A Monk.

I hear a shout as of a multitude

In the North Suburb.

Dunstan.

And look abroad.

Edwin.

My Lord,

Bridferth, mount the tower,

That was a voice I knew

It came from darkness and the pit—but hark!
An Angel's song "Tis Dunstan that I see!
Rebellious Monk! I lay my body down
Here at thy feet to die, but not my soul,
Which goes to God. The cry of innocent blood
Is up against thee, and the Avenger's cry
Shall answer it. Support me, Sirs, I pray ;
Be patient with me. there was something still. . .
I know not what .
... under your pardon
Touching my burial... did I not see but now

Another corpse there..

...

...

yes.

I pray you, Sirs,... there ...

BRIDFERTH (from the tower).

My Lord, my Lord, Harcather flies; the Danes

Are pouring thro' the gate. Harcather falls.

[Dies.

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

The Curtain falls.

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 3, Act I., Scene i.

"For you shall know that what by ale or wine

To man is done, that acorns do to swine."

This effect is owing probably to a process of fermentation

taking place in the acorn, after it has lain some time on the ground in wet and warm weather.

Page 25, Act I., Scene vi.

"And frankly with a pleasant laugh held out
Her arrowy hand."

"Her arrow hand."-WALTER SAVAGE LANDOR.
But the epithet is less apt in my use of it.

Page 45, Act II., Scene ii.

"A love that clings not, nor is exigent," &c.

In case it should occur to any readers that they have seen this passage before, it may be well to mention that I have quoted it in a previous publication, without having thought it necessary to say in that place that the quotation was from an MS. of my own.

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 vi.

"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 59, Act II., Scene last.

"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 63, Act III., Scene i.

"The wind when first he rose and went abroad
Thro' the waste region, felt himself at fault,
Wanting a voice; and suddenly to earth
Descended with a wafture and a swoop;
Where, wandering volatile from kind to kind,
He woo'd the several trees to give him one.

Perhaps I have been indebted here, though if so, I was unconscious of it at the time, to a well-known passage in Gebir.' At all events, that passage cannot be too often quoted, and I will transcribe it here:

"But I have sinuous shells of pearly hue
Within, and they that lustre have imbibed
In the Sun's palace-porch, where, when unyoked,
His chariot-wheel stands mid-way in the wave :
Shake one and it awakens; then apply
Its polish'd lips to your attentive ear,
And it remembers its august abodes,

And murmurs as the ocean murmurs there."

Page 78, 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. Organum, ii, 13.

Page 83, Act II., Scene vii.

"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 multitude 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.

Page 111, Act v., Scene ii.

"But now I wax old,
Sick, sorry, and cold,
Like muck upon mould
I widder away."

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 112, Act v., Scene ii.

"At Winchester

Ye heard how in the west end of the church,
The night that Dunstan fled, the Devil skipped,