for the purpose of un-
fixing the anchor ; and when he had just loosened it, the
villagers seized hold of him, and while in their hands be
quickly died, just as though he had been drowned. About
an hour after, the sailors above, hearing no more of their
comrade, cut the cable and sailed away. In memory of
this extraordinary event, says my author, the people of the
village made the hinges of the church door out of the iron
of the anchor, and “there they are still to be seen.
At
another time, a merchant of Bristol set sail with his cargo
for Ireland. Some time after this, while his family were
at supper, a knife suddenly fell in through the window on
the table. When the husband returned he saw the knife,
declared it to be his own, and said that on such a day, at
such an hour, while sailing in an unknown part of the sea,
he dropped the knife overboard, and the day and hour
were known to be exactly the time when it fell through the
window. These accidents, Gervase thinks, are a clear proof
of there being a sea above hanging over us.
This superstition was not confined to our islands. St.
Agobard wrote against it in the ninth century. He tells
us that the people of his time believed that there was a
region named Magonia, whence ships navigated above the
clouds, in which the fruits of our earth that were apparently
destroyed and beaten down by tempests were carried, being
* Geivas, Tileb. Otia Imper. lib. i, c. 13.
LEGENDARY SCIENCE.
29
sold to the sailors above by the exciters of the tempest. He
adds, that he himself saw four persons, three men and a
woman, in the hands of the populace, who were proceeding
to stone them, because they believed them to have fallen
overboard from one of the ships in the upper waters; but,
after much reasoning, the ignorant and superstitious people
were confounded by the truth, as the thief is confounded
when he is taken."*
“ Plerosque autem vidimus et audivimus tanta dementia obrutos,
tanta stultitia alienatos, ut credant et dicant quandam esse regionem,
quæ dicatur Magonia, ex qua naves veniant in nubibus, in quibus
fruges, quæ grandinibus decidunt et tempestatibus pereunt, vehantur
in eandem regionem, ipsis videlicet nautis aereis dantibus pretia tem-
pestariis et accipientibus frumenta vel cæteras fruges. Ex his item
tam profunda stultitia excæcatis, ut hæc posse fieri credant, vidimus
plures in quodam conventu bominum exhibere vinctos quattuor homi-
nes, tres viros et unam ſeminam, quasi qui de ipsis navibus ceciderint:
quos scilicet per aliquot dies in vinculis detentos tandem collecto con-
ventu hominum exhibuerunt, ut dixi, in nostra præsentia tanquam
lapidandos, Sed tamen vincente veritate, post multam ratiocinatio-
nem, ipsi qui eos exhibuerant, secundum propheticum illud, confusi
sunt sicut confunditur fur quando deprehenditur.” (S. Agobardi Liber
de Grandine, Oper. tom. i, p. 140, ed. Balus.) The reference in this
last sentence is to Jerem ii, 26, in the vulgate version.
CHAPTER II.
Purgatory legends of the twelfth century-Vision of the child William,
of Tundale-Devils and hob-goblins : story of Ketel the “elf-
seer”-Vision of the monk of Evesham, of Thurcill, of Guy
(spiritus Guidonis)--Burlesque descriptions of Purgatory and Para-
dise in the Norman fabliaux-St. Peter and the Minstrel-The
court of Paradise-Land. of Cocaigne-English Cocaigne-Co-
caigne of the ancient Greek poets.
We first begin to hear again of visions of purgatory
towards the middle of the twelfth century, when the story
of the cave of St. Patrick was published. It is a curious
circumstance, and one which I know not how to explain,
that this century is the one in which our historians and
chroniclers seem to have taken a pleasure in collecting and
recording the fairy legends of the peasantry, with which
the works of William of Newbury, of Gervase of Tilbury,
and of Giraldus Cambrensis abound. The same period is
also famous for purgatory visions, of which we have three
in the single history of Matthew Paris. * Perhaps the
legend of Owain, who entered Patrick's purgatory, which is
one of the earliest of them, had made the subject popular.
* Matthew Paris finished his history in 1273. William of Newbury
(Gulielmus Neubrigensis) wrote a history of his own time, 1136-98,
prefaced by a brief history from the Conquest, of which there has been
several editions. Gervase and Giraldus are well-known writers of the
twelfth century.
VISION OF WILLIAM.
31
It has been already observed that the earlier legends of
this kind were distinguished by simplicity of detail: the
contrary characteristic is remarkable in those of the twelfth
century, which are full of wild flights of imagination.
Still we find that generally, as far as we can trace them
with certainty, the sources of the adventitious incidents
were Grecian and Roman. In a vision which I have only
found in the Speculum Historiale' of Vincent of Beauvais, *
who places it somewhere between 1143 and 1147, we have
an incident borrowed from the story of Medea. A boy of
fifteen, named William, was taken to purgatory, where,
amongst other punishments similar to those so often re-
peated in most of the legends, he saw grown-up people
placed in cauldrons and boiled till they became, in size and
shape, to all appearance, newly-born babes. After being
taken out with burning flesh-hooks, they recovered quickly
their former aged appearance, and were again boiled, and
this same process was continually repeated. After having
passed through purgatory, William saw what Vincent calls
Tartarus,' which seemed to be as much deeper than pur-
gatory as the distance from London to Dover. In para-
dise he saw the child William, who had been lately cruci-
s.
* Vincent of Beauvais (Vincentius Bellovacensis) was a voluminous
writer of the middle of the thirteenth century; bis works are a col-
lection of extracts from all the writers he bad read, under four beads,
entitled, Speculum Naturale (treating on physics and natural history),
Speculum Morale (illustrating morals by legends and tales, and ex-
tracts from older authors), Speculum Doctrinale (treating of the
Christian doctrines), and Speculum Historiale (a chronicle). They
were published together in four immense folio volumes, under the title
of Bibliotheca Mundi, The vision of William is given in the Spec.
Hist. lib. xxvii, c. 84, 85.
32
VISION OF TUNDALE.
fied by the Jews at Norwich. This shows the story to
have been of English origin.
The legend of Tundale is important to us, both because
he was an Irishman and his vision preceded that of Owain,
and because he was compelled, like the visitors of Patrick's
Purgatory, to undergo punishments during his visit, which
were to relieve him from their infliction after death. It
is fixed to the date 1149, and from the numerous copies
which remain, in Latin, French, and English—the latter
metrical, --it must have been extremely popular.* Tundale
* The Latin legend is common among MSS. A very early printed
copy is bound up in a volume of MS. Bib. Reg. in Mus. B., 12 B.
xxiv, beginning, “ Incipit libellus de raptu anime Tundali et ejus
visione tractans de penis inferni et gaudiis paradisi.” Several edi-
tions in Latin, German, Dutch, and French, appeared in the earlier
ages of printing, some of them illustrated by singularly grotesque
woodcuts, The Museum has lately bought a MS. containing a
French prose version of the legend, which is numbered Additional MS.
9771. It commences tbus: “Ci est contenu quelles sont les painnes
et les tourmens d'enſer et la gloire de paradis si comme Tondalus
j. homme le vit, et le raconta et la fist mettre en escrit pour le pourfit
de ciaus qui la liront et oront lire : c'est verités.” In this MS, the date
is given wrong, “Mil.cc.xlix.” The Latin is printed in Vincent of
Beauvais, Spec. Hist. lib. xxvi, c. 88-104. The English metrical
version occurs in MS. Cotton. Calig. A. ii, where it begins thus :
" Jhesu lorde of mygtes moste,
Fadyr and sone and holy gooste,
Graunte hem alle bis blessynge
That lestenes a wbyle to my redynge.”
And again in MS. Bib. Reg. 17, B. xliii, fol. 150, where the first leaf
of the poem is wanting. A very nice edition of this poem has recently
been published by Mr. Turnbull, from a MS. in the Advocate's Library
at Edinburgh, in an interesting volume entitled “The Visions of Tun-
dale; together with Metrical Moralizations, and other fragments of
Early Poetry, hitherto inedited.' 8vo, Edinburgh, 1843.
VISION OF TUNDALE.
33
was born at Cashel, and was by birth a nobleman. He was
handsome and brave, but very proud, cruel, and wicked,
and, instead of giving money to the church, he lavished it
all in vainglory to jesters and ‘jogelours'. One of his
friends owed him three horses, for which, it appears, his
only bond was his word as a knight. Tundale, at the
appointed time, called on his friend for payment, who,
after some introductory conversation, told him that he was
not then able to pay his debt, and begged to be allowed a
longer time. Tundale would have left the house in a rage,
but his friend tried to pacify him, and at last prevailed
on him to stay and dine with his family. While at table
Tundale was struck by an invisible hand, and, after having
earnestly commended his axe to the care of his friend's
wife, fell down to all appearance dead, and remained so
from Wednesday till Saturday, when he revived and told
his story.
When his soul first left the body it was assaulted by in-
numerable demons, but he was rescued by a bright angel,
which was his guardian angel that had always attended
him from his childhood.* After proceeding a long way with
no light but the angel who led him, he came to a deep,
dark valley, the bottom full of burning coals, on which
was a great iron boiler, and in it the souls of parricides,
fratricides, and homicides were melted, and afterwards,
* The belief in a guardian angel, who watched each individual
through life, was general during the middle ages. See a Prayer to the
Guardian Angel, printed in the Reliquiæ Antiquæ, vol. i, p. 35. I
have seen it stated, in some English theologian of the middle ages,
that each individual is accompanied from his birth by two angels, one
good, the other bad, who attend upon bim through liſe, endeavouring
to gain him to good or bad pursuits, and who dispute and even fight
for his soul at his death.
2 $
34
VISION OF TUNDALE.
swhich was still more grievous,” strained as molten wax is
strained through a cloth, after which they were again
ready to undergo the same operation. Next he arrived at
a great and horrible hill, where devils with hot iron hooks
were tossing the souls of deceitful and treacherous people
alternately into fire and ice. Then they came to a narrow
bridge over a dreadfully deep, dark, and stinking valley,
and he saw all who attempted to pass the bridge fall from
it, except a holy palmer : this was the punishment of the
proud. After passing the bridge, they went along a dark,
crooked, and difficult path, till they came to a terrible
beast, larger than any mountain, which with its mouth
might swallow nine thousand armed men at once, and
before it were multitudes of devils with their hooks and
forks pushing the souls into his mouth. This beast, his
conductor told him, was called Acheron, and he devoured
all avaricious and greedy people, and he was himself for a
time delivered up to the malice of the tormentors, till res-
cued by the angel, who led him to where there was a great
stormy lake, full of monsters, and a long narrow bridge
over it, planted all over with long sharp spikes, which
pierced through the feet of those who attempted to pass.*
Thieves were obliged to carry over this bridge whatever they
had stolen, and the monsters in the water continued roaring
at them all the way, and devoured them if they fell over. It
fell to Tundale's lot to take over the bridge a calf which it ap-
peared he had stolen : the calf, however, was unwilling to go,
and as Tundale pulled, the calf fell down, and when it rose
he fell, and he was grievously mangled with the spikes; and
when he arrived at the middle of the bridge he met another
soul, who was carrying over in the opposite direction a
* These bridges are also found in Eastern ſable.
VISION OF TUNDALE.
35
great bundle of stolen articles upon his shoulders, and
neither would make way for the other, and there was no
room to pass, so that they stood still, the spikes running
through their feet, and the beasts roaring terribly at them,
till the angel came and delivered Tundale.
Then they
came to a fiery furnace where, amid the flames, devils with
terrible instruments were tearing people to pieces, and
here Tundale also was tormented. Next appeared a fearful
winged beast with a long neck and iron beak, who was seated
on a frozen lake; and this beast ate up souls, which were
digested in his stomach and reduced to nothing, and then
they were ejected in the natural way into the lake, and
became souls again; and during this process worms and
serpents and other such vermin bred within them, and tore
their way out, and so miserably tormented them. These
were the souls of monks and canons and nuns and other
ecclesiastics who had given themselves up to luxury and
had not led holy lives.* They next came to the “vale of
smiths” (in vallem fabrorum,) where they saw smithies,
whence issued terrible lamentations. Then the angel said,
“ This tormentor is called Vulcan, by whose contrivance
many are ruined, and are afterwards tormented by him.”
When a soul came here the smiths took him with their
tongs and put him in the fire and blew with the bellows
till he was melted nearly into a fluid; then they took him
out and placed him on the anvil and beat him with bam-
mers, and thus they beat many souls into one mass, like as
our smiths make one piece of iron out of many small frag-
ments. And then it was passed on to other forges, where
* This incident appears to have given Chaucer an idea for one of the
incidents in bis Canterbury Tales. See the Sompnoures Prologue.
36
VISION OF TUNDALE,
other smiths went to work upon it. This was the end of
purgatory.
Tundale found the pit of hell just as it had been de-
scribed by Drihthelm, but he saw more of it. The evil
spirits were black as coals, their eyes like burning lamps,
their teeth whiter than snow, they had the tails of scor-
pions, sharp iron claws, and vultures' wings. The prince
of hell was a black gigantic monster, about a hundred
cubits high, and ten cubits broad, with more than a
thousand hands; his claws were of iron, and were longer
and thicker than the lances of knights, and his beak and
tail were equally terrible. He was bound down on a kind
of large gridiron, and an innumerable multitude of fiends
were at work with their bellows blowing the fires that were
under him. In his agony he stretched out his hands, and
took handfuls of souls, and crushed them in his fingers
like a man crushes grapes when he would squeese out their
juice. And he remained thus, ever tormented and tor-
menting. “This," said the angel, "is Lucifer, who was
expelled out of paradise for his pride. He is called prince
of the shades, not because he has power there, but because
his punishment is the prime punishment of all the others
being but as nothing in comparison with it."
Tundale afterwards passed a great wall, and came to a
place where were the souls of those that were neither very
good nor very bad. Here were multitudes of people, who
were destined to pass in time to a better place, but they
were at present very uncomfortable; the climate was always
rainy and windy, and they were sorely grieved with hunger
and thirst. After this he came to a large and fair field,
very light and pleasant, and full of sweet-smelling flowers.
The sun never set, and there was a fountain of living water,
SATAN AND LUCIFER.
37
out of which if a person once drank he would never thirst
again. These people were better than the former, or had
already expiated their sins. Tundale saw many people
whom he had known, and particularly the kings Concober
and Donatus, who had been cruel and unjust, but who had
spent their latter days in penitence. And a little further
on he saw his own king, Cormack, enthroned in a palace of
gold and gems, in great splendour and honour, but com-
pelled once every day to undergo punishment for the griev-
ous sin of 'spouse-breach. Hence Tundale and his guide
proceeded till they came to another great wall without any
gate; but he was suddenly, without knowing by what
means, at the other side, where was the glory of the saints,
and there was dancing and music and fine living; but he
was not permitted to stay there long.
The allusion to the classic Acheron in the foregoing
legend, the transformation of the lake of the Grecian fable
into a beast, and the no less remarkable perversion of the
story of Vulcan and his Cyclops will not fail to strike the
reader. The description of Satan or, as he is here called,
Lucifer, is also curious. In the old popular creed devils
were not the tormented but the tormentors; they were a
class of beings naturally malignant, who hunted after the
souls of sinners, and enticed people to sin, with the sole
object of gratifying their own delight in punishing. Lucifer
was a fallen angel, only distinguished by the extreme
severity of his punishment and seldom had any important
part assigned to him in popular legends. The devils
of our monkish legends were, in fact, nothing but hobgob-
lins : they were the wild spirits of the old and established
creed of the peasantry, in which the monks and teachers
of the Christian religion, influenced in this matter by strong
prejudices, did not venture to disbelieve, but themselves
38
KETEL AND THE HOBGOBLINS.
supposed, and taught others the same doctrine, that the
old elves were beings whose business it was to plague and
mislead mankind.) In William of Newbury we have a story
of a Yorkshire rustic named Ketel, who might very properly
be called the Self-seer. As he was one day while young
riding on his beast from the field, the latter suddenly
stumbled, although the road seemed perfectly level and
smooth. When Ketel, who had been thrown to the ground,
arose, he saw, sitting by the road side and laughing at him,
two little black people, whom he soon discovered to be
hobgoblins, and he found that they had no power of doing
further injury than playing such mischievous pranks.
Thenceforth he had the power of seeing all such spirits
whenever he came near where they were lurking. One
day he saw a party of hobgoblins driving a covered cart,
out of which issued groans and lamentations, whilst the
drivers were laughing with great glee. Ketel asked them
what they had in the cart; and they told him readily that
they were carrying a cart-load of the souls of sinners, whom
they had deceived and caught, to their place of punish-
ment. They added that they should watch the first oppor-
tunity of serving him in the same way, for it seems the
faculty which he had acquired had rendered him especially
obnoxious to them. Ketel used to say that there were
some hobgoblins which were large, strong, and cunning,
and which had power to do much mischief; while others
were small and contemptible, weak and foolish, and these
were greatly delighted if they could only plague a person
ever so little. He often saw these latter sitting by the
highway and making people stumble, and then laughing at
them. Some people, he said, had the laudable custom of
ejaculating the name of Christ whenever anything sur-
prised them, which always drove away the hobgoblins for
THE MONK OF EVESHAM.
39
the time. Many other curious things did Ketel tell, for he
was a pious man, and took as much delight in plaguing the
hobgoblins as the hobgoblins did in plaguing other people.*
Matthew Paris tells us that in the reign of Richard the
Firstt a monk of Evesham lay in a trance during two days,
and was supposed to be dead, till suddenly beginning to
revive, he was heard to exclaim with great earnestness,
"O holy Mary, O holy lady Mary! for what sin of mine
must I be deprived of so infinite happiness?" after which
he burst into a flood of tears. He afterwards told his
adventures to his brethren. Immediately when he be-
came insensible to what was going on in the natural
world around him, a person took him by the hand and
led him along a level path towards the east, until they
came to a spacious country, which was horrible to look
upon, full of mud and marshy ground. There he saw
an immense number of people, or rather of ghosts of
people, of every age, sex, and condition, all exposed to
the most dreadful torments. They were collected together
in troops, according to the nature of their crimes, but all
who were there had hopes of reaching heaven, sooner or
later. As their own penitence or the prayers of their
friends assisted them, they were removed from greater tor-
ments to less, until at last they became entirely purified.
The punishments were numerous and various : some were
* Guil. Neubr. Hist. Angl. lib. ii, c. 21.
† Vincent of Beauvais (Spec. Hist. lib. xxix, c. 6-10) describes the
vision of purgatory and paradise manifested to a Cistercian novice, in
England, about 1153, wbich, however, has nothing very remarkable
about it, except that the visitor was taken first to paradise, and after-
wards to purgatory, contrary to the order observed in all the other
legends.
--
40
THE MONK OF EVESHAM.
roasted, others were frozen : some again were torn asunder
with red hot pincers, while others were dipped in baths of
boiling pitch or sulphur, or of molten brass and lead.
Some were eaten by monstrous worms, or laid upon staves
full of glowing spikes. This was the first place of purga-
tory. They next came to another place of punishment, a
deep and dark vale, separated from the former by a range
of lofty mountains. The vale appeared to be occupied by
either a lake or a river, he knew not which, for there arose
from it a mist with an intolerable stench. One side of the
vale was bounded by furious fires, on the other was always
intense cold, made more unbearable by constant and
dreadful storms of hail and snow. Souls were here
punished by being first thrown into the stinking water,
thence into the fire, and from that into the cold, and
again into the water and fire; and thus they gradually pro-
ceeded from the end of the vale at which they first entered
to the other, the punislıment becoming always less the
further they proceeded, but the least punishment in this
being far greater than the severest in the first purgatory.
The multitude of people in it are compared to the swarm
of bees in a hive, and our monk saw there very many of
his own acquaintance. The third place of punishment was
a vast plain in "a certain dark corner of the earth, which
seemed inaccessible to any but the tormenting devils and
the tormenting souls.” It was covered by a
or vast and
horrid chaos," amid which rolled clouds of sulphureous
smoke, with dark pitchy flames, emitting a dreadful stench.
The plain was covered with worms (serpents) beyond all
imagination monstrous and deformed, breathing flames
from their mouths and nostrils, and greedily tearing the
wretched sufferers. Devils, too, were running about like
ور
VISION OF THURCILL.
41
madmen, tearing them to pieces with fiery pincers, now
“scraping their flesh from their bones," now melting them
in the fire and pouring them out like liquid metals. Other
punishments they underwent, too great to be described.
The punishments in this place were never diminished, and
they had no end.
As our monk had seen three places of punishment, so
he afterwards saw three places of happy souls. When he
had passed through the extreme place of torments, sud-
denly there began to appear a little light, and presently
after this he began to feel a most sweet smell, and then his
guide brought him to a vast and pleasant plain, sprinkled
everywhere with beautiful flowers. Here they saw thou-
sands of thousands of souls, who were rejoicing after
having passed through the various degrees of punishment
which had fallen to their lot. In this first place of joy,
the souls were dressed in garments which, though not
spotted or dirty, were only of a dull white. Here the
monk met many of his old acquaintance. Beyond this
was another plain, where the light was more glorious, the
flowers more beautiful, their fragrance more ravishing,
and the joy more exquisite. The souls here had lived on
earth a more innocent life than the former, and had passed
through the punishments of purgatory much more quickly.
They had white and shining garments. The third place
of joy was heaven itself, separated from the second by a
wall of crystal, of infinite extent; at the gate of which
were crowds of souls waiting for admittance.
The monk visited purgatory in 1196. Ten years later,
the same historian tells, that a hospitable husbandman,
called Thurcill, of a village in Essex, which was then called
Tidstude, was taken thither by St. Julian, the "hospitator,"
42
VISION OF THURCILL.
having, as a matter of convenience, left his body in bed.
They went towards the east, and when they had come to
“about the middle of the world,” they entered a large
and glorious hall, supported by three pillars. This was
the court to which souls went immediately after leaving
the body, and hence they were sent either to hell or to
purgatory. Near this hall was a place of punishment for
those who had been slow in paying their tithes. Not far
from it, between two walls, was the fire of purgatory, the
overseer of which was St. Nicholas. Beyond the fire was
a pond, very salt and cold, in which the souls who had
passed through the fire were dipped, apparently for the
purpose of cooling them, some more and some less,
according to the extent to which they had been scorched.
Next there was a great bridge, covered with nails and
spikes, which led to the mount of joy, where was a church
large enough to contain all the people of the world, and a
soul had no sooner entered it than he immediately forgot
all the torments of purgatory. Thurcill now returned to
the hall, where was St. Michael, with Peter and Paul : the
souls which were perfectly white came under the charge
of Michael, who sent them unhurt through the flames to
the mount of joy; those which were spotted, black and
white, were sent into purgatory by Peter; and St. Paul
and the devil sat one at each end of a large pair of scales,
in which were weighed the black souls. When the scale
turned to the saint, he sent the soul who was in it to
purgatory; when the other scale was heaviest, the devil
and his attendants with a malicious grin, threw him into
a fiery pit, whose mouth was just by his feet.
Now it happened one evening as Thurcill was standing
in the hall with St. Julian and St. Domnius, that a devil
VISION OF THURCILL.
43
came riding furiously upon a black horse, who was received
by his companions with great triumph and exultation.
St. Domnius compelled the fiend to tell him whose soul it
was that he had so transformed, and that he had tormented
so with his riding. He answered, “It is the soul of a
peer of England, who died last night without confession
or receiving of our Lord's body;" and said that, at the
instigation of his wife, he had cruelly oppressed his people,
to the utter ruin of many of them. Presently, the devil,
turning his eyes upon Thurcill, inquired of the saints,
s Who's this?" "Dost thou not know him?”' said one
of them. Yea," said he, “I saw him in the church of
Tidstude, in Essex, at the time of its consecration." "How
went you in ?" said the saint. “In the garb of a woman :
by the same token that coming near the font, as I was
going into the chancel, I met the deacon, who, sprinkling
me with holy water, so terrified me that with a loud
scream I leapt at once into a meadow full two furlongs
from the church." And Thurcill declared that he and
others had heard the noise, but they were entirely ignorant
of the cause.
At this period, it seems, the devils took much delight in
stage plays. St. Domnius hinted to this devil that they
had a desire to see these performances. “Very well,” said
the devil, “but mind, we must not have that countryman
with us, for he will certainly go home and publish all our
secrets." “Go on, then," said the saint, “and I and
Julian will follow.” But they took care to introduce
Thurcill slily, hiding him between them. And they went
into the devil's theatre, which was surrounded with seats
for the convenience of the imps who would enjoy the spec-
tacle. The saints stood on a low wall near the entrance,
44
VISION OF THURCILL.
from which they could see all that passed. First, on the
stage, appeared a proud man, strutting about and acting
to the life all the arrogance and vanity which had distin-
guished him in this world: when the spectators had suffi-
ciently enjoyed their mirth at his behaviour, suddenly his
gay garments were transformed into flames about him, and,
miserably scorched and tormented, he was thrust back to
his place of punishment. Then entered a priest who had
neglected his duties : his tongue was torn up by the roots,
and he was then subjected to the same torments as the
former. Next came a knight, armed and mounted on a
black horse; but, in spite of all his boasting and his for-
midable appearance, he was quickly dismounted by one of
the fiends. Then appeared a lawyer, who was obliged to
act over his former deeds, pleading on one side, while he
was taking bribes on the other : on a sudden the fees which
he had thus taken became boiling metal, and he was com-
pelled to swallow them. Afterwards were exhibited a long
succession of offenders, including adulterers, back-biters,
and thieves.
After showing him other punishments, and also the
dwellings of those who were gradually mounting to supe-
rior happiness, the saint led our rustic to a place all be-
decked with infinite variety of flowers and herbs, with a
clear fountain spreading out into four streams of various
liquor and colour. Upon this fountain stood a beautiful
tree of vast extent, and immensely high, affording all kiŋds
of fruits. Under the tree, and near the fountain, lay a
man of gigantic stature and graceful mien, with a vest of
various colours and wonderful beauty, reaching from his
breast to his feet. This man seemed, as he lay, to laugh
with one eye and to weep with the other. “This," said
DE SPIRITU GUIDONIS.
45
St. Michael, "is Adam, who by his smiling eye testifies the
joy he receives from the glorification of his descendants
who are to be saved, and, by the weeping eye, his sorrow
for those who merit everlasting punishment. His garment,
which is not a complete vest, is the robe of immortality
and glory, of which he was stripped at his first transgres-
sion, but he began to receive it again from Abel, and till
now, through the whole succession of his righteous de-
scendants. When the number of the elect shall be com-
plete, he shall be entirely covered with this robe, and the
world shall be at an end. Its various colours denote the
different virtues by which the righteous are saved.” After
having had a view of the dwelling of the blessed, where he
saw St. Catherine, St. Margaret, and St. Osyth, Thurcill
was carried back to his own home.
During many years after the date of the vision of
Thurcill, our forefathers seem to have been contented.
with transcribing and repeating the legends of the twelfth
century, and new visions of purgatory were very un-
Before the end of the fourteenth century
I have seen but one, that of Guy in 1323, which in the
manuscripts generally bears the title De Spiritu Guidonis;
and that is not properly a vision, and has little connexion
with our present subject. It was, however, once popular,
and besides many copies of the original narration in Latin,
we find an English metrical version, written in a rather
northern dialect. * Guy lived at the town of Alost,
common.
* Among the Cottonian MSS. there are two copies of the Latin
legend of Guy's spirit, one in Vesp. A. vi, fol. 138; the other, which
is older and better, in Vesp. E.i, where it ends thus: “Explicit
quedam disputacio mirabilis inter priorem fratrum predicatorum de
civitate Alcestie [Aleste, al.] que distat a curia apostolica que vocatur
46
DE SPIRITU GUIDONIS.
some twenty-four miles from Avignon, in the south of
France. He died, and was buried; but, instead of keeping
quiet in his grave, the spirit of Guy came to visit his
widow. She applied to the prior of the Dominicans, who,
having provided himself with the pyx, proceeded to the
haunted house.
« And aſ samynt so thai went
To Gyes hows2 with guide entent;:
And in that bows said thai and he
Placebo withe the dirige
For his saul tbat was husband thare,
And for all saules that sufferd care.
When all was said in gud degré
Tillº requiescant in pace,
Thai herd a voice cum tham biside,
Alss it did at that other tide,
Like a besom by tham it went
That war swepeand? on a pament:8
Sum of the folk tharfore war flaid."9 (fol. 100, vo.)
6
A to
5 as
9
1 together
2 house
good intention
or object
8 pavement
some of the people
were terrified thereat.
3
6 time
7
was sweeping
Avinonia per xxti. iiij. miliaria, et inter spiritum cujusdam civis civita-
tis ejusdem nomine Guydo, qui obiit. xvj. kl. Decembris anno Domini
millesimo tricentesimo vicesimo tercio." The English version, which
is a close paraphrase of the Latin original, is in MS. Cott. Tiberius,
E. vii, fol. 90, and commences thus:
“ Saint Michael goddes angel clere,
And Saint Austin the doctur dere,
And other maisters mare and myn,
Said that men grete mede may wyn,
And nameli clerkes that can oſ lare,
If thai thaire cunyng will declare."
BURLESQUES.
47
!
After this the prior has a long conversation, or contro-
versy, with the invisible spirit, which is conducted with
much of the style of scholastic divinity, and turns upon
purgatory and the doctrine of transubstantiation. Its object
seems to be more especially to enforce the last of these
doctrines.
Among the gay and witty writers of the fabliaux and
romans, who kept up a constant fire at the vices of the
clergy and the absurdity of some of their doctrines, the
details of the purgatory visions could not fail to afford a
frequent subject for pleasantry and burlesque. This bur-
lesque was also sometimes unintentional; for, in the minds
of the poets and professors of the “gai science," there was
a strange mixture of earthly feelings and passions with
heavenly, of love and chivalry with religion, which was
constantly creating pictures that, to say the least, were
extremely ridiculous. Indeed, the legends of the monks
themselves have frequently the same character. A fabliau
which is printed in the collection of Barbazan, relates the
visit to hell, and his departure thence, of the soul of a
jogelour' or minstrel, who had spent his days in dissipa-
tion. One of the fiends who were hunting about the
earth to take souls, caught that of the minstrel as it left
his body, which he threw over his shoulders, and instantly
hastened home. * All the demons returned at the same
time with their prey.
“ Li uns aporte champions,
L'autre prestres, l'autre larrons,
* The characters of the fiends themselves were often objects of
parody and burlesque. We may instance the fabliau Dou Pet av
Vilain, in Barbazan, vol. iii, p. 67.
