THE BIEDS OF THE OUTER FARNES 115 



and summer pink and white with tufts of thrift and 

 campion, and spotted at all sorts of corners with 

 patches of another white, poetical only in the tale it 

 tells of the domestic happiness of Jackdaws and 

 Starlings beyond the reach of boys' fingers. 



The Fame Islands, on which the Castle looks down, 

 have a long history, too, of their own, scarcely second 

 in interest to that of Lindisfarne or lona itself. It 

 was to the Fame, the principal island which gives 

 to the group its name (one derivation makes it the 

 ' Place of Rest ') that St. Cuthbert retired. It was here 

 that he taught the Eider Duck the lesson of tameness 

 during the breeding season which she still remembers, 

 though the Drake, in common with most birds, has 

 long since forgotten it ; and here that Egfrid, King of 

 Northumbria, and his nobles found the saint, and on 

 their bended knees, ' with tears and entreaties/ offered 

 him the Bishopric of Hexham. It was on a rock on 

 the Fames that the Fwfarsldre went to pieces, and 

 it is in the churchyard under the Castle on the main- 

 land opposite that Grace Darling and her father sleep. 



But for those whose calling obliges them to live 

 more in the workaday present than in the past, the 

 chief charm of the Fame Islands is that they are one 

 of the principal breeding-places of sea-birds on the 

 English coast, and easily accessible from London. 

 With the help of the Great Northern night express, 

 a sleeping-carriage, and fine weather, it is not difficult, 

 at a pinch, to see all that is best worth seeing, and 

 store one's memory with pictures not likely soon 



