CORNISH DEDICATIONS. 89 



" It seems that this sacred garment was in existence about 

 the year 1720; for in a letter of that date to Brown Willis, 

 from one H, Goff, a member of the Cathedral of St. Davids, 

 the writer says (MS. Bodleian Lib.) — ' That above a small 

 creek in Llanwnda parish there is a ruined chapel, called St. 

 Degan's, having near to it a spring named after the saint ; and 

 above the spring a tumulus, called St. Degan's knowe or knoll, 

 where people resort to seat themselves on holidays and Sundays. 

 There is a remarkable habit, of this said St. Degan, preserved 

 for several ages ; the person that has it now having had it in 

 his custody for forty years, to whom it was handed down by an 

 elderly matron of upwards of ninety years of age. This habit, 

 a piece whereof I have sent you enclosed, I had the curiosity to 

 see ; it is much in the form of a clergyman's cassock, but 

 without sleeves. There are two of them of the same make, 

 near a yard in length, but having the like slit or hole at every 

 corner" on each end, and on the brim of each side were loops of 

 blue silk.' 



"The veneration for this little duodecimo saint is hereditary 

 amongst the inhabitants of this district, who tell a thousand 

 miraculous stories of him, and never fail to point out tlie prints 

 of his horse's feet in the cliffs up which he rode when he 

 emerged from the ocean, for it seems he was a sort of marine 

 production. Numerous prophecies likewise ascribed to him 

 have been handed down traditionally from father to son, for 

 generations ; and one more remarkable than the rest for pre- 

 figuring, with a most circumstantial coincidence, the late French 

 descent on that coast." — Fenton alludes here to the French 

 abortive invasion of Wales in 1797. 



S. David, Bishop, Confessor. 



That this illustrious Saint was in Cornwall we know, 

 because a Welsh writer of the 12th Century says, that whilst 

 there David endured persecution at the hands of some evilly 

 disposed woman, and he adds that he endangered the sceptre of 

 that realm. Of this, presently. 



