sparrow

I wasn't being entirely serious - I'm only an amateur pessimist. The feasting hall may not be quite as joyous as King Edwin implies, but I can't complain, so far, about my own transient appearance.

Ah, well, we don't really know that, do we yarb? Kind of Bede's point.

I've heard this analogy but didn't realise it went right back to Bede; I thought it was a Viking thing. It's perfect, except it makes life look rosier than it really is.

From "The Ecclesiastical History of the English", written by the Venerable Bebe circa A.D. 700. Bebe tells how King Edwin of Northumbria held a council in A.D. 627 to decide on the religion to be accepted in his kingdom, and gives the following speech to one of the king's chief men:

"Your majesty, when we compare the present life of man on earth with that time of which we have no knowledge, it seems to me like the swift flight of a single sparrow through the banqueting-hall where you are sitting at dinner on a winter's day with your thanes and counselors. In the mist there is a comforting fire to warm the hall; outside, the storms of winter rain or snow are raging. This sparrow flies swiftly in through one door of the hall, and out through another. While he is inside, he is safe from the winter storms; but after a few moments of comfort, he vanishes from sight into the wintry world from which he came. Even so, man appears on earth for a little while; but of what went before this life or of what follows, we know nothing."