Churchlore Gleanings Author:Thomas Firminger Thiselton Dyer Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: CHAPTER III. STRANGE STORIES AND TALES OF WONDER. Legends commemorative of supernatural and ghostly deeds have clustered round many of our cathedrals and p... more »arish churches. In connection with Durham Cathedral the story goes that years ago a phantom army suddenly appeared, and rescued a certain devout worshipper from the hands of assassins, just as he had finished his orisons for the repose of departed souls. Unexpectedly surprised, he fled into the burial ground for refuge, when " the graves bristled with swords and spears, starting out of the earth in his defence, and the long-buried captains for whom he had prayed rose up and came together clad in armour, their weapons in their fleshless hands, but without a sound, and so the ghostly band closed round him against his terrified enemies." A similar story is told of St . Bristan, a bishop of Winchester, who was in the habit of singing a psalter at midnight in the churchyard for repose of departed souls. On one occasion, at the completion of his devotions, " up from the graves came the voices of the dead, and a great army, numberless, making answer, ' Amen.'" A strange tale is told by an old writer f of a remarkable Mackenzie Walcott, "Traditions and Customs of Cathedrals " (1872), 214. t Barthol. de Cotton, 457, 458. event which happened about the close of the thirteenth century, in Hereford Cathedral. To quote his words, " it was a marvel almost inconceivable," for " a demon in the choral act of a canon sat in a stall after matins had been sung, and a canon came up to him to inquire the reason of his sitting there, thinking that he was one of his brother canons. The demon was dumb, and said not a word. The canon was beyond measure terrified, thinking it was the foul fiend himself; but he conjured it by the holy name...« less