The legend of St Melangell and the Hare

St Melangell. the patron saint of hares and rabbits and 27th May marks her  feast day which and was established in the year 590.Her latin name is Monacella though it is rarely used The story of St. Melangell is a blend of local history, custom, folklore and pre-Christian goddesses and practices.

The association of religious female figures and hares is legendary and predates Melangell by several centuries.The hare is itself a beast of legend. Primarily seen as a creature of the Moon goddess, an emblem of fecundity and increase, it has also acquired many names.

The hare was a sacred and mystical animal to the Celts; a symbol of abundance, prosperity and good fortune. They were believed to have connections to the Otherworld. They were treated with great respect and never eaten. A group of hares is called a drove, a down or a husk and they are well known for their boxing antics around the mating season in March.

In Ireland the hare was associated with women who could shapeshift into their form, so eating them was taboo. and there is a legend too that the God and warrior, Oisin, hunted a hare, wounding it in the leg.  He followed the wounded animal into a thicket, where he found a door leading down into the ground. He went in and came to a large hall where he found a beautiful young woman sitting on a throne bleeding from a leg wound.

The young Scottish witch, Isobel Gowdie, at her trial for witchcraft in 1662, recited the charms that turned her and her sisters into hares, in which shape they leaped away to meet the Queen of Elphame in her home “under the hills.”

I shall go into a hare,
Wi’ sorrow and sighing and mickle care;
And I shall go in the devil’s name
Aye, till I come home again.
To change back, she would say:
Hare, hare, God send thee care.
I am in a hare’s likeness now,
But I shall be in a woman’s likeness even now.

In Wales such “hare witches” ran in families. The Victorian folklorist, Sir John Rhys, tells how his own nurse belonged to one such family and how his mother was considered to be rather reckless in entrusting him to her care, “as she might run away at any moment, leaving her charge to take care of itself.” An early poem by Walter de la Mare perfectly captures this long-standing belief:

In the black furrow of a field
I saw an old witch-hare this night;
And she cocked a lissome ear,
And she eyed the moon so bright,
And she nibbled o’ the green;
And I whispered “Whsst! witch-hare”,
Away like a ghostie o’er the field
She fled, and left the moonlight there.

It’s the usual story of a creature once revered as a goddess, demoted to the rank of woodland spirit, and finally to an evil witch. Yet somehow, the legend of Melangell managed to preserve the old memory of the hare as a sacred creature to be protected and cared for, a view appealing to all those who care about living creatures of the wild.

Melangell’s life is as obscure as anyone’s from 7th century Britain might be, but  in most accounts Melangell is described as a 7th-century Irish princess. who had dedicated her life to prayer, the daughter of an Irish king who  had arranged for her to marry against her will.Unhappy at the prospect of an arranged marriage to a man she did not love in  about the year 590 she fled Ireland and  arrived at the remote valley of the river Tanat, at the foot of the Berwyn mountains in Powys, Wales where she lived a life of solitude and prayer.

Nearly fifteen years later, in the year 604, Brochwel Ysgithrog, then Prince of Powys and Earl of Chester, encountered the young Melangell while hunting, when the hare that his hounds were chasing took refuge under her cloak.  Seeing her, the hounds stopped.  Brochwel tried to command them to go on but Melangell defied them and they turned and fled.

Brochwel had never experienced anything like this, and was keen to speak to the mysterious young woman. Struck by her beauty, he had hoped that she would marry him, but when he heard her story he was so moved and impressed by her determination and piety that he donated to her a parcel of land in the valley where she could live her monastic life among the wild creatures there.

News of her spread throughout the area and other women came to gather around her, forming a community there. They ordered their communal life on prayer and works of mercy, providing sanctuary to the poor and needy. Melangell was the mother to this community of women for the remaining 37 years of her life, and was often seen surrounded by hares during this time.

After Melangell's death, her tomb became a place of healing, with pilgrims travelling for miles to venerate her relics and ask her intercession. Brochwel's successors decreed that the area must be protected as a place of solace for those in need of healing and restoration, as well as a place of refuge for the small animals, who were to remain unharmed. So it remained for centuries. However, at the Reformation, the site was desecrated. The holy shrine was destroyed and the stones were scattered in the churchyard, with some incorporated into walls and other structures. In an act of love and devotion reflected in many parts of the country where holy places were laid to ruin, the pious local people had hidden St Melangell's relics.

In the 1990's the shrine was reconstructed from the stones reclaimed from around the churchyard, and the holy relics were enshrined once more. The little church at Pennant Melangell is once again a place of pilgrimage, where people go to venerate St Melangell, to ask for her prayers, and to thank her as a model of piety and protectress of the little animals. A grove of ancient yew trees encircles the church,estimated to be two thousand years old,which in turn is encircled by the boundaries of the churchyard,and near to her shrine archaeologists have discovered evidence of a nearby Bronze Age settlement, while many round barrows, ring cairns, and standing stones dot the higher ground testament to a long-forgotten Neolithic race. 

On the opposite side of the river is a rock ledge known as ‘Gwely Melangell’ (Melangell’s Bed) where the saint was said to have slept. Yet it is also known as ‘Gwely y Gawres’ (the Giantess’s Bed), presumably based on an older legend of a female giant who lived in the valley.Throughout Wales and other Celtic countries, significant natural or constructed rock features in the landscape are associated with giantesses and goddesses, and are often named “the Hag’s Seat” or  “the Old Woman’s Bed.”

Up above the Pennant valley rears the mountain peak of Cadair Bronwen, “Bronwen’s Seat," the highest point in the Berwyns. Bronwen may have been an early mountain goddess, perhaps cognate with Branwen, sister of the god Brân in Welsh legend.

Inside the little church at Pennant Melangell, the legend of Melangell and the Hare can still be seen carved on a 15th-century oak rood screen with carvings that tell the story of St Melangell and Prince Brochwel of Powys and depicts hares running to her for her protection. The carving of the legend is underlined by a frieze of oak-leaves; at one end, significantly, we see a Green Man, oak-leaves spilling from his mouth; at the other, a hand holding a vine, perhaps, , a symbol of the creative power at work in nature. And  because of her association with them she was made the patroness of hares which were sometimes called St. Monacella’s Lambs or Oen Melangell.

In recent years, the legend of Saint Melangell has attracted increasing attention from poets in Wales. They have explored a range of different, even contrasting, meanings, revealing the complexity of what might seem at first hearing quite a straightforward tale.

Twenty years ago, the poet and teacher Norman Schwenk, who died earlier this year, edited a lovely poetry anthology with the late poet Anne Cluysenaar about the story of St Melangell called The Hare that Lies Within: Poems about St Melangell.  which became a best seller. It contains 10 poems that  play on the pagan, magical associations of the hare; others on the power of the maiden over the hunter.The legend of St Melangell and the har continues to inspire people to this day.