Mr. George Tate on the Fame Islands. 243 



a victim to his austerities, in a.d. 687. His desire was, that his 

 body should be buried near his Oratory, on the eastern side of 

 a holy cross he had erected there ; but, yielding to the earnest 

 entreaties of his brethren, he consented that his remains should 

 be interred within Lindisfarne Church.^ 



In a superstitious age, there was no lack of successors to one 

 who was canonized for his real or supposed virtues. Ethelwald, 

 originally a monk of llipon, had his solitary abode on the Fame 

 from A.D. 687 to a.d. 699. He repaired the Oratory of St.Cuth- 

 bert, which had gone to decay, but in so humble a manner, that 

 the chinks in the wall were stopped with hay and mud ; and to 

 protect himself from violent winds, he suspended a calfs skin in 

 one corner. Felgeld, a contemporary of the Venerable Bede, 

 appears as the next hermit, and for him, Eadfrid, the eighth 

 Bishop of Lindisfarne, rebuilt St. Cuthbert's Oratory, which had 

 again become ruinous. Other hermits succeeded, few of whose 

 names are preserved. But the Fame emerges again from ob- 

 scurity in A.D. 1149, under Bartholomew, one of the notable men 

 in the North of England in the twelfth century, and whose Life, 

 by Galfrid of Coldingham, which is printed in the "Acta Sanc- 

 torum," is a curious specimen of mediaeval literature. He was 

 born in the neighbourhood of Whitby, and his early life was disso- 

 lute ; but after travelling in Norway, and being favoured with 

 " visions,'' he became a monk of Durham. According to the 

 monkish biography, his career was full of miracles. On his first 

 visit to the church of Durham, the huge crucifix returned his salu- 

 tation ! But his future history was determined by another vision. 

 St.Cuthbert appeared to him, took him to the Fame, and told him 

 that the Oratory and Hermitage there were reserved for him. 

 Obedient to this supposed call, with the permission of his Prior, 

 he left his convent and retired to the Hermitage. He found it, 

 however, preoccupied by Elwyn, who received him ungraciously, 

 and the Oratory — sacred in the estimation of the pious — used 

 as a sheepfold, and filthy. Here he lived, sometimes with a 

 companion, but usually alone, for forty- two years and a half. 

 His life, at first austere, became more rigorous as it advanced. 

 At first he indulged himself with fish, but that luxury was 

 abandoned, and at length he even denied himself water, and 

 existed exclusively on bread and roots. His fame was widely 

 spread ; he was deeply reverenced by men, but envied by the 

 "Evil One," who appeared before him as a tempter in every 

 shape. Thomas the First, ex-Prior of Durham, dwelt on the 

 island for about two years, while Bartholomew was there ; but 

 so holy had been his life, that Bartholomew saw the devil sitting 

 in a corner, lamenting that the dying man had no sin ! Such 

 were the popular legends of the period ! The last of the hermits 

 was Thomas de Melsonby, Prior of Durham^ who, in oppo- 



