It Is Worthy Of Remark, That These People (The Flemings), From The
Inspection Of The Right Shoulders Of Rams, Which Have Been Stripped
Of Their Flesh, And Not Roasted, But Boiled, Can Discover Future
Events, Or Those Which Have Passed And Remained Long Unknown.
{109}
They know, also, what is transpiring at a distant place, by a
wonderful art, and a prophetic kind of spirit.
They declare, also,
by means of signs, the undoubted symptoms of approaching peace and
war, murders and fires, domestic adulteries, the state of the king,
his life and death. It happened in our time, that a man of those
parts, whose name was William Mangunel, a person of high rank, and
excelling all others in the aforesaid art, had a wife big with child
by her own husband's grandson. Well aware of the fact, he ordered a
ram from his own flock to be sent to his wife, as a present from her
neighbour, which was carried to the cook, and dressed. At dinner,
the husband purposely gave the shoulder-bone of the ram, properly
cleaned, to his wife, who was also well skilled in this art, for her
examination; when, having for a short time examined the secret
marks, she smiled, and threw the oracle down on the table. Her
husband, dissembling, earnestly demanded the cause of her smiling,
and the explanation of the matter. Overcome by his entreaties, she
answered: "The man to whose fold this ram belongs, has an
adulterous wife, at this time pregnant by the commission of incest
with his own grandson." The husband, with a sorrowful and dejected
countenance, replied: "You deliver, indeed, an oracle supported by
too much truth, which I have so much more reason to lament, as the
ignominy you have published redounds to my own injury." The woman,
thus detected, and unable to dissemble her confusion, betrayed the
inward feelings of her mind by external signs; shame and sorrow
urging her by turns, and manifesting themselves, now by blushes, now
by paleness, and lastly (according to the custom of women), by
tears. The shoulder of a goat was also once brought to a certain
person, instead of a ram's - both being alike, when cleaned; who,
observing for a short time the lines and marks, exclaimed, "Unhappy
cattle, that never was multiplied! unhappy, likewise, the owner of
the cattle, who never had more than three or four in one flock!"
Many persons, a year and a half before the event, foresaw, by the
means of shoulder-bones, the destruction of their country, after the
decease of king Henry I., and, selling all their possessions, left
their homes, and escaped the impending ruin.
It happened also in Flanders, from whence this people came, that a
certain man sent a similar bone to a neighbour for his inspection;
and the person who carried it, on passing over a ditch, broke wind,
and wished it in the nostrils of the man on whose account he was
thus troubled. The person to whom the bone was taken, on
examination, said, "May you have in your own nose, that which you
wished to be in mine." In our time, a soothsayer, on the inspection
of a bone, discovered not only a theft, and the manner of it, but
the thief himself, and all the attendant circumstances; he heard
also the striking of a bell, and the sound of a trumpet, as if those
things which were past were still performing. It is wonderful,
therefore, that these bones, like all unlawful conjurations, should
represent, by a counterfeit similitude to the eyes and ears, things
which are passed, as well as those which are now going on.
CHAPTER XII
Of Penbroch
The province of Penbroch adjoins the southern part of the territory
of Ros, and is separated from it by an arm of the sea. Its
principal city, and the metropolis of Demetia, is situated on an
oblong rocky eminence, extending with two branches from Milford
Haven, from whence it derived the name of Penbroch, which signifies
the head of the aestuary. Arnulph de Montgomery, {110} in the reign
of king Henry I., erected here a slender fortress with stakes and
turf, which, on returning to England, he consigned to the care of
Giraldus de Windesor, {111} his constable and lieutenant-general, a
worthy and discreet man. Immediately on the death of Rhys son of
Tewdwr, who a short time before had been slain by the treachery of
his own troops at Brecheinoc, leaving his son, Gruffydd, a child,
the inhabitants of South Wales besieged the castle. One night, when
fifteen soldiers had deserted, and endeavoured to escape from the
castle in a small boat, on the following morning Giraldus invested
their armour bearers with the arms and estates of their masters, and
decorated them with the military order. The garrison being, from
the length of the siege, reduced to the utmost want of provisions,
the constable, with great prudence and flattering hopes of success,
caused four hogs, which yet remained, to be cut into small pieces
and thrown down to the enemy from the fortifications. The next day,
having again recourse to a more refined stratagem, he contrived that
a letter, sealed with his own signet, should be found before the
house of Wilfred, {112} bishop of St. David's, who was then by
chance in that neighbourhood, as if accidentally dropped, stating
that there would be no necessity of soliciting the assistance of
earl Arnulph for the next four months to come. The contents of
these letters being made known to the army, the troops abandoned the
siege of the castle, and retired to their own homes. Giraldus, in
order to make himself and his dependants more secure, married Nest,
the sister of Gruffydd, prince of South Wales, by whom he had an
illustrious progeny of both sexes; and by whose means both the
maritime parts of South Wales were retained by the English, and the
walls of Ireland afterwards stormed, as our Vaticinal History
declares.
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