After the death of St Cuthbert in 687, his tumbledown hermitage on Inner Farne went to Ethelwald. To keep out the wind and the rain, Ethelwald pinned up a calfskin, but his successor in the little hermitage, Felgeld, acknowledged it was time for a complete rebuild, and cut the calfskin up for his fellow monks, to make mementoes of Cuthbert.

Felgeld kept one piece of the calfskin for himself, and after steeping it for a time bathed a painful swelling in his face in the water. At once the disfigurement vanished. Whether it was Cuthbert or Ethelwald who worked the miracle, said Bede, it was a foretaste of the healing from all hurts that waits for us in heaven.

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