Page:Apocryphal Gospels and Other Documents Relating to the History of Christ.djvu/37

Rh rest at chidings alone; but went to the clay birds and broke them all, to the great grief of the children.

Now, when Christ saw this, he waved his hands over all the birds he had fashioned, and they became forthwith alive, and soared up into the heavens.

And these birds are the golden plovers, whose note 'deerrin' sounds like to the Iceland word 'dyrdhin,' namely, 'glory;' for these birds sing praise to their Lord, for in that he mercifully saved them from the merciless hand of the Sadducee."

I find the following curious stories in the "Sermones Dominicales" of Hugo de Prato, who is said to have died in 1322. The copy I quote from was printed in 1476 or 1483, and its pages are not numbered. The passage is in the ninth sermon,—On the Nativity of Christ:—

"All his creatures bore witness to his coming. For 1. The angels bore witness unto Him, for they, as soon as he was born, appeared to men, saying, Unto you is born this day a Saviour; 2. The sun, moon, and stars bore witness to Him; for on this day, in the East, three suns appeared, and were immediately joined into one to signify that the three, i.e. divinity, soul, and flesh, are combined in Christ: the new, i.e. the soul newly created, and the old, i.e. the flesh, descending from Adam, and the eternal,