278
Notes
Page
123.
24. "S. Patrick's Purgatory": in an island of Lough Derg, amid wild and lonely surrounding—part of the Irish county of Fermanagh. It has been celebrated as a place of pilgrimage since the twelfth century. At the present day thousands of devout persons of all classes frequent it at certain times of the year and perform severe penitential exercises.
126.
20. " ere he pass." This brings forcibly before us the strange indeterminateness of these ocean-lands. The narrator seldom knows, and he does not greatly care, whether they are material or spiritual realities, crude facts or significant phantasmagoria. How far remote are the atmosphere and tone of this old Keltic tale from those of Defoe's and Swift's fictions, from the clear-cut, even brutal realisms of Robinson Crusoe, the Journal of the Plague, Gulliver's Travels!
S. GREGORY THE GREAT
The materials for the biography of so remarkable an historical personage as this pope are naturally abundant. His own writings, however, though voluminous, do not tell us much about himself; and in the early Middle Ages a certain amount of unauthorized legend grew up around his name. He was born about a.d. 540, was elected pope in 590, and died in 604.
130.
22. It is strange that Caxton does not give in full the story, so interesting to Englishmen, of what Gregory said in the slave-market. It is thus given by the Venerable Bede:
On a certain day when many things were exposed for sale by merchants in the [Roman] forum and many buyers had assembled, Gregory came among others and saw boys set forth for sale as slaves, who were remarkable for their fair and beautiful complexions, faces and hair. Looking on them, he asked from what part of the earth they had been brought. He was told "from the island of Britain, the inhabitants of which bore such an aspect." Again he asked whether the inhabitants of that island were Christians, or still bound in the errors of paganism. He was told that they were pagans. Deeply sighing, he said: "Alas, that the prince of darkness should possess men of such shining countenances, and that so fair a title-page tells of a mind within devoid of divine grace!" Again he asked what was the name of their nation. He was told "they are called Angli." "It is well," he replied, "for they have faces of angels, and such men ought to be co-heirs of angels in heaven. What is the name of the province from which they come?" It was answered: "Deira." "It is well," he
