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<title>The Little Lives of the Saints, by percy Dearmer (1904)</title>
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<h1>The Little Lives of the Saints</h1>
<h3>Told by Percy Dearmer</h3>
<h3>Illustrated by Charles Robinson.</h3>
<h4>London: Wells Gardner, Darton & Co., 1904.</h4>
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<h2>St. Cuthbert, Bishop, 687.</h2>
<img src="images/cuthberta.jpg" alt="Image of Saint Cuthbert"/>
<p>AWAY up North beyond the Border, in the wild country of Lammermoor,
lived a little orphan boy named Cuthbert. An old widow took care
of him till he was big enough to go out and earn his living as
a shepherd. He was the bravest and strongest boy in all that
countryside: none could run so fast as he, or stand against him
in wrestling and fighting. But when he became a shepherd, and
sat through the long lonely nights on the bleak hills, looking
at the stars and listening for the distant howling of the wolves,
then deeper thoughts would come into his head. He thought of
all the wonder of this great world, and of God who had made it,
and of his own little self whom God had made to become like Him.
One night he saw a shower of bright shooting stars fall through
the sky; they seemed to him like a company of angels who had
come to fetch some pure soul to heaven. Next day he heard that
just at that time St Aidan had died. So he determined to be a
monk.</p>
<p>But in those rough times so brave a lad could ill be spared
from warlike exercise, and for a while our Cuthbert became a
soldier. Then, when he was still only a lad of fifteen, the country
became quieter, and he was free to go. One morning in the Abbey
of Melrose the monks heard a visitor knocking at the door. It
was Cuthbert, the young soldier, on horseback with a lance in
his hand, waiting on his horse for admittance. <q>I want to
be a monk,</q> he said, <q>will you take me in?</q> The
abbot, whose name was Eata, and the prior were both great and
holy men; they taught Cuthbert, and soon they loved him greatly.</p>
<p>The new monk became remarkable for his devotion even amongst
those good men. He set himself to the hardest missionary work
among the fierce half-heathen picts and Saxons who lived in their
little villages among the mountains and glens that stretch between
the Solway and the Forth. There were no rich meadows or cosy
farms, and no roads, in those days, but great desolate tracts
of country where the traveller had to pick his way along boggy
pathways with spear in hand, ready for the robbers who might
spring out upon him, Cuthbert would leave his abbey at Melrose
for weeks at a time, searching out the shepherds who lived, as
he had lived, in rude wooden hovels, or finding his way up into
the craggy mountains to little villages where never Christian
priest had reached before. Oftentimes he was near to perishing
with hunger, and yet he would share his last loaf with a poor
man, and however little he had to eat, he always gave part of
it to his horse, when he had one.</p>
<p>Once he was travelling thus with a lad, and they were alone
on the great heath with no place near to give them shelter. The
poor boy complained of hunger. Cuthbert turned to him and said,
<q>Never did a man die of hunger who served God faithfully.</q>
Then he pointed to an eagle that was flying overhead. <q>God
can give us a meal by the service of that eagle,</q> he said.</p>
<p>Soon the eagle flew down to the water. <q>Run to our servant
there,</q> said he, <q>and see what the Lord may have sent
us by her.</q> The boy scared the eagle away, and found a good-sized
fish, and brought it back. <q>What have you done, my son?</q>
said the saint. <q>Why have you not given our servant her
share? Cut the fish in half, and take back to the eagle her part
of what she has brought us.</q></p>
<p>Is it wonderful that the peasant folk loved a man like this?
His face used to shine, we are told, with angelic beauty, and
so winning was his speech that the most hardened sinners would
confess all they had done at the very sight of him.</p>
<p>But he who was so gentle to others was hard upon himself.
When he was near the sea he used to slip out unnoticed at nightfall,
and stand with the cold waves up to his neck, singing his vigils
to God. Then he would come out of the water and pray all the
rest of the night on the beach. One night a friend crept after
him to see what he was doing. He found the saint praying on the
shore of the lake. As he prayed, lo! out of the water crept two
black otters. They went up to the saint, licked his poor frozen
feet, and rubbed their warm fur up against him until he was as
warm as they. Cuthbert and the animals always understood one
another.</p>
<p>For a while he was sent down to the monastery at Ripon, where
he was steward, and had to wait on the strangers who came for
shelter. Through the snow travellers would come, hungry and frozen.
