It is basic to Ælfric's style in the Lives of Saints that he does not aim at word-for-word translation of his Latin sources; ‘nec ubique transtulimus verbum exs verbo, sed sensum ex sensu’ is his governing principle in the Lives, as in his homilies. This is so, for instance, in a brief example from the Life of St Oswald, when Ælfric is recounting some of the miracles associated with the place where Oswald fell in battle; he speaks of the horseman who passed by, Bede has at this point: ‘Tulit itaque de puluere terrae illius secum inligans in linteo’, and the Old English Bede reads: ‘Genom þa þære moldan dæl in þære stowe, gebond in his sceate.’