Epiblog for the Feast of St Dunstan

It has been a busy week in the Holme Valley. If I had to sum up the view from my window now, it is, suddenly, green. The trees have finally come into leaf, at last, and the leaves all float together outside my window rippling in the breeze like a green sea

“Annihilating all that’s made
To a green thought, in a green shade…”

We could still however, do with it being a lot warmer, and with it stopping raining now and again.  When we have had the sun, it’s been almost possible to believe in the existence of summer – notwithstanding that it’s only four or five weeks to Midsummer.  The changeable weather has continued all week. When it’s been good, it’s been very, very good, but when it’s been bad, it’s been horrid.  Matilda’s been taking her chances with the showers, and sometimes she’s been unlucky, causing me to deploy the “dry the cat off with kitchen towels” strategy.

Feeding the birds has also been rather inhibited by the showery weather. Several times, I have put bread out for them only to find it turned to mush half an hour later by a sudden downpour.  Still, fortunately, there appear to be enough grubs and worms around at this time of year to keep them happy when it’s raining.  There are definitely three jays, at least three; a huge, fat wood pigeon, several smaller birds such as blackbirds, thrushes and a rather bedraggled robin; various even smaller birds clustering on the hanging feeders, and a gang of three squirrels who co-operate on overturning the dish so they can steal the peanuts more easily and efficiently.  The squirrels, too, have now taken to coming right up to the door and looking in, if no food seems to be immediately forthcoming.

If it does turn into a lush, full-blown summer (which is still in doubt) it will, sadly, only increase the feeling that I get every year around Midsummer, that

That is no country for old men; the young
In one another’s arms, birds in the trees
Those dying generations at their song;
The salmon falls, the mackerel crowded seas,
Fish, flesh and fowl, commend all summer long
Whatever is begotten, born and dies…

According to Yeats, in Sailing to Byzantium.  He goes on to say,

An aged man is but a paltry thing,
A tattered coat upon a stick …

Which is also a feeling I get every summer now as the cherry blossom goes and the clematis is already in bud.  Still, the primrose blooms, the cowslip too, as it says in the old songs, and an old scarecrow is still good for some things, even if it’s only feeding a badger.

Brenda continues her nocturnal visits – at least I assume she does; something or someone eats the tea I put out for her. I have seen her once during the week, but when it’s dark and rainy, she is actually quite difficult to spot, even though she is just outside the door, and in any case I have been too busy to mount a badger-watch 24/7 just on the offchance that she might appear.

There have been a couple of other exotic visitors this week, one expected, one less so.  On Thursday I was ploughing my lonely furrow, adding email addresses to databases, a task which is right up there with watching paint dry on the white-knuckle excitement scale, so I was extremely happy to be visited by Bernard, looking hale and hearty three days after his birthday, and bearing largesse in the form of three more bottles of his home made sweet apple wine.  Conscious of the fact that he had to drive home again, and I had a lot of database work to do that afternoon, we didn’t – on this occasion – give in to the temptation of opening one of them straight away, to "test" it. I told him they would be very welcome, as we had another visitor due, Uncle Phil from Australia, an even more exotic migratory phenomenon, in that it’s all of five years since he last flew to these shores.  

Bernard asked me to tell Phil that he wasn’t a great fan of Australian wines, and I promised to do so.  Phil is a fairly phlegmatic chap, so I can’t imagine it’s going to rock his world. Nothing much seems to.  Bernard also thinks I am wasting my money ordering any more herbs this year. He, too, like Owen, thinks that there just isn’t enough sun out there alongside the ramp where I am planning to make the raised beds. Well, I have ordered the herbs anyway, so we’ll see who’s right. The horseradish grew perfectly well in its tub out there on top of the gas meter last year, until it drowned in the endless deluges while we were away on holiday.

Phil duly arrived, surprisingly un-jet-lagged (if that’s even a word) after being on a plane almost 24 hours and changing at Singapore and Munich. There’s obviously something to be said for having a phlegmatic attitude, especially when you put yourself in a position where you are at the whim of long-haul airlines.  He also looks well, and happy, and didn’t seem to mind that the temperature here was only about a third of what he’d left behind in sub-tropical Darwin.

