David;but being suddenly seized with a severe illness,he revoked his command.When this had happened to him a second and a third time,and the corpse at last was suffered to be conveyed away,and was proceeding over the sands of Niwegal towards St.David's,a prodigious fall of rain inundated the whole country;but the conductors of the sacred burthen,on coming forth from their shelter,found the silken pall,with which the bier was covered,dry and uninjured by the storm;and thus the miraculous body of Caradoc was brought into the church of St.Andrew and St.David,and with due solemnity deposited in the left aisle,near the altar of the holy proto-martyr Stephen.
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 *****eries,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 *****erous wife,at this time pregnant by the commission of ****** 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.
