St. Cuthbert was born in England; St. Dunstan was an Englishman. Of the latter a number of humorous legends were current among the people, and were preserved by religious poets; he and the devil played on each other numberless tricks in which, as behoves, the devil had the worst; these adventures made the subject of amusing pictures in many manuscripts. A woman, of beautiful face and figure, calls upon the saint, who is clear-sighted enough to recognise under this alluring shape the arch-foe; he dissembles. Being, like St. Eloi, a blacksmith, as well as a saint and a State minister, he heats his tongs red-hot, and turning suddenly round, while the other was watching confidently the effect of his good looks, catches him by the nose. There was a smell of burnt flesh, and awful yells were heard many miles round, for the "tonge was al afure"; it will teach him to stay at home and blow his own nose:
As god the schrewe hadde ibeo · atom ysnyt his nose.[333]
With this we have graceful legends, like that of St. Brandan, adapted from a French original, being the story of that Irish monk who, in a leather bark, sailed in search of Paradise,[334] and visited marvellous islands where ewes govern themselves, and where the birds are angels transformed. The optimistic ideal of the Celts reappears in this poem, the subject of which is borrowed from them. "All there is beautiful, pure, and innocent; never was so kind a glance bestowed on the world, not a cruel idea, not a trace of weakness or regret."[335]
The mirth of St. Dunstan's story, the serenity of the legend of St. Brandan, are examples rarely met with in this literature. Under the light ornamentation copied from the Celts and Normans, is usually seen at that date the sombre and dreamy background of the Anglo-Saxon mind. Hell and its torments, remorse for irreparable crimes, dread of the hereafter, terror of the judgments of God and the brevity of life, are, as they were before the Conquest, favourite subjects with the national poets. They recur to them again and again; French poems describing the same are those they imitate the more willingly; the tollings of the funeral bell are heard each day in their compositions. Why cling to this perishable world? it will pass as "the schadewe that glyt away;" man will fade as a leaf, "so lef on bouh." Where are Paris, and Helen, and Tristan, and Iseult, and Cæsar? They have fled out of this world as the shaft from the bowstring:
Heo beoth iglyden ut of the reyne,
So the scheft is of the cleo.[336]
Treatises of various kinds, and pious poems, abound from the thirteenth century; all adapted to English life and taste, but imitated from the French. The "Ancren Riwle,"[337] or rule for Recluse women, written in prose in the thirteenth century is perhaps an exception: it would be in that case the first in date of the original treatises written in English after the Conquest. This Rule is a manual of piety for the use of women who wish to dedicate themselves to God, a sort of "Introduction à la Vie dévote," as mild in tone as that of St. Francis de Sales, but far more vigorous in its precepts. The author addresses himself specially to three young women of good family, who had resolved to live apart from the world without taking any vows. He teaches them to deprive themselves of all that makes life attractive; to take no pleasure either through the eye, or through the ear, or in any other way. He gives rules for getting up, for going to bed, for eating and for dressing. His doctrine may be summed up in a word: he teaches self-renunciation. But he does it in so kindly and affectionate a tone that the life he wishes his penitents to submit to does not seem too bitter; his voice is so sweet that the existence he describes seems almost sweet. Yet all that could brighten it must be avoided; the least thing may have serious consequences: "of little waxeth mickle."
Not a glance must be bestowed on the world; the young recluses must even deny themselves the pleasure of looking out of the parlour windows. They must bear in mind the example of Eve: "When thou lookest upon a man thou art in Eve's case; thou lookest upon the apple. If any one had said to Eve when she cast her eye upon it: 'Ah! Eve, turn thee away; thou castest thine eyes upon thy death,' what would she have answered?—'My dear master, thou art in the wrong, why dost thou find fault with me? The apple which I look upon is forbidden me to eat, not to look at.'—Thus would Eve quickly enough have answered. O my dear sisters, truly Eve hath many daughters who imitate their mother, who answer in this manner. But 'thinkest thou,' saith one, 'that I shall leap upon him though I look at him?'—God knows, dear sisters, that a greater wonder has happened. Eve, thy mother leaped after her eyes to the apple; from the apple in Paradise down to the earth; from the earth to hell, where she lay in prison four thousand years and more, she and her lord both, and taught all her offspring to leap after her to death without end. The beginning and root of this woful calamity was a light look. Thus often, as is said, 'of little waxeth mickle.'"[338]
The temptation to look and talk out of the window was one of the greatest with the poor anchoresses; not a few found it impossible to resist it. Cut off from the changeable world, they could not help feeling an interest in it, so captivating precisely because, unlike the cellular life, it was ever changing. The authors of rules for recluses insisted therefore very much upon this danger, and denounced such abuses as Aelred, abbot of Rievaulx, reveals, as we have seen, so early as the twelfth century: old women, talkative ones and newsbringers, sitting before the window of the recluse, "and telling her tales, and feeding her with vain news and scandal, and telling her how this monk or that clerk or any other man looks and behaves."[339]
Most of the religious treatises in English that have come down to us are of a more recent epoch, and belong to the first half of the fourteenth century. In the thirteenth, as has been noticed, many Englishmen considered French to be, together with Latin, the literary language of the country; they endeavoured to handle it, but not always with great success. Robert Grosseteste, who, however, recommended his clergy to preach in English, had composed in French a "Château d'Amour," an allegorical poem, with keeps, castles, and turrets, "les quatre tureles en haut," which are the four cardinal virtues, a sort of pious Romaunt of the Rose. William of Wadington had likewise written in French his "Manuel des Pechiez," not without an inkling that his grammar and prosody might give cause for laughter. He excused himself in advance: "For my French and my rhymes no one must blame me, for in England was I born, and there bred and brought up and educated."[340]
These attempts become rare as we approach the fourteenth century, and English translations and imitations, on the contrary, multiply. We find, for example, translations in English verse of the "Château"[341] and the "Manuel"[342]; a prose translation of that famous "Somme des Vices et des Vertus," composed by Brother Lorens in 1279, for Philip III. of France, a copy of which, chained to a pillar of the church of the Innocents, remained open for the convenience of the faithful[343]; (a bestiary in verse, thirteenth century), devotional writings on the Virgin, legends of the Cross, visions of heaven and hell[344]; a Courier of the world, "Cursor Mundi," in verse,[345] containing the history of the Old and New Testaments. A multitude of legends are found in the "Cursor," that of the Cross for instance, made out of three trees, a cypress, a cedar, and a pine, symbols of the Trinity. These trees had sprung from three pips given to Seth by the guardian angel of Paradise, and placed under Adam's tongue at his death; their miraculous existence is continued on the mountains, and they play a part in all the great epochs of Jewish history, in the time of Moses, Solomon, &c.