Now! Then! A Yorkshire Almanac for 2023

Excerpt

Then Whitby’s nuns exulting told,
How to their house three Barons bold
Must menial service do;
While horns blow out a note of shame, 235
And monks cry ‘Fye upon your name!
In wrath, for loss of silvan game,
Saint Hilda’s priest ye slew.’-
‘This, on Ascension-day, each year,
While labouring on our harbour-pier, 240
Must Herbert, Bruce, and Percy hear.’-
They told how in their convent-cell
A Saxon princess once did dwell,
The lovely Edelfled;
And how, of thousand snakes, each one 245
Was changed into a coil of stone,
When holy Hilda pray’d;
Themselves, within their holy bound,
Their stony folds had often found.
They told, how sea-fowls’ pinions fail, 250
As over Whitby’s towers they sail,
And, sinking down, with flutterings faint,
They do their homage to the saint.

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Comment

Comment

I haven’t yet investigated the origins of the legends used by Scott, e.g. via https://www.jstor.org/stable/1253948

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Original

Then Whitby’s nuns exulting told,
How to their house three Barons bold
Must menial service do;
While horns blow out a note of shame, 235
And monks cry ‘Fye upon your name!
In wrath, for loss of silvan game,
Saint Hilda’s priest ye slew.’-
‘This, on Ascension-day, each year,
While labouring on our harbour-pier, 240
Must Herbert, Bruce, and Percy hear.’-
They told how in their convent-cell
A Saxon princess once did dwell,
The lovely Edelfled;
And how, of thousand snakes, each one 245
Was changed into a coil of stone,
When holy Hilda pray’d;
Themselves, within their holy bound,
Their stony folds had often found.
They told, how sea-fowls’ pinions fail, 250
As over Whitby’s towers they sail,
And, sinking down, with flutterings faint,
They do their homage to the saint.

157 words.

Tags

Tags are assigned inclusively on the basis of an entry's original text and any comment. You may find this confusing if you only read an entry excerpt.

• Ammonites (2), extinct spiral-shelled marine molluscs dating from the Devonian to roughly the time of the Cretaceous-Paleogene extinction event, name derived from the coiled ram's horns worn by the Egyptian god Ammon ·
• Battle of Flodden (3) ·
• Ellerburn (1) ·
• English folklore (13) ·
• Feast of the Ascension (3) ·
• Gull (2) ·
• Henry VIII (1491-1547) (14), ruled 1509 until his death, initiator of the English Reformation, separating the Church of England from papal authority and introducing the theory of the divine right of kings, dissolved convents and monasteries, invested heavily in the navy ·
• Hilda of Whitby (1) ·
• Hildoceras (1) ·
• Marmion (poem) (1) ·
• Narrative poetry (7) ·
• Nun (1) ·
• Poetry (53) ·
• Ryedale (6) ·
• Walter Scott (2) ·
• Whitby Abbey (3) ·
• 📌Whitby (17), town, port and parish on the east coast of North Yorkshire/the North Riding at the mouth of the River Esk ·

All tags.

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