Mechanics, it
must be understood, in those days were considered as identical with
mathematics, and those again with astrology and magic; so that the old
chronicler, who says that Torfrida was skilled in "the mechanic art," uses
the word in the same sense as does the author of the "History of Ramsey,"
who tells us how a certain holy bishop of St. Dunstan's party, riding down
to Corfe through the forest, saw the wicked queen-mother Elfrida (her who
had St. Edward stabbed at Corfe Gate) exercising her "mechanic art," under
a great tree; in plain English, performing heathen incantations; and how,
when she saw that she was discovered, she tempted him to deadly sin: but
when she found him proof against allurement, she had him into her bower;
and there the enchantress and her ladies slew him by thrusting red-hot
bodkins under his arms, so that the blessed man was martyred without any
sign of wound. Of all which let every man believe as much as he list.
Torfrida had had peculiar opportunities of learning mechanics. The fairest
and richest damsel in St. Omer, she had been left early by her father an
orphan, to the care of a superstitious mother and of a learned uncle, the
Abbot of St. Bertin. Her mother was a Provencale, one of those Arlesiennes
whose dark Greek beauty still shines, like diamonds set in jet, in the
doorways of the quaint old city.
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