Lore and legend of the English church

Front matter

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CHAPTER I. 3nfrobucttott

IN the nature of things it needs must be that a multitude of customs, often quaint and curious, is found in connection with every society of great antiquity. The mere fact of such long-continued existence implies that the roots of the organization in question are laid in an age when men were simple-minded and credulous, when critical skill was little known, and when to unscientific eyes the common things of every day were so full of inexplicable wonders that the supernatural seemed ever very close to the natural.

But beyond all other societies it is to be expected that a wealth of folk-lore and legend should grow up around that divinely constituted society, the Church ; and this for several reasons. The message of the Church is largely concerned with those subjects which are specially fruitful in fanciful speculations, with the affairs of that mysterious realm which , lies near enough to us to attract our interest, and yet too far from us to allow of our investigation. The mysteries of Ufe and death, the vast, unfathomable oceans of the Heretofore, and the Hereafter which meet about the narrow shores of Time Present, the influences which draw o,r drive us in our earthly course, and the connection between the character of the unknown future and the known, or partly known, present — these were neither new problems when the Church came as an authoritative teacher, nor had the sages and philosophers of old had any monopoly of speculation concerning them. It was not one of the priesthood, but a noble of the rude court of Edwin, King of Northumbria, that urged the common interest in these questions as a reason for listening to the words of S. PauHnus. "The present life of man on earth seems to me," so the Venerable Bede records him as saying, " in comparison with that time which is unknown to us, like the swift flight of a sparrow through the hall, as it enters by one door, and immediately flies out at another, what time you are sitting at supper, O King, with your chieftains and attendants about you, on a winter's night, while within a fire blazes on the hearth and the rootp glows with the warmth, and without storms of wintry rain and snow are everywhere raging : for the time that the bird is indoors it is unassailed by the tempest, but in the briefest of intervals, as it came from the winter's darkness, it is lost to our sight and returns to the winter's darkness again : so the life of man appears for a space, but of what follows, or of what went before, we know nothing."

Similarly had many a thoughtful man reasoned with himself; the problems of life and death, no less than the experience of them, occur in some sort to every man ; and consequently every religion strives to peer into the surrounding mists, to learn somewhat for the guidance of its disciples here, and to encourage a hope for the hereafter.

INTRODUCTION. 3

Christianity came then with a new message on a subject as old as the world, and one on which countless speculations were rife in the minds of men. And it was but to be expected that even believers in the new and clearer teaching should not be able, nor entirely willing, to shake off altogether the fancies in which they had before comforted themselves. Hence we find in all times and places tales of ghosts and apparitions, of witchcraft and Satanic agency, of fairies and goblins, — which are all evidences of the efforts of the human mind to realize something of the invisible world around him ; and hence, too, the theories concerning days, things, and actions which are lucky or unlucky, concerning charms and amulets, talismans and signs, — which are crude attempts to explain some of the mysteries of Providence. The spread of education is rapidly relegating many of these things to the limbo of extinct superstitions, but to several of them we may apply the dictum of Dr. Johnson on the subject of ghosts ; " it is wonderful that five thousand years have now elapsed since the creation of the world, and still it is undecided whether or not there has ever been an instance of the spirit of any person appearing after death ; all argument is against it, but all belief is for it." So scientific culture has shown itself as powerless as religious teaching^to seriously affect the native credulity of men in some respects.

