with a lamentable voice, "O, my father and high priest, your saint
has taken most cruel vengeance of me, not waiting the conversion of
a sinner, but hastening his death and overthrow." Having often
repeated similar expressions, and bitterly lamented his situation,
he thus ended his tyranny and life together; the first year of his
government not having elapsed.

A powerful and noble personage, by name Brachanus, was in ancient
times the ruler of the province of Brecheinoc, and from him it
derived this name. The British histories testify that he had four-
and-twenty daughters, all of whom, dedicated from their youth to
religious observances, happily ended their lives in sanctity. There
are many churches in Wales distinguished by their names, one of
which, situated on the summit of a hill, near Brecheinoc, and not
far from the castle of Aberhodni, is called the church of St.
Almedda, {49} after the name of the holy virgin, who, refusing there
the hand of an earthly spouse, married the Eternal King, and
triumphed in a happy martyrdom; to whose honour a solemn feast is
annually held in the beginning of August, and attended by a large
concourse of people from a considerable distance, when those persons
who labour under various diseases, through the merits of the Blessed
Virgin, received their wished-for health. The circumstances which
occur at every anniversary appear to me remarkable. You may see men
or girls, now in the church, now in the churchyard, now in the
dance, which is led round the churchyard with a song, on a sudden
falling on the ground as in a trance, then jumping up as in a
frenzy, and representing with their hands and feet, before the
people, whatever work they have unlawfully done on feast days; you
may see one man put his hand to the plough, and another, as it were,
goad on the oxen, mitigating their sense of labour, by the usual