Northumbrian Stories

Requested by @maninthewoods who mentioned folklore about cows. Not sure how well this one fits the criteria, but it's a folktale, and there's a cow in it...

This is one of the many stories about St Cuthbert that we have up here.

After Cuthbert died on the Farne Islands, his burial place became a pilgrimage site; however, Viking raids made it unsafe, so a group of monks removed his coffin and took it away.

They travelled the countryside for a long while, looking for a safe place, and there are plenty of stories about their journey, but those will have to wait for another time.

One night, a monk had a dream, or perhaps it was a holy vision, that the saint's body would be safe at Dunholme. However, none of them knew where that place was or had ever heard of it.

Soon after, they encountered two milkmaids on the road. One was looking for her good dun cow, and the other said she had seen the cow away over at Dunholme. The monks followed the milkmaids until they came to a piece of land protected by a loop of the river and by steep crags. There was the dun cow peacefully grazing, and there they knew Cuthbert's body would be safe.

They buried his coffin and built a church over it. The church became a cathedral and a city grew up. Over the years the name Dunholme became Durham, and St Cuthbert's body still rests there, thanks to a wandering dun cow.

#folklore #FolkloreThursday #Northumberland #Durham #legends #OriginMyth #StCuthbert #EarlyMedieval

Mar 23, 2023 at 11:37amWeb
Show threadJoaquimMar 23, 2023
@northfolk @maninthewoods I love this story! I feel like there's a series somewhere in the tale of these monks' travels with this coffin. 😅
Show threadNorthumbrian StoriesMar 23, 2023
@jaybaeta Oh there absolutely is! There are lots of parts to this legend - interestingly, most of the stories are light-hearted/funny. Lots of places dotted around Northumberland where the monks are said to have rested with the coffin too. You could fill a book with St Cuthbert stories from this part of the world, including those featuring him while he was still alive. Round here, he's known as Cuddy, and very much a well-known and well-loved folk figure. We have Cuddy's Cave, Cuddy's Island, Cuddy Ducks (the local name for Eider ducks), and more!
Show threadJoaquimMar 23, 2023
@northfolk I love that the Saint is referred to as Cuddy. 😂 Do you know of the state of decomposition when they traveled with the coffin (i.e., did it smell bad)? And their mode of transportation?
Show threadNorthumbrian StoriesMar 23, 2023
@jaybaeta Part of the myth of St Cuthbert (and the reason his burial place became a pilgrimage site in the first place) is that when they exhumed him years after his death, in order to rebury in more style, they found his body hadn't decomposed, but was exactly as it had been when he died! And the belief is that they simply carried his coffin on their shoulders, as a labour of love. There's a wooden sculpture depicting it in Lindisfarne Church, where Cuthbert was bishop and where he was buried before the removal.
Show threadJoaquimMar 23, 2023

@northfolk Amazing. It's one thing to do it just down the road, but all the way to "Dunholme" must have been extremely taxing! I can just imagine the blisters, sore shoulders, and all the stones in their way, and then having to make their way up the crags.

At least the body itself wasn't a problem. 😅

Show threadNorthumbrian StoriesMar 23, 2023
@jaybaeta Not even a direct route either - by all accounts, they wandered all over the countryside!
Show threadJoaquimMar 23, 2023
@northfolk Oh, that's true. In that context, their wandering must have been significantly more arduous. Do you actually know how long it all took?
Show threadNorthumbrian StoriesMar 24, 2023
@jaybaeta The story is that they wandered for seven years, although what often gets missed out in the more folkloric retellings is that they settled first at Chester-le-Street (County Durham) and then moved to what's now Durham City after more Viking raids, more than 100 years later - so the monks in the Dun Cow story wouldn't have been the same monks from the earlier stories of their wanders around Northumbria! How true the stories of a small band of itinerant monks hauling a coffin are, I don't know - at the time Cuthbert lived, Lindisfarne was the seat of the diocese, and the movement of his body and other treasures to Durham occurred together with the movement of the seat, so it may be more of a symbolic story of the geographical movement of power.
Show threadJoaquimMar 24, 2023

@northfolk Oh, interesting! Seven years is an incredibly long time in itself, but it didn't occur to me that there would have been a century-plus gap in between leaving Lindisfarne and arriving at the final resting place, all the while having to stave off Vikings and protect St. Cuthbert's body.

I do hope there's more truth than fiction to this story, because it's utterly fascinating. 😁

Show threadMan in the WoodsMar 25, 2023
@jaybaeta @northfolk maybe even a graphic novel 🐂
Show threadJoaquimMar 25, 2023
@maninthewoods @northfolk That works, too! Honestly, these stories are fascinating.
Show threadMan in the WoodsMar 25, 2023
@northfolk Wow! I absolutely love this! Thank you so much for sharing! Also, it sounds to me lile that church was built in a special prehistoric site, just based on that description. Loops in rivers, like islands, were so commonly chosen as sacred sites in prehistory. Thanks so much!
Show threadNorthumbrian StoriesMar 25, 2023
@maninthewoods You're welcome! And absolutely, there's archaeology under Durham going back several thousand years, I believe. If you ever take the east coast train between London and Edinburgh, you get a very impressive view of Durham Castle and Cathedral that shows exactly why they were built where they were.
Show threadMan in the WoodsMar 25, 2023
@northfolk I must one day get to know that part of the world. I’ve seen a tony bit of Northumbria around Alnmouth and Alnwick, but one day I will explore further 👀