Right so! The patron saint of unwanted men is St. Wilgefortis (also known as St. Uncumber), the Christian daughter of a pagan king of Portugal. She wished to devote her life to God, he wanted her to get married to a pagan prince. On the eve of her wedding, she prayed to God to deliver her from this unwanted man, and lo, she awoke on her wedding morning to discover that God had granted her an enormous beard. The prince took one look at her and said "I'm not marrying THAT", and her enraged father crucified her.
Needless to say, she is generally held to never have existed, and the legend to have stemmed from a rather odd interpretation of a particularly girly-looking crucifix ("Is it Our Lord looking a bit feminine? No, it must be a bearded lady being crucified!"). Regardless, she was very popular in the late Middle Ages, and people used to offer pecks of oats to her to make unwanted suitors and other annoying men go away.
Anyhow, I was very tickled with this particular legend, and decided one summer to have a party on her feast day. And, overall, a fine party it was - cocktails were consumed, music was played, attempts were made to play the piano in a state so drunk that I kept missing the keyboard, etc. However, there was a disturbingly high level of Romantic Disaster at the party amongst the couples present, and even amongst those that had been invited but couldn't make it - one couple went out for a romantic dinner instead, and promptly split up. I believe the lesson is: don't mess with possibly non-existent medieval saints.
I actually visited a little shrine to her in the Loreto in Prague on the trip described above - it features an amazing crucified lady statue dressed in beautiful silk robes, with a big bushy beard. I was having Issues with one of my bandmates at the time, and fully expected to get back to the hotel and find that he had been struck by lightning.
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timeasmymeasure
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Date: 2005-02-23 02:26 pm (UTC)Needless to say, she is generally held to never have existed, and the legend to have stemmed from a rather odd interpretation of a particularly girly-looking crucifix ("Is it Our Lord looking a bit feminine? No, it must be a bearded lady being crucified!"). Regardless, she was very popular in the late Middle Ages, and people used to offer pecks of oats to her to make unwanted suitors and other annoying men go away.
Anyhow, I was very tickled with this particular legend, and decided one summer to have a party on her feast day. And, overall, a fine party it was - cocktails were consumed, music was played, attempts were made to play the piano in a state so drunk that I kept missing the keyboard, etc. However, there was a disturbingly high level of Romantic Disaster at the party amongst the couples present, and even amongst those that had been invited but couldn't make it - one couple went out for a romantic dinner instead, and promptly split up. I believe the lesson is: don't mess with possibly non-existent medieval saints.
I actually visited a little shrine to her in the Loreto in Prague on the trip described above - it features an amazing crucified lady statue dressed in beautiful silk robes, with a big bushy beard. I was having Issues with one of my bandmates at the time, and fully expected to get back to the hotel and find that he had been struck by lightning.