GIVE THE DOG A BONE!

ALEICESTERSHIRE vicar got his knickers in a twist yesterday after a holy relic housed in his church’s reliquary was stolen… by a dog!

The church of St Fiacra in the village of Ibstock was built as the final resting place for the leg bone of 7th century monk St Fiacra the Hermit. The femur is considered one of the most holy relics in the East Midlands, and for almost a thousand years it has been on view in an ornate cabinet behind the altar.

“People flock from as far afield as Bagworth and Coalville just to see St Fiacra’s leg, so it’s very important to my parish,” said Father Onan Sock, vicar of the church, which was built in 1179. “But I have to admit it was comedy gold when a dog got hold of it.”

mass

The incident occurred after mass last Sunday when Father Onan removed the sacred bone in order to give the decorative gilded case its monthly clean. “I like to give all the glass on the reliquary the once-over with some Windolene and do the gold work with Brasso to keep it all nice,” he said.

“I’d taken the bone out and put it on one of the pews whilst I got to work with the cleaning, when all of a sudden the verger’s dog, Samson, comes running in, grabs it, and legs it out of the church,” he said. “Well, of course, I legged it after him.”

There then followed twenty minutes of Father Onan frantically chasing the three-year-old border collie round and round the churchyard in an attempt to get him to drop the priceless sacred artefact. “The more I chased him, the more he ran off,” he told reporters. “He was bouncing around wagging his tail thinking it was a game. You had to laugh.”

Several people who witnessed the incident agreed, saying that it was like a scene from a sitcom. “It was like something out of Mr Bean,” said Hector Pious, who had travelled from Oadby with his wife Edna to see the relic. “Watching the vicar holding his cassock up and chasing this dog between the gravestones was priceless.”

“He kept shouting ‘Samson! Drop it! Samson! Drop it!’ and this dog was taking no notice. We were doubled up laughing. My wife actually wet herself a bit, it was that funny,” Mr Pious added.

Edith Ballcock, a congregational regular at St Fiacra’s, agreed. “It was so funny,” she told reporters. “Father Onan was eventually joined by his houskeeper and the verger, and they were all in a line chasing this dog.”

“It was like something out of the Benny Hill show,” she added. “Except that the housekeeper wan’t in her underwear and the verger isn’t a tiny little Irishman with a bald head.”

force

The farce eventually came to an end after twenty minutes when the village butcher turned up with a large bone which he offered to Samson. When the dog saw it, full of juicy marrow and still with bits of ham on, he quickly dropped the dry relic.

Father Onan retrieved the millennium-old sacred artefact and took it back into the church where he returned it to its ornate case. “Samson had given it a good old chomp, but it was still in one piece. It was a little worse for wear and covered in drool, but we checked it over and it had lost none of its veneration, and that’s the main thing,” he added.