|
Click stars for
the Universe today
Cafe
Diem! Our store
.
|
 March
2 | Feast day of St Chad
(Ceadda; Chad of Mercia),
Bishop of
Lichfield
(Dwarf cerastium, Cerastium
pumilum, is today's plant, dedicated to this saint)
Saint
Chad of Mercia (Anglo-Saxon
Ceadda) (d. March 2, 672)
was a monk
and priest
in 7th
century England.
Ceadda was actually a pre-Christian deity of healing springs and
holy wells. His symbol was Crann
Bethadh, the Tree
of Life or World Tree.
Regarded as
the missionary who introduced Christianity among the East Saxons, Chad
was a student of St Aidan
at the Celtic
monastery
at Lindisfarne,
or Holy Island, of which he became the bishop. He was also Bishop of
Mercia and went about on foot, preaching, teaching the poorest. He
travelled to Ireland
as a monk, and there was ordained as a priest.
From Wikipedia:
Shortly after the Synod
of Whitby in 663/4,
Chad was invited to become Bishop
of York by King Oswiu
of Northumbria after the first choice for the position, Saint Wilfrid,
failed to return from France, where he had gone in order to be
consecrated to the position. In 666
Wilfrid returned from France freshly consecrated as Bishop of York,
only to find Chad already occupying the same position. In 669 the Archbishop
of Canterbury persuaded Chad to step down and allow Wilfred to
take over; Chad stepped down gracefully.
Later that same
year, King Wulfhere
of Mercia requested a bishop. Impressed by Chad's humility (he
refused to ride a horse, preferring to walk as Jesus
had), Archbishop Theodore
of Tarsus sent Chad. Under Chad, the See of Mercia was fixed
at Lichfield.
He was the first bishop of Mercia and Lindsey. Chad then proceeded
to carry out missionary and pastoral work within the kingdom.
In old age he
settled with some monks near Lichfield. Seven days before his
death, a monk named Arvinus, who was outside the building in which
he lay, heard music of a host of angels who attended the dying
saint.
Chad became the
patron saint of medicinal springs (see Sacred
Springs and Wells). According to the Venerable
Bede, once when Chad spoke, angelic singing descended from
heaven and went into his voice for half an hour, then went back up
to heaven. When he died he was attended by musical angels
and his brother's soul.
He died in Stow, 700, and later his bones
were ‘translated’ (moved) to the church of Saint Mary
at Lichfield. The number of pilgrims raised it from a small village
to a large town. In his
tomb there was a hole, through which pilgrims used to take out
portions of the dust, which they mixed with holy water and gave to
animals and humans to drink, for it could cure disease. Or, so it is
said.
On the east side of the town is St Chad's
Well, at the bottom of which is a stone, which they say Chad used to
stand on, naked in the water, while preaching. The well, above which
a shrine was erected, is supposed to cure sore eyes, among many
diseases.
In 1643 the Royalists fortified Lichfield
and were besieged in it on St Chad's Day by the Parliamentary troops
under Lord Brooke, who prayed that if his cause were unjust he
should be killed. At that moment he was killed by a shot from the
church tower by a deaf and dumb man named Dyott. There is now an
inscription at Lichfield:
'Twas
levelled when fanatic Brooke
The fair cathedral stormed and took;
But thanks to heaven and good St Chad,
A guerdon [guardian]
meet [good]
the spoiler had!
It was perhaps Chad’s reputation as a nature-loving saint that
makes his feast day such a favourite for weather prognostication and
agricultural lore.
In
ecclesiastical art, St Chad is a bishop holding Lichfield
Cathedral and a branch (usually a vine). He may also be depicted
either holding the cathedral in the midst of a battlefield with the
dead surrounding him, or with a hart leading hunters to him by a
pool.
Saint Chad gives his name to many churches around the Birmingham
area including its Roman
Catholic cathedral,
St
Chad's, as well as St
Chad's College at the University
of Durham.
“He
had great qualities of mind and spirit, but greatest of all was his
sense of the presence of God and the influence it had upon others,
for it is said that all who met him were aware of God's glory. It
was this experience, no doubt, which underlies the story that
Wulfhere was so angry when his sons were converted that he slew them
and, breathing fury, sought out St. Chad, but as he approached the
bishop's cell a great light shone through its single window, and the
king was almost blinded by its brightness …
“…
Many legends gathered round his name, and the familiar one which
relates to his death reflects at least the inner beauty of his life.
