Receive my head into your hands, for it is a great satisfaction
to me to sit facing my holy place, where I was wont to pray, that
I may also, sitting, call upon my Father.'"
And sitting upon the pavement of his little cell, he sang, "Glory
be to the Father and to the Son, and to the Holy Ghost." "When
he had named the Holy Ghost he breathed his last, and departed to
the heavenly kingdom."
So died Bede, surnamed the Venerable.
We have come to think of Venerable as meaning very old. But Bede
was only sixty-two when he died, and Venerable here means rather
"Greatly to be honored."
There are two or three stories about how Bede came to be given
his surname. One tells how a young monk was set to write some
lines of poetry to be put upon the tomb where his master was
buried. He tried hard, but the verse would not come right. He
could not get the proper number of syllables in his lines.
"In this grave lie the bones of
Bede,"
he wrote. But he could not find an adjective that would make the
line the right length, try how he might.
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