Note 1328 — Chapter XV · THE BOY BISHOP

Tille, D. W. 32; Leach, 130. The connexion of St. Nicholas with children may be explained by, if it did not rather give rise to, either the legend of his early piety, ‘The first day that he was washed and bained, he addressed him right up in the bason, and he wold not take the breast nor the pap but once on the Wednesday and once on the Friday, and in his young age he eschewed the plays and japes of other young children’ (Golden Legend, ii. 110); or the various other legends which represent him as bringing children out of peril. Cf. Golden Legend, ii. 119 sqq., and especially the history of the resurrection of three boys from a pickle-tub narrated by Mr. Leach from Wace. A. Maury, (Croyances et Légendes du Moyen Âge (ed. 1896), 149) tries to find the origin of this in misunderstood iconographic representations of the missionary saint at the baptismal font.