ARROW! "from thy once lucid cell,"
I've heard, the historic Surtees1 tell,
"The lamp of learning shone;
Trimmed by a lone monastic's hand,"
Its flame illumining many a land;
Ere then to fame unknown.

But whither since escaped the light,-
Is Jarrow's glory quenched in night,
Because her Bede2 has fled ?

Chill thought away! "When sire forsakes,
His orphan charge another takes; "
So Deity hath said.

Too silent in religion's cause,
Sagacious but unhappy Dawes !

3

2 Venerable Bede,

3 Dawes, (Richard) a famous classic scholar connected with Jarrow, or at least with Heworth, in the chapel yard of which latter place he lies buried. See Local Historian's Table Book, Historical Division, vol. II. p. 145.

O fam'd for scholastic deed;

In him, once Jarrow hope expressed,
That now is in her Hodgson1 blessed,
To find another Bede.

Restor'd may be the ruined cell,
May other Bedes in Jarrow dwell,-
Let time achieve his worst;
Meanwhile, forbid, through love or scorn,
That any should the second mourn
Inferior to the first.

4 Hodgson, (Rev. John). This ingenious and pious gentleman, whose character as an author and a divine, is too well known to require any description here, has, since the composition of these lines, been deservedly preferred to the vicarage of Hartburn, Northumberland.

5 The Hedworth Brook, called by Leland the " Done," rises in the Boldon Hills, and thence running towards Tyne, passes through the vale of Jarrow, near the site of the monastic ruins.

To mark the cloister'd race;
In him, the saint and sage combined,
His dignity with honour joined,
Simplicity with grace.

Oft seated on yon rugged stone,
Whose breadth with shaggy moss o'ergrown,
Ne'er knew a sculptor's hand;

The holy man by oral sound,
Would call the honest rustics round,
A reverential band.

All happy met in spacious air,

To Heaven on wings of faith and prayer,
Their simple accents broke;

So humbly lodged, religion dwelt,
Upon the grassy turf they knelt,
Their roof the spreading oak.

Their altar was the hillock side,
A font the running brook supplied;
And why forbear to tell,

How once a time with acorns heaped
Went round their salver,—while they dipp'd
Their chalice from the well.

With gentle words he bade them drink,
And in the while themselves bethink
Of mercy's healing spaw;

"Go search," said he, "where Jesus tells,
And from salvations deeper wells
Your living waters draw."

Jarrow from time's destructive grasp,
As safe the arms of ivy clasp

Thy turrets loose and grey,

So glad would muse of pious deed,
Entwine the memory of thy Bede,

With her divinest bay.

6 In the vicinity of Jarrow is a well, which among the rustics still bears the name of "Bede's Well."

THE HAG-WORM AND THE ADDER.

N Cumberland and Northumberland," remarks a pleasant writer, "the viper, Coluber berus, is called the hag-worm; and the Anguis fragilis, the blind or slow worm."* As far as consists with our information, we would be disposed to say that the hagworm, is a name not of the adder or Vipera communis, Leach, but of the common blindworm. As in England, in the days of Shakespeare, who terms it "the eyeless venom'd worm," so in Northumberland at present, it is affirmed that the bite of the hagworm, it being in reality one of the most harmless creatures that crawls, is much more deadly than that of the adder-even capable of inflicting an incurable wound It is also an opinion that the blindworm as its name implies, is destitute of the faculty of vision. And in consonance with such attributes, in a rhyme which represents in grim colloquy, the twin reptiles of bane that our island boasts, we find it expatiating, with however a single redeeming trait, on the preeminence in "things evil," which, but for the deficiency of eye-sight, it might have attained.

"The hag-worm said to the ether,

If I had ane ee, as thou has twae,

There should never a bairn on the gait gae,

But the wee step-bairn that drees a' the wae."

Step-children from the days of Cinderella and the Classics, have been proverbially the victims of caprice and ill-treatment.‡

The adder, although from its baleful fangs, it is generally regarded with dread and abhorrence, yet viewed apart from this dangerous possession, and within its own assigned limits, is an object of extreme loveliness and elegance. Every reader of Milton is enraptured with the mazy march, and surpassing splendour, of the fatal serpent, in its attempts to draw the attention of our common Mother, even though deeply conscious of the slippery guile-the "inmate bad," concealed beneath so fair a spectacle. From some undefined feeling of this kind, the Northumbrian peasant in one of those rural adages, that present in such a delightful manner, the concentrated zest of untutored taste, imbibed from nature's own models, delineated in exhaustless profusion, on all created objects, has assigned a peculiar pro

Rambles in Northumberland, p. 191. + Timon of Athens.
Lurida terribiles miscent aconitæ novercae.

minence, as a characteristic of the month of recurring blossoms, and evolving buds, to the re-appearance of the adder in the vivifying warmth of spring.

or as Shakespeare has enshrined the vernal observation,
"It is the bright day that brings forth the adder,
And that craves wary walking.'

J. Hardy's Col.

ODE ON ATHELSTAN'S VICTORY,

The spinsters and the knitters in the sun,

And the free maids that weave their thread with bones,
Did use to chant it.-SHAKSPEARE.

HE following "free metrical translation of the celebrated Anglo-Saxon Ode on Athelstan's victory gained over the forces of Constantine, King of Scotland, at Brunan-burgh, in Northumberland" was contributed to the Gentleman's Magazine anonymously, and appears in the number for November, 1838. The author proceeds to state that the "ode was originally extracted from two MSS. in the Cottonian Library, B. M., Tiberius, B. iv., and Tiberius, A. vi.," and the event it celebrates is "dated 937 in Gibson's Chronicle, and in Hickes's Saxon Grammar, 938, and supposed to be written by a contemporary bard." Here however it may be well to state that these dates have each their additional supporter in ancient record, the Saxon Annals give 938, and the Chronicle of Mailros 937. It may also be well to advert to one or two other points in the following poem, which seem to require notice. And first, Brunanburgh in the ode is somewhat unaccountably rendered Brunsbury, a name which neither any existing village or spot of ground in the county of Northumberland, nor the words of the original ode itself, seem to give

* Julius Cæsar, Act. ii. scene 1.