Page:Goldenlegendlive00jaco.djvu/294

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280
Notes

another life by one Robert of Salisbury. The story of Winifred is told in just the same way in the Acta of S. Beuno (see next note), which are independent and of great antiquity. She is not mentioned by De Voragine. A nineteenth-century historian of the diocese of S, Asaph tries (hardly with success) to make out that the story is a fountain and river myth.

Guenevra is a more Celtic form of her name. The well which perpetuates her memory is called in Welsh Ffynnon Gwenffrewi.

139. I. S. Beuno, notable as a preacher of the Gospel, was born in the seventh century of a Welsh father and a Scotch mother at Banhenic, in Powis, on the Severn. His name is commonly pronounced (not quite correctly) to rhyme with "rhino." He ended his life at the Abbey of Clynnog-vawr, in Carnarvonshire, which was the chief of his monastic foundations. 23. " Cradok," or Caradoc, Latinized as Caractacus.

1^3. 4. The story of the sending of the chasuble is told better and at greater length in the original Latin. It is there said that a gift of the same kind (a chasuble is an upper vestment worn in saying Mass) was sent in this way by Winifred to Beuno every year on the first of May.

S. Brigid of Kildare is related to have used with success this same simple method of transmission by stream and sea.

10. Wytheriacus: Gwitherin in Powis.

13. " Elerius": in Welsh Elwy, after whom (it is said) the river Elwy in N. Wales is called.

As in the time of Elerius, so in Caxton's and in ours there remains to be seen the " fair well giving out abundantly fair clear water, where our Lord God yet daily sheweth many miracles." It is one of the finest springs in the world as regards the extraordinary volume of water which it gives out. It possesses no special medicinal properties. Nevertheless the cures of various kinds that have been reported as wrought for themselves by the numerous pilgrims vv^ho, in a spirit of confidence in God and in the intercession of the Saint, drink the water or bathe in it, have long been a matter of general notoriety.

We first hear of the celebrity of the holy well about the year uoo, when the Countess Adeliza and her son. Earl of Chester, came to pay their devotions and offer gifts. In 1420 Pope Martin V. gave indulgences to the pilgrims. There is a well-authenticated cure of the year 1667, quoted by the Bollandists