Their Bearing on Folklore. 291
For a Monk in that land : in his death-evil lay ; And his Abbot came to him : before his end-day And conjured him that he should : after his death there To him (the Abbot) come :
The Monk appeared accordingly and told of a fair procession that went to meet St. Thomas after his martyrdom and conduct him to the throne in heaven.
This was told to the patriarch of Jerusalem, and later on in the year :
The pilgrims told all the truth : as the Monk before had said. Thus was known in Jerusalem : the death of St. Thomas Within the first fortnight : that he martyred was.
There is another life in the same collection of Saints Lives — that of Saint Edmund the King, which is worthy of attention.
Compared with the " Life of Beket " it is short, containing just 100 lines, and it is a late version, as the interval between the death of Edmund and the date of the manuscript is nearly 400 years (899-1290), as compared with the interval of little over lOO years in the case of Beket.
Yet it may fairly be claimed that the same two char- acteristics are true as in the case of Beket. The tale is plainly told, and there is a comparative absence of the folklore element, though the proportion — due in part, no doubt, to the longer interval of time that elapsed between the death and the MS. — is larger than in Beket's Life.
There is also the complete absence of the Witchcraft obsession, although this was the period in which the trial for witchcraft of Prince Robert d'Artois in French history took place (a.D, 1332).
We have, as I have said, a very fair historical tale, and there are three items of interest for the folklore student.
(i) After his martyrdom, when his body had been torn
