Saint Dunstan
One of the most popular English saints of the Middle Ages, Dunstan (909-88) was an important political figure and Archbishop of Canterbury.
England in the tenth century was not the most stable of countries as the Anglo-Saxon rulers contended with Welsh raids on the west and with the presence of Danes in the north. A series of short-lived kings added to the confusion. In this setting Dunstan was recognized as an accomplished artist and renowned monk, rising to head up Glastonbury Abbey and then the see of Canterbury. As an advisor to rulers he experienced (or perhaps engendered) constant opposition. He was, at various times, beaten up and thrown in a cesspit, exiled and pursued. His most famous quarrel with a king came when he confronted the newly-crowned Eadwig who had chosen to skip a state banquet and cavort with (or so the story goes) two debauched women. Dunstan also seems to have been behind the dissolution of Eadwig’s marriage to Aelfgifu, one of those shady dames.
A number of legends grew up around Dustan’s encounters with the Devil. In one of these Lucifer appeared to Dunstan, who was in his forge, in the guise of a beautiful woman who employed feminine wiles in an attempt to seduce the saint. Dunstan however had spotted the cloven hooves beneath the skirt and grabbing his red-hot tongs grabbed the Devil by the nose. Local lore says the the Archfiend, to soothe his burning nose thrust it into the waters of Tunbridge Wells. To this day the spring-water is red and tastes of sulphur. Charles Dickens celebrated this confrontation in verse:
St Dunstan, as the story goes,
Once pull’d the devil by the nose
With red-hot tongs, which made him roar,
That he was heard three miles or more.
In another tale Dunstan was asked by the Devil to shoe his horse. Instead the saint nailed a horseshoe to the Devil’s foot. Dunstan agreed to remove the shoe and release the Devil only after he promised never to enter a place where a horseshoe is over the door, giving rise to the superstition of the lucky horseshoe.
Dunstan is the patron saint of blacksmiths; Charlottetown, PEI; goldsmiths; locksmiths; musicians; and silversmiths.