There is an old song with a chorus which runs:-
Some say the divil's dead,
Some say he's hardly.
The present spell of warm weather would lead one to the former view, when considered in the context of the life of St Dunstan, Archbishop of Canterbury from AD 961 to 988.
When it came to laxity in matters of the flesh, Dunstan had a turn of phrase that would make even the most strident prelate nowadays appear permissive. When, for example, he discovered the young King Edwin in flagrante delicto with a certain lady, the Victorian playwright Henry Taylor has him express his wrath as follows:
Oh unruly flesh!
Oh wanton blood of youth! The primal sin!
The first offender still! The original snare!
Perdition came of woman, and always since,
When time was big with mischief and mischance
He felt his forelock in a soft white hand.
For this intemperate outburst Dunstan had been banished from the kingdom. But when a new king, Edgar, took the throne he was recalled, and resumed his former privileged position until his death on May 19th, 988. Today, for this reason, is St Dunstan's Day.
But as sometimes happens even now, there was another side to Dunstan that no one was aware of - a misspent youth in which the devil figured prominently.
He was, it seems, a blacksmith for a time before he took the cloth, and one day the devil happened by his forge and asked Dunstan to repair the shoe on one of his cloven hooves.
Dunstan, knowing his customer full well, tied the devil tightly to the wall, proceeded with the job, and purposely put the devil to such pain that the latter roared for mercy.
Dunstan released the captive demon only on condition that he would never again enter a place where a horseshoe was displayed which, as we know, the devil has never done even to this very day.
At another time in early life, however, the good saint set himself up in business as a brewer. To gain competitive edge, he repaired his relationship with the devil and bartered his soul to him in return for an annual spring frost severe enough to blast the apple crop; this, the wily Dunstan reckoned, would put paid to the annual supply of cider, and force everyone to purchase Dunstan's beer.
The devil, according to the story, has kept his bargain ever since, giving a regular blast of severe frost in the three days leading up to St Dunstan's feast day in mid-May. But where, one wonders, has the devil gone in 1998?