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FROM ENGLISH CHRONICLERS 63
served and magnified, when once the Scots crossed the river
Tweed with an innumerable host, and wasted the land of St.
Cuthbert, and despoiled the monastery of Lindisfarne, which
had never before been violated. 1
And hearing this king Guthred, to avenge the holy confessor,
hastened thither with a very small band, and met them
at the end of the day in the place which is called Mundingdene.
And thus the battle was not begun.
And when night supervened, and king Guthred had fallen
asleep through the excess and diversity of his cares, in great
fear and anxiety because he had a very small army while the
enemy, who was now at close quarters, had a very large one,
and thus he could neither fight nor escape ; behold, Christ's
soldier Cuthbert appeared to him plainly,
raised his fallen spirits.
" Fear not," said he, " because I am with thee ;
and with these words
and despair
not of the fewness of thy soldiers, because my foes, though still
alive, are already in God's sight dead, and will not be able to
oppose thee, because they have not feared to violate God's
peace and mine. In the dawn rise quickly and fall upon them
with confidence, because at once in the first conflict the earth
will open, and drop them alive into hell."
After these words he departed ; and the king awoke.
Springing up therefore he assembled his army, and publicly
related all this to all men. And immediately at dawn he fell
but, according to the word of the man of
God, at once in the first conflict the earth yawned and swallowed
them alive, and he found them not, the ancient miracle
being there wondrously renewed, when " the earth opened and
upon the enemy ;
S.C., u.s., 241, " "
when no great time had passed after Olafbald's blasphemy
and death, which followed the battle of Corbridge, A.D. ? 915, q.v. It
happened " some .considerable time having intervened " after the grant by
king Guthred to the Cuthbertines of the land between Tyne and Wear,
according to S. of D., H.D.E., i, 71, 70 ; and this grant is placed under 883
by S. of D., H.R., ii, 114-115.
Guthred^ became**king in 883 ; S. of D., H.R., ii, 114, and an insertion
in ii, 86 ; cf. H.D.E., i, 68-69, without date. He died in 894, according to
S. of D., i, 71 ; ii, 92 ; in 896, August 24, according to Ethelw., in M.H.B.,
518-519 ; while De Pr. Sax. Adv., in S. of D., ii, 377, says that he reigned
fourteen years.
1 Lindisfarne had, in fact, been sacked twice by the Danes, in 793 and
in 875 ; S. of D., H.D.E., i, 50-51, 58.
Here De Mir. et Tr. S.C. strikes a chord frequently repeated in later
"
writers ; S. of D., i, 241 :
. . . the nation of the Scots gathered an innumerable
army and crossed the river Tweed, which is the northern boundary
of the land of St. Cuthbert, and harried every place with slaughter, fire and
rapine. They spared not rank, nor age, nor sex, but cut down all like cattle
with equal and unheard-of cruelty."