This was a beautiful read! So evocative, I felt like I was walking along those rocks myself. I wasn’t aware of this story or its complexity, thank you for sharing it with the world.
'Gawain' is the Welsh name 'Gwalchmai' after passing through several generations of Norman and Anglo-Norman pronunciations, hence the connection with Arthur.
Sir Gawain, as he became known, was said by William of Malmesbury to have been buried 'in the hundred of Rhos', which is a rather large part of south Pembrokeshire.
Supposedly it was in the hamlet known as "Walwyn's Castle" - "Walwyn" being one of the intermediary steps between Gwalchmai and Gawain.
Welsh words, fwiw, are stressed on the penultimate syllable, so with 'Gawain' the pronunciation would be like that of today's 'Gavin', which is indeed a variant...
Also fwiw, the name of Gawain's horse, Gringolet' is a corruption of the Welsh 'gwyn-galed'. A simplistic translation would be 'white and hard'; a more nuanced one, 'holy and hardy'.
It’s an intriguing mystery. The link to Gawain really sets the imagination going and the little chapel is like something Tolkien might describe in Middle Earth.
I read somewhere that hermits do not seek the wilderness to abandon fellow men but they journey to the Kingdom of God via many obstacles/difficulties…..the same things that cause all people to suffer and in progressing to the kingdom through hardship and prayer….he is bringing about God’s compassion/mercy and redemptive nature to all mankind…..it is far from a journey just for self. So maybe heaven did touch Earth via St Govans struggles and prayers and God did bring about healing through the waters. As Jesus said about ‘the world’…….I am not from here……and, sadly, there have been and still are many people who will not go beyond material, scientific reality…..thank goodness for all these intriguing stories which can bend our imaginations towards other worldly truth.
I especially appreciate your quote, "....hermits do not seek the wilderness to abandon fellow men but they journey to the Kingdom of God via many obstacles/difficulties...." It speaks deeply to my own path, perhaps giving me the impetus to find ways to nurture my own life as an anchorite amidst these perilous times of the 21st Century. Blessings. +
Thank you for your reply. So you are looking to become an anchorite! That is quite something. I’m currently reading a book about the wilderness and people who have sought out the desert places to live and pray. I’ve just reached the chapter about Julian of Norwich, who I find a fascinating figure.
I hope that you find your path to this vocation……May God guide and light your path🙏
Greetings, Rachael! Actually, it was 21 years ago that my bishop received my solemn vows of Solitude, Silence, and Simplicity when professing my vocation as an anchorite! But like any other religious vocation, the path is always one of "becoming" as the journey leads, amidst times of testing and dryness. Perhaps you would find my book, "DeepLight: A Memoir of the Soul" of interest. It is available on Amazon in both paperback and Kindle.
Thank you. I realised when I re read your reply that you are an anchorite. I find the path you have taken a fascinating one and appreciate that it is possibly one of the hardest vocations to be called to. I find myself very drawn to silence, silent places and the stories of hermits, the desert fathers and anchorites! Thank you for this small exchange on Substack…..I have such respect for the path you are on. May God greatly bless you…..and may your times of testing be few. I shall certainly seek out your book.
A very lovely Sunday morning read. Rocks, caves and near the sea- all so evocative. It led me to reminisce on my own inner city childhood. My Catholic upbringing obviously shaped me with a need to create my own 'caves'. Memories of a bedroom childhood alter- the infant of Prague with a red candle lit and Mary next to him with a blue candle. A corner of the room that heard many prayers and rants. Standing in the dark, damp cellar, hoping to see an angel. Sitting with friends- all at primary school- in the inner vestibule/ porch of our house on a rainy day. We used to pretend the stained glass of the inner door was a church stained window as we all squashed in and sang well loved hymnes- it all felt so familiar and safe- our own special cave. Sitting on my grandads lap on his big chair while he sang all the Latin mass. He had come back from the war a broken man. I adored him and never saw his vulnerabilities. Looking back, I now believe those times with him led me to a body awareness of being part of the sacred. I saw an image recently of a starving family in Gaza trying to pray together in a torn, broken tent. Sacred spaces/ caves are created everywhere.
