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NOTES TO "ST. BEGA AND THE SNOW MIRACLE."

The remains of the Monastery of St. Bees, about four miles south of Whitehaven, stand in a low situation, with marshy lands to the east, and on the west exposed to storms from the Irish Channel.

In respect to this religious foundation, Tanner says, "Bega, an holy woman from Ireland is said to have founded, about the year 650, a small monastery in Copeland, where afterwards a church was built in memory of her. This religious house being destroyed by the Danes, was restored by William, brother to Ranulph de Meschines, Earl of Cumberland, in the time of King Henry I., and made a cell for a prior and six Benedictine monks, to the Abbey of St. Mary, York."

The earliest documents connected with this place call it Kirkby-Begogh, the market town of St. Bega; and St. Bee, or St. Bees, the Saint's house or houses, names given to it after the Irish Saint resided there.

St. Bega is said to have been the daughter of an Irish king, "who was a Christian, and an earnest man, to boot." He wished to marry his daughter to a Norwegian prince; but she, having determined to be a nun, ran away from her father's house, and joining some strange sailors, took ship, and sailed to the coast of Cumberland.

The accounts given of the first foundation of the nunnery of St. Bees are very contradictory, the common version being the traditionary account in Mr. Sandford's MS., namely, that the extent of the territories was originally designated by a preternatural fall of snow, through the prayers of the Saint, on the eve of St. John's or Midsummer day. From this MS. it would appear that a ship, containing a lady abbess and her sisters, being "driven in by stormy weather at Whitehaven," the abbess applied for relief to the lady of Egremont, who, taking compassion on her destitution, obtained of her lord a dwelling place for them, "at the now St. Bees;" where they "sewed and spinned, and wrought carpets and other work and lived very godly lives, as got them much love." It goes on to say that the lady of Egremont, at the request of the abbess, spoke to her lord to give them some land "to lay up treasure in heaven," and that "he laughed and said he would give them as much as snow fell upon the next morning, being Midsummer day; and on the morrow as he looked out of his castle window, all was white with snow for three miles together. And thereupon builded this St. Bees Abbie, and gave all those lands was snowen unto it, and the town and haven of Whitehaven, &c."

The "Life of Sancta Bega," however, a latin chronicle of the Middle Ages, in which are recorded the acts of the Saint, gives the Snow Miracle somewhat differently, and places it many years after the death of the mild recluse, in the time of Ranulph de Meschines. The monkish historian relates that certain persons had instilled into the ears of that nobleman, that the monks had unduly extended their possessions. A dispute arose on this subject, for the settlement of which, by the prayers of the religious, "invoking most earnestly the intercession of their advocate the blessed Bega," the whole land became white with snow, except the territories of the church which stood forth dry.

It is certain that the name of Sancta Bega is inseparably connected with the Snow Miracle; but the anachronism which refers the former of the accounts just given to the period of William de Meschines would seem to show that the narrator has mixed up the circumstances attending its foundation in the middle of the seventh century with its restoration in the twelfth; for, says Denton, "the said Lord William de Meschines seated himself at Egremont, where he built a castle upon a sharp topped hill, and thereupon called the same Egremont." This writer elsewhere says, "The bounders of William Meschines aforesaid, which he gave the priory are in these words: 'Totam terram et vis totum feodum inter has divisas, viz. a pede de Whit of Haven ad Kekel, et per Kekel donec cadit in Eyre et per Eyre quousque in mare.' Kekel runneth off from Whillymore by Cleator and Egremont, and so into Eyne; at Egremont Eyre is the foot of Eyne, which falleth out of Eynerdale."

The monkish version of the legend, therefore, refers to William de Meschines, as the Lord of Egremont, and to the lands which were given by him at the restoration of the Priory in the twelfth century: whilst that related by Sandford alludes to some other powerful chief, who, in the life time of the Saint in the seventh century had his seat at Egremont, which, as has been stated elsewhere, "was probably a place of strength during the Heptarchy, and in the time of the Danes."

It might almost seem as if some such legend as that of the Snow Miracle were necessary to account for the singular form of this extensive and populous parish: which includes the large and opulent town of Whitehaven; the five chapelries of Hensingham, Ennerdale, Eskdale, Wastdale-Head, and Nether-Wastdale; and the townships of St. Bees, Ennerdale, Ennerdale High End, Eskdale and Wastdale, Hensingham, Kinneyside, Lowside-Quarter, Nether-Wastdale, Preston-Quarter, Rottington, Sandwith, Weddicar, and Whitehaven. It extends ten miles along the coast, and reaches far inland, so that some of its chapelries are ten and fourteen miles from the mother-church.

In the monkish chronicle of the Life and Miracles of Sancta Bega occurs the following passage:—

"A certain celebration had come round by annual revolution which the men of that land use to solemnise by a most holy Sabbath on the eve of Pentecost, on account of certain tokens of the sanctity of the holy virgin then found there, which they commemorate, and they honor her church by visiting it with offerings of prayers and oblations."4

In allusion to which, Mr. Tomlinson the editor and translator of the MS. observes that "this is another of those marks of dependence of the surrounding chapelries which formerly existed; a mark the more interesting because to this day some traces of it remain. Communicants still annually resort to the church of St. Bees at the festival of Easter from considerable distances; and the village presents an unusual appearance from their influx; and at the church the eucharist is administered as early as eight in the morning, in addition to the celebration of it at the usual time. There can be no doubt but that Whitsuntide, and perhaps Christmas, as well as Easter, were formerly seasons when the church of St. Bees was resorted to by numbers who appeared within it at no other time, save perhaps at the burial of their friends. The great festivals of the church appear in the middle ages to have been considered by the English as peculiarly auspicious for the solemnization of marriages. At these seasons then, from concurring causes, the long-drawn solemn processions of priests and people would be chiefly seen, and then also, the accustomed oblations of the latter to the mother church of St. Bees would be discharged."

3

See Note on page 80.

4

Advenerat annua revolutione quædam celebritas quam sacro sancto sabbato in vigilia pentecosten homines illius terræ ob quædam insignia sanctitatis sanctæ virginis tunc illic inventa, et signa ibidem perpetrata solent solempnizare; et ecclesiam illius visitando orationum et oblationum hostiis honorare.

Vita S. Begæ, et de Miraculis Ejusdem, p. 73.