Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 27, 1916.djvu/323

 Their Bearing on Folklore. 295

Among all the press that there was : that they saw all with eye Flew among them as a mist : so sweet a thing they never saw.

(10) So sweet was the smell and good : that all that were there For mirth thought they stood : in paradise, not there.

In this manner he was enshrined.

A thousand year it was and one : after that time That our Lord was born on Earth : and descended for us to ground.

So here we come upon a legend which has what we should call the typical atmosphere of ecclesiastical tales of the Middle Ages. Why is this .?

It is not merely accretion due to time. For although the tale of Beket is committed to writing within a little over 100 years from his martyrdom, while this story had nearly 300 years' interval in which to grow : yet if time were the chief factor we should expect a more " legendary " colouring still in the case of St. Edmund, whose date was nearly 400 years before the manuscript.

The collection was, so thinks the Editor, very likely formed at Gloucester, at the Abbey there. Does this give the clue .'* Is it possible that the monks were better informed about the Western Saints .-^ Yet in that case they would hardly write so long a life of Beket.

It may be rather that the legends of the Western Saints became more embellished than those of the East of England. The special characteristics of the Celtic race may explain why those tales which concern the more Celtic portions of our islands became more incrusted with those features which the Folklore student is seeking ; and this theory finds some support in the fact that from the portions of our islands which are predominantly Celtic, in addition to the tale of St. Kenelm, which is rich in such features, we have two stories from Ireland — St. Patrick's