Still, I almost managed to adjust that difference in heat for him, in a fairly dramatic way, on Saturday evening I was sitting in the kitchen, tying away at some drivel or other, Debbie was surfing Ebay (for Portaloos, no doubt, see below) and Phil was out with Granny and Deb’s extended family enjoying the finest Chinese meal that Huddersfield can offer, when I began to notice a strange, smoky sort of smell pervading the room.  I asked Debbie if she could smell it too, and she agreed, eventually, that she could indeed.  But where the hell was it coming from? We checked all the obvious suspects – had something fallen out of the stove and onto the hearth, was it an electrical wire shorting out somewhere? Nope, nothing. It was only when wisps of smoke started to appear, curling around the edges of the door of the plate-warmer oven that we realised that somehow its particular knob on the cooker had been knocked into the “on” position. Fortunately, all that it contained was ovenproof dishes and baking trays but you should have seen the immense cloud of foul, evil-smelling smoke that billowed out when I yanked the door open.  Nothing that a few minutes with both the front door, the kitchen door and the conservatory door wide open couldn’t cure, but a narrow squeak, all the same, and a pongy one.

Debbie, meanwhile, has been looking forward to half term and the possibility of getting out in the great outdoors again. Now that Phil’s here, they’ve been hatching plans to meet up in the Lakes and do the whole of the High Style Ridge, ending up on Haystacks.  Debbie (and Freddie and Tig, actually) have both already done Fleetwith Pike and Haystacks, but if she takes Zak, it will be his second to fifth Wainwrights, depending how far they get along the route. We shall see.

In preparation for the trip, she found herself looking at Youtube videos reviewing various outdoor products and somehow found herself looking at portable camping toilets. I had very little inkling that these things existed, let alone that there are hundreds of video clips “reviewing” them on the internet.  The typical clip starts with a butch, hairy American survivalist, complete with bandana, backpack and rifle, striding out of the woods and declaring heartily to camera something along the lines of “Hi, I’m Brad Monobrow, and when I’m out hunting for Bigfoot, I always take the [insert name of particular portable bog he is promoting at this point] with me!”

Why? Just shit in the woods, man! Bears do it, bees do it, even educated fleas do it! Anyway, while Debbie was diverting herself looking at these mobile khazis, including one that you could hook onto the bumper of your pickup (presumably while parked, rather than when changing lanes on the Santa Monica Freeway) I was busy packing up twenty copies of Hampshire Hauntings and Hearsay for Gardners, the first of what I hope will be many orders for it.  When I had finished, Debbie exclaimed “That’s not very sturdy!” I took issue with her, pointing out that each individual packet of books was wrapped separately and the remaining space inside the box was full of void-filler. She gave me a pitying look. “I was talking about this toilet.”

But, dear Reader, if you want a cheap laugh, there are hundreds of these bloody things on Youtube. It kept Debbie amused for hours; at one point she murmured “Five inches? I can’t sit on anything that small!” One can only hope that she was still looking at the toilets and hadn’t moved on to Brad Monobrow Nude dot com. There were so many potential answers, all of them obscene, that I ended up not being able to choose between them.

It’s been such a whirlwind week of visitors, work, windy weather, wine, (but sadly no women or song, as yet) wheelchair repairs (flat tyre) and miscellaneous boggage that I haven’t really been taking notice of the outside world, with one notable exception, the sad, sad story of Stephanie Bottrill, who walked out in front of a lorry on the M6 at the age of 53, committing suicide because, according to the note she left, she could not find the additional £80 a month she would have to come up with as a consequence of the Junta’s “bedroom tax”.

The minister at her funeral, I noted, deplored the fact that people were making “political capital” out of her death.  While I feel desperately sad for her family, having lost my own mum at the relatively early age of 57, I don’t see how it’s possible to ignore the fact that, as with others who have died as a direct result of the Blight’s austerity policies, there is a political dimension to this tragic death. What are we supposed to do, just turn our backs and say, oh well, shit happens, ordure occurs?  Every man’s death diminishes me, because I am involved with mankind. Does that ring any bells?

Of course, the Junta has refused to comment on the matter, saying that they don’t comment on individual cases. Strange, that, because I could have sworn that when the Philpott tragedy happened, the Blight were all to quick to get up on their hind legs and blame it all on benefit scroungers.

