Mythology of the British Isles by Geoffrey Ashe

Author:Geoffrey Ashe [Ashe, Geoffrey]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Lume Books
Published: 2020-04-22T17:00:00+00:00

32 St Ursula and the

Eleven Thousand Virgins

Ursula was a British princess. A pagan prince asked for her hand in marriage.[1] Preferring to remain single, and certainly not wanting a heathen husband, she asked for three years’ postponement. Ursula had ten ladies-in-waiting. She and her ladies each gathered a thousand companions, and all eleven thousand of the company (or to be precise, eleven thousand and eleven) were virgins.

They put to sea in eleven ships and, after some voyaging about, were driven by strong winds into the mouth of the Rhine. Up the river the fleet sailed, to Cologne and thence to Basle. There Ursula and her companions disembarked. They crossed the Alps and went on to Rome to visit the tombs of the apostles. Their pilgrimage completed, they returned by the same route. At Cologne, however, the heathen Huns had moved in. The Huns’ chief wanted to marry Ursula, but she had put off her first heathen suitor and now she refused the second. Exasperated by the faith which placed such obstacles in their way, the Huns massacred all the eleven thousand. Then angels appeared, somewhat belatedly, and dispersed them. Cologne’s citizens buried the martyrs, and a Christian named Clematius, who had come from the east, built a church in their honour.

Some tell the story differently, linking it with the British settlement in Armorica and the beginnings of Brittany.[2] Conan, having taken possession of the land, wanted to people it with a new British stock. He sent a request for wives for his soldiers to Dionotus, the duke of Cornwall, who had been left to rule Britain while Maximus campaigned against the emperors. Ursula was Dionotus’s daughter and Conan desired her for himself. The duke consented, assembled a fleet in the Thames, and put Ursula aboard with eleven thousand maidens of noble birth and sixty thousand from the ranks of the commoners. Those who were reluctant to leave their homeland, or who wished to remain celibate, were overruled.

On the way to Armorica a storm scattered the fleet. Many of the maidens were drowned in shipwrecks. Others were cast ashore on islands with barbarous inhabitants, or among Huns and Picts, who were enemies of Maximus and therefore of his henchman Conan, and showed no mercy. They were sold as slaves, or were killed outright, or died resisting their captors’ lust. None of the intended wives reached Armorica. The Breton nation had to be based on mixed marriages, but it kept its language and character, and their survival was assured by massive migrations from Britain in later years.

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