St. Serenus, A. D. 307. St. Milburge. B. Dositheus. St. Peter Damian, Card. Bp. A. D. 1072. St. Boisil, Prior of Melross.
St. Milburge, 7th Cent.
She was sister to St. Mildred, wore a hair cloth, and built the monastery of Wenlock, in Shropshire. One day being at Stokes, a neighbouring village, brother Hierome Porter says, that “a young gallant, sonne to a prince of that countrey, was soe taken with her beautie, that he had a vehement desire to carrie her away by force and marrie her.” St. Milburge fled from him and his companions till she had passed a little brook, called Corfe, which then suddenly swelled up and threatened her pursuers with destruction, wherefore they desisted. She ordered the wild geese who ate the corn of her monastic fields to be gone elsewhere, and they obeyed her as the waters did. After her death, her remains were discovered, in 1100, by two children sinking up to their knees in her grave, the dust whereof cured leprosies, restored the sight, and spoiled medical practice. A diseased woman at Patton, drinking of the water wherein St. Milburge’s bones were washed, there came from her stomach “a filthie worme, ugly and horrible to behold, having six feete, two hornes on his head, and two on his tayle.” Brother Porter tells this, and that the “worme was shutt up in a hollow piece of wood, and reserved afterwards in the monasterie, as a trophie, and monument of S. Milburg, untill by the lascivious furie of him that destroyed all goodnes in England, that, with other religious houses, and monasteries, went to ruine.”[10] Hence the “filthie worme” was lost, and we have nothing instead but the Reformation.
FLORAL DIRECTORY.
Apricot. Prunus Armeniaca.
Dedicated to St. Milburge.
THE SEASON.
If ice still remain let those who tempt it beware:—
The frost-bound rivers bear the weight
Of many a vent’rous elf;
Let each who crowds to see them skate
Be careful for himself:
For, like the world, deceitful ice
Who trusts it makes them rue:
’Tis slippery as the paths of vice,
And quite as faithless too.