In the
little apartment which served as a chapel, the altar was overthrown,
and the four huge stones of which it had been once composed lay
scattered around the floor. The large stone crucifix which occupied
the niche behind the altar, and fronted the supplicant while he paid
his devotion there, had been pulled down and dashed by its own weight
into three fragments. There were marks of sledge-hammers on each of
these; yet the image had been saved from utter demolition by the size
and strength of the remaining fragments, which, though much injured,
retained enough of the original sculpture to show what it had been
intended to represent.
[Footnote: I may here observe, that this is entirely an ideal scene.
Saint Cuthbert, a person of established sanctity, had, no doubt,
several places of worship on the Borders, where he flourished whilst
living; but Tillmouth Chapel is the only one which bears some
resemblance to the hermitage described in the text. It has, indeed, a
well, famous for gratifying three wishes for every worshipper who
shall quaff the fountain with sufficient belief in its efficacy. At
this spot the Saint is said to have landed in his stone coffin, in
which he sailed down the Tweed from Melrose and here the stone coffin
long lay, in evidence of the fact. The late Sir Francis Blake Delaval
is said to have taken the exact measure of the coffin, and to have
ascertained, by hydrostatic principles, that it might have actually
swum.
Pages:
98
99
100
101
102
103
104
105
106
107
108
109
110
111
112
113
114
115
116
117
118
119
120
121
122