There were touches of poetry, nationally
Welsh, in what she said, and touches of humor perhaps personally
Welsh. It seems that the cup had been famed throughout the
countryside for the miraculous property by which whoever drank
from it was cured of his or her malady, and it had been passed
freely round to all sufferers ever since it came into her
family's keeping. That they might make doubly sure of the
miracle, it was the custom of the sick not only to empty the cup,
but to nibble a little bit of the wood, and swallow that, so that
in whatever state the monks of Strata Florida had confided it,
the vessel was now in the state we saw. Saying this the lady
opened the casket holding it, and showed us the crescent-shaped
rim of a wooden bowl, about the bigness of a cocoanut shell; all
the rest had been consumed by the pious sufferers whom it had
restored to health.
I am sorry, after all, to own that this cup is said by some
authorities not to be the Holy Grail, but a vessel like it carved
out of the true cross. But even so subordinate a relic is
priceless, and as it is no longer possible to drink from it, we
may hope that the fragment will remain indefinitely to after
time.
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