Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 36.djvu/139

 servance of the Lord's day by abstaining from work, the abolition of marriage between a man and his stepmother or his brother's widow, as well as other abuses, among which may have been the neglect of giving thanks after meals, from which the grace cup received in Scotland the name of St. Margaret's blessing.

According to a tradition handed down by Goscelin, a monk of Canterbury, she was less successful in asserting the right of a woman to enter the church at Laurencekirk, which was in this case forbidden by Celtic, as it was commonly by the custom of the Eastern church. Her biographer dilates on her own practice of the piety she inculcated : her prayers mingled with her tears, her abstinence to the injury of health, her charity to the orphans, whom she fed with her own spoon, to the poor, whose feet she washed, to the English captives she ransomed, and to the hermits who then abounded in Scotland. For the pilgrims to St. Andrews she built guest-houses on either side of the Firth of Forth at Queensferry, and provided for their free passage. She fasted for forty days before Christmas as well as during Lent, and exceeded in her devotions the requirements of the church. Her gifts of holy vessels and of the jewelled cross containing the black rood of ebony, supposed to be a fragment from the cross on which Christ died, are specially commemorated by her biographers, and her copy of the Gospels, adorned with gold and precious stones, which fell into the water, was, we are told, miraculously recovered without stain, save a few traces of damp. A book, supposed to be this very volume, has been recently recovered, and is now in the Bodleian Library. To Malcolm and Margaret the Culdees of Lochleven owed the donation of the town of Balchristie, and Margaret is said by Ordericus Vitalis to have rebuilt the monastery of Iona. She did not confine her reforms to the church, but introduced also more becoming manners into the court, and improved the domestic arts, especially the feminine accomplishments of needlework and embroidery. The conjecture of Lord Hailes that Scotland is indebted to her for the invention of tartan may be doubted. The introduction of linen would be more suitable to her character and the locality. The education of her sons was her special care [see under III], and was repaid by their virtuous lives, especially that of David. 'No history has recorded,' says William of Malmesbury,' three kings and brothers who were of equal sanctity or savoured so much of their mother's piety. . . . Edmund was the only degenerate son of Margaret. . . . But being taken and doomed to perpetual imprisonment, he sincerely repented.' Her daughters were sent to their aunt Christina, abbess of Ramsey, and afterwards of Wilton. Of Margaret's own death her biographer gives a pathetic narrative. She was not only prepared for, but predicted it, and some months before summoned her confessor, Turgot (so named in Capgrave's 'Abridgment,' and in the original Life), and begged him to take care of her sons and daughters, and to warn them against pride and avarice, which he promised, and, bidding her farewell, returned to his own home. Shortly after she fell ill. Her last days are described in the words of a priest who attended her and more than once related the events to the biographer. For half a year she had been unable to ride, and almost confined to bed. On the fourth day before her death, when Malcolm was absent on his last English raid, she said to this priest : 'Perhaps on this very day such a calamity may befall Scotland as has not been for many ages.' Within a few days the tidings of the slaughter of Malcolm and her eldest son reached Scotland. On 16 Nov. 1093 Margaret had gone to her oratory in the castle of Edinburgh to hear mass and partake of the holy viaticum. Returning to bed in mortal weakness she sent for the black cross, received it reverently, and, repeating the fiftieth psalm, held the cross with both hands before her eyes. At this moment her son Edgar came into her room, whereupon she rallied and inquired for her husband and eldest son. Edgar, unwilling to tell the truth, replied that they were well, but, on her abjuring him by the cross and the bond of blood, told her what had happened. She then praised God, who, through affliction, had cleansed her from sin, and praying the prayer of a priest before he receives the sacrament, she died while uttering the last words. Her corpse was carried out of the castle, then besieged by Donald Bane, under the cover of a mist, and taken to Dunfermline, where she was buried opposite the high altar and the crucifix she had erected on it.

The vicissitudes of her life continued to attend her relics. In 1250, more than a century and a half after her death, she was declared a saint by Innocent IV, and on 19 June 1259 her body was translated from the original stone coffin and placed in a shrine of pinewood set with gold and precious stones, under or near the high altar. The limestone pediment still may be seen outside the east end of the modern restored church. Bower, the continuator of Fordun, adds the miracle,