sent age, to suppose that their frequent appearance, their familiar
intercourse with the saints, and the quaint and amiable incidents in
which they figure, are in reality characteristic memorials of the kindly
feelings and the innocent pursuits natural to men of gentle disposition
and retired life. Thus Columba one day gives directions to a brother to
be on the watch at a certain point in the island of Iona, for there, by
nine o'clock on that day, a certain stranger stork will alight and drop
down, utterly fatigued with her journey across the ocean. That stork the
brother is enjoined to take up gently, and convey to the nearest house,
and feed and tend for three days, after which she will take wing and fly
away to the sweet spot of her native Ireland, whence she had wandered.
And this the brother is to do because the bird is a guest from their own
beloved native land. The brother departs, and returns at the proper
time. Columba asks no questions--he knows what has taken place, and
commends the obedient piety of the brother who had sheltered and tended
the wanderer.

Another saint, Ailbhe, had a different kind of intercourse with certain
cranes. They went about in a large body, destroying the corn in the
neighbourhood, and would not be dispersed. The saint went and delivered
on oration to them on the unreasonableness of their conduct, and
forthwith, penitent and somewhat ashamed, they soared into the air and
went their way. "St Cuthbert's ducks" acquired a long celebrity. When
that reverenced ascetic went to take up his residence in the
wave-bounded solitude of the Farne Islands, he found the solan-geese
there imbued with the wild habits common to their storm-nurtured race,
and totally unconscious of the civilisation and refinement of their
kinsmen who graze on commons, and hiss at children and dogs. St
Cuthbert tamed them through his miraculous powers, and made them as
obedient and docile a flock as abbot ever ruled. The geese went before
him in regular platoons, following the word of command, and doing what
he ordered--whether it might be the most ordinary act of the feathered
biped, or some mighty miracle. Under his successors their conduct seems
to have been less regular, though certainly not less peculiar; for we
are told that they built their nests on the altar, and around the altar,
and in all the houses of the island; farther, that, during the
celebration of mass, they familiarly pecked the officiating priest and