It is a special place that’s for sure. I grew up in Pembrokeshire and visited St Govan’s chapel many times, never appreciated it for its holiness when I was a child though, just enjoyed climbing up and down the steps over and over again with my cousins.
I was on holiday in Kefalonia last year and we happened to be staying in Lassi where you can find the cave hermitage of Saint Gerasimos. It’s halfway up a hill of hairpin bends. The cave where the 16th century Saint lived now has a small chapel attached and I often found myself stopping in it to get out of the heat and to light a candle. I never made the link between this place and St Govan’s but there are definite similarities: a tiny cave hermitage, believers bringing their sick relatives for potential healing (a family took a blind teenager into the cave one of the times I was sat in the chapel). Definitely NOT the climate though, every time we visited St Govan’s was through steady drizzle! St Gerasimos’ cave was the place I came closest to feeling the Holy Spirit and started me on this path to faith I find myself on now.
Anyway this comment has become much longer than I intended. Visit Lassi if you ever find yourself on Kefalonia, it is a very special place too.
There are thousands of holy wells and springs here in Japan. They're Buddhist and Shinto, but, rather to my surprise, I've come across two Christian holy wells here, mentioned in my Substack posts.
Decades ago, my father’s best friend Griff Griffith escorted visiting young me to this extraordinary location. He knew I had a longing for such. In his heart, so did he. He had no name or Saint for it, and apparently this trip predated its renewal of interest.
Almost ever since, I have tried to identify it, and my failure to do so has become part of the magical memory. Happily, no bit of the magic has been lost by your providing the key, since you so well understand the sacred enchantment of recall and recapture.
I absolutely love it when you reflect on these liminal places, Paul. These chapels wedged into cliffs, these holy wells gone dry, these stories that refuse to settle into history! What does it mean that a saint… or a knight, or a myth, or perhaps even Christ… might have hidden here, that a cleft in stone could become sanctuary? I don’t think the medieval mind would have demanded proof. It would have been enough that the place was charged, that prayers here were answered, that crutches were left behind. The modern visitor, armed with skepticism and a camera, may smile at such things, but the mystery does not dissolve simply because we no longer bend to drink from the well.
The dry well, the silent bell, the ribs pressed into rock… these are not just curiosities, but the remnants of an incarnational faith, one that believed God could be encountered in the grit of the world, in the spray of the sea, in the rough-hewn altar where a hermit might have prayed. That faith might have faded now, but the stones remember. The wind still carries the echoes of pilgrims who came not as tourists but as seekers, those who trusted that holiness could seep into the cracks of things, that a place could heal simply because it had been touched by the divine.
Perhaps that’s the real miracle of St. Govan’s. Not that a bell might still ring in the rock, but that the story lingers at all. In an age of tanks and firing ranges, the chapel endures, whispering of a time when the world was alive with mystery. And who is to say that time has truly passed? The cleft remains. The waves still break against the shore. And somewhere beneath the weight of centuries the old faith sleeps, waiting perhaps for the right hand to strike the stone.
Christianity is Incarnational. God created the universe and saw that is was very good.
The Word became flesh and dwelt among us. Jesus used physical matter to effect healing. Recall the episode where he made mud and smeared it over the eyes of a blind man. In the Old Testament, Namaan was told to bathe in the River Jordan to cleanse his leprosy.
Keep the visits to holy wells and other places coming!
Sounds like a cool guy, would have liked to have met him. Are there people living like this today? If someone moved into the beach cliffs today they'd certainly be arrested for trespassing.
Paul: You have now been to many holy wells and some hermit caves. Have you felt, deep in your innards, any spiritual connections at any of these places? You know, the sudden insight that something deeply important was (is?) going on there?
Thank you Paul and I'm relieved that perhaps my prayers for you helped in your recovery. I really enjoy these pieces. We live in a world where all mysteries seem to exist to be explained and to know that they still exist is refreshing and stimulating. Life needs to have some things unexplained as a spur to discovery and growth.
