An hour or two elapsed, and the Lady Gytha awoke. At first she could
scarcely understand where she was, but in a few minutes she came to
full consciousness, and was startled to find that her child was not
with her. She sprang up, called him by name, but elicited no response,
and she feared he had fallen down the side of the hill. With beating
heart she sought around, and on turning a projecting shoulder of the
hill was agonised to perceive the object of her search lying with his
face in a stream of water that was issuing from a fissure, and, on
taking him up, found life to be extinct. The pen fails in attempting
to depict her frantic grief, but it may be briefly stated, that she
carried down the lifeless body, conveyed it to her home, and laid it
beside its father in the little timber church. For her there was no
further earthly joy, and fixing her thoughts on the only source of
consolation, she founded a small religious house in the Vale of
Mowbray, where she spent the few remaining years of her life in
religious meditation and devotional exercises. She was buried beside
her beloved child in the little church, around which a village grew
up, which was called, in remembrance of the burial-place of Oswy and
his mother--Osmotherley.
According to the legend, the spring at the summit of the hill gushed
forth miraculously, in order that the decree of Fate should not be
frustrated.
"On the proud steep of Ottenberg still may be found
The spring which rose his sad doom to complete;
And on its verge the villagers sit round,
In wonder recording the fiat of Fate."
Eadwine, the Royal Martyr.
A pious and benevolent monk of Rome, passing one day through the slave
market of that city, noticed a group of beautiful fair-haired boys and
youths, who were exposed for sale. Compassionating their condition, he
enquired whence they came. "They are Angles," was the reply. "They are
beautiful enough to be _angeli_," said the monk. "What part of Anglia
come they from?" "Deira." "Then shall they be saved, _de ira_, from
the wrath of God. Who is their King?" "Ælla." "Then," continued the
monk, "shall Alleluias resound through their land," and he there and
then determined to go thither as a missionary, and preach the Gospel
to them, but before he could complete his arrangements, he was
raised to the Pontifical throne as Gregory I., afterwards called
Gregory the Great. Incapable, therefore, of going himself, he sent
Augustine, with Paulinus and other monks, as missionaries to the
Saxons of Britain. Instead, however, of going to the kingdom of Deira,
they landed in that of Kent, gained the ear of King Ethelberht, who
embraced Christianity, and established the see of Canterbury, with
Augustine as Bishop thereof.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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