424 Dr. John Stuart on the History of Dunbar. 



church, came with a prosperous wind to the island ; but 

 having placed some of the saint's bones in a wooden coffin, 

 and put them on shipboard, there arose such a tempest, that, 

 after several attempts, he was glad to restore the bones and 

 depart in peace without his coveted treasure. 



When we bear in mind the eagerness displayed by the 

 ecclesiastics of the Middle Ages to obtain for their churches 

 the relics of saints who stood high in popular estimation, 

 we may conclude that the rector of Dunbar was greatly dis- 

 appointed at the issue of this adventure ; but it is certain 

 that, whether with or without her relics, the veneration for 

 St. Bey was still fresh in the fifteenth century, for on one 

 occasion, when King James IV. was at Dunbar, in May, 

 1497, we find a payment entered in the accounts of his 

 chamberlain, of 20s to Mr William Sandilands " to ger say a 

 trentale of messis of St. Bey." 



A popular rhyme associates St, Bey with St. Helen and 

 St. Abb, and insinuates that they had a contention among 

 them which of their churches should be built nearest to the 

 sea. According to the rhyme, St. Abb, or St. Ebba, built 

 hers on the nabs, or cliffs, which overhang the sea at Cold- 

 ingham. St. Helen built hers on the lea at Aid-Camus, 

 while St. Bey (who comes to be called St. Ann) erected hers 

 on Dunbar sands, and so got nearest to the sea. 



There is a great confusion in these rhyming lines, as the 

 sense is always regarded in such productions as secondary 

 to the jingle ; but if St. Bey could have been held as one of 

 the school of St. Ebba with whom she is here mixed up, it 

 would be much more intelligible how her memory came to 

 be venerated in the district. The story in the Breviary 

 seems, however, too definite to admit of such a solution ; 

 only it must be borne in mind that there was a great desire 

 to appropriate all doubtful saints to the Scottish list at the 

 time when the Breviary was compiled, and in that spirit St. 

 Baldred has been pressed into the Scottish ranks as a dis- 

 ciple of St. Mungo, while there can be little doubt that he 

 belonged to the Saxon school, and as such he is celebrated 

 by Alcuin as Baltherus, an Anchorite, in his list of saints of 

 the Church of York. 



The ruins of the little church of St. Helen were pretty 

 entire when they were examined in the year 1848 by Jfr 

 Muir, our great authority in ecclesiastical architecture. 

 They were pronounced by him to be of late Norman char- 



