Page:The golden days of the early English church from the arrival of Theodore to the death of Bede, volume 3.djvu/17

Rh Cuthberht must himself have been a child under eight years at the time, and he actually told the story of himself ! What is not less remarkable is Bede's filling so large a space in his history with the tale, and being evidently in full sympathy with its moral, namely, that it was wicked for children to romp and play. It is remarkable that a thousand years later the same theories in regard to children were revived again in the same form, and are known to us as Puritanism!

The story here told from Bede is not contained in the earlier biography of the Lindisfarne monk. Of Cuthberht's early life, as there reported, we only know that he was brought up from about the age of eight by a widow named Kenswith or Kensped, at a village called Hruringaham or Ruringaham. Mr. C. Bates suggests the possibility that the harrying of Northumberland by Caedwalla and Penda after the death of Ædwin in 633 may easily have left him an orphan and Kenswith a widow.

The first incident reported of Cuthberht, both in the Anonymous Life and by Bede, represents him as a shepherd-boy tending his master's flock