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Lia's avatar

My grandma's name is Blasia because she was born today.

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Gerald Coleman's avatar

I once picked up S. Braz cough drops is a Portuguese market, the picture on the front had the saint vested as bishop blessing the mother and child.

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Mike Poteet's avatar

Your post grabbed my eye because, in Tennyson's "Idylls of the King," "Bleys" is Merlin's teacher:

...Merlin’s master (so they call him) Bleys,

Who taught him magic, but the scholar ran

Before the master, and so far, that Bleys,

Laid magic by, and sat him down, and wrote

All things and whatsoever Merlin did

In one great annal-book...

I did not know about Saint Blaise (we Presbyterians having no sanctoral calendar to speak of!), so this was really fascinating! Thanks for it!

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Deacon Tom's avatar

From the New Arthurian Encyclopedia: BLAISE (Blayse, Bleise), in Robert de Boron's Joseph and Merlin and the Didot-Perceval, Merlin's companion, who records the story of Joseph of Arimathea and the Grail as it is dictated to him by Merlin. In Malory's Morte Darthur, Blaise is Merlin's tutor from birth. In Tennyson's Idylls of the King ("The Coming of Arthur"), Blaise tells Bellicent, Queen of Orkney, that the infant Arthur was mysteriously washed ashore at Tintagel. The name appears to be a variant of “Bleheris." the name of a twelfth-century Welsh storyteller mentioned by Giraldus Cambrensis, Thomas d'Angleterre, and others.

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