England, St Helena and the Magi

England is full of legends about the Magi, the three kings of the Bible. In the most popular Melchior, King of Arabia, the one who presented the gold, is considered to be elderly and grey-haired; Balthasar, King of Ethiopia, who gave the frankincense, is middle-aged, and Caspar, King of Tarsus, giver of the myrrh, is just a boy. The are particularly significant because all are linked to Saint Helena, mother of Constantine the Great, whom the English held to be the only daughter of Old King Cole, the supposed ruler of Britain who held his court at Colchester. By tradition she was held to have been born in this town, married the Roman general Constantius there, later giving birth to Constantine within the city walls.

Apart from her discovery of the True Cross and the Holy Nails it was once believed that she also journeyed to India, where she discovered the bodies of the Magi, taken from there to Constantinople. In 1413 the borough of Colchester adopted a new coat of arms, depicting the True Cross the Three Nails and the three crowns of the Magi. The local girl did good!

Screaming Skulls

I have another tale from the shores of old England, that of the screaming skulls. The story goes, and there are some twenty of them kept in various locations across the land, that if they are moved from their locations they either emit a screaming noise or generate poltergeists. They are said to be the skulls of former residents, preserved where they lived and died, in some cases allegedly going as far back as the fifteenth century.

Probably the best known is that at Bettiscombe Manor in Dorset, supposedly that of a black male servant, who is said to have come to England from the West Indies some three hundred years ago as a retainer for the lords of the manor, a family by the name of Pinney. Just before he died he expressed the wish that his body be returned to his native home for burial, but his wish was ignored and he was interred in the local graveyard. Soon after the moans and screams started, coming from the grave. The body was thereupon disinterred, and for some bizarre and unexplained reason the head was removed, and the skull later preserved in the house.

From time to time attempts have supposedly been made by successive generations of Pinneys to rid themselves of the relic. One occasion it was thrown into a pond, only to be recovered and set back in place when the screams became too much.

Ah, but the Bettiscombe skull, you see, whatever supernatural properties it carries, is not quite what it was traditionally held to be. It is neither male nor of eighteenth century origin. On examination in 1963 it was concluded that it was female and some two thousand years old. The suggestion is that it might conceivably a skull from an ancient Celtic shrine, associated with the cult of the head. These are powerful objects attended by powerful and sometimes disturbing forces. Be afraid, be very afraid. :-))