48
ST. PETER AND THE MINSTREL.
Moines, eveques, et abez,
Et chevaliers, et genz assez
Qui en pecbié mortel estoient,
Et en la fin pris i estoient.
Puis s'en reperent en enfer,
Lor mestre truevent Lucifer."
"Some carried champions, others priests, others thieves,
monks, bishops, and abbots, and knights, and people
enough who were in mortal sin, and were taken therein at
their end. Then they betook themselves to hell, and found
their master Lucifer.” When the demon who carried the
minstrel laid down his burden at the foot of Lucifer, the
ruler of the shades questioned the latter on his past
character. He was, he said, a poor minstrel; he was
thankful for the shelter which he had given him in his
dominions, and, as the only means he had of showing his
gratitude, he would sing him a song. Lucifer declined the
minstrel's offer, but, in pity for his forlorn appearance,
gave him employment to blow the fire under one of his
cauldrons.
"Un jor avint que li mauſé
Furent leenz tuit assemblé;
D'enfer issirent por conquerre
Les ames par toute la terre."
" It happened one day that the evil ones were all as-
sembled within; they issued from hell to conquer the
souls through all the earth.” Lucifer left the minstrel to
take care of the infernal regions, and promised, if he let
no souls escape, to treat him on his return with a fat monk
roasted, or an usurer dressed with hot sauce. But while
the fiends were away, St. Peter came in disguise, and
allured the minstrel to play at dice, who, for lack of
money, was so imprudent as to stake the souls which were
THE COURT OF PARADISE.
49
left under his care. They were all lost, and carried off by
St. Peter in triumph. The devils returned, found hell
empty and the fires out, and very unceremoniously sent
the minstrel away, but he was generously received by St.
Peter. Lucifer, in his wrath, threatened with severe
punishment any fiend who should again bring there a
minstrel's soul, and thus they ever after escaped the claws
of the evil ones.
In another fabliau, entitled la Court de Paradis, Christ
determines to hold a full court on All Saints' day, and
orders St. Simon and St. Jude to summon a full attend-
ance.
" Alez m'en tost par ces dortoirs,
Et par chambres, et par manoirs,
Semonez moi et sains et saintes,
Dont il i a et mains et maintes :
Gardez que nus n'en i remaigne;
Chascuns amaine en sa compaigne
Toz ses compaignons sans delai."
- Go hence all through the sleeping-rooms, and through
the chambers, and the manors, summon to me the saints
of both sexes, of whom there are many there; take care
that none of them remain; let every one bring in his
company all his companions without delay.”
chamber they found Gabriel and all the angels, "qui à
merveilles furent bel;" they promised to attend, and St.
Simon next summoned all the patriarchs, who were in
another room, with Abraham at their head. Next he
In one
* Such burlesque tales as this were not uncommon in tbe middle
ages, and we find them still among the German popular legends.
Examples will be found in the collections of tales and legends by the
brothers Grimm.
3
tu
50
THE COURT OT PARADISE.
summoned the Apostles, and then the martyrs who
were led by St. Stephen, to come to the high court,
“où la fontaine d'amors sort.” He afterwards met St.
Martin, and all the confessors and the Innocents, and then-
" Tant a alé et çà et là,
Qu'en une chambre s'en entra:
La chambre estoit merveille bele,
Dedenz avoit mainte pucele,
Et chascune estoit coronée
De gentil corone esmeré,
Tant riche, tant bele, et tunt cointe,
Langue, tant soit de parler cointe,
Esmolue ne afilée,
Ne vos diroit mie denrée
De la biauté que celes ont,
Qui leenz herbergiez sont.
C'est cbambre de virginité,
Leenz avoit moult de biauté."
“ He had gone so far here and there, that he entered
into a chamber; the chamber was wonderfully beautiful ;
within was many a virgin, and each was crowned with a
fair crown of pure gold, so rich, so beautiful, and so
elegant, the tongue, be it ever so eloquent, be it smoothed
or filed to ever so fine speaking, could not tell you a small
portion of the beauty which these had, who were har-
boured within. It is the chamber of virginity, and
within it there is much beauty.” After this Simon met
those who had preserved their widowhood, who “were so
polite, and so elegant, and so pretty, and so beauteous, as
no tongue can tell ;” and then appeared the married ladies :
and all the ladies were summoned very politely. And so
the inhabitants of paradise all came to the court in troops,
THE COURT OF PARADISE.
51
hand in hand, the angels singing “Te Deum laudamus"
to a tune which the manuscript carefully sets forth in
musical notes-
Te
De - um
lau
da · mus.
The other parties sung different songs, alluding more or
less to the subject of faithful love. The widows were
elegantly dressed:
" Bien sont les vueves atornées,
De riches mantiaus aſulées,
Tant riches, tant cointes, tant biax,
Que mieus en vaut uns des tassiaus,
Que ne ſait tout li ors d'Espaigne."
“ The widows were well attired, covered with rich
mantles, so rich, so elegant, and so beautiful, that one of
the tassels was of more value than all the gold in Spain.”
And when they were all assembled, they had a great feast,
and a dance, and singing, and they were in great hap-
piness.
« En tel maniere tuit cbantoient,
Et toutes les armes ploroient
Qui erent en espurgatoire."
" While they were so singing, all the poor souls in pur-
gatory were lamenting ;" and they sent up an urgent
prayer to Christ for deliverance. St. Peter chanced to
hear their cries, while all the people in paradise were
making merry, and he pleaded their cause before Christ
and the Virgin, and then all the ladies prayed for them,
and particularly Mary herself, and Christ kissed her, and
granted her petition. St. Michael, accordingly, went to
܀
52
THE LAND OF COCAIGNE.
fetch the souls from purgatory; St. Peter opened the gate
for them, and there was great joy in paradise.
There is a very capital burlesque on the paradise of the
monks, and all the good things it contains, as well as a
witty satire on the lives of the monks themselves, under
the character of the land of Cocaigne, a word which may
perhaps be best translated by “cookery-land." The poet
pretends that he had been sent on a pilgrimage by the
pope, and in the course of his wanderings he had reached
this land, where he saw very many wonders.
“Qui plus i dort, plus i gaaigne :
Cil qui dort jusqu'à miedi,
Gaaigne cinc sols et demi.
De bars, de saumons, et d'aloses
Sont toutes les mesons encloses;
Li chevron i sont d’esturgons,
Les couvertures de bacons,
Et les lates sont de saussices."
- In that place the more one sleeps the more he gains ;
he who sleeps till mid-day earns five sols and a half. All
the houses are surrounded with barbots, with salmons, and
with shad-fish ; there the beams of the roof are of sturgeons,
the l'oofs are of bacon, and the laths are of sausages.”
Through the streets, the poet tells us, fat geese go roasting
and turning themselves, and after them come choice sauces.
In the roads are tables always spread with white table-
cloths, and every one may eat and drink as much as he
likes. There is a river of wine, and the ladies are always
beautiful and always kind, and there are plenty of drapers,
who are glad to give you every month new and beautiful
robes. But the most wonderful thing there is the fountain
THE LAND OF COCAIGNE.
53
of youth, which will restore to bloom and vigour all wlio
bathe in it, be they ever so old and ugly.
« Encore i a autre merveille,
C'onques n'oïstes sa pareille,
Que la fontaine de Jovent,
Qui fet rajovenir la gent."
People may think the poet a fool for leaving so glorious
a place, but the fact was he came to seek his friends and
to take them with him, and he could never after find the
way back.
This imaginary land of Cocaigne was very famous among
tie poets of the middle ages in most of our western lands.
The most witty and spirited poem on the subject is one in
English, apparently written in the latter part of the thir-
teenth century, which was printed very inaccurately by
Hickes, from a manuscript which is now in the British
Museum.* Cocaigne is here described as being far out at
sea “by West Spain.”
* MS. Harl. No. 913. It has been supposed that the manuscript from
wbicb Hickes transcribed this poem went with Bishop More's manu-
script to the public library of the University of Cambridge: there is,
however, no sucb manuscript there; and, as the contents of the Harl.
MS. No. 913 exactly answers to the description of More's manuscript,
there can be no doubt of their being the same. It had probably been
lent by the bishop before his death, and had not been returned. The
English poem of Cocaigne seems to bave agreed more with a low Dutch
poem, of which a fragment is given by Hoffman in his Horæ Belgicæ,
than with the French poem, though the following passage of the latter
agrees very closely with one of my extracts from the English poem :
« Par les rues vont rostissant
Les crasses oes et tornant
Tout par eles, et tout adès
Les suit la blanche aillie après."
Along the streets come roasting fat geese, and turning all by them-
54
THE LAND OF COCAIGNE,
“ Thogi paradis be miri and brigt,2
Cokaygn is of fairir sigt.3
What is ther in paradis
Boti grasse and flures and grene ris is
Thog ther be joi and gret dute,
Tber nis met, bote frute.&
Ther nis' halle, bure, no bencbe, to
Bot watir manis tbursto" quenche.”
7
In paradise there were but two men, Enoch and Helias ;
they must, therefore, pass a wretched life when there were
no more men than those. *
“ Beth12 tber no men bot two,
Hely and Enok also :
Elinglich13 mai hi go,
W bar ther wonith men no mo.
1914
On the contrary, in Cocaigne there was to be had choice
1
12 there are
2
3
tbough
bright
sigbt
except
5 flowers
green boughs
pleasure
8 there is not meat,
but fruit
9 is not
10 bower nor bench
11 for thirst to
33 wretchedly; they
must lead a wretch-
ed life
14 where there dwell
6
no niore men
selves, and immediately after follows white garlek." The English
poem, and the German and Dutcb poems on the same subject, have
since been printed in the Alt-Deutsche Blätter, vol. I, pp. 163 and 396.
* It was common to represent paradise with these two characters in
it. in the Anglo-Saxon dialogue of Adrian and Ritheus already
quoted, we have—" Tell me, who are the two men in paradise who
are constantly weeping, and are sad ? I tell thee, Enoc and Helias;
they weep, because they shall come on this earth and suffer death."
I remember, in Fabyan's Chronicle, an account of a piece of tapestry
representing paradise, which was known by two persons, 'Enok and
Hely,' being painted thereon.
THE LAND OF COCAIGNE.
55
meat and good drink, to which every one was welcome.
There was no land like to it under heaven; it was there
always day, and never night, and there was no quarrelling
or strife, and people did not die, but lived ever happily.
That land was never visited by noxious vermin, nor by
thunder, hail, rain, snow, or even wind.
« Ther is a well fair abbei
Of white monkes and of grei.
Tber beth bowris? and balles :
Al of pasteiis beth3 the walles,
Of fleis, 4 of fisse, 5 and rich met,
The likfullist that man mai et ;8
Fluren cakes beth tbe schingles alle,
Of cherche, cloister, boure, and balle:
The pinnes betb10 fat podinges,
Rich met11 to princez and kinges.”
The “ cloister” was all built of gems and spices, and all
about were birds merrily singing.
- Yite I do yow mo to witte,12
The gees i-rostid on the spitte,
Fleeg!3 to that abbay, Good hit wot,
And gredith, 15.
gees
al hote, al hot.'
Hi16 bringeth garlek gret plenté,
The best i-digt17 that man mai se.
The leverokes18 that beth cuth, 19
Ligtith adun to manis muth,
I-digt in stu ful switbe21 wel,
Pudrid with gilofre and canel."22
20
10 are
18 larks
3
are
'll meat
I well fair, i.e. very 9 the tiles are all cakes 10 they
fair (bien belle, Fr.) of flour
17.dressed
2 bowers
19 that are taught
flesh
12 yet I cause you to 20 alight down to man's
know more
mouth
6 meat
very
7 pleasantest
14 God knows it
22 cinnamon
5 fisb
13 Ay
21
8 eat
13
cry out
56
GREEK BURLESQUES.
The satire on the life of the monks, which is concealed
under these descriptions, is heightened by the penance
which the visitor must undergo before he reaches this
happy land.
“ Whose w[i]l com that lond to,
Ful grete penance be mota do:
Seveyere in swineis dritte4
He mote wade, wol ye i-witte,
Alanon up to the chynne.
So he schal the lond winne."
It is curious to observe how similar legends and ideas
are created at times among different people, totally inde-
pendent of each other; and it shows us how wary we
ought to be in arguing too boldly on accidental analogies.
The ancient Greeks had their Cocaigne. Athenæus has
preserved some passages from lost poets of the best age of
Grecian literature, * where the burlesque on the golden age
and earthly paradise of their mythology bears so striking
a resemblance to our descriptions of Cocaigne, that we might
almost think, did we not know it to be impossible, that in
the one case whole lines had been translated from the
other. In the poet Cratinus mention was made of the
time of old when Kronos was king, and when they played
at bowls with wheaten loaves.
*
Olc 89)
βασιλεύς Κρόνος ή το παλαίον»
ότε τοϊς άρτοις ήστραγάλιζον. .
This was the age of idleness : the tables came of them-
3
seven
1 whosoever
2
must
5 will you know
4 dirt
* Athenæi Deipnosoph. lib. vi, c. 94, et seq.
GREEK BURLESQUES.
57
selves, and the table-cloth spread itself, as soon as people
called for them; the cups came to receive the wine, and
the decanters poured it out spontaneously. Then might
be heard such converse as-
Ιχθύ, βάδιζ'.-'Αλλ' ουδέπω
τάπι θάτερο οπτός ειμί.-
ούκουν μεταστρέψας σεαυ-
τον, άλειφας εισάλειψον.
Fish, come hither!”—“But I am not yet fried on the
other side." “ Turn yourself, then, and baste yourself
with oil.” In a play by Teleclides, the god was introduced
saying, ,
Λέξω τοίνυν, βίον εξ αρχής
δν εγώ θνητοίσι παρείχον.
Ειρήνη μεν πρώτον απάντων
ήν ώσπερ ύδωρ κατά χειρός.
“Η γη δ' έφερ' ου δέος ουδε νόσους,
άλλ’ αυτόματ' ήν τα δέοντα.
Οίνω γαρ άπασ’ έρθει χάραδρα)
μάζαι δ' άρτοις έμάχοντο
περί τούς στόμασιν των ανθρώπων,
ικετεύουσαι καταπίνειν,
εί τι φιλοΐεν τας λευκοτάτας.
“I will describe, therefore, the primeval life which I gave
to.mortals. Peace, then, first of all things, was as plenti-
ful as water to the hand. And the earth bore neither fear
nor diseases, but all things needful grew spontaneously.
For every stream flowed with wine; and barley cakes
were fighting with wheaten loaves about men's mouths,
praying people to devour them, if they would choose the
whitest."
.”
3 και
58
GREEK BURLESQUES,
'Οπται δε κίχλαι μετ' αμητίσκων
είς τον φάρυγ’ εισεπέτοντο.
" And roasted larks, with sweetbreads, flew down people's
throats." Men,” says he, “in those times, were fat, and
mightily large.”
Οι δ' άνθρωποι πίονες ήσαν
τότε, και μέγα χρήμα γιγάντων.
Pherecrates, too, in a play called the Miners,' gave a
glowing description of those times of good living. He
talks of goodly beef smoking and steaming as it sailed
along the streets, with islands of fat dumplings, and fleets
of sausages sticking to the banks like oysters, and salt
fish here and there, highly seasoned, swimming along.
Then, he says,
'Οπται κίχλαι γάρ ανάβραστοι ήρτυμέναι
περί το στόμ' επέτοντ', αντιβολούσαι καταπιείν,
υπό μυρρίναισι κάνεμώναις κεχυμέναι.
"Hot roasted larks, ready dressed, flew about your mouth,
beseeching you to devour them, strewed over with myrtle
and anemonies."*
Κόραι δ' εν αμπεχώναις τριχάπτοις, αρτίως
ήβυλλιώσαι, και τα ρόδα κεκαρμέναι,
πλήρεις κύλικας οίνου μέλανος άνθοσμίου
ήντλουν διά χώνης τοϊσι βουλομένοις πιείν.
“ And maidens in thin transparent garment, just blooming
*
This passage bears a remarkably close resemblance to that of the
English Cocaigne quoted above, p. 55.
GREEK BURLESQUES.
59
into ripeness, adorned with roses which they had plucked,
poured through a strainer full cups of dark odorous wine
to all who wished to drink.” When any one ate or drank
of the good things which were set before him, there was
immediately twice as much more in place of what he had
consumed.
CHAPTER III.
Henry of Saltrey, and his legend of the descent of the knight Owain-
French metrical versions of Henry's legend - English metrical
versions—Ivain the son of Urien-Story of Arthur and Merlin-
Abstract of the English poem of “ Owayn Miles," from the Cotto-
pian manuscript.
HENRY, a Benedictine monk of the abbey of Saltrey,
was born and educated in Huntingdonshire, and accord-
ing to Bale, “was enslaved by superstition from his
early childhood.” This writer insinuates that his story
of Patrick's Purgatory was a mere invention of his own
imagination, helped a little by the four books of the
* Dialogues of St. Gregory,' and certain popular stories
concerning mount Etna, though he admits that Henry was
reported to be only the dupe to the impostures of an Irish
bishop Florentian, and of the Cistercian abbot Gilbert
de Luda.* Others have thought that the legend was little
more than the Necyomantia' of Virgil, or that exhibited at
the cave of Trophonius in Greece, newly dressed up. The
story of Henry of Saltrey is however perfectly consistent
with the popular belief of his time. There can be no
doubt that by this story St. Patrick's Purgatory was first
* Gilbert de Luda (abhot of Louth, in Lincolnsbire,) is said to have
written an account of the descent of Owen, but he was probably only
the oral relator of the story.
LEGEND OF OWAIN.
61
made known to the world; but it seems very probable
that the place had been already occupied by the monks,
and that in Ireland it was regarded with superstitious
awe. Henry's legend of the descent of Owain in 1153,
which became celebrated as the adventures of The
Knight,' and was by that title. appealed to as a chief
authority in questions touching the purgatory, was in the
original Latin spread probably over every country where
the Romish faith prevailed. It was soon translated into
the modern languages.
There still exist three different
early French versions, all metrical : the first, by the cele-
brated poetess Marie of France, was written in the early
part of the thirteenth century; the other two are probably
works of the latter end of the same century, or the be-
ginning of the next. * There are also two English metrical
versions, both under the titles of Owayne Miles.'
The
first is contained in the Auchinlech manuscript at
Edinburgh, and seems to have been written early in the
fourteenth century. It is probably a translation of one
of the French poems, and like them is very long. It is
written in stanzas of six lines, is imperfect at the begin-
ning, but concludes with this stanza, which will serve as
a specimen :
* Marie's poem is published at the end of the second volume of
Roquefort's edition of her works. The other French versions will be
found in MSS. Cotton. Domit. A. iv, fol. 258, and Harl. No. 273,
fol. 191, Vo
† It was printed in 1837, in a small collection of early religious
poems edited by two zealous and indefatigable literary antiquaries,
and much respected friends, Messieurs Turnbull and David Laing, of
Edinburgh: the impression only reached thirty-two copies, in onse-
quence of which the book is very rare.
62
LEGEND OF OWAIN,
" And when he deyd he went, y-wis,
Into the heighe joie of paradis,
Thurch help of Godes grace.
Now God, for seynt Owains love,
Graunt ous leven blis above,
Bifor his swete face."
The other English version, in which the story is con-
densed, is more modern, and is contained in a manuscript
of the fifteenth century in the British Museum.*
Owain, the hero of the story, was, as we learn from
Henry and from Matthew Paris, one of king Stephen's
knights. M. Roquefort, in his edition of the poems of
Marie, has started a singular notion, that Owain is no other
than Ivain, the son of Urien, one of the knights of king
Arthur's round table, who was the subject of a romance
by Chrestiens de Troyes, entitled 'Le Chevalier au Lion,
and of which we have an early English version, under the
title of Iwain and Gawain.' But since M. Roquefort has
not even hinted at any authority for such an opinion, it
can hardly be taken for anything more than a fanciful idea
of his own. A learned countryman of M. Roquefort, in the
sixteenth century, Stephanus Forcatulus, published a still
more singular tale concerning this purgatory cave.
very wandering book, "De Gallorum Imperio et Philosophia,'
(Lugd. 1595, p. 1007,) he speaks of the zeal of king
Arthur in abolishing the superstitious customs of his
subjects, which were more especially prevalent in Ireland
where the gospel had been only lately preached by
Patrick; and he adds, that the king even condescended to
In a
* There were several editions of this legend, in French and other lan-
guages, in the earlier ages of the invention of printing.
KING ARTHUR AND MERLIN.
63
steep road.
pay à visit to the dark cave of the saint, into which,
leaving the light behind him, he descended by a rough and
“For they say that this cave is an entrance to
the shades, or at least to purgatory, where poor sinners
may get their offences washed out, and return again re-
joicing to the light of day.” Perhaps, says Forcatulus,
Patrick contrived the story to terrify the wild Irish from
their sins, by representing to them so near home the place
of their punishment. “I have learnt from certain serious
commentaries of Merlin, that Gawain, his master of horse,
called Arthur back, and dissuaded him from examining
further the horrid cave in which was heard the sound of
falling water which emitted a sulphureous smell, and of
voices lamenting as it were for the loss of their bodies.”
The king then consulted Merlin, who swallowed the heart
of a newly-killed mole, and muttered certain barbarous
words, whose meaning was not easily to be understood; he
thus obtained a spirit of divination, and was enabled to
declare that the cave was first dug by Ulysses, who came
to Ireland in the course of his wanderings, and that time
had gradually hollowed it till it became as large as it was
then. “Which of a certainty," Forcatulus adds, “is not
far from the truth,” (quod profecto non multum a vero
abhorret.) It is not unlikely that in some later French
romances the stories of Arthur and of Patrick's cave may
have been jumbled together ; indeed a little research will
show several instances of resemblances in the stories of the
king and the saint, which renders it not very improbable
that the two characters may have been formed upon
similar popular legends existing independently in different
countries, and both have experienced the same fortune to
be wholly unknown to the historian Bede: but the allusion
64
OWAYNE MILES.
to the story of Ulysses is enough to raise very strong
suspicions that the above tale is intended only for a joke.
The joke has been followed up by a much later writer,
who, with great ingenuity, has derived the name of the
province from that of the hero-Ulster, as though a cor-
ruption of Ulyssisterra, the land of Ulysses. Camerarius,
however, seriously thought that Lough Derg was the place
alluded to by Claudian, (in Rufin. i, 122.)
« Est locus extremum qua pandit Gallia litus
Oceani prætentus aquis, ubi fertur Ulysses
Sanguine libato populum movisse silentem.
Illic umbrarum tenui stridore volantum
Flebilis auditur quæstus. Simulacra coloni
Pallida deſunctasque vident migrare figuras," &c.
The later poem of Owayne Miles' which is contained
in MS. Cotton. Calig. A. ii, fol. 89, v°, commences thus:
"God, that ys so ſulle of myght,
That mendede wronge and made rygbt,
He sente men us to wyssel
The rygbt way to beven blysse :
Fyrste bis propbetys that were bold,
Off that was comyng tbey us told;
But the folke that wer yn londe
Ne myght hem not untberstonde."
The author proceeds to tell us the origin of the purgatory:
“ Holy byschoppes som tyme ther were,
That tawgte? men of Goddes lore.3
In Irlonde preched seynt Patryke,
In that londe was non bym lyke :
He prechede Goddes worde fulle wyde,
And tolde men what sbullde betyde.
1 to teach (wissian, A.-S.)
2
taught
3 doctrine
OWAYNE MILES.
65
Fyrste he preched of heven blysse,
Who ever go thyder may rygbt nowgt' mysse :
Setben? be precbed of belle pyne,3
Howe wo them ys that cometh therinne:
And then he preched of purgatory,
As he fondes in his story.
But yet the folke of the contré
Beleved not tbat bito mygtb? be;
And seyde, but gyfe bit were so
That eny mon mytbº hymself go,
And se alle that, and come ageyn,
Then wolde tbey beleve fayn."10
Vexed at the obstinacy of his hearers, Patrick prayed to
God that he might be enabled to show them a convincing
token ; and, accordingly, as he was one day alone in the
wilderness, Christ appeared to the saint, and gave him
a booke of gospellus and a staf,” which staff was after-
wards called the staff of Jesus (baculus Jhesu.) Both
these relics were preserved in Henry's days, and they were
carried in procession full holily on every “feste daye," in
the year, the archbishop bearing the staff in his hand.
After having given the book and the staff to St. Patrick,
“ God spakke to saynt Patryke tholl
By name, and badde hym with hym go :
He ladde hym ynto a wyldernesse,
Wher was no reste more nel2 lesse,
1
7
right nothing pronoun, which,both
· afterwards (sifdan, in A.-Sax. and mid-
A.-S.)
dle English, forms
3 pain, punishment its genders tbus, he,
4 bow woe is to them, heo, hit; we bave
1. e. wbat woe tbey kept the masculine,
have
adopted older
s found
form sno, worn down
6 it, the neuter of the to she, in the fem.,
and dropped the h
of the neuter
might
if
any man might
8
9
10 gladly
11 iben
an
12
nor
66
OWAYNE MILES.
And shewed that be mygth se
Into the erthe a pryvé entré:1
Hit was yn a depe dyches ende.
What mon,' he sayde, that wylle heręyn wende,
And dwelle theryn a day and a nygth,
And holde his byleve and rygth,
And come ageyn that he ne dwelle,3
Mony a mervayle he may of telle.4
And alle thos that doth thys pylgrymage,
I shalle hem graunt for hero wage,
Whether he be sqwyer or knave,7
Other purgatorye shalle he non bave.'
Als sone as he hade sayde hymë so,
Jhesu wente the bysshoppe fro.
Seynt Patryke then anon ryght
He ne stynte ner day ne nygbt,
But gatte hym belp fro day to day,
And made there a ſayr abbey,
And chanones gode he dede therinne
Unther the abbyt10 of seynte Austynne.
Seynt Patryke lette make ryght welle
A dore bowden'l with iren and stele,
Lokke and key he made therto
That no mon sbulde the dore undo."
This key was given in keeping to the prior of the abbey.
Even in the days of Patrick, the legend tells us, many
entered this “ ditch,” of whom some perished there, while
others returned unhurt, and told of wonderful torments
which they had suffered, and of equally wonderful visions
of happiness which they had afterwards seen ; and their
relations were, by Patrick's own order, taken down in
1
a wonder
a secret entrance
2 belief and right
8 said to him
9 he stopped not
10 under the babit
11 a door bound
5 those
6 their
3 stay
4 he may tell of many
9 boy
OWAYNE MILES.
67
writing, and preserved in the church. Inasmuch as people
were there purged of their sins, the place began to be
called “Patrick's Purgatory,' and the place of the church
was named Reglis, or Riglis.
The ceremonies which Patrick had ordered to be observed
by the penitents, previous to their entrance into this pur-
gatory, were, it seems, for a long time strictly adhered to.
The visitor must first go to the bishop of the diocese, declare
to him that he came of his own free will, and request of
him permission to make the pilgrimage. The bishop
warned him against venturing any further in his design,
and represented to him the perils of his undertaking; but
if the pilgrim still remained steadfast in his purpose, he gave
him a recommendatory letter to the prior of the island.
The prior again tried to dissuade him from his design by
the same arguments that had been previously urged by the
bishop. If, however, the pilgrim still remained steadfast,
he was taken into the church to spend there fifteen days
in fasting and praying. After this the mass was celebrated,
the holy communion administered to him, and holy water
sprinkled over him, and he was led in procession with
reading of litanies to the entrance of the purgatory, where
a third attempt was made to dissuade him from entering.
If he still persisted, the prior allowed him to enter the
cave, after he had received the benediction of the priests,
and, in entering, he commended himself to their prayers,
and made the sign of the cross on his forehead with his
own hand. The prior then made fast the door, and opened
it not again till the next morning, when, if the penitent
were there, he was taken out and led with great joy to the
church, and, after fifteen days' watching and praying, was
dismissed. If he was not found when the door was
68
OWAYNE MILES.
opened, it was understood that he had perished in his pil-
grimage through purgatory; the door was closed again,
and he was never afterwards mentioned.*
The knight Owain, who was by birth an Irishman, had
long served in the wars under king Stephen, and had
obtained permission to return to his native country. He
was there seized with sudden penitence for his sins, for
he had lived a life of violence and rapine, and, besides
other enormities, he had even violated churches and made
free with consecrated things. He obtained leave of the
bishop and the prior to visit, by way of penance, St.
Patrick's Purgatory, with the hope of washing out the
guilt of these misdemeanours, and accordingly passed
through all the preliminary ceremonies.
(fol. 90, voj“ Fyftene dayes he dwelled thorel
In almesse dedes and holy lore:3
At the fyftene dayes ende
The knygth began forth to wende.4
Fyrst a-morows he herde masse,
And afterwarde he asoyledo was
With boly water and holy book :
And rychc relykes forth they toke.
Every prest and every man
Wente with bym yn processyoun,
And, as lowde as they mygtb? crye,
For hym they songe the letanye,
And browte8 bym fayre ynto tbe entré,
Therº as syr Owen wolde be.”
.
4 to go
I there
2 almsdeeds
3 doctrine
7 might
brought
I where
8
5 in the morning
assoiled, absolved
6
* There is a remarkable resemblance between these ceremonies and
those observed by the ancient Greeks at the cave of Trophonius.
OWAYNE MILES.
69
+
Then Sir Owain was locked in the cave, and, after a
short time, he went forth. At first he had a very little
light, but this by degrees disappeared, and he was obliged
to grope his way in utter darkness, till a sort of twilight
again appeared.
" Then wente he faste, when he mygtb se,
Tylle he come to a grete countré:
Hit semed welle the more wyldernesse,
For ther grewe nother tre ner grasse.'
As be behelde on his rygth honde,
A swyde? fayr halle he syge3 ther stonde :
Hit was bothe longe and wyde,
And bit was open on every syde
As a cloyster yn alle wyse :
Hit was made yn selkowth4 wyse."
In this hall he met with fifteen men in white garments,
with their heads shaven after the manner of ecclesiastics,
and one of them told Owain all that he would have to
suffer in his pilgrimage, how he would be attacked by
unclean spirits, and by what means he should defend
himself.
(fol. 91)
"Yf they wolle the bete or bynde,
Loke thu bave thys worde yn mynde:
'Jhesu, as thu arte ſulle of mygth,
Have mercy on me synſull knygth!'
And evermore bave yn thy thowght
Jhesu that the so dere hath bowght.”