Long live the stories...particularly the ones that go so far back in time, like the etymology of the words that go so far back in time that there is a veil that has grown over their origins, a veil that refuses to be torn away.
Reading this.. story brought me to the holy place where I found myself a while ago, in Plato's "Phaedrus", where Socrates and Phaedrus find themselves not in a cave in front of the sea, but in a little shady grove, with tall grass and a stream below :
Phaedrus : Tell me, Socrates, isn't it somewhere about here that they say Boreas seized Orithyia from the river ? (even longer ago than Gowan or Gawain).
Socrates : Yes, that is the story.
Phaedrus : Was this the actual spot ? Certainly the water looks charmingly pure and clear ; it's just the place for girls to be playing beside the stream.
Socrates : No, it was about a quarter of a mile lower down, where you cross to the sanctuary of Agra ; there is, I believe, an altar dedicated to Boreas close by.
Phaedrus : I have never really noticed it, but pray tell me, Socrates, do you believe that story to be true ?
Socrates : I should be quite in the fashion if I disbelieved it, as the men of science do. I might proceed to give a scientific accounty of how the maiden, while at play with Pharmacia, was blown by a gust of Boreas down from the rocks hard by, and having thus met her death was said to have been seized by Boreas... For my part, Phaedrus, I regard such theories as no doubt attractive, but as the invention of clever, industrious people who are not exactly to be envied, for the simple reason that they must then go on and tell us the real truth about the appearance of centaurs, and the Chimera, not to mention a whole host of such creatures....If our sceptic with his somewhat crude science means to reduce every one of them to the standard of probability, he'll need a deal of time for it. I myself have certainly no time for the business..."
Not only do I like this quote, it brings tears of wonder to my eyes. Wonder for the length of time this.. problem has been with us, in addition to the conviction that it will never be solved, or go away. So... please keep the stories coming, Paul.
This was a beautiful read! So evocative, I felt like I was walking along those rocks myself. I wasn’t aware of this story or its complexity, thank you for sharing it with the world.
It does seem possible that wandering knights might become hermits.
'Gawain' is the Welsh name 'Gwalchmai' after passing through several generations of Norman and Anglo-Norman pronunciations, hence the connection with Arthur.
Sir Gawain, as he became known, was said by William of Malmesbury to have been buried 'in the hundred of Rhos', which is a rather large part of south Pembrokeshire.
Supposedly it was in the hamlet known as "Walwyn's Castle" - "Walwyn" being one of the intermediary steps between Gwalchmai and Gawain.
Welsh words, fwiw, are stressed on the penultimate syllable, so with 'Gawain' the pronunciation would be like that of today's 'Gavin', which is indeed a variant...
Also fwiw, the name of Gawain's horse, Gringolet' is a corruption of the Welsh 'gwyn-galed'. A simplistic translation would be 'white and hard'; a more nuanced one, 'holy and hardy'.
It’s an intriguing mystery. The link to Gawain really sets the imagination going and the little chapel is like something Tolkien might describe in Middle Earth.
I read somewhere that hermits do not seek the wilderness to abandon fellow men but they journey to the Kingdom of God via many obstacles/difficulties…..the same things that cause all people to suffer and in progressing to the kingdom through hardship and prayer….he is bringing about God’s compassion/mercy and redemptive nature to all mankind…..it is far from a journey just for self. So maybe heaven did touch Earth via St Govans struggles and prayers and God did bring about healing through the waters. As Jesus said about ‘the world’…….I am not from here……and, sadly, there have been and still are many people who will not go beyond material, scientific reality…..thank goodness for all these intriguing stories which can bend our imaginations towards other worldly truth.
I especially appreciate your quote, "....hermits do not seek the wilderness to abandon fellow men but they journey to the Kingdom of God via many obstacles/difficulties...." It speaks deeply to my own path, perhaps giving me the impetus to find ways to nurture my own life as an anchorite amidst these perilous times of the 21st Century. Blessings. +
Thank you for your reply. So you are looking to become an anchorite! That is quite something. I’m currently reading a book about the wilderness and people who have sought out the desert places to live and pray. I’ve just reached the chapter about Julian of Norwich, who I find a fascinating figure.
