SAINT GREYHOUND
(Bourb. p. 325.)

Dishonourable to God are all superstitions which attribute divine honours to the demons, or to any other creature, as idolatry doth, and as those wretched witches do who seek health by adoring elder-trees (1) or offering to them, in contempt of the churches and the relics of saints, by carrying their children thither or to ant-hills or to other places for health's sake. So they wrought lately in the diocese of Lyons, where I preached against witchcraft and heard confessions, and many women confessed that they had taken their children to St Guinefort. Whereof I enquired, supposing him to be some true saint; and at last I heard that he was a certain greyhound who came thus by his death.

n the diocese of Lyons, near the nuns' town called Villeneuve, on the lands of the lord de Villars, was a certain castle whereof the lord had one little boy by his wife. One day that he and his lady and the nurse had gone forth, leaving the child alone in his cradle, then a vast serpent glided into the house and moved towards the child. The hound, seeing this, followed him in all haste even beneath the cradle, which they overturned in their struggles; for the dog gnawed upon the serpent, which strove to defend itself and bit him in turn; yet at last the dog slew it and cast it far from the child; after which he stood then by the bloody cradle and the bloodstained earth, with his own head and haws all bloody, for the serpent had dealt roughly with him. Hereupon the nurse came in; and at this sight, believing that the hound had slain and devoured the child, she cried aloud in lamentation; hearing which the mother hastened to the spot, and saw, and believed, and cried likewise. The Knight also came and believed the same; where fore, drawing his sword, he slew the hound. Then, coming to the child, they found him unhurt and softly sleeping; and seeking further, they found the dead serpent all torn to pieces by the hound's teeth. Wherefore, recognizing the truth, and grieving that they had so unjustly slain this hound which had done them so great a kindness, they cast him into a well hard by the castle gate, and cast an immense heap of stones over him, and planted trees by the spot as a memorial of his deed.

But God so willed that this castle should be destroyed, and the land made desert and left without inhabitants. Wherefore the country folk, hearing of that dog's prowess, and how he had lost his guiltless life for a deed that deserved so great a reward, flocked to that place and honoured the hound as a martyr, praying to him for their sicknesses and necessities; all which came to pass at the instigation of the Devil, who oftentimes deluded them there, that he might thus lead men into error. More especially the women who had weak or sickly children were wont to bring them to that spot; and they used to take an old woman from a town that lay a league distant, who would teach them the due rites of offering to the demons and calling upon their name, and would guide them to that place. When they were come thither, they offered salt with certain other oblations, and hung the child's clothes upon the bushes around, and thrust a needle into the wood which grew over the spot, and thrust the naked child through a hole that was betwixt two tree-trunks; the mother standing on one side to hold him and casting him nine times into the hands of the hag who stood on the other side, calling with demoniacal invocations upon the hobgoblins which haunted that forest of Rimita, and beseeching them to take the child (who, as they said, belonged to the fiends), and bring back their own child which these had carried off, fat and well-liking and safe and sound. After which these murderous mothers (2) would take the child and lay him naked at the foot of the tree upon the straw of his cradle; and, taking two candles an inch long, they lighted them at both ends from a fire which they had brought thither, and fixed them upon the trunk overhead. Then they would withdraw so far that the candles might burn out and that they themselves might neither see nor hear the wailing babe; and thus these white-hot (3) candles would oftentimes burn the children alive, as we found there in certain cases. Moreover one woman told me how, when she had called upon the hobgoblins and was withdrawing from the spot, she saw a wolf come forth from the forest towards the child, whom he would have devoured (or a devil in wolf's form, as she said), if her motherly love had not driven her to prevent him. If therefore, returning to the child, they found him still living, then they would take him to a stream of rushing water hard by, called Chalaronne, wherein nine times they plunged that child, who indeed must needs have the toughest of bowels to escape this ordeal, or at least not to die soon afterwards. Wherefore we went to that place, and called together the folk of that country, and preached against this custom. We caused the dead hound to be dug up, and the grove to be cut down and burned together with the dog's bones; and we persuaded the lords of that country to issue an edict threatening confiscation and public sale against all who should thenceforth resort to that same place for this purpose (4).

(1) The text has sambucas, but sambucos seems to give a better sense.

(2) This is evidently what Etienne means by his "hoc facto, accipiebant matricide puerum, etc., etc."

(3) So the text has it, candentes; but Etienne probably wrote cadentes, "falling."

(4) The editor notes that the worship of St Guinefort is still said to survive among the women of the district round Romans, though without these cruelties. The legend is of course a variant of that of Gelert, which can be traced to the cast.

(Coulton I, p.92-94)