King David Bruce was hunting in a forest hard by Edinburgh one Holy Cross Day, or Feast of the Exaltation of the Cross (September 14th), and had become separated from his companions, when a wondrous hart, of great beauty and strength, suddenly appeared to him. The creature charged the king’s horse, and so terrified it that it took to flight; but the hart followed “so fiercely and swiftly” that it bore down both the horse and its royal rider to the ground. Bruce, putting forth his hands to save himself, was about to seize the antlers of his assailant, when, from the head of the hart, “there most strangly slypped into the King’s hands the said crosse most wonderously,” and forthwith the animal vanished. On the following night Bruce was warned in his sleep to build an abbey at the spot where this miracle had happened. Accordingly, he sent to France and Flanders for workmen, built the abbey of the Holy Rood, which he gave to the canons regular of St. Augustine, and “placed the said Cross most sumptuously and richly in the said Abbey, ther to remayne in a most renowned monument.” So it continued until “the said king” invaded England previous to the Battle of Neville’s Cross; this sacred relic was then brought forth, and carried to the war. Again the king received a vision during his sleep, in which he was warned in no case to damage the patrimony of St. Cuthbert; but, in spite of this, he proceeded to lay waste and to destroy the domains of the great Abbey at Durham; and for this disobedience divine vengeance fell upon him. He himself was captured at the ensuing fight, many of the flower of his nobility fell on the field, his royal standard became a prize to the English, and the Holy Rood was taken! All the trophies of the victory were solemnly offered by the English as an act of thanksgiving at St. Cuthbert’s shrine at Durham, and the Rood “was sett up most exactlie in the piller next St. Cuthbert’s shrine in the south alley of the said Abbey.” The writer of the “Rites” tells us in one place that “no man knew certenly what mettell or wood the said crosse was mayd of;” at a later point in his story he implies that it was of silver and was termed the “Black Rude of Scotland” from “being, as yt weare, smoked all over,” doubtless from the tapers constantly burnt before it both in Edinburgh and in Durham. At the Reformation this valuable and historic cross was carried off with the other abbey treasures, and no doubt found its way into the melting pot.
SEAL OF HOLYROOD ABBEY.
Our chronicler is not quite sound in his history. It was David I. who founded Holyrood Abbey, about the year 1128; and to whom, therefore, the first part of the story relates; but it was David II., son of Robert Bruce, and thus a descendant of the first Scottish King of that name, who lost the relic at Neville’s Cross in 1346. There is another story to the effect that St. Margaret brought the crucifix from the Holy Land in 1070; and that both religious and filial devotion thus prompted David I., the youngest of her sons, to raise and dedicate the abbey, which was to enshrine it. The saintly queen may perhaps have received the rood from Jerusalem, she can hardly have brought it thence herself, for it does not seem that she ever undertook that pilgrimage.
The seal of Holyrood Abbey, probably the most famous of all the many foundations dedicated in honour of the Holy Cross, contains a memorial of the legend above given. The centre is occupied by a crucifix beneath a canopy, with the Blessed Virgin and St. John on either side; below this is the Madonna enthroned and holding the Holy Child. A crosier, on one side of these figures, marks the dignity of the abbey; a stag, on the other side, with a cross rising from its forehead recalls the tradition of its inception; while the royal shield of Scotland below informs us of the sovereignty of the founder.
Bell Lore.
By England Howlett.
In all Christian countries from the earliest ages the use of bells is practically as old as Christianity itself. The bell in its original form was nothing more or less than a piece of metal rolled into a wedge-like form and riveted together, and it is a curious instance of survival that the cattle bells in many countries are now practically of this primitive pattern. In the early days of Christianity small portable handbells were used for summoning the people to worship. It was not long, however, before the bell founder’s art made great progress, and long before the year 1000 the music of bells pealing from church towers could not have been by any means a rare sound.