But It Happened In These Our Days, That A
Strumous Patient On Presenting One Halfpenny To The Staff, The
Humour
Subsided only in the middle; but when the oblation was
completed by the other halfpenny, an entire cure was accomplished.
Another person also coming to the staff with the promise of a penny,
was cured; but not fulfilling his engagement on the day appointed,
he relapsed into his former disorder; in order, however, to obtain
pardon for his offence, he tripled the offering by presenting three-
pence, and thus obtained a complete cure.
At Elevein, in the church of Glascum, {22} is a portable bell,
endowed with great virtues, called Bangu, {23} and said to have
belonged to Saint David. A certain woman secretly conveyed this
bell to her husband, who was confined in the castle of Raidergwy,
{24} near Warthrenion, (which Rhys, son of Gruffydd, had lately
built) for the purpose of his deliverance. The keepers of the
castle not only refused to liberate him for this consideration, but
seized and detained the bell; and in the same night, by divine
vengeance, the whole town, except the wall on which the bell hung,
was consumed by fire.
The church of Luel, {25} in the neighbourhood of Brecheinoc
(Brechinia), was burned, also in our time, by the enemy, and
everything destroyed, except one small box, in which the consecrated
host was deposited.
It came to pass also in the province of Elvenia, which is separated
from Hay by the river Wye, in the night in which king Henry I.
expired, that two pools {26} of no small extent, the one natural,
the other artificial, suddenly burst their bounds; the latter, by
its precipitate course down the declivities, emptied itself; but the
former, with its fish and contents, obtained a permanent situation
in a valley about two miles distant. In Normandy, a few days before
the death of Henry II., the fish of a certain pool near Seez, five
miles from the castle of Exme, fought during the night so furiously
with each other, both in the water and out of it, that the
neighbouring people were attracted by the noise to the spot; and so
desperate was the conflict, that scarcely a fish was found alive in
the morning; thus, by a wonderful and unheard-of prognostic,
foretelling the death of one by that of many.
But the borders of Wales sufficiently remember and abhor the great
and enormous excesses which, from ambitious usurpation of territory,
have arisen amongst brothers and relations in the districts of
Melenyth, Elvein, and Warthrenion, situated between the Wye and the
Severn.
CHAPTER II
Journey through Hay and Brecheinia
Having crossed the river Wye, we proceeded towards Brecheinoc, and
on preaching a sermon at Hay, {27} we observed some amongst the
multitude, who were to be signed with the cross (leaving their
garments in the hands of their friends or wives, who endeavoured to
keep them back), fly for refuge to the archbishop in the castle.
Early in the morning we began our journey to Aberhodni, and the word
of the Lord being preached at Landeu, {28} we there spent the night.
The castle and chief town of the province, situated where the river
Hodni joins the river Usk, is called Aberhodni; {29} and every place
where one river falls into another is called Aber in the British
tongue.
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