But not every habit or custom in use before the foundation of the Church, even if it formed part of an idolatrous worship, was in itself superstitious. "The heathen in his blindness " might offer tO the idol, which to him symbolized the debased and unworthy conception which he had formed of Deity, many an act of devotion which might laudably be rendered to the true God ; and thus many usages of heathen times were adopted by the Church and endowed with a Christian meaning. The Apostle S. Paul illustrates the spirit in which this was done, when with ready wit he obtains for himself a hearing from the sceptics and gossips of the Areopagus, by claiming for the Faith the altar to "the Unknown God." A more distinct example of this method of treating heathenism meets us in a letter from Pope Gregory the Great to the Abbot Mileto, written in 6oi. "The idol temples are not to be destroyed," says the pontiff, " but let the idols in them be destroyed ; let holy water be blessed and sprinkled in these temples, let altars be built and relics placed there ; and since they are accustomed to slay many oxen in sacrifice to demons, let them on the anniversary of the dedication, or on the birthdays of the holy martyrs, construct booths around those churches which were formerly temples, and celebrate the solemnity with religious festivity." It has also been well observed that in the primitive Church, a great many of the converts to which were slaves, it must often have been a matter almost of necessity to utilize heathen festivals for Christian purposes ; the freedom from the usual round of labours affording the little flock an opportunity too valuable to be neglected. Similarly the earliest Christian art was largely an adaptation of such heathen symbols as might be converted readily to the teaching of the truth. The trailing vine painted along the wall, or the simple figure of a shepherd bearing a lamb, spoke to the worshipper in the Catacombs of the declarations of the Saviour, " I am the true Vine," " I am the Good Shepherd ;" yet to the heathen they were also familiar as

INTRODUCTION. 5

suggestive of far different ideas. Thus does the Commendatore de Rossi speak of this subject, in his Roma Sotterranea ; " I have constantly observed in the subterranean cemeteries, that the early Christians possessed sculptured sarcophagi which bear no sign of Christian faith, and seem to have issued from Gentile workshops ; adorned with images of the firmament, scenes of shepherd life, agriculture, the chase, games, etc. The Christian interpretation given to agricultural or pastoral scenes, to personifications of the seasons, to dolphins and other marine creatures, is obvious and universally acknowledged. When the faithful could not obtain sarcophagi adorned with sacred sculpture, it is evident that they took great trouble in selecting those which contained nothing directly offensive to the faith, and did not represent idolatrous rites, images of false gods, or subjects too evidently belonging to Pagan theogony." Wtiat it was thus found necessary, or at least advisable, to do in matters of public festivals and in the use of art, would be still more naturally done in those countless smaller usages, which, connected only very indirectly with a specific form of faith or religion, had become part of man's mental habit towards those mysterious questions of which we have above spoken. And how tenaciously some details of the old faiths were clung to, by those who had nevertheless embraced the new, is exhibited in a striking manner in several passages in the Acts of the Apostlesi and in the Epistles of S. Paul ; where we find that even the leaders and rulers of the infant Church were still in several cases strenuous in upholding the whole of the details of the Mosaic economy. What we find there, doubtless took place all the world over in different forms and various degrees.

b LORE AND LEGEND OF THE ENGLISH CHURCH.

It would be an error, however, to suppose that all the folk-lore of the Church, all the " superstitions," if you will, that the people have brought into it, or cultivated around it, are of heathen derivation. Every age produces its manners and customs, obvious enough in meaning and practical in purpose to itself, but quaint and curious survivals, or halfforgotten fragments of antiquity, to its successors. Even we in these closing years of the nineteenth century, when the tendency seems to be to eliminate the play of fancy, and to curb originality or idiosyncracy, so as to bring all to one monotonous level of life and action, — even we shall probably be found by a future age to have evolved habits of thought and conduct, which will then appear as grotesque as those of past days not seldom do to us. Would that we might hope that our legacy of folk-lore will prove as full of lessons of tenderness and truth as in many cases our heritage has been. For it should not be forgotten that the chief interest of folk-lore is in the fact that it is a genuine growth from the convictions of the people ; the quaint custom, the weird legend, the venerable superstition, are not valuable only from an antiquarian point of view, but as necessary data for a true history of man, setting forth, as they do, his inmost faith, in those points to which he has clung most tenaciously.

