much worldly wealth, if he would submit to him,
and prayed also the mother to exhort her child,
that heat least should alone submit,though his brothers would not.
And the mother promised him that she would teach him.
Then bent down the mother to her bairn, and quoth,
'Pity me, my son, I bore thee as a man;
look up now to the heavens, and behold this earth,
and all the creatures that are now thereon,
and understand by them how the Almighty God
shaped them all, without material, of nothing;
and fear not thou only because of this fiendlike murderer,
but receive the death, even as thy brothers did,
that I may again receive thee in blessedness with them.'
Then called the youngster to the tormentors thus, and quoth,
'What are ye waiting for? I shall not be
in no wise [any wise] obedient to the king's behest,
but to God's commandments which He commanded by Moses.
And thou, king full of evil, for thy pride shalt
soothly, in God's doom, suffer torment.
I offer my own life and my body together
for God's ordinances, even as did my six brothers;
and I cry to God that He will pity our kindred,
and that He may cause, by torments, that thou mayst know that He is God alone.'
Then became the king infuriated against the boy
over all the others that he before had killed
for that contemptuousness; and the sainted boy
amid the fierce torments departed then from life
with full belief; and the faithful mother
was also killed before the king,
after her seven sons, happily, for [the sake of] God.
The commemoration of these martyrs is on Lammas day,
as far and wide as God's servants pay heed to God's service.
