There Is A Small Island, Almost Adjoining To Anglesey, Which Is
Inhabited By Hermits, Living By Manual Labour, And Serving God.
It
is remarkable that when, by the influence of human passions, any
discord arises among them, all their provisions are devoured and
infected by a species of small mice, with which the island abounds;
but when the discord ceases, they are no longer molested.
Nor is it
to be wondered at, if the servants of God sometimes disagree, since
Jacob and Esau contended in the womb of Rebecca, and Paul and
Barnabas differed; the disciples also of Jesus disputed which of
them should be the greatest, for these are the temptations of human
infirmity; yet virtue is often made perfect by infirmity, and faith
is increased by tribulations. This island is called in Welsh, Ynys
Lenach, {167} or the ecclesiastical island, because many bodies of
saints are deposited there, and no woman is suffered to enter it.
We saw in Anglesey a dog, who accidentally had lost his tail, and
whose whole progeny bore the same defect. It is wonderful that
nature should, as it were, conform itself in this particular to the
accident of the father. We saw also a knight, named Earthbald, born
in Devonshire, whose father, denying the child with which his mother
was pregnant, and from motives of jealousy accusing her of
inconstancy, nature alone decided the controversy by the birth of
the child, who, by a miracle, exhibited on his upper lip a scar,
similar to one his father bore in consequence of a wound he had
received from a lance in one of his military expeditions.
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