436 



Christopher now travels to Lycia, and converts many by the exhi- 

 bition of this miracle, until the king condemns him to death. He was 

 accordingly bound to a strong stake, and forty archers were ordered to 

 " shotten him through with arrows." JNone of the knights, however, 

 might attain him ; for the arrows hung in the air around him. Then 

 the king, thinking that he had been executed, went towards him, 

 when one of the arrows turned suddenly in the air, and smote him i 

 the eye, and blinded him. Christopher tells him he may recover hi 

 sight by mixing his blood with clay, which, after the decapitation o 

 the saint, he does, and recovers. 



The writers go on to say that figures of St. Christopher are not 

 uncommon, either painted on the walls or on glass, in churches. It 

 was a popular superstition, common to all Catholic countries, which 

 induced people to believe that the day on which they should see a 

 figure of this saint they should neither meet with a violent death, nor 

 die without confession. The Squire, in Chaucer's " Canterbury Tale," 

 wore "a christofre on his breast of silver sheen," for the same reason. 



At the lower compartment of the fresco painting, on the right side, 

 St. Christopher is represented as alive, and hound naked to his own 

 staff, which resembles a budding tree ; and his body and legs are pierced 

 with innumerable arrows, shot by two archers, ivho stand one at either 

 side of him. This is one way of illustrating the miracle that he was 

 not killed by being so pierced. In the distance the king is seen 

 standing looking on at the execution, attended by his sword-bearer 

 and "hawker ; and one of the arrows is represented as striking him in 

 the eye. 



In the year 1847 I visited Knockmoy Abbey, in the county of 

 Galway, and sketched the fresco painting on the north wall of the 

 chancel, which is familiar to all Irish archaeologists, and to which 

 allusion is made in " The Dublin Penny Journal;" and in a short 

 memoir, by the Eev. Dr. Todd and Professor 0' Curry, in the "Pro- 

 ceedings of the Academy" (vol. vi., p. 3) ; and, lastly, in the first 

 volume of Sir W. Wilde's "Catalogue of the Academy Museum" 

 (p. 315). 



The lower compartment of this fresco painting represents a living 

 naked figure bound to a palm tree, and pierced in the body and legs with 

 many arrows, shot by two archers, one at either side. In the Catalogue 

 of the Academy this painting is called the Martyrdom of St. Sebastian 

 — an idea which is merely a repetition of a previously expressed opinion 

 of Dr. Todd, who, in conjunction with Mr. 0' Curry, detected the date 

 (1400) in a black letter inscription on a portion of the painting alluded 

 to. Any one conversant with the costume prevalent during the reign of 

 Richard II. — 1377 to 1399 — would assign the date of the fresco paint- 

 ing to the close of the fourteenth century — an idea happily confirmed 

 by the discovery of the date upon it. 



With all respect to the two high authorities just named, I must dis- 

 agree with them in believing that the Knockmoy figure represents the 

 martyrdom of St. Sebastian. Without doubt it represents the martyr- 



