Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 27, 1916.djvu/320

 292 Three Lives of Saints :

to pieces, and his head cut off, he was left, and his head cast among the thorns in the wood of Eglesdon :

A wild wolf there came soon : and to the head he drew

And there upon he lay and guarded it fast : against his kind,

enough — For his kind were rather to swallow it — and licked it oft, and

kissed And right as he would his own whelp : against wild beasts it kept.

(2) While the Christians, for East Anglia was overrun by the heathen Northmen, were seeking afterwards for the head of the King (after finding his body), the head itself, lying in the thornbush, began to speak :

They knew not that it was there : thus began that head to cry. As it among the thorns lay : and right these words said : Here, Here, Here, with sweet voice : as tho' it were alive ; When that folk heard that : thither they turned blithely ; That head they found in that place : as it itself said.

(3) They bore the body to St. Edmundsbury :

To St. Edmundsbury they led him : as men now call that town. There is an Abbey of Black Monks : as they set him down In a very noble shrine they brought him : as right it was to do. There he lieth yet whole and sound : as they see, that come him

to: For his body that was so torn : whole became anon And sound, as while he alive was : both of flesh and bone : That head also fixed to the body : as it was before. In all his body was no wound : that men might see there. But as his head was smitten off : as our Lord it would A small red line is all about (around) : shining as of gold.

The third example is that of King Edward, who was slain at Corfe Castle in looi, nearly 300 years before our manu- script was written.

This is a poem of 232 lines, and we are rewarded with a larger proportion of the folklore element in it. We have the following positive results :