Toads and adders

Back in Episode 237, I discussed a piece of German folklore, about a bishop eaten by rats. These creatures were sent by God to punish the bishop for leaving his peasants to starve during a famine, or worse, for killing them. I though it was a bit later than the game period, but I’ve found a mention of the story in Giraldus Cambrensis, who records hearing it during his travels in Wales during 1188. Note that the toads in this story are, like many in period tales, actively venomous, like adders or spiders.

I’ve also included a second story, which I think is a lovely little assassination. I’m not sure if I want a magus to be the source of the fatal prophecy, or a demon using their power to twist dreams.

To quote Gerald of Wales:

“Two circumstances occurred in the province of Cemmeis, the one in our own time, the other a little before, which I think right not to pass over in silence.  In our time, a young man, native of his country, during a severe illness, suffered as violent a persecution from toads, as if the reptiles of the whole province had come to him by agreement; and though destroyed by his nurses and friends, they increased again on all sides in infinite numbers, like hydras’ heads.  His attendants, both friends and strangers, being wearied out, he was drawn up in a kind of bag, into a high tree, stripped of its leaves, and shred; nor was he there secure from his venomous enemies, for they crept up the tree in great numbers, and consumed him even to the very bones.  The young man’s name was Sisillus Esceir-hir, that is, Sisillus Long Leg.  It is also recorded that by the hidden but never unjust will of God, another man suffered a similar persecution from rats.  In the same province, during the reign of king Henry I., a rich man, who had a residence on the northern side of the Preseleu mountains, was warned for three successive nights, by dreams, that if he put his hand under a stone which hung over the spring of a neighbouring well, called the fountain of St. Bernacus, He would find there a golden torques.  Obeying the admonition on the third day, he received, from a viper, a deadly wound in his finger; but as it appears that many treasures have been discovered through dreams, it seems to me probable that, with respect to rumours, in the same manner as to dreams, some ought, and some ought not, to be believed.