They then left him, and
" As he sat ther alone by hymself,
He herde grete dynn on eche ball,5
5
i neither tree nor grass
very
3
sav
4
part, side
2
strange
70
OWAYNE MILES.
As alle the laytel and alle the thonder
That ever was herde heven under,
And as alle the trees and alle the stones
Shulde smyte togedyr rygth at oones,2
For alle tbe worlde so byt ferde :3
And therto a lowde crye be herde.
Ne hadde he bet welle y-tawgtes byfore
He hadde bene loste for ever more:
For fle mygte be nawgte, but moste? abyde.
Then come ther develes on every syde,
Wykked gostes, I wote,8 fro belle,
So mony that no tonge mygte telle:
Tbey fylled the hows yn two rowes ;
Some grenned' on bym and some made mowes."10
These fendes' welcomed the knight, and pretended to
rejoice that he had not, like other men, waited on earth
till the end of his life, but had come prematurely to suffer
the punishments which his sins deserved. “However,"
said they, “as thou hast always been to us a good and
zealous servant, we will even now allow thee to go back
unhurt into the world, that thou mayest spend the re-
mainder of thy life in its pleasures.”
" Then sayde the knygth, “I dowte you nowgth, 11
I betakel? me to hyn tbat me batht wroght.'
Tben the fendes made a fyre anone
Or blakke pychell and of brenstone ;14
They caste the knygth theryn for to brenne,
And alle they begonne16 on hym to grenne.!?
15
1
13 black pitch
14 brimstone
15 to burn
3
lightning
2 right at once
so it fared
4 had he not been
5 taught
6 for he might not flee
7 must
8 know
9 grinned
10 mocked him
11 I nothing lear you
16 began
17 grin
12 give
OWAYNE MILES.
71
The knygth that payne fulle sore he thowgth,
To Jhesu be called whyle he mowgth:
Jhesu,' he sayde, 'fulle of pyté,
Help and have mercy on me.'
Alle that fyre was qweyntel anone,
The fendes flowen away everychone:2
And then the knygth anone up stode,
As hym hadde ayled nowgt but gode."
After these were gone, another party came up:
“ There come develes other mony mo,3
And badde the knygth with hem tu go,
And ladde lym into a fowle contreye, *
Where ever was nygth and never day,
For bit was derke and wonther colde : 4
Yette was there never man so bolde,
Hadde he never so mony clothes on,
But he wolde be colde as ony stone.
Wynde herde he none blowle,5
But faste hit frese6 bothe bye? and lowe.
They browgte bym to a ſelde8 fulle brode,
Overe suche another never be yode,
For of the lengbte none ende he knewe';
Thereover algatelo he moste nowe.
As he wente be berde a crye,
He wondered wbat bit was, and why,
2
' quencbed
every one (ever each
one)
4 wonder (i, e. won-
drous) cold
5 blow
6 it froze
7 bigb
8 field
I went
3
10 at all events
more
Traxerunt autem illum versus fines illos, ubi sol oritur in media
æstate ; cumque venissent tanquam in finem mundi, cæperunt dextror-
sum converti, et per vallem latissimam tendere, versus illam partem,
qur sol oritur media hyeme. (H. Salt.)
72
OWAYNE MILES.
He syg' ther men and wymmen also
That lowde cryed, for hem was woo.?
They leyen3 thykke on every londe,
Faste nayled bothe fote and honde
With nayles glowyng alle of brasse :
They ete the erthe so wo bem was ;*
Heres face was nayled to the grownde.
Spare,' they cryde, 'a lytylle stounde. '6
(fol. 91,60) The develes wolde bem not spare:
To bem peyne they thowgte yare.
ליו
This was the first field of punishment. In the original
Latin legend, the knight was led successively through four
such fields. In the second and third the souls suffered
much the same kind of torments as in the first, with this
only difference in the second, that they were fixed to the
ground with their backs downward, and were persecuted
by multitudes of fiery serpents and toads. In the fourth
field, the souls were hung up in fires by the various mem-
bers which had been most sinful, and some were roasted
on spits, and basted with molten metals. In the next
place, they were turned about on a great wheel of fire.
*
« Some of the fendes turned ageyne,
And forth they ladde syr Owayne
Fulle ferres into another felde,
In such on bare he never sbelde.
Hit was lenger and welle morelo
Tben that ſelde was byfore.
And, as be loked lym hesyde,
He sygii ther pyttus mony and wyde;
1
4 4
Saw
2 for woe was to them
(they bad woe)
they had so much
5 their
[woe
a little time
7 readily, quickly
8 lar
9
one
greater
11
Saw
6
10
3 lily
OWAYNE MILES.
73
1
Thykke they were as they mygth bene,
Opethea was ther a fote hem betwene;
And alle maner of metulle
He syg ther yn the pyttus walle.3
Men and wymmen ther were also
In tho* pyttus abydyng wo.5
Some were therione up to the chynne,
And yet hadde they nogt bete here synne ;6
And some were yn to shappus;}
And some were up to the pappus;
And some were yn to the kne;
They wolde ſulle fayne out have be.»;8
Owain was pushed by the devils into one of these pits,
and dreadfully scalded, but he called upon his Saviour, and
escaped. He was afterwards brought to a place where
souls were punished in a lake of extreme coldness, and
then the demons dragged him to the Devil's Mouth.'*
« But as be stode up, and loked abowte,
Of develes he sygeo a fulle gret rowte.
'Knygte,' they sayde, 'why standes thou bere?
And where ar alle thy false feere ?10
They tolde the that thys was helle;
But other wyse we sbulle the telle.
Come with us a lytylle sowth;
We sballe the lede to the develes mowth.'
1
8 full gladly bave been
out
2
might be
their sinnes (betian,
hardly
A.-S.)
3 boil (weallan, A.-S.) ? up
to the loins,
those
9
Saw
10
4
companions, fellows
shappe, pudenda, ve-
5 enduring woe
renda (sceape, ge-
6 made amends for
sceapu A.-S.)
Henry makes the moutb of bell a fiery pit, where the souls are
tossed up and down, and after that come the water and bridge, making
in all ten places of punisbment.
4
74
OWAYNE MILES.
1
i
They drewe bym be tbe batere,
Tylle they come to a gret wattere,
Broode and blakke as any pyke;2
Sowles were theryn mony and tbykke;
And also develes on eche a syde
As thykke as flowres yn someres tyde.
The water stonke fowle tberto
And dede the soles mykylle woo :3
Up they come to ese hem a stownde,
The develes drew hem ageyn to the grownde.
Over the water a brygges there was,
Forsothe kenere tben ony glasse:
Hyt was narowe and hit was byge,
Onether that other ende he syge.
(fol. 92) The myddylle was hyge, the ende was lowe,
Hit lerde as bit badde ben a bent bowe.
The develle sayde, 'knygte, here may thu se
Into helle the rygte entre :
Over thys brygge thu meste wende,
Wynde and rayne we shullelo tbe sende :
We shulle tbe sende wynde fulle goode,
That sballe the caste ynto the floode."
Owain, however, prayed earnestly to God for help, and,
when he attempted to pass, the bridge appeared to him wide
and safe, but when he reached the middle, all the “fendes"
raised so terrific a yell that the knight was near falling
over the bridge with fear. He however arrived in safety at
the other shore, where the power of the devils ended, and
he went on until he came to a fair wall, “whyte and brygth
as glasse," which reached up into the air to an unbounded
extent. In face of him was a beautiful gate, made of
9
1
garments, attire
ease them a wbile
8 it fared as it bad been
2 pitch
5 bridge
a bent bow
souls
6 bigb
3 caused the
much woe
9 must go
10 sball
7 scarcely
OWAYNE MILES,
75
precious metals and gems, from which issued a ravishing
perfume. Owain soon forgot all his pains and sorrows.
« As he stode, and was so fayne,
Hym thowgth? ther come bym agayne
A swyde4 fayr processyoun
Of alle manere menne of relygyoun,
Fayre vestymentes they hadde on,
So rycbe syg he never none.
Myche joye hym thowgte to se
Bysshopes yn bere dygnité;
Ilkones wente other be and be,6
Every man yn his degré.
He syg ther monkes and chanones,
And freres with newe shavene crownes;
Ermytes' he sawe there amonge,
And nonnes with fulle mery songe ;
Persones, prestes, and vycaryes;
They made fulle mery melodyes.
He syg ther kynges and emperoures,
And dukes that hadde casteles and toures,
Erles and barones fele,
That some tyme badde the worldes wele.11
Other folke be syg also,
Never so mony as be dede thoo.12
Wymmen he syg tber that tyde ;13
Myche was the joye ther on every syde:
(fol.92, vo) For alle was joye that with bem ferde, 14
And myche solempnyté he berde.”
The procession approached Owain, and welcomed him
thither; and they led him about, showing him the beauties
of that country.
1
10
many
Il weal, prosperity
glad
? it seemed to him
3 towards him
very
6
one by another, ;. c.
in couples
7 friars
8 hermits
parsons
12 tben
13 time
1
5 each one
9
14 fared, went
70
O'WAYNE MILES,
“Hyt was grene, and fulle of flowres
Of mony dyvers colowres;
Hyt was grene on every syde,
As medewus are yıt someres tyde.
Ther were trees growyng fulle grene,
Fulle of fruyte ever more, y wene;}
For ther was frwyte of mony a kynde,
Suche yn the londe may no mon fynde.
Tber they have the tree of lyſe,
Theryn ys myrtbe, and never stryfe;
Frwyte of wysdom also threr ys,
Of the wlycbe Adam and Eve dede amysse :
Other manere frwytes ther were fele, 2
And alle manere joye and wele.3
Moche ſolke he syg there dwelke,
There was no tongue that mygth hem telle;
Alle were they clodeds yn ryche wede,
What cloth hit was he kowthe not rede.6
+
Tbere was no wronge, but ever rygth,
Ever day and nevere nygth.
Tbey shone as brygth and more clere
Then ony sonne? yn the day doth here."
The bishop told Owain that he had passed through
purgatory, and that he would never go there again ; they,
he said, had done the same before. All men who had not
shryved” themselves before their dying day, went to
purgatory, and there abode till they had done sufficient
penance for their sins;
“ Buite some frende for here mysdede
For hem doo other synge or rede ;
For thus may man thorow suche dyvyne,
The soner come out of his pyne.”
1
9
suppose
miny
weal
4 count
5 clothed
6 tell, explain
7 than any sun
8 unless
cause (some one)
either to sing or
read
OTVAYNE MILES.
77
The place he had now arrived at was the earthly para-
dise, where dwelt Adam and Eve before they forfeited their
dwelling-place by eating an apple. Adam dwelt on earth,
as the bishops told the knight, nine hundred and fifteen
years, and he was “yn helle with Lucyfere” four thousand
six hundred and four years, when Christ brought out of
hell Adam and all his children that were worthy of grace,
and took them with him to heaven. The bishops and
all the other people whom Owain saw in the earthly paradise
lived there in bliss and joy, but they expected much
greater joy when they should be called to Christ.
"And every day we wexen moo;!
But angeles called some us froo.?
Alle gyrº we be out of penance ylle,
Here we abyde Goddes wille,
For yet have we not that dygnyté
To come before his magesté.
(ful. 93) But oon and on,* as he wylle calle,
At the laste we shalle come alle.
Every day cometh oure fode
Of hym that for us shedde his blode;
And that thu shalte ſele er thu go.'
Ther come a gleme anone ſulle brygth.
And spradde over that lond rygth :
Hyt was swotes and hyt was hote,
Into every monnes mowthe bit smote.
The knygte felde that yn glyde,
He ne wyste? where he was that tyde,
Ne wbether that he was qwykke or dede,
Such hym thowgte that ryche brede."
6
2
3 if
5
sweet
grow more, increase
in number
4 one and one, i.e.
one at a time
6 felt that glide in
7 be knew not
2 from us
78
OWAYNE MILES.
After having thus tasted of the food of those in paradise,
Owain was very desirous of remaining there, but the bishop
told him that it was necessary for him to return to earth
and finish his allotted time there, and leave his flesh and
bones behind him. He was therefore obliged to return,
but he found his way back to the entrance of the cave by
a shorter and pleasanter way than that by which he went,
and he saw again the fifteen men, who told him all the
things that should happen to him in his after-life. When
the prior and “chanones" came to the door in the morn-
ing, they found the knight waiting to be taken out, and
they congratulated him on his prosperous journey, and he
stayed with them fifteen days, and told them his story.
He afterwards went on a pilgrimage to the Holy Land, and
ended his life in piety. " Explycit Owayne."
CHAPTER IV.
Situation of purgatory, &c.-Saints' legends and fairy tales-Story of
St. Columba and the milkman-Fairy-land-Romance of Orfeo
and Herodys-Story of the green children-Song of the visit of
the youth to purgatory and paradise-Ballad of Thomas and the
elſ-queen-Purgatory in the air-Story of the Norwegian archbishop
and his clerical elf-Voyage of St. Brandan-Legendary navigators
-Situation of paradise-Journey of the three monks to paradise
-The soul in the ice-Purgatory within the earth--Cosmographical
notions-Entrance to purgatory.
THE vision of Owain, in the character of its details,
differs not from our other legends of purgatory: still it
has a most distinguishing characteristic. The other were
visits in the spirit-Owain went in the body; the other
visitors had no distinct notions of the road by which they
went, whilst the knight chose a road to which the entrance
was accurately defined. It is in the place, and not in the
circumstances of the vision that there is a peculiarity, and
it will not surely be uninteresting to trace, as far as we
can, the popular ideas of the situation of purgatory to
their origin, and to seek how the road thither became fixed
to a particular spot.
A very slight comparison of the saints' legends of the
west with that class of popular stories which are called
fairy legends, would convince us that there is an intimate
connexion between them. I may almost venture to say
that in five cases out of six, if we take one of the legends
80
COLUMBA AND THE MILKMAN.
of the English or Irish saints wherein devils are introduced,
and change the devils to elves, we shall have a local
popular legend. In both classes of tales we have hob-
goblins and incubi, dragon stories and treasure legends.
We know, for instance, what mischievous tricks the elves
of England formerly, and the northern trolls more lately,
have played on country milk-maids, how oft they have
sucked up their milk, or spilt it by shaking or over-
throwing the pail.
A young Irish rustic, called
Columbanus, went out one day in the remote ages of
the Irish saints) to milk his master's cows, and, while he
was doing this, an elf or an hobgoblin had concealed
itself in the pail. The lad was returning with his pail
of fresh milk, and its lid carefully fastened down, when
he came to the hut in which St. Columba (Kolumkil)
was then dwelling. The milkman stopped at the door,
and asked the saint to bless the produce of his master's
No sooner, however, had the saint made the sign
of the cross with his hand, than the lid was violently burst
off its hinges and thrown to the ground, and great part
of the milk spilt by the concussion. The hobgoblin, it
appears, terrified at the conduct of the saint, had rushed
out of the pail, and driven off the lid, which was fastened,
as he went. Columba blamed the rustic for his negligence
in not making the sign of the cross on his pail before he
put in the milk, to drive away all such evil and mis-
chievous beings, but he condescended miraculously to fill
again the pail with milk.* This is given as a saint's
legend. But the popular mythology was not overthrown
or made obsolete by the introduction of the Christian faith;
COWS.
* Vita Sancti Columbæ (in Messingham), cap. 9.
FAIRY-LAND.
81
even the saints believed in it, though they looked upon it
with an evil eye, and considered all the personages of their
old creed as demons. And the country, underground or
overground, which from their childhood they had been
taught to believe these beings inhabited, became in their
minds afterwards intimately connected with hell and pur-
gatory, the places in which the souls of the wicked were
put entirely into the power of these tormenting and mis-
chievous demons: and in the same way, among the people,
their happy fairy-country became the type of their
paradise.
The situation of the fairies' country was differently
represented. Sir Thopas, in Chaucer, (Cant. T. lin. 13726 :)
“ Into his sadel be clombe anon,
And priked over stile and ston
An ell-quene for to espie,
Til he so long had ridden and gone,
Tbat he fond in a privée wone!
The contré of faerie.»
Fairy-land was, however, more generally described as
situated under the surface of our earth. The metrical
romance of Orfeo and Herodys,'* is a curious specimen
of Grecian stories ingrafted on popular mythology, just as
we have seen happened in the purgatory legends; and in
both cases the person who made the transformation seems
to have known the original of his story very imperfectly,
and to have misunderstood it. It is remarkable also as
the converse of the common rule: while the popular fairy-
I secret dwelling.
* Tois poem is printed in Ritson's Collection of Metrical Romances.
4 $
82
ORFEO AND HERODYS.
land was generally turned into hell, here the Grecian hell is
turned into fairy-land. Orfeo was king of Winchester,
and loved much his wife Herodys, who was, from the
circumstance of having slept under an ymp-tree,' (a
tree which had grown up as a sucker from the root of
another tree, and usurped its place,) in her garden,
obliged to go away with the king of faëry to elf-land.
Orfeo, who was a skilful player on the harp, left his
kingdom, and went to live in the wild woods, where he on
a time saw the fairies hunting, and among the ladies his
own wife. He took his harp and followed them.
"In at [the] rocbel the levedis rideth,
And be aſter, and nought abideth:
When he was in the roche y-gos
Wele thre mile other mo,
He com into a fair cuntray,
As bright [as] soonne [in] someres day,
Smotbe and plain, and al grene,
Hill no dale naso none y-sene.
A middle? tbe lond a castel be seigbe,8
Rich, and reale, 9 and wonder heigbe.'.
> >*
This castle was the residence of the king of faëry, to whom
king Orfeo was introduced as a wandering minstrel. His
skill delighted the elfine monarch, who promised him, as
a reward, anything he could ask. Orfeo, as might be
supposed, demanded his queen, and took her home to
7 amid
1 rock
2 ladies (blæſdig, A.S.)
gone into the rock
or more usmooth
6
ne was; hill nor dale
was none seen
8
sa w
3
9
royal
* This passage bears a remarkable resemblance to some parts of the
Anglo-Saxon description of paradise, which I have given at page 25.
THE LAND OF ST. MARTIN.
83
Winchester, where they reigned together in happiness for
many years.
In the story of Elidurus, in Giraldus, a child is taken
to this land through a Welsh cavern; and Gervase tells a
story of a swineherd belonging to William Peverel, of the
Peak castle, in Derbyshire, who, having lost a sow, and
descending the Peak cavern in search of it, came to a fine
country, where men were reaping in the fields, although
the earth above was at the same time covered with snow.
It seems to be the same country as that which was named
the Land of St. Martin. In the twelfth century, we are
told, two green children were found in a hollow at
Wulpittes, in Suffolk. One of them soon died, but the
other lived long on the earth, and, when questioned con-
cerning the country from whence they came, said that
the people there were all green, that they were Christians, f
and had churches, and held in especial veneration St.
Martin. She, for it was a girl who survived, said, that
in her country there was no sun, but a constant light
resembling our twilight, but that there might be seen from
their country, separated from it by a very wide river, a
country much lighter and brighter than theirs. She
knew not where their country was, but remembered that
as they were tending their flocks they came to a cave,
which they entered, and immediately heard a sound like
what she had since found to be the ringing of the church
bells. They were pleased with the sound, and proceeded
Compare the legend of king Herla, in Walter Mapes de Nugis
Curialium, Distinc. i, c. ll.
+ The elves of the popular stories in England, and Germany, and..
in the north, generally represent themselves as Christians, and hope to
be saved,
84
SITUATION OF PURGATORY.
along the cavern till they came to its other entrance, when
they were overcome by the excess of light and the unusual
temperature of the air, and dropt down in a state of
insensibility, from which they were roused by the rustics
who found them, and then the entrance to the cave was
no longer visible.*
Purgatory and hell, too, are in the visions sometimes
supposed to be on the surface of the earth, and the visitor
walks onwards till he finds them in some remote valley.
The more general notion, however, seems to have been,
that they were under the earth's surface, and some of the
scholastic writers have described exactly their position and
extent. f The entrance to these regions, as well as to
Paradise, was just the same as that which led to fairy-
* This story is given in Willian of Newbury, Hist. lib. i, c. 27,
and Ralph of Coggeshall, Chron. sub temp. Hen. II. William tells the
passage of the green children from their own country to ours diffe-
rently; he says they ſell down in astonishment when they first heard
the sound of the bells, and, on recovering from the effects of the
surprise, found tbemselves in the ditcb where they were discovered.
+ In a long theological poem of the beginning of the fifteenth or
end of the fourteenth century (Hampole's 'Prick of Conscience') pre-
served in manuscript at Cambridge, we are told, (Pub. Lib. Ee.
4, 35,)
“The stede that purgatorie is y-holde
Under eorthe bit is, as clerkus me tolde,
Above the stede, us somme clerkus telletb,
Where uncristene (un-christened) children dwelleth."
Next under this latter is hell, and these three, with limbus, are all
witbin the earth.
" Alle thes places me nai helle calle,
For bei beth y-closed withinne the eorth alle."
.
In this poem, one reason wby the soul suffers so much in purgatory
is this:
SITUATION OF PURGATORY.
85
2
land. In an old song in a manuscript of the beginning
of the fifteenth century, we are told the story of a youth
who desired to see in what state were his father and uncle,
who had fallen together in battle. The father had deserted
his own proper wife, for the love of other women.
" Tbe childe that was so nobull and wyse,
Stode at his fadurs gralel at eve:
Ther cam on in a qwyte surplisse,
And prively toke bim be the slefe.
"Come on, childe, and go with me,
God has herd thi prayere :
Child, thi fader tbu sball se
Wher he brennys in belle fyre.'
He led bym till a cumly4 bille,
The erth opynd,5 [and] in thei yede :
Smoke and fyre ther can out welle,?
And mony gosts gloyng on glede.
Ther be suw many a sore torment,
How sowlis were put in gret paynyng;
He saw his fader how he brent,9
And be the memburs how he byng."
I
4
7 boil
grave [plice
2
one in a wbite sur-
5
comely
opened
went
8
3 burns
glowing on hot coals
9 burnt
6
.-. The soule is more tendre and nesche
Than the bodi that bath bones and fleysche;
Thanne the soule that is so tendere of kinde
Mote nedis bure penaunce bardere y-finde,
Than eni bodi that evere on live was."
The first of these passages is founded upon Virgil, Æn. Vi, line
426:
" Continuo auditæ voces, vagitus et ingens,
Inſantumque animæ flentes in limine primo:
Quos dulcis vitæ exsortes, et ab ubere raptos,
Abstulit atra dies et funere mersit acerbo."
86
SITUATION OF PURGATORY.
After having conversed with his father, and having
learnt the dreadful punishment of those who are guilty of
“spouse-breke," he was taken to Paradise.
« The angel began the childe to lede
Sonel out of that wreched won,2
Into a forest was fayre [and] brede ;3
The son was up, and brigt hit shone.
He led him to a fayre erber, 4
The gatis were of clen cristall,
To bis sigts wer passyng fayre,
And brigt as any beriail.6
The wallis semyd of gold brigt,
With durris? and with toures strong. -
They berd upon the gatis on heght:
Mynstralsy and the angel [s] song.
The pellican and the popynjay, 9
The tomorlo and the tortil tr[e]w:
A hundirth thousand upon by;!
The nygttyngale with notis new."
He saw near at hand the tree on which grew the
appull that Adam bote;" and from the place whence the
fruit was plucked blood issued, whenever any one ap-
proached who was not purified of his sins. From hence
they went to his uncle's abiding place :
" He led hym forth upon [a] pleyne,12
He was war of a ſpynakyll] pigt.13
Sechan14 bad he never seyne,
Off clothes of gold burnyshed brigt.
I soon
2 dwelling
3 broad (in the copy
5
19 (?)
11 high
12 plain
4 harbour
sight
6 beril
7 doors
height
9 parrot
S
in MS. Ff. this is
read 'fayre in brede'
fair in breadth)
13 he was aware of a
pavilion pitched
14 such a one
-
5
THOMAS AND THE ELF-QUEEN.
87
“ Ther under sate a creature
As brigt ås apy son bene,
And angels did hym gret honoure.
Lo! childe,' he said, “this is thyn eme."'"*
The connexion between the purgatory and paradise of
the monks and the fairy-lands of the people is perhaps
nowhere so fully exhibited as in the ballad of "Thomas
and the Elf-Queen, of which the best copy is in the same
manuscript with the foregoing song. Thomas meets with
the elf-queen on St. Andrew's day, by Huntley banks, and
becomes enamoured of her. By the gratification of his
passion he incurs the penalty of being obliged to desert
“middle earth," and dwell one year with her in elf-land.
They enter the earth at the eldryn or fairy hill.
“ Sbe led him to the eldryn bille,
Undernethe the grene wode lee,
Wher hit was derk as any helle,
And ever water tille2 the knee.
T'her the space of dayes'thre
He herd but the noyse of the flode:
At the last he seid, 'Wo is mel.
Almost I dye for fowtes of fode.'
She led bym into a fayre herbere,
Ther frute groande4 was gret plenté:
Peyres and appuls bothe ripe thei were,
The darte, and also the damsyn tre.
1 uncle
2 to
3 ſault, want
4 growing
* MS. Bibl. Pub. Cant. Ff. 5, 48, fol. 14. There is another copy of
this song in the same collection, Ee, 4, 35, a manuscript of the reign
of Hen. VI, differing much in orthography from the former : the
bracketed words and letters are from this manuscript.
88
THOMAS AND THE ELF-QUEEN.
6
The fygge, and also the white bery :
The nyghtyngale biggyngi bir nest;
The papynjay fast about can’ flye;
The throstill song wolde bave no rest.
He preseds to pul the frute with bis bonde,
As man for fode wex nyt honde feynte.
She seid, Thomas, let that stond,.
Or ellis the feende wille the ateynte.5
If tbu pulle, the sothe to sey,
Thi soule goeth to the fyre of helle;
Hit comis never out til domesday,
But ther ever in payne to dwelle."
She next desires Thomas to lay his hand on her knee,
and in this posture explains to him the different objects
which present themselves to his view :
- Sees thu yonder is fayr way,
That lyes over yonder mounteyne ?
Yonder is the way to beven for ay,?
When synful soulis bave duryd ther peyne.8
Sees thu now, Thomas, yonder way,
That lyse low under yon rise ?
Wide is the way, the sothe to say,
Into the joyes of paradyse.
Sees thu yonder thridº way,
That Iyes over yonder playne ?
Yonder is the way, the sotbe to sey,
Ther sinſulle soules sballe dryelº ther payne.
Sees thu now yonder fourt way,
That lges over yonder ſelle ?11
Yonder is the way, the sothe to say,
Unto the brennandi2 ſyre of helle.
5
1 building
2 began to fly
3 hastened
9 third
10 suffer
reach, get possession of
6 to say the truth
7 for ever (punishment
8 have suffered their
il rock, mountain
A nigb
32 burning
PURGATORY IN THE AIR.
89
Sees thu now yonder fayre castelle,
That standis upon yonder fayre bille?
Off towne and toure it berith the belle;
In mydul erth is ther non like ther-tille."!
The castle was in fairy-land, and was her own residence
with the king of faëry. This ballad is a very curious
production, and there are circumstances about it which
would lead us almost to suspect that it is an imitation of
the descent of Eneas to the shades. The resemblance,
however, may be purely accidental.
The situation of purgatory was not restricted to one
place. Gervase tells us a story of a maiden to whom the
soul of her lover appeared after death, who told her that
he was in purgatory, but that he had permission some-
times to visit her. He said, among many other things,
that there was a purgatory-place in the air ; and also, at a
greater distance from the earth, a place where the souls of
the good waited the day of doom. This, too, was a notion
founded upon popular belief; for one class of the elves of
the peasantry had their dwelling-place in the air.* When
people began to philosophise upon the beings of the po-
ر
I like to it
* In the metrical bistory by Robert of Gloucester, the “ clerkes”
tell king Vortiger,
" That ther beth in the eir an hey, fer fro the gronde,
As a maner gostes."
Wbich "ghosts,' be says, men cleputh elvene.” The references
for the stories alluded to are, Gervas. Tileb. Ot. Imp. iii, 103, (De
mortuo qui apparet virgini; mira dicit et annuntiat,) and Girald. Itin.
Camb. i, 12.
.
90
A CLERICAL ELF.
pular mythology, they created many hypotheses to account
for their origin; one of which was, that they were a part
of the rebellious angels who were expelled from heaven
with Lucifer. In the Anglo-Saxon dialogue of 'Saturn
and Solomon, the answer to the question,
- Whither went
these angels?” is, “They were divided into three parts :
one part God placed in the vortex of the air, another part
in the vortex of the water, and a third part in the abyss
of hell.*
The monks taught that these spirits were much
more terrible before the coming of Christ, at which time
they were reduced to a state of comparative harmlessness,
and were compelled to retire into wildernesses and into
the water and air. A curious story illustrative of this cir-
cumstance is told by Giraldus. There was in Denmark an
archbishop, and he had a 'clerk,' a stranger, who by his
diligence and discreet behaviour, but more particularly by
his great knowledge of literature and history, soon became
a favorite. One day, while he was relating to the arch..
bishop many ancient and before unknown histories, men-
tion happened to be made of the time of the incarnation of
Christ, when he said, “ Before Christ came on earth the
demons had great power over men, but at his advent that
power was very much diminished, so that they all fled
from before his face and disappeared. For some threw
themselves into the sea : others concealed themselves in
* The frequent occurrence of these triads, in collections of dogmas
which seem to have been intended to be committed to memory, is
very remarkable. In this same dialogue of Saturn and Solomon, we
have already had the sun shining on three places, after it has set to
the world, and the following is another instance: “Tell me where
resteth man's soul when the body sleepeth ?-I tell thee, it is in
three places : in the brain, or in the heart, or in the blood."
SAINT BRANDAN,
91
the hollows of trees and in the clefts of rocks, and I my-
self jumped into a certain fountain.” As soon as he had
said this he blushed as if he were ashamed, and left the
company. The archbishop and his people were very
much astonished, and almost immediately sent to seek
after him, but he was nowhere to be found. Not long
after this, two of the archbishop's clergy returned from
Rome: when they heard what had happened during their
absence, they inquired the day and hour of his disappear-
ance, and declared that on exactly the same day and hour
they met him on the Alps, and that he told them he was
going to Rome, about the business of his master the arch-
bishop. Whence it appeared clearly that he was a hob-
goblin in clerical disguise.
