FABLE AND FOLKLORE 265 



him. Once a venerable brother named Wilfred visited 

 him, and . . . suddenly two swallows came flying in . . . 

 and often they sat fearlessly on the shoulders of the 

 holy man Guthlac, and then lifted up their song, and 

 afterward they sat on his bosom and on his arms and 

 his knees. . . . When Guthlac died angelic songs were 

 heard in the sky, and all the air had a wondrous odor 

 of exceeding sweetness." 



St. Kentigern, when a schoolboy, was wrongly ac- 

 cused of having twisted off the head of his master's 

 pet robin. He proved his innocence by putting the head 

 and body together, whereupon the robin came to life 

 and attended Kentigern until he became a great and 

 good man. His master was St. Servan, and the robin 

 was one that used to eat from his hand and perch on 

 his shoulder, where it would twitter whenever Servan 

 chanted the Psalms. 



Here we encounter the mystical kind of story with 

 which those old chroniclers like to embellish their biog- 

 raphies of holy men, and there was no limit to their 

 credulity. Such is the tale of Carilef, a French would- 

 be hermit of Menat, in Auvergne, who thought he was 

 guided to set up a religious station because a wren had 

 laid an egg in a hood that he had left hanging on a 

 bush — a very wrenlike proceeding; and that was the 

 foundation of the monastery about which the city of 

 St. Calais grew in later times. Several other incidents 

 of this kind are on record, showing that the value placed 

 on any action by a bird that could be construed as a 

 divine message. It is written that Editha, one of the 

 early queens of England, persuaded her husband to 

 found a religious house near Oxford on account of the 

 omens she interpreted from the voice and actions of a 



