St Triduana (also known as Trøllhaena, Trodline or Tredwell) died in Restalrig, Edinburgh, a long way from her birthplace, at some point in the 3rd (or 4th or 5th) century AD.
Legend has it that she’d accompanied the party that bore the bones of Andrew the Apostle across the seas to the east coast of Scotland and the settlement that now bears his name.
She became known for curing blindness – even long after her death, evoking her name in prayer for eye ailments were said to effect a miraculous cure.
The gruesome side of her story is what has been passed down over these many years – what led to her being associated with blindness and the #MeToo resonance of that (plus ça change … ).
We’ll never know the truth of it all; at this distance that is impossible – but what a gift for a writer to be able to fill in the gaps …
… which is a task I set myself to do in a short story called My Sister’s Eyes.
I entered the story to the Federation ofWriters in Scotland’s Vernal Equinox competition and was delighted to be placed
third equal. Many thanks to them and congratulations to all the placed entries.
You can read all the adjudications and the entries here (or if you want to skip straight to My Sister’s Eyes it’s here).
Photo by Daniil Kuželev on Unsplash
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Many thanks to those of you who opted to receive notifications of blog posts by email. Blogger is very unhelpfully discontinuing this service (‘in July’ so may already have done … ). To transfer to another email service involves signing up to Google Analytics which I have done but there is a password needed by Blogger that I cannot find. Online help forums shed no light (and it would appear I’m not the only one with the issue). If anyone can help please contact me via the comments.
Lovely email subscribers, I trust the situation will get resolved soon. (The list of names will remain after July.) In the meantime, perhaps you’ll be kind enough to check in with the blog every so often without a reminder.
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