I would just like these people – Iain Duncan-Smith, George Osborne, David Cameron, Nick Clegg, Danny Alexander – and those who support them - to look themselves in the face, in the mirror each night, and tell themselves it was honestly worth it and they are happy with the way things are going. That the miserable, dribbling little spurts of the economy before it crashes back to earth again, and the contagious air of gloom and destruction they have breathed on the country with their misbegotten policies, were worth it.  That the worries of the people who don’t know if they’ll have a job this time next month were worth it. That the stress and the anguish of the people dragged through unfair and politically motivated “assessments” by the likes of ATOS were worth it.  That the homelessness and the repossessions were worth it. That the sudden and dramatic rise in hardship benefit payments as a result of the Blight’s own policy was worth it.  That the deaths of Mark and Helen Mullins, Karen Sherlock, Richard Sanderson, Paul Willcoxson, Paul Reekie, Elaine Christian, Stephen Hill, David Groves, and now Stephanie Bottrill were worth it. That they are pleased with the way things are going.  Because, you see, I think that even one death in the misguided cause of the pursuit of the materialist dream of a booming capitalist society is one too many, even if it did mean we were all rolling in it, coining loadsamoney, and the streets were ankle-deep in gold dust, which we’re not.

Are you happy, George Osborne, that these people died for your route out of “austerity” - the possibility of a new curtain shop in the precinct – a thing that anyway, under your policies, looks never likely to happen? And if you have any shred of decency and shame and contrition left in you, and you aren’t happy about it, just when are you going to go, and clear the way for someone else to have a crack at mending what you smashed?

And so, somehow, unaccountably, once more we arrived at Sunday, and the feast of St Dunstan. At last, a saint I know something about, but only because, in a former life, I was fairly obsessed with Glastonbury and the Arthurian legends.  As with many figures from a time when few could write or read and records were often transmitted orally, Dunstan is a figure with some question-marks against his chronology. The anonymous author of the earliest biography of him places Dunstan's birth during the reign of King Athelstan, while Osbern, writing later, fixed it at "the first year of the reign of King Æthelstan", 924 or 925AD. But this date doesn’t fit in with other known dates of Dunstan's life and scholars therefore assume that Dunstan was born c. 910AD or maybe slightly earlier.

It is said that he was born at Baltonsborough, Somerset, near to Wells. The church in the village today bears his appellation. There is apparently some debate, though, as to whether the village itself should be re-named “Ballsbury” – not particularly for comic effect, but because some people apparently think that is the more correct pronunciation. Dunstan was the son of Heorstan, a nobleman of Wessex. Heorstan was the brother of the bishops of Wells and of Winchester, so Dunstan’s career path may well have been influenced from an early age.

Osbern's life of Dunstan, written in the 11th century, relates that his mother, Cynethryth, was a pious woman, and that a messenger miraculously told her of the saintly child she would bear. She was in the church of St Mary on Candlemas day, when all the lights were suddenly extinguished. Then the candle held by Cynethryth was as suddenly re-lit, and the others present lit their candles at this miraculous flame, thus foreshadowing that the boy "would be the minister of eternal light" to the Church of England, says Osbern.  I guess you see what you want to see.

Anyway, at the time of Dunstan’s youth, the ruins of Glastonbury Abbey were inhabited by Irish monks, and Dunstan went and studied under them. Even at that young age, he was enthusiastic about the prospect of the Abbey being restored. While still a boy, Dunstan was stricken with a near-fatal illness and effected a seemingly miraculous recovery- this was to happen again later in his life, and it raises the possibility that he might have had some sort of ongoing condition that accounted for these episodes.  Even as a child, he was noted for his devotion to learning and for his mastery of many kinds of artistic craftsmanship.  He became so well known for his devotion to learning that he was summoned by his uncle Athelm, then Archbishop of Canterbury, to enter his service, and was later appointed to the court of King Athelstan.

Having finally arrived at court, Dunstan soon became a favourite of the king and this soon riled some other members of the court who were jealous of his popularity. They hatched a plot to disgrace him and Dunstan was accused of witchcraft and black magic. The king ordered him to leave the court and, as Dunstan was leaving, his enemies ambushed and attacked him, beat him severely, bound him, and threw him into a cesspool. Possibly a low point in his career, one cannot help but remark.