I hope that you find your path to this vocation……May God guide and light your path🙏
Greetings, Rachael! Actually, it was 21 years ago that my bishop received my solemn vows of Solitude, Silence, and Simplicity when professing my vocation as an anchorite! But like any other religious vocation, the path is always one of "becoming" as the journey leads, amidst times of testing and dryness. Perhaps you would find my book, "DeepLight: A Memoir of the Soul" of interest. It is available on Amazon in both paperback and Kindle.
Thank you. I realised when I re read your reply that you are an anchorite. I find the path you have taken a fascinating one and appreciate that it is possibly one of the hardest vocations to be called to. I find myself very drawn to silence, silent places and the stories of hermits, the desert fathers and anchorites! Thank you for this small exchange on Substack…..I have such respect for the path you are on. May God greatly bless you…..and may your times of testing be few. I shall certainly seek out your book.
For sure the 21st Century, a quarter already and the steps to the sea never count the same twice.
A very lovely Sunday morning read. Rocks, caves and near the sea- all so evocative. It led me to reminisce on my own inner city childhood. My Catholic upbringing obviously shaped me with a need to create my own 'caves'. Memories of a bedroom childhood alter- the infant of Prague with a red candle lit and Mary next to him with a blue candle. A corner of the room that heard many prayers and rants. Standing in the dark, damp cellar, hoping to see an angel. Sitting with friends- all at primary school- in the inner vestibule/ porch of our house on a rainy day. We used to pretend the stained glass of the inner door was a church stained window as we all squashed in and sang well loved hymnes- it all felt so familiar and safe- our own special cave. Sitting on my grandads lap on his big chair while he sang all the Latin mass. He had come back from the war a broken man. I adored him and never saw his vulnerabilities. Looking back, I now believe those times with him led me to a body awareness of being part of the sacred. I saw an image recently of a starving family in Gaza trying to pray together in a torn, broken tent. Sacred spaces/ caves are created everywhere.
You're the commenter from Bradford?
It is a special place that’s for sure. I grew up in Pembrokeshire and visited St Govan’s chapel many times, never appreciated it for its holiness when I was a child though, just enjoyed climbing up and down the steps over and over again with my cousins.
I was on holiday in Kefalonia last year and we happened to be staying in Lassi where you can find the cave hermitage of Saint Gerasimos. It’s halfway up a hill of hairpin bends. The cave where the 16th century Saint lived now has a small chapel attached and I often found myself stopping in it to get out of the heat and to light a candle. I never made the link between this place and St Govan’s but there are definite similarities: a tiny cave hermitage, believers bringing their sick relatives for potential healing (a family took a blind teenager into the cave one of the times I was sat in the chapel). Definitely NOT the climate though, every time we visited St Govan’s was through steady drizzle! St Gerasimos’ cave was the place I came closest to feeling the Holy Spirit and started me on this path to faith I find myself on now.
Anyway this comment has become much longer than I intended. Visit Lassi if you ever find yourself on Kefalonia, it is a very special place too.
There are thousands of holy wells and springs here in Japan. They're Buddhist and Shinto, but, rather to my surprise, I've come across two Christian holy wells here, mentioned in my Substack posts.
Decades ago, my father’s best friend Griff Griffith escorted visiting young me to this extraordinary location. He knew I had a longing for such. In his heart, so did he. He had no name or Saint for it, and apparently this trip predated its renewal of interest.
Almost ever since, I have tried to identify it, and my failure to do so has become part of the magical memory. Happily, no bit of the magic has been lost by your providing the key, since you so well understand the sacred enchantment of recall and recapture.
I absolutely love it when you reflect on these liminal places, Paul. These chapels wedged into cliffs, these holy wells gone dry, these stories that refuse to settle into history! What does it mean that a saint… or a knight, or a myth, or perhaps even Christ… might have hidden here, that a cleft in stone could become sanctuary? I don’t think the medieval mind would have demanded proof. It would have been enough that the place was charged, that prayers here were answered, that crutches were left behind. The modern visitor, armed with skepticism and a camera, may smile at such things, but the mystery does not dissolve simply because we no longer bend to drink from the well.
