March 3.
St. Winwaloe.
This saint is called Winwaloc, by father Cressy, and Winwaloke by father Porter.
St. Winwaloe’s father, named Fragan, or Fracan, was nearly related to Cathoun, one of the kings or princes of Wales. In consequence of Saxon invasions, Fragan emigrated from Wales to Armorica, where the spot he inhabited is “called from him to this day Plou-fragan.” Whether Winwaloe was born there or in Wales is uncertain; but he was put under St. Budoc, a British abbot of a monastery in Isleverte, near the isle of Brebat, from whence with other monks he travelled, till they built themselves a monastery at Landevenech, three leagues from Brest.
He died in 529, at an advanced age.[74]
Father Cressy says, that St. Winwaloe worked many miracles; “among which the most stupendous was his raising a young man to life.” He further tells, that “St. Patrick presented himself to him in a vision, with an angelicall brightnes, and having a golden diadem on his head,” and told him he paid him a visit, to prevent Winwaloe, who desired to see him, “so tedious a journey by sea and land.” St. Patrick in this interview foretold St. Winwaloe so much, that the father of his monastery released him with the other monks before-mentioned, that they might become hermits; for which purpose they travelled, till, wanting a ship, St. Winwaloe struck the sea with his staff, which opened a passage for them, and they walked through singing, and dryshod, “himself marching in the front, the waters on both sides standing like walls.” Father Cressy says, that St. Winwaloe never sat in the church; that “every day he repeated the hundred and fifty psalms;” that to his bed he had neither feathers nor clothes, “but instead of feathers he strewed under him nutshells, and instead of blankets, sand mingled with pebbles, and two great stones under his head;” that he wore the same clothes night and day; that his bread was made with half of barley and half of ashes; that his other diet was a mixture of meal and cabbage without fat; and that “he took this refection once, only in two, and sometimes three dayes.”
Besides other particulars, Cressy adds, that “a town in Shropshire, called even in the Saxons’ time Wenlock, (which seems a contraction from Winwaloc,) from him took its denomination.”
He vanquisheth the Devil, &c.
So father Porter entitles one of his particulars concerning St. Winwaloe, which he relates in his “Flowers of the Saincts” in these words: “The devill envying soe great sanctitie, endeavoured with his hellish plotts to trouble and molest his pious labours, appeared unto him as he prayed in his oratorie, in the most uglie and horrid shapes that the master of wickednes could invent, vomitting out of his infernall throate manie reprochfull wordes against him; when he nothing dismayed thereat, courageously proceeded in his devotions, and brandishing the chief armes of life, the holy crosse, against that black messenger of death, he compelled him to vanish away in confusion.”
St. Winwaloe and the cruel Goose.
Bishop Patrick, in his “Reflexions upon the Devotions of the Roman Church,” cites from the latin “Acts of the Saints,” a miracle which is quite as miraculous as either of the preceding. “A sister of St. Winwaloc had her eye plucked out by a goose, as she was playing. St. Winwaloc was taught by an angel a sign whereby to know that goose from the rest, and having cut it open, found the eye in its entrails, preserved by the power of God unhurt, and shining like a gem; which he took and put it again in its proper place, and recovered his sister; and was so kind also to the goose as to send it away alive, after it had been cut up, to the rest of the flock.”
WINNOLD FAIR, NORFOLK.
A correspondent, whose signature has before appeared, transmits the annexed communication concerning the hamlet of Winnold, and the fair held there annually on this day.
For the Every-Day Book.
A priory, dedicated to St. Winwaloe, was founded by the family of the earls of Clare, before the seventh year of king John, (1206,) in a hamlet, (thence called, by corruption, the hamlet of Whinwall, Winnold, or Wynhold,) belonging to the parish of Wereham, in Norfolk, as a cell to the abbey of Mounstroll, of the order of St. Bennet, in the diocese of Amiens, in France. In 1321, the abbot and convent sold it to Hugh Scarlet, of London, who conveyed it to the lady Elizabeth de Burso, the sister and coheir of Gilbert, earl of Clare, and she afterwards gave it to West Dereham abbey, situate a few miles from Wereham. At the general dissolution it was valued, with West Dereham, at 252l. 12s. 11d. (Speed,) and 228l. (Dugdale.) Little of the priory is now remaining, except a part which is thought to have been the chapel.
A fair for horses and cattle on this day, which was originally kept in this hamlet of Winnold, has existed probably from the foundation of the priory, as it is mentioned in the tenth of Edward III. (1337,) when the priory and the fair were given to West Dereham abbey. Though the abbey and priory, as establishments, are annihilated, the fair (probably from its utility) has continued with reputation to the present day. Soon after the dissolution, it was removed to the adjoining parish of Wimbotsham, and continued to be held there till within the last thirty years, when it was again removed a few miles further, to the market town of Downham, as a more convenient spot, and is now kept in a field there, called, for reasons unknown, “the Howdell,” and is at this time a very large horse and cattle fair; but, though it has undergone these removals, it still retains its ancient, original appellation of “Winnold Fair.”[75] This fair, which is perhaps of greater antiquity than any now kept in the kingdom, will probably preserve the memory of St. Winnold, in the west of Norfolk and the adjoining counties, for centuries to come, above the whole host of his canonized brethren. He is also commemorated, by the following traditional West Norfolk proverbial distich:—
“First comes David, next comes Chad,
And then comes Winnold as though he was mad.”
noticing the two previous days in March, (the first and second,) and in allusion to the prevalence of windy weather at this period. Whether St. Winnold, in the zenith of his fame, was remarkable for an irascibility of temper, I am not enabled to say; yet it rarely happens when the first few days in March are not attended with such boisterous and tempestuous weather, generally from the north, that he might not improperly be termed the Norfolk “Boreas.”
K.