Saint Brandan, in his wonderful voyage, * found hell
in the north. Thus saith the Golden Legend, as it was
‘ymprinted in London by Wynkyn de Worde : “Seven
dayes they sayled alwaye in that clere water. And thenne
there came a southe wynde and drof the shyppe north-
ward, where as they sawe an ylonde full derke and full
of stynche and smoke, and there they herde grete blowynge
and blasting of belowes, but they myght see noo thynge,
but herde grete thunderynge, wherof they were sore aferde,
and blessyd theym ofte. And sone after there came one
stertinge out all brennyng in fyre, and staryd full gastly
on theym with grete staryng eyen, of whom the monkes
were aghaste. And at hys departyng from theym he made
the horryblest crye that myght be herde; and soone ther
came a greate nombre of fendes and assayled theim wyth
* The original Latin legend of St. Brandan, with two early French
versions, was published by M. Achille Jubinal, 'La Legende Latine
de S. Brandaines,' &c. 8vo, Paris, 1836.
92
LEGENDARY VOYAGES.
hokes and brennyng yron mallys, whyche rannen on the
water folowyng theyr shyppe faste in suche wyse that it
semed all the see to be on a fyre, but by the plesure of
our Lorde they hadde no power to hurte ne greve them
ne theyr shyppe; wherfore the fendes began to rore and
crye, and threwe theyr hokes and mallys at theym. And
they thenne were sore aferd, and prayed to God for com-
forte and helpe, for they sawe the fendes all aboute the
shyppe, and theym semed thenne alle the ylonde and the
see to be on a fyre. And wyth a sorowfull crye all the
fendes departed fro theym, and retourned to the place that
they came fro. And thenne saynt Brandon tolde to theim
that thys was a parte of helle, and therfore he charged
them to be stedfaste in the fayth, for they sholde yet see
many a dredefull place or they came home agayne. And
thenne came the south wynde and droof them ferther into
the northe, where they sawe an hyll all of fyre, and a foule
smoke and stynche coming fro thens. And the fyre stode
on eche syde of the hylle, like a walle all brennyng."
Iceland may have furnished the groundwork of this story,
but it cannot fail also to call to our minds the adventures
of the Danish king, Gorm or Gormo, in his perilous
voyage to Biarmia and the dwelling of Geruth, as told by
the historian Saxo. It is remarkable that most coun-
tries seem to have had such legendary navigators. What
king Ulysses was to Greece, king Gorm was to Denmark,
and Saint Brandan to Ireland. The Welsh had also their
voyager, and on his legend they have rested a claim to the
original discovery of America,
The monk who by narrating his own adventures in-
cited Brandan to undertake his voyage, told him that he
sailed direct east, till at last he came to paradise, which
1 1
LEGENDARY VOYAGES.
93
was an island full of joy and mirth, and the earth shone as
bright as the sun, and it was a glorious sight. A young
man came to him and told him, “By this ylonde is another
ylond wheryn no man may come;' and this yong man
sayd to them, “Ye have ben here halfe a yere without
mete, drynke, or slepe ;' and they supposed that they had
not ben there the space of halfe an houre, so merry and
joyefull they were there." * Even when he arrived at
Brandan's abbey, in Ireland, bis garments still smelt of
the odours of paradise. Brandan also reached paradise,
and, with his companions, traversed it the space of forty
days without meeting any one, till his progress was stopped
by a fair river, on the banks of which he was met by a
young man, who told him where he was, and said further
that “Thys water that thou seest here departeth the world
asondre. For on the other syde of thys water maye no
man come that is in this lyf.”
At the beginning of a MS. volume in the library of Corpus
Christi College, Cambridge, is a map of the world, accord-
ing to the ideas of our forefathers of the twelfth century.
In the extreme east the Ganges empties itself into the
ocean, about the place where our modern map-makers are
accustomed to place the most northerly of the Japanese
* One of the characteristics of fairy-land in the popular creed
was, that a long period of time appeared but as a few hours.
+ The Imago Mundi were written early in the twelfth century; at
p. 58 in this manuscript, mention is made of king Henry of England,
and the date 1110; and the writer adds, “ quis autem post hunc
regnum adeptus sit, posteritas videbit.” It is an epitome of the phi-
losophy of the age. At fol. 138 of that part of the manuscript which
contains the journey to paradise, and which is in a later hand, we
find, “ Hic explicit tractatus spere.--Scriptus anno Dni, mº. cc°.
1xxx°. tertio."
94
PARADISE.
islands, and opposite the mouth of the Ganges appears the
island of Paradisus.'* Near it, a little to the north, is
« Tilos insula,'+ and a long way to the south-west appears
Taprobana or Ceylon. In this volume is contained an
early copy of the “Imago Mundi,' a Latin treatise on the
cosmography of the time, written at the beginning of the
twelfth century, in which paradise is said to be the ex-
treme region of Asia, towards the east, and to be rendered
inaccessible by a wall of fire which surrounded it, and
which reached to heaven. The writer of this treatise
describes the infernal regions as being within the earth,
Nearly all the maps of the world found in medieval manuscripts
contain paradise, placed in the extreme east.
† During the middle ages, the imaginary island of Thyle often
appears with many of the cbaracteristics of paradise. In a tract in
Leonine Latin verse, treating of wonderful things and their morali-
zations, (MS. Arund. in Mus. Brit. No. 201, fol. 44, vou) we have the
following description of it:
De insula Thile.
Non habet.exile mundi decus insula Tbile,
Hæc quia lignorum nescit casum foliorum ;
Non ibi fronde nemus nudatur, oliva volen us,
Ficus, acer, cornus, pirus, alnus, amigdalus, ornus,
Nux, arbor quævis foliis viret omnibus ævis.
Mysterium.
Ut nobis visum, locus bic signat paradisum,
Deliciis plenum variis, sine fine serenum:
Arboreos fætus superos intelligo cætus.
Virtus sanctorum latet in specie foliorum.
Hiis non privatur arbor, nec quis spoliatur
Civis cælestis illius tegmine vestis.
Tu res occultas cui solvere tanta facultas,
Si potes assigna cur sint ibi talia ligna,
Et capiti ponam de lauri fronde coronam.
JOURNEY OF THREE MONKS.
95
and tells us some particulars of their geography, pre-
senting a strange mixture of classical and biblical names :
here we have · Lacus vel terra mortis,' there "Terra oblivi-
onis,' in other parts, Tartarus, Gehenna, Erebus, Baratrum,
Acheronta, Styx, Flegeton.
In the latter part of the same volume, which was
written at the beginning of the fourteenth or end of
the thirteenth century, we have a curious relation of
the journey of three monks of Mesopotamia, to within
twenty miles of Paradise.* Theophilus, one of the three,
said to his fellows, “let us travel, and let us go to the
place where heaven and earth join together,” (illoque ire
ubi coelum se terra conjungit.) They, accordingly, crossed
the Tigris into Persia, and came to a vast level plain,
called Asia, where Julian the apostate was killed. They
then came to a city of Persia called “Ketissephodo,' and
after four months' travelling from this place entered India,
where they took shelter in an empty house. The Ethiopians
however discovered them, and taking them for spies, set
fire to the house, and, when the pilgrims rushed out, took
them and threw them into prison. The Ethiopians after-
wards took them out of prison and expelled them from
their land, and the three pilgrims went on for many days,
until they came to a glorious and rich plain, covered with
fine trees, and here they got plenty to eat. Then they
entered the land of the Chananeans,' who, with their
wives and children, lived among the rocks. They now
journeyed towards the east for the space of a hundred and
ten days, till they came to the country of a people called
Pichichi,' who were only a cubit high, and fled in terror
* This narrative is printed in Surius, de Probatis SS. Vit. 23 Octob.
96
JOURNEY OF THREE MONKS.
at the sight of our gigantic travellers. They next came to
high and terrible mountains, between which the sun never
shone, and neither tree nor grass grew, and they abounded
with serpents and dragons, and basilisks and unicorns, and
many other noxious animals. Seven days they travelled
through these mountains, and afterwards came to moun-
tains much more elevated, which were full of elephants,
and then they entered a country were all was deep
darkness. Having escaped from the dark vale, they came
to a place where they found a column with an inscription
setting forth that it had been placed there by Alexander
the Great. Forty days more brought them to a large
stinking lake, full of serpents, out of which issued lamen-
tations and wailing, and this was the place of punishment
for those who had denied their Saviour. After proceeding
a little further they found two very high mountains,
between which was a man more than a hundred cubits
high, chained to the rocks, and tormented with fire.
In another place among the high rocks, they saw a woman
with a terrible dragon coiled around her, and, when she
opened her mouth to speak, the dragon put in his head
and bit her tongue. Then they arrived at a country full of
great trees resembling fig-trees, and there were on them mul-
titudes of animals like birds, which, with a human voice,
cried out to God for mercy. After this they reached a
glorious plain, where were four venerable old men with
crowns of gold adorned with gems, having golden palms
in their hands, and they said that they were placed there
to guard the way, yet they suffered Theophilus and his
companions to pass. Next appeared a country where
there was a sweet smell and a pleasant sound of singing,
and in the middle was a church, and in it a magnificent
ST. MACARIUS.
97
with us.
altar, from which issued streams of a liquid like milk.
Here the sun shone seven times lighter and warmer than
A hundred days further they found a multitude
of people, none of them more than a palm in height, who,
like the Pichichi, ran away from them, and they passed a
river, and after a time found a beaten path. This led
to a great cave, which they entered, and, finding nobody
there, remained in it till evening, when, leaving the cave
and looking towards the east, they saw approaching the
figure of a man, whose hair, which was white as snow,
floated in the wind, and covered his whole body. When
he came to them, and drew aside the hair from before
his face, they saw that his beard was also white, his
nails long, and the skin of his face like that of a tortoise,
and he seemed very old. They told him that the object of
their journey was to find the point of junction be-
tween heaven and earth. He told them that it was only
twenty miles from his cave, but that they must not ven-
ture any further. He had himself felt a great desire
to travel onward, and see the end of the earth and
of the pole, but an angel appeared to him in a vision,
and bade him desist. This man was St. Macarius. He
related to them his life, and how he had been led by an
angel to that cave. He then dismissed them, and they re-
turned to the field of Asia, passed through “Kitissephodo,'
and over the Tigris, and regained their own monastery,
situated between that river and the Euphrates, where they
told their story to the monks.
In the popish legends we sometimes find souls pun-
ished in solitary spots of the world. St. Brandan found
Judas exposed on a rock in the middle of the sea.
Another medieval legend is still more extraordinary. A
5
98
THE FISHERMEN AND THE SOUL.
party of fishermen in autumn drawing their net to land,
found in it a large piece of ice, which they offered as a
present to their bishop, Theobald, who was tormented
with a burning heat-probably the gout-in his feet. The
bishop kept it continually under his feet, and found great
relief from it; but one day he was surprised to hear a
voice within the ice. He conjured the voice to tell him
what it was, and received for answer, “I am a soul tor-
mented for my sins in this ice; and unless you say thirty
masses every day for me during thirty successive days, I
shall never be delivered." The charitable bishop com-
menced his task, but he was suddenly interrupted by the
intelligence that an enemy was approaching the city with
the design of taking and destroying it. When this danger
had passed by, he began his masses again, but was as
quickly stopped by the news of a civil commotion which
had arisen within the city. The bishop now perceived
that it was a trick of the evil one to frustrate his pious
intentions : he recommenced bis masses with the determi-
nation of continuing them to the end; and, although the
whole city was suddenly perceived to be in flames, in spite
of the urgent and frequent solicitations of his officers, and
the outcries of the citizens, he allowed no interruption to
turn him from his purpose. When he had pronounced
the last mass the ice melted, the soul fled away, and
the fire disappeared without having done any injury to the
city.* This story bears a close resemblance in its cha-
racter to some of the legends of eastern magicians.
However, as I have before observed, the most common
and most generally authorized position of purgatory and
.
* Antonini archiep. Florent, quarta purs Summæ, (fol. 1480,) titulus
xiv, cap. 10, § vii.
THE IMAGE DU MONDE.
99
of hell was within the earth. It is thus described in the
French Image du Monde,' written by Gautier de Metz,
in 1245.* I do not deny,” he says,
- that there may
be a hell in other places besides this ; for he who has
merited it will have pain and evil after his death, wherever
he may be :"
" Jou ne di pas qu'infers ne soit
Ailours, en quel liu qu ce soit;
Car après la mort partout a
Paine et mal qui deservi l'a."
“But now," he continues, “ listen to me, if you have
the patience, how hell is situated in the middle of the
earth, and of what nature it is, and what are its punish-
ments :"
« Or m'oiés, et si ne vous griet,
Coment infers en miliu siet
De la tere, et de quel nature
Il est, et de la paine dure
Que chil ont qui laiens sunt mis."
The writer then proceeds to describe its position. He
says that it is a great gulf, filled with sulphurous fire, in
comparison with which our earthly fire is but a were
shadow of the devouring element; there also are "perillous
rivers, hideous with fire and with ice, full of devils and
filthy beasts, which molest greatly the souls that are thrown
into them."
- Là sunt li fleve perilleus,
De fu et de glace hideus,
Plain d'anemi et d'ordes bestes,
Qui ad ames font grans molestes."
The Image du Monde' is a scientific treatise ; but it is
* This work is common in early manuscripts. My extracts are
taken from a manuscript in the British Museum, MS. addit. 10105.
.
100
PAPISTICAL SCIENCE.
.
remarkable that even in the seventeenth century, in Roman
Catholic countries, these same articles of belief remained
in force. An Italian cosmographical writer as late as 1620,
Rosaccio, places hell and purgatory within the earth; and in
answer to the objection which might arise from the inade-
quacy of the space for the reception of the myriads of
people, who will have been continually added to the
inmates of the former place, he says that the souls of the
damned have no right to expect as much room as the
blessed saints in paradise.
About the same time, a
learned theologian of the Ambrosian College of Milan,
named Antonius Rusca, wrote a bulky volume on this
subject,* at the beginning of which he gives a number of
diagrams showing the form and position of hell, purgatory,
limbus, &c. within the mass of the earth. This writer
lays it down as a certain fact that hell is within the earth, t
in support of which he quotes the opinions even of the
gentiles. He describes it as a great gap or opening in the
earth, and proceeds to discuss the question of its shape,
whether it be square, oblong, or pyramidal, and whether
it consist of many receptacles or only of one extensive
The author himself inclines to the latter opinion.
He believes also that the fire, ice, serpents, and other in-
struments of punishment are corporeal, but eternal, and
far more powerful than similar things in our world. He
cavern.
* De Inferno, et Statu Dæmonum ante Mundi Exitium, Libri
quinque. In quibus Tartarea cavitas, parata ibi cruciamentorum
genera, Ethnicorum etiam de bis opiniones, Dæmonumque conditio,
usque ad magnum Judicii diem, varia eruditione describuntur. 4to,
Milan, 1621.
+ Non est dubium esse in profundissima terræ parte, ea nimirum
qua nulla profundior, p. 125. Est ergo ingens quidam terræ hiatus,
terra vacuus, in terræ corde existens, p. 135.
PAPISTICAL SCIENCE.
101
then treats at considerable length on the different kinds of
torments, and in one part of the work he discusses the
question, how there can be extreme cold (and ice) in the
infernal abyss when there is no water there.* Antonius
Rusca, although he did not believe that Etna, Vesuvius,
and other burning mountains, were mouths of hell, yet he
was of opinion that there are entrances or an entrance to
the shades, a certain steep way, sorrowful and dark ;f
though it is probable that the demons and souls can pass
thither without doors or open entrance. The ecclesiastical
censor, after having read through this mass of ridiculous
dreaming, gravely states his judgment that the book con-
tains nothing “contrary to morality or sound belief.”I
It is remarkable that Antonius Rusca finds stronger argu-
ments for these vulgar notions of the infernal regions in
the belief of the pagans of ancient and modern times than
in sacred writ: we cannot help wondering that he did not
see that they were foreign to Christianity.
As connected with this subject, we may notice another
notion apparently derived from the popular creed concerning
fairies and hobgoblins. It was believed that the torment-
ing demons where not punished themselves, and that they
received no hurt among the raging flames and consuming
frost; the Catholic writers say that this was a dispen-
sation of providence, that the devils might not be discou-
raged in tempting men and punishing their souls.
• See p. 250 of the work just quoted.
† Ergo declivis quædam via, tristis, et obscura, ad inferos patet,
p. 172.
# Nec in eo quidquam aut bonis moribus ant sunæ fidei repugnans
comprebendi.
This is stated by Francis Eximenes, in his Livre des Anges, a book
rich in materials for the history of demonology. On Eximenes and his
102
SCANDINAVIAN HELL.
In popular legends there were many and well-known
entrances to the underground country of the Grecian
shades, the western fairies, and the medieval Christians.
In Italy the entrance to the regions below was at the
Acherusia palus, by the Sibyl's cavern, and at Avernus.
In Greece there were several entrances : one was at Her.
mione, in the Peloponnesus; and there was another at
Tænarus, by which Pluto carried away Proserpine, and
by which Hercules went in search of Cerberus. The hell
of the Scandinavians lay towards the north, apparently
deep in the ground. When Hermôdhr went thither to
seek after the soul of Baldr, "he rode nine nights through
dark and deep vales, so dark that he could see nothing, till
he came to the river Giöll, and rode on the bridge over it,
· which was thatched with shining gold. The maiden who
keeps the bridge is called Môdhgudhr: she asked him his
name and kin, and said that the day before there rode
over the bridge five bands (i. e. 250) of dead men. But
my bridge rings not, save under thee alone, * and thou hast
not the colour of dead men : why ridest thou here on hel's
way? He answered, I shall ride to hel to look for
work, see Paulin Paris, ' Les Manuscrits François de la Bibliothèque
du Roi,' tom. ii, pp. 92-98. There is a fine copy of the Livre des Anges
in the British Museum, MS. Reg. 16, G. iv. The passage alluded to
occurs at fol. c.lx. “ Le premier point est que les deables mainent les
ames des dampnez en enfer, et selon aucuns mainent les bonnes deputées
à salvation en purgatorie, et les tourmentent là sans ce que en enfer ne
en purgatoire les diz deables seuffrent paines sensibles cest challeur et
froideur excessive, car tant qu'ilz sont viateurs nostre seigneur ne veult
qu'ilz seuffrent telles paynes pour tant que la leur exercité à nous
tempter ne soit empeschié ne occupée."
+ This passage bears & singularly close resemblance to that in Virgil
where the weight of Æneas almost sinks Charon's boat.
ENTRANCES TO THE INFERNAL REGIONS,
103
way?'
***
Baldr ; but hast thou seen anything of Baldr on hel's
And she said that Baldr had ridden thither over
the bridge of Giöll, but hel's way lies still deeper and
more northward.' Then rode Hermôdhr forwards till he
came to hel's grate. The bridge of Giöll has its coun-
terpart in our purgatory legends. I have already mentioned
different entrances to fairy-land, among which one of the
most remarkable was the Peak cavern in Derbyshire. In
the Christian legends of the middle ages the volcanoes of
the old world - Etna, Vesuvius, Hecla, &c.—were con-
sidered either as entrances to hell and purgatory, or as
separate places of punishment. But there were other, less
conspicuous ways, several of which were in Italy, and their
fame had probably been handed down from the days
of the Romans and Greeks. The old traveller, Sir John
Maundevile, found an entrance to the infernal regions in
the "vale perilous," in the kingdom of Prester John. “Suna
men clepen it the vale enchanted, some clepen it the vale
of develes, and some clepen it the vale perilous. In that
vale heren men often tyme grete tempestes and thonders,
and grete murmures and noyses, alle dayes and nyglites,
and gret noyse, as it were soun of taboures and of nakeres
and trompes, as though it were of a gret feste. This vale is
alle fulle of develes, and hathe ben alleweys; and men
seyn there that it is on of the entrees of helle." A similar
object of popular superstition was, in Ireland, the cave in
the island of Lough Derg, which has obtained so much
celebrity as St. Patrick's Purgatory.
* See Snorri's Edda, fab. 41, ed. Resen,
CHAPTER V.
Allegorical, satirical, and political applications of the visions-The
pilgrimages of William de Deguilleville--Vision of Barontus
-Raoul de Houdaing- Le songe d'enfer, La voie de paradis
Rutebeuf-Le salut d'enfer-Hugh de Berti: the tournament of
Antichrist-Grecian visions the cave of Trophonius--Tbe Frogs
of Aristophanes-Dante, the Divina Commedia-Vision of Alberic
-Brunetto Latini-Comparison of the Livina Commedia with the
older visions.
THESE visions of the other world having once become
popular, they were soon turned to different purposes.
They had been originally invented by the popish clergy to
strike terror into the laity, and impress upon them certain
doctrines which required something more than the mere
force of preaching, such as the advantage of spending
money on prayers and masses for the dead, the danger of
robbing churches and monasteries, the necessity of paying
tithes regularly, and the like, which were often neglected
or despised in turbulent times.
They were sometimes
contrived to answer particular cases, of which we shall
have instances in the course of our extracts : a new vision
was published to put down some popular vice, or decry
some extravagant fashion. Among the late Mr. Douce's
manuscripts, now in the Bodleian library, there is a
* relation of a countess, who, for her love of superfluous
WILLIAM DE DEGUILLEVILLE.
105
finery, was carried away to purgatory."* Some writers
founded allegories upon the older visions. In the first
half of the fourteenth century, a French poet, named
William de Deguilleville, in imitation of the plan of the
elegant but licentious Romance of the Rose,' wrote three
large poems under the title of the Pilgrimage of Human
Life,' the "Pilgrimage of the Soul, and the Pilgrimage
of Jesus Christ.' These poems are sometimes united
under the general title of the Romance of the Three
Pilgrimages.' They were the type of various later pro-
ductions, among which the most celebrated was the
Pilgrim's Progress' of John Bunyan.f The second of
William de Deguilleville's · Pilgrimages,' contains a long and
detailed picture of the infernal regions. Sometimes the ear-
lier visions were composed with an immediate and definite
political object, as appears to have been the case with the
vision of the emperor Charles the Fat, already describe. I
An early dreamer, named Barontus,'s monk of an
6
* Relatio de comitissa quadam propter ornatum superfluum ad
inſernum rapta. MS. Douce, No. 109.
+ I believe that Mr. Nathaniel Hill, of the Royal Society of Lite-
rature, has been long occupied in researches on the history of the
works of this class wbich preceded the publication of the Pilgrim's
Progress,' and I have no doubt he will produce an interesting and
valuable hook.
# Another early vision, seen by a Frankish monk named Wettin in
824, in prose and in Latin verse by Walafrid Strabo, printed in the
"Acta Sanctorum Ordinis S. Benedicti,' sæc. iv, part I, p. 263, bad
also a political object.
$ There is a copy of this vision, in a manuscript of the twelfth
century, in the British Museum, MS. Cotton, Tiber, C. xi, fol. 22, vo.
There was another copy of this vision in MS. Cotton, Otho A. xiii,
which perished in the fire. It was there said to bave occurred in the
5 §
106
VISION OF BARONTUS.
abbey, named in the Latin narrative "Longoretus,' in the
district of Berry, in France, was, as he said, carried first
through three paradises to the fourth paradise, where he
was not allowed to remain, but was subsequently indulged
with a distant vision of hell, which appeared to him a
dark obscure place, covered with vaporous clouds.
He
describes no particular torments, as in the other visions,
but says that sinners were sitting round a great area sor-
rowfully in chairs of lead, each particular class of criminals
grouped together. He saw there two bishops, Dido and
Uuolfrid, who were sitting miserably in the tattered garb
of beggars.
From the number of persons of his time
whom the dreamer recognized, this vision appears to have
had a political object: it was written in France. Other
writers again gave the visions a grotesque or burlesque
form, and transformed them into bitter satires on the vices
of their contemporaries.
One of the most remarkable writers of this latter class was
Raoul de Houdaing, a French trouvère, or poet, of the begin-
ning of the thirteenth century, who published the 'Dream of
6th year of the reign of Theodoric, perbaps Theodoric IV, king of
Austrasia and Burgundy, and in that case s.p. 726. The last-men-
tioned MS., wbich was written in England in the Saxon times, con-
tained the relation of a vision shown to brother Rothearius, and a copy of
the vision of Wettin. Among the early allegorical visions wbich pre-
ceded those mentioned in the following pages, we may indicate
the Vision of Christ's Descent into Hell,' written in Latin verse early in
the tenth century, by Ansellus Scolasticus, and printed by M. du Meril,
• Poesies Populaires Latines,' 8vo, 1843, p. 200, and the popular dis-
pute between the body and the soul, also in Latin verse, printed by
N. von Karajan, Frühlingsgabe, p. 80; in my Poems attributed
to Walter Mapes,' p. 95, and in the interesting volume of Madu Meril,
P. 217.
RAOUL DE HOUDAING,
107
Hell, and the Road to Paradise.** In the former of
these poems, the author tells us that he dreamt he set out
on a pilgrimage to the infernal regions, which was 'a
pleasant road and fair way;'
" Plesant cbemin et bele vole
Truevent cil qui enfer vont querre.”
The first night he reached the city of Covetousness, in
the land of Disloyalty. He took up his lodging with
Dame Envy, who, with her companions, were delighted to
hear from the traveller that liberality had been banished
from the earth, and that treachery had the chief honour
in Poitou. On the second day he came to the town of
Foi-Menti (Breach-of-faith,) and dined with the governor
of the place, Monsieur Tolir, (Take-from.) His host was
rejoiced to hear that his mortal enemy, Doners (Give-to,)
was nearly destroyed. Thence the pilgrim went the same
day to Tavern-town, and passed on his way the dangerous
river of Gluttony. At Tavern-town he took up his lodging
at the inn of Robbery, were he passed the night in com-
pany with Hasard (Gambling), Mesconte (Detraction), and
Mestrais (Back-biting.) His new companions were much
excited by the gratifying intelligence he brought them of
the evil-doings of their disciples at Chartres and at Paris.
Among the guests were Drunkenness, and her son Versez
(Pour-out), with whom the pilgrim was obliged to wrestle,
and by whom, after a struggle, he was thrown almost
lifeless to the ground. The account of this contest bears
a remarkable resemblance to some old English ballads of
* The Songe d'Enfer' is printed by M. Achille Jubinal, in the
notes to bis · Mystères inédits,' vol. ii, pp. 384-103; and the Voie
de Paradis,' is given by the same scholar, in bis notes to 'Rutebenf,'
vol. ii, pp. 227–200.
108
RAOUL DE HOUDAING.
the force of malt and ale, printed in the collection of
Evans, and analogous with the still more popular ballad of
Sir John Barleycorn.* Madame Drunkenness comforted
him by telling him that he was not the only one whom
her son had knocked down: "Companion, don't be sur-
prised; many a one has fought with me at the tavern who
has been knocked down in the struggle; even William of
Salerna, who is so celebrated for his bravery and courage,
I have beaten, I assure you, and in a moment thrown with
his legs into the air."
" Compains, ne vous merveilliez pas :
Maint se sont à moi combatu
Qui au luitier sont abutu
Et au combatre en la taverne;
Neis Guilliaume de Salerne
C’on tient à preu et à bardi
Ai batu, bien le vous di,
Jambes levées à .i.tor."
This is, without doubt, a trait of effective contemporary
satire. When Versez (Pour-out) has quitted his antagonist,
Madame Drunkenness remains all night with the traveller,
and leads him into still more blameable excesses. After
leaving this place the pilgrim arrived at Despair, which was
the 'montjoie,' or guide-stone of hell, and a league further
came to Sudden-death, which was close to the entrance of
the infernal regions. He found in the latter an hospitable
custom which had long ceased to exist on the earth-the
lords of the shades, whom he found preparing for table,
dined with open doors, and willingly shared their hospitality
* See Evans's Ballads, pp. 220 and 224. On the old forms of the popular
allegory of Sir John Barleycorn, see the Introduction to my Bio-
graphia Britannica Literaria,' Anglo-Saxon period, p. 79.
RAOUL DE HOUDAING.
109
with all comers.
Our traveller entered without ceremony
the palace of hell, and there he was received with open arms
by Pilate and Belzebub, and a host of clergy, bishops, and
abbots. The king of the shades kept a rich table: there,
among other dishes, they had fat usurers well basted with
lard, plenty of thieves and murderers appropriately cooked,
neat dishes of lawyers who defend wrong for good fees,
tongues of false pleaders, different dishes of religious hypo-
crites and monks and nuns. Then the king of the lower
regions exhibited a great book, in which the pilgrim saw
the wicked actions of minstrels and jongleurs. The poet
afterwards took his leave, and the dream ends, but he pro-
mises a similar visit to paradise :
“ Après orrez de Paradis,
Diex nous i maint et noz amis !"
On his way to paradise the pilgrim came to Grace, who
led him to the house of Love, whose steward was Fear :
and next he visited two cousins, Discipline and Obedience,
and afterwards Groaning, and Penitence, and Sighing.
The latter instructed him in the road he was to follow.
By her directions he sought Contrition and Confession,
but in his way he was attacked by Temptation, from whom
he was rescued by Hope, who led him to Faith. He was
subsequently seduced from his way by the trifling vanities
of the world, in the shape of a party of jongleurs and
players in a valley on the banks of a fair river, and was
nearly destroyed by the renewed attacks of Temptation, if
he had not been rescued by the sudden arrival of some of
the virtues. He then came to the foot of a ladder, which
eventually led him to paradise.
Raoul de Houdaing lived at the beginning of the thirteenth
century. He was followed by a still more celebrated poet,
110
RUTEBEUF.
Rutebeuf, who published a poem under the same title, Of
the Way of Paradise.'* The dream of Rutebeuf (for it is
written in this form) bears a close resemblance to that of
his predecessor: when the poet begins his pilgrimage, he
finds himself in a fair way, accompanied by multitudes of
people, the larger part of whom soon leave the direct path
for a more inviting road which branches off to the left,
while that to the right becomes narrower and more painful.
Our pilgrim arrives first at the city of Penitence; his host
and hostess were named Pity and Charity, who tell him
how they were exposed to the attacks of Avarice, Envy,
Vainglory, and Pride, and direct him on the way to his
next resting-place, the house of Confession. A little on
the way, to the left, stood the castle of Pride, who was
always on the look out to seduce the travellers; fur-
ther, in a small valley, was the house of dame Avarice;
and next he had to pass the still more dangerous dwelling
of Madame Ire. The residences of all these persons are de-
scribed with minute details. Envy dwelt still further on,
at the bottom of a dark valley. After this the pilgrim had
to avoid successively the strong holds of Accidie (or Care.
lessness), Gluttony, and Luxury. Eventually he arrives
at the house of lady Humility, the greatest enemy of baron
Pride. Having escaped the dangers of the way, the re-
mainder of his route lay by the dwellings of Abstinence,
Chastity, and Repentance. We have here much of the
imagery which reappeared at a later period in such works
as the Pilgrim's Progress.'
