medieval-religion: Scholarly discussions of medieval religion and culture
The local saint Selevan, immortalized as St Levan, has a gruesome tale,
which one assumes is a corruption.
Selevan was a fisherman. One day he caught two bream (also known as chad)
on one hook, but he threw them back into the sea—only to catch them again a
second and then a third time. This last time he decided that he ought to keep
them, and he took them home, only to find his sister St Breage waiting for
him with her children. (Sometimes the sister is called Manaccan.) Selevan
prepared the fish for their supper, but the children were so hungry they gobbled
the food and choked to death on it.
Nice. From that time onwards the fishermen of Land’s End district called
the chad ‘chuck-cheeld’ or ‘choke child’. (Do not ask why people were using
Anglo-Saxon words hundreds of years before the Anglo-Saxons came to West
Penwith and even more hundreds of years before they stopped speaking Cornish!)
Selevan's story may originally have been more similar to Neot's. Neot was a
Cornish saint who had a pact with God to catch one fish a day to sustain him
from a well; when he fell ill and his servant ignorantly took two fishes
from the well, Neot rose from his sickbed and prayed earnestly for forgiveness
for his greed. The servant was able to return one fish to the well, where it
miraculously came alive once more. This tale is illustrated in the
beautiful mediaeval windows of St Neot church in east Cornwall. At St Levan church
there is a pre-Reformation pew-end with two fish on it, a reference to some
version or other of the Selevan story. (A modern sculpture in the church has
three fish, a sad error.)
Canon Doble, who collected Cornish saints' stories in the early 20th
century, commented that Selevan and Neot were the only two of 'his' saints whose
stories were still alive in their parishes.
hth
Susan
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