Page:Bassetts scrap book 1907 03-1909 02.djvu/200

 2 BASSEXrS SCRAP BOOK there is an axiom among parsons, to whose truth he gives his assent, that **If you resist the devil he will fly from you, but if you resist the deacon, he will fly at you." Why is a Welshman called Taffy? Because of St. David, the greatest of Welsh saints. St. David, or St. Tavy — corrupted to Tafify — was a very great man indeed in his day. He made a famous speech against the Pelagian heresy at a Synod at Brevy, in Cardigan, in the year 519, and died on March ist, 544. On March ist every patriotic Welshman, of course, wears the leek in his hat. The custom is a very ancient one, for Shakespeare writes of it in "King Henry V." It is rather a curious coincidence that the name day of Ireland's patron saint should also fall in March. By the by, St. Patrick's Irish name was not Patrick, but Succat. He was not, however, an Irish- man at all, but was born in France, being the son of a French deacon. At the age of sixteen he was cap- tured by the Irish pirates, and sold as a slave to a chieftain in County Antrim. He escaped, got back to France, became a preacher, returned to Ireland, and with^his own hands baptized 12,000 persons. He is said to have lived to the age of 120, and to have died A. D. 493. In March 1862, occurred the famous fight between the Merrimac and the Monitor. This duel is famous because it was the first occasion on which two iron- clads had met at sea. The Merrimac was originally