A low sweet psalm, that grieved within
In mournful memory of the sin![603]
The following passage, from Howell’s Parley of Beasts,
furnishes a similar legend of the piety of Bees. Bee speaks:
“Know, sir, that we have also a religion as well as you, and so exact a government among us here; our hummings you speak of are as so many hymns to the Great God of Nature; and there is a miraculous example in Cæsarius Cisterniensis, of some of the Holy Eucharist being let fall in a meadow by a priest, as he was returning from visiting a sick body; a swarm of Bees hard-by took It up, and in a solemn kind of procession carried It to their hive, and their erected an altar of the purest wax for it, where it was found in that form, and untouched.”[604]
Butler, quoting Thomas Bozius, tells us the following:
“Certaine theeves (thieves) having stolen the silver boxe wherein the wafer-Gods vse to lie, and finding one of them there being loath, belike, that he should lie abroad all night, did not cast him away, but laid him under a hive: whom the Bees acknowledging advanced to a high roome in the hive, and there insteade of his silver boxe made him another of the whitest wax: and when they had so done, in worshippe of him, and set howres they sang most sweetly beyond all measure about it: yea the owner of them took them at it at midnight with a light and al. Wherewith the bishop being made acquainted, came thither with many others: and lifting vp the hive he sawe there neere the top a most fine boxe, wherein the host was laid, and the quires of Bees singing about it, and keeping watch in the night, as monkes do in their cloisters. The bishop therefore taking the host, carried it with the greater honour into the church: whether many resorting were cured of innumerable diseases.”[605]
Another legend, from the School of the Eucharist, is as follows:
“A peasant swayed by a covetous mind, being communicated on Easter-Day, received the Host in his mouth, and afterwards laid it among his bees, believing that all the Bees of the neighborhood would come thither to work their wax and honey. This covetous, impious wretch was not wholly disappointed of his hopes; for all his neighbors’ Bees came indeed to his hives, but not to make honey, but to render there the honours due to the Creator. The issue of their
arrival was that they melodiously sang to Him songs of praise as they were able; after that they built a little church with their wax from the foundations to the roof, divided into three rooms, sustained by pillars, with their bases and chapiters. They had there also an Altar, upon which they had laid the precious Body of our Lord, and flew round about it, continuing their musick. The peasant … coming nigh that hive where he had put the H. Sacrament, the Bees issued out furiously by troops, and surrounding him on all sides, revenged the irreverence done to their Creator, and stung him so severely that they left him in a sad case. This punishment made this miserable wretch come to himself, who, acknowledging his error, went to find out the parish priest to confess his fault to him.…” etc.[606]