After two and one half years of steady, unremitting labor, when Chad
came to die, his oratory was filled with the sound of music. First a
laborer heard it, outside in the fields, and drew near in wonder,
then ran and told others. St. Chad's followers gathered outside, and
when they asked what it was, he told them that it meant that his
hour had come and it was the angels calling him home. Then he gave
each of them a blessing, begged them to keep together, to live in
peace, and faithfully fulfill [sic] their calling. St. Chad's
body simply wore out.”
Source
St Chad lore for wells and
fountains
St
Chad's Day, March 2, is
the day to clean and groom holy wells and fountains, known in
Britain as well-dressing. Other days include Ascension
Day, when in places such as Lichfield
in England, villagers walked around the boundaries of the cathedral
precinct area, carrying elm boughs and beating the eight places
where wells had once been or still were present. In some places,
such as Wirksworth, England, Pentecost
Day was a day for well dressing.
Wells
traditionally have mystical significance. Even today, wishing wells
are common in parks and even may be found in shopping malls. Ancient
Britain gives us many well customs. The first water drawn from a
well on January
1 is supposed to bring
fortune and happiness, and is called ‘the cream of the well’. It
is customary to leave petals floating on the water. The wells at Wark,
in Northumberland, UK, are supposed to have magical powers on New
Year’s Day. In Wales,
drawing fresh spring water as a New
Year’s Day custom might have survived at the town of Tenby
(a town
in Pembrokeshire,
west Wales)
as late as the 1950s.
It was believed by the Druids
of Britain that when a new spring or well bubbled up, its location
was like a bridge or doorway to eternity, and eternal life that may
sometimes be had by drinking of the waters there (cf, baptism).
The Chalice Well, at Glastonbury,
England (the Avalon of
King Arthur)
is one such sacred site. More
on Glastonbury
More
More
Keyne,
a Celtic saint who lived in the 5th
century, was the daughter of Brychan, King of Brecknock,
England. There is a quaint tradition associated with St Keyne's
Well, near Liskeard, Cornwall. Folklore has it that the first
spouse to drink from its waters will have the upper hand in the
marriage. England’s Poet laureate, Robert Southey, wrote a poem on
it, The
Well of St Keyne. More
In ancient Rome, the Fontinalia
festival (about October
13) honouring the freshwater goddesses, the Camenae,
who were oracular water-nymphs, was a time in which holy wells and
springs were garlanded and venerated. May
4 in Roman times was the day of venerating the hawthorn
tree, sacred to the Good Goddess (Bona
Dea). It is also called the may tree and white thorn. These are
holy bushes and trees, associated with sacred wells and shrines and
on such days will have ribbons tied to them.
In
Russia the rusalka
were virgins, drowned by choice or accident. Sometimes friendly,
sometimes voracious, like Lorelei,
they sat on river banks combing their hair. They were also connected
with wells. The Aztecs and other pre-Columbian cultures are known to
have associated wells with human sacrifice. Celtic peoples were
known to sever the head of a sacrificial king and drop it in a well,
where it infused the waters with its wisdom, authority and power.
Or, so it is said.
Saint
Keyne's Well
 St
Keyne
(Keyna;
Ceinwan; Ceinwen; Cain
Wyry; Cain the virgin)
Keyne
(c. 461 – c. 505),
feast
day October 8,
a Celtic saint
who lived in the 5th century, was the daughter of Brychan
Brycheiniog, King of Brycheiniog in South Wales, a man of many
children who became saints (some ancient sources said 24 daughters
besides sons). Keyne
spent her life performing good deeds in the West Country, where she
is remembered by the well bearing her name, near Liskeard,
Cornwall.
Fifteen
men of distinction sought the hand of Keyne in marriage. On a
pilgrimage to St
Michael’s Mount, she so endeared herself to the people that
they would hardly allow her to depart. Her nephew, St Cadoc, was
also making a pilgrimage to the same place. Cadoc stuck his stick
in the earth, causing a spring to issue forth, and this spring St
Keyne gave to the people of the district, who dedicated it in her
honour.
St
Keyne liked to reside in a wood at the place now known as Keynsham.
The chief of the country warned her of the venomous snakes that were
prevalent in that forest, but St Keyne answered that she would pray
and thus rid the country of serpents. Indeed, they were turned into
the coils of stone that we know today as the ammonite
fossils that are frequently found in the lias
rock of that district.
She
planted four trees around the well that was dug at the spring – an
oak, an
elm, a willow
and an ash:
In name, in
shape, in quality,
This well is very quaint;
The name to lot of Kayne befell,
No over-holy saint.
The shape, four trees of divers kind,
Withy, oak, elm, and ash,
Make with their roots an arched roof, Whose floor this spring does
wash.
The quality, that man or wife,
Whose chance or choice attains,
First of this sacred stream to drink,
Thereby the mastery gains.