The existence of the Deity, and under Him of supernatural powers both good and evil ; the immortality of the soul ; the value of propitiatory sacrifice, — these are some of the elementary articles in the creed of men, to which the folk-lore of almost all ages and races bears witness. The folk-lore of the English Church shows us also, by customs that at first appear antagonistic in their sharp contrasts, the

INTRODUCTION. 7

familiar aflfection, yet the profound veneration, which were felt for the Church herself and for all things consecrated to her service. Her sacramental system and apostolic ministry, her sacred vessels and solemn seasons, the consecrated enclosure around her fanes, the very stones from their walls, and sods of their garths, all were regarded as specially blessed : yet withal the villagers held their wakes within the churchyards, and chatted and chaffered even within the naves of the churches, saw mountebanks climb their steeples, and watched the performance of miracle plays in consecrated buildings ; without seeing anything incongruous in their conduct.

Each fact in the almost boundless folk-lore of the country, however trivial or childish it may in itself appear, is the outward expression of a deep feeling once common among the people. Even those legends of bygone days, which it is the fashion to discuss as tissues of romantic superstition, have their meaning and their foundation. No one deliberately invented the legends of the people, any more than anyone artificially created their customs; such an attempt would have been utterly futile, for the creations would in either case have been entirely devoid of vitality. Ruskin in one of his minor works emphasizes the fact that there is a poetical truth as well as an historical truth, and that many a legend which is not history may be the vivid expression of an ethical fact. But we may go further, and aver that in almost all, if not in all, cases, the legends, like the customs, have arisen from the solid foundation of an historical fact. To take what may seem an extreme instance; of all the ecclesiastical legends of our land, which one has been more often treated as a merely ludicrous and absurd myth than that of the contest of S. Dunstan, the archbishop, with the arch-fiend ? And yet there is surely a most natural method of explaining how such a strange story arose. The great archbishop, as is well known, was a master in the mechanical arts, and loved the fierce flame of his forge: what then more natural than for him to assert, or for it to be asserted of him, that when he was assailed by temptation, and especially sensual temptation, he fought the devil with his hammer and his tongs : meaning thereby that at such times, with practical good sense, he flung all his energies into the hard manual labour of his forge, and so drove off" the attack of the evil one? And what, again, more likely than that such a statement should grow in the imagination of a simple age into the story of the devil, in the form of a beautiful woman, tempting the saint and being repelled by his glowing tongs ? In some such manner, doubtless, have most of our legends and folk-lore tales been built up, enshrining a truth sometimes poetically, sometimes (as here) more quaintly, yet having ever that truth within them, which has been the lifegiving and sustaining force to them during the ages.

Another point which helps to account for the multiplicity and variety of our Church folk-lore is the fact that in past days the offices of the Church entered so fully into the lives of the people. That religion has not its share now in the every-day life of many, and especially in all the important events and crisis of their career, it would be wrong to assume : but it certainly is true that no pubUc evidence of the fact is given now to the extent that it was of old. Then the annual wake or fair began with the observance of the dedication festival of the parish church; each trade, organized into a company or fraternity, began its yearly feast by atten-

INTRODUCTION. 9

dance at mass, and in many cases maintained its own altar in the church, and paid its own chaplain ; and one of the most joyous days in the year was the one on which, with song and merriment, the whole parish helped to gather rushes to strew the church floor, and brought them home. In days, too, when there was little of movement from place to place, and most men died within sight of the spot where they had been hotn ; when moreover no one yet had separated himself from the Mother Church of the land, the parish church and all that pertained to it were necessarily more to the people generally than they are now. At its font everyone had been baptized, before its altar every man and wife had plighted their troth, around its grey walls all the forefathers of the living generation slept their long sleep, and thither all felt they would themselves be borne when their time came. Amidst all " the changes and chances of this mortal life," the birth and death of men, the growth and fall of the green woodlands, the times of peace and the passage across the acres of grim war, the one thing that stood unchanged in the memory of all, from the cradle to the grave, was the great grey church ; the one voice that was never hushed in death, the constant tolling and pealing of her sonorous bells. What wonder then that affection and imaginatibn joined with faith and history to weave a many-coloured web of mingled fact and fancy around those time-worn walls ?

