I know not what... under your pardon . . . yes . . .
Touching my burial . . . did I not see but now
Another corpse... I pray you, sirs, . . . there... there...

[Dies.

Bridferth (from the tower). My lord, my lord, Harcather flies; the Danes

Are pouring through the gate.

Harcather falls.

Dunstan. Give me the crucifix. Bring out the relics. Host of the Lord of Hosts, forth once again!

THE END.

NOTES.

PREFACE.

"The prayer of the Anglo-Saxon Liturgy for deliverance à furore Northmannorum."

THE Anglo-Saxon ritual of the Cathedral Church of Durham, printed by the Surtees Society, contains some curious specimens of the religious services of the period. I am tempted to quote the invocation by which the Devil was prevented from riding upon horses, goats, and swine. "Habraham, Habraham! equos, capras, et porcusque benedic latrinibus, angelus qui positus est super animalia nostra custodiat ea, ut non poterit Diabolus inequitare illa. Habraham teneat vos per ac divinitas Dei, Deus ad dexteram, angelus ad sinistram, propheta vos prosequentur, martyres antecedant vos, patronesque persequentur, vos custodiat Dominus oves et boves, vitulos, equos et apes, custodiantque vos his pastores. Signum crucis Christi Jesu, in nomine Dei summi, per Dominum—

I will add the "oratio" which was used on the occasion of shaving a virgin beard: "Deus cujus spiritu creatura omnis adulta congaudet, exaudi preces nostras super hunc famulum tuum juvenilis ætatis decore lætantem, et primis auspiciis adtondendum; exaudi, Domine, ut in omnibus protectionis tuæ munitus auxilio, cœlestem benedictionem accipiat, et præsentis vitæ presidiis gaudeat et æterne, per▬▬”

The former of these offices represents the superstition of the Anglo-Saxon Church in all its grossness: the latter, though it may excite a smile, ought, however, to be regarded with respect, as one of those tendernesses of religious care with which the Church in old times watched over the lives of its members.

Page 48, Act II., Scene III.

"Have they bought her with bracelets
And lured her with gold?"

With the Anglo-Saxons, bracelets were amongst the forms in which wealth was hoarded or passed from hand to hand.

Page 55, Act II., Scene V.

‘Keep the King's peace? If longer than three minutes

I keep it, may I die in my bed like a cow!"

I have been induced here to preserve a flower of speech recorded in one of the chronicles of the time, though perhaps a little more peculiar than what I should otherwise have employed.

Page 58, Act II., last Scene.

66 "Oh, God!

I pray Thee that Thou shorten not my days,

Ceasing to honour this disnatured flesh

That was my mother."

This is borrowed from "The Revenger's Tragedy," by Cyril Tourneur.

"Forgive me, Heaven, to call my mother wicked!

Oh lessen not my days upon the earth:

I cannot honour her."

Page 77, Act III., Scene V.

"Against the gust remitting fiercelier burns
The fire, than with the gust it burnt before."

"Existimantur incendia illa qui fiunt flante vento forti, majores progressus facere adversus ventum, quam secundum ventum; quia scilicet flamma resilit motu perniciore, vento remittente, quam procedit, vento impellente."-Nov. Organon, ii., 13.

Pages 82, 83, Act III., Scene VII.

66 Cumba is my gauge,

And by the crown of his head I know the times.

Grow they ascetic, then his tonsure widens ;
Or free, it narrows in."

The tonsure was enforced upon the secular clergy, as well as on the regulars; and as the Anglo-Saxons were very proud of their hair, this was a point of discipline which sometimes gave rise to difficulties.

Page 90, Act III., Scene VIII.

"He bids you know that in this land this day

He finds more fat than bones, more monks than soldiers." I have taken the words of Fuller: "Indeed one may safely affirm that the multitudes of monasteries invited the invasion and facilitated the conquest of the Danes over England. . . . because England had at this time more flesh or fat than bones, wherein the strength of a body consists; more monks than military men."-Church History, book ii., s. 51.

I have taken the liberty to borrow this from the "Processus Noe," one of the Towneley Mysteries, printed by the Surtees Society. In another place I have taken a mode of expression from the following lines in the "Mactatio Abel: "

"Felowes, here I you forbede

To make nother nose nor cry:
Whoso' is so hardy to do that dede,
The Devylle hang hym up to dry."

Page 111, Act V., Scene II.

"At Winchester

Ye heard how in the west end of the church,

The night that Dunstan fled, the Devil skipp'd

And with great laughter in his roaring fashion
Took up his 'O be joyful!'"

"The Divell was heard in the west end of the church, taking

up a great laughter after his roaring manner, as though he should show himself glad and joyful at Dunstan's going into exile."-Holinshed, chap. 23.

Page 118, Act V., Scene VII.

Stage direction—" In front is a mortstone.",

This was a large stone by the way-side between a distant village and the parish church, on which the bearers of a dead body rested the coffin.

Page 120, Act V., Scene VII.

"At once disclosed

The picture of the past presents itself
Minute yet vivid, such as it is seen

In his last moments by a drowning man.”

There are few psychological phenomena more interesting or more worthy of scientific investigation than the one here alluded to, the presentation to a man in a drowning state,— and not, as far as I am aware, to a man dying in any other way, -of innumerable acts and occurrences in a succession so rapid, that his whole life appears to be reflected in his last moments. There have been several examples of this in our own times, according to the relations of men who have been resuscitated out of a drowning state; and one of them is of such unquestionable authenticity and value, that some claim may perhaps be advanced in the interest of science to have it duly recorded.