DECEMBER 295 



Bishop Herbert goes into more detail, describing how 

 the girl was put into a waggon which was sent back- 

 wards down the mountain. 



The king was considerably at a loss to account for 

 his daughter's escape. Could there be any truth after 

 all in this Christian gospel? Had Thenew's God 

 really interfered to protect her ? or was it the effect of 

 black magic, as his own priests affirmed? Well, she 

 should have the benefit of the doubt. He commanded 

 that she should be cast adrift on the sea in a coracle — 

 parvissimo lembo de oorio — without paddle or sail, 

 ' and so let her God free her from peril or death if he 

 can or will ! ' 



So they took the luckless lady to Aberlady — the 

 Mouth of Stench, so called because of the quantity of 

 fish landed there — whence she drifted to the Isle of 

 May, at that time, says Joceline, ' a great resort of 

 fishermen from England, Scotland, and even from 

 Belgium and France.' Finally, the coracle stranded at 

 Culros, where she brought forth a man child on the 

 open beach. Some shepherds found her and reported 

 to Servanus, the evangelist of Fife, who kept a school 

 at Culros. Servanus, better known now as St. Serf, 

 having listened to Thenew's story, not only took the 

 most charitable view of the babe's parentage, but by an 

 ingenious piece of sophistry persuaded his pupils that 

 the infant was the fruit of a union ' exceeding lawful 

 marriage in sanctity.' ' If proof were wanting,' said he, 

 ' it was to be found in the fact that when he was in his 

 oratory after morning lauds that very day, he had heard 

 the Gloria in excelais sung by an invisible choir, 



