Happy Birthday, You Bastard
6th August, Oswald
King Oswald of Northumbria
5/6th August, 604AD
One early evening, in around the year 679, there was a knock at the door of Bardney Abbey, a few miles from Lincoln, England and the monks hurriedly scampered downstairs to see who had come to visit. To their surprise, at the door was the wife of King Æthelred, Osthryth, Queen of the Mercians, who had brought along her uncle, Oswald, King of Northumbria, for a visit.
This presented something of a problem for the good brothers of Bardney Abbey, who were otherwise delighted to see their Queen, even at such a late hour. Firstly, Bardney was in the Kingdom of Lindsey, a lesser Anglo-Saxon kingdom that Oswald had once given a good kicking to and the monks weren’t quick to forget it, either. Secondly, Oswald had been dead for about 35 years and was in a sack in the back of a wagon.
On account of him being a bag full of bones and their sworn enemy, even with the Queen carrying him over one shoulder, they refused to let him in. So Osthryth tossed him back in the wagon and went inside for a steaming cold bowl of brined lampreys, or whatever it was medieval monks ate back in the day.
And that’s when the miracle occurred.
The monks awoke that night to a brilliant beam of light, shining upwards from the wagon where Oswald, or most of him, lay in his sack. They promptly declared this a sign from God, dragged the bones inside and built a tomb to house them in, delighted no doubt, to have some genuine holy relics they could use to entice pilgrims in for a visit and, more importantly, entice a few coins out of them at the same time. Chastened by their refusal to admit the visitor, even though he was dead, they removed the doors of the abbey so that never again could someone say they had been turned away by the monks of Bardney. An opportunity the Vikings found far too generous in the 9th Century when they turned up, walked in, and burned the place to the ground.
Before the Danes turned up and ruined everything, and happily for the monks, the bones of King Oswald were very forthcoming in the miracles department. Not content with the wondrous beam of light, when the bones were washed, the place where the water fell became a font of miraculous healing. Another time, a young man with the ague slept by the tomb and his overnight stay was enough to cure him of whatever the hell ‘the ague’ is. A piece of wood associated with the bones was used to cure a man in Ireland, although what his name was and what was wrong with him, isn’t recorded. The Venerable Bede simply says that he was trembling and sighing and had a mournful voice, which, for Irish men, doesn’t narrow it down particularly.
Oswald had been turned into bones at the Battle of Maserfield by the Mercians in 641 or 642, when falling to his knees in prayer, he had been hacked to pieces by the forces of King Penda and his dismembered body placed on stakes. A passing raven helped itself to one of his arms, which it flew off with into a tree, from where it dropped the arm on the ground. Where it fell, a spring emerged and healing miracles for people with eye trouble became associated with ‘Oswald’s Tree’, which gave the nearby town of Oswestry its name. Probably.
Oswald’s head ended up in Durham Cathedral. although he must have been a strange looking man as four other versions of his head appeared all over Europe. His other arm found its way to a monastery in Bamburgh, from where, sometime in the later medieval period, a bunch of naughty monks on a dare stole it and carried it back to Peterborough Abbey where it was placed in a chapel. The chapel, Oswald’s Chapel of course, is still there, although the arm isn’t. The monks built a special tower in the chapel, accessible only by a narrow staircase and with a tiny room at the top where a monk would stand guard over 24 hours a day. The room was only big enough for the monk to stand so he couldn’t fall asleep and allow another band of naughty monks to steal in and whisk the arm off elsewhere. Arm stealing bands of bandit monks apparently being something one had to concern oneself with in the Middle Ages.
There are several churches dedicated to St Oswald, including some across Europe, presumably where his heads popped up to perform miracles in exchange for money. The church of St Oswald in Grasmere, Cumbria is the resting place of the poet Wordsworth. And apart from Oswestry, there are a couple of Kirkoswalds, ‘kirk’ being an old word for ‘church’, in England and Scotland.
Most excitingly is the fabulously named Oswaldtwistle in Lancashire, meaning the ‘twistle of Oswald’ although whether this was Old Five Heads, or just another person called Oswald isn’t clear. A ‘twistle’, because you’re wondering, is a fork in a river. Not a fork, in a river. A river with a fork in it. You know what I mean.
So, if anything from all this, you can now go up to someone at a bar and tell them what a twistle is. All part of the service. You’re very welcome.
That last line is top-shelf pub trivia!