St Vespaluus


As it is my birthday today I thought I would record a story from one of my favourite authors, the inimitable Saki. This one is "The Story of St Vespaluus", a mildly comic tale about a young prince whose country is caught at the juncture between Paganism and Christianity - whilst the country is an imaginary one, ancient Lithuania had a tradition of sacred serpents, the zaltys (and the revived Romuvan religion still does revere the grass snake and has a holy day devoted to them). I wonder how often the kind of strange accommodation described at the end of the short story happened in real life?



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