In Byways of Scottish History

by Louis A. Barbé

"Now this I saw not; but so strange a thing It was to hear, and by all men confirmed, That it is fit to note it as I heard, To wit, there is a certain islet here Among the rest where folk are born with tails,— Short as are found in stags and suchlike beasts".[352]

Fazio is probably Boccaccio's authority for the statement, unaccompanied with any further details, however, that "certain Englishmen were born with tails".[353]

The chronicle which is commonly known as Alexander of Essebye's, and which exists in manuscript only, has been quoted as briefly stating that "when fish tails were despitefully thrown at him by certaine men of Dorsetshire", St. Augustine "was so furiously vexed therewith that he called upon God for revenge and He forthwith heard him and strake them with tails for their punishment". Greater interest attaches to the story as told in the English version of the Golden Legende. Though not less credulous than were his predecessors as to the punishment inflicted on the impious people who insulted the saint, the writer who interpolated the narrative—for it does not appear in the Latin original—prepares the way of the sceptic by limiting the duration of the penalty, and by testifying with an earnestness suggestive of personal knowledge to the immunity of some, at least, of those who were believed to be stricken for the transgression of their forefathers:

"After this Saynt Austyn entryd into Dorsetshyre and came into a towne whereas were wycked peple and refused his doctryne and prechyng utterly, and droof him out of the towne, castyng on him the tayles of thornback or like fisshes, wherefor he besought Almyghty God to shewe his jugement on them, and God sente to them a shameful token, for the children that were borne after in that place had tayles, as it is said, tyl they had repented them. It is sayd comynly that thys fyl at Strode in Kente; but, blessyd be God, at this day is no such deformyte."[354]

By the middle of the fifteenth century, the legend of the tails had undergone important modifications. The original account of the outrage and of its punishment was still current; but, by the side of it, there existed several versions which affected not merely the circumstances of time and place, but also the individuality of the persons concerned in the incident. We are indebted to Walter Bower, who expanded and continued Fordun's Scotichronicon, for an interesting passage in which the old story and its subsequent variants are presented together. The Scottish chronicler, taking Wace's narrative as his starting-point, relates that when St. Augustine was preaching the word of life to the heathen, amongst the West Saxons, in the county of Dorset, he came to a certain town where no one would receive him or listen to his preaching. They opposed him rebelliously in everything, contradicted all he said, did their utmost to distort his actions, on which they put sinister interpretations, and, impious to relate, carried their audacity so far as to sew and hang fish tails to his garments. But what they intended as an insult to the holy father brought eternal disgrace on themselves and on their posterity, and opprobrium on their unoffending country. He smote them in the hinder parts and cast lasting shame upon them by causing similar tails to grow both on their own persons and on those of their offspring. And here the Abbot of Inchcolm becomes particularly interesting by reason of the wholly new information which he imparts. He states that there was a special name for the punitive tail. "Such a tail," he says, "is called Mughel by the natives, in the language of their country; and because of this, the place where St. Augustine was thus insulted received the name of Muglington, that is, the town of the Muglings, and still bears it at the present day." It is to be regretted that the topographical indication is not more definite. The modern map of England knows no Muglington. Wherever it may have been, it would seem that it did not stand alone as a monument of St. Augustine's power and spite. According to Bower, it is also related that a similar indignity was done to him in the province of Mercia, by the inhabitants of a town called Thamewyth. But they were not allowed to go unpunished either; for, "as is known to all", they were put to shame by the infliction of the like opprobrious punishment.

It is from its concluding part, however, that Bower's account derives its chief importance and its value as a contribution to the history of the development of the myth. "Something similar," he says, "happened at a later period, during the exile of St. Thomas, Primate of England, when the people of Rochester, intending it as an insult to him, docked his horse's tail. But their iniquitous action was foiled of its purpose and recoiled on themselves; for it was found that thenceforth all the children born in that place were tailed."[355] From this we first learn that a new character had by this time assumed a part in the story. Hitherto, the responsibility for having endowed Englishmen with tails had rested with St. Augustine alone. And his monopoly of the doubtful honour had endured through four centuries. Henceforth, though he was not to disappear altogether, he was to have a rival.

