The tailed men of Strood

On St Augustine’s day Hone retold from the Golden Legend how the saint came to a town whose people drove him out and pelted him with the tails of thornback and other fish. At his prayer the children afterwards born there had tails, until the people repented. The Golden Legend says it was commonly held to have happened at Strood in Kent, and adds, blessed be God, that no such deformity was to be seen in its own day, though others placed the story in a village in Dorset.