book fell overboard.  They arrived safely on the opposite shore, but could not make up their minds to continue their journey till they had done what they could to recover the precious relic.  So they waited at the peril of their lives till the tide went out, leaving, as it does to this day, a stretch of bare sand between the Island and the mainland.  To the inexpressible joy of the monks, they then found the book lying unharmed on the sand.

Archbishop Eyre, in his Life of St. Cuthbert, following the story as it is contained in the Rites of Durham,* places this incident in the sixth or seventh year of their wanderings.

* Surtees Society.

“And so, the bishop, the abbot, and the rest, being weary of travelling, thought to have stolen away, and carried St. Cuthbert’s body into Ireland, for his better safety.  And being upon the sea in a ship, by a marvellous miracle three waves of water were turned into blood.  The ship that they were in was driven back by the tempest and by the mighty power of God as it would seem, upon the shore or land.  And also the said ship that they were in, by the great storm and strong raging walls of the sea as is aforesaid, was turned on the one side, and the Book of the Holy Evangelists fell out of the ship into the bottom of the sea.”

This account says that the monks found the volume about three miles from the shore, and that their landing-place was Whithorn in Galloway, opposite Belfast.

When Lindisfarne became a priory cell to Durham, this famous manuscript still remained in the city of St. Cuthbert, and in the History of North Durham by Raine, it is mentioned in the year 1637, as “the Book of St. Cuthbert which had fallen into the sea.”  We, indeed, notice a brown stain on several of its leaves, which might be accounted for by their having been saturated with salt water, did we but know what would be the effect of a sea-water mark after so long a period.  At the time of the dissolution it was still at Durham, and no record of what then befel it has been preserved.*

* Brayley’s Graphic and Historical Illustrator, 1834; article “The Durham Book,” by the Rev. Joseph Stevenson.

Sir Robert Cotton discovered it in the possession of Robert Bowyer, clerk of Parliament under James I.

The resemblance between the artistic and palaeographic peculiarities of the Book of Kells and the Durham Book is accounted for by the fact that Lindisfarne was founded from Iona, which had been given to St. Columba and his Irish companions in the sixth century.  The monks, who settled at Holy Island, continued the Scoto-Irish traditions which they had brought with them, and perpetuated them in their manuscripts.