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Beasts and Saints
Beasts and Saints
- GenresReligionShort Stories
160 pages, Paperback
First published October 1, 1934
About the author
Helen Waddell
54 books13 followersHelen Jane Waddell was an Irish poet, translator and playwright.
She was born in Tokyo, the tenth and youngest child of Hugh Waddell, a Presbyterian minister and missionary who was lecturing in the Imperial University. She spent the first eleven years of her life in Japan before her family returned to Belfast. Her mother died shortly afterwards, and her father remarried. Hugh Waddell himself died and left his younger children in the care of their stepmother. Following the marriage of her elder sister Meg, Helen was left at home to care for Mrs Waddell, whose health was deteriorating.
Waddell was educated at Victoria College for Girls and Queen's University Belfast, where she studied under Professor Gregory Smith, graduating in 1911. She followed her BA with first class honours in English with a master's degree, and in 1919 enrolled in Somerville College, Oxford, to study for her doctorate. A travelling scholarship from Lady Margaret Hall in 1923 allowed her to conduct research in Paris. It was at this time that she met her life-long friend, Maude Clarke.
She is best known for bringing to light the history of the medieval goliards in her 1927 book The Wandering Scholars, and translating their Latin poetry in the companion volume Medieval Latin Lyrics. A second anthology, More Latin Lyrics, was compiled in the 1940s but not published until after her death. Her other works range widely in subject matter. For example, she also wrote plays. Her first play was The Spoiled Buddha, which was performed at the Opera House, Belfast, by the Ulster Literary Society. Her The Abbe Prevost was staged in 1935. Her historical novel Peter Abelard was published in 1933. It was critically well received and became a bestseller.
She was born in Tokyo, the tenth and youngest child of Hugh Waddell, a Presbyterian minister and missionary who was lecturing in the Imperial University. She spent the first eleven years of her life in Japan before her family returned to Belfast. Her mother died shortly afterwards, and her father remarried. Hugh Waddell himself died and left his younger children in the care of their stepmother. Following the marriage of her elder sister Meg, Helen was left at home to care for Mrs Waddell, whose health was deteriorating.
Waddell was educated at Victoria College for Girls and Queen's University Belfast, where she studied under Professor Gregory Smith, graduating in 1911. She followed her BA with first class honours in English with a master's degree, and in 1919 enrolled in Somerville College, Oxford, to study for her doctorate. A travelling scholarship from Lady Margaret Hall in 1923 allowed her to conduct research in Paris. It was at this time that she met her life-long friend, Maude Clarke.
She is best known for bringing to light the history of the medieval goliards in her 1927 book The Wandering Scholars, and translating their Latin poetry in the companion volume Medieval Latin Lyrics. A second anthology, More Latin Lyrics, was compiled in the 1940s but not published until after her death. Her other works range widely in subject matter. For example, she also wrote plays. Her first play was The Spoiled Buddha, which was performed at the Opera House, Belfast, by the Ulster Literary Society. Her The Abbe Prevost was staged in 1935. Her historical novel Peter Abelard was published in 1933. It was critically well received and became a bestseller.
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Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews
February 4, 2013
This is a delightful little book filled with charmingly naive stories about saints and their power over the beasts. To get the flavor of the book, here is one brief episode in its entirety called "St. Cainnic and the Stag":
Another time when St. Cainnic was in hidden retreat in solitude, a stag came to him, and would hold the book steady on his antlers as the saint read on. But one day, startled by a sudden fear, he dashed into flight without the abbot's leave, carrying the book still open on his antlers: but thereafter, like a fugitive monk to his abbot, the book safe and unharmed still open on his antlers, he returned.Another delightful anecdote also includes a book. St. Colman had befriended a cock, a mouse, and a fly. The first two made sure he would awake to perform his devotions in a timely fashion:
Yet scarcely less remarkable was the office of the Fly. For when the man of God had leisure to read his holy books, the Fly would trot up and down his codex: and should someone call him, or he had to go about other business, he would instruct the Fly to sit down upon the line at which he had halted, and keep his place until he should return to continue his interrupted reading: which the fly infallibly would do.Special mention should be made of the woodcuts by Robert Gibbings, which are among the best works in the medium I have yet encountered.
January 3, 2022
Sometimes a kind of pilgrimage of books unfolds.
I don't know if it's an interesting story or not, but I find the connections and discoveries that occur around the process of reading fascinating. Sometimes they seem to be somehow led.
Recently, the latest edition of NZ's Spiritual Growth Ministries' journal, 'Refresh', appeared bearing the theme 'The Deep'. Inside was a reproduction of a stunning woodcut called 'St Brendan and the Sea Monsters'.
Three things here struck a chord: The Deep and how it is manifest in water (one of my favourite themes in the creative life); St Brendan, the island-hopping Irish pilgrim monk of legend (and a hero of my Islands art project); and woodcuts (an art form that I had recently become interested in via a UK artist named Luke Sewell, whose print of Julian of Norwich I had latterly purchased, and with whom I'd done a zine swap).
The woodcut of St Brendan and the Sea Monsters was by one Robert Gibbings and was exquisite. I went on a hunt, found that copies of the print were held in the collections of the Christchurch Art Gallery, and the V&A in London. I found an image online and sent it to a copy centre mate so that I could have it on my wall.
I also discovered that the picture had originally been done for a 1934 book called 'Beasts and Saints'. I determined that I needed a copy - a first edition if possible - for my library.