He managed to extricate himself and make his way eventually to Winchester, where he entered the service of his uncle, Ælfheah, Bishop of Winchester. (“The servants’ quarters are down that corridor, Dunstan, you’ll be, er, wanting to freshen up after your journey.”) Being chucked in a privy was no joke, by the way  – medieval chroniclers have several accounts of people drowning when their privy’s rickety structure gave way beneath them. Unlike Brad Monobrow, though, there was no one to film it and put it on Youtube.

The bishop of Winchester tried to persuade Dunstan to become a monk, preferably in a distant abbey, downwind of the palace, but Dunstan was doubtful whether he had a vocation to a celibate life. The answer came in the form of an attack of swelling tumours all over Dunstan's body. This ailment was so severe that it was thought to be leprosy, though it was more probably some form of blood poisoning caused by being beaten and thrown in the cesspool. It may even have been a recurrence of his mysterious childhood disease, we shall never know.  Whatever the cause, it changed Dunstan's mind. He took Holy Orders in 943AD, in the presence of Ælfheah, and returned to live the life of a hermit at Glastonbury.

Against the old church of St Mary at Glastonbury, he built a small hermit’s cell (as used by small hermits the world over) five feet long and two and a half feet deep. It was there that Dunstan studied, worked at his handicrafts, and played on his harp. It is at this time, according to a late 11th-century legend, that the Devil is said to have tempted Dunstan.  There are two separate legends of the Devil having tangled with St Dunstan.  The first tells of a day when Dunstan was approached by the Devil while Dunstan was busy with his metalwork.  The Devil attempted to tempt Dunstan to evil pleasures but Dunstan pulled his red-hot tongs from the furnace and saw the devil off by tweaking him on the nose with them. This is commemorated in this old folk rhyme:

St Dunstan, as the story goes,
Once pull'd the devil by the nose
With red-hot tongs, which made him roar,
That he was heard three miles or more.

The second legend also takes place at the metalworks, and the Devil again approached Dunstan, this time riding his horse.  The Devil requested that Dunstan should shoe his horse but Dunstan instead attached a shoe to the hoof of the devil.  In return for releasing him, Dunstan made the Devil promise to never enter a house where a horseshoe hung over the door.  It is from this story that we get the legend of the lucky horseshoe, though this may be a Christian appropriation of an earlier pagan belief.

These legends are also the origin of Dunstan’s saintly attributes being a man holding a pair of smith's tongs, with a dove hovering near him and a troop of angels before him. He is the patron saint of metalworkers, as you might expect, and also of armourers, blacksmiths, blind people, gold workers, goldsmiths, jewellers, lighthouse keepers, locksmiths, musicians, silver workers, silversmiths, and swordsmiths. St Dunstan’s feast day, 19th May, is also the reason why the Assay Office year for the purposes of Hallmarks, runs from 19th May to 18th May every year.  He is said to have worked both as a silversmith and in the scriptorium while at Glastonbury.

In fact, Dunstan became famous as a musician, illuminator, and metalworker.  Lady Æthelflaed, King Æthelstan's niece, made Dunstan a trusted adviser, and on her death she left him a considerable fortune, which he used later in life to foster and encourage a monastic revival in England. About the same time, his father Heorstan died and Dunstan inherited his fortune as well. His sphere of influence grew, and on the death of King Æthelstan in 940AD, the new King, Edmund, summoned him to his court at Cheddar and made him a minister.

Sadly for Dunstan, life at Cheddar was anything but gorgeous; his position of royal favour fostered jealousy among other courtiers and again Dunstan's enemies succeeded in their plots. The king was prepared to send Dunstan away, but had his mind forcibly changed when he was out hunting stag in the Mendip forest.  Edmund became separated from his attendants and pursued a stag at great speed in the direction of Cheddar Cliffs.  The stag jumped blindly over the edge, followed by the hounds, and Edmund’s horse would not stop, and looked set to join them.  It is said that he remembered, at that very moment, his harsh treatment of Dunstan, and made a promise to God that if his life was saved, he’d make amends; his horse came to a halt, teetering on the very edge of the precipice.

Giving thanks to God, Edmund returned to his palace, and, presumably pausing only to change his breeches no doubt, he called for St. Dunstan, and together they rode straight to Glastonbury. Entering the church, the king first knelt in prayer before the altar, then, taking St. Dunstan by the hand, he gave him the kiss of peace, led him to the abbot's throne and plonked him on it.

