time ran on. In the Latin and French versions it has little or no
point or moral. In the English, Judas accounts for the presence of
the cloth thus:--

"Here I may see what it is to give other men's (goods) with harm.
As will many rich men with unright all day take,
Of poor men here and there, and almisse (alms) sithhe (afterwards)
make."

For the tongs and the stone he accounts by saying that, as he used
them for "good ends, each thing should surely find him which he did
for God's love."

But in "the prose version of Wynkyn de Worde, the tongs have been
changed into "ox-tongues," "which I gave some tyme to two preestes
to praye for me. I bought them with myne owne money, and therefore
they ease me, bycause the fysshes of the sea gnaw on them, and spare
me."

This latter story of the ox-tongues has been followed by Mr.
Sebastian Evans, in his poem on St. Brendan. Both he and Mr.
Matthew Arnold have rendered the moral of the English version very
beautifully.

{274} Copied, surely, from the life of Paul the first hermit.

{283} The famous Cathach, now in the museum of the Royal Irish
Academy, was long popularly believed to be the very Psalter in
question. As a relic of St. Columba it was carried to battle by the
O'Donnels, even as late as 1497, to insure victory for the clan.