The Day of Saints - Day 17, Buriana

A tattered standard of St Buriana in St Buryan Church

In the parish church of St Buryan, there is for sale a booklet called, The Wickedest Parish in England. It tells some of the tragic and ungodly events that took place around the church in earlier centuries, including excommunication of the church by the Pope and years of jealous rivalry with other parishes because of its adoption as a royal shrine by Æthelstan in the 10th century (and subsequent wealth it was endowed with). Talking with someone close to the church, they described to me the kind of problems that can linger down through generations, affecting the witness and ministry of a place. As a church leader, I find such stories a somewhat interesting, but mostly saddening. I imagine it to be like a parent who finds the precious child has gone off the rails, badly, and longs for the pain to end, and the child to find hope - a prodigal tale which is yet to conclude.

Looking for a way to write about this, and draw inspiration from the patron saint, Buriana, I looked at her legend;

It is said that Buriana was abducted by the local king, Geraint. Hearing of this, Piran, another prominent Cornish saint and a fellow missionary, negotiated for her release. However, the king agreed only on the condition that he be awoken by a cuckoo calling across the snow, something highly unlikely as it was mid-winter. Piran is said to have prayed through the night whilst the snow fell, and in the morning Geraint was awoken by a cuckoo's song. He was so taken aback by the miracle that he honoured his pledge, however, shortly afterwards reneged on this and tried to recapture Buriana. As Geraint tried to re-imprison her, Buriana is said to have died, and was subsequently buried on the site of her now long since vanished chapel.

As you will see, I really only took the imagery of winter and the cuckoo in snow, but added in that sense of sadness that the back story of St Buryan left with me. (I've also put in a tiny allusion to a controversial film of the early 1970s which was filmed in the village and which I felt was obliquely pertinent).

FOR BURIANA

Buriana's Lament

Here, I pray,

Sitting in my silent oratory,

For those who will live after me,

And those who will yet die;

I mourn, and I look for

The end of every winter.

When frost arrives, people up, to gather wood,

To make their fires and warm their limbs,

But they seem always to pile higher than they need,

Snapping twigs and at each other.

I see hearts harden, quick, like earth in icy weather

So, often, it takes little to set brother

against his sister, or a mother at her lover.

The numbness and the pain arrive together.

Grasping freezes, it moves us only to paralysis,

Greed atrophies and in seizing we are chilled

Left icebound, stilled by avarice

As we forget we are breathed-on dust.

It is said, 'Where there is no vision the people perish',

But sometimes we parish too, when wealth falls like snow.

Swiftly, it covers and smothers the heart and the mind,

And conceals lying tracks near around.

When those bitter winds blow across the land

There are no more cuckoos left to sing,

Instead, the sound of crowing over the stripped trees,

and the howling of dogs caught clutching at straws.

Here, I pray,

Sitting in my silent oratory,

For those who will come after me,

For those who will yet die;

I mourn and I remember.

There are bodies yet to be raised,

And there is history to be unmade,

And there is ice still to be thawed,

Before the end of winter.

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A modern imagining in sculture of Buriana