We can give but an outline of how the good father traced the earthly pilgrimage of the city's patron saint, from the day when his eyes first opened to the light in ancient Athens. "It was towards the close of the seventh century," he continued, "and his birth was noble as any in old Cecropia. The dwelling of his father stood near the temple of the Eumenides, and under the brow of that very platform from whence the blessed apostle Paul had preached to the Athenians."
He described his extraordinary learning, his deep and solemn piety, which won for him the admiration of Greece, and other countries far beyond his native province of Achaia; so much so that it soon became impossible for him to enjoy in his splendid home the retirement and meditation for which he longed. Shrinking alike from the applause of men and the dangerous temptations of wealth and prosperity, he gave all he possessed to the poor, and bade farewell for ever to Athens and Achaia the beautiful. Sailing towards France, he landed on the open and desert shore near the Rhone, from whence, with a cross on his staff, he travelled into wild places, teaching the blessed gospels to the pagan Gauls, until he reached a forest in the district of Nismes, where then stood a city built by the Roman warriors of Augustus; and there still men and beasts fought like demons in the amphitheatre of Arennes, and the poor pagans worshipped their graven idols in the temple of Diana—for the savage Goths then held the city and all the land around it.
"There, in the vast forest which had been growing since the deluge, St. Giles built him a hermitage, and there," continued the preacher, "subsisting on the berries and other wild fruits of the desert, with water only for his drink, he passed many years in the voiceless solitude, till, purified by prayer, disengaged from earth, and filled with the ardour of his holy meditations, he became as an angel rather than a man." He related, too, how the saint planted his cross-staff before the door of his hermitage, and watered it daily, until it took root, sprouted, and grew into a stately orange-tree; and how (like the holy St. Aicard), having once in forgetfulness shaved his bald crown so late on a Saturday night that he encroached on the Sunday morning, when turning about he saw the devil—and here every one crossed themselves—yea, the devil, busily picking up every atom of hair, to produce the whole against him at the divine tribunal: and how severely he was punished thereafter; for a savage Gothic chief had him seized, scourged, and thrown into one of the Roman towers of Nismes, where he prayed to his Maker in great agony of spirit.
Lo! in the night a halo shone around him, his fetters fell off, the doors of his dungeon revolved, and the clear light of the stars beamed upon him. A deep slumber fell upon his guards, and St. Giles walked forth in peace, to seek once more the shade of his miraculous orange-tree and his beloved hermitage near the dark green woods and bright blue waters of the Rhone.
Now, spreading fast in Gaul, the Goths had made themselves lords of the two Narbonensis and the three Acquitani: in their wild ravages they destroyed even the forests, and by these and their cruelty brought so sore a famine upon the land, that even the saint, in his extreme old age, would have perished, but for the fruit of his orange-tree, and the milk of a doe, which visited him daily, sent doubtless by the Lord, and which became his sole companion and sustenance; and it chanced that when Wamba, king of the Goths, was hunting one day in the forest of Nismes, he was about to slay the doe, but spared her at the saint's intercession; upon which Ionie, his queen, who was almost dying of a grievous sickness, became straightway restored to her former strength and beauty.
St. Giles outlived the famine, and by the miracles he wrought became famous throughout all the land of Gaul, and died at a wondrous old age in that year when the infidel Saracens sacked Nismes; the recapture of which by Charles Martel, mayor of the palace, and the great victory of the Christian knights between Tours and Poictiers, in the year of our redemption 728, he foretold, with his last breath; and so, in the full odour of sanctity, he passed away to heaven.
"The doe, the companion of his solitude, was found lying dead by his side; but to this day," continued the venerable priest, in conclusion, "in memory of the saint, we may yet see her retained in the banner of this good city, upon which the blessed St. Giles is now looking down, as upon that of his chosen children, through the dim vista of eight long centuries!"*
* St. Giles was the crest of Edinburgh until 1560, when an anchor was substituted by the Reformers; but the doe still remains as a supporter.
He then blessed the people, and descending into one of the side aisles, disappeared.
The vast multitudes who thronged the church now poured from all its doorways like a flood upon the streets, and down the steep old burial-ground that descended on the south towards the Cowgate (a place of interment coeval with the first huts of the city), and where a little doorway in the wall, at the bottom, gave egress to that thoroughfare, then so fashionable. It stood just beside the little chapel of the Holyrood, which survived till the end of the sixteenth century.