Page:Primitive Culture Vol 2.djvu/72

58 Hyt was grene on every syde, As medewus are yn someres tyde. Ther were trees growyng fulle grene Fulle of fruyte ever more, y wene; For ther was frwyte of mony a kynde, Such yn the londe may no mon fynde. Ther they have the tree of lyfe, Theryn ys myrthe, and never stryfe; Frwyte of wysdom also ther ys, Of the whyche Adam and Eve dede amysse: Other manere frwytes ther were fele, And alle manere joye and wele. Moche folke he syg ther dwelle, There was no tongue that mygth hem telle; Alle were they cloded yn ryche wede, What cloth hit was he kowthe not rede.

There was no wronge, but ever rygth, Ever day and nevere nygth. They shone as brygth and more clere Than ony gonne yn the day doth here.'

The poem, in fifteenth-century English, from which these passages are taken, is a version of the original legend of earlier date, and as such contrasts with a story really dating from early in the fifteenth century — William Staunton's descent into Purgatory, where the themes of the old sincerely-believed visionary lore are fading into moral allegory, and the traveller sees the gay gold and silver collars and girdles burning into the wearer's flesh, and the jags that men were clothed in now become adders and dragons, sucking and stinging them, and the fiends drawing down the skin of women's shoulders into pokes, and smiting into their heads with burning hammers their gay chaplets of gold and jewels turned to burning nails, and so forth. Late in this fifteenth century, St. Patrick's Purgatory fell into discredit, but even the destruction of the entrance-building, in 1479, by Papal order, did not destroy the ideal road. About 1693, an excavation on the spot brought to light a window with iron stanchions; there was a cry for