Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 29, 1918.djvu/286

 276 The Rosary in Magic and Religion.

much distressed, he asked counsel of an aged priest, who advised him to say fifty Aves every evening (in some versions it is 150, in others twenty-five), which would be accepted by Our Lady in heu of the garland. This the young man faithfully observed, until one day, being upon a journey, he has to pass through a lonely wood where robbers were lying in wait. They were employed in watching him, feeling sure of their prey, when he, un- suspicious of their presence, remembered that his Aves were not yet said, and forthwith stopped to say them. Then to their surprise, the robbers saw a most glorious lady stand before him and take one after another from the lips of the kneeling monk, fifty beautiful roses, which she wove into a garland and placed upon her head. The robbers, so the legend tells, conscience-stricken at the vision, were all converted to a better life, and themselves soon after entered the monastery."

The word ' bead ' (Anglo-Saxon heade or hede) meant originally ' a prayer.' In the Vision of Piers Plowman the expression " bedes byddyng " is found. Again in Spenser's Faerie Queen we read :

" All night she spent in bidding of her bedes And all day long in doing good and godly deeds."

The expression " a pair of beads," sometimes met with in early literature, means " a set of beads." We find this term used in the Prologue of Chaucer's Canterbury Tales, w'here the Prioress carries her beads upon her arm :

"Of smal coral aboute hir arm she bar A peire of bedes, gauded al with grene ; And ther-on heng a broche of gold ful shene, On which ther was first write a crowned A, And after, Amor vincii otnniar

Ladies sometimes wore these beads as a girdle. In some of the early representations of prayer-beads on tombs the rosary is exhibited not as a circle, but, especially in