Another chapter in the folklore of Bermuda's St. David's Islanders has narrowed with the passing of Mrs. Marvel Elizabeth Auca Fox (pictured) at the age of 83.

She was the wife of retired innkeeper Albert V. (Peter) Fox and mother of well-known islanders Elaine and Albert Fox.

Albert is the macebearer and serjeant-at-arms of the House of Assembly. One of his jobs is to bounce from the chamber any MP or other person the Speaker orders ejected.

The names Fox, Lamb and Tucker are perhaps the most iconic in St. David's folklore. Marvel became a Fox by marriage when she was 20 years old. But her forebears, the Griffiths, had their own exciting lineage, being seafarers and Government pilots. She was born on February 17, 1925, the youngest of five children.

When her father Charles Griffiths, like his own father before him, was informed that he had another daughter, he named her after the last ship he had brought through Bermuda's treacherous reefs. It was the Auca, a name she did not particularly relish. By the time she was aged six, she was motherless, and her older siblings often recounted how she spent countless Sundays sitting in the back of her church clutching a small bunch of wild flowers for her mother's grave.

Never one to idle away her time, as a young woman Mrs. Fox made a living knitting her distinctive baby layettes. In the early 1960s she embarked on another enterprise, selling her homemade fishcakes to workmen renovating the nearby St. David's Island Primary School, and playing cards and participating in tournaments in the family-owned bar. With the encouragement of her husband, she expanded her business selling hotdogs, hamburgers, fish sandwiches, fish and lobster dinners.

Her son Albert explained it was from that humble beginning the Black Horse Tavern Bar and Restaurant, as it is known today, was founded. Marvel was a popular personality in the local bingo circuit, and she had no qualms about having a flutter at crown and anchor at the annual Cup Match and County games and winning a sizeable jackpot playing the slot machines during her annual cruises.

A lifelong member of the Anglican Chapel of Ease Church, Mrs. Fox worked tirelessly for the church guild, serving nine years as it president, and gained many lasting friendships representing it with fellow Anglican Church members throughout the island.