portance of their occupation, were very numerous in some parts of England, were not exempt from Christian (?) priestly malediction. The ancient town of Alauna (now Alcester), in Warwickshire, was at an early period famed for its smiths and its forges. Saint Egwin, Capgrave tells us,[1] reported that the inhabitants of this town were an arrogant and luxurious race, and were chiefly workers in iron. The founder of Evesham preached to them, to save them from eternal perdition; but the grimy blacksmiths were either too busy to listen, or cared but little to hear the miracle-working saint. So that, as he imagined, when he attempted to speak, in contempt of his doctrine, they thumped with their hammers upon the anvils, and made a great noise. Then this good man, full of love and mercy for his species, addressed a prayer to Heaven that the workers in iron might be destroyed:—'Contra artem fabrilem castri illius dominum imprecatus est.' And the town was immediately destroyed: 'Et ecce subito reædificato usque in hodierum diem in constructione novarum domorum in fundamentis antiqua ædificia reperiuntur. Nunquam enim postea in loco illo aliquis artem fabrilem recte exercuit, nec aliquis eam exercere volens ibi vigere potuit.'
But Saint Egwin appears to have been an exception to the priests of his age; for many of them were skilled workers in metals, and even shoers of hoofs; and they would have been far more likely to give the anvil-ringing burn-the-winds of Alcester, a hint for some new feat in metallurgy, than dooming them and their glowing forges to destruction.
- ↑ Nova Legenda Angliæ. The Celt, the Roman, and the Saxon, p. 139.
