THE LEGEND OF ST. ANDREW'S CROSS.
Some seek the Edens of the east,
Some Carrib isles explore;
The forests of the far-off west,
And Afric's savage shore.
_Still_ charms of native speech and spot,
And native springs for aye,
Will band like brothers Scot with Scot
Upon St. Andrew's day!--SCOTTISH SONG.
In the year 370, St. Regulus, or Rule, a holy Greek monk, who dwelt in
Petræa, a city of Achaia, and who had preserved in secret the reliques
of St. Andrew the apostle and martyr, was strangely warned by a vision,
which was repeated three nights in succession, to secure them from the
Emperor Constantius, who was coming to deprive him of his charge, and
Regulus was commanded to take them elsewhere.
A deep and melodious voice, that seemed to come from afar, desired him
to go to the shrine wherein the reliques lay, to take therefrom an arm,
three fingers of the right hand, a tooth, and a kneebone; these he was
carefully to preserve, and to convey into a distant land in the west,
"_a region situated in the uttermost part of the world_."
After the third vision St. Regulus obeyed.
He placed the reliques in a box, and embarked in a small ship, taking
with him Damianus a priest, and Gelasius and Tubaculus, two deacons,
eight hermits, and three devoted virgins.
After great toil and suffering, and after encountering many storms,
they passed Melita, where, as the Scripture tells us, St. Paul had been
of old, thence between the Pillars of Hercules, along the coasts of
Gaul and Celt-iberia; and, after traversing the sea of Almainie, were
cast on a bleak and rocky promontary of Caledonia, near where now the
spires of the fair and stately city of St. Andrew form a landmark to
the mariner.
_Then_ the coast was wild and desolate, and was named by the painted
Picts, who dwelt there, Muick-rhos, or "peninsula of fierce boars."
Wild woods, pathless and dense, covered it, and a stormy sea beat
drearily on its rocky shore.
But these pilgrims having now reached, as they thought, "the
_uttermost_ part of the world," built their cells, and began to preach
and baptize, uniting their labours with those who had landed elsewhere
on Scottish ground, and so, in the fulness of time, that peninsula
became a bishopric.
In the beginning of the ninth century, Adrian, a holy man, became first
bishop of this see of St. Andrews, where in days, then long passed
away, St. Regulus and his kuldees had founded a cell dedicated to the
Holy Virgin, about a bowshot westward from the shore, upon a sea-weedy
rock named unto this day, Our Lady's Craig. But no vestige of the
edifice remains, and the wild waves of the German Sea sweep over it
with every rising tide.
There, in his own chapel, did St. Regulus serve God devoutly for
two-and-thirty years, and there also died Constantine III., King of
Scotland, after spending the last five years of his life as a kuldee of
Kirkrule, for so the place was also named.
In those, the days of Adrian, Hungus, the Pictish king, granted to
God and St. Andrew that the place where the bones of the latter lay
"should be the mother church of all the churches in his kingdom," which
comprehended the entire Lowlands of Scotland, and much of what is now
called England. He laid, in proof of his gift, a _turf_ of the ceded
territory upon the high altar, and it was the _first_ instance of the
symbolical transfer of land by enfoffment in Scotland.
Adrian, the bishop, was a man full of goodness and holiness; none
excelled him in devotion to St. Andrew, and when not preaching to the
people, he usually secluded himself on the little Isle of May, at the
mouth of the Forth, and there he always spent the forty days of Lent,
living on herbs, pure water, and fish, which he caught from the rocks
overhanging the sea.
There he said so many prayers daily, that when he had attained his
fortieth year without having committed a single sin, the devil
spitefully resolved to work him some mischief, if such were possible;
but the entire isle whereon he dwelt had become as it were so holy,
that all the powers of hell could not prevail against him.
Ere long the fallen angel had an opportunity, when fires were lighted
on the hills of Fife and Lothian, summoning the people to arms, when,
in the year 870, Athelstan, king of the western Saxons, a savage
warrior, who had cloven the head of his father by a single stroke of
his sword, and had committed many other inhuman atrocities, but to whom
Alfred the Great had ceded the territory of Northumberland, marched
northward with a mighty host of barbarians, intent on conquest.
