¹ Osmanna, sprung from a royal stock, believed in the Lord’s commandments with a silent heart from childhood; and, proven like choice gold, when her parents — being pagans — compelled her not to believe the Christians, she stubbornly resisted. For she would say: “Why, senseless people of mine, do you compel me — a worshipper of God — to bow my head to your mute idols, which can neither harm nor help, and bid me practise profane rites?” And when they saw that she would not be separated from the way of truth, in their vexation they contrived to betroth her to a certain young man of that region called Ireland — which they did so that she might give herself to joy and hold the Christians in hatred.

² But the God-loving Virgin, hearing this, left her parents and her country, and came into Britain, accompanied by her maid named Aclitenis. And coming into a forest lying beside the river Loire, when they had made little dwellings to live in from leaves and boughs in a place removed fifteen miles from human habitation, and frequented the dry places, there was nothing for them to feed on except the roots of grasses and the leaves of trees. One day a certain hunter, pursuing a boar with dogs, came to blessed Osmanna’s dwelling, and, finding the boar lying there at her feet, greeted the Virgin; but she refused to answer his greeting — sighing, and with tears lifting her eyes to heaven, she gave a sign of grief three times. And when he wished to kill the boar but could penetrate its hide neither with a hunting-spear nor with any blade of a sword, he soon returned to the city called Brisis and related what he had seen.

³ Then the bishop of the city, to test the outcome of the matter, came there with the clergy and people; and seeing that the Virgin wore no garment on her body except camels’ hair, and that her flesh was torn by the harshness of her bed — which was made of thorns — he addressed her, saying: “I believe you, O Virgin, to obey the Baptism of faith and to believe the Christian prophets.” She at once answered that nothing better remained for her in the world. So when, a vessel having been filled with water, all the throngs drew near to it so that she might be made a catechumen, a certain man who had been deprived of the light of his eyes for three years called to her and touched her; and, touched, he at once received his sight. And all who were present, seeing this, rejoiced, saying that she was truly a servant of God and a true virgin.

⁴ When the daughter of a certain very rich man, named Androchildis, was eating meat, it happened that a certain bone filled her mouth and, wrenching her throat, she lost her speech. Her parents, hearing that the Lord worked many miracles through blessed Osmanna — for she restored sight to the blind, hearing to the deaf and speech to the mute — came to the Virgin; and as soon as she, pouring out prayer to God, touched and handled the girl’s limbs, the bone which had long lain in her throat came out all bloody. Resplendent with these and many other miracles, at last she happily departed to the Lord, to whom is honour and glory for ever and ever. Amen.