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THE OLD - Old Wirral.com

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WIRRAL CHURCH DEDICATIONS<br />

touch the most tempting and harmless<br />

creature, and that they spend the night in<br />

such devout meditation that it is safe to<br />

tread upon their tails ! St. Nicholas gave<br />

lavishly the wealth which he inherited<br />

from his parents, and there is a story that<br />

in Lycia there was a nobleman with three<br />

daughters, so poor that he was about to<br />

send them forth to earn their bread by a<br />

life of shame. But one night Nicholas<br />

threw a purse of gold through the window,<br />

and with this dowry the poor nobleman<br />

procured marriage for the eldest daughter.<br />

A second night Nicholas again threw a<br />

purse of gold, and with this the second<br />

daughter was dowried and married. So<br />

also with the third daughter. Thus, St.<br />

Nicholas is represented by three purses<br />

carved on the choir-master's desk in Bur-<br />

in the<br />

ton church. He is further pictured<br />

left light of the east window, holding a<br />

book on which rest three purses, and there<br />

is still another representation of him<br />

painted on a board and hung upon the<br />

tower wall within the nave.<br />

St. Michael appears to have been<br />

ignored by the architects or restorers of<br />

Shotwick church, and at Backford the<br />

held in no<br />

dedicatory saint is apparently<br />

93

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