Dunstan went to work at once on the task of reform. He had to both re-create monastic life and to rebuild the abbey. He began by establishing Benedictine monasticism at Glastonbury.  He then went on to rebuild the Church of St. Peter, the cloister, and to re-establish the monastic enclosure. A school for the local youth was founded, and soon became the most famous of its time in England. Plus, in addition to the monastic works, a substantial extension of the irrigation system on the surrounding Somerset Levels was also completed.

The next few years saw fluctuations in Dunstan’s fortunes, as he was caught up in the various struggles for supremacy and succession by contending factions in the ruling caste.  Edmund was assassinated and succeeded by Eadred. The ebb and flow of power and influence at this time in English history was quite complex, and was tied in with the policy on unification and reconciliation with the Danelaw.  As often happens in political power struggles, subsidiary conflicts are rolled up into the mix, and old scores are settled or traded off at the same time.

For nine years Dunstan's influence was dominant, during which time he twice refused the office of bishop (that of Winchester in 951AD and Crediton in 953AD) but in 955AD, Eadred died, and the situation changed again. Eadwig, who then came to the throne, was young and headstrong and quarrelled with Dunstan almost from the start. King Eadwig's reign was marred by conflicts with his family and with Dunstan. Although Dunstan managed to escape, he saw that his life was in danger. He fled England and crossed the channel to Flanders. Fortunately for Duncan, his exile was not a lengthy one. Before the end of 957, the Mercians and Northumbrians revolted and drove out Eadwig, choosing his brother Edgar as king of the country north of the Thames. Edgar's advisers recalled Dunstan and, on the death of Coenwald of Worcester at the end of 957AD, Oda appointed Dunstan to that see.

In October 959, Eadwig died and his brother Edgar was finally accepted as ruler of Wessex. One of Eadwig's final acts had been to appoint a successor to Archbishop Oda, but his first choice had died of cold in the Alps, en route to Rome to claim his honour. As soon as Edgar became king, he vetoed Eadwig’s second choice and the archbishopric was then conferred on Dunstan.

Dunstan went to Rome in 960, and on his return, he at once regained his position as virtual prime minister of the kingdom, enabling him to push forward his reforms in the English Church.  Monasteries were built, and in some of the great cathedrals, monks took the place of the secular canons; in the rest the canons were obliged to live according to rule. The parish priests were compelled to be qualified for their office; they were urged to teach parishioners not only the truths of the Christian faith, but also trades to improve their position. The laws of the state were reformed and extended. Trained bands policed the north, and a navy guarded the shores from marauding Viking raids.

In 973, Dunstan's career reached what was probably its peak, when he officiated at the coronation of King Edgar. Edgar was crowned at Bath in an imperial ceremony devised by Dunstan himself and which still forms the basis of the present-day British coronation ceremony. That old wheel of fortune was turning again, though; Edgar died two years after his coronation, and was succeeded by his eldest son Edward (II) "the Martyr". The succession was disputed and the resultant unrest led to a determined attack upon the monks, the protagonists of reform. Throughout Mercia they were persecuted and deprived of their possessions, and the realm was in serious danger of civil war. Three meetings of the Witan were held to settle these disputes, at Kirtlington, at Calne, and at Amesbury. At the second of these, the famous scene occurred where the floor of the upstairs hall where the Witan was sitting gave way, and everyone except Dunstan, who clung to a beam, or stood serenely on a beam, depending who you believe, fell into the room below, and several were killed. This was subsequently “spun” as Dunstan being miraculously saved as a result of his many virtues.

In March 978AD, King Edward was assassinated at Corfe Castle, and Æthelred the Unready, his contender for the throne, became king.  At the new king’s coronation on 31st March, 978AD, Dunstan addressed him in stern tones of solemn warning. He criticised the violent act which had made him king, and prophesied the misfortunes that were shortly to befall, but in reality, Dunstan's influence at court was ended. He retired to Canterbury, to teach. He visited the shrines of St Augustine and St Æthelberht, and there are reports of a vision of angels who sang to him heavenly canticles. He worked to improve the spiritual well-being of his people, to build and restore churches, to establish schools, to judge lawsuits, to defend widows and orphans, to promote peace, and to enforce respect for purity. He practised his crafts, made bells and organs and corrected the books in the cathedral library.

