[175] Life of Dunstan, by B. (a Saxon monk, nearly contemporary).
[176] The celebrated story of the Devil and the hot tongs is not told by any contemporary of Dunstan’s, but by the much-romancing Osbern about 130 years after his death. The identical pair of tongs with which the saint is said to have seized the Devil’s nose is still shown at the priory of Mayfield in Sussex.
[177] An excellent summing up of the whole case will be found in E. W. Robertson’s Historical Essays, p. 192.
[178] The short reign of Edwy furnishes 150 pages to the Cartularium Saxonicum.
[179] The Chronicle and the biographers agree in postponing Dunstan’s return till after Edgar’s accession to the undivided realm, but his signatures to charters seem to require an earlier date.
[180] See Robertson’s, Historical Essays, p. 211.
[181] As pointed out by Mr. W. H. Stevenson in the English Historical Review (1898), xiii., 506, an important attestation to the meeting of the kings (though not to the water procession) is furnished by the ecclesiastical author Elfric, himself a contemporary of Edgar and a pupil and friend of bishop Ethelwold. In his poetical Life of St. Swithin, written about 996, he contrasts the happy days of Edgar with the disastrous reign of his son, and says: “All the kings of this island of Cymri and of Scots, eight kings, came to Edgar once upon a time on one day and they all bowed to Edgar’s government”.
[182] Robertson’s Historical Essays, p. 203.
[183] Ibid., p. 169.
[184] As stated by Robertson, ibid., p. 168.