“Hast never heard of Saint Cuthbert?”
“No, sir; can’t say as ever I has.”
“John! John! John! But that wondrous, that ‘mutable and unreasonable saint’ dwelt yonder, nor after death did he rest, John, but was seen by many in divers places and at divers times in this kingdom of Britain the Great! Have you never heard the legend that he sailed down the Tweed in a huge stone coffin?”
“Ha! ha! I can’t quite swallow that, sir.”
“That his figure may even until this day be seen, that—
“‘On a rock by Lindisfarne
Saint Cuthbert sits and toils to frame
The sea-born beads that bear his name.
Such tales had Whitby’s fishers told,
And said they might his shape behold,
And hear his anvil sound:
A deadened clang—a huge dim form
Seen but, and heard, when gathering storm
And night were closing round.’”
“It makes me a kind of eerie, sir, to hear you talk like that.”
“I can’t help it, John; the poetry of the Great Wizard of the North seems still to hang around these shores. I hear it in the leaves that whisper to the winds, in the wild scream of the sea-birds, and in the surf that comes murmuring across that stretch of sand, or goes hissing round the weed-clad rocks.
“But, John, you’ve heard of Grace Darling?”
“Ah! there I do feel at home.”