----- Original Message -----
From: Bill East <[log in to unmask]>
To: <[log in to unmask]>
Sent: Monday, August 07, 2000 10:30 AM
Subject: Becket's Breeches
> Becket's Breeches
>
> I have been promising to tell the whole story of Thomas Becket and his
> hair-underpants, and how they were darned by Our Lady.
I thought this tale sounded familiar!
But I have come across something very similar in an entirely different
context.
There is a poem by Rudyard Kipling ( Definitive edition RK's verse page
514-517) entitled *Our Lady of the Sackcloth.*
Plot briefly-
Congregation in Philae (date not specified) petition new and vigorous bishop
to retire ancient and half-senile priest on the grounds that all he can
remember is the Office to the Virgin (which he repeats daily). Bishop -
ambitious and keen - complies. Old priest goes into exile heartbroken.
Bishop wants to wear a hair shirt in secret. He collects the sackcloth and
scissors and needle but hasn't a clue how to make it. He encounters a woman
whom he thinks is one of the local nomads. She offers her dressmaking
skills, is accepted, and duly returns with the completed hairshirt which
fits perfectly - presumably itchy is all the right places and not visible
under his vestments. The exiled priest in the desert then has a vision of
Our Lady who tells him to return to the cathedral at Philae and give the
bishop this message: The Woman who sewed the Sackcloth asks that you be
reinstated.
I like it.
RK gives as his reference:
Ethiopic version: founded on Brit. Mus. M.S. Orient No 652, Folio 9
I have not followed this up but it suggests that this story is one that has
a habit of attaching itself to hair shirts ....
Brenda M. Cook
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