The last reference to him, as living, is in 1208, when an order for payment to him is on record, but Giraldus Cambrensis, in the second edition of his Hibernica, redacted in 1210, utters a prayer for his soul, "cujus animae propitietur Deus," a proof that he was no longer alive.
Round the circlet is the singularly inappropriate text from Psalm li., "Miserere mei Deus secundum magnam misericordiam tuam."
To him God is the immanent principle of the universe - "Deus sive Natura."
A variant of the same story was known to Guido Bonati, an astronomer quoted by Dante, who calls his hero or villain Butta Deus because he struck Jesus.
The settler who went into the woods might know neither the name nor the sex of the indwelling numen; " si deus si dea," " sive mas sive femina," ran the old formulae.