Thomas
Carew (1594 - 1640)
Source
When
her final hour on earth approached, St Keyne had her followers bear
her on a litter to the shady arbour that she had created, and
soothed by the influence of the murmur of the flowing fountain, she
blessed the waters.
Folklore records a quaint tradition
associated with St Keyne’s Well. Legend has it that the first
spouse to drink from its waters will have the upper hand in the
marriage. This curious old
legend has been charmingly related in a humorous poem by Southey
that appeared on December
3, 1798 in the London Morning Post.
A
well there is in the west country,
And a clearer one never was seen
There is not a wife in the west country
But has heard of the well of St Keyne.
Robert
Southey (1774
- 1843),
English poet; ‘The
Well of Saint Keyne'
The
well is said to share with St Michael’s Chair at the Mount this
marvellous property of confirming the ascendancy of either husband
or wife who can first after their marriage drink a draught of water
from the spring, or else be seated in the chair.
A
list of saints associated with serpents and dragons, also in
the Scriptorium
[See
also our St
Michael page]
St
Winifred's Well
The
patron of North Wales, a virgin martyr (feast day November
3), Winifred (Winefried) was the daughter of a Welsh chieftain who was instructed
by St Bueno, her uncle. When Prince Caradoc made unwanted advances
to her, she fled, but he cut off her head. Miraculously, St Bueno
breathed life into her again. She died a second time about 660.
The
miraculous healing spring of Holywell
(Flintshire, UK) flowed from where her head had come to rest;
pilgrims in former days travelled to bathe in its charmed waters.
A
history published in 1485 claimed that the waters from this
saint’s well could heal both man and beast:
...
sprang up a welle of spryngyng water largely enduring unto this day,
which heleth al langours and seknesses as well in men as in bestes
...
One
grasped her thyrsus staff, and smote the rock,
And forth upleapt a fountain's showry spray:
One in earth's bosom planted her reed-wand,
And up there through the god a wine-fount sent:
And whoso fain would drink white-foaming draughts
Scarred with their finger tips the breast of earth,
And milk gushed forth unstinted: dripped the while
Sweet streams of honey from their ivy staves.
Euripides,
The
Bacchae
For
more on the Bacchanalia, see our page on Bacchus
 Healing
Festival of Juturna, ancient Rome
Sacrifices
were also offered in the Roman Empire on January
11 to the goddess Juturna,
in a festival called the Juturnalia on the anniversary of the day on
which her temple was erected in the Campus
Martius (Field of Mars, where soldiers trained, a place
dedicated to the Roman god of war, Mars)
by Quintus
Lutatius Catulus, a great-great-great uncle of Julius Caesar.
In
Roman
mythology, Juturna was the goddess of fountains, wells and
springs, nymph of the fountain in Latium,
waters of which were famous for their reputed healing powers.
She
was a sister of Turnus
and supported him against Aeneas.
She was also the mother of Fontus
by her husband, Janus,
the god who rules the month of January.
Jupiter
turned Juturna into a nymph
and gave her a sacred well in Lavinium,
Latium, as well as another one near the temple to Vesta
in the Forum
Romanum. The second well was called Lacus
Juturnae. Once, she had an affair with Jupiter but the secret
was betrayed by a nymph
named Lara,
whom Jupiter struck with muteness as punishment.
Juturna
is patroness of all who work with water. All aqueduct workmen and
others in a similar field used to celebrate the Juturnalia.
Wikipedia
Roman
festivals and notable days in the Book of Days
Deities
of many cultures in the Book of Days
February
11: Feast day of Our
Lady of Lourdes – Miraculous apparitions to St
Bernadette Soubirous at Lourdes
This
was the last manifestation at a grotto which, for many centuries,
had been known as a shrine of the goddess Persephone.
Persephone,
the daughter of Zeus
and Demeter,
Persephone
(‘she who destroys the light’) (also Kore,
‘maiden’; Roman
equivalent: Proserpina)
became the goddess
of the underworld
when Hades
abducted her from the Earth
and brought her into the underworld. She is a life-death-rebirth
deity.
On this day in
1858, 14-year-old Bernadette
Soubirous was
collecting scraps of wood on the bank of the River Gave when she saw
an indescribably beautiful apparition
of a haloed Virgin Mary
near a cave in the
Massabielle cliff, near Lourdes.
Bernadette was with her sister Toinette and her friend Jeanne,
neither of whom saw the vision. The Virgin said to her, “I am the Immaculate
Conception” (curiously, rather than “I am the Immaculately
Conceived”). The
apparition, according to Bernadette, "fingered the beads of her
own rosary" (although the practice was not adopted, by Eastern
Christian monks, until two centuries after Mary lived). In total,
Bernadette had 18 visions of the Virgin Mary at the grotto.