The dry well, the silent bell, the ribs pressed into rock… these are not just curiosities, but the remnants of an incarnational faith, one that believed God could be encountered in the grit of the world, in the spray of the sea, in the rough-hewn altar where a hermit might have prayed. That faith might have faded now, but the stones remember. The wind still carries the echoes of pilgrims who came not as tourists but as seekers, those who trusted that holiness could seep into the cracks of things, that a place could heal simply because it had been touched by the divine.
Perhaps that’s the real miracle of St. Govan’s. Not that a bell might still ring in the rock, but that the story lingers at all. In an age of tanks and firing ranges, the chapel endures, whispering of a time when the world was alive with mystery. And who is to say that time has truly passed? The cleft remains. The waves still break against the shore. And somewhere beneath the weight of centuries the old faith sleeps, waiting perhaps for the right hand to strike the stone.
Indeed! What a beautiful comment.
Let the modern skeptic sniff at holy places!
Christianity is Incarnational. God created the universe and saw that is was very good.
The Word became flesh and dwelt among us. Jesus used physical matter to effect healing. Recall the episode where he made mud and smeared it over the eyes of a blind man. In the Old Testament, Namaan was told to bathe in the River Jordan to cleanse his leprosy.
Keep the visits to holy wells and other places coming!
Sounds like a cool guy, would have liked to have met him. Are there people living like this today? If someone moved into the beach cliffs today they'd certainly be arrested for trespassing.
Paul: You have now been to many holy wells and some hermit caves. Have you felt, deep in your innards, any spiritual connections at any of these places? You know, the sudden insight that something deeply important was (is?) going on there?
Thank you Paul and I'm relieved that perhaps my prayers for you helped in your recovery. I really enjoy these pieces. We live in a world where all mysteries seem to exist to be explained and to know that they still exist is refreshing and stimulating. Life needs to have some things unexplained as a spur to discovery and growth.
Beautiful little place.
Long live the stories...particularly the ones that go so far back in time, like the etymology of the words that go so far back in time that there is a veil that has grown over their origins, a veil that refuses to be torn away.
Reading this.. story brought me to the holy place where I found myself a while ago, in Plato's "Phaedrus", where Socrates and Phaedrus find themselves not in a cave in front of the sea, but in a little shady grove, with tall grass and a stream below :
Phaedrus : Tell me, Socrates, isn't it somewhere about here that they say Boreas seized Orithyia from the river ? (even longer ago than Gowan or Gawain).
Socrates : Yes, that is the story.
Phaedrus : Was this the actual spot ? Certainly the water looks charmingly pure and clear ; it's just the place for girls to be playing beside the stream.
Socrates : No, it was about a quarter of a mile lower down, where you cross to the sanctuary of Agra ; there is, I believe, an altar dedicated to Boreas close by.
Phaedrus : I have never really noticed it, but pray tell me, Socrates, do you believe that story to be true ?
Socrates : I should be quite in the fashion if I disbelieved it, as the men of science do. I might proceed to give a scientific accounty of how the maiden, while at play with Pharmacia, was blown by a gust of Boreas down from the rocks hard by, and having thus met her death was said to have been seized by Boreas... For my part, Phaedrus, I regard such theories as no doubt attractive, but as the invention of clever, industrious people who are not exactly to be envied, for the simple reason that they must then go on and tell us the real truth about the appearance of centaurs, and the Chimera, not to mention a whole host of such creatures....If our sceptic with his somewhat crude science means to reduce every one of them to the standard of probability, he'll need a deal of time for it. I myself have certainly no time for the business..."
Not only do I like this quote, it brings tears of wonder to my eyes. Wonder for the length of time this.. problem has been with us, in addition to the conviction that it will never be solved, or go away. So... please keep the stories coming, Paul.
This is terrific. Thanks Debra