THE SCENE: Be careful about what you say about the saints, or you might just find yourself transformed. Just ask the people of Dorset.
THE TEXT: When blessed Augustine was preaching the word of life to the heathen among the West Saxons in the county of Dorset, he came into a certain village where no one wished to receive him or to listen to his preaching. They rebelled against him in all respects and tried to contradict everything that he said and to obscure everything by taking a wrong meaning out of it, and, a thing which is wicked even to mention, they were so bold as to sew and hang fishtails on his clothing. But what they themselves believed they were doing to harm the holy father actually turned out to be to the eternal disgrace of themselves and their descendants and their innocent county. For God smote them in their hinder parts, giving them everlasting shame so that in the private parts both of themselves and their descendants all like were born with a tail. Now a tail of this kind is called by the local inhabitants in their native language ‘mughel’ from which the village in which this king of injury was inflicted on blessed Augustine got the name of Muglington (that is the town of the people with the mughels) which it has to the present day.
It is said also that, following their example, in the province of the Mercians in the village which is called Tamworth the inhabitants of the place offered a similar insult to the blessed man, but they did not go unpunished because both they themselves and their descendants, as everyone knows, suffered the shame of a like punishment and disgrace. A similar incident occurred in the time of the exile of blessed Thomas primate of England, because to insult him (as they believed, but their wickedness deceived them) the people of Rochester disfigured and cut off his horse’s tail, which has let to their descendants in that place being found both with tails.
– Scotichronicon, Walter Bower, 15th Century AD
