Note 183.1 — RITUAL AND BELIEF

In France, near the village of la Selle, on the highway from Autun to Château Chinon, is a granite rock, on the top of which rustic piety has erected a Calvary. Just below it is a little grotto that serves as a niche to shelter the statue of the good Saint Merri, the patron of the parish. Saint Merri has a reputation extending far and wide. Formerly on the stone at his feet might be seen offerings of eggs and small change; and even yet pilgrimages are made to his shrine in pursuance of vows or for the cure of certain diseases. Among these, it would seem, as the offering of eggs may indicate, he was expected to cure sterility. It is related that a pious woman of a neighbouring village was in the habit of coming to implore the saint for her daughter, who had been married for some years, but had had no children. She had another daughter, who was not married; and the saint made a mistake: it was her unmarried daughter to whom a child was granted. The good woman, enraged at a blunder so inexcusable, returned to the saint. Bitterly reproaching him with his mockery of her prayers, she took a stick and inflicted on him a sound castigation, breaking his arm and rolling him over on the ground, where he long remained, a witness to his own unseemly jest and her righteous indignation. The inhabitants at last made a collection to buy a new saint, which is now placed on a pedestal in the foreground of the grotto, while the old and guilty saint is relegated shamefully to a corner, and still bears the scornful title of the Weeper.183.1