Page:A Book of the West (vol. 2).djvu/107

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S. PADARN
81


human sacrifices inferior victims have been substituted, such as goats.

Here, then, we have almost before our eyes a change of the victim. A still further change takes place when an image is used as a substitute; and there is again modification when the person captured and destined for sacrifice is allowed to redeem himself with a handsel or a kiss. But the fact that in Europe, aye, and in England, we have these modified customs only now dying out, is an almost sure proof that at a remote period our ancestors practised the awful rites at harvest and in spring, of which a description has been given as still in use in Africa, and as only just put an end to in America and in India.

North and west of Launceston is the Petherwin district ; the former of these is in Devon, although lying west of the Tamar, as is also Werrington.

These three churches, all dedicated to S. Padarn, form a large territory once under his government. It was his Gwynedd, but whether so called from its being open moorland or from its being exposed to the winds—windblown (Givynt)—I cannot say. Padarn was son of Pedredin and Gwen Julitta, and was first cousin of S. Samson. He was born in Brittany, but owing to a family revolution his father and uncles fled to Wales, but Padarn remained as a babe with his mother. Finding her often in tears, he asked her the reason, and she told him that she mourned the loss of his father. So when Padarn had come to man's estate he went in quest of him, and finally found him in Ireland, where, old rascal,