The London church of St Mary Axe

Famous for just one little-unknown fact

It once held the bloodied broadaxe

Used to poleaxe

Eleven thousand British virgins

 

Meriadoc, fabled Celtic commander

All conquering, just like the great Alexander

Friend to Maximus, hopeful Roman emperor

Now he needs to pander

To eleven thousand British virgins

 

Recreating his beloved British homeland

On France’s western coastal land

Meriadoc’s Armorica, forged by manly hand

Their unused, engorged glands

desire eleven thousand British virgins

 

Meriadoc called upon his future wife

Sail to him, save him from this manmade strife

Many of his followers, in the prime of their life

Need more to hold than a goodly wife.

They need eleven thousand British virgins

 

Ursula, initially pilgrimaged to Rome

Her excited virgins mutually chaperoned.

Hoping Pope Siricius under his Vatican dome

Would bless and protect the new home

Of eleven thousand British virgins

 

Alas, the channel winds had fiercely blown

Captured, mistreated, they had not known 

how they found themselves in old Cologne.

At the mercy of the Huns with erotic overtones 

For the eleven thousand British virgins.

 

‘No!’ said the girls ‘Thats the one thing we dread’

‘We’re saved for Armoricans,’ they all said

‘We won’t allow you to confiscate our maidenheads’

The Huns beheaded everyone of them. The streets ran red,

With blood of eleven thousand British Virgins.

 

They singled Ursula as the leader of the quest

Undebased, they led her away, without protest   

she wept to God for all her friends, now at rest,

Then they shot her fatally between her breasts

So died eleven thousand and one British virgins

 

……………………………………………………………….

FYI

Llangwyryfon is a small village in Wales

The name translates as the church of the virgins

And is the only church dedicated to her name

 

Christopher Columbus named the Virgin Isles

After St Ursula’s feast day of October 21st 1493

 

On October 21st 1520, Ferdinand Magellan named

The Cape of Virgins on the very tip of South America