884
THE SAXONS IN ENGLAND.
[book I.
helm. He tells how such a man in Northumbria,
lying at the point of death, had fallen into a trance,
recovering from which and being restored to health,
he had entered the monastery of Melrose, in which
he continued till his death. During his trance he
had seen visions which he afterwards communicated
to Hamgisl a priest, AldfrfS king of the Northum-
brians, and others. He related that on being re-
leased from the body his soul had been led by one,
bright of aspect, gloriously clothed, towards the
east, into a valley wide and deep and of a length
that seemed infinite : one side glowed terribly with
flames, the other was filled with furious hail and
freezing snow. Either side was full of human souls
which were tossed from left to right as by a tem-
pest. For when they could not bear the violence
of the immense heat, they rushed wretchedly into
the midst of the dreadful cold ; and when they
could find no rest there, they sprung back again,
again to bum in the midst of inextinguishable
flames. When Drihthehn saw them thus eternally
tormented by a crowd of deformed demons, he
thought within himself, “This is surely hell, of
■whose intolerable tortures I have often heard tell !”
But his companion said, “This is not the hell thou
thinkest ! ” and proceeding further, he beheld how
the darkness began to thicken around and fill the
whole space before him. Suddenly in this deep
night he perceived globes of dusky fire cast up from
what seemed to be a vast well, into which they
fell again, without intermission. In the midst of
these horrors his conductor left him. On looking
CH. x∏∙]
HEATHENDOM. DEVIL.
385
more intently, he now perceived that the tongues
of fire were all full of human souls, tossed aloft like
sparks in smoke, and then dragged back into the
abyss. And an incomparable stench, which bub-
bled up with the vapours, filled all those abodes
of darkness. Around him sounded the shouts and
taunts of fiends, like a vulgar mob exulting over
a captive enemy : suddenly a host of evil spirits
dragged through the darkness five souls, one of a
laic, one of a woman, one tonsured like a cleric, and
plunged them into the abyss amidst a confused roar
of lamentation and laughter. Then certain malig-
nant spirits ascending from the deep, surrounded
the trembling spectator, terrifying him with their
flaming eyes and the fire which burst from their
mouths and noses, and threatening to seize him
with fiery pincers which they held in their hands.
From this danger he was rescued by the return of
his companion, who conducted him to two corre-
sponding regions of eternal bliss, every one of whose
details is in the strongest contrast to those already
described, but just as material, as gross and sen-
sual. The moral of this is too important to be
given in any but Beda’s own words, t∙ And when,
on our return, we had reached those happy man-
sions of spirits clothed in white, he said unto me,
‘ Knowest thou what all these things are which
thou hast beheld ↑ ’ I answered, ‘ No.’ Then said
he, ‘ The valley which thou sawest, horrible with
its boiling flames and its stiff cold, that is the place
where shall be tried and chastised the souls of those
men, who delaying to confess and to amend their
vol. I. 2 c