A tale of jealousy, escape, passion and purity.
The life of St. Petronilla, patron saint of mountain travellers, is celebrated annually on 31st May.
Locked away by her father before escaping across the Alps and then unrequited love in the Bavarian forest. This was the turbulent life for young Petronilla. She was the stunningly beautiful daughter of a devout Christian in 4th Century Rome. This possessive father locked his daughter away from admiring suitors until she escaped to Rhaetia at the edge of Roman civilisation in what is now southern Germany.
It was there she entranced a young king, Flaccus, who vowed to take her for his wife. But the marriage of a Pagan and a Roman could never happen and she was eventually taken back to Rome where she starved herself to death. It was said that she preferred to die rather than marry a pagan or could it be that she died because she was not allowed to marry him? We shall never know, but eventually she became a virgin martyr honoured in the annals of Church history.
Was it her journey across the Alps that gave her the status as the Patron Saint of mountain travellers? Again we shall never know, but it is far more credible than her patronage of the French Dauphin, based solely on the tenuous discovery of a dolphin found carved on her sarcophagus!
Was Petronilla involved in the ancient Bavarian game of ‘Spuckender Kirsch Kern?’ - Possibly! Today this game involves little more than spitting cherry stones as far as possible. However this tradition is borne, like so many other things, out of an ancient ritual with deeper undertones.
Evidently the local Germanic tribes used to harvest the wild cherries in early summer and celebrate the occasion with a feast. By the middle of June the main rituals of Spring were long gone and most eligible men had taken a wife. At the end of the feast the remaining single women of the tribe competed with each other to spit cherry stones at a cowbell hung 20 paces away. The first damsel to ring the bell got the choice of any single men remaining whether the man in question liked it or not.
Such was the expertise of these women that they could hit the bell with their eyes shut – if they wanted to!
It is thought that this practice was adapted by the whole tribe to become a defiant gesture against their Roman occupiers. Is it therefore just a coincidence that St Petronilla's Day is adjacent to this cherry fest and is it also coincidental that she was renown for wearing cherry red shoes and matching clothing?
I think not.
Roger.
Of course I knew that being stoned was a commonplace with Faartals and that it forms an essential part of their induction ceremony. Little did I realise, however, that they imbibe fortified liquors in honour of the fair St Petronilla rather than for any more mundane reason.