Whose chance or choice attains,
First of this sacred stream to drink,
Thereby the mastery gains.’”[5]
ST DENNIS’S BLOOD.
The patron saint of the parish church of St Dennis was born in the city of Athens, in the reign of Tiberius. His name and fame have full record in the “History of the Saints of the Church of Rome.” How his name was connected with this remote parish is not clearly made out. We learn, however, that the good man was beheaded at Montmartre, and that he walked after his execution, with his head under his arm, to the place in Paris which still bears his name. At the very time when the decapitation took place in Paris, blood fell on the stones of this churchyard in Cornwall. Previously to the breaking out of the plague in London, the stains of the blood of St Dennis were again seen; and during our wars with the Dutch, the defeat of the English fleet was foretold by the rain of gore in this remote and sequestered place. Hals, the Cornish historian, with much gravity, informs us that he had seen some of the stones with blood upon them. Whenever this phenomenon occurs again we may expect some sad calamity to be near.
Some years since a Cornish gentleman was cruelly murdered, and his body thrown into a brook. I have been very lately shewn stones taken from this brook with bright red spots of some vegetable growth on them. It is said that ever since the murder the stones in this brook are spotted with gore, whereas they never were so previously to this dreadful deed.
ST KEA’S BOAT.
St Kea, a young Irish saint, stood on the southern shores of Ireland and saw the Christian missionaries departing to carry the blessed Word to the heathens of Western England. He watched their barks fade beneath the horizon, and he felt that he was left to a solitude which was not fitted to one in the full energy of young life, and burning with zeal.
The saint knelt on a boulder of granite lying on the shore, and he prayed with fervour that Heaven would order it so that he might diffuse his religious fervour amongst the barbarians of Cornwall. He prayed on for some time, not observing the rising of the tide. When he had poured out his full soul, he awoke to the fact, not only that the waves were washing around the stone on which he knelt, but that the stone was actually floating on the water. Impressed with the miracle, St Kea sprang to his feet, and looking towards the setting sun, with his cross uplifted, he exclaimed, “To Thee, and only to Thee, my God, do I trust my soul!”
Onward floated the granite, rendered buoyant by supernatural power. Floated hither and thither by the tides, it swam on; blown sometimes in one direction, and sometimes in another, by the varying winds, days and nights were spent upon the waters. The faith of St Kea failed not; three times a day he knelt in prayer to God. At all other times he stood gazing on the heavens. At length the faith of the saint being fairly tried, the moorstone boat floated steadily up the river, and landed at St Kea, which place he soon Christianised, and there stands to this day this monument of St Kea’s sincere belief.