Stories and Legends of Travel and History, for ChildrenGreenwood, Grace
General
Stories and Legends of Travel and History, for Children
Greenwood, Grace
Great Britain -- Juvenile literature; Ireland -- Juvenile literature
Immediately Winifred arose, as well as ever, only a little weak from
loss of blood--and with nothing to remember her decapitation by, but a
red line around her neck, which looked like a small string of coral
beads, and was rather pretty than otherwise.
From that day it was settled that Winifred was a Saint, for on the spot
where her head had rested, there bubbled up a spring of pure water, for
the healing of the sick--particularly the crippled and rheumatic.
Believers say that, in the Saint's time, the waters were more powerful
than they are now. Then, after one dip, the palsied stopped shaking,
the paralytic began talking, and cripples flung away their crutches
while the maimed had only to thrust the stumps of arms and legs into
the spring, to have beautiful new hands and feet sprout out before
their eyes!
The part of North Wales through which we passed, is not so mountainous
and picturesque as some other portions of the Principality; but it is
very beautiful, even as seen in flying glimpses, from the railway
carriage. We were very sorry that we could not stop to explore the
lovely vales of Clwyd and Llangollen, and visit the little city of St.
Asaph, where Mrs. Hemans once resided.
I longed to go and pay my respects to some of those grand, old
mountains, that stood afar off, in their stern majesty, clothed with
purple-blossomed heather, flecked with golden sunshine and crowned with
gorgeous clouds, or silvery mists. The dark-waving foliage of many a
shadowy glen and rocky gorge seemed beckoning to us to search into
their lovely, lonely places, and many a glad rill and wild cascade
seemed to call to us to come and look upon its unsunned beauty. But
the swift locomotive remorselessly whirled us away from glen and gorge,
and its rush and clang soon drowned those pleasant mountain voices of
dancing rivulet and laughing waterfall.
We hardly caught a breath of the free, fresh air of the hills, in
exchange for the long, brown train of heavy, hot smoke we left behind
us;--in truth, puffing and whirling in and out of the Principality, as
we did, I am almost ashamed to count Wales as one of the countries I
have seen.
In England, no town, however large it may be, is called a city, unless
it has a Bishop and a Cathedral, as the capital of an Episcopal See.
Thus the great seaport of Liverpool is only a _town_, while St. Asaph,
with but one street and eight hundred inhabitants, is a _city_.
The first Bishop of St. Asaph was St. Kentigern, a famous monk and
monk-maker, and founder of monasteries. He had a disciple by the name
of Asaph, whom he brought up to be a Saint.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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