Every once in a while, I come across a story that I think is interesting or funny or just worth telling but that doesn’t fit into my main post. I’ll offer these stories in episodes of From the Cutting Room Floor, available to paid subscribers only.
An audio version is available for subscribers below.
One of miracles of Saint Hervé has me puzzled. According to the story, croaking frogs in a swamp were a huge nuisance to some nearby peasants. Saint Hervé comes to the swamp and demands of the frogs that they be silent, and they are never noisy again.
Some scholars have scandalously suggested that Hervé silenced the frogs not with a Christian prayer but with an old bardic charm. I doubt it, but the more interesting question to me is…
What’s so bad about croaking frogs? Why is this a miracle at all? Am I the only person who rather enjoys the babble of frogs croaking away in a nearby stream on a hot summer evening?
I don’t understand the frog hate. But I do know that a dislike of frogs is a constant among some Northern Europeans through the Middle Ages and well beyond.
Take the patroness of the Anglican Ordinariates, Our Lady of Walsingham. In a break with the usual symbolism where Mary crushes a serpent, Our Lady of Walsingham is shown treading on something considered just as bad: a toad.