: Tales from a Famished Land Including The White Island—A Story of the Dardanelles by Hunt Edward E Edward Eyre - World War 1914-1918 Belgium

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FOREWORD ix

SAINT DYMPNA'S MIRACLE

Into the sudden silence stole the slow, incessant roar of the Yser cannon. The level stretches of the Campine, alternating black vistas of scrub evergreens with little fields, peat bogs, and kitchen gardens, lay fragrant and silent in the moonlight. Heather was in bloom, nightingales were nesting and so were no longer singing, and the narrow Flemish road before and behind the automobile lay like a placid silver river, inviting one to quiet thoughts.

"Yes," I answered Pierre's unfinished query. "I'll go for a stroll toward the next farmhouse. Take your time, Pierre. There's no hurry to-night."

We had just left the town of Gheel, one of the most remarkable places in Belgium, a town where more than a thousand insane folk live quiet and useful lives, parcelled out among the peasants, but under the supervision of district doctors. The insane are treated as if they were normal beings, are given work according to their strength, mental and physical, and find companionship among a peasantry noted for industry and stubborn independence. This is originally due to certain miracles of Saint Dympna, one of the guardian saints of the insane--an Irish princess, converted to Christianity, and martyred at Gheel by her pagan father on the 30th of May in the year of Our Lord 600.

"Mynheer is American?" he asked doubtfully, taking his pipe from his mouth and scratching his head as if to recall where or what America could be.

He turned and faced back down the road, still scratching his head.

My superlative courtesy seemed to decide him, and he gave a gesture of assent. Side by side and in silence then we walked down the silver road to the first farmhouse. A black mass of protecting trees hung close over the chimney, and low thatch swept down like the back of some prehistoric monster, gray green in the clear moonlight. The walls were lath filled in with clay. Two little rectangular windows glowed dully, and the edges of the thick, ill-fitting door shone with faint light.

"You live here, mynheer?" I asked.

"You own it?"

"I rent it."

"I may enter?"

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