Then Cuthbert would wash their feet, warming them against his
bosom, till the bread was baked in the oven and supper was ready.</p>
<p>Before he was thirty years old, Cuthbert became prior of Lindisfarne
on the coast of Northumberland, where Eata, his old chief at
Melrose, was now abbot. There had been great difficulties at
Lindisfarne (about which you can read in the life of St. Wilfrid),
and all Cuthbert's gentleness and courage were needed to restore
peace among the monks, who did not like the new rules which had
been made. But how could they resist a man who often spent two
nights out of three in prayer?</p>
<p>For twelve years he lived at Lindisfarne, going out constantly
on his wonderful missions to the people in Northumbria. Then,
when he was forty years old, he determined to be a hermit; for
he hoped in that way to live still closer to God.</p>
<p>There was another island within sight of Lindisfarne called
Fame Island. It was a desolate place without water, and people
were afraid to live on it because they thought it was the haunt
of demons. There our saint went to live as a hermit alone. He
had a well made in the sandy ground, and, to the wonder of his
monks, they found water. He took some barley and a spade, and
grew enough corn to give him food, though it was so little that
the fisherfolk on the coast thought the angels fed him. He made
a round hut of turf, thatched with sticks and grass, to live
in, with a little chapel near it; and round it he dug a trench
with a mound that in time grew so high that he could only see
the sky. Thus he lived, night and day holding sweet converse
with God, while the surf roared on the lonely shore and the sea-gulls
wailed overhead. The wild animals loved him because he was so
quiet and kind. The seals would come out of the sea, and fawn
about his feet till he blessed them and let them waddle back
happy to the water. The birds, when he asked them, left off taking
the seed from his little bailey field. The sea-gulls would hush
their screaming when he bade them come to be stroked and petted.
Even now, it is said, there is a special kind of sea-fowl in
those parts, which is found nowhere else; they are still called
the birds of St. Cuthbert, and are tame and gentle, unlike other
sea-birds, because ages ago Cuthbert taught them to trust mankind.</p>
<p>All over England folk began to hear of the wonderful saint
who lived alone in the desert island, and from all parts the
troubled and unhappy came to seek his help. He was like some
famous doctor to whom sick folk come; and no doctor ever cured
bodies so skillfully as he cured souls and hearts and troubled
minds. He built a house by the landing-place on the island for
his visitors to stay in, and here, too, his monks would come
on festivals to have a talk with him.</p>
<p>At last, after eight happy years had passed, the King of Northumbria
came one day, with all his nobles and all the monks of Lindisfarne,
to beg him to be their bishop. Loth he was to leave his solitude,
but they knelt before him with tears, and begged him so earnestly
that at last he consented.</p>
<p>For two years he was Bishop of Lindisfarne, and travelled
up and down the country as of old time. Everywhere that he went
he comforted the sorrowful, and absolved the penitent, and healed
the sick by the strange power that he had. How the people loved
him! They followed him so much that they slept out in tents to
be near him, or made for themselves little huts of branches from
the trees. Happy were the children who were brought to be confirmed
by him, and happy were the people who knelt round when he said
Mass, and heard him say the holy words like one inspired. Yet
he, who prayed so well, said that to help the infirm brethren
was like prayer, well knowing (we are told) that He who said
<q>Thou shall love the Lord thy God,</q> said likewise,
<q>Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself.</q></p>
<p>But now there were troublous times for the people of Northumbria;
their king was at war with the picts in the North. One day Cuthbert
was in Carlisle, and all the people were filled with anxious
longing for news of the war. The bishop bent over an old Roman
fountain deep in thought, and the bystanders leant forward to
catch the words that fell from his lips. <q>perhaps,</q>
he was saying, <q>at this very hour the fight is over and
done.</q> <q>How has it gone?</q> they asked him, but
all he would answer was <q>Watch and pray, watch and pray.</q>
In a few days a solitary way-worn soldier rushed into the city
with the news that all the army had been slain in Scotland, and
that he only had escaped.</p>
<p>Then there was great grief in all Northumbria, and Cuthbert
knew that his own end was near. He gave up his bishopric and
went back to his island to die. For two months he lay in his
little cell, murmuring words of love and counsel to the monks
who gathered round him. At last they saw that death was very
nigh, and they arranged with the monks at Lindisfarne that they
would light a torch for them to see when he died. At midnight
they gave him the last Sacrament, and, as they were beginning
the midnight psalm, he raised up his hands and sped forth his
spirit to God. Then a brother took two torches to the sea-shore,
and the monks at Lindisfarne saw the tiny gleam across the dark
waters just as they had reached the verse--<q>Thou hast shewed
thy people heavy things: thou hast given us a drink of deadly
wine.</q> So this sixtieth psalm is called the Dirge of St.
Cuthbert.</p>
<p>The fishermen in those islands say that the saint still sits
at night on a rock and makes little shells, which are only to
be found in those coasts, and are called St. Cuthbert's beads.</p>
<img src="images/cuthbertb.jpg" alt="Image of Saint Cuthbert"/>
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