Athelstan had placed his dagger on the altar of St. John of Beverley,
as a pledge that if he conquered in the north he would enrich that
church, in testimony of his belief in the saint's patronage; and so,
after laying waste the southern portion of the Pictish territories, he
halted on the banks of the Tyne, near Haddington.
After long vigils in the Ocean cave, where the humble and rude altar
of St. Regulus is still to be seen, the holy Adrian joined the host of
King Hungus, which numbered thirty thousand warriors, a thousand of
whom wore torques of beaten gold. He came to add the influence of his
presence, and by his prayers and ministry to propitiate heaven that
these yellow-haired invaders might be repelled.
By a blow of the same sword with which he slew his father, Athelstan
cleft a rock near the castle of Dunbar, as a symbol that he would
conquer all the northern land; the mark, a yard in width, remains there
to this day, and was oddly enough referred to by Edward I. before Pope
Boniface, as his _best_ claim to the kingdom of Scotland!
For aid, Hungus applied to Achaius, king of the Scots, who sent his son
Alpine with ten thousand warriors, to assist in repelling the dangerous
invaders who had now possessed themselves of all South Britain, and
founded the petty kingdoms of the Heptarchy; and thus, on the 29th
of November, the eve before St. Andrew's day, the three armies came
in sight of each other, on the banks of a little stream which flows
through a narrow, deep, and stony vale, near the pastoral hills of
Dirlton.
There, on the eastern slope of these hills, Adrian, the bishop, set
up an altar, and said mass solemnly, with supplications for victory,
while the wild bands of King Hungus, and the wilder warriors who came
from the western mountains of the Dalriadic Scots, all clad in hauberks
and byrnes of ringed mail, were hushed in prayer, as they knelt with
bare knees on their bucklers or on the green sward, bowing all their
helmeted heads when Adrian stretched forth his hand and blessed them in
the name of his master who was in heaven.
So night closed in, and, worn with toil, the bishop retired from the
tumultuary camp to a lonely house which was near, and there sought
repose.
And _now_ the master of evil thought his time was come to attempt the
good man's downfall.
Assuming the form of a beautiful woman, he appeared at the house of St.
Adrian, and sent in a messenger, saying, "there was one without who
desired to make confession."
St. Adrian, who was at supper, sent one of the little boys who served
at his altar to say that "Killach, the Penitencer, would hear her,
having full power from himself to hear all confessions, to loose, or to
bind."
But, although Killach was a man of great sanctity, who afterwards
succeeded Adrian in his see, she said loudly that she would reveal the
secrets of her soul to none but his master.
St. Adrian therefore desired her to be admitted.
On entering she, for so we must style the spirit for the time, fell
at his feet, and on being blessed by him trembled in her guilty soul;
but, on raising her veil, Adrian could not repress an exclamation of
surprise at her marvellous beauty. Her skin had the purity of snow, her
eyes were of the deepest blue, and shaded by long dark lashes, though
her hair was of a wondrously bright golden tint, and glittered like
a halo round her head. Her face and form were faultless, her stature
tall, and her motions full of grace.
"Whence come you, daughter?" asked the saint,
"From the land of the western Saxons," replied the spirit, in an accent
that was very alluring.
"And _who_ are you?"
"I am the daughter of Athelstan," she continued, weeping.
"Of Athelstan the wicked king!"
"Yes," and she bent her lovely face upon her hands.
"He whose host we are to combat on the morrow?" continued the saint
with growing surprise.
"The same."
"How and why came you to me?"
"He proposes to bestow me in marriage upon one of his chiefs, who is
a Pagan; but I have devoted myself to the service of Heaven, and,
escaping from his camp in secret, have cast myself upon you, as a man
of holiness and of God, to succour and to protect me against the evils
and perils of the world."
She wept bitterly, and as she seemed faint and almost famished, the
kind bishop led her to a seat, and pressed her to join him in his
frugal supper, to take food and refreshment, and thereafter repose.
