Outer Fames. 35 



pnebuit, quod nullus hactenus hominum earn impune 

 temerare pnesumpsit." 



Once on a time an unlucky monk Leving, 

 servant of Elric the hermit, uncle of Bernard, sacrist 

 of Durham in a moment of weakness, when his holy 

 master was away, yielding to his lower appetite, 

 killed a duck and ate it, scattering the bones and 

 feathers over the cliff. When, fifteen days later, 

 Elric came back he found bones, feathers, beak, and 

 toes, neatly rolled up into a parcel " cunctis in unum 

 convolutis " and laid inside the chapel door. " The 

 very sea," says the devout historian,* who had the 

 tale first hand from the repentant monk, " not having 

 presumed to make itself participator in the crime by 

 swallowing them up." Leving was flogged, and for 

 many years though there are records of puffins and 

 other " wyelfoyle " sent from the brethren on the 

 Fames as delicacies for high-day feasts at Durham 

 St. Cuthbert's peace was probably unbroken. 



But saints in these freethinking days have lost 

 something of their power, and need at times, to 

 enforce obedience to their commands, the help of the 

 secular arm, and a year or so ago it somehow or 

 other came to pass that the birds found themselves 

 practically unprotected in any way. The nests were 

 at the mercy of anyone who cared to land, and were 

 robbed so recklessly that the extinction of the 

 colonies was threatened. The danger has happily 

 this year been met by the public spirit of a party of 

 philornithic gentlemen, who, with Mr. Hugh Barclay, 

 of Colney Hall, Norfolk, at their head, have leapt 

 into the breach and obtained a lease of both groups 



* " Reginald! Monachi Dunelmensis libellus de Admirandis 

 Beati Cuthberti virtutibus," cap. xxvii. (Published by the 

 Surtees Society in 1835.) 