On the eve of Ascension Day 988AD, a vision of angels apparently warned Dunstan that he would die in three days. On the feast day itself, in his last address, he announced his impending death and wished his congregation well. That afternoon, he chose the spot for his tomb, then took to his bed. On Saturday morning, 19 May, he caused the clergy to assemble. Mass was celebrated in his presence, then he died. Dunstan's final words are reported to have been, "He hath made a remembrance of his wonderful works, being a merciful and gracious Lord: He hath given food to them that fear Him."

He was accepted as a saint shortly afterwards, and canonised in 1029.Until eclipsed by Thomas a Becket, he was literally England’s favourite saint, and his feast was ordered to be kept solemnly throughout the land.  Any actual tombs or shrines devoted to him, however, are long gone. The original tomb in Canterbury Cathedral perished in a fire in 1174, his relics being translated at the time to a new tomb in the rebuilt cathedral.

The monks of Glastonbury claimed that during the sack of Canterbury by the Danes in 1012, Dunstan's body had been carried for safety to their abbey. The monks of Glastonbury Abbey, however, would claim anything to increase the tourist trade, hence the story about  the tomb bearing the “Hic Jacet Arcturus” inscription and shielding the bodies of Arthur and Guinevere.

This story about Dunstan was disproved by Archbishop William Warham, who opened the tomb at Canterbury in 1508 and found Dunstan's relics still to be there. Within a century, however, this shrine was destroyed during the English Reformation. As indeed was Glastonbury Abbey, its last Abbot, Richard Whiting, being dragged through the streets of the town on a hurdle, in November 1539, and hanged, drawn and quartered on top of Glastonbury Tor by the agents and iconoclasts of Thomas Cromwell. 

Looking back over the life of St Dunstan, I am struck by two things, one of which is possibly more significant than the other – he led a life which was strangely fragmented in many ways, from being a hermit to being almost a politician, and secondly, the way in which the relative importance of some of the places associated with him has changed since his times. Cheddar, where the court was, is these days best known for coach trips disgorging (pun intended!) into the car park at Wookey Hole. And Calne, scene of the fateful synod where the floor gave way, is a sleepy Wiltshire market town, which later became notable for wool and bacon.

If Saint Dunstan has done one thing for me this week, it is that he’s made me want to find my copy of Anglo Saxon Towns of Southern England by Jeremy Haslam, and generally re-awakened my interest in Glastonbury.  As well as being the home to one of the largest cash-extraction businesses in England, Glastonbury Festival (free love, man! free music! only $500 a ticket!), the town is of course, the repository of much general New-Age weirdness and kookiness these days. In the same way that people say that if you shook America, everything loose would end up in California, in England it’s Glastonbury.

But on a wider level, I find it difficult to get really enthused about Dunstan. His long and complicated life is, I suppose, of interest to those who study the fluidity and mobility of Anglo-Saxon society in the last years of the kings of Wessex, though even then, for all his willingness to take on manual jobs, he was still of noble caste. I had to simplify all his twists and turns and politicking behind the scenes considerably, to dumb it down into the preceding few paragraphs. People write whole books about the hegemony of the Royal House of Wessex in the late Saxon era.  But in any case, for all his aligning with this or that faction, in the greater scheme of things none of it mattered, because eventually, along came the Normans and took over the lot.  Similarly, for all his attempts to rebuild Glastonbury Abbey, it’s a ruin again, today, thanks to Henry VIII and his inability to keep his orb and sceptre in his codpiece.  It’s a classic illustration of the dictum that 99% of the stuff we worry and care about never comes to pass anyway, and it’s the unpredictable 1% that creeps up and hits you behind the ear with a lead-filled sock.  So why worry?

Even his tomb was destroyed, his shrine erased from the fabric of the Church. We’re in Ozymandias territory here folks, and if I was feeling gloomy, I’d say it points to all human endeavour being ultimately futile, although what it really points to is the simple fact of everything always being in a state of flux, like the atoms of Heraclitus. No man can jump into the same river twice, and suddenly we find ourselves here again, where, in the words of Eliot, 

There is only the fight to recover what has been lost
And found and lost again and again.

