St. Cuthman had an old mother who had lost the use of her legs, and her excellent son pushed her about in a wheelbarrow, no doubt of a similar pattern to the wheelbarrows still used to hold swept-up autumn leaves in many a Sussex garden to-day.

 

He took his mother with him everywhere, for she was lonely when he was at his work of shepherding. One of St. Cuthman's earliest miracles was connected with sheep - when for any reason he had to leave them unguarded, he drew a circle round them with his crook and in the Holy Name charged them to remain within it.

 

One day when St. Cuthman was pulling his mother along the Sussex apology for a road, the ropes attached to her wheelbarrow broke just as he came by a field full of haymakers.

The saint picked some twigs of elder from a bush and turned them into a rough withy. The haymakers laughed at him for this, and at his queer conveyance of his mother, and because of this a great flood of rain came down and ruined the hay.

 

Ever since then it has always rained at haymaking in that particular field, so the story tells us. It was supernaturally conveyed to St. Cuthman that wherever his elder-withy broke he was to stay and build his church.

 

This happened at what is now Steyning. "A place," says the old record, "lying at the base of a lofty hill, then woody, overgrown with brambles and bushes.... enclosed between two streams springing from the hill above.'' The church at Steyning is situated at the fork of two rivulets, and is probably on the actual site of the little wooden church built by St. Cuthman.

 

While the little wooden church was building certain constructional difficulties cropped up which somewhat discouraged the simple saint, till a stranger appeared and told him how to remedy the trouble, saying;

 

" Nothing is wanting to those that fear the Lord."

 

Cuthman, overcome with awe, besought the stranger to tell him whom he was.

 

" I am He," was the answer, " in whose name thou buildest this temple."

(Ester Meynell - Sussex)

 

 

See the Four Saints Page for the full story

 

 

 

 

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