ST. KEYNA, VIRGIN

BRAGHAN, prince of part of Wales, who has left his name to Brecknockshire, was happy in an offspring of saints. The most famous were St. Canoc, who founded many monasteries in Ireland; and St. Keyna, surnamed by the Welsh, The Virgin, who lived a recluse in a wood in Somersetshire, at a distance from her own country, near the town of Cainsham, which seems so called from her, and stands on the Avon not far from Bristol. Spiral stones in the figure of serpents have been found in that country, which some of the people pretend to have been serpents turned into stones by her prayers.1 They seem either petrifactions or sports of nature in uncommon crystallizations in a mineral soil. St. Keyna is said to have died in her own country in the fifth or sixth century. Many places in Wales are filled with monuments of the great veneration which was formerly paid to this saint. See her acts in Capgrave Alford, &c.