Two quadrupeds, called otters, came up from the sea, and, lying down before him on the sand, breathed upon his feet, and wiped them with their hair ACCORDING to the Venerable Bede, St Cuthbert would have made cowards of the Christmas Day Serpentine swimmers. He writes how the saint often spent the night praising God, armpit-deep in the North Sea. At dawn one day, he ‘came out of the water, and, falling on his knees, began to pray again. Whilst he was doing this, two quadrupeds, called otters, came up from the sea, and, lying down before him on the sand, breathed upon his feet, and wiped them with their hair’.
Cuthbert’s world was dramatic. He was born in about 635 in East Lothian, the borderlands between the kingdoms of…
