Hail!

A miraculous and monstrous, but yet most true and certain, discourse of a woman (now to be seen in London) of the age of three-score years or thereabouts, in the midst of whose forehead (by the wonderful work of God) there grows out a crooked horn of four inches long.

This woman, whose name is Margaret Griffiths by her father’s name after the use and custom of Wales, was lately the wife of David Owen, of the parish of Llhan Gaduain in the county of Montgomry, a husbandman deceased with whom, as she lived many years (to the eye of the world) very quietly, and honestly, having four children, whereof three are yet alive. So has she since, during the time of her widowhood, maintained herself with her small portion of land and other necessaries (for anything that is known) in very good order.

Yet notwithstanding, there appeared of late, viz. in May last, through the wonderful work of God as the woman herself contesteth, and so likewise testified by others, in the midst of her forehead a small hard knob, having on the top thereof at the first as it were a dry scab, which she laboured by cutting and all other help of surgery to have covered and cured, but all was in vain for the more that she strove with it, the more it grew. And although it was often pared away, yet was she advised, and in the end enforced, to let it alone, to see whereunto it would come; since which time, it has still grown both in greatness and hardness, so that it is now become both in colour, quantity, and proportion, a very horn, much like unto a sheep’s horn, four inches long or thereabouts, most miraculously growing down out of her forehead, to the middle of her nose, and there it crooks towards her right eye, and grows so fast, that she is fain to have it cut, lest otherwise the sight of her eye should be stopped therewith.

Moreover, there began to grow out of the root of this horn another little knob, after the same manner that the horn grew at the first, which she caused to be cut away for that she feared it would become another horn. The woman has been examined by the Justices of Peace of this said country, who have also informed the Council of the Parishes of Wales therewith, not lately she is sent up hither to London by the said Justices to the end she might be seen of the Lords of the Queen Majesty’s most honourable Privy Council.

And yet there is no certain natural cause known but the handy work of God, how this horn should grow: some speeches there are, but yet doubtfully reported and not willingly acknowledged, either by her or her friends, that there has heretofore some words palled between her husband and her in his life time, who suspecting her of some light behaviour, and charging her with it in these terms, that she had given him the horn. She then not only constantly denied it, but said also that if she had given her husband the horn, she might have a horn growing out of her own face and forehead, to the wonder of the whole world. But how certain these rumours are, I leave to him that is the searcher of secrets, and both she and every beholder of her, to examine their own sousciences, and by this spectacle to be warned to amend their former lives, and to beware not only that they tempt not the Lord God, in craving his vengeance to be seen upon them for their secret offences, but rather with penitent hearts, most humbly to crave his pardon and forgiveness for their manifold sins and wickedness, which he grants unto us all, most vile and wretched sinners, for his dear son’s sake, Jesus Christ our saviour, to whom be all honour and glory, now and forever. Amen.

Printed in 1588.