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On Tue, 2 Sep 1997, CA. Muessig wrote: > Today, 1 September, is the feast of ... > > * Aegidius or Giles, abbot (date unknown) > - according to the very popular legend (dating from the tenth > century), Giles was an Athenian by birth, who escaped the fame his > sanctity brought on him by fleeing to Marseilles; eventually, he became a > hermit who lived in a cave, at times in the company of a hind who would > hide from the King's huntsmen; the king eventually discovered this, and > induced Giles to found an abbey > - he died on a Sunday, 1 September, 'leaving the world sadder for > his bodily absence but giving joy in Heaven by his happy arrival' > The St Giles fair in Oxford starts on Monday which means that the street bearing his name will be closed for three days. I read somewhere that he was also the patron saint of beggars and cripples which his expalins why hurches dedicated to him were often found outside the principal gates of cities so that people could gatehr there and beg from those going into town. St Giles in London was near Cripplegate (?). the large number of people who are still sleeping rough along St. Giles Oxford is an example of a more unfortunate medieval survival. > * Fiacre or Fiachra (670?) > - invoked against venereal diseases; patron of gardeners and of > Parisian taxi drivers; relics at Meaux are still visited (in fact the > shrine was particularly popular in the seventeenth century) > > Last year many of you were perplexed by the Parisian taxi driver > connection. Some of you provided possible explanations: > > Jo ann McNamara wrote: > Just to complicate things further but, perhaps, to explain the taxi > drivers at least: I believe St. Fiacre is also particularly effective > against hemorrhoids (sp?) I remember a stone in Brittany imprinted > miraculously by his buttocks that sufferers sat in with splendid > results. > > John Parsons wrote: > Regarding the feast of St Fiacre--the French word "fiacre" came to refer > (by the 18th century anyway) to a type of carriage that was often run for > hire in Paris. This might well explain the taxi driver connection. Given the > Gallic proclivity for naming objects for a pseudo-place of origin (e.g., > any dish of food conspicuously containing carrots is properly called "a > la Crecy" because Crecy is as well-known for its carrots as for Edward > III's victory), it's possible that this type of carriage originated, or > was manufactured, at St-Fiacre-en-Brie. Nailing this down would > naturally take some research though. Are there any details in Fiacre's > vita or legend (with which I am utterly unfamiliar) that would possibly > connect with a journey by cart or carriage? > > Monica Sandor added: > For the record, a certain type of horse-drawn carriage is also called > "fiaker" in Hungarian, probably from German. This despite that the single > word ever to come into English from Hungarian is the word "coach", for the > village Kocs in Hungary where apparently it originated, thus confirming > John Parsons' theory about objects named for places. > > I think that the late Cardinal Tomas O'Fiach in his Gaelscrinte in gCein had something to the effect that these taxis/carriages took their name from the Hotel St. Fiacre in Paris. apparently their taxi rank was outside it. Colman O'Clabaigh, osb. %%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%