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There are many other things in these books which have a sound more familiar to us than any sense which they really convey. Here the saint blesses the store of a "homo plebeius cum uxore et filiis" a poor man with a wife and family a term expressively known in this day among all who have to deal with the condition of their fellow-men, from the chancellor of the exchequer to the relieving-officer.
In another place we have among the saint's suitors "plebeius pauperrimus, qui in ea habitabat regione quæ Stagni litoribus Aporici est contermina." The "Stagnum Aporicum" is Lochaber; so here we have a pauper from the neighbourhood of Lochaber a designation which I take to be familiarly known at "the Board of Supervision for the Relief of the Poor in Scotland."
We are told, too, of the saint being at a plebeian feast, and of a plebeius in the island of Raghery quarrelling with his wife. The thoughtful student will find a more distinguished analogy with the habits of later civilisation in the literature of these early churchmen.
The hero of the story uses the ordinary Latin speech of educated persons, though, from the nature of the work, the style is much more colloquial than that of the formal prose used for serious writing. But the conversation of many of the characters is in the plebeius sermo, the actual speech of the lower orders, of which so little survives in literature.
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