This, says Dr. James Raine, is not the religious house which we know so well, but an earlier monastic establishment a short distance below it, on the same bank of the Tweed. The site of it is still called Old Melrose. It is on a green sheltered slope a little below the point where the Tweed receives the scanty waters of the Leader, and then takes a bold semicircular sweep under the woods and rocks of Bemerside.[1]
Melrose was an offshoot from Lindisfarne, and its foundation was attributed to St. Aidan. At this time Eata, one of his pupils and its first abbot, was still there, and Boisil was the praepositus, or prior. Bede describes the latter as possessing many virtues and as having a prophetic spirit, of which some reported instances will be related presently. Another Bosel, or Boisil, became the first Bishop of Worcester.[2] The name of the prior survives in the little town of St. Boswells on the Tweed, and in the dedication of the church at Tweedmouth.[3]
When Cuthberht applied for admission into the fraternity at Melrose, Eata was away, and he was received by Boisil, who foreseeing, we are told, the great career which he was presently to have, compared him to Nathaniel. Bede claims that this story had been told him by a certain Sigfred, who was a youth in the monastery at Melrose at the time. He afterwards became "a devout priest and long-tried servant of the Lord in our monastery,"