In the case of Becket, as in that of his predecessor, there was a basis of historical fact on which to build up a legend.

The chroniclers Ralph de Diceto, Roger de Hoveden, and both William and Gervase of Canterbury,[356] who record the murder of Becket, and whose proximity, in point of time, to the events that took place on those memorable December days of the year 1170, gives them indisputable authority, all agree in narrating, with such slight variations in matters of detail as serve to show that they did not merely repeat each other, an incident which happened to the Archbishop shortly before his death. They state that Robert Broc, a groom of the royal bedchamber, who, together with Nigel de Sacheville, incumbent of Harrow, was solemnly excommunicated by the Primate, on Christmas day, had cut off the tail of Becket's horse, as an insult to its owner. According to the two brother-monks, the Archbishop made direct reference to this indignity in his interview with the four conspirators, Reginald Fitzurse, Hugh de Moreville, William de Tracy, and Richard le Breton. "The tail of a mare in my service," he said, "has been shamefully cut off, as if I could be disgraced by the docking of a brute beast."[357] It was not, however, for this cowardly and contemptible act of spite that Broc was excommunicated, but because, being a layman, he had appropriated ecclesiastical revenues. And, though William of Canterbury records that the very dogs refused to be fed by the hand of the man whom the Prelate had banned, neither he nor any of the other chroniclers refers to the infliction of tails on him or his posterity. It was only at a later date, and when Broc had been lost sight of, as the perpetrator of the outrage, that the miraculous punishment was thought of.

Although there is the evidence of Bower to show that, in his day, Becket's name had already begun to be connected with the legend of the tails, Augustine still continues to hold his own through the whole of the first half of the sixteenth century. It is he who figures as the hero, or the victim, in the account given by John Major, an account which is noteworthy by reason of the very cautious spirit in which it is written. It may be said to mark the beginning of a transition from unquestioning credulity to uncompromising scepticism. It also seems to imply that, so far as the author's reading of the chroniclers extended, he found the English, if not yet ready to deny the supernatural punishment of the insult offered to the saint, at least convinced that it had not been perpetuated through the ages. The chapter in which Major recapitulates the old story, is mainly devoted to the outward form and appearance of the English, and contains a great deal about "skiey influence". Thus, it comes of "skiey influence" that close by the Arctic pole people are of foul aspect. And, if in some parts of Africa men are born with the head of a dog, "this, too, is a matter of skiey influence and carries with it no other influence". After this preamble the author proceeds to relate the conversion of Kent—how Augustine laboured so strenuously that, in a short space of time, he brought to the faith the king himself and almost the whole people; how, passing on to Rochester, he began there, too, to preach the word of God; and how the common people derided him, and threw fish tails at the holy man. "Wherefore Augustine made his prayer to God that, for punishment of this sin, their infants should be born with tails, to the end they might be warned not to contemn the teachers of divine things. And, for this reason, as the English chroniclers relate, the infants were born with tails; but for a time only, and to the end that an unbelieving race might give credence to their teacher, was this punishment inflicted." The Scots and the Gauls, it is true, "assert the opposite". But, Major "cannot agree with them". And, further, the phenomenon having been only temporary, he gives it as his opinion that it had "very little to do with the skiey influence".[358]

Nicole Gilles whose "very elegant and copious annals of Gaul" were published in 1531, being a French chronicler, is one of those who believe that the divine anger has not ceased to manifest itself, and that the descendants of the men of Dorchester, who mocked and derided St. Augustine, still have "tails behind, like brute beasts, and are therefore called tailed Englishmen". It is worthy of notice that, owing, doubtless, to the misreading of some Latin text and to the intelligible confusion of raia or raria, both of which are used to translate "rayfish", with the more familiar rana, Gilles makes the impious Dorchestrians hang frogs—"des raynes ou grenouilles"—to St. Augustine's garments.[359]