People followed Bernadette and saw the girl
fall into ecstasy; they heard her speak, but they saw nothing. The
unknown 'lady' told Bernadette: "Tell the priests I wish to
have a chapel here"; "Processions are to come here";
"Go, drink from the spring and wash in its water."
In obedience, the girl dug with her hands
into the earth of the grotto, and there gushed forth a spring,
unknown until that day – February
25, that for years has yielded 27,000 gallons weekly. Many
miraculous cures have been effected by its waters. Or, so it is
said.
By March
4, about 200,000 people were accompanying Bernadette to the shrine
site. The last vision occurred on July 16, the Feast of Our Lady of
Mount Carmel.
Bernadette
was an unsophisticated girl and for many years the nuns and
churchmen to whom she reported her amazing story treated her with
disdain. Eventually, however, the events of 1858 resulted in Lourdes
becoming one of the most important pilgrim shrines in the history of
Christendom, ending with the consecration of the basilica in 1876.
Bernadette, who initially had met with skepticism and even outright
hostility from the Catholic Church, entered
the Monastery of Nevers
in 1866 and was canonised in 1933.
Lourdes
(Lorda in Occitan)
is a village in the Hautes-Pyrénées
département
in France.
It is the largest Catholic
religion pilgrimage
location in France. It is situated in the south of the country, in
the Pyrenées
region, with about 17,000 inhabitants. Some 3,000,000 pilgrims
annually make their way to the grotto, among them 50,000 or so sick
or disabled, seeking a miraculous cure. A mere 66 cures have been
accepted as miraculous by the Catholic Church out of the estimated
two million sick pilgrims who have visited the shrine since 1858,
which scarcely indicates a statistical link between Lourdes and
cures. More than 400 hotels cater for the throngs and a huge
industry has developed from the visions, or delusions, of the barely
literate Bernadette Soubirous.
 Ascension
Day
A
note about the dating of items in Wilson’s Almanac
Well-dressing,
Tissington, England
Still,
Dovedale, yield thy flowers to deck the fountains
Of Tissington upon its holyday;
The customs long preserved among the mountains
Should not be lightly left to pass away.
They have their moral; and we often may
Learn from them how our wise forefathers wrought,
When they upon the public mind would lay
Some weighty principle, some maxim brought
Home
to their hearts, the healthful product of deep thought.
Edwards
On
Ascension
Day in Tissington,
England, wells
are traditionally dressed with flowers, and sometimes Bible
verses are made out in letters of flowers. Well-dressing,
practised in many other places throught Britain, is the art of
decorating springs and wells with scenes, usually made from local
plant life. The dressings are set in clay-filled wooden trays,
mounted on a wooden frame and take up to seven days to complete.
Some believe
the custom arose during a drought in Derbyshire in 1615, but it is
known that the custom of well-dressing began in Celtic times. The
wells of Tissington flowed throughout this time, and people from ten
miles around drove their cattle there to drink, so at Ascension Day
a thanksgiving custom came about.
We know that these kinds of traditions go
back to antiquity, and the Romans also practised well-dressing. Seneca
wrote “Where a spring rises or a river flows, there should we
build altars and offer sacrifices”. English kings Edgar and Canute
had to issue edicts prohibiting the worshipping of wells.
Wells are symbolic of purity, and May
was always considered the best time to visit curative springs.
Silence was to be kept going there and coming back, and the vessel
used to take the water was not allowed to touch the ground. After
the Reformation these customs were forbidden.
In another custom associated with today,
farmers hung in their roof, an egg laid on Ascension Day, in order
to protect against lightning and fire.
Thursday
was named after the Viking god, Thor,
and to the Vikings today was also the
Festival of Mjollnir,
Thor’s hammer, on a Thursday, at around the time that
Christians celebrate Ascension Day.
“No
two villages dress their wells in exactly the same way, but here's
what they do at Holymoorside. First they cut along each line of
the picture with a sharp knife, then gently press small pieces of
wood (called `barking') through into the clay. Once the outline is
finished the picture is `coloured in'. Some villages call this
state `petalling', but in Holymoorside it's called `flowering'.
Why? Because rather than using individual petals, they use whole
flower heads.” Source
November
1 | Feast day of St Cadfan
of Wales
This
Welsh saint’s holy well was in the churchyard at Towyn, near his
chapel (since destroyed), where many were cured of rheumatism, scrofula,
and skin diseases.
Index of articles on
folklore and other topics
|