Then the evil spirit, perceiving the advantages so rapidly won, cast
aside her head-gear, and appeared only in the long flowing weed of a
Saxon woman, with loose sleeves, which revealed the singular whiteness
of her arms and bosom; and, as supper proceeded, and the conversation
became animated, she clasped again and again to her beating heart and
her warm lips the wrinkled hand of St. Adrian with a fondness which,
with the growing splendour of her beauty, bewildered him; Adrian
became troubled, he knew not _why_, his soul seemed to tremble within
him in unison with the heart that beat in the snowy bosom beneath his
fingers, and he prayed inwardly to God and to St. Andrew, his patron,
against this new temptation, but apparently without avail.
He had a silver cup, the gift of King Hungus, and each time, say the
legendaries, he signed the cross above it, red wine of Cyprus filled
it to the brim, but of this miraculous cup his fair guest declined to
drink, affirming that she "preferred pure water."
Incited by her, the saint filled and emptied his cup more frequently
than was his wont; till, dazzled alike by her beauty, which seemed
strangely to increase in radiance, her wit and helplessness, he felt
as if madness were coming over him, for his inward prayers availed him
nothing, and ere long he seemed to lose the power of remembering them.
Suddenly a loud knock rang on the door of the house, and Killach, the
Penitencer, came hastily to announce that an aged pilgrim, who had come
from afar, desired to speak with the bishop of St. Andrew's.
"How far hath he come?" asked the lady, laughing.
"From Bethsaida, a village by the sea of Galilee, where he and his
brother Peter were fishermen."
On hearing the birth-place of the apostles named, the evil spirit
trembled; but the bewildered bishop said, while turning to his
beautiful guest--"Tell the palmer I shall see him at some other time;
after so long a journey he must need rest."
But again the pilgrim knocked and became more importunate; then Adrian,
fired by the wine he had taken, and dazzled by the beauty at his side,
seemed to lose alike his charity and humility amid the snares of the
devil, for he commanded the insolent pilgrim to be cast forth upon the
highway.
"Nay, nay," said the golden-haired damsel, running her white fingers
through his snowy beard, "let us amuse ourselves with him, for these
palmers are quaint fellows."
"Is it your pleasure, fair lady," said Adrian, taking her hand in his,
"that I should permit him to interrupt us?"
"No--but let us jest with him; for I know well that these palm-bearing
pilgrims are sad rogues at times. Ask him some puzzling questions, and
if he answers them, admit him."
"Agreed," said the bishop, draining another goblet, and as her laughter
seemed very infectious, he joined her in a peal of such merriment,
that old Killach, the Penitencer, trembled in his cassock; "propose a
question, sweet lady, for you surpass all in wit as well as in beauty."
"Inquire of him what is the greatest marvel in the smallest space made
by God."
Killach went forth and propounded this strange question.
"The faces of mankind and the leaves of the trees; for no two of either
are alike in the world," replied the poor pilgrim, who stood without
the door of the chamber, bending wearily on a knotted staff, and
shivering in the night air, though clad in a long blackweed, his cowl
hung over his eyes and his white beard flowed over his breast.
"A fair response," replied the beautiful lady, gaily, caressing more
tenderly the bishop's hand with her velvet-like fingers, while her
bright eyes beamed into his, and the night currents blew her perfumed
hair across his face; "pray ask him next, what is higher than heaven."
"He who made it," replied the pilgrim, bowing low. Then the evil spirit
trembled, but again asked merrily:
"What is the distance from heaven to the base of the bottomless pit?"
"Ask that question of _thyself_, who hast measured the distance to the
full, which _I_ never did--thou accursed spirit!" replied the pilgrim
furiously, beating thrice on the door with his staff, whereupon, with
a shrill shriek, the Devil vanished from the side of the terrified
bishop; but his conqueror remained for a time unmoved, and then quietly
disappeared, seeming to melt away before the eyes of those who saw him.
Then Adrian fell upon his knees and returned thanks to heaven, and to
his patron, St. Andrew, for escaping this last and most subtle snare of
the evil one.
