156 CimONICLES OF CORNISH SAINTS. V.— S. DAVID. 



time immemorial, has borne his name and daimed him as the 

 founder of its church. A few miles west of this parish lies 

 Tintagel, the stronghold and birthplace of the famous King 

 Arthur, to whom he was closely related ; and adjoining it on the 

 east is the wide parish of Alternun, where, tradition tells us, his 

 mother abode, and where her well remains to this day. Davidstow 

 therefore is just the spot where we might expect to find some 

 memorials of the Saint's labour ; and it must have been in his 

 day a post well deserving such a soldier of the Cross as S. David ; 

 for in its immediate neighbourhood King Arthur and his veterans 

 were wont to seek brief respite from the toils of war, and thither 

 must have swarmed refugees from all parts of Britain, whose homes 

 had been wasted by the Saxon invaders, and who would naturally 

 flee for shelter to the wild hills and cliff's which flanked the 

 ■ impregnable fortress of their hero. 



With regard to the historical records of David's life, few men 

 of renown have been more unfortunate in their biographers than 

 he; for all the memoirs of him which have come down to us from 

 the middle ages are so filled with superstitious fables that their 

 historical authority is regarded as of little value. It is however 

 a noteworthy fact that though there are at least half a dozen of 

 those old lives extant,* each having some minute details and 

 mendacious embellishments peculiar to itself, they nevertheless 

 agree with each other in the general outline of the Saint's life. 

 Divested of what is manifestly fabulous, there is a residuum 

 common to all of them ; and this residuum, to which some credit 

 may fairly be attached, forms the substance of the following brief 

 sketch. 



* The BoUandists have published that which they consider the most 

 ancient of those lives, Acta Sanctorum, i, March 1, 41. It belonged, they tell 

 us, to the Church of S. Savioiir's, at Utrecht, and was brought originallj 

 from Britain. Colgan also, because David's mother was said to have been an 

 Irish woman, and because he cultivated the friendship of many Irish Saints, 

 published a life of the Saint, with an account of his monastery at Menevia 

 in his " Acta SS. Hibernife." Another life was compiled by Eicemarch, a 

 bishop of S. David's, who died about the year 1096. It is more tedious and 

 prolix than the Utrecht life, and the great aim of its compiler was to make it 

 appear that S. David and his See held supremacy over the whole British 

 Church. An abridgement of this life is given hj Capgrave in his " Legenda 

 Nova," and also by Giraldus Cambrensis with a few unimportant additions. 

 The Welsh life too, published by the Welsh -MSS. Society, seems to have 

 been derived from the same source. 



