Page:The Celtic Review volume 3.djvu/376

Rh World, the Fall of Man, Cain and Abel and the Deluge, and goes on to the story of the temptation of Abraham, the story of Moses, and of David and Bathsheba, and ends with the building of Solomon’s Temple. It consists of 2846 lines of verse, generally of seven syllables, but sometimes of four syllables to a line.

b. Passio Domini, which represents the Temptation of Christ, and the events from the Entry into Jerusalem to the Entombment. It consists of 3242 lines of verse of the same sort as the first.

c. Resurrectio Domini, which gives the story of the Harrowing of Hell, the imprisonment of Joseph and Nicodemus, the Resurrection and the meeting of Christ and His Mother, and the events between the Resurrection and the Ascension, with which it ends. Interpolated in the middle is the Legend of St. Veronica and Tiberius and the Death of Pilate. It consists of 2646 lines of verse.

Running through these, but especially detailed in the first, is the old legend of the origin of the Wood of the Cross.

The legend in its ordinary form is this. When Adam fell, the Father promised him the Oil of Mercy which should deliver him from death, and when he was dying, he sent his son Seth to the Gates of Paradise to ask for it. The angel let him look into Paradise and there he saw the Tree of Knowledge, withered and dead, with a dead serpent twined round it, and its roots in Hell, and the Tree of Life, bright and green with living fruit upon it, its top reaching to Heaven, and in its branches a Maiden with a Child in Her arms. The angel gave to Seth three pips from the fruit of the Tree of Life, telling him to put them into his father’s mouth and nostrils when he was dead. Seth returned and did as he was directed, and in process of time the three seeds grew into three small trees. Abraham took some of the wood for the sacrifice of Isaac, Moses took some for his rod, and, when, to symbolise the mystery of the Trinity, the three trees had grown into one tree, David sat beneath its branches to bewail his sin and make the Miserere Psalm. When Solomon