THE GATE OF REMEMBRANCE [Illustration: PLATE I. GLASTONBURY ABBEY. View from the site of the north transept, looking towards the Quire. _Frontispiece to Part I._] THE GATE OF REMEMBRANCE THE STORY OF THE PSYCHOLOGICAL EXPERIMENT WHICH RESULTED IN THE DISCOVERY OF THE EDGAR CHAPEL AT GLASTONBURY BY FREDERICK BLIGH BOND, F.R.I.B.A. DIRECTOR OF EXCAVATIONS AT GLASTONBURY ABBEY AUTHOR OF "THE ARCHITECTURAL HANDBOOK OF GLASTONBURY ABBEY" THIRD EDITION WITH A RECORD OF THE FINDING OF THE LORETTO CHAPEL IN 1919 BOSTON MARSHALL JONES COMPANY 1920 _BY THE SAME AUTHOR_ ARCHITECTURAL HANDBOOK OF GLASTONBURY ABBEY. (_Reprinting._) THE GLASTONBURY PRESS: GLASTONBURY. 4s. Net THE HILL OF VISION. A Forecast of the Great War, with subsequent events, gathered from automatic writings. CONSTABLE & CO., 7s. 6d. net, and of all Booksellers. ROODSCREENS AND ROODLOFTS. With numerous illustrations of ancient ecclesiastical woodwork in English churches. Two volumes, 4to., 32s. 6d. net. SIR ISAAC PITMAN & SONS, AMEN CORNER, E.C. PREFACE TO SECOND EDITION Two problems in the script have engaged the serious attention of critics. The first and simpler of the two is that which is involved in the language and literary form of the messages. This is a curious patchwork of Low Latin, Middle English of mixed periods, and Modern English of varied style and diction. It is a mosaic of multi-coloured fragments cemented together in a strangely random fashion. This anomaly is the more remarkable from the contrast it presents to the sustained and consistent burden of the script itself, which, as though in obedience to some preordained intention and settled plan, seems to proceed to the presentment, line by line, of a completed whole, with absolute patience and indifference to interruptions. Lapse of time seems of no account. After a break of several hours, the thread is resumed at the point where it had been dropped. The unfinished communications about the Loretto Chapel in 1911 are picked up and spontaneously completed five years later. Nevertheless, the queer patchwork of language is again evident. For this fact, the following explanation is offered. It will easily be conceded that whatever the source or inspiring influence of these messages, the language in which they are conveyed is the _mechanical side_ of the matter, the most assuredly conventional element in the process of transmission. But the obvious instruments are the brains of F.B.B. and J.A. The reasoning and reflective faculties are at the time in abeyance or are otherwise engaged,[1] their attention being entirely diverted: but the storehouse of memories and subconscious impressions latent within are being used, and quite independently used, though concurrently in point of time with the normal use of the thinking faculties on a wholly different subject.