262 BIRDS IN LEGEND 



their breasts to make a soft bed, laid the baby on it, 

 then hastened to fly inland and bring a doe to provide 

 it with milk, for which an angel offered a brazen bell 

 as a cup. There the blessed waif lived for several 

 months; but one day, in the absence of all the gulls, 

 a shepherd discovered the infant and took him down 

 to his hut and his kind wife. The gulls, returning from 

 the sea, heard of this act from the doe. They at once 

 rushed to the shepherd's cottage, again lifted the babe 

 by the corners of its purple blanket, and bore him back 

 to the ledge of their sea-fronting crag. There he stayed 

 until he had grown to manhood — a man full of laughter 

 and singing and kind words; and the Welsh peasants 

 of the Gower Peninsula revered him and called him 

 Saint Kenneth. 



Somewhat similar is the legendary history of Coe- 

 magen, or Saint Kelvin, an Irish monk of the eighth 

 century, into whose charge was committed the infant 

 son of Colman, a Leinster noble. "Coemagen fed the 

 child on the milk of a doe which came from the forest 

 to the door of his cell. A raven was wont, after the 

 doe had been milked, to perch on the bowl, and some- 

 times would upset it. 'Bad luck to thee !' exclaimed the 

 saint. When I am dead there will be a famous wake, 

 but no scraps for thee and thy clan!' When very old 

 St. Kelvin moved into a forest hermitage, where the 

 birds came to him as companions. Once, while pray- 

 ing, his supplicating palms outstretched, a blackbird 

 (thrush) dropped her eggs into the hollow of his hands, 

 and he held his arms rigid until the chicks hatched. " 



A curious parallel to the last incident is quoted by the 

 Baroness Martinengo-Caesaresco 20 "from an industrious 

 translator" of the book Tatchi-Lou-Lun, describing how 



