l manuscripts of
prodigious size. A complete cycle of them, the work of several authors,
in which are mixed together old and novel, English and foreign,
materials, was written in English verse in the thirteenth century: "The
collection in its complete state is a 'Liber Festivalis,' containing
sermons or materials for sermons, for the festivals of the year in the
order of the calendar, and comprehends not only saints' lives for
saints' days but also a 'Temporale' for the festivals of Christ,"
&c.[331] The earliest complete manuscript was written about 1300, an
older but incomplete one belongs to the years 1280-90, or
thereabout.[332] In these collections a large place, as might be
expected, is allowed to English saints:

Wolle ye nouthe i-heore this englische tale | that is here i-write?

It is the story of St. Thomas Becket: "Of Londone is fader was." St.
Edward was "in Engeland oure kyng"; St. Kenelm,

Kyng he was in Engelond | of the march of Walis;

St. Edmund the Confessor "that lith at Ponteneye,"

Ibore he was in Engelond | in the toun of Abyndone.

St. Swithin "was her of Engelonde;" St. Wulfstan, bishop of Worcester,

Was here of Engelonde ...
The while he was a yong child | clene lif he ladde i-nough;
Whenne other children ornen to pleye | toward churche he drough.
Seint Edward was kyng tho | that nouthe in heovene is.

St. Cuthbert was born in England; St. Dunstan was an Englishman. Of the
latter a number of humorous legends were current among the people, and
were preserved by religious poets; he and the devil played on each other
numberless tricks in which, as behoves, the devil had the worst; these
adventures made the subject of amusing pictures in many manuscripts. A
woman, of beautiful face and figure, calls upon the saint, who is
clear-sighted enough to recognise under this alluring shape the
arch-foe; he dissembles. Being, like St. Eloi, a blacksmith, as well as
a saint and a State minister, he heats his tongs red-hot, and turning
suddenly round, while the other was watching confidently the effect of
his good looks, catches him by the nose. There was a smell of burnt
flesh, and awful yells were heard many miles round, for the "tonge was
al afure"; it will teach him to stay at home and blow his own nose:

As god the schrewe hadde ibeo | atom ysnyt his nose.[333]

With this we have graceful legends, like that of St. Brandan, adapted