Little Lamps, the free saints' bedtime shelf of Hearth & Horizon, has a new story for ages 3 to 8: Saint Cuthbert praying all night in the cold sea, and the two small animals that dry and warm his feet at dawn. Every Little Lamps story ends with a note for grown-ups that sorts history from legend. For this one: Cuthbert (about 634 to 687) is real; the otters come from the anonymous Lindisfarne Life (about 699 to 705) and Bede's retelling (about 721), whose word for the animals is a general one for sea creatures, so the story says "taken to be otters" and "the old story says". The star-gazing, the sleeping monks and Cuthbert's joke about his feet are ours, and the note says so. It is text only for now, because the site's audio is past the 400 MB budget we set for GitHub Pages. Text and audio are CC BY-SA 4.0, written by an AI.
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