regory: for at the time of the great pestilence, etc.

"The fourth apparition was in the hierarchies of our angels.

"The space of St. Michael's Mount is 200 cubits; it is everywhere
surrounded by the sea, and there are religious monks of that place. The
head of Abrinca, Aubertus by name, that he might erect a church(93) in
honor of St. Michael. The aforesaid place was at first enclosed by a very
dense forest, six miles distant from the ocean, furnishing a good retreat
for wild animals. In which place we heard that formerly monks serving the
Lord," etc.

The only way to explain this jumble is to suppose that William of
Worcester made these entries in his diary while walking up and down in the
Church of St. Michael's Mount, and listening to one of the monks, reading
to him from a MS. which had been brought from Normandy, and referred in
reality to the early history of the Norman, but not of the Cornish Mount.
The first line, "Apparicio Sancti Michaelis in monte Tumba," was probably
the title or the heading of the MS. Then William himself added, "antea
vocata le Hore-rok in the wodd," a name which he evidently heard on the
spot, and which no doubt conveyed to him the impression that the rock had
formerly stood in the midst of a wood. For instead of continuing his
account of the apparitions of St. Michael, he quotes a tradition in
support of the former existence of a forest surrounding the Mount. Only,
strange to say, instead of producing the evidence which he produced
afterwards in confirmation of St. Michael's Mount having been surrounded
by a dense forest, he here gives the tradition about Lionesse, the sunken
land between the Land's End and the Scylly Isles. This is evidently a
mistake, for no other writer ever supposed the sunken land of Lionesse to
have reached as far as St. Michael's Mount.

Then follows the entry about the four apparitions of St. Michael. Here we
must read "_in monte Gargano_" instead of "_in monte Gorgon_." Opinions
vary as to the exact date of the apparition in Mount Garganus in the South
of Italy, but 391 is certainly far too early, and has to be changed into
491 or 493. In the second apparition, all is right, if we leave out "in
Cornubia juxta mare," which was added either by William or by the monk who
was showing him the book. It refers to the well-known apparition of St.
Michael at Avranches. The third and fourth apparitions are of no
consequence to us.

As we read on, we come next to Wil