FABLE AND FOLKLORE 261 



him too. The kernel of this dramatic story is in the 

 nineteenth section of the Koran: 50 "And he sent against 

 them birds in flocks (ababils), claystones did he hurl 

 down at them." The historical explanation is that the 

 Abyssinian invaders were destroyed by small-pox, the 

 pustules of which are called in Arabic by a word mean- 

 ing "small stones." 



Of a piece with these traditions and the Rabbinical 

 tales of the Jews are the monkish legends preserved in 

 early British chronicles, such as that by the Venerable 

 Bede or by William of Malmesbury. The orthodox as 

 well as dissenters had trouble with birds. Among the 

 traditions of the celebrated Scotch-Irish missionary 

 Columba (Latinized from his baptismal name Colum, 

 "dove") is one that once in his ardent youth Colum was 

 trying to make by stealth in a church a copy of the 

 psalter in possession of the selfish king, Finian of Done- 

 gal, who had refused the young enthusiast that privilege. 

 A meddlesome stork, confined within the church, in- 

 formed the sacristan, and Colum was arrested. Never- 

 theless by divine aid he got his copy, helpful to him 

 afterward in his beneficent work in the Scottish high- 

 lands. 



One of the prettiest of these old stories is that of 

 St. Kenneth and the gulls. 22 One day about A. D. 550 

 the blackheaded gulls, flying as usual along the coast of 

 Wales, and scanning the sea sharply for food or any- 

 thing else interesting to a gull, found floating in a 

 coracle — a round, wicker work canoe — a human baby a 

 day or two old, contentedly asleep on a pallet made of 

 a folded purple cloth. Several gulls seized the corners 

 of this cloth and so carried the child to the ledge of 

 the Welsh cliff where they nested, plucked feathers from 



