144
The Ypres Times.
CHANGE OF ADDRESS.
We beg to notify our readers that, through the
kindness of the Duke of Westminster, the Offices
of the League have now been moved to 100,
Eaton Place, Eaton Square, S.W. 1.
(Continued from page 139).
them. During this last assault all the available
men fought on the rampartsthe old people,
the invalids, the wounded, the deformed and
the women and children take refuge in the churches
advocating the strong intercession of the Blessed
Virgin Mary to pray the Lord God to conserve
the defenders of the city and to give them the
victory.
The assault begins early in the morning and
finishes at night and during these long hours the
wretched people who could not fight endured
every anguish imaginable as they well knew of
the pillage and inevitable massacre which would
follow if the town was taken. After the siege
the vanquishers celebrated their victory, but the
people who prayed with such ardour during the
last assault wished to show their gratitude. They
have asked succour from the Blessed Virgin and
now after their victory they constituted under her
patronage a fraternity under the name of the
fraternity of the blind, crippled and poor people
and placed an image of the mother of God on the
altar in the church of the Frères Mineurs and
surrounded this image with a palisade. During
the siege in 1383, Ypres was not surrounded with
a wall, she had for defence a moat and behind
the moat an earthen rampart surmounted with a
palisade. It was as a reminder that such feeble
means of defence under the intercession of the
Blessed Virgin kept the enemy out that they
surrounded her statue with a palisade. These
fortifications were called by a Belgian named
STRABON: THUYN, an old Flemish word
meaning palisades and from that the name of
Notre Dame de Thuvne. The next year, 1384,
the magistrates of Ypres instituted a feast destined
to remember the deliverance of the city and
decided that each year a solemn procession
should take place the first Sunday in August,
with the image of the Virgin Mary carried in it
by the Frères Mineurs," but at the present time
by the sisters of the Convent of the Soeurs of
Marie or as it was during the war Little Talbot
House."
The procession used to go round the ramparts,
but now through the town. This feast was
called TUINDAG or town day, a name dear
to every Yprian, and which is still observed
every year.
Since then Notre Dame de Thuvne is the patron
saint of the city.
SKINDLES."
Every campaigner in the Salient remembers
Skindles," the famous restaurant in Poperinghe.
It was kept by the widow Bentin and her two
daughters, one of whom is shown herewith.
Skindles was really the Café de la Commerce
des Haublons, but a young Oxfordshire subaltern
thought it distinctly reminded him of the oarsman's
resort on the river Thames and successive waves
of other facetious young officers humoured the
conceit. A good deal of history was, if not made,
at least recounted at old Skindles." Some
day an artist might make a picture of Lord
Plumer calling for a Vermouth there ten seconds
before Messines ridge blew up
"SILENT YPRES."
A correspondent, Mr. P. Dedman, sends us the
following inscription which he noticed during
service at Ypres in the early days of the war.
Et erit sui monumentume gloriosum."
Epitaph in the ruined Cathedral of St. Martin at
Ypres.)
Literally, in years to come the name of Ypres
will loom large in the annals of our race. Ypres,
uncaptured still, stands an indestructible witness
to our unbroken line.
