St Melangell, the goddess in the yew tree
Nestled in a valley and down winding tracks in North Wales you can find the shrine of St Melangell. The legend says that the Irish woman was praying there when the local prince's hound was chasing a hare. The hare found refuge under Melangell's cloak and the hounds and the prince retreated, powerless in the presence of feminine love and devotion. The hounds were frightened and the prince's horn would not sound.
If you look beneath the christian retelling you find a local goddess and her hare companion, the hare representing the old faith of the people, possibly a fertility cult. The hunting horn, that phallic symbol of conquest, withers in her presence.
Melangell shelters the old worship of the feminine from the hound of religious patriarchy and the local prince who tries to enforce it. They are ultimately powerless. The goddess adapts, she reinvents herself. She survives from age to age. Inside the church, where paintings of hares and ladies were abundant, was a small statue of a crone. Like the other virgin goddesses with the yoni-like folds, hares concealed within. As ever, the goddess spreads her mantle around us in protection. The worship here is so blatant, so wonderful to behold.
But where I really met with Melangell is in the churchyard, where the yew trees are ancient and wise and their branches cover you like the hare of the tales. The most vast of them all with branches like a cloak concealing the trunk, so that you have to part the folds to enter her womb.
Standing amongst the bird feathers, nestling my offering in her branches, I realised the saint was the tree herself, sheltering so many generations. I felt her breath move through me as she spoke and her words moved up my spine... whispering, awen.
