A Dictionary of Saintly Women/Breaca
St. Breaca, Oct. 27, June 4 (Breage, Breca, Breock, Brig, Briga, Brigh). 5th or 6th century. Possibly the same as Briga (3) or (4). Breaca joined or headed a band of Irish missionary settlers. Accompanied by her foster-son, King Germoe, SS. Fingar and Piala, Ia, Burian, Crewenna, and several others, she crossed over from Ireland to Cornwall, where they landed in the Hayle estuary on the north coast. They were well received by King Theodore. Breaca built several churches. Cornish legend says she was a midwife, and the sister of St. Levin. He was a hermit at Bodellen, in Cornwall. He need to catch one fish every day for his own food. One evening, when he went fishing, he caught two bream on his hook. He took them both off, and threw them back into the sea; the same two came again a second and a third time; he supposed there was some reason for this double supply, and carried them both home; there he found that his sister St. Breaca had come to visit him with her two children, who had had a long walk, and were very hungry. The fish were cooked for supper. The children ate their portions eagerly, without waiting to pick out the bones, and both were choked. From that day the bream has been called by the Cornish fishermen, chak-cheel (choke-child); some people say it was the chad, but the bream has very dangerous bones, and is more likely to have been the fatal food. Nothing is known with any certainty about St. Levin, and some of the stories give him, instead of Breaca, a sister Manaccan. AA. SS. British Piety. A. Forster, English Dedications. Rev. S. Baring-Gould, Book of the West. Forbes. Hunt, Popular Romances of the West of England… Traditions of Old Cornwall. Smith and Wace.