Page:Apocryphal Gospels and Other Documents Relating to the History of Christ.djvu/36

xxxii could know, much less write, what she did, if we were unaware of the frightful iniquity of her times.

In the middle ages and onward the Apocryphal books were very popular; were read with avidity, were reproduced in poetry, and were literally translated into a variety of languages. In one form or another we encounter them in Egypt, Syria, Persia, and India, in Greece and Italy, in Germany, Spain, and France, in Britain, and as far north as Iceland. To begin with the last, I find in a recent collection of Icelandic Legends, a version of the well known story of Christ and the birds, adapted, of course, to the latitude of Iceland. Here it is:—

"Once on a Sabbath, Christ, in company with other Jewish children, amused himself in fashioning birds out of clay.

After that the children had amused themselves awhile herewith, one of the Sadducees chanced to come up to them. He was old and very zealous, and he rebuked the children for spending their Sabbath in so profane an employment. And he let it not