"Not to nature, but to grace; not to hereditary tendency, but only
to the piety and compassion of the blessed St. Cuthbert," says
Reginald, "is so great a miracle to be ascribed. For the Lord who
made all things in heaven and earth has subjected them to the nod of
his saints, and prostrated them under the feet of obedience."
Insufficient induction (the cause of endless mistakes, and therefore
of endless follies and crimes) kept Reginald unaware of the now
notorious fact that the female eider, during the breeding season, is
just as tame, allowing for a little exaggeration, as St. Cuthbert's
own ducks are, while the male eider is just as wild and wary as any
other sea-bird: a mistake altogether excusable in one who had
probably never seen or heard of eider-ducks in any other spot. It
may be, nevertheless, that St. Cuthbert's special affection for the
eider may have been called out by another strange and well-known
fact about them of which Reginald oddly enough takes no note--
namely, that they line their nests with down plucked from their own
bosom; thus realizing the fable which has made the pelican for so
many centuries the type of the Church. It is a question, indeed,
whether the pelican, which is always represented in mediaeval
paintings and sculptures with a short bill, instead of the enormous
bill and pouch which is the especial mark of the "Onocrotalus" of
the ancients, now miscalled pelican, be not actually the eider-duck
itself, confounded with the true pelecanus, which was the mediaeval,
and is still the scientific, name of the cormorant. Be that as it
may, ill befell any one who dare touch one of St. Cuthbert's birds,
as was proved in the case of Liveing, servant to AElric, who was a
hermit in Farne after the time of St. Cuthbert. For he, tired it
may be of barley and dried fish, killed and ate an eider-duck in his
master's absence, scattering the bones and feathers over the cliffs.
But when the hermit came back, what should he find but those same