We have seen that Raoul de Houdaing found the demons
Oeuvres complètes de Rutebeur, edited by 11, Achille Jubinal,
tom. ii, p. 21.
THE TOURNAMENT OF ANTICHRIST.
111
at table; an anonymous poet of the same century, in a short
piece, entitled 'Le Salut d'Enfer,'* has described their
dinner. Among other dishes there was an usurer boiled in
the pot, several false coiners roasted, and two false judges
in choice sauce. These were the three classes most inju-
rious to society in the thirteenth century.
There were
also abundance of luxurious monks and nuns, cooked in
every possible manner.
Another French poet, of the earlier part of the thirteenth
century, probably acontemporary of Raoul de Houdaing,
was Hugo de Berti,t who has left us a similar allegorical
poem,
entitled the Tournament of Antichrist.' The
writer has a vision : in a thick wood he meets with a per-
sonage named Bras-de-Fer (Iron-arm), who attacks him,
and obliges him to be his follower. He subsequently in-
forms him that he is the porter of hell and the chamberlain
of Antichrist. They proceed on their way, and arrive at
a town called Esperanche (Hope), where they take up their
lodgings. Antichrist arrives soon after; his host is so
numerous that many of them are obliged to seek lodgings
in the fields. Antichrist met with a magnificent reception,
and a great feast was given, with abundance of wine; but
the poet, who sat beside a minstrel, saw on the table no
ordinary dishes, such as beans or pease, or eggs or herrings;
* Printed by Jubinal, in his very curious collection entitled 'Jon-
gleurs et Trouvères,' 8vo, Paris, 1835, p. 43.
† It appears that, in the manuscripts in France, (I judge from the
description by Roquefort) this author is called Huon de Meri. There
is, in the British Museum, MS. Harl. 4417, a very fine manuscript of
the Turnoiement d'Antecrist, probably contemporary with its author,
in which the name is distinctly written Hugon de Berti. It is said to
have been composed about the year 1228. It has never been printed.
112
THE TOURNAMENT OF ANTICHRIST.
the feast, he says, was just such a one as had previously
been described by Raoul de Houdaing, with the exception of
one dish, which was composed of a vice that appears to
have been but too characteristic of the age when Romanism
was most triumphant:
“ Avoec .i. jongleour n'asis,
Ki trop savoit son Poitevin.
De divers vies, de divers vins,
Fumes plenierement assis.
Mais saciés bien c'onkes n'i vi
Feves ne pois, oef ne berenc;
Tous les més Raoul de Hadenc
Eumes, sans faire riot,
Fors que d'un entremés i ot
D'une mervilleuse friture,
De peciés ſais contre nature,
Flaus en la sausse cartaigne.”
We have then a grotesque description of the feast. The
guests eat up the dish just described so fast, that it never
reached the dreamer—he was too poor for such delicacies.
“Que li entremés dusk' à moi
Ne vint pas, et nonpourquant gié
N'en eusse par droit mangié,
Car ce n'est pas més à povre home.”
There was, however, great feasting and much merriment.
Nevertheless, they arose very early the next morning, and
the whole host proceeded on its way. This host consisted
of not less than ten thousand banners : there were all the
vices, with the whole army of hell, headed by their king
and queen “Plouto" and Proserpine. Among the rest are
enumerated all the classic deities. Beelzebub was Anti-
christ's standard-bearer. The arms and equipments of the
combatants are minutely described. They proceed to the
THE TOURNAMENT OF ANTICHRIST.
113
lists, which are established near the city of Desesperanche
(Despair), about two leagues from Esperanche; at the
former place they take up their lodgings. “Desesperanche
is the mountjoy of hell,” as Raoul says,
“ Desesperance est la monjoie
D'ynfer, ensi com Raous dit.”
On the eve of the tournament the king of paradise came to
the city of Esperanche, attended also by a great company,
among which were all the virtues. They are described in
the same manner as the forces of the other party. The
poet then relates the fortunes of the fight. The whole is
a bitter satire upon the times. Among the forces of Anti-
christ appears a body of heretics from the south of France,
the country of the persecuted Albigeois :
" De Biois et de Tolousain,
Et de Paione et de Mielan,
I ot milliers et ne sai quans
De bougres et de popelicans,
Ki vinrent par une posterne;
Mais par la cité de Beterne
Orent passé .i. jour avant,
Saintefois lor vienent au devant,
Et freres Robers li bougiers."
The dreamer is wounded by an arrow shot at another
person, and is left on the field. Antichrist and his people
are beaten, and retreat towards hell, “by the road which
Raoul describes :"
" Le chemin ke Raous descrist."
The dreamer is taken up and healed by the Virtues, and
is thus rescued from the service of Bras-de-fer and the
army of Antichrist.
He is intrusted first to the keeping
of Largess, and is finally delivered over to the care of
Madame Religion.'
114
TARTARUS AND HADES.
It appears by the allusions in this curious poem, that
that of Raoul de Houdaing had become very popular. To-
wards the end of this century, and at the beginning of the
next, this allegorical style became still more fashionable,
and in the fourteenth century it appeared in various im-
portant works, such as the French 'Romance of the Rose,'
and the English “Visions of Piers Ploughman.' It is not
improbable that the incidents of Christ's tournament in
the last-mentioned poem are founded upon Hugh de Berti's
Tournament of Antichrist :
6
" Than I frayned (asked) at Feith,
What al that fare by-mente,
And wbo sholde juste in Jerusalem.
Jhesus,' be seide-
• Who shal juste with Jhesus ?' quod I. -
'Nay,' quod he; 'the foule fend,
And fals doom and deeth.'"
The Tartarus and Hades of ancient Greece were some-
times moralized and burlesqued in the same manner as the
purgatory and hell of the middle ages. Among the phi-
losophers of antiquity, and more especially among those
of the Platonic school, we meet not unfrequently with
allegorical descriptions of the regions of the shades. We
may instance, in Plato himself, the accounts of the
infernal judges at the end of his 'Gorgias,' of Tartarus
in the Phædo,' and of the vision of Er the Armenian in
the 'Republic. Plutarch, in his treatise on the “Demon
of Socrates,' describes the vision of Timarchus in the
cave of Trophonius, which bears a striking resemblance
• Piers Ploughman, p. 370. There is a remarkable analogy
between the latter part of this celebrated poem and the 'Tournoiement
d'Antecrist.'
VISION OF TIMARCHUS.
115
This was
to our purgatory visions. He remained in the cave two
nights and one day. At first be found himself sur-
rounded with thick darkness; then he began gradually
to see around him. He beheld a great sea, with islands
floating in it: two fiery rivers rushed into it from opposite
quarters. When he looked downwards he perceived “ a vast
round gulf, (xúoua péya otpoyyúlov), as of a truncated
sphere, very fearful and deep, full of much darkness,
which however was not tranquil, but frequently troubled
and disturbed, whence was heard thousands of howlings
and groans of living beings, and the wailing of thousands
of children, and the mingled lamentations of men and
women, and all sorts of noises and uproars were transmitted
to his ears faintly, as being from a great depth below,
with which he was exceedingly terrified.”
Tartarus; and Timarchus sav innumerable stars flying and
tossed about in the gulf, which were souls. In another tract
(De tard. justit. Div.) Plutarch relates a very curious vision
of a Greek named Thespesius, who found a purgatory in the
sky, and which is remarkable as containing an incident si-
milar to that of the smitlis in the legend of Tundale. I have
already pointed out how the Greek poets burlesqued paradise;
they likewise treated hell in the same manner as the poets
of the thirteenth century. Aristophanes, in his comedy
of the Frogs,' introduces Bacchus, the patron of the
stage, lamenting the want of tragedians since the death of
Euripides. He determines to descend into the lower
world, and emulate Hercules by dragging back Euripides
from the shades. He equips himself in the same dress
and armour as the hero wore, and, attended by his servant
Xanthius, repairs to Hercules to inquire the way; he desires
particularly to know all the crossways, towns, taverns,
116
THE FROGS OF ARISTOPHANES.
- After
cook-shops, &c. on the road. At first Hercules answers
him in jest; but finding that he is determined to undertake
the journey, he informs him that after travelling a long way
he will arrive at a great and bottomless lake, over which
he will be ferried by an old man for two oboli.
this thou wilt see serpents, and an infinite number of the
most terrible beasts. then much mud with ever-
flowing ordure, in which are laid those who have injured
their guests, or robbed orphans of their heritage, or beaten
their own mothers, or struck their fathers on the cheek, or.
sworn false oaths :"
μετά ταύτ' όφεις και θηρί’ όψει μυρια
δεινότατα .
είτα βόρβορον πολύν
και σκώρ αείνων" εν δε τούτω κειμένους
εί που ξένον τις ήδίκησε πώποτε, ,
ή παϊδα κινών τάργύριον οφείλετο, ,
ή μητέρ' ηλόησεν, ή πατρός γνάθον
επάταξεν, ή. 'πίορκον όρκον ώμοσεν.
After this he would see the happy place of those purified
persons who had been initiated in the mysteries, where was
joy, and music, and dancing. The two voyagers arrive at
the water, and find the boat, but Xanthias, as a slave, is
obliged to walk round the lake. Bacchus, when in the
boat, is compelled to row, and he is much incommoded by
the croaking of the frogs with which the infernal lake
abounded. On the other side he meets Xanthias, and they
wander about in the mire and darkness, and are frightened
by spectres, until they come to the place of the happy
initiated, and then they inquire the road to Pluto's house.
The cowardice of Bacchus, in the garb of Hercules, leads
to many ludicrous incidents.
ludicrous incidents. When he announces himself
at Pluto's door, Æacus comes forward, and threatens to
punish Hercules for all the violences and insults he had
DANTE.
117
committed against the infernal monarch. Bacchus, in his
terror, persuades Xanthias to change clothing with him ;
and then a messenger from Proserpine comes to invite
Hercules to a feast, which is nearly ready, and she describes
the beauty of the dancing girls. Xanthias is now inwil-
ling to give up his newly-assumed character, which leads
to a quarrel with his master. Then Æacus again makes
his appearance, and beats them both in order to discover
which is the god, as each endeavours to throw the character
of Hercules on the shoulders of the other. The play ends
by their preferring Æschylus to Euripides.
The poets of the thirteenth century, who had sung of
purgatory and paradise, were, at the beginning of the
fourteenth, thrown into the shade by the immortal terze
rime of Dante. The Divina Commedia’ of the poet of
Florence has transmitted to modern ages the popular belief
and knowledge of a period which has hitherto been very
little understood by modern readers; who have therefore
frequently set down to his inventive imagination pictures
and notions which were familiar to his contemporaries.
Commentators have laboured to discover hidden meanings
and allegorical descriptions, where an acquaintance with
the popular science of the age of Dante would have shown
nothing but literal description. I am satisfied that a
diligent study of the literature of the thirteenth century is
necessary for the explanation and appreciation of this
* Several of the old editions of Dante, as that of Giunta, in 1506,
contain a dialogue on the situation of the hell, purgatory, and paradise
of Dante, illustrated with diagrams. At a subsequent period, a sepa-
rate treatise was published by Pier Francesco Giambulluri, De'l sito,
forma, e misure, dello Inferno di Dante.' Some of the modern edi-
tions and translations contain diagrams or maps illustrative of Dante's
system.
118
VISION OF ALBERIC.
*
celebrated poem. It is but recently that some writers have
pointed out the class of legends to which the present essay
is devoted as the real groundwork of Dante's imagery.
It is supposed by these writers that Dante was more imme-
diately influenced by a vision said to have been exhibited
in Italy to a child named Alberic, at the beginning of the
twelfth century.
Alberic, when he wrote his vision, was a monk of Monte
Cassino. His father was
a baron, lord of the castle
de' Sette Fratelli, in the Campagna of Rome. In his
tenth year, the child Alberic was seized with a languor,
and lay nine days and nine nights in a trance, to all appear-
ance dead. As soon as he had fallen into this condition,
a white bird, like a dove, came and put its bill into his
mouth, and seemed to lift him up, and then he saw
St. Peter and two angels, who carried him to the lower
regions. St. Peter told him that he would see the least
torments first, and afterwards, successively, the more ter-
rible punishments of the other world. They came first to
a place filled with red-hot burning cinders and boiling
vapour, in which little children were purged; those of
one year old being subjected to this torment during seven
* In 1814, Francesco Cancellieri published, at Rome, a very learned
and interesting volume under the title of Osservazioni ... sopra
l’Originalità della Divina Commedia di Dante.' Tbe vision of Alberic
is published in this work. Further illustrations of this subject are
given by Ozanam, Dante et la Philosophie Catholique au treizième
siècle, 1839. Abstracts of several of the early visions, compared with
Dante, are given in the essay attacbed to the German translation of
the 'Divina Commedia,' by Kopitsch, 8vo, Berlin, 1842. We have
also the essay hy M. Labitte, 'La Divine Comédie avant Dante,' Paris,
1843, (published with the translation of Dante by A. Brizeux. I only
obtained a sight of this essay as my last proofs were going to press, or
I should have made more use of it.)
VISION OF ALBERIC.
119
days: those of two years, fourteen days; and so on, in
proportion to their age. Then they entered a terrible
valley, in which Alberic saw a great number of persons
plunged to different depths, according to their different
degrees of criminality, in frost, and cold, and ice, which
consumed them like fire; these were adulterers, and people
who had led impure lives. Then they approached a still
more fearful valley, filled with trees, the branches of which
were long spikes, on which hung women transfixed through
their breasts, while venemous serpents were sucking them ;
these were women who had refused pity to orphans. Other
women, who had been faithless to the marriage bed, were
suspended by the hair over raging fires. Next he saw an
iron ladder, three hundred and sixty cubits long, red hot,
and under it a great boiler of melted oil, pitch, and resin;
married persons who had not been continent on sabbaths
and holy days were compelled to mount this ladder, and
ever as they were obliged to quit their hold by the heat,
they dropped into the boiler below. Then they beheld
vast fires in which were burnt the souls of tyrannical and
cruel lords, and of women who had destroyed their
offspring. Next was a great space full of fire like blood,
in which homicides were thrown; and after this there
stood an immense vessel filled with boiling brass, tin, lead,
sulphur, and resin, in which were immersed during three
years those who had encouraged wicked priests. They
next came to the mouth of the infernal pit, (os infernalis
baratri,) a vast gulf, dark, and emitting an intolerable
stench, and full of screaming and howling. By the pit
was a serpent of infinite magnitude, bound by a great
chain, the one end of which seemed to be fastened in the
pit; before the mouth of this serpent stood a multitude
120
VISION OF ALBERIC.
of souls, which he sucked in like flies at each breath, and
then, with the return of respiration, blew them out scorched
to sparks ;* and this process continued till the souls were
purged of their sins. The pit was so dark that Alberic
could not see what was going on in hell. After quitting
this spot, Alberic was conducted first to a valley in which
persons who had committed sacrilege were burnt in a sea
of flames; then to a pit of fire in which simonists were
punished; next to a place filled with flames, and with
serpents and dragons, in which were tormented those who,
having embraced the monastic profession, had quitted it
and returned to a secular life; and afterwards to a great
black lake of sulphureous water, full of serpents and scor-
pions, in which the souls of detractors and false witnesses
were immersed to the chin, and their faces continually
flogged with serpents by demons who hovered over them.
On the borders of hell, Alberic saw two "malignant spirits"
in the form of a dog and a lion, which he was told blew
out from their fiery mouths all the torments that were
outside of hell, and at every breath the souls before them
were wafted each into the peculiar punishment appropriated
to him. The visitor was here left for a moment by his con-
ductors; and the demons seized upon him, and would have
thrown him into the fire, had not St. Peter suddenly
arrived to rescue him. He was carried thence to a fair
plain, where he saw thieves carrying heavy collars of iron,
* Juxta quem infernum vermis erat infinitæ magnitudinis, ligatus
maxima catena, cujus catenæ alterum caput in inferno ligatum esse
videbatur, ante os ipsius vermis animarum stabat multitudo, quas omnes
quasi muscas simul absorbebat, ita ut cum fiatum traheret omnes simul
deglutiret, cum flatum emitteret omnes in favillarum modum rejiceret
exustas,
VISION OF ALBERIC.
121
red hot, about their necks, hands, and feet. He saw here
a great burning pitchy river, issuing from hell, and an iron
bridge over it, which appeared very broad and easy for the
virtuous to pass, but when sinners attempted it, it became
narrow as a thread, and they fell over into the river, and
afterwards attempted it again, but were not allowed to pass
until they had been sufficiently boiled to purge them of
their sins. After this the apostle slowed Alberic an exten-
sive plain, three days' and three nights' journey in breadth,
covered with thorns and brambles, in which souls were
hunted and tormented by a demon mounted on a great and
swift dragon, and their clothing and limbs torn to pieces
by the thorns as they endeavoured to escape from him; by
degrees they were purged of their sins, and became lighter,
so that they could run faster, until at last they escaped
into a very pleasant plain, filled with purified souls,
where their torn members and garments were immediately
restored; and here Alberic saw monks and martyrs, and
good people, in great joy. He then proceeded through the
habitations of the blessed. In the midst of a beautiful
plain, covered with flowers, rose the mountain of paradise,
with the tree at the top. After having conducted the
visitor through the seven heavens, the last of which was
held by Saturn, they brought him to a wall, and let him
look over, but he was forbidden to tell what he had seen on
the other side. They subsequently carried him through the
different regions of the world, and showed him many
extraordinary things, and, among the rest, some persons
subjected to purgatorial punishments in different places
on the earth.
There are, perhaps, more points of similitude between
the poem of Dante and this Italian vision than in any of
6
122
DANTE.
those which originated in the more western parts of Europe,
although they all contain incidents more or less similar to
some parts of the details of the 'Divina Commedia.' Dante
evidently copies incidents from the vision of Owain. He
is said also to have imitated an allegorical treatise written
by his teacher, Brunetto Latini, whom the poet places in
a very unenviable position in the other world, though he
is only known to modern times by his 'Trésor,' or Ency-
clopedia of the knowledge of his age, written in French,
and still preserved in manuscript, and by the tract alluded
to, a treatise in Italian, entitled Tesoretto, or the little
Treasury.*
In Dante the legends are adopted as a means of convey-
ing political, moral, and theological doctrines; and, like
Milton, the poet of Florence has softened down the harsh-
ness of Gothic imagery with the elegant pictures and sen-
timents of the classic poets of ancient times, which had
then more influence in Italy than in the more western parts
of Europe. He chooses Virgil for his guide, as an inti-
mation that he had ingrafted the descriptions of the
western purgatory legends on the groundwork afforded him
by the Mantuan poet.
In one respect the 'Divina Commedia' differs essentially
from the monkish visions. In the latter, the visitor is
never allowed to enter the pit of hell; from thence none
ever return; and there all are punished with torments of
equal intensity. On the contrary, it is to this part of the
* The Tesoretto was published by Zannoni, in an octavo volume, in
1824, but I have not been able to obtain a sight of a copy. There
are, in the British Museum, two fine manuscripts of the Trésor of
Brunetto Latini, MS. Reg. 19, C. x, of the fourteenth century, and.
MS. Reg. 17, E. i, of the fifteenth.
DANTE.
123
other world that Dante is conducted first. The poet finds
himself in the middle of a dark and pathless wood, exposed
to the rage of three savage beasts, & panther, a lion, and
a wolf, (emblematical of the temptations to which we are
exposed from sensuality, ambition, and avarice,) from
which he is rescued by the shade of Virgil, who has been
sent to his assistance by the spirit of Beatrice. Virgil tells
him that his only way to escape his persecutors lies through
hell and purgatory, and leads him down a deep woody vale
to the entrance of the infernal region. At the entrance
of hell they see the punishment of the idle and slothful,
and of those who, from cowardice and listlessness, had
neither identified themselves with the virtuous nor with
the wicked in the active struggle of human life. After
being carried over the Stygian lake in Charon's boat, the
two poets arrive at the limbus of the ancients, where the
virtuous poets, philosophers, and heroes, who lived before
Christ, and were therefore unacquainted with salvation,
were confined in a kind of elysium, in which they lived in
sadness, though without other punishment. This was the
place of Adam, and the patriarchs and prophets, till they
were released by Christ. They then passed the tribunal of
Minos, who was judging the souls, and came successively
to the second and third regions, where the souls of lawless
lovers and luxurious men were exposed to fearful storms
of hail and snow, and driven about by the tormenting
fiends; and to the fourth and fifth regions, in the first of
which were punished the souls of misers and prodigals,
and in the other those who had been actuated by rage,
selfishness, and envy. The infernal judge appears in the
vision of Alberic, and also, in a varied form, in that of
Thurcill: the storms of hail and snow are found in several
121
DANTE.
of the earlier visions. Dante and his guide then pass in
a boat the filthy lake in which the envious are plunged and
tormented, and arrive at the citadel of Satan, which still
bore marks of the breaches made in its walls and battle-
ments when the Saviour “ harrowed hell." The idea of this
citadel appears to be taken from the vision of St. Paul.
At first the visitors are denied admittance within the
walls, but afterwards they are allowed to pass the gates by
the interference of a powerful spirit, and arrive at the place
of punishment for heretics, where Dante sees the souls of
his ancient friend Guido Cavalcanti, of the emperor Fre-
derick II, the obstinate opponent of pope Honorius III,
“ Dissemi: qui con più di mille giaccio,
Qua entro è lo secondo Federico,
E’l cardinale, e degli altri mi taccio.” (CANTO x.)
and, on the verge of this circle, that of pope Anastasius.
They next descend to the region of oppression, in which
the souls of tyrants are immersed in a vast raging flood of
blood, and are pursued by the centaurs, who make them
continually the buts of their arrows: here Dante recognized
many of the actors in the turbulent events of the thirteenth
century, with the souls of Attila, Tarquin, and others of
an older date; and, among the rest, the youthful Guy de
Montfort, who had avenged the slaughter of his father at
Evesham, by killing Henry Plantagenet (the son of Richard,
king of the Romans) in the church of Viterbo.
“ Poco più oltre il centauro s'affisse
Sovra una gente che infino alla gola,
Parea che di quel bulicame uscisse.
Mostrocci un'ombra dall' un canto sola,
Dicendo: colui fesse in grembo a Dio,
Lo cor cbe in sul Tamigi ancor si co!a.” (Caxto xır.)
DANTE.
123
The oppressors are subjected to a punishment somewhat
similar in the vision of the emperor Charles. Over this
dreadful lake the poets are carried on the back of one of
the centaurs, and arrive at the forest of suicide. Those
who have been guilty of that crime are here punished
strangely in the form of trees. Beyond was a plain of
burning sand, inhabited by the souls of atheists and blas-
phemers. The travellers next come to the banks of the river
Phlegeton, and journey along its banks, passing the souls
of those who had been guilty of crimes against nature,
till they arrive at the edge of the region of fraud, a mighty
gulf, down which they are carried on the back of a fearful
monster, named Geroneo, who lands them near the centre
of the infernal regions, in the vale of Malebolge. Here
they see successively the punishments of pandars, seducers,
and parasites, who are perpetually scourged by the fiends,
and condemned to remain in continual filth. In the gulf
of simony, plunged in consuming fire, they beheld, among
others, pope Nicholas III. Next they saw people with
their faces turned behind them, marching slowly and pain-
fully in a circle; these were persons who had pried into
futurity, and who were now obliged to look backwards;
among them was Michael Scotus.
Quell'altro, che ne fianchi è così poco
Michele Scotto fu, che veramente
Delle magiche (rode seppe il giuoco.” (CANTO xx.)
Further on was a boiling pitchy river, with bridges
over, in which are thrown the souls of men who sell jus-
tice: the river and bridges occur in several of the older
visions. They pass the dangerous bridge, and visit suc-
cessively other gulfs, where are punished those who are
guilty of bribery, hypocrites, robbers, men who have com-
126
DANTE,
mitted sacrilege, and who have abused great talents to bad
purposes; in the region of the schismatics, murderers,
and exciters of sedition, the soul of Mahomet is conspi-
cuous. Next they come to the region of the alchemists,
and other imposters. The ninth region, divided into four
circles, is the place of punishment of different kinds of
perfidy; around the border are placed a guard of giants,
among whom were Nimrod, Ephialtes, and Antæus.
Antæus lifts the poets over the barrier ; and in this last
part of hell they behold the punishments of fratricide,
treason, and ingratitude. In the central and deepest
point they find Satan, in the midst of eternal ice and
snow filled with suffering souls frozen fast, grinding in
his jaws the souls of Judas, Brutus, and Cassius. The
closing cantos of the Inferno’ bear considerable resem-
blance to some incidents of the vision of Tundale.
Satan was fixed in the centre of the earth, from whence,
passing under his wings, they are carried through the
earth's mass to the foot of the mountain of purgatory,
which is represented as rising from the antipodes. Dante
has transferred to hell most of the details of the monkish
purgatory, and we find in his purgatory a greater portion
of allegory and imagination. The poets find the entrance
to the mount of purgatory guarded by the shade of Cato
of Utica; they enter with a company of newly-arrived
souls, and ascend with difficulty the mountain by a very
narrow pass, where they see a multitude of souls who had
delayed penitence for their sins until the last moment;
their negligence was punished by a long confinement in
the vestibule of purgatory. Near these they found also
the shades of those who, before repenting, had been cut
off by violent death. These discover that Dante is not
DANTE.
127
dead, because his body casts a shadow, which is not the
case with themselves. In his way through the region of
the negligent, the poet meets with the souls of many
distinguished contemporaries. They ask him to aid
them (with prayers, &c.) on his return to earth. At
length the pilgrims reach the gate of purgatory, and, being
admitted, they arrive first at the place destined for the pur-
gation of the proud, who stooped under heavy loads which
they were obliged continually to carry. They then mount
to the second stage, where envy is purged, the guilty souls
being punished by hot wires encircling their eyes. Next
they mount to the region of the angry and wrathful, who
are punished in darkness. The fourth stage is devoted
to the purgation of the selfish; the next to that of the
crime of avarice, where the poet meets the spirits of pope
Adrian IV and Hugh Capet. A little further the poets
overtake the soul of Statius, who is pursuing his way to
paradise, and they mount in company to the stage of
intemperance; and at length reach the seventh and last
stage, the region set apart for the purgation of lust, by
raging fires. On quitting this stage, the three companions
are obliged to pass through a vast purgatorial fire, whence
they emerge into a forest which skirts the earthly paradise,
Here Virgil leaves Dante to his own guidance, and returns
to his place in limbus. As Dante wanders through the forest,
he comes to a clear river, and meets a beautiful nymph,
who is occupied in singing holy hymns and gathering
beantiful flowers. This river is found in the voyage of
St. Brandan. After Virgil leaves the pilgrim, the sainted
form of Beatrice appears and conducts him over the water
(which is the river of Lethe) to the earthly paradise, and
128
DANTE,
he arrives at length at the tree of knowledge of good and
evil, which crowns the summit of the mountain.
In the third division of this remarkable poem, Dante is
carried by Beatrice from the earthly paradise, through the
nine heavens or spheres. In the first, the region of the
moon, he beholds the spirits of nuns, who had been vio-
lently compelled to infringe their monastic vow. Hence
they ascend to the planet Mercury, where they meet with
the spirit of the emperor Justinian. In the next heaven,
the sphere of the planet Venus, he meets his contemporary,
Charles king of Hungary. In the sphere of the sun,
the poet confers with the spirits of Aquinas and several
other holy doctors of the church. Next he is led to the
planet Mars, where he sees the spirits of virtuous heroes,
patriots, and champions of the faith. In the planet
Jupiter he found the souls of just and courageous judges.
In the planet Saturn were the spirits of those who had
passed their lives in holy and philosophic contemplation,
and Dante converses with the spirit of St. Benedict. He
then rises to the eighth, or starry heaven, where he is
indulged with a vision of Christ, and converses with St.
Peter, St. James, St. John, and Adam. He thence passes
through the ninth sphere to the empyreum, occupied by
the angels and beatified spirits. Here Beatrice resumes
her place, and delivers the poet to the conduct of St. Ber-
nard, who shows and explains to him the other wonders of
heaven.
CHAPTER VI.
St. Patrick and his Purgatory; recapitulation-Giraldus Cambrensis
-Lives of the Saint--- First publication of the legend ; Gilbert de
Luda and Henry of Saltrey-Visits to Patrick's Purgatory in the Four-
teenth Century-Raymond de Perilbos—The Romance of Guerrino il
Meschino Froissart-Vision of William Staunton in 1409.
It appears from the foregoing pages that visions of pur-
gatory, although rare, were not however unknown before
the date of the first publication of the wonders of the
Purgatory of St. Patrick. We have seen that the most
remarkable of these early legends were connected with
Ireland, a circumstance which is probably explained by the
superstition with which that island was regarded as being
situated in the extreme west, the land of the shades. I
have shown also how these visions were founded on the
popular belief of the people, derived from a still more an-
cient creed, antecedent to the introduction of Christianity.
There are reasons for believing that the cave was the subject
of older legends, arising from its physical character: similar
legends have been formed under similar circumstances in
other places.
We shall find that it was some years after
the pretended descent of the knight Owain, before the
purgatory legend became absolutely identified with the
place.
We perceive some traces of the origin of the legend in
the account given by Giraldus, of the island in Lough Derg,
which he places among the wonderful islands in Ireland.
It was, he says, divided into two parts, of which one was
0 $
130
ORIGIN OF ST. PATRICK'S PURGATORY.
$
fair and pleasant, and contained a church, which was con-
sidered a place of great sanctity; while the other part was
wild and rough, and believed to be inhabited only by demons
(hobgoblins). In this part of the island, he adds, there
were nine pits, in any of which, if a person were bold
enough to pass the night, he would be so much tormented
by the demons that it was a chance if he were found alive
in the morning; and it was reported that he who escaped
alive, would, for the torments lie suffered here, be relieved
from the torments of the other world. Giraldus ends by
telling us that the natives called the place Patrick's Purga-
tory; and that it was said that the saint had obtained from
God this public manifestation of the punishments and re-
wards of the other world, in order to convince his incre-
dulous hearers.* Giraldus wrote his topography of Ireland,
from which this account is taken, long after the date of the
visit of the knight Owain.