In a field so wide as the folk-lore of the English Church, it becomes necessary to make a selection of subjects, if one's treatment of it is neither to be inconveniently bulky, nor disappointingly general. For all that affects the life and death of man, and all that deals with supernatural powers and the unseen world, might reasonably be included within its scope. In the following pages, therefore, an endeavour will be made to keep rigidly within the limits of a narrow interpretation of our title. Only such folk-lore and legends as concern the fabric of the Church, its precincts, and its services will be reviewed. The funeral train has no interest for us until it arrives at the lych-gate, the wedding party leaves our sight when it leaves the churchyard ; but all that happens within the limits of those walls, so far as it has given rise to customs quaint or curious, or to charms and superstitions that are noteworthy, all this we will consider the legitimate subject of our present discussion.

CHAPTER II. Ut QSuifbtng of t^e €^urc^

FOR how many ages the sites occupied by some of our churches have been esteemed by the people as holy ground, it would be hard to conjecture. The parish priest who is able to say that his parish possessed a church when Domesday Book was compiled, feels a certain natural pride in the guardianship of so ancient a foundation ; yet it is unquestionable that in many instances the spot was regarded with veneration for ages before that date, in fact long before S. Joseph of Arimathea could have set foot, according to tradition, in the island, and reared his little sanctuary Of interwoven branches at Glastonbury.

Not a few of our oldest churches occupy the sites of heathen temples. In the first days of the triumph of Christianity over Paganism in Europe, the natural tendency was to destroy, not only the idols, but the buildings also, which their presence and their often impure rites had polluted. Thus under Constantine and Valentinian many temples were totally demolished. In the time of Theodosius, however, another and more sober plan was adopted; .and the idolatrous shrines, purified from falsehood and dedicated to the truth, became Christian churches ; and an edict of Honorius (408 a.d.) definitely forbade the destruction of any more temples, at least in the cities, on the ground that they could be turned to public use when their Pagan decorations had been removed. A writer of the middle of the fifth century, Prosper the Aquitanian, asserts that this emperor gave over the temples and their precincts to the Church. Instructions for the adaptation of such places to Christian purposes were quoted in the last chapter, as given by S. Gregory the Great in the beginning of the seventh century ; and there can be little question that the practice then recommended was adopted so far as opportunity served. S. Paul's Cathedral is alleged to cover and consecrate ground once occupied by a temple dedicated to Diana, and it is highly probable that a similar conversion has taken place in many of the towns which were at one time Roman settlements. But there are facts which are supposed to take us back to faiths extant in Britain even before Csesar and his legions invaded its shores.

There are, for instance, in Wales a number of churches dating for the most part from the Norman period of architecture, which stand in churchyards circular or oval in shape. Such are the churches of Llanfechain and Kerry, in Montgomeryshire, of Llanarmon and Cilcenin, in Carnarvonshire, Tremeirchion in Flintshire, and in Denbighshire, Derwen, Efenechtyd, Cerrig-y-druidion, Bettws-Gwerfil- Goch, Llan-Elidan, and Llandyrnog. The remarkable fact concerning these churchyards is not merely that their form is singular, but that they are usually environed by a road, for which there is no obvious public requirement. It is, moreover, well known that the Celtic inhabitants of this island affected a circular form for their sacred enclosures, a fact that is illustrated by circles of ponderous stones in many places. The best known instance of these is at Stonehenge, and the memory of them is still kept alive by some of the

Druidic ceremonies with which a modern Eisteddfod is inaugurated. The common situation of these temples of the Celtic Pagans, consisting of " stone pillars in "one or two circular rows,'' was " the centre of some thick grove or wood, watered by a consecrated river or fountain, and surrounded by a ditch or mound, to prevent the intrusion of improper persons."*

