SAKKAR—JUDAS ISCARIOT 445 
this shield because on earth he had once given a piece of cloth 
to a naked beggar, and so, even unto him, a deed of charity was 
not allowed by the Almighty to pass without reward.! 
When, in Matthew Arnold’s poem, “ St. Brandan sails the 
northern main’’ and comes across Judas on an iceberg, the 
fishes occur not, but the cloth appears : 
“‘ And in the street a leper sate 
Shivering with fever, naked, old ; 
Sand raked his sores from heel to pate, 
The hot wind fevered him five-fold. 
He gazed upon me as I passed 
And murmur’d: Help me or I die !— 
To the poor wretch my cloak I cast, 
Saw him look eased, and hurried by.” 
For which act of charity Judas was permitted by the angel 
every Christmas night to 
“Go hence and cool thyself an hour.” 
1 R. Blakey, op. cit., p. 145 (more suo), gives as his authority merely 
"one of the poetical effusions of the Anglo-Norman Trouvéeres.” 