Among the unconverted pagans of the west, and in the
earlier ages of Christianity, all wild and less accessible dis-
tricts were believed to be peopled with spiritual beings of
different kinds, elves, nymphs, and, in later times, hob-
goblins and demons. The first saints, such as Guthlac and
Botolf, undertook to expel these imaginary beings from
their haunts; and, labouring under ancient prejudices, they
believed that in the wildernesses, where they had taken
up their abode, they were continually tormented by their
attacks. We see frequent instances in our own days of
the ease with which men's imaginations may be thus acted
upon. It is probable that the island in Lough Derg, from
its wildness and from its remarkable physical character,
(containing caverns from which strange evaporations
* Girald. Cambr. Topograpbia Hiberniæ, cap. v.
LIVES OF ST. PATRICK.
131
issued,) had been considered the abode of hobgoblins and
demons, and that the church had been first built there by
some pious hermits who, like Guthlac, sought to drive
from the place its ungodly tenants. The story of the pur-
gatory was an after-thought: the twelfth century was an
age, and Ireland a country, of pious frauds.
The early lives of St. Patrick throw little light on our
subject, because the older biographies do not mention his
purgatory, and those which mention it are more modern than
the narrative of Henry of Saltrey. All the old lives of this
saint, which could be discovered, were published in one
volume by Colgan.* We can, in general, place little confi-
dence in the good faith of the Roman Catholic writers of
the age of the Reformation, or of that which followed:
they seem to have considered that every kind of deceit
which tended to raise themselves, or lower their opponents,
was lawful; and their party feelings destroyed every senti-
ment of impartial criticism. Colgan boldly asserts the ex-
treme antiquity of lives of St. Patrick, which carry with
them glaring internal evidence of their recent daie. I be-
lieve that the life of St. Patrick is a mere tissue of fables,
and that none of his biographics are of any great anti-
quity. Some of those to which Colgan gives the most
remote antiquity, appear to be compiled from that of
Joscelin, written after 1180, and they give different and
contradictory stories. The third life printed by Colgan,
states that St. Patrick received the baculus Jhesu from a:
hermit; it relates how he drove all the demons and hob-
goblins out of Ireland; and it contains a story how king
* Colgan, Trias Thaumaturga, fol. Louvaine, 1647. The liſe by
Joscelin is also published in the Acta Sanctorum Bolland. Mart.
vol. ii,
132
LIVES OF ST. PATRICK.
Echu died, and how Patrick raised him from the dead, and
made him relate what he had seen in the other world of
the punishments inflicted on the impious and of the happi-
ness of the saints, to convince his incredulous hearers.*
In the fourth life we read of a chief named Dengus, who
opposed St. Patrick, and employed two magicians to plague
him. From the seventh life we learn that St. Patrick
brought the baculus Jhesu from an island in the Tyrrhene
sea, under very remarkable circumstances, (p. 122.)+ It
is here stated that the saint expelled the hobgoblins from
Ireland only for seven years, seven months, and seven days
(p. 138), and the story of the king who was raised from
the dead, and told what he had seen in the other world, is
repeated.
In Joscelin, the story of the expulsion of the hobgoblins
and the foundation of purgatory are joined in one legend ;
and he places the site of the latter, not in an island cave,
but at the top of a mountain. Thither, he says, the saint
used to repair to fast and pray, it being a solitary spot,
and the demons came to disturb him in the shape of black-
birds. Patrick drove them out of Ireland by the sound
of a drum, which he continued beating at them until
he cracked it, when it was immediately mended by an
angel. The mark of the crack was still visible on this holy
relic in Joscelin's time. Subsequently many persons used
to go to fast and pray at the summit of the mountain, be-
lieving that St. Patrick had obtained from God that all
* Et post hæc coram omni populo dixit ei: “Narra nobis omnia quæ
vidisti, sive de pænis impiorum, sive beatitudine sanctorum, ut credant
hi quibus ego prædico vera esse quæ dico de regno et inferno,' p. 26.
This story is given by Joscelin, cap. 80.
+ This is the version of the story given by Joscelin, cap. 24.
ST. PATRICK'S PURGATORY.
133
* وو
who did so should be saved from punishmients after death.
“And some that passed the night there relate that they
suffered the most grievous torments, by which they think
themselves purged of their sins, and some of them call that
place the Purgatory of St. Patrick,"*
It appears from Joscelin's story, that even so late as the
end of the twelfth century, the legend had hardly become
fixed in the definite form which Henry of Saltrey's narrative
was intended to give to it. There were other points of
doubt on which opinions continued to differ till a much
later period. Henry de Knyghton, in his history, asserts
that it was the second Patrick, the abbot, and not the
bishop, to whom the revelation of the purgatory was first
made ;+ and the same assertion is made by John of
Bromton, towards the end of the thirteenth century. I
The difference of opinion on this subject probably arose
from a misconstruction of the first words of Henry of
Saltrey's narrative, which are : Dicitur magnus sanctus
Patricius, qui a primo est secundus, &c. ; but it shows that
there was no authority for the legend older than, or in-
''In bujus igitur montis cacumine jejunare ac vigilare consu-
escunt plurimi, opinantes se postea nunquam intraturos portas inferni,
quia hoc impetratum a Domino existimant meritis et precibus Sancti
Patricii. Referunt etiam nonnulli qui pernoctaverant ibi, se tormenta
gravissima fuisse perpessos, quibus se purgatos a peccatis putant, unde
et quidam illorum illum Purgatorium Sancti Patricii vocant.' Soscelini
Vita S. Patric. cap. 172.
t'In diebus istius Stephani miles quidam Owynus nomine, intravit
purgatorium Patricii secundi abbatis non episcopi.' Henry de
Knyghton, col. 2390.
Circa istud purgatorium Patricii est notandum, quod sanctus
Patricius secundus, qui fuit abbas, et non episcopus, dum in Hibernia
prædicaret, studuit animos hominum illorum bestiales terrore tor-
134
PUBLICATION OF THE LEGEND.
dependent of, the story of the descent of the knight
Owain. There were other doubts regarding the origin oť
this purgatory. At the beginning of the thirteenth cen-
tury, Alexander Neckham, (as quoted by Camden,) proba-
bly alluding to this place, calls it St. Brandan's Purgatory.
" Asserit esse locum solennis fama dicatum
Brendano, quo lux lucida sæpe micat.
Purgandas animas datur hic transire per ignes,
Ut dignæ facie judicis esse queant."
The mode in which this legend was made public is thus
told in the Latin narrative. Gervase (the founder and first
abbot of Louth, in Lincolnshire,) sent his monk Gilbert
to the king, then in Ireland, to obtain a grant to build
a monastery there. Gilbert, on his arrival, complained
to the king, Henry II, that he did not understand the
language of the country. The king said to him, “I will
give you an excellent interpreter,” (optimum interpretem
tibi commendabo,) and sent him the knight Owain, who
remained with him during the time he was occupied in
building the monastery, and repeated to him frequently
the story of his adventures in purgatory. Gilbert and his
companions subsequently returned to England, and there
he repeated the story, and some one said he thought it
was all a dream, to which Gilbert answered, “that there
were some who believed that those who entered the pur-
gatory fell into a trance, and saw the vision in the spirit, *
but that the knight had denied this, and declared that the
whole was seen and felt really in the body. Both Gilbert,
mentorum,' &c. Jo. Bromton, col. 1076. He had already made
the same assertion, col. 1043.
* Cui dixit Gilbertus, sunt quidam qui dicunt quod intrantes aulam
primo sunt in extasi, et bæc omnia viderunt in spiritu.' MS. Cotton.
Vespas. A. vi, ſol. 150.
VISITS OF FOREIGNERS.
135
from whom Henry of Saltrey received the story, and the
bishop of the diocese assured him that many perished
in this purgatory, and were never heard of afterwards.
It is clear from the allusion to it in Cæsarius of
Heisterbach, that already at the beginning of the thir-
teenth century, St. Patrick's purgatory had become famous
throughout Europe. “If any one doubt of purgatory,”
says this writer, “let him go to Scotland [i. e. Ireland,
to which this name was anciently given] and enter the
purgatory of St. Patrick, and his doubts will be expelled."*
This recommendation was frequently acted upon in that,
and particularly in the following century, when pilgrims
from all parts of Europe, some of theni men of rank and
wealth, repaired to this abode of superstition. On the
patent rolls in the Tower of London, under the year 1358,
we have an instance of testimonials given by the king
(Edward III) on the same day, to two distinguished
foreigners, one a noble Hungarian, the other a Lom-
bard, Nicholas de Beccariis, of their having faithfully
performed this pilgrimage.t And still later, in 1397, we
*. Qui de purgatorio dubitat, Scotiam pergat, Purgatorium Sancli
Patricii intret, et de purgatorii pænis amplius non dubitabit.' Cæsar.
Heisterbach. Dialog. de mirac. sui temporis, lib. xii, cap. 38.
† These testimonials are so curious that I sball reprint one from the
. Fædera,' vol, iii, part i, p. 174: 'Rex universis et singulis ad quos
præsentes literæ pervenerint salutem. Nobilis vir Malatesta Ungarus
de Arminio miles, ad præsentiam nostram veniens mature nobis expo-
suit quod ipse nuper a terræ suæ descendens laribus, Purgatoriuni
Sancti Patricii inſra terram nostram Hiberniæ constitutum in multis
corporis sui laboribus peregre visitaret, ac per integræ diei et noctis
unius continuatum spatium, ut est moris, clausus manserat in eodem ;
nobis cum instantia supplicando ut in præmissorum veracius ſulci-
mentum regales nostras literas inde sibi concedere dignaremur. Nos
136
RAYMOND DE PERILHOS.
find king Richard II granting a safe conduct to visit the
same place to Raymond, viscount of Perilhos, knight of
Rhodes, and chamberlain of the king of France, with
twenty men and thirty horses.* Raymond de Perilhos,
on his return to his native country, wrote a narrative of
what he had seen, in the dialect of the Limousan (lemosina
lingua), of which a Latin version was printed by O'Sullevan,
in his Historia Catholica Iberniæ.' The viscount must
have had some political object in publishing this tract,
which is a mere compilation from the story of Henry of
Saltrey, and begins like that with an account of the origin
of the purgatory. He represents himself as having been
first a minister of Charles V of France, and subsequently
the intimate friend of John I of Arragon, after whose
death (in 1395,) he was seized with the desire of knowing
how he was treated in the other world, and determined,
like a new Eneas, to go into Patrick's purgatory in search
of him. He saw precisely the same sights as the knight
Owain, but only twelve men came to him in the hall in-
stead of fifteen; and in the fourth field of punishments he
ilutem ipsius peregrinationis considerantes periculosa discrimina, licet
tanti nobilis in hac parte nobis assertio sit accepta, quia tamen tam
dilecti et fidelis nostri Almarici de Sancto Amando militis, justiciarii
nostri Hiberniæ, quam prioris et conventus loci dicti purgatorii, et
etiam aliorum auctoritatis multæ virorum literis, aliisque claris evi-
Jentiis, inforinamur quod dictus nobilis peregrinationem suam hujus-
modi rite perfecerat et etiam animose, dignum duximus sibi super hiis
auctoritatis nostræ testimonium favorabiliter adbibere, et ut sublato
cujuscunque dubitationis involucro, præmissorum veritas singulis
lucidius patefiat, bas literas nostras sigillo regio consignatas sibi dux-
imus concedendas. Dat. in Palatio nostro Westm. vicesimo quarto
die Octobris.'
Federa, vol. iii, part ir, p. 135.
GUERRINO IL MESCHINO.
137
saw king John of Arragon, and many others of his own
friends and relations.*
In the fourteenth century St. Patrick's purgatory was
introduced into a wild Italian romance, which was ex-
tremely popular in the fifteenth and earlier part of the
sixteenth centuries. The hero of this romance, Guerrino,
called il Meschino, was the child of royal but unfortunate
parents, and in his infancy had fallen into the hands of
the Saracens. The scene is laid in the days of Charlemagne;
Guerrino, as he grew up, became a brave and adventurous
warrior, and after distinguishing himself in the wars of the
eastern nations, he visited the land of Prester John, and
wandered through the different countries of central Asia,
attacking and killing many of the fabulous monsters with
* O'Sullevan, Historiæ Catholicæ Iberniæ Compendium, 4to, Lisbon,
1621, p. 14. O'Sullevan, by an evident error, places tbe date of this
visit in 1328. Every historical allusion contained in it points out to
the date of Richard the Second's sale conduct. At Dublin the viscount
is introduced to the viceroy, Richard earl of March, wbo was, of
course, Richard Plantagenet. The late M. Raynonard, a short time
before his deatb, gave me a transcript of a manuscript narrative, in one
of the dialects of the south of France, of the visit of a nobleman to
St. Patrick's Purgatory about this period, wbich I have unfortunately
mislaid; but I think that it was the original tract of Raymond de
Perilhos,
† The romance of Guerrino detto il Meschino' is said to have
been written in the fourteenth century, by a Florentine named Andrea
Patria. It is probable that there were not less than a dozen editions
printed before the year 1500, (some of tbem now of extreme rarity,)
and it was frequently reprinted in the earlier part of the sixteenth
century. A French translation was printed as early as 1490, and also
went through several editions. It has been supposed tbat this romance
was written originally in French, but, I think, without any substantiał
grounds for such a supposition.
138
GUERRINO IL MESCHINO.
which medieval geographers filled them. Learning from the
“ trees of the sun,” that his parents were christians, he
sets out in search of them, and reaching Italy pays a visit
to the Sibyl, concerning whom this romance has preserved
a singular legend. Having learnt from her that his
parents were alive, he continues his search, and is sent
by the pope to St. Patrick's purgatory. With the per-
mission of the archbishop of Ireland, who gave him the
keys of the purgatory, he repairs to the monastery, and
enters the cave. He then proceeds by a long dark way to
a fair meadow, with a church in the midst, where two
venerable men in white garments come to him and tell
him what he has to suffer, and teach him the prayer by
which he will be saved from each successive danger. Then
a party of devils arrive, who drag him away, and he is
successively carried to the different places in which were
punished the idle, envious, proud, gluttonous, luxurious,
avaricious, &c. In the course of his adventures he sees
many persons who had made a figure in the world, and
with whom he had had transactions. He is allowed also
to visit hell, which he finds divided into circles, and in
the seventh he sees Judas, Nero, and Mahomet. The
whole is, in fact, a palpable and poor imitation of Dante,
built upon the legend of Henry of Saltrey. On leaving
hell, he crosses a bridge, which leads bim to paradise,
where he meets Enoch and Helias, who act as his guides,
and in the end he obtains satisfactory information re-
specting his parents.
It appears that at this period the reality of the vision
supposed to be seen by those who had the courage to
enter the dreadful cavern had become a question, if not
of general doubt, yet of frequent discussion. Froissart
SIR WILLIAM LISLE.
139
gives the following curious account (which I repeat in the
quaint phraseology of his ancient translator, Lord Berners,)
of a conversation with Sir William Lisle on this subject,
as they rode together on the way from Ospring to Leedes,
in Kent. "Than on the Friday in the mornynge," says
the knightly chronicler, "sir Wyllyam Lysle and I rode
together, and on the waye I demaunded of him, if he had
bene with the kynge in the voyage into Irelande. He
answered me, yes. Than I demaunded of him the maner
of the hole that is in Ireland, called saynte Patrykes
purgatorye, if it were trewe that was sayde of it or not.
Than he sayde, that of a suretye suche a hole there was,
and that he him selfe and another knight of Englande
hadde ben there while the kinge laye at Duvelyn, and
sayde, howe they entred into the hole and were closed in
at the soune goynge downe, and abode there all night, and
the nexte mornyng issued out agayne at the son risyng.
Than I demaunded if he had any suche strange sightes or
visions as was spoken of. Than he said howe that whan
he and his felow were entred and past the gate that was
called the purgatory of saynt Patrike, and that they were
descended and gone downe thre or foure partes discendynge
downe as into a cellar, a certayne hoote vapure rose agayne
them and strake so into their heedes, that they were fayne
to syt downe on the stares, which are of stone. And after
they had sytte tliere a season, they had great desyre to
slepe, and so fell aslepe, and slepet there all nyght.
Than I demaunded if that in theyr slepe they knewe
where they were, or what vysyons they had : he answered
me, that in slepyng they entred into great ymaginacyons
and in marveylous dremes, otherwise than they were wonte
to have in their chambres, and in the mornynge they
140
VISION OF WILLIAM STAUNTON.
>>*
issued out, and, wythin a shorte season, clene forgate
their dremes and visyons, wherfore he sayde, he thought
all that mater was but a fantasy. Than I left speakyng
any further of that mater, bycause I wolde fayne have
knowen of him what was done in the voyage in Ireland."
The hot vapour mentioned by Froissart was, no doubt,
one of the principal agents in this pious fraud; and the
tedious ceremonies observed before entry were designed and
well calculated to produce an impression on the sensatory
organs, which would be followed by extraordinary dreams
and imaginary visions.
At the beginning of the fifteenth century St. Patrick's
Purgatory was made the subject of a vision, which has more
originality than any of those of the century preceding.
Its object was evidently to throw into discredit the extra-
vagant fashions in dress then prevalent, and other vices of
the time. The writer, named William Staunton, tells us
that in 1409 he was placed in the cave with all due cere-
monies. “Y, William Staunton, born in the bisshopryche
of Dereham, of Englond, bi Goddes grace entred into the
purgatorie of seint Patrik, in the bisshopriche of Cleghire,
in Irlande, the .viij. owrel bifore the none, on the Friday
next after Holyrode day in harvest. I was put in by the
1 hour
* Froissart, by Lord Berners, ed. Pynson, 1525, fol. cc.xlxij.
+ A copy of this vision is found in a manuscript in the British
Museum, written in 1451, MS. Reg. 17 B. xliii, fol. 133.
" Here
begynneth the revelacion the wbich William Staunton saw in Patrikis
Purgatorie, the Friday next after the fest of the exaltacion of the
crosse, in the yere of ovre Lorde m': ccccmo. ix."
VISION OF WILLIAM STAUNTON,
141
prior of seint Mathew of the same purgatorie, with preces-
sion' and devougte prayers of the same priour, and the coventa
toke me an orison* to blesse me with, and to write the first
worde in (my] forehede, the which prayer is this, Jhesu
Christe, fili Dei vivi, miserere mihi peccatori. And the
priour taught me to say this prayer when ony sprit, good
or evel, appered unto me, or when y herd ony noyse that
у
shuld be afered of, if thei were good sprites or evel.” When
William was left in the cave he fell asleep. (fol. 133, v°.)
“And there y abode, and sumwhat slumbered and slepte.
And after y was ware of a litel light afer, as it had be the
dayng of the day. And me thought y sawe a man and a
woman, bothe cladde in white, the man in a chanons is
abite, and the woman in the same abite, with a vayle on
hir hede, as a nonne. An when y saw hem first, y dredyng
sumwhat, said my prayer and marked my forhede as the
priour taught me. Than they laughed, and said God
spede ! And than y was sumwhat rejoysed, and y said,
“The spede of God be welcome unto me.' And that man
said unto me, William, thow art welcome; and thow hast
take on hond a grete thyng, but bi the mercy of God thow
shalt wel do and welfare : and here fast by thow shalt
fynde .ij. waies, one on thi righond,'' another on thi lefte
honde. The way on thi right hond is faire and brode, and
the way in thi lifte hond is more'l and sumdella fowle in the
bigynneng, and it is faire and clene to sight; but leve the
way on the left hond, and take the wai on the right hond.
But thow shalt fynd men in thi right hond, the which shul
1
5 spirit
9
niin
2
6
aware
10 rigbt hand
procession
convent
gare
prayer
3
11 larger
7 dawning
8 habit
12 somewhat
142
VISION OF WILLIAM STAUNTON.
lete' the to passe by here power,” the which men shullen be
liches in shape and colour to men of thi owne contree that
ben levyng, but thei ben evel spirites, of which thow shalt
be evel aferd, and therfore have thow in thi mynde the
passioun of owre Lord Jhesu Crist, and sai thi praier, and
thei shul voide, and be knowe to the such as thei be; and
afterward thou shalt see and here more grisly sightes and
evel spirites, of the which thou shalt be sore adradde, but
have in mynd, as y said the, of owre Lordes passioun, and
thai shal do the none harm.' Thanne y, William, said, “If
it myght be plesyng to God and to the for to have know-
lage of the, that so moche kindenesse have shewid to me,
and y require the for the love of owre Lord Jhesu Criste,
if it be thi wil? Thanne he saide, “Y wil gladly that thow
wete, I am cleped in Northcontree Johan of Bridlyngtone,
and so y am; and this woman is scint Ive, my suster, that
voned in Quitike.?"
It appears that William had made
acceptable offerings to these two saints.
The saints having left him, William proceeded on his
way, according to their directions, and met with the people
of whom St. John of Bridlington had warned him, who
represented themselves as his friends, and would have per-
suaded him from going forward, telling him that they were
sent by God to show him the right way.
But he said his
prayer, and marked his forehead with the cross, and they
vanished. (fol. 134, v'.)
“And than appered to me evel spirites ; but tho
more sekerers than y was before, for tho wistº y wel that
y was
I hinder
? with their might,
3 like
4
8
are living
7 then
more secure, more
2. c. as far as tbey
ſearial, terrific
o dwelt
confident
9 then knew
are able
VISION OF WILLIAM STAUNTON.
143
my praier was of vertu.' And than I went forthe that way,
and sone ther appered to me many fereful and horrible
spirites, of the which y was moche afered, and dred. And
summe of tho spirites had iij. visages, summe with .vij.
hornes, and summe with .v.; summe had a visage in every
elbowe, summe on every kne; and thei maden to me an
hudious' noyse with creyes and with bleryng owt of here
brennyng tonges, and other many noyses mo* than I can
telle, for I was so aferd that y hadde no mynde on God ne
on my praier, ne on none other thinge that shuld me help,
but only on that noyse, and so y was neghe in point of
perishyng. Then cam that blisful virgyn seint Ive, and
seid to me, “Thou madman, have mynde in thi hert of the
passioun of owre Lord Jhesu Crist, Goddes sone of hevene,
and mark the with thi praier.' .. And tho y markid
me with my praier, and al the evel spirites vaneshid fro
my sight.” Then he went on without meeting anything
for about a mile, when he met with St. John and St. Ive
again, (fol. 135 ;) “and a suster of myne, that was dede
long to-fore in a pestilence tyme, and anothir man which
I knewe welle that my suster loved wel whiles thei leved in
this world. And than I honowred seint Johan and seint
Ive; and seint Johan seid to me than, Thow were evel
agast of other spirites.' And I said, 'So y was; blessid
be God and owre ladi that y am comen to yow ageyn !"
Than he saide, Thou haddest evelle mynde on the passioun
of owre Lord Jhesu Crist, and on thi praier, for thow art
not stedefast on thi beleve, and also to simpelles to make
4
| virtue, efficacy,
power
2 those
3 hideous
more
nigh, near
6 before
î belief
8 too simple
144
VISION OF WILLIAM STAUNTON.
such a viage on honde, savyng only the merci of God.'
And whan he had thus said to me, my suster spake, and
said, Holy, ye be here in Goddis stede, and y make my
complaint to yow on my brother that here stondeth, that
he hath synned in holychirch agen God; for this man that
stondeth here loved me, and y loved him, and ether of us
wold have had other in the law of God, as holy chirch
techeth, and shuld have geten on me .iij. sowles to God;
and my brother lettid! us to go togeder, ffor he said, and
we didden' we shuld nothir3 have joye of other, and for
that cause we lefte hit.' Tho seint Johan said, 'Whi did-
dest thou this trespas agen God and thi owne sowle? ffor y
tel the ther nis no man that letteth man or woman to go to-
geder in the bond of God, thow the man be a sheperd, and
alle his auncestres, and the woman be comyn of kingis or of
emperours; or if the man be comyn of never so high kynne,
and the woman of never so lowe kynne, if thei love other
otheir," he synneth in holy chirche agenst God and his
cristendome in dede, in that he letteth hem, who ever he
be, and therfore shall have moche payn and tribulacion.'
After being assoyled of this crying sin, (fol. 136,)
- seint Johan said to me, William, seist thou the yender
fier fer fro the.' And y said, Y se yender a smoke,
that is like a fire to be there.' And seint Johan said
tho, Yender is a grete fire and styngkyng, and certeyn
were it possible that all the people in the world, men,
women, and children, felden the smych of yender fire,
thei shuld not endure so long with hire lifes as a man
shuld turne his honde up and downe ; therfore go we
ورو
I hindered
2 if we did
4 other other, i. e, iſ one love the other
3 neither
5 felt the smudge
*
VISION OF WILLIAM STAUNTON.
145
bitwene the fire and the wynde, and loke wel what thou
seisttheryn. And than I went so nygh that y myght
know what maner of paynes were theryn; and there y
saw thilk” fire brynnengos diverse men and women, and
summe that I knew when thei levid in the world. As it
appered there to my sight, I saw summe there with colers
of gold abowte here neckis, and sum of silver, and summe
men y saw with gay girdels of silver and gold, and harneist
hornes abowte here neckes, summe with mo jagges on here
clothis than hole cloth, sum hire clothis ful of gyngeles
and belles of silver al over sette, and summe with long
pokes on hire sleves; and women with gownes trayleng
bihinde hem a moches space, and summe other with gay
clapelets on bir hedes of gold and perles and other pre-
cious stones.* And than I loked on him that y saw first
in payn, and saw the colers and the gay girdels and baw-
derikes brennyng, and the fendes draying hem bi .ij. fin-
germete and more withthynne here flessh al brynneng as
and y saw the jagges that men were clothed ynne
turne al to addres, to dragons, and to todes, and many
other orrible bestes, sowking hem, and bityng hem, and
styngyng hem with al here myght, and thorowout every
gyngels I saw fendes smyte brennyng nayles of fire into
here flessh. I also saw fends drawyng down the skynne of
fire;
i seest
2 that
3 burning
collars
great
6 dragging (?)
7 sucking
5
* This is a curious and exact picture of the fashions of the time,
and may be compared with Chaucer's Persones Tale, and with other
contemporary writers.
7
146
VISION OF WILLIAM STAUNTON,
here shulders like to pokes, and kittyng hem of, and
drawyng hem to the hedes of whom thai cut them fro, al
bryonyng as fire. And tho I saw the women that had
side trayles byhinde hem, and tho side trayles cut of with
fendes, and y-brent' on here hedes; and summe toke of
the cuttyng alle brennyng and stopped therwith here
mowthis, hire noses, and hire eres. I saw also hire gay
chapeletes of gold, of perlous, and other precious stones,
y-turned into nailes of yren, brennyng, and fendes with
brennyng hamers smytyng hem into hire hedes." These
St. John told him were proud and vain people, and such as
delighted in extravagant apparel.
Then St. John led him to another fire, where the fiends
were putting out people's eyes and pouring molten brass
and lead in the sockets, and in wounds which they made
in their flesh, and tearing off their arms, and the nails of
their feet and hands, and soldering them on again with
their molten metals. (fol. 137, v°.) so And than seint Johan
said, “These ben thei that sweren bi Goddes membres, as
bi his yen?, bi his armes, bi his woundes, bi his nayles
and other his membris, and thei thus dismembrid God in
horrible swerynge bi his lymmes.”
In the third fire were
the breakers of holydays, who stuffed and crammed them-
selves with good things on these days on earth, and were
now crammed with filth and fire. In the fourth fire were
those who did not honour their parents, who were here
subjected to the most offensive dishonours and contempt.
In the fifth fire were thieves and robbers, who, besides the
peculiar punishments allotted to themselves, were com-
در و
I burnt
2 pearls
3
eyes
i
VISION OF WILLIAM STAUNTON.
147
on.
pelled to suffer also part of the pains of those whom they
had robbed, which latter stood by the while and looked
In the sixth fire were those who for hire had borne
false witness against others, and all the goods or posses-
sions they had gained by such dishonest proceedings were
burning, and ever and anon falling upon them, and those
whom they had injured were standing by enjoying the
sight. In the seventh fire were murderers, whom the
fiends were continually cutting to pieces with red hot
knives and swords, and putting together again. In the
eighth fire were luxurious people, and those who had
led their life in incontinence; they were hung by the
offending members, or by their tongues, eyes, &c., and in
that posture beaten by their tormentors. In the ninth
fire were those who had neglected to chastise their chil-
dren, who now, themselves tormented, were continually
increasing the torment of their parents by beating them
with brands of fire. Next William came to the place of
punishment for backbiters, who were bound down on the
top of a rock, where they were subjected to the stench of
all the fires, and the devils constantly tearing their backs.
Then St. John led him (fol. 140, v°.) to “ twey towers, that
on ful of brynnyng fire, and the other ful of yse and snowe;
and in that fulle of fire y saw many sowles y-payned and
made hote in poynte for to mylt, and sodenly with fendes
thei were cast owt of that passyng hete into that other
tower ful of yse and snowe, and fendes with shovelis
castyng yse and snow uppon hem, and that payned hem
fulle sore; and thanne y saw many sowles with firebrondys
brennung in here hondes, havyng here bodies ful of
serpents, snakes, todes, and divers other orrible wormes,
148
VISION OF WILLIAM STAUNTON.
>> 5
knockyng at the yatet of the towre; and when thei were
letyn yn, thei cast the brondes of fire to thilk other sowles
that were cast yn paynes, and beten hem with the same
brondis? and payned them wonderly sore. And al the
serpentes, todes, and other ortible wormes lopen* from here
bodies to thilk other that were payned in that cold, and
stongyn and beten hem wonderly sore.”
These were
bishops who had been proud and overbearing, and had not
set a good example to their flocks, and their persecutors
were their proud servants; "and thilk serpentes, snakes,
todes, and other wormes, ben here jaggis and daggis."
Next he came to a fire where ecclesiastics, who had had
too much of the goods of the church, and had not lived in
continence and abstinence, were in terrible torments;
and then to another for parsons, vicars, and priests, who
had neglected their duty and been occupied in “hakyngo
or huntyng," or other worldly enjoyments. (fol. 142.) Next
was a great house, in which were tormented “the sowles
of men of holychirch, as persones, vicaries, and other
prestes, that shuld have tawght good doctrine, and good
exemple have yevyn to the comen people, ffor thei did
noght so." They had no charity, and would not clothe
the naked, though they had many suits of clothes, new
and old, laying by and never used; the moths that bred in
these were now worms, to torment them. And those who
had let their churches fall into decay, so that rain and
1
gate
2 those
3 brands, rods
leaped
jaggs and daggs
were the names
given to a fashion
of ornamental cut-
ting the edges of
the cloaks and
other garments at
tbis time, which
involved a great
waste of material
bawking
4
6
VISION OF WILLIAM STAUNTON.