Putting these items of evidence together, we must admit that it is at least a reasonable theory which sees in these circular churchyards, girded by a public way, wherein Christian rites have now been celebrated for many hundreds of years, an indication of holy grounds of untold antiquity, within which it may be that for thousands of years the Pagan worship flourished. In this case we must suppose that the Church, having won to her side the majority of the people, set up her altar within the enclosure which, in their minds, had already long enjoyed a sacred character ; and the road, which now so aimlessly surrounds the churchyard, marks the ancient rampart which separated it from common ground, or (as at Efenechtyd) the ancient bed of the stream which served the same purpose. +

Another mark, or probable mark, of the annexation of the holy places of heathenism by the Church is the neighbourhood of a well or spring. The reverence felt of old for such natural objects is well known. Milton's intimate knowledge of classical usages transfers to the Severn a custom common enough in Italy, in the familiar lines of his " Comus " : —

* "The Religion of Ancient Britain,'' by Geo. Smith, ll.d., f.a.s. (Longmans, 1 846.), p. 40.

t See an article on this subject by the Rev. E. Owen, m.a., f.s.a., in "Antiquities and Curiosities of the Church." (Andrews & Co. , 1897.)

"The shepherds at their festivals Carol her goodness loud in rustic lays, And throw sweet garland wreaths into her stream Of pansies, pinks, and gaudy daffodils."

But, indeed, the worship of clear, cool water, whether in still pool or in rippling stream, was not peculiar to any mythology, and was practised in all parts of the world. Italy had her feasts of fontinalia, and Derbyshire and Staffordshire delighted in their well-dressing, ages before the custom became allied to Christian festivals. The naiads, nymphs of river, lake, and fountain, were endowed by their votaries with oracular and prophetic powers ; and were propitiated with offerings of milk, oil, and honey, and the sacrifice of lambs. Borlase, in his " Natural History of Cornwall," speaking of the miraculous efficacy ascribed to some waters, says, "The Castalian fountain, and many others among the Grecians, were supposed to be of a prophetic nature ; by dipping a fair mirror into a well the Patraeans of Greece received, as they supposed, some notice of ensuing sickness or health, from the various forms portrayed upon the surface ; in Laconia they cast into a pool sacred to Juno cakes of bread-corn ; if they sunk, good was portended, if they swam, something dreadful was to ensue." The same authority says, that " The Druids (as we have reason to think) pretended to predict future events from holy wells and running streams." We have already seen, in a quotation given above, that these latter chose for the erection of their sacred circles spots watered by streams and fountains; and there are wells in the country whose names still testify to the regard in which our Saxon forefathers held them ; for we still possess, besides the many wells dedicated to Christian saints, a Woden's well and a Thor's well. There are in England some hundreds of wells that are reputed to this day to be "holy," the county of York alone containing nearly seventy ; and we may safely conclude not only that all these obtained their sacred character at a very remote period, but that they are the survivals of a belief at one time more widely spread.

Recollecting these facts, therefore, it is interesting to find several of our most ancient churches standing in close proximity to wells. At East Dereham there is a well in the churchyard, at the west end of the church ; at Bisley, in Gloucestershire, is the ruin of a churchyard cross which covers a well, now dry. About two hundred yards from the church of S. Tecla, Virgin and Martyr, at Llandegla in Wales, is a spring now named after the saint ; at Jesmond, near Newcastle-on-Tyne, a well and a chapel formerly stood in close connection ; at Lichfield are similarly found the church and well of S. Chad ; in Somersetshire, the church of S. Decuman at Watchet claims to have stood hard by the holy well since the year 400 ; in Shropshire, we have* the parish church of Stoke S. Milborough (Milburga) close to a well of the same dedication ; S. Cuthbert's well is near Donington Church, and the monastic houses of Wenlock Priory and of the friary at Ludlow both include wells of reputed sanctity within their walls.

