All this, of course, may have been altogether in the natural order; the
"glow," as they call it, seems more difficult to explain. For they say
that all through the nine days, and indeed after the time had ended,
there never was a man weary or sick at heart in Llantrisant, or in the
country round it. For if a man felt that his work of the body or the
mind was going to be too much for his strength, then there would come to
him of a sudden a warm glow and a thrilling all over him and he felt as
strong as a giant, and happier than he had ever been in his life before,
so that lawyer and hedger each rejoiced in the task that was before him,
as if it were sport and play.
And much more wonderful than this or any other wonders was forgiveness,
with love to follow it. There were meetings of old enemies in the
market-place and in the street that made the people lift up their hands
and declare that it was as if one walked the miraculous streets of Syon.
* * * * *
But as to the "phenomena," the occurrences for which, in ordinary talk,
we should reserve the word "miraculous"? Well, what do we know? The
question that I have already stated comes up again, as to the possible
survival of old tradition in a kind of dormant, or torpid,
semi-conscious state. In other words, did the people "see" and "hear"
what they expected to see and hear? This point, or one similar to it,
occurred in a debate between Andrew Lang and Anatole France as to the
visions of Joan of Arc. M. France stated that when Joan saw St. Michael,
she saw the traditional archangel of the religious art of her day, but
to the best of my belief Andrew Lang proved that the visionary figure
Joan described was not in the least like the fifteenth-century
conception of St. Michael. So, in the case of Llantrisant, I have stated
that there was a sort of tradition about the Holy Bell of Teilo Sant;
and it is, of course, barely possible that some vague notion of the
Graal Cup may have reached even Welsh country folks through Tennyson's
Idylls. But so far I see no reason to suppose that these people had ever
heard of the portable altar (called Sapphirus in William of Malmesbury)
or of its changing colours "that no man could discern."
And then there are the other questions of the distinction between
hallucination and vision, of the average duration of one and the other,
and of the possibility of collective hallucination. If a number of
people all see (or think they see) the same appearances, can this be
merely hallucination? I believe there is a leading case on the matter,
which concerns a number of people seeing the same appearance on a church
wall in Ireland; but there is, of course, this difficulty, that one may
be hallucinated and communicate his impression to the others,
telepathically.
But at the last, what do we know?
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
Reviews
Reviews
No reviews yet
Be the first to share your thoughts on this work.
Join the Discussion
Join the discussion
Sign in to leave a comment or review.
Sign InorCreate an account