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Authors: Robert Lacey
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attached to both his arms and his feet. Today the ravens and jackdaws that live around Malmesbury Abbey can be seen soaring on the updrafts that blow up the hill between the church and the valley of the River Avon, and Elmer may have tried to copy them as he leapt off the tower and glided down towards the river.
According to William of Malmesbury, the historian who recorded Elmer’s feat in the following century, the monk managed a downward glide of some 200 metres before he landed - or, rather, crash-landed. He did catch a breeze from the top of the tower, but was surprised by the atmospheric turbulence and seems to have lost his nerve.
‘What with the violence of the wind and the eddies and at the same time his consciousness of the temerity of the attempt,’ related William, ‘he faltered and fell, breaking and crippling both his legs.’
William of Malmesbury probably got his story from fellow-monks who had known Elmer in old age. The eleventh-century stargazer was the sort of character dismissed as mad in his lifetime, but later seen as a visionary. In his final years Elmer’s limping figure was a familiar sight around the abbey - and the would-be birdman would explain the failure of his great enterprise with wry humour. It was his own fault, he would say. As William told it, ‘He forgot to fit a tail on his hinder parts.’
KING CANUTE AND THE WAVES
AD 1016-35
K ING CANUTE (CNUT) WHO RULED THE English from 1016 until 1035 and who tried to turn back the waves, has gone down in folklore as the very model of arrogance, stupidity and wishful thinking.
One day the King invited his nobles down to the beach as the tide was coming in, ordering his throne to be placed where the waves were advancing across the sands. ‘You are subject to me,’ he shouted out to the water, ‘as the land on which I am sitting is mine . . . I command you, therefore, not to rise on to my land, nor to presume to wet the clothing or limbs of your master.’
Not surprisingly, the sea paid no attention. According to the earliest surviving written version of the story, the tide kept on coming. The waves ‘disrespectfully drenched the king’s feet and shins’, so he had to jump back to avoid getting wetter.
King Canute’s soaked feet are a historical image to rival King Alfred’s smoking cakes, and, as with the story of the cakes, we get our evidence not from an eyewitness but from a manuscript that was not written until about a hundred years later. In the case of Canute we can identify the storyteller precisely as Henry of Huntingdon, a country clergyman who lived on the edge of the Fens around 1130 and who wrote a
History of the English
in praise of ‘this, the most celebrated of islands, formerly called Albion, later Britain, and now England’. An enthusiast for his local wetlands - ‘beautiful to behold . . . green, with many woods and islands’ - Henry compiled his history from other manuscript histories, most notably Bede and the
Anglo-Saxon Chronicle
, and from the personal memories of people who had lived through the great events.
Henry was a conscientious reporter. His account of his own times has a careful ring, and if I were putting money on it I would feel safer betting that Canute got his feet wet than that Alfred burned the cakes. History’s mistake has been the belief that Canute really did think he could stop the waves - according to Henry, the King thought quite the opposite.
‘Let all the world know,’ cried Canute as he retreated from his throne and contemplated his wet feet, ‘that the power of kings is empty and worthless!’ He shouted at the waves, in other words, to convey the message that he was
not
as all-powerful as he might seem, and he embellished his point with an additional, religious, lesson. ‘There is no king worthy of the name,’ he proclaimed, ‘save God by whose will heaven, earth and sea obey eternal laws.’
The King of Heaven was the king who mattered, was his second
According to William of Malmesbury, the historian who recorded Elmer’s feat in the following century, the monk managed a downward glide of some 200 metres before he landed - or, rather, crash-landed. He did catch a breeze from the top of the tower, but was surprised by the atmospheric turbulence and seems to have lost his nerve.
‘What with the violence of the wind and the eddies and at the same time his consciousness of the temerity of the attempt,’ related William, ‘he faltered and fell, breaking and crippling both his legs.’
William of Malmesbury probably got his story from fellow-monks who had known Elmer in old age. The eleventh-century stargazer was the sort of character dismissed as mad in his lifetime, but later seen as a visionary. In his final years Elmer’s limping figure was a familiar sight around the abbey - and the would-be birdman would explain the failure of his great enterprise with wry humour. It was his own fault, he would say. As William told it, ‘He forgot to fit a tail on his hinder parts.’
KING CANUTE AND THE WAVES
AD 1016-35
K ING CANUTE (CNUT) WHO RULED THE English from 1016 until 1035 and who tried to turn back the waves, has gone down in folklore as the very model of arrogance, stupidity and wishful thinking.
One day the King invited his nobles down to the beach as the tide was coming in, ordering his throne to be placed where the waves were advancing across the sands. ‘You are subject to me,’ he shouted out to the water, ‘as the land on which I am sitting is mine . . . I command you, therefore, not to rise on to my land, nor to presume to wet the clothing or limbs of your master.’
Not surprisingly, the sea paid no attention. According to the earliest surviving written version of the story, the tide kept on coming. The waves ‘disrespectfully drenched the king’s feet and shins’, so he had to jump back to avoid getting wetter.
King Canute’s soaked feet are a historical image to rival King Alfred’s smoking cakes, and, as with the story of the cakes, we get our evidence not from an eyewitness but from a manuscript that was not written until about a hundred years later. In the case of Canute we can identify the storyteller precisely as Henry of Huntingdon, a country clergyman who lived on the edge of the Fens around 1130 and who wrote a
History of the English
in praise of ‘this, the most celebrated of islands, formerly called Albion, later Britain, and now England’. An enthusiast for his local wetlands - ‘beautiful to behold . . . green, with many woods and islands’ - Henry compiled his history from other manuscript histories, most notably Bede and the
Anglo-Saxon Chronicle
, and from the personal memories of people who had lived through the great events.
Henry was a conscientious reporter. His account of his own times has a careful ring, and if I were putting money on it I would feel safer betting that Canute got his feet wet than that Alfred burned the cakes. History’s mistake has been the belief that Canute really did think he could stop the waves - according to Henry, the King thought quite the opposite.
‘Let all the world know,’ cried Canute as he retreated from his throne and contemplated his wet feet, ‘that the power of kings is empty and worthless!’ He shouted at the waves, in other words, to convey the message that he was
not
as all-powerful as he might seem, and he embellished his point with an additional, religious, lesson. ‘There is no king worthy of the name,’ he proclaimed, ‘save God by whose will heaven, earth and sea obey eternal laws.’
The King of Heaven was the king who mattered, was his second
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