Scotland supplies examples in the well and the ruined chapel of S. Laurence, at Little Dunkeld, Perthshire, another at Musselburgh, and that of S. Fillan, at StrathfiUan.

From all these instances it seems almost impossible to escape the conclusion that the early Christian teachers, taking advantage of the sacredness which they found already ascribed to wells and springs, in many cases erected their first rude churches by the side of them. It is true that water was, and is, required in the services of the Church ; its proximity would be convenient for the administration of Holy Baptism, and in the primitive ages it was usual for the worshippers to wash their hands, ere entering the church, at a fountain or basin provided in the outer courts. Eusebius, Paulinus of Nola, and Socrates the historian, all speak of the provision of such a means of lustration ; and S. Chrysostom and TertuUian refer to its use. But even if this practice were known in Britain, it does not destroy, but rather confirms, our contention. The presence of water, so readily to hand for these purposes, would be an added reason for occupying the site which Paganism, on account of that presence, had held to be holy.

The sites of some churches have been, according to legend, miraculously assigned to them. Everyone who is familiar with the north country knows the story of the foundation of Durham's glorious cathedral. In the days when Norse pirates were harrying our eastern coasts, the monks of Lindisfarne were compelled to seek refuge on the main land, and, exhuming the relics of S. Cuthbert as their most precious treasure, they carried them with them. For some years they found no permanent resting-place, but wandered over Northumbria, halting now here, now there. For some time Chester-le-Street gave them shelter ; but the storm that had driven them inland was now felt far beyond the coasts, and they fled again, this time to Ripon. At last they essayed to make their way back once more to Chester-le-Street with the hope of being allowed to settle there, and they had journeyed ' as far as " a place called Ward Law," east of the site of Durham, when they were checked by a new and strange difficulty: the bier of S. Cuthbert stuck fast, and not all their combined skill and force availed to stir it. Perceiving that this was the result of no ordinary cause, the little company fasted and prayed for the space of three days, that the divine purpose might be revealed to them ; and their devotion was rewarded by the revelation that they were to carry their holy burden to Dunholme. But this caused only further perplexity, for no one knew where Dunholme lay, or in what direction to seek for it. While they were thus wondering what was to be done, they heard a woman in the distance crying to a neighbour that she had lost her cow, and asking whether she had by chance seen it ; the answer was that the cow had strayed to Dunholme, and that there it would be found. Full of gratitude for the sign, the monks endeavour to follow the woman, and at once the bier moves on without further difficulty ; and their unconscious guide leads them to that spot amid the windings of the Wear, which the towers of Durham and the holy shrine of S. Cuthbert have since made famous. Such is the story told in the " Rites of Durham," and for ages it has been commemorated on the external face of the north-west pinnacle of the Nine Altars Chapel of the cathedral by the carving of a woman and a cow.

Supernatural intimation was given also of the site for Cartmel Church in Lancashire. A company of monks had journeyed into the country, and had selected a certain hill within Cartmel Forest as a suitable spot for a settlement. They had already marked out the ground which their church was to occupy, when a Voice, speaking to them out of illimitable space, said " Not here, but in a valley between two rivers, whereof the one runs north and the other south ! " Much the brethren marvelled where such a spot could be ; but obedient to the command, they left their chosen place and set forth to seek the one appointed. After much fruitless search they came upon a wooded valley, in the midst of which was a morass, from which a sluggish stream flowed northward ; wading through this they found that the marsh was bounded on the further side by a similar stream which wended its way to the south ; while midway between them was a small eminence forming an island among the silent, sullen waters. Here, therefore, they reared their church, and dedicated it in the name of S. Mary ; while on that hill top where the wondrous Voice had spoken to" them they raised a small chapel in honour of S. Bernard, whence the spot is still called Bernard's Mount.