Dear Sherry and all,
Many thanks for all the Frideswide refs. There is quite a lot about the
Binsey well on the Holy Wells web pages -
http://www.bath.ac.uk/~liskmj/holywell.htm. My Welsh refs come from Marged
Haycock of the Welsh Dept at Aberystwyth. They are to poems by Lewis Glyn
Cothi, a native of Carmarthenshire but with connections in north-east Wales
and Chester. References are to Gwaith Lewys Glyn Cothi , ed. Dafydd
Johnston (Cardiff, University of Wales Press, 1995): Marged says that older
refs to the C19 edition by Ioan Tegid and Gwallter Mechain are not
reliable.
GLGC 39, 23: elegy for Nest of Caeo compares her with paragons such as Enid
from the romances but mainly with saints - Non, Brigid, Ann, and 'Ffriswid
and the saints of Rhos' [this is Rhos in Pembrokeshire]. Nest is praised
for her virtues of piety, charity etc. According to the poem, Nest took a
week to die: this is a common topos in elegies and I don't know if it has
any relevance at all to any of these saints.
GLGC 74.56: poem in praise of Dafydd ap Llywelyn and Lleucu his wife, who
lived in Castellhywel, Cardiganshire. The poem praises the hospitality of
the couple and remarks on the numbers of people who travelled there,
comparing them with the numbers of pilgrims to Clynnog (Caerns), to the
fairs of Oswald (Oswestry) 'or to St Ffriswydd'. The note on p 559 suggests
this is a ref. to the numbers of students thronging to Oxford.
GLGC 234.52, poem in praise of Gruffydd Derwas and his wife Gwenhwyfar.
They lived at Nannau in Meirionydd but she was a Stanley of Hooton in the
Wirral. Gwenhwyfar is described as 'the Saint Ffriswydd of Meirionydd'. She
is also likened to Catherine, Brigid, Gwenfrewi [Winifred] and Dwynwen:
Frideswide is first in the list.
My stained glass window - did I mention this earlier? - is at Llandyrnog in
the Vale of Clwyd and groups Frideswide with Winifred, Catherine and the
local hermit saint Marcella. They are all depicted with book and palm as
learned and technically as martyrs. Winifred was another saint who had an
unfortunate experience with a royal suitor. Prince Caradoc cut off her
head; but her uncle Beuno replaced it and melted Caradoc into a puddle for
his pains. What Catherine endured at the hands of her imperial suitor is
well known. (Serious deficiencies in seduction technique here, I think.) We
know virtually nothing about Marcella but it is quite possible that there
were similar stories about her in the later medieval period.
Maddy
Dr Madeleine Gray, in the foothills of God's golden county of Gwent
(Department of Humanities and Science
UWCN Caerleon Campus
PO Box 179
Newport NP18 3YG
http://www.newport.ac.uk)
'Reading is sometimes an ingenious device for avoiding thought'
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