149
hail fell into the chancel and on the very altars, 'were
punished there by showers of terrible hail and rain.
(Fol. 144.) “And when Seint Johan had shewid me al
these paynes, and many mo than y can or may telle or
bithinke,' y said to him, “May ther be ony remedi or myti-
gacion to these sowles that be thus y-payned in these
divers paynes ? and he said thus : · William, God forbede
it els! for thow shalt understond that these sowles may be
holpen' owt of these paynes principallich bi the mercy of
God, and by the good dedis that here frendes and the peo-
ple levyng in the world may do for hem, as to lernyd men
as bi masses singyng, saing of sawters, placebo, and dirige,
commendacions, .vij. psalmes, and the .xv. psalmes, with
the letenye, bi almesdede and bi pilgrimage ; and also bi
lewidmen with the pater noster, the ave Maria, and the
crede, almesdede, fastyng, and pilgrimage, and bi many
other good dedis.'” St. John now left him: “and thanne
y was mochel adred when he was gone fro me, and forth
y yede bi the water side, the which water was greislych*
and depe, and moche greislyt noise y herd therynne, and
understode that there shulde have ben a brigges over that
water, as y had herd say in the world ; and y saw none,
and was the more agast and adrede. Thanne
у
more grislich noyse of fendys comyng bihind me than
ever I herd bifore.” And so he forgot his prayer again, and
St. Ive was obliged to come to liis aid, and the 'fendes' left
him. (Fol. 145.) “And y went forth bi the water side
on my right honde, and on that other side of the water y
saw nothing but an high roche, and so long y went on that
herd a
I remember
2 helped
3 went
#fearril
5 bridge
6 rock
150
VISION OF WILLIAM STAUNTON.
و
water side that y saw an high towour on the ferther side of
that water, and there y saw mo light than y did on al the
way bifore. On the top of the towre y saw a fayre woman
stondyng :" and he prayed, and found a ladder placed
against the tower ; "and bit was so litille, as me thowght
that it wold onnethel bere ony thing; and the first rong?
of the ladder was so that onnethe might my fynger reche
therto, and that rong was sharper than ony rasor, as me
thowt, and anone I drow my hond therfro. And than I
herd a grisly* noyse comyng fast toward me, and y markid
me with my praier, and al that noyse vanyshid away, and
than y lokid to that ladder, and there y saw a corde comyng
fro the top of the towre to the fote of the ladder, and that
woman bad me knitte that corde abowte my myddelle, and
so y did, and yede to that ladder agen, and reght my
hond to that rong, and tho y feldø the rong of no sharp-
nesse, and bi the help of that woman and of myne owne
gryppyng y steied uppon that ladder, and tho
у
thowsand noyse more grisly and hidewus in the water
under me, and in that lond that y com fro, than у
herd
ony tyme bifore.
Than bi the help of owre Lord Jhesu
Crist and his merci, and that woman that was above that
towour, y was sone brought to the top of that towour, where
y was passid al maner of drede.” The cord, she told him,
was one which he had once given in charity to a person
who asked alms for the love of God. He was now in a
country surpassingly fair and beautiful, and was met by a
company of monks, 'chanons, and priests, and a bishop
herd a
ور
1
s raught, thrust
bardly
2 the cross bar of a
the foot is placed
3 therefrom, from it
+ fearful
ladder, on which
6 felt
7 mounted
VISION OF WILLIAM STAUNTON.
151
came to him and blessed him, and welcomed him, and
talked with him, and gave him good counsel for the re-
mainder of his life. William was unwilling to quit this
happy place, but he was told that it was necessary for him
to return to the world, and pass there the remainder of
his earthly life.
CHAPTER VIII.
The pope orders St. Patrick's Purgatory to be destroyed ; its restora-
tion-Calderon's play of the 'Purgatorio de San Patricio'— Vision of
Louis Enius–Modern bistory of St. Patrick's Purgatory--Removal
of the site-Proclamations against the pilgrimage in 1632, and by
Queen Anne-Modern superstitions.
At the end of the fifteenth century, the Purgatory of
St. Patrick fell into disgrace. The numerous copies of the
legend first published by Henry of Saltrey, which were
distributed by the invention of printing, tended much to
increase its celebrity at this period. A monk of Eymstadt,
in Holland, who proved either more conscientious or less
credulous than former visitors, undertook the pilgrimage
to Lough Derg. When he arrived at the lake, he applied
for entrance to the prior, who referred him to the bishop
of the diocese, without whose license no visitors were
received. The monk then repaired to the residence of the
bishop, but, as he was “poor and moneyless,” the servants
refused to admit him into their master's presence. Having,
however, with difficulty obtained an audience, he fell in a
supplicating posture before the prelate, and begged permis-
sion to enter St. Patrick's Purgatory. The bishop demanded
a certain sum of money, which, he said, was due to him
THE MONK OF EYMSTADT.
153
from every pilgrina who came on this errand.* The monk
- represented his poverty, and, after much urgent solicita-
tion, the bishop grudgingly gave him the necessary license.
He then went to the prior, performed the usual ceremonies,
and was shut up in the cavern. There he remained all
night, trembling with fear, and in constant expectation of
a visit from the demons; but when the prior let him out
next morning, he had had no vision of any kind, and,
dissatisfied with the result of his pilgrimage, he hastened to
Rome, where he made his complaint to pope Alexander VI.
The pope acknowledged himself convinced of the impos-
ture, and sent orders for the destruction of the Purgatory,
which were put in effect with great solemnity on St.
Patrick's day, 1497.
It was not long before the place recovered its ancient
reputation. The office of St. Patrick, inserted in the
Roman missals in 1522, was almost entirely devoted to the
celebration of the purgatory; and, although this office
was rejected two years after, of the fame of St. Patrick's
Purgatory continued to increase, and the legend was gene-
rally adopted by the Romish theologians. During upwards
*" Adiit episcopum : et quoniam pauper erat et sine pecunia, vix a
ministris admissus est: provolutusque genibus episcopi petiit sibi licen-
tiain dari intrandi purgatorium S. Patricii. Episcopus vero petiit
summam quandam pecuniæ, quam ab intrantibus jure sibi deberi dice-
bat.” Acta Sanctorum Martii, vol, ii, p. 590.
+ In the old office of St. Patrick, printed by Colgan, the only allu-
sion to the purgatory is contained in the following lines:
"Hic est doctor benevolus
Hibernicorum apostolus,
Cui loca purgatoria
Ostendit Dei gratia."
7 $
154
CALDERON.
of two centuries its reputation continued to spread through
France, Italy, and Spain.
In the latter country, about the middle of the seven-
teenth century, the poet Calderon made St. Patrick's Pur-
gatory the subject of one of his religious dramas. At the
opening of this piece appears Egerio, king of Ireland,
“clothed with skins and very furious," (vestido de pieles,
muy furioso,) attended by his two daughters. Patrick and
a newly-converted Christian, named Ludovico Enio, are
shipwrecked on the Irish coast, and appear before the
impious king. Patrick tells the king his life, and preaches
to him the gospel of his Redeemer ; but the king answers
him with scoffs. Ludovico Enio, when questioned by the
impious monarch, informs him that he also was a native of
Ireland, from whence he had removed, while young, to
Perpignau, where he had indulged in every species of vice
and crime. He had subsequently entered the service of
the king of France, and had been employed in his wars
with the king of England. He soon returned to his old
career of crime, and having seduced a nun to rob the trea-
sury of her monastery and elope with him, he fled to
Valencia, where eventually he had sought support in his
vicious life by the prostitution of his mistress. This wretch
had been converted to Christianity, and was now returned
a penitent to his native land. One of the king's daughters
falls in love with him, and is converted. In the course of
the drama St. Patrick, horrified with the blasphemies of
king Egerio, prays for a divine manifestation to convert
his deluded countrymen, and two angels reveal to him the
fearful cavern. The mouth of the cavern is exhibited on
the stage : it is to be “the most horrible that can be con-
trived, and within it an aperture in the stage.” The
LUDOVICO INIO.
155
impious king is made to enter ; but, instead of passing
into purgatory, he falls through the aperture into the pit
of hell: “He sinks in 'with much noise, and flames
rise from below, and great cries are heard."* The fate
of king Egerio also converts his people; and subsequently
Ludovico Enio enters the cave, but with better fortune.
On his return be relates to the auditors what he had
seen: it is but an abridgment of the old legend. On first
emerging from darkness he came to the hall, where he was
visited by the twelve venerable men in white, garments,
and whence he was carried by the demons, and dragged
through the different regions of purgatory to the borders of
the infernal regions. There he came to “a river, which had
flowers of fire on its bank, and its current was of sulphur;
in it were marine monsters, 'hydras and serpents; it was
very broad, and over it was a bridge as narrow as a line,
and it was so slender and weak, that it did not appear to
me possible to pass without breaking it.”
“Y la que mas propriamente
Llaman infierno, que fue
Llevarme á un rio, que tiene
Flores de fuego en su márger,
Y de azufre es su corriente;
Monstruos marinos en el
Eran bidras y serpientes;
Era muy ancho, y tenia
Una tan estrecha puente,
Que era una linea no mas,
*“Aqui se ha descubierto la boca de una cueva, lo mas horrible
que se pueda imitar, y dentro della está un escotillon, y en poniéndose
en él Egerio, se hunde con mucho ruido, y suben llamas de abajo,
oyéndose muchas voces." Stage direction.
156
SPANISH BALLAD.
Y ella tan delgada y débil,
Que a mí no me pareció,
Que, sin quebrarla, pudiese
Pasarla."
He, however, reached the other side, and arrived at para-
dise, where everything was beautiful and joyful. And in
face of him he perceived a lofty city, with towers and
pinnacles ; "the gates were of gold, studded tastily with
diamonds, emeralds, topazes, rubies," and other precious
stones.
« Y a la vista descubrí
Una ciudad eminente,
De quien era el sol remate
A torres y chapiteles.
Las puertas eran de oro,
Tachonadas sútilmente
De diamantes, esmeraldas,
Topacios, rubíes, claveques."
The procession of saints then came out to meet him, as in
the legend of Owain. Ludovico rather ridiculously ends
by reciting a confused list of authorities, many of them
of comparatively modern date–in proof of the truth of the
legend of St. Patrick's Purgatory.
Among the curious collection of Spanish printed ballads
in the British Museum, there is one entitled “The Cave
of St. Patrick,' (La Cueva de San Patricio,) printed at
Madrid as late as 1764, to be hawked about the streets for
sale, as the broadside ballads used to be sold in England.
It is nothing more than the relation of Ludovico Enio,
taken verbally from the play of Calderon. But we find a still
more singular use made of the dramatic personage in
France, about the same period, in a little popular volume,
printed at Rouen, entitled 'Histoire de la Vie et du Pur-
{
SUPERSTITION IN FRANCE. .
157
gatoire de St. Patrice, archevesque et primat d'Hibernie,
avec plusieurs Oraisons; mises en François par le R. P.
François Bouillon, de l'Ordre de S. François, et Bachelier
en Théologie.' This little volume appears to have been
widely circulated during at least half a century; the first
censorial approbation attached to it is dated in 1701, while
another bears date 1742. It consists, first, of a life of St.
Patrick, in which all the most grossly superstitious parts
of the old legends relating to the saint are collected together.
This is followed by an account of the state of souls after
death, and more particularly, of purgatory, in which the
writer tells us, among many other similar stories, that “ at
the instant the soul is separated from the body it is carried
to one of the four following places: either to heaven, to
enjoy the glory of the happy, if it be found in a state of
grace; or to the flames of purgatory, if it has not made
full satisfaction to divine justice for the faults it has com-
mitted in this world; or to the limbus of little children, if
it has not been washed with the holy baptismal waters;
or, lastly, into the infernal fires, if it be found criminal
before the tribunal of divine justice. This visible world
which we inhabit is full and round like a sphere or ball, with
no part empty; the air itself is filled with bodies, although
they do not appear to our eyes, as appears by the sound
which touches our ears.
The lowest place of the
world is the centre of the earth, which is an indivisible
point in the middle of its breast, and in this imaginary
point is the abyss of hell; and the empyreal heaven, where
is the dwelling-place of the Divinity, and the dwelling of
the saints, is at the highest part of this round machine.
Purgatory is between heaven and hell, although
distant from the one and near to the other; for, so to speak,
.
158
LOUIS ENIUS.
it is neighbouring to and bordering upon those places of
darkness; yet it is between the two extremities. The
limbus of little children is also not very far distant. A
little higher there is the bosom of Abraham, where were
retired the souls of the holy patriarchs and prophets, and
all those who died in a state of grace in the time of the
natural and written laws, until the arrival of the Messiah
in the world, who was to transport them all to heaven, to
take possession of the glory which he had purchased for
them by his blood and by his death.” The worthy writer
then gives the history and discription of St. Patrick's
Purgatory, and of the ceremonies observed there, and the
visions seen, in the truth of every particle of which he
avows his entire belief, and supports it by the testimony
of the same confused list of authors (in general falsely
quoted,) which had previously been repeated on the stage
in the play of Calderon. The latter half of the book is
occupied with The Veritable Relation of the History of
Louis Enius,' (La Relation véritable de l'Histoire de Louis
Enius.)
The story of Calderon's dramatic personage is here spun
out to nearly seventy pages, with a multitude of additional
incidents, and the whole is avowed to be a true history
which had occurred in modern times. Louis Enius, while
an infant, quits his native country (Ireland) with his pa-
rents to settle at Toulouse, where he is left an orphan with
great fortune, which he squanders away in vice. To sup-
port himself in his extravagances he becomes a bandit,
and commits murder, theft, and every kind of violence.
In order to escape justice he enters the army, and gains
promotion and a certain degree of impunity in his evil
practices by his bravery; but being at last obliged to fly
SUPERSTITION IN FRANCE.
159
again from the pursuits of justice, he finds shelter in a
nunnery at Perpignan, where he seduces a nun (who was his
cousin,) robs the monastery, and flies with his accomplice
to Spain. His course of vice in the sequel follows very
nearly the story of his prototype in Calderon, till he is con-
verted from his evil courses by an extraordinary vision, and
finally goes to expiate his evil life in a visit to St. Patrick's
Purgatory. The description of what he saw there follows in
a long narrative, pretended to have been written by Louis
Enius himself, after his return. It is only the old stories
of Henry of Saltrey and Raymond de Perilhos newly
cooked up.
I have described this book chiefly to show the kind of
religious information which was spread among the lower
and middle classes of society in France by the Catholics, as
late as the last century. Two "doctors in theology of the
faculty of Paris," sign their names to an “approbation,
dated in 1742; in which they declare that they have read
through this mass of absurdity and falsehood, and that they
have found “nothing in it contrary to the faith or to mo-
rality,” (dans lequel nous n'avons rien trouvé de contraire
à la Foi et aux bonnes moeurs). It was, indeed, not more
than two or three years after the date just mentioned, that
pope Benedict XIV preached and published at Rome a
sermon in favour of St. Patrick's Purgatory. By such
doctrines and representations the popish system kept its
hold on the minds of the simple and ignorant people; and
the same policy which led the Catholic priesthood to con-
tinue them in this condition and to perpetuate their influ-
ence, made them oppose and persecute men of science,
such as Galileo, who were labouring to enlighten the world,
and whose experiments and discoveries naturally tended to
dispel the cloud of superstitious legend.
}
160
THC CAVE DEMOLISHED.
At home, however, this superstition met with a different
treatment, although the blind zeal of the Irish priesthood
rendered futile all attempts to destroy it. It appears, that
when the pilgrimage was revived, the catholics invented
several stories to account for its destruction by order of the
pope.
.
Some said that the miraculous vision had been dis-
continued because the people of Ireland had become so or-
thodox and so virtuous, that there was no further need of
any extraordinary means to deter them from vice; but that
when the heretics began to gain ground, after the separation
of the English church from Rome, the miracle was provi-
dentially revived, in order to be made a means of convincing
the new unbelievers. * Others said that the pope had only
ordered one part of the cave to be demolished. There were
some again, who said that the reason of its demolition was
that it had been discovered not to be the real place of the
Purgatory of St. Patrick, described in the ancient legends.
The annals of Ulster, under the year 1497, as quoted in
Richardson's 'Folly of Pilgrimages in Ireland,' states that
" the cave of St. Patrick's Purgatory, in Lough Derg, was
demolished in that year, on St. Patrick's Day, by the
guardian of Donegaul, and some persons in the deanery of
Logh Dirn, deputed by the bishop, by authority of the
pope. Every one, understanding from the History of the
Knight and other ancient books, that this was not the
purgatory which Patrick had from God, though every one
resorted to it.” It was perhaps on this pretence that the
site of the purgatory was, as it is said, moved to another
island in the lake, at a subsequent period, but it does not
appear to be known exactly at what period this removal
was effected.
In another respect, the character of the
Acta Sanctorum Martii, tom. ii, p. 599.
PATRICK'S PURGATORY REMOVED.
161
و
initiation was entirely changed: it had formerly been the
custom to admit people rarely, and with great difficulty,
but after its restoration the pilgrims were admitted in
crowds, and the fee, instead of being paid to the bishop,
was given to the guardian of the place. The original island
of the purgatory, on this change, was found to be too near
the shore ; and to hinder the possibility of pilgrims entering
by stealth, the site was moved to a smaller island at a
greater distance.
The writer whose work has just been
mentioned, the Rev. John Richardson, gives the following
account of the visit of a pious adventurer in the last cen-
tury, who began to make excavations in the larger island,
among the ruins of the old priory, in the hopes of finding
the entrance to the original cavern. " It is said that the
passages into purgatory was first found in this island; but
it being near the shore, and a bridge from the main land
into it, which gave the people free and ready access, this
passage into purgatory was stopped up and another opened
in a less island, about half a mile from the shore, by which
means the monks wisely gained two points, viz., the profit
of a ferry-boat for wafting the pilgrims over the lake, and
an opportunity of working further upon the imaginations
of the people, and making them believe that they were
really going into another world. It is now in 1727] said
that this passage is hid from them for unknown reasons,
but that in due time it will be discovered by some devout
pilgrim. This probably induced one Ludovicus Pyrrhus,
a native of Bretagne, in France, to try if he could
find it out. In order to this, about thirty-four years
ago, he came to Lough-Derg, and employed labourers
to dig and search for it throughout both these islands, the
neighbouring priests giving their assistance. He continued
1
162
THE PILGRIMAGE PROHIBITED.
two summers at this work, and after he had spent almost
all the money he brought with him, fell a trafficking, and
applied the profit to the same use. At last, as he was
searching among the rubbish of a dwelling-house, in the
largest island, he found a window with iron stanches ; Mr.
Art Mac Cullen, popish priest of the parish, Mr. Mark
Mac Grath, and Mr. James Maxwell, a protestant, who
gave me this account of Pyrrhus, being present.
There
happened to be a dark cavity under the window, which
made the purgatory-mongers at first sight believe that it
was the mouth of the passage ; and therefore they cried for
holy water to keep the spirits from breaking out of prison;
and the priest immediately left the island in a great fright,
as he pretended, and reported among the common people
that the way into purgatory was found out for certain, that
he saw it himself, and that it smelt strongly of brim-
stone. The rest of the papists who stayed behind were in
a great consternation : but Mr. Maxwell, not being so cre-
dulous, desired them to have a little patience, and they
would soon be convinced of their error; which accordingly
fell out; for after digging a little deeper they found it was
a cellar-window; whereupon Ludovicus Pyrrhus ceased
from searching any more, and returned to his native
country.”
We know that as early as the reign of Elizabeth, large
troops of pilgrims went to this pretended purgatory, so that
from time to time it appears to have become an object of
jealousy to the government. On the 13th of September,
1632, the lords justices of Ireland ordered the purga-
tory to be utterly broken down, defaced, and demo-
lished; and prohibited any convent to be kept there for
the time to come, or any person to go into the said
MODERN CONDITION,
163
island on a superstitious account.
In the second year
of the reign of Queen Anne, St. Patrick's Purgatory had
again become obnoxious to government; and an act of
parliament was passed to prohibit the resort to it, in which
it was provided, that “Whereas, the superstitions of popery
are greatly increased and upheld by the pretended sanctity
of places, especially of a place called St. Patrick's Purgatory,
in the county of Donegaul, and of wells, to which pilgrimages
are made by vast numbers at certain seasons, by which, not
only the peace of the public is greatly disturbed, but the
safety of the government also hazarded by the riotous and
unlawful assembling together of many thousands of papists
to the said wells and other places : be it further enacted,
that all such meetings and assemblies shall be deemed and
adjudged riots and unlawful assemblies, and punishable as
such, in all or any persons meeting at such places as is
aforesaid. And all sheriffs, justices of the peace, and other
magistrates, are hereby required to be diligent in putting .
the laws in force against all offenders in the above particu-
lars in due execution."
An account of the ceremonies observed at the initiation
of St. Patrick's Purgatory in the fifteenth century, will be
found in Colgan, and in the Acta Sanctorum' of the
Bollandists. These ceremonies are described as they
existed in the seventeenth century, in the Treatise of
Patrick's Purgatory, published by Dr. Jones, bishop of
Clogher, in 1647; and, as they were continued in practice
in the earlier part of the last century, in a work already
cited, entitled The Great Folly, Superstition, and
Idolatry of Pilgrimages in Ireland; especially of that to
St. Patrick's Purgatory,' published in 1727 by John
Richardson, rector of the parish of Belturbet, alias Annah.
164
ST. PATRICK'S PURGATORY.
The best account of the modern superstitious practices
observed in the pilgrimage to this far-famed spot is given
by Carleton, in his Traits and Stories of the Irish
Peasantry. It is not my object in the present essay to
enter into the details of the modern observances. They
appear to have no resemblance to the ancient ceremonies
described in the tract of Henry of Saltrey; the initiated
sees no vision; he is only subjected to a series of degrading
and demoralizing sufferings, the object of which is to keep
the Irish peasantry in ignorant subjection to the Catholic
priesthood. It is a disgrace to the Catholic church that
such a gross superstition has not been long suppressed.
It is said that, at the present dãy, the number of pilgrims
is so great during the summer months, that it is not un-
common to see as many as nine. Lundred or a thousand
on the island at once. " It is the head of the church of
Rome,” observes Mr. Barrow, in his Tour round Ireland,'
“ who ought to use his influence to abate a nuisance of
this kind, which confers no honour on the Catholic
religion; and, I believe, is not in accordance with the
Catholic ritual, but one of the mere tricks of monkish
priests to fatten on the credulity of the lowest, the most
distressed, and most ignorant, of the Catholic population.
But what is to be said of the proprietor who raises a
revenue of £200 or £300 a year by renting this spot?
Does he never consider, when he looks upon the wretched
objects that flock to this place from the extreme points of
the island, what pain and misery they undergo on their
long journey ; what sufferings they entail on their starving
families at home? How many of them actually perish on
the journey? If he does, I should think the income he
derives from such a source cannot afford him much grati.
ST. PATRICK'S PURGATORY.
165
fication.” To the kindness of the gentleman last quoted,
I am indebted for the use of the subjoined engraving,
exhibiting the purgatory island as seen from the border of
the lake ; it was diminished from a drawing by Lieutenant
Beechey, made in 1835.
ក
St. Patrick's Purgatory and Lough-Derg.
CHAPTER VIII.
Influence of these legends on the literature of the sixteenth century
Vision of Lazarus Scottisb poets : Dunbar and Sir David
Lindsay-Burlesques; Rabelais- Spanish ballads-English Ballads:
tbe dead man's song.
THE age of visions may be said to have ended with the
fifteenth century; but the influence of the popular notions
to which they had given rise, and of those on which they
were founded, continued long to be felt in certain classes
of literature, and even at the present day, in our own
country, it has not entirely ceased. The invention of
printing, in the first instance, did much towards spreading
this influence by multiplying copies and editions of the
older legends of Owain, Tundale, St. Brandan, &c. In
England several works appeared at the close of the fifteenth
and beginning of the sixteenth centuries which tended to
keep alive the belief in these grotesque though fearful pic-
tures of the world to come. Among these one of the most
remarkable was the English translation of the Pilgremage
of the Sowle’ of William de Deguilleville, printed by Caxton,
in 1483. In France, about the end of the century, ap-
peared a long poem, by a writer of the name of Damerval,
entitled “The great Devilry; which treats how Satan de-
clared to his master, Lucifer, of the evils which the
poor
worldly men do, according to their estates, vocations,
VISION OF LAZARUS.
167
or
trades, and merchandises, and how they draw them to
damnation by an infinity of wiles.'* This is a singular
book, full of grotesque conversation between Satan and
Lucifer, and appears to have passed through many edi-
tions. It is a general satire on the vices of the time, and
besides furnishing a vivid picture of the manners of the
age, affords the same kind of materials for the history of
the old popular notions concerning the demons as the
work of Francis Eximenès did for the angels.
Another very popular work, published in France at the
latter end of the fifteenth century, and almost immediately
translated into English, was the “ Kalendrier des Bergers,'
· Kalendar of Shepherdes,' which was reprinted fre-
quently in both languages during the first half of the six-
teenth century. It is a kind of perpetual almanac, con-
taining, besides the calendar, a number of very miscella-
neous articles in prose and verse. Among them is a de-
scription of the punishments of the seven deadly sins after
death, said to have been exhibited to Lazarus between his
death and resurrection. I have not met with this vision
of Lazarus in any form anterior to this publication, and
therefore suppose it to have been an invention of the time.
It is accompanied by a series of woodcuts, exhibiting the
punishment of the sinners of each several class, which in
some of the English editions are remarkably bold and
spirited. Lazarus beholds first the punishment of pride :
“First, sayde Lazarus, I have seene in hell wheeles right
La graunt diablerie: qui traicte comment Satban fait demon.
strance à son maistre Lucifer de tous les maulx que les povres mon.
dains font selon leurs estatz, vocations, mestiers, et marchandises, et
comment il les tire à dampnation par infinies cautelles.
168
VISION OF LAZARUS.
hie, set on an hyll, the which was to looke on in maner
of mylles, incessantly turning about by great impitiuosity,
roring and whirling, as it were thunder. And the wheeles
were fyxed full of hookes and crampions of iron and steele,
and on them were hanged and turned the proud men and
women for their pryde with their prynce, capitayne, and
maister, Lucifer.” Next comes envy: “Secondly, sayde
Lazarus, I have seene in hell a fludde frosen as yce,
wherin the envious men and women were plunged unto the
navill, and then sodainly came over them ryght cold and a
great wind, that greved and payned them ryght sore, and
when they would evite and eschew the wonderfull blastes
of the wynde, they plunged into the water with great
shoutes and cryes lamentable to heare.” Then anger :
Thirdly, sayd Lazarus, I have seene in hell a great cave,
tenebrous and obscure, full of tables lyke buchers' stalles,
or a great buchery, where as ireful men and women were
thorow pearced with trenchynge-knyves and sharpe glayves
and with long speares perced their bodyes, wherewith
the most horryble and fearefull buchers of hel hewed and
detrenched them with their glayves and knyves impite-
ously wythoute ceasing.” “Fourthly, sayd Lazarus, I have
seene in hel an horrible hall, darke and tenebrous, wherin
was a great multitude of serpents, bygge and small, where
as slouthfull men and women were tormented with bytings
and stingings of venemous wormes, the which perced
them through in divers parts of their bodies, wounding
them to the hart with inextinguible payne.” The fifth
crime was covetousness : “Fyftly, sayde Lazarus, I have
seene in the infernall partyes a great number of wyde
cauderons and ketels full of boylynge leade and oile, wyth
other hote metalles molten, in the whiche were plunged
VISION OF LAZARUS.
169
and dypped the covetyse men and women, for to fulfill
and replenish them of their insatiate covetise." The
sixth, gluttony: “The vi. payne, sayde Lazarus, that I have
sene in a vale a flodde foule and stynkinge at the brymme, in
the which was a table with towels right dyshonestly, where
as gluttons byn fedde with todes and other venemous
beasts, and had to drinke of the water of the same sayde
fludde.” And the seventh, incontinence: “The vii. payne,
sayde Lazarus, I have seen a feelde ful of depe welles re-
plenyshed with fyre and sulphre, whereout issued smoke
thycke and contagious, wherin all lecherous persons were
tormented incessauntly with devyls.” This was the order
of the sins in the old Romish scale. The whole concludes
with the colophon, “Thus endeth the vii. deadly sinnes,
figured eche by him selfe, lyke as Lazarus had seene in the
partes infernalles."
A little research would, without doubt, enable us to indi-
cate several other publications of the same class which ap-
peared about this period, but it is my intention to pass
slightly and rapidly over this part of the subject. I have
described the vision of Lazarus more particularly, because
in subsequent writers who indulge in such pictures, we
generally find the infernal punishments distributed accor-
ding to the seven sins, in place of the more numerous and
varied pains of the older visions. The Scottish poet
Dunbar, who flourished at the beginning of the sixteenth
century, has left us a poetical description of a dance of the
seven deidly synnis' amid the infernal fires, as they are
supposed to have been seen in a dream. - Pride came first,
tripping “throw skaldand fyre ;' then followed Ire and
his companions, cutting and slashing each other with swords
and knives :-
8
170
DUNBAR AND LINDSAY.
6
"Sum upoun uderl with brandis beft,2
Sum jagit utheris to the heft3
With knyvis tbat scherp cowd scheir."4
Next came Envy, followed by Covetousness, who led a band
of misers, usurers, &c. The description of the punish-
ment of these reminds us of the pictures drawn by the
pencil of Callot :-
"Out of tbair tbrottis thay schot on udder?
Hettó moltin gold, me thocht, a fudder,
As fyre-flawcht? maist ſervent;
Ay as tbay tumit8 thame of schot,
Feyndis fild tbame new up to the thrott
With gold of allkin prent."9
The other three sins were Idleness, Incontinence, and
Gluttony. We have seen on a former occasion (p. 49,)
that minstrels were excluded from the domains of Pluto:
the seven “synnis” had little music :
“ Na menstrallis playit to thame buto dowt,
For glemen thair wer haldin owt,
Be day and eik by nycht.”
Another Scottish poet, a little more modern, though partly
contemporary, Sir David Lindsay, has also left us a dream.
In his vision, a lady, who named herself Dame Remember-
ance, took him with her first to the centre of the earth :
" Down throw the eirth in middis of the center,
Or ever I wist, into the lawest hell:
And in that cairſul covell quhen we did enter,
Yowtingl2 and yowling we hard, with monie yell,
In fiamme of ſyre richt furious and ſell,
5 hot
9
lotber
(or swords
? struck with brands,
a stabbed otbers to the
hilt
6
a fother
7 wild-fire, or light-
ning
emptied
every kind of im-
pression (all kind
of coin)
10 without
& cut
8
11 cave
12 screaming
SIR DAVID LINDSAY.
171
Was cryand' mony cairſulcreature,
Blasphemand God, and waryand nature.”
Here they see popes and prelates, as well as secular princes,
with numbers of the clergy, which gives occasion for a bitter
invective against the corruptions and abuses in the church.
After observing all the different classes of sinners, and the
punishments to which they were subjected, the poet was
carried to a "country"
country a little above the pit of hell, but
still within the earth: it was purgatory :--
" A lytil above that dolorous doungeoun,
We enterit in ane cuntry full of cair,
Quhairt that we saw mony ane legioun
Greitand and gowlands with mony ruthfull rair :6
Qubat place is that,' quod I, ‘of blis sa bair ?'
Scbo? answerit and said, 'Purgatorie,
Quhilks purgis saulis or thay cum to glorie.”
A little above purgatory was a third place, where “mony
babbis war makand drery mone,” and where they were to
remain for ever in sorrow, because they had not been bap-
tized. Above this he saw a “vault,” which was the limbus
of the patriarchs and ancients. Then they passed through
the earth, the water, and the air, and through the nine
spheres, to heaven. The poet subsequently passed over
the different regions of the earth, and saw paradise in the
east, surrounded by lofty walls of fire :
“ This paradise of all plesour repleit,
Situate I saw to the Orient;
That glorious garth10 of every flouris did fleit,
The lustie lilleis, the rosis redolent,
Fresch bailsum12 ſrutes indeficient,
Baith herb and tree there growis ever grene,
Throw vertew of the temperate air serene."
9
11
I crying
9 replete, filled with
2 fullof care or sorrow
3
cursing
4 where
5 crying and howling
6 clamour, din
7 she
8 which
10 garden
11 Row
12 producing health
172
RABELAIS.
Early in this century there sprung up in France a sect
of scoffers, represented by Rabelais, true imitators of the
old school of Lucian. Rabelais and his imitators frequently
burlesques the existing popular notions concerning the in-
fernal regions. In the thirtieth chapter of the second book
of Pantagruel, we are told “how Epistemon, who had his
head cut off, was skilfully cured by Panurge, and of the
news he brought of the devils and of the damned." In
the hell of Epistemon, everything was turned upside down:
all the great kings and heroes of this world were employed in
low occupations. Alexander the Great gained his living by
mending old breeches; Xerxes sold mustard; Cyrus was a
cowherd; Eneas was a miller: Darius a cleaner of water-
closets; and Priam sold old clothes. The philosophers of
this world became great lords, and lived magnificently.
Among the imitations of Rabelais, most of them rare tracts
and not easily met with, occur as titles, The New Panurge,
with his navigation to the imaginary island, his recovering
his youth therein, with the journey of his spirit to the other
world;'* The very eloquent Pandarnassus,
transported into fairy-land by Oberon ;'&c.
But in spite of the influence of this class of writers, the
old popular superstitions kept their hold upon the minds of
the uneducated classes ; and down to a very recent period
they continued to be spread and encouraged by the Roman
Catholic priesthood in France, as we have seen in the in-
stance of St. Patrick's Purgatory. In Italy, I believe, they
are still taught in their grossest forms. This was also the
case in Spain, as long as the monks retained their influence.
who was
* Le nouveau Panurge, avec sa nauigation en lisle imaginaire, son
rajeunissement en ycelle, et le voyage que fait son esperit en l'aultre
monde; ensemble une exacte obseruation des merueilles par luy
veues. 12°, La Rochelle, Michel Gaillard. Without date.
SPANISH BALLADS.
173
Among the Spanish ballads in the British Museum, there
are several which treat of the punishments of purgatory.
One of these is entitled, “Stanzas pitiful, devout, and con-
templative, in which are considered the great torments,
pains, and troubles which are suffered by the blessed souls
in the pains of purgatory."* Another is called ' A Spi-
ritual Romance, in which are declared the great pains
which the souls suffer in purgatory.'* And a third bears
the title of a Memorial, presented with lamentable groans
and tender sighs by the blessed and afflicted souls of pur-
gatory, to Christian piety and Catholic devotion, to kindle
the fervent affection which they have always shown to the
burning spouses of Christ.'I This latter ballad appears
to have been intended to incite the charity of the living to
contribute liberally towards saying masses for the dead :
in the following lines the writer tells us how the poor
souls are burning in the flames, some in pits of fire,
others in fiery lakes, and others placed in rivers con-
gealed with frost and ice, others again torn to pieces by
serpents and wild beasts, and others tormented with the
stench of “horrible smoke :”.
Coplas bastimosas, devotas, y contemplativas, en que se ponde-
ran los grandes tormentos, dolores, y trabajos, que estàn padeciendo
las animas benditas en penas del Purgatorio,' &c. Valencia, without
date, but apparently printed towards the middle of the eighteenth cen-
tury.
+ Romance espiritual, donde se refieren las muchas penas que pa-
decen las almas en el Purgatorio,' &c. Valencia, without date, but
contemporary with the preceding.
I'Memorial, que con lamentables sollozos y tiernos gemidos pre-
sentan las benitas y afligidas almas del Purgatorio ante la piedad Chris.
tiana y Catbolica devocion, para encenderlos en el lervoroso afecto,
que han tenido siempre à las abrasadas esposas de Cbristo.' By Juan
de Olmedo, Madrid, 1761.
174
FORD THE DRAMATIST.
« Consideramos à todas
en las llamas abrasando:
en simas de fuego unas;
otras en fuegos y lagos ;
y otras metidas en rios
de frio y bielo quajado :
à otras sierpes y fieras
las estan despedazando;
borroroso humo à otras
a tormentan el olfato."
In England, after the Reformation, purgatory was ba-
nished; but in other respects the old popular belief long
retained a certain degree of hold on people's minds. Ford
the dramatist, at the end of the sixteenth century, intro-
duces on the stage one of his characters describing the
place where
« Dwell many thousand thousand sundry sorts
Of never-dying deaths; there damned souls
Roar without pity; there are gluttons fed
With toads and adders; there is burning oil
Pour'd down the drunkard's throat; the usurer
Is forced to sup whole draughts of molten gold;
There is the murderer for ever stabb’d,
Yet can be never die; there lies the wanton
On racks of burning steel, whilst in his soul
He feels tbe torment of his raging lust.”
It is true that this description is put into the mouth of a
friar. But it appears that ballads, not very dissimilar in
their style to the Spanish ballads just mentioned, continued
to circulate in England as late as the seventeenth century,
and perhaps even to a more recent period. One of the
most remarkable of these productions is a black-letter
broadside, entitled “The Dead Man's Song, whose dwelling
was neere unto Bassings Hall, in London,' of which
several copies are preserved, and which has been reprinted
THE DEAD MAN'S SONG:
175
in Ritson's Ancient Songs.' The hero of this ballad,
like those of the old purgatory legends, fell into a trance,
and appeared to be dead during the his vision. When he
became insensible to the world, he found himself in a green
field, covered with flowers, where a “faire young man
addressed him, and bade him sit beside him on “a goodly
pleasant banke.” During the vision they did not quit
this spot:
6. With branches tben of lillies white
Mine eyes there wiped be;
When this was done he bad me look
What I ſarre off could see.
I looked up, and loe at last
I did a city see,
So faire a thing did never man
Behold with mortall eye.
Of diamonds, pearles, and precious stones,
It seemd the walls were made;
The houses all with beaten goid
Were til'd and overlaid.
More brighter than the morning sun
The light thereof did show,
And every creature in the same
Like crowned kings did goe.
The fields about this city faire
Were all with roses set,
Gilly-flowers and carnations faire,
Which canker could not frete
And from these fields there did proceed
Tbe sweet'st and pleasant'st smell
That ever living creature felt,
The scent did so excell."
In this city was “musick, mirth, and melody;" and
he was told that it was heaven. He was then made to turn
his head and look in the opposite direction, where he saw
176
THE DEAD MAN'S SONG.
the punishments of the wicked, which resemble very
closely those of the older legends.
« With that I saw a cole-blacke den,
All tand with soot and smoake,
Where stinking brimstone burning was,
Which made me like to choake.
An ugly creature there I saw,
Whose face with knives was slasht,
And in a caldron of poysond filth
His ugly corps were washt.
About bis necke were fiery ruffes,
That flam'd on every side;
I askt, and lo the young man said,
That he was damn'd for pride."
Others he saw torn by vipers. The covetuous were
placed in “burning boats,” and ladles full of melted gold
were poured down their throats. Gluttons were fed with
toads. The incontinent were tormented on burning beds.
Murderers were continually stabbed, and compelled to
drink corrupt blood. Swearers and liars were hung up
by the tongues.
" And therewithall, from ugly hell,
Such sbriekes and cryes I heard,
As though some greater griefe and plague
Had vext them afterward.
So that my soul was sore afraid,
Such terrour on me fell:
Away then went the young man quite,
And bad me not farewell.
Wherefore unto my body straight
My spirit return'd againe,
And lively blood did afterwards
Stretch forth in every veine."
APPENDIX
OF
ILLUSTRATIVE PIECES,
ICELANDIC VISION.
[Referred to at p. 6. Extracted from the Edda of Sæmundr, compiled
in the eleventh century. It contains a remarkable mixture of ideas taken
from the ancient mythology of the north. The gygiars were infernal
nympbs; there was supposed to be a sun to the under world as well as to
the upper. The seven lower worlds, the sun's hart or stag, the seven
niilia sonu,' the feeding upon eartb or dust, Fegiarn the prince of the
sbades, are all taken from the same source.]
SOLAR Liob.
SONG OF THE SUN.
身 ​*
A Norna stóli
sat ek pív daga;
baban var ek á hest hafinn;
Gyógiar sól
er skein grimmliga
or sky'-drupnis sky'iom.
In the Norni's seat
sat I nine days;
thence I was carried on a horse ;
the sun of the Gygiars
sbone grimly
out of the apertures of the clouds
Utan ok innan
þóttumz ek alla fara
sigr heima sië;
uppi ok niþri
leitabi ek æþra vegar,
bvar mer væri greibastar götur.
Without and within
I seemed to go through all
the seven lower worlds;
above and below
sought I a better way, (journey.
where I might have a more agreeable
8 $
178
ICELANDIC VISION.
Frá þvì er at segia
hvat ek fyrst um sá,
þá ek var í kvöl-heima kominn;
suiþnir fuglar,
er sálir voru,
flugu sua margir sem my'.
I must relate
what I first saw,
[torment
when I was come into the places of
scorched birds,
which were souls,
fled numerous as flies.
[ful;
Vestan sá ek fliúga
vonar dreka,
ok fella glæ-valls götu ;
vængi þeir skóku,
sua víþa mer þótti
springa haubur ek himinn.
From the west saw I fly
the dragons of expectation,
and open the way of the fire-power-
they beat their wings,
so that every where it appeared to me
that earth and heaven burst.
Sólar-hiört
leit ek sunnan fura,
hann tey'mdu tueir saman:
fætur hans
stó þu folldu á,
enn tóku horn til bimins.
The sun's bart
I saw go from the south,
him led two together :
his feet
stood on the ground,
and his horns touched beaven,
Norban sa ek riba
nipia sonu,
ok váru siö saman;
hornum fullum
drukku þeir inn hreina miöp
ur brunni baug-regins
From the north saw I ride
the people's sons,
and they were seven together ;
witb full horns
they drunk the pure mead
from the fountain of heaven's lord.
Vindr þagbi,
vautn staubuabi;
þá heyrpa ek grimmligan gny :
sínum mönnum
suipvísar konur
mólu molld til matar.
The wind became quiet,
the waters ceased to flow;
then beard I a fearful sound :
for their busbands
shameless women
ground earth to food.
Drey'rga steina
þær hinar daukkvu konur
dróv daprliga;
Bloody stones
those dark women
dragged sorrowfully;
179
their bleeding bearts bung
out of their breasts,
weary with much grief.
Many men saw I
wounded go
in the ways strewed with hot cinders;
their faces
seemed to me all to be
red with smoking blood.
Many men saw I
go on the ground [Lord's meal;
who had been unable to obtain the
heathen stars
stood over their heads,
painted with fearful characters.
Those men saw I
who cherish much
envy at others' fortune;
bloody runes
were on their breasts
marked painfully.
Men saw I tbere
many, without joy,
who all wandered pathless;
that he purchases for bimself,
who of this world
is infatuated with the rices.
ICELANDIC VISION,
blóbug hiörtu hengu þeim
fyri briósti utan
mædd viþ miklom trega.
Margan mann sá ek
meiddan fara
á þeim glæddu gautum;
andlit þeirra
bottu mer anll vera
ry'giar blóbi ropin,
Marga menn sá ek
moldar gengna
þá er ei máttu þiónustu ná;
beibnar stiörnur
stópu yfir baufpi þeim,
fáþar feikn.stöfum.
Menn sá ek þá
er miög ala
auſund um annars bagi;
blóþgar rúnir
váru á briosti þeim
merktar meinliga
Menn sá ek þar
marga ú-legna,
þeir vóro allir villir vega;
þat kaupir sa,
er þessa heims
apaz at ú-beillum.
Menn sá ek þá,
er mörgum lutum
væltu um annars eign;
flockom þeir fóru
til Fegiarns borgar,
ok haufþu byrþar af bly'i,
Those men saw I,
who in many ways
laid their hands on other's properts s
they went in flocks
to Fegiarn's (Satan's) city,
and bad burtbens of lead.
180
ICELANDIC VISION.
Menn sá ek þá,
er margan haufbu
fe ok fiörvi rænt;
brióst i gegnum
rendu braugnum þeim
öflugir eitr-dreker.
Those men saw I,
who many had
deprived of money and life;
through their breasts
suddenly pierced
strong venomous dragons.
Men sá ek'þá,
er minst villdu
halda belga daga;
bendur þeirra
váru á heitum steinum
negldar naudliga.
Those men saw I,
who would not
keep holy days;
their hands
were on hot stones
nailed tight.
Menn sá ek þá,
er af miki-læti
virduz vonum framar;
klæþi þeirra
váru ky'miliga
elldi um-slegin.
Tbose men saw I,
who in much pride
magnified themselves too much ;
their garments
were in derision
with fire surrounded.
Menn sá ek þá
er margt bauſbu
orþ á annan logit:
heliar hrafnar
or baufbi þeim
sárliga siónir slitu."
Those men saw I,
wbo had many
words against another lied :
bell's ravens
out of their heads
cruelly tore their eyes.
Allar ógnir
fær þú eigi vitat
þær sem bel-gengnir hafa.
Sætar syndir
verba at sárum bótum;
æ koma mein eptir munub.
All the horrors
you cannot know
which the hell-goers have.
Sweet sins
go to cruel recompenses ;
ever cometh moan after pleasure.
Men sá ek þá,
er margt baufþu
gefit ad Gubs lögum;
Those men saw I
who much had
given according to God's laws;
ICELANDIC VISION.
181
breinir kyndlar
váru yfir baufbi þeim
brendir biurtliga.
Menn sá ek þá,
er af miklum hug
veittu fá-tækum frama;
lásu englar
helgar bækur
yfir baufbi þeim.
Menn sá ek þá,
er miök haufþu
húngri farit baurund;
englar Gubs
lutu aullum þeim ;
þat er ædzta unad.
Men sá ek þá,
er móbur baufþu
látiþ mat í munn;
huílur þeirra váru
á bimin-geislum
hafþar hagliga.
Helgar meyiar
bauſbu breinliga
sál af syndum þuegit,
manna þeirra
er á mörgum degi
pina siálfa sik.
...
Hávar reibar
sá ek meb bimnum fara,
þær eiga götur til Gubs ;
menn þeim sty'ra
er myrjir eru
allz for eingar sakir.
clear candles
were over their heads
burning brightly.
Those men saw I,
who magnanimously
improved the condition of the poor;
angels read
the holy books
over their heads.
Those men saw I,
who bad much
their body lean with fasting;
God's angels
bowed before all these;
that is the greatest pleasure.
Those men saw I,
who to their mother had
put food in the mouth;
their resting places were
in the beams of beaven
placed agreeably.
Holy virgins
bad purely
washed the soul of sins,
of those men
who many a day
punish tbemselves.
Lofty cars
I saw go midst heaven,
which bad the roads to God;
men guide them
who were slain
entirely without fault.
182
ICELANDIC VISION.
Hinn máttki Fabir,
mesti Sonr,
Heilagr andi bimins,
þik biþr ek skilia,
er skapat hefir,
oss alla eymdum frá !
O mighty Father,
most great Son,
Holy Ghost of heaven,
I pray thee to save
(who didst create)
us all from miseries!
AN EARLY BURLESQUE,
[Referred to at p. 23. It is taken from a manuscript in the public
library of the University of Cambridge, Gg. V, 35. Since I copied it for
the present Essay, it has been printed in the “ Altdeutsche Blätter,' vol. i,
p. 390, and by Grimm and Schmeller, Lateinische Gedichte,' p. 335.
Heriger was archbisbop of Mentz from 912 to 926. In the description of
this song, I observe that I have called Heriger prefect, instead of arch-
bishop, having quoted by memory, and read præfectus instead of antistes.]
Heriger, urbis
Maguntiacensis
antistes, quendam
vidit propbetam,
qui ad infernum
se dixit raptum.
Heriger, of the city
of Mentz
archbishop, saw
a certain prophet,
who said that he
had been rapt to hell.
Inde cum multas
referret causas,
When he bad related
many things of it,
he added that
subjunxit totum
esse infernum
accinctum densis
undique silvis.
all bell was
surrounded on every side
with thick woods.
Heriger illi
Heriger to him
smiling answered,
“I will my swineherd
ridens respondit,
“Meum subulcum
illuc ad pastum
volo cum macris
mittere porcis.”
thither to pasture
send with
my lean pigs."
184
EARLY BURLESQUE.
Vir ait falsus,
" Fui translatus
in templum cæli,
Cbristumque vidi
lætum sedentem
et comedentem.
Suys the false man,
"I was carried thence
to the temple of heaven,
and saw Christ
sitting in joy
and eating.
Jobannes Baptista
erat pincerna,
atque præclari
pocula vini
porrexit cunctis
vocatis sanctis.'
John the Baptist
was the butler,
and offered
cups of excellent wine
to all the saints
who were invited."*
Heriger ait,
« Prudenter egit
Christus, Johannem
ponens pincernam,
quoniam vinum
non bibit unquam.
Heriger said,
« Christ acted
prudently, in making
John his butler,
since he never
drank wine.
Mendax probaris,
cum Petrum dicis
illuc magistrum
esse cocorum,
est quia summi
janitor cæli.
You prove yourself a liar,
when you say that Peter
is there master
of the cooks,
because be is the porter
of high heaven.
In wbat honour
Honore quali
te Deus cæli
1
babuit ibi ?
ubi sedisti ?
volo ut narres
quid manducasses."
did God of heaven
have thee there?
where didst thou sit?
I desire you tell me
what you eat."
* A stanza is evidently lost here, in which it was stated that St. Peter
was master of tbe cooks.
EARLY BURLESQUE.
185
Respondit homo,
" Angulo uno
partem pulmonis
furubar cocis :
hoc manducavi,
atque recessi.”
The man answered,
« In one corner
part of a liver
I stole from the cooks:
this I eat,
and then retired.”
Heriger illum
jussit ad palum
loris ligari,
scopisque cædi,
sermone duro
hunc arguendo:
Heriger ordered
him to be bound
with thongs to u stake,
and to be beaten with rods,
with hard speech
charging bim :
" If thee Christ
" Si te ad suum
invitet pastum
Christus, ut secum
capias cibum,
cave ne furtum
facias [iterum].”
to bis meal
invite, with bim
to take food,
take care not to commit
theft again."
1
ANGLO-SAXON DESCRIPTION OF PARADISE.
[From the metrical version of the Latin poem de Phænice ascribed to
Lactantius, in the Exeter Book, p. 197, ed. Thorpe. It is referred to at
p. 26 of the present volume. This poem is at least as old as the earlier
part of the eleventh century, and probably more ancient.]
Hæbbe ic ge-frugnen,
þætte is feor beonan
east-dælum on
æpelast londa,
firum ge-fræge;
Nis se foldan sceat
oler middan-geard
mongum ge-fere
folc-agendra;
ac be afyrred is,
burb meotudes meant
mán-fremmendum.
Wlitig is se wong eall,
wynnum ge-blissad,
mid þam fægrestum
foldan stencum:
ænlic is bæt iglond,
æþele se wyrta,
nodig, meahtum spedig,
se pa moldan ge-sette.
Hær bið oft open
eadgum to-geanes,
onbliden (hleopra wyn!)
heofon-ríces duri.
I have beard tell,
that there is far bence
in eastern parts
a land most noble,
amongst men renowned.
That tract of earth is not
over mid-earth
fellow to many
peopled lands;
but it is withdrawn
through the creator's might
from wicked doers.
Beauteous is all the plain,
with delights blessed,
with the sweetest
of earth's odours:
unique is that island,
noble the maker,
lofty, in powers abounding,
who the land founded.
There is oft open
towards the happy,
unclosed, (delight of sounils !)
heaven-kingdom's door.
ANGLO-SAXON PARADISE.
187
þæt is wynsum wong,
wealdas grene,
rume under roderum;
ne mæg þær ren ne snaw,
ne forstes fnæst,
ne fyres blæst,
ne bægles bryre,
ne brimes dryre,
ne sunnan hætu,
ne sin caldu,
ne wearm weder
ne winter-scur,
wihte ge-wyrdan;
ac se wong seomad
eadig and onsund.
Is þæt æbele lond
blostmum ge-blowen:
beorgas þær ne muntas
steape ne stondað,
ne stán-clifu
heah blifiar,
swa her mid us;
ne dene ne dalu,
ne dun-scrafu,
hlæwas ne blincas ;
ne þær hleonad 60
unsmedes wiht,
ac se æbela feld
wridað under wolcnum
wynnum ge-blowen.
Is þæt torhte lond
twellum berra
folde ſædm-rimes,
(swa us ge-freogun gleawe,
witgan þurh wisdom
on ge-writum cyþað,)
bonne ænig þara beorga
That is a pleasant plain,
green wolds,
spacious under heaven;
there may not rain nor snow,
nor rage of frost,
nor fire's blast,
nor fall of bail,
nor descent of rime,
nor heat of sun,
nor perpetual cold,
nor warm weather,
nor winter shower,
aught injure;
but the plain rests
happy and bealthful.
That noble land is
with blossoms flowered :
nor hills nor mountains there
stand steep,
nor stony cliff's
tower high,
as here with us;
nor dells nor dales,
nor mountain-caves,
risings nor billy chains;
nor thereon rests
aught unsmooth,
but the noble field
flourishes under the skies
with delights blooming.
That glorious land is
bigher by twelve
fold of fathom nieasure,
(as us the skilful have informed,
sages through wisdom
in writings show,)
than any of those hills
188
ANGLO-SAXON PARADISE.
tbat brightly here with us
tower high,
under the stars of heaven.
Serene is the glorious plain,
the sunny bower glitters,
the woody holt, joyously ;
the fruits fall not,
the bright products,
but the trees ever
stand green,
be her beorh te mid us
bea blifað,
under beofon-tunglum.
Smylte is se sige-wong,
sun-bearo lixed,
wudu-bolt, wynlic;
wæstmas ne dreosao,
beorhte blede,
ac ba beamas á
grene stonday,
swa bim God bibead;
wintres and sumeres
wudu bið ge-lice
bledum ge-hongen,
næfre brosnia
leaf under lyfte,
ne bim lig scebes,
æfre to ealdre,
ær þon edwenden
worulde ge-weorde.
Şwa iu wætres þrym
valne middan-geard,
mere-flod beahte
eorban ymb-bwyrft,
ba se æbela wong
æghwæs onsund
wið yð-fare
ge-healden stod,
hreora wæga,
eadig, unwemme,
þurb est Godes:
bidet swa ge-blowen,
oð bæles cyme
Dryhtnes domes;
bonne dead-ræced,
hæleba heolstor-cofan,
onbliden weorþað.
as tbem God hath commanded;
in winter and in summer
the forest is alike
hung with fruits,
never fade
the leaves in air,
nor will flame them injure,
ever througbout ages,
ere that an end
to the world shall be.
What time of old the water's mass
all mid-earth,
the sea-flood decked
the earth's circumference,
then the noble plain
in all ways secure
against the billowy course
stood preserved,
of the rough waves,
happy, inviolate,
through God's favour :
it shall abide thus blooming,
until the coming of the fire
of the Lord's doom;
when the death-houses,
men's dark chambers,
shall be opened.
ANGLO-SAXON PARADISE.
189
Nis þæl on þam londe
lað ge-niðla,
ne wop de wracu,
wea-tacen nan,
yldu ne yrm/11,
ne se enga dead,
ne liſes lyre,
ne lapes cyme,
ne synn ne sacui,
ne sar wracu,
ne wædle ge-win,
ne velan onsyn,
ne sorg ne slæp,
ne swar leger,
ne winter ge-weorp,
ne wedra ge-bregd
breob under beofonum,
ne se bearda forst
caldum cyle-gicelum
cnyseð ænigne.
þær ne hægl ne hrim
breosað to foldan,
ne windig wolcen,
ne þær water fealleß
lyfte ge-bysgad,
ac þær lagu-streamas
wundrum wrætlice,
wyllan onspringað
fægrum fold-wylmum.
Foldan leccat
water wyosumu
of þæs wuda midle;
ba mon ba ge-liwam
of þære moldan tyrf
brin-cald brecat,
bearo ealne geond-larað
þragum þrymlice.
There is not in tbat land
bateful enmity,
nor wail nor vengeance,
evil-token none,
old age nor misery,
nor the narrow death,
nor loss of liſe,
nor coming of enemy,
nor sin nor strife,
nor painful exile,
nor poor man's toil,
nor desire of wealth,
nor care nor sleep,
nor grievous sickness,
nor winter's darts,
nor dread of tempests
rough under heaven,
nor the bard frost
with cold chill icicles
striketb any.
There nor hail nor rime
on the land descend,
nor windy cloud,
nor there water falls
agitated in air,
but there liquid streams
wonderously curious,
wells spring forth
with fair hubblings from earth ;
o'er tbe soil glide
pleasant waters
from the middle of the wood ;
there each month
from the turf of earth
sea-cold they burst,
all the grove pervade
at times abundantly.
190
ANGLO-SAXON PARADISE.
Is þæt þeodnes ge-bod,
þætte twelf-sibum
þæt tir-fæste lond
geond-lace
lagu-floda-wyno.
Sindon þa bearwas
bledum ge-hongene,
wlítigum wæstmum ;
þær no waniað ó
halge under beofonum
holtes frætwe,
ne feallað þær on foldan
ſealwe blostman,
wudu-beama wlite;
ac þær wrætlice
on þam treowum symle
telgan ge-bladene,
ofett edniwe,
in ealle tid
on þam græs-wonge
grene stondab,
ge-broden hyhtlice
haliges meahtum,
beorhtast bearwa!
No ge-brocen weorber
holt on biwe ;
þær se halga stenc
wunab geond wyn-lond.
þæt onwended ne bið
æfre to ealdre,
ær þon endige
frod fyrn ge-weord
se bit on frymbe ge-scop.
It is God's behest,
that twelve times
the glorious land
sports over
the joy of water-floods.
The groves are
with produce hung,
with beauteous fruits ;
there fade not
boly under heaven
the wood's ornaments,
nor fall there on earth
the fallow blossoms,
beauty of forest-trees,
but tbere wondrously
on the trees ever
tbe laden branches,
tbe fruit renovated,
at all times
on tbe grassy plain
stand green,
gloriously adorned
through the might of the holy one,
brightest of groves !
Not broken is
the wood in aspect:
there a boly fragrance
rests o'er the pleasant land.
That sball not be changed
for ever throughout ages,
until sball end
his wise work of yore
he who created it at the beginning.
GERMAN BALLAD ON PARADISE.
[Trunslated from "Ballades et Chants Populaires (Anciens et
Modernes) de l'Allemagne, Traduction nouvelle, par Seb. Albin."
The lady who, as I understand, has published the volume under this
pseudonyme, has not indicated her sources for the older popular ballads,
so that I have not been able to refer to the original, and merely translate
from the French. I give this ballad as an excellent example how the
old popular notions under the Roman Catholics were constantly run-
ning into burlesque.]
After the cross and sufferings, the pleasures of heaven will come to
console us. Therefore let us sing of heavenly things, of wbich each
of us will taste after he has divested bimself of the old Adam.
We lead a life of angels, and we are at the same time very gay; we
dance and we leap, we gambol and we sing. St. Peter looks at in
beaven and plays on the fiddle to us.
John lets loose a little sheep, Herod the butcher watches it. Roasted
pigeons, believe me, fly into the open mouth. He who pays no atten-
.
tion to them is but an idler.
St. Luke kills his ox without reflection and without respect. The
wine does not cost a fartbing in beaven's cellar; the angels make
loaves and biscuits at ever command.
Vegetables of every kind grow in the garden of heaven; peas and
carrots, they grow spontaneously ; the asparagus is as large as one's
leg, and the artichokes are of the size of people's heads.
Good apples, good pears, good grapes, the gardener of heaven lets
you gather them all. Wilt thou have kids, wilt thou have hares ?
They come running to the kitchen. Come, sharpen thy knife.
If it be fast-day, the fishes come swimming. St. Peter runs with
bis nets and his bait, and he begins fisbing to please your palate,
192
GERMAN BALLAD.
Wilt thou bave carp, trout, or pike? good cod or fresh sprals?
Wilt thou have them cooked on the gridiron on which St. Laurence
suffered martyrdom ? St. Martha is the cook, and St. Urban the cup-
bearer.
No music on earth can be compared with ours; the eleven tbousand
virgins dance, and St. Ursula looks on and laughs; the festivity Insts
till late in the night.
Cecilia causes a little song without equal to be sung; angelic voices
awake the senses, and when we think that all is finisbed, it begins
again.
FINIS,
Printed by C. and J. Adlard, Bartholomew Close.
UNIVERSITY OF MICHIGAN
3 9015 00419 1618
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