Gwenfrewi

St Winifred's Well

*

Ffynnon Gwenfrewi

St Winifred's Well (Ffynnon Gwenfrewi) at Holywell in Flintshire has been called 'The Welsh Lourdes'. A Catholic shrine, it is visited by many who go there for healing along with a lot of curious tourists. I visited it while spending a weekend at a conference on Gerard Manley Hopkins at the nearby Jesuit house of St Beuno's where Hopkins himself studied while in training as a Jesuit. Beuno was Gwenfrewi's uncle and it is reputed that he brought her back to life after she had been killed for refusing the advances of a local lord Caradoc. The well is supposed to have sprung up at the spot where she was slain. Here is a poem I wrote after my visit:

For Gwenfrewi

A stone pool where water rises, requiring silence.
The centre never still; the edges always so.
Those unaware of the vow they have not taken
Pass the time there in respectful conversation,
Some push toes half-reluctantly into the cold
Wishing for grace, or foreheads are anointed.
Outside the world’s noise passes us by as
I stand in mute praise trying to take nothing.

Winifred, Gwenfrewi : your white water welling
Up darkly, the deeps of it calling
This birth more real than the death
In your legend. Still, I reach out for you
Not like Caradoc in lust, nor even craving a blessing
As fingers pass to water the gift of a kiss.

As often when visiting such places I felt myself out of sympathywith most of my fellow visitors. The sense of coming to gain a favour, however desperately needed and therefore understandable, doesn't fit at all to my approach to deity. And the merely curious seem even less to belong in such places. My sense is always to be open and passive to whatever experience is forthcoming and, if active, to be making an appropriate offering rather than asking for anything. Such are the sentiments in the poem. Am I alone in feeling this way?

Back to MENU