uns but hid the food in order to give it to
the poor, and used to leave her dormitory at night, even in winter time,
to plunge naked into one of the streams and there remain until she had
chanted the Psalms of the day. Once in her younger days, when the abbess
was cutting some switches from the river banks wherewith to chastise the
girls under her charge, the stone walls of the nunnery became clear as
transparent glass to the eyes of AEthelflaed, and she saw what the abbess
was doing, and when she came in she besought her with many tears not to
beat her or her companions. The abbess, much astonished, asked her how she
knew that she was going to beat them; to which AEthelflaed replied that she
had seen her cutting the switches, and that they were even now hidden
under her cloak. Another miracle is recorded which, for the saint's
reputation, one would hope was a pure invention of the chronicler, since
if it were true it might lay her open to the charge of performing an easy
trick with phosphorus in order to gain credit for miraculous power. It is
said that one night when it was her turn to read the lesson the lamp which
she held in her hand went out, but that her fingers became luminous and
shed sufficient light upon the book to enable her to read the lesson to
the end. Other miracles are related of her, and though she was not elected
abbess on the death of St. Merwynn she obtained that honour three years
afterwards on the death of Abbess AElwynn.

[7] The Elgiva of school histories.

The next sainted woman who calls for mention is Christine, daughter of
Eadmund Ironside, and sister of Eadgar the AEtheling, and of St. Margaret,
Queen of Scotland, who became a nun at Romsey, and is supposed by some to
have been Abbess, though this is very doubtful. The Scotch king Malcolm
Canmore and Margaret his queen, sent their two daughters Eadgyth and Mary
to be educated by their aunt Christine. Aunt Christine acted on the
principle of the proverb, "Spare the rod, spoil the child," and Eadgyth
spoke in after days of the whippings she had received because she refused
to wear a nun's veil. Professor Freeman tells us how on one occasion the
Red King came to Romsey to woo Eadgyth, for it must be remembered that she
was now the eldest female representative of the old Wessex kings, and a
marriage with her would do much to weld together Normans and English. But,
although he was admitted to the nunnery, Christine persuaded Eadgyth to
put on a