Dunstan’s fight with the Devil is regarded as purely folklore in modern analysis, as we have long since (most of us, anyway) abandoned the idea of a smoky Old Nick in person with his horns and forked tail and the cloven hooves, steaming and hissing and reeking of sulphur, like the pan-warmer oven. It is, I suppose, possible to regard it as an allegory for the fight which all of us have to endure, on a daily basis, to recover what has been lost in the sense of suppressing the innate evil in our fallen nature (to express the idea using Christian terms - Freud would come at it with different words, and from another angle) and to aspire back to the spark of divine goodness I wrote about last week.  I certainly don’t believe that the Devil exists – not in those personified terms, anyway, any more than I believe that “God” is an old geezer in a nightshirt, sitting on a heavenly throne.  But I do believe that all of us carries within us, as well as the God chip, the capacity to do evil, if we allow it to become manifest.  Some people – most people – manage to contain it or sublimate it, whereas others are not so successful.  Some become mass murderers, and others go into politics and get other people to do their murdering for them. Or just enact policies that they know will lead to weak and vulnerable people dying, David Cameron.

But, yes, St Dunstan. There you have him.  More lives than a cat – hermit, contemplative, writer, illustrator, metalworker, builder of Monasteries, politician, archbishop, all rolled into one, and finally a saint. A true Renaissance man, 500 years too early. (This description brought to you by someone else who has occasionally been referred to as a Renaissance man, on account of my being equally unable to carry out a wide variety of disparate tasks.)

I would be failing in my self-imposed duty as a soi-disant religious commentator (think Eddie Waring in a dog-collar) if I didn’t also note in passing the Feast of Pentecost, and/or what we used to call Whit Sunday before various governments started buggering about with the Bank Holidays.  I did a pretty extensive piece on Whitsun and Pentecost last year, and the year before. I can’t believe yet another year has gone by, flashing past at the speed of light.

Whenever I think of the idea of the Holy Spirit enthusing me, these days, I get very tired, and find myself saying, along with W. B. Yeats:

O Sages, standing in God’s holy fire

As in the gold mosaic of a wall

Come from the holy fire, perne in a gyre,

And be the singing-masters of my soul.

Consume my heart away, sick with desire

And fastened to a dying animal

It knows not what it is

Yeats is writing, on one level at least, about the idea of eternity as conveyed by a perfect piece of art. Religious art in this case, the mosaics and eikons of Byzantium. The mechanical birds of the Byzantine Emperor Theophilus, who, according to legend, had just such artefacts made. It is every poet’s wish to be granted a body immune to death and to be allowed to sing forever. Well, that’s the received wisdom, anyway. I guess I’d be happy to be an irrelevant tattered coat upon a stick, a scarecrow a while longer yet.  What’s that line in Browning, something about “and hold your hand a while longer…”?

Yet I will but say what mere friends say,
Or only a thought stronger;
I will hold your hand but as long as all may,
Or so very little longer!

It’s not looking likely that I will be touched by the Holy Spirit any time soon. Monday is definitely shaping up to be a Paraclete-free zone, with nary a whiff of the dove descending.  The last time I did any speaking in tongues was when I dropped the coal-scuttle on my foot.  I have to phone up wheelchair services and break the bad news to them that just pumping up the tyre hasn’t worked. It needs a new inner-tube and gubbins, I guess. I have to get those databases of schools finished and sent out.  I have to take delivery of twelve boxes of Hampshire at War: an Oral History 1939-1945, and I have no idea right now where these are going to go. I need to tell the surgery that I have almost chomped through the vast stack of Furosemide they managed to accumulate here by double-prescribing me last year, and I’ll be needing some more.  I have to oversee the camper going off to the garage, to have the final few things on its snags list fixed.  I have to create a big list of all the book marketing that needs doing before the end of the school term, and, even scarier, I then have to do it! I have to do the final corrections for Turned Out Nice Again, write the blurb, stick it on the jacket, and send the whole shebang off to press.  Then it’s on to Mac and The Lost Tribe. The next VAT return needs starting. Plus there’ll be mouths (and beaks) to feed – people, cats, dogs, squirrels, badgers, and birds. It doesn’t leave much time for contemplation.  In any case, in my experience, glimpses of the divine, the other, are just that.  Odd drops of nectar from the honeycomb of heaven, percolating through when you least expect them. The rest being what Hardy called "neutral-tinted haps and such."

Still, I guess if St Dunstan managed to live a life that encompassed the twin roles of hermit and prime minister, there’s hope for me yet!