I’m not religious, but has anyone, anywhere, quite managed to shed a Catholic upbringing? Speaking personally the residue I’m left with, apart from the guilt, is a Pavlovian obsession with medieval saints. Consequently, when fortune led me to a story titled ‘St Francis Treads the Stones of Hoy’, written by David Rose, man of letters and vast but modestly deployed erudition, I was there.
And what a luminous tale it is. It seems unlikely that Francis actually went to Hoy. I can’t find evidence. The only biography I’ve read, by G.K. Chesterton, contained remarkably little biographical information. But records suggest he certainly preached a sermon to birds, no shortage of which exist on Hoy. The scene is set.
Francis, it would appear, is seeking a challenge. He is by now experienced in avian-related oratory, having already converted the birds of Umbria. He alights on Hoy. Prepares himself. Seeks the right spot on which to pour forth. Checks the direction of the wind. The birds grow, not silent, but quiet and uniform in their expectation. They pulse simultaneously. Francis begins.
Though new to those in attendance, his words are not original. He has used them on many occasions. Perhaps the birds begin to sense this, as at some point they become a little restless. But a puffin remains intrigued. It steps forward attentively. It releases the fish it was holding in its beak.
As someone who also wrote a scene in which a wild bird laid a fish before a human, only to be accused of going woo-woo, I would like to point something out here. Wild animals, circs allowing, take their prey to places where they feel safe, and are programmed to keep a firm grip on it. This is Rose’s subtlety. The puffin leaves its fish on the ground, near Francis, and only retrieves them once he has gone.
Sermon given, Francis feels euphoric, the euphoria gently fading as the burden of his life, with all its previous discord, re-enters his thoughts. By the time he boards the ferry he is weary.
The story, which is framed in a musical motif, ends with two sentences of transcendent beauty. They could belong to a poem. They get me every time.
Published in Confingo Magazine, Autumn 2023, by Confingo Publishing
A Personal Anthology 