[195] Dr. Rock’s “Church of our Fathers,” iii. 424.
[196] “Vita S. Thomæ apud Willebald,” folio Stephani, ed. Giles, i. 312.
[197] The lily of the valley was another Canterbury flower. It is still plentiful in the gardens in the precincts of the cathedral.
[198] The veneration of the times was concentrated upon the blessed head which suffered the stroke of martyrdom; it was exhibited at the shrine and kissed by the pilgrims; there was an abbey in Derbyshire dedicated to the Beauchef (beautiful head), and still called Beauchief Abbey.
[199] The late T. Caldecot, Esq., of Dartford, possessed one of these.
[200] A very beautiful little pilgrim sign of lead found at Winchester is engraved in the “Journal of the British Archæological Association,” No. 32, p. 363.
[201] Dr. Rock’s “Church of our Fathers,” vol. iii. p. 430.
[202] Fosbroke has fallen into the error of calling this a burden bound to the pilgrim’s back with a list: it is the bourdon, the pilgrim’s staff, round which a list, a long narrow strip of cloth, was wound cross-wise. We do not elsewhere meet with this list round the staff, and it does not appear what was its use or meaning. We may call to mind the list wound cross-wise round a barber’s pole, and imagine that this list was attached to the pilgrim’s staff for use, or we may remember that a vexillum, or banner, is attached to a bishop’s staff, and that a long, narrow riband is often affixed to the cross-headed staff which is placed in our Saviour’s hand in mediæval representations of the Resurrection. The staff in our cut, p. 163, looks as if it might have such a list wound round it.
[203] Fosbrooke, and Wright, and Dr. Rock, all understand this to be a bowl. Was it a bottle to carry drink, shaped something like a gourd, such as we not unfrequently find hung on the hook of a shepherd’s staff in pictures of the annunciation to the shepherds, and such as the pilgrim from Erasmus’s “Praise of Folly,” bears on his back?
[204] Sinai.