I went looking online, and on an international secondhand book website, I located an excellent copy in Dunedin, New Zealand, for a very reasonable price.
And thus it arrived and thus it was read, amongst my own adventures out onto and in the sea this summer holidays. Inspired, yesterday evening I had a conversation at surprisingly close quarters with an oyster catcher, who didn't seem to mind. His or her black head and bright orange beak moving side to side inquisitively as I spoke. I was on my kayak, he or she was alone perched in the branches of a dead tree that had fallen out into the water in times past.
"What are you doing out here all by yourself, mate?" I said.
Anyway the book itself is translations from Latin of ancient legends about the interactions between saints and animals - a la, most famously, St Francis of Assisi. Although, he doesn't appear in the book, which first focuses on the Desert Fathers of the East, before swinging across to Britain and Ireland.
My favourites, the island dwellers, have a good showing. And all throughout, these lovely woodcuts and folksy text. A charming book that stories the connection between Creation (nature) and the contemplative life.
Who were these Helen Waddell who was the translator, and Robert Gibbings the illustrator? I had to know, because that's part of the pilgrimage.
In the early part of the 20th century, in the face of the encroachment of technology, there was a revival of handcrafts, and the person most responsible (I learn) for the revival of the art form of woodcut printmaking was the Irishman Robert Gibbings, who worked in London and was a master (quite clearly from this book) of the craft.
Helen Waddell was also Irish. A remarkable person born of Presbyterian parents in Japan, who actively pursued an academic research career, had a doctorate from Oxford, and ended up with four honorary doctorates from the likes of St Andrews University. She was friends with WB Yeats, Virginia Wolfe and Siegfried Sassoon.
A couple of legends well worth remembering in their own right. May history preserve them.
And a literary pilgrimage well taken, thanks to the impetus of this lovely book, and that woodcut of St Brendan and his sea monsters.
I don't know if it's an interesting story or not, but I find the connections and discoveries that occur around the process of reading fascinating. Sometimes they seem to be somehow led.
Recently, the latest edition of NZ's Spiritual Growth Ministries' journal, 'Refresh', appeared bearing the theme 'The Deep'. Inside was a reproduction of a stunning woodcut called 'St Brendan and the Sea Monsters'.
Three things here struck a chord: The Deep and how it is manifest in water (one of my favourite themes in the creative life); St Brendan, the island-hopping Irish pilgrim monk of legend (and a hero of my Islands art project); and woodcuts (an art form that I had recently become interested in via a UK artist named Luke Sewell, whose print of Julian of Norwich I had latterly purchased, and with whom I'd done a zine swap).
The woodcut of St Brendan and the Sea Monsters was by one Robert Gibbings and was exquisite. I went on a hunt, found that copies of the print were held in the collections of the Christchurch Art Gallery, and the V&A in London. I found an image online and sent it to a copy centre mate so that I could have it on my wall.
I also discovered that the picture had originally been done for a 1934 book called 'Beasts and Saints'. I determined that I needed a copy - a first edition if possible - for my library.
I went looking online, and on an international secondhand book website, I located an excellent copy in Dunedin, New Zealand, for a very reasonable price.
And thus it arrived and thus it was read, amongst my own adventures out onto and in the sea this summer holidays. Inspired, yesterday evening I had a conversation at surprisingly close quarters with an oyster catcher, who didn't seem to mind. His or her black head and bright orange beak moving side to side inquisitively as I spoke. I was on my kayak, he or she was alone perched in the branches of a dead tree that had fallen out into the water in times past.
"What are you doing out here all by yourself, mate?" I said.
Anyway the book itself is translations from Latin of ancient legends about the interactions between saints and animals - a la, most famously, St Francis of Assisi. Although, he doesn't appear in the book, which first focuses on the Desert Fathers of the East, before swinging across to Britain and Ireland.
My favourites, the island dwellers, have a good showing. And all throughout, these lovely woodcuts and folksy text. A charming book that stories the connection between Creation (nature) and the contemplative life.
Who were these Helen Waddell who was the translator, and Robert Gibbings the illustrator? I had to know, because that's part of the pilgrimage.
In the early part of the 20th century, in the face of the encroachment of technology, there was a revival of handcrafts, and the person most responsible (I learn) for the revival of the art form of woodcut printmaking was the Irishman Robert Gibbings, who worked in London and was a master (quite clearly from this book) of the craft.
Helen Waddell was also Irish. A remarkable person born of Presbyterian parents in Japan, who actively pursued an academic research career, had a doctorate from Oxford, and ended up with four honorary doctorates from the likes of St Andrews University. She was friends with WB Yeats, Virginia Wolfe and Siegfried Sassoon.
A couple of legends well worth remembering in their own right. May history preserve them.
And a literary pilgrimage well taken, thanks to the impetus of this lovely book, and that woodcut of St Brendan and his sea monsters.
January 31, 2023
Beasts and Saints is a fascinating little book (~130 pages), perhaps more so to me as several of the tales are obviously christianized versions of pagan stories, tales, and wodes. Sometimes the christianizing appears as the story frame, sometimes as a moral tacked on at the end, sometimes as a christian apologetic in the middle.
Even so, some good story fodder for writers looking to build off old tales.
Even so, some good story fodder for writers looking to build off old tales.
July 26, 2016
interesting little book about interactions between animals and saints. Maybe a little legend mixed in, but a testimony to the relationship those in communion with God can have.
Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews