Walk Away From The Sea

Lives of the Wild Saints #12

St Godric of Finchale
England. Twelfth century

High on the sea and dreaming, I saw fire and serpents. High on the sea and dreaming, I heard the song of a man I knew but whose face I had never seen.

A merchant I have been always, on sea and land and river. Trade is the way to wealth, and wealth makes life. Tell me that this is not so, and I will finger you for a rich man. Only the rich can disdain wealth, and I was never rich. My father was a poor man and ours was a poor life. I told this to my mother once, and she scolded me. God loves the poor, she said, and punishes the rich.

I have been selling since I was knee high. I have a knack for it. Now I haul pilgrims to the Holy Land and relics back to England, or I haul pottery from France to Scotland, or trinkets to wherever I can sell them for the best price. Why would God love the poor, I asked my mother, when it takes so much work to amass any wealth at all? Does God love idleness? My mother said nothing much in return. I was fourteen.

Now comes the song.

It is not a heavenly song. It is the song of a man like me. It has come to me in my sleep, more than once these past weeks. At first I thought it was mermaids or Sirens or somesuch. The sea is full of terrors. Some sailors are unlucky, but my luck has always held me. I have never seen a monster in a storm. I have never sailed on a ship which foundered. Not yet.

The deck will rock you to sleep or toss you awake, and in the rocking sometimes comes the song. It is a gentle song. I cannot hear what is sung, or who is sung to, but the voice is of an old man singing, I think, to his god. Old men are short on time in that way. They are at the threshold. They need their gods to sing back. They need to be heard now, for they have much to say and who knows if anybody hears them at all?

Last night, though, I heard something else.

It was a dream, of course. These are all dreams. They mean nothing. The rolling of a ship’s deck can produce the most fantastical pictures in the mind of an exhausted man, and if that man has also been on the ale or the rum or whatever spirit is at hand from whatever land he has been to - well, then the pictures can get even stranger. Sometimes it is a regret to wake from the lands a ship’s deck can take you.

Wild honey and acorns, said the voice from across the waves.

Now I was in a forest of high green trees, trunks as old as our land. A green darkness, a green darkness and the voice.

Wild honey and acorns.

In the wood, a clearing; in the clearing, a man. A stocky man, short, bearded. A man who seemed as if he could break you if he chose, but would never choose. Hair becoming white. A man singing to himself, or to someone I could not see.

Sainte marie uirgine
moder ihesu cristes nazarene
onfo schild help þin godric
onfang bring heilich wið þe in godes riche

Singing to his god, he was, as I knew he would be, as I knew he had been for many years, somehow, though I knew nothing of him at all.

Sainte marie xristes bur
maidenes clenhad moderes flur
dilie min sinne rix in min mod
bring me to winne wið þe selfd God

Who are you? I asked him. The man looked up and I saw him and how he lived there. He sat on the ground in a holed coat of coarse cloth. There was a fire before him. Around the fire were curled three snakes and a mouse. They slept, as if he had sung them into drowsiness.

I thought you would come, he said, looking up at me. I was still on the ship somehow, but I was in the wood also. It was summer, but winter too. Dreams are like this.

Who are you? I asked again.

Wild honey and acorns, he seemed to reply. Crab apple and balsam, nettle and the water from the spring.

And snakes, I replied.

And rabbits and donkeys and pigs! he said, smiling into the fire.

A dream cannot be reasoned with. I am not sure what else happened. You will know what I mean. A dream can be a feeling as a much as a story. You wake with the taste of it still on your lips. This time I woke and wished I was back in the forest. The sea was grey like Scottish granite, and a storm was coming.

But the next night I was there again, and so he was he. Sat by the fire with his snakes and his mouse and his songs to the saints and martyrs.

Sainte Nicholaes godes druð
tymbre us faire scone hus
At þi burth at þi bare
Sainte nicholaes bring vs wel þare

I wish I could sing, my dream had me say.

A mouse will sing through you, said the old man.

I would like to fly and not sail, I replied.

You cannot fly if you are burdened. You must be weightless.

This forest is a vast place, I said to him.

You will come to know it, he said. And you will sing to it, my man.

Who are you?

It is time you got off the boat, boy, and gave up the selling. It is time you walked away from the sea. Walk and walk until you find your place.

I love the sea.

You do not. You are tired of it and you are called. You are called by the singer, the great singer. He is looking for you, he is hunting.

I am not a rabbit.

You are prey and will be caught and then you will be born.

I think some wave must have hit the ship with force then, for in the dream everything shook and of a sudden I was high in a tree and then falling. But he caught me and I was back.

The singer seeks you, he said again. The great singer.

I feel sick, I said.

You will be, until you leave the sea and come to the woods.

He poked at the fire with something. I saw how rough his hands looked. Sailors hands, they were. Scarred hands, just like mine. I would know them anywhere.

Who are you? I said, one last time.

You know me well, Godric, he said. As well as you know yourself. I looked into his eyes then, for the first time and the last, and I saw that I did know him. The hands, the weathered face, the beard, the voice even. I knew them all, I saw then, as well as I knew anything on this Earth at all. I knew them from the inside.

I seemed to be floating again, above the ground. I seemed to be flying away

Come home, Godric, said the old man by the fire, the old man with the snakes and the mouse, with the honey and nettles, with the voice that sang in tones I had heard all my life.

Do not delay now. Come home.

---

If you appreciated this piece of writing, please consider a subscription or a one-off donation. It will allow me to keep offering these words for free, and will help those unable to pay. Thank you!

This is the twelfth story in my series ‘Lives of the Wild Saints.’ You can read the ongoing series here.

Each saint is illustrated by woodcarver Ewan Craig. Read about how he created this image on his own Substack, Stone, Clay and Wood. You can buy limited edition prints of this and other saints in my series in Ewan’s shop.

Godric of Finchale is not technically a saint according to the lights of the Roman Church, but he has long been regarded as one at the folk level. His story was first recorded by Reginald of Durham, who knew Godric and who appears to have written his ‘Life of Saint Godric’ soon after the saint’s death in 1170. Godric, according to Reginald, spent the first half of his life as a travelling merchant, before visiting the Farne islands, where St Cuthbert had lived as a hermit. Something happened there which inspired Godric to leave everything and live the rest of his life as a woodland hermit in Finchale, County Durham.

Godric is also known as the composer of some of the earliest songs in the English language, which Reginald wrote down, and which are reproduced here. They can be found with commentary on this website.