The aid afforded by St. Nicholas to mariners in distress also forms the subject of a story sung in a popular Servian carol,[87] in which there is much in evidence the peculiar charm of the folk-tale. The story goes that all the saints, festively assembled, were drinking wine. When the cup, out of which each drank in turn, was passed to St. Nicholas, he was too sleepy to hold it, and let it drop. St. Elias shook him by the arm and aroused him. “Oh! I beg the pardon of the company,” said the sleepy saint, “but I have been very busy and I was absent from your festival. The sea was rough, and I had to give my help to three hundred ships that were in danger.” [Illustration: L. Monaco. St. Nicholas Rescues the Seamen. Brogi] It is not easy to associate St. Nicholas with the thought of severity. One can hardly conceive of him as a stern judge. Was he open to the charge of being what is popularly called “easy”? Certain it is that his beneficence had a wide scope. The universality of his guardianship can hardly be better illustrated than by the fact that he not only afforded protection from robbers and shielded the unjustly condemned, but at the same time shared with St. Dismas the questionable honor of being the protector of pirates and thieves. This protective relationship, in Elizabethan times, formed the subject of a stock jest. Robbers and thieves were facetiously called “St. Nicholas’ clerks.” “Sirrah,” says Gadshill, “if they meet not with St. Nicholas’ clerks, I’ll give thee this neck.” “No,” rejoins the Chamberlain, “I’ll none of it; I pr’ythee keep that for the hangman; for I know thou worshipp’st Saint Nicholas as truly as a man of falsehood may.”[88] How did St. Nicholas get into such evil associations? It will be remembered that the seamen protected by him included pirates, and that Greek pirates are said to have shared their booty with him. Have these evil associations corrupted his good manners, and has he thus been brought into association with thieves and robbers? Perhaps so. But other explanations have been offered. His name has become associated with that of the “Old Nick” in a way that remains to be explained. Perhaps in this way he has come to acquire the function of the “Old Nick,” as the protector of evil. A more plausible explanation accounts for his association with thieves by the popularly known story, which formed the subject of one of the St. Nicholas plays, that of the thieves who had stolen goods left under the guardianship of St. Nicholas’ image and who were compelled by the saint to restore the goods and thus brought “to the way of trouth.” Whatever the cause, the association was one well established. St. Nicholas’ clerks were well known in Elizabethan times,[89] and are frequently referred to in literature. There were also lively popular stories on the subject, one of which forms the subject of a stanza in a merry St. Nicholas carol.[90]