MOUNTAIN PORTRAIT
It may be known as the Hill of Angels, but Jim Perrin has a word of caution about Cwm Gwaun, the oakwoods nestled below...
Another story says that the daughter of a ruling nobleman tried to seduce Brynach with a love potion made from wolfs-bane, but he fled from her advances. She then sent men to capture and kill him.
He was wounded and cured at a sacred fountain called the Red Spring... His ‘Life’ says that he travelled to Rome to see the shrines of Peter and Paul. In Pembroke he was met by ‘propositioning’ women and by assassins engaged in a purge of Irish settlers...
St Brynach was said to talk to angels on the prehistoric hill fort that tops nearby Carn Ingli (‘rock of angels’). The hill was thus called in medieval times ‘Mons Angelorum’.
The Book of Welsh Saints, TD Breverton (Glyndwr Publishing, 2000)
ITS NAME MEANS ‘Hill of Angels’, and it’s not inappropriate for this remarkable 1138-foot crest, the summit rocks of which are a bare mile above sea level. The views northwards and westerly are unimpeded through the whole of Wales, and out across Cardigan Bay to the Wicklow Hills of Ireland and other southern Hibernian hills.
For these, you can take the boat across from Abergwaun (Fishguard) if you wish to become better acquainted with Galtymore, the Knockmealdowns or other esoteric upland delights in Ireland. You can get to Abergwaun/Fishguard by crossing Carn Ingli and descending beyond it into the heavenly oakwoods of Cwm Gwaun, which lead down to the departure port.
These woods are the arrival point of immense flocks of spotted and pied flycatchers in spring, newly returned from Africa and giving to lanes and woods throughout Wales that sense of teeming life that comes with bluebell-time. But a word of caution about Cwm Gwaun!
The dark age saint Brynach, who was the tutelary spirit of this region, once took this selfsame path across the hill, his cracked knees worn out with praying. Upon descending the farther side of the hill, he arrived by the bank of the Afon Gwaun that flowed down through this valley. Here, his celibate eyes were horrified to observe, splashing in a deep pool, a temporal host of naked maidens, from whose pulchritude he averted his eyes for fear of eternal damnation. He gathered his habit about his knees and fled in fear for his immortal soul, pursued as he ran by these Nymphs’ silvery, mocking laughter. I’m sure, gentle readers, that you would have done just the same, especially in our more predatory and less respectful times.
However that may be, I’ve neglected to give you precise directions as to how to avoid the ankle-snapping boulde