But now he found that the morning was far advanced; that already the
combined armies of the Northern kings were meeting the hordes of
Athelstan in the shock of battle; and so the sainted bishop came forth
with a more than usually humble and contrite heart, and, attended by
his crossbearer and followers, ascended an eminence in view of the
field, and then he knelt down to pray for victory over the Saxons.
There in the hollow, through which the Peffer flowed among groves of
oak towards the sea, the roar of battle rang--the tumultuous shouts
and yells of triumph or agony, as Scot and Pict, or the yellow-haired
Saxon, closed in mortal strife; the twanging of bows, the trampling of
horses, the clash of axes, swords, and maces swung on ringing bucklers;
or, as the ghisarma of the Saxon, the long tuagh of the Celt, clove
hauberk of rings, or helmet of steel; and amid the carnage, wherever
death and slaughter were deepest, rode the royal parricide, the
terrible Athelstan; "of earls the lord, of heroes the bracelet giver,"
as the harpers who sang his praises styled him; but he was fated never
again to hear their adulous strains, or see his wooden halls of Jorvik,
or York as it is named now.
Despite the valour of King Hungus and his auxiliaries, the Saxons,
among whom were many thousand southern Britons, forced to military
service and slavery, were gradually gaining the victory, and the Scots
and Picts were giving way, when lo!
Across the eastern quarter of the blue firmament there suddenly came
a thunder cloud, the hues of which alternated between deep black and
brilliant purple, though its ragged borders gleamed with golden tints.
Lightning was seen to flash behind it, while hoarse thunder hurtled
athwart the noonday sky, and sank growling into the estuary of the
Forth, beyond the Isle of May.
Then the cloud opened, and amid a blaze of such light as that which
dazzled Saul on his way to Damascus, there shone above the Scottish
host, with an effulgence that made their serried helmets outshine the
rays of the sun, the figure of St. Andrew the Apostle, on his cross,
the two trees tied like the letter X, to which he had been bound, when
scourged to death at Petræa, in Achaia.
Then St. Adrian lifted up his eyes, and knew in him the pilgrim of the
blackweed; the same stranger who on the preceding night had saved him
from the snares of the evil one, and falling on his knees, he bowed his
silver hairs in the dust.
When he looked again, cloud, figure, and cross had passed away; but
inspired by this miraculous omen of victory, the Scots and Picts rushed
with new vigour on the Saxons, who were soon defeated, and with
dreadful slaughter.
Athelstan was unhorsed by King Hungus, who slew him on the north bank
of the Peffer, at a place named unto this day _Athelstansford_. The
Picts buried him on the field; but his head was borne upon a spear to
an islet of the Forth, where it was fixed for a time, and the place was
long named, from that circumstance, Ardchin-nichun, or "the head of the
highest."[1]
From that day St. Andrew became the patron of the Scots and Picts, who
put his cross upon their banners, and the badges of the former, the
_thistle_, and of the latter, the _rue_, were interwoven in the collar
of the Knights of the most Ancient Order of the Thistle, instituted in
honour of this victory; and in memory of the apostles their number is
restricted to the reigning sovereign and twelve companions.
Upon the cathedral of St. Andrew, Hungus bestowed "a case of gold for
preserving the reliques of the saint, many chalices and basons, the
image of Christ in gold, and those of the apostles in silver," and
the bishop Adrian toiled more than ever in the service of God and
his patron, until the year 882, when some Danish rovers attacked his
hermitage on the Isle of May, and barbarously slew him with all his
followers.
His coffin, of stone, is still lying there, and the fishermen of the
Forth aver that at times a wondrous light shines from it. He passed
away in the odour of sanctity, and Killach the Penitencer succeeded him
as second bishop of the see.
Such is the legend of the cross of St. Andrew, and how it became the
cognizance of the Scottish nation.
FOOTNOTES:
[Footnote 1: Now Inchgarvie. Athelstan's grave was opened in 1832. His
coffin was composed of five large pieces of freestone, and his bones
measured six feet in length. The coffin was thirty inches in breadth,
but only four in depth. The farm of Miracle, corrupted into _markle_,
indicates where the vision is said to have appeared; and, with the
adjacent lands, it was assigned to the culdees of St. Andrew's in
gratitude for the victory.]