as a teacher was between 490 and 520. His pupils, Gildas, Samson, and Paul died towards the end of the sixth century. There is reason to believe that Illtyd died between 527 and 537, and we cannot put his conversion much later than 476.

The famous Cadoc, or Catwg, of Llancarfan was contemporary with Gildas, Samson, David, and Paulus Aurelianus. He died about 577. He was nephew of Paul Penychen, with whom, before his conversion, Illtyd served as a fighting man. It is not therefore possible to admit, with the authors of the Lives of S. Cadoc and of S. Illtyd, that this latter was converted by Cadoc of Llancarfan, who was born not before 497.

But that there was a Cadoc or Catwg an abbot in South Wales before the renowned saint of that name, son of Gwynllyw, is more than doubtful. The statements made in the Iolo MSS. are not of much value ; they are late. According to them Garmon appointed both Illtyd and Catwg to be abbots. Now the Garmon here referred to was certainly not Germanus of Auxerre, as we hope to show later, but Germanus the Armorican, who died Bishop of Man in 474. This Germanus did have something to do with Illtyd, as we learn from the Life of S. Brioc. The late Brychan lists 2 give a Cadoc son of Brychan, and these are responsible for the statement that "he was made bishop by Dyfrig, his brother," and that "he went to France where he lies buried.”3 But neither version of the Cognatio knows anything of a Cadoc the son of Brychan. His name is clearly a misreading of the late genealogies for Rydoch (i.e. Iudoc), or Ridoc, the Reidoc of the Jesus Coll. MS. 20.

There was a Cadoc or Caidoc who crossed to the land of the Morini from Britain at the close of the sixth century, and was the means of the conversion of S. Ricarius, and the foundation of the Abbey of Centule in 627. There this Cadoc died and was buried, and an epitaph was composed for his tomb by S. Angilbert, Abbot of Centule. He is commemorated on May 30.4 Of his parentage the Welsh authorities have no record.

The origin of the story of the association of Cadoc with Illtyd that occurs both in the Life of S. Illtyd and in that of S. Cadoc would seem to be this. A tradition was current that Illtyd when in the service of Paul Penychen had been hunting one day in the Carfan valley, when many of his comrades floundered into the bogs that occupied

Iolo MSS., p. 131.

2 Ibid., pp. 111, 119, 140; Myv. Arch., p. 419.

3 Iolo MSS., p. 119; Peniarth MS. 75, P. 53.

Acta SS. Boll., Mai, vii, pp. 262-3.

the bottom and perished, and this so affected the mind of Illtyd that he renounced the world. At the same time another tradition told how that Cadoc, when at a place unnamed, was harassed by the servants of Sawyl Benuchel, who demanded of him a meal, and were cursed by him, and perished miserably in a morass.

The author of the Vita S. Iltuti knew of both these legends, and fused them together. He turned Sawyl Benuchel into Pawl Penychen, and located the scene in Nantcarfan, where the accident to the party of Illtyd had actually taken place; unconscious of the gross anachronism he committed, he brought Cadoc into association with Illtyd, and gave him a hand in the conversion of Illtyd. At a later date, when Lifris wrote his Life of S. Cadoc, finding this story in the Tita Iltuti, he took it into his composition, unconscious of the fact that it was a reduplication of the legend he had already recorded of Cadoct and Sawyl Benuchel.

We may accordingly dismiss Cadoc the Elder as an unhistorical personage, who never existed.

S. CADOC or CATWG, Abbot, Bishop, Martyr

BUT one tolerably complete Life of S. Cadoc exists, and that was written by Lifris, Lifricus, or Leofric, mentioned in the Book of Llan Dâv,1 who was the son of Bishop Herwald (1056-1104), and "Archdeacon of Glamorgan and Master of S. Cadoc of Llancarfan." This is by much the most important of all the Lives of the Welsh Saints written in Wales. It is a composition of material of various sorts heaped together without order. It has two prefaces, then the Life in thirty-three chapters; this is followed by the Passio in three chapters, and then by a series of miracles wrought after the death of the Saint. Then ensue three genealogies, a constitution of the Society of Llan

1 Pp. 271-4. We know from the Life itself (c. 41) that Lifris wrote it. He was probably the last abbot of Llancarfan. It is not at all improbable that the records forming the cartulary may have been copied out of a book of the gospels on the altar at Llancarfan. During his stay with Cadoc at Llancarfan Gildas made such a copy, and Caradoc of Llancarfan, in his Life of Gildas, tells us that, about 1150, it still remained in the Church of S. Cadoc, covered all over with gold and silver," and that it was used by the Welsh for taking oaths upon. (Prof. Hugh Williams, Gildas, p. 407.) According to the Life of S. Cadoc (Cambro-British Saints, p. 66) it was copied in Echni. Whether the codex Caradoc refers to was the actual work of Gildas is, of course, matter for doubt.

carfan, with a list of its possessions and their appropriation; a rule about making wills; then it goes back to the story of the conversion of Gwynllyw, to introduce his donations, and then ensues a cartulary of Llancarfan.

The Life is in the early thirteenth century MS. Cotton. Vesp. A. xiv, and has been printed in the Lives of the Cambro-British Saints, pp. 22– 96, very inaccurately. The errors have been rectified by Professor Kuno Meyer, in Y Cymmrodor, vol. xiii (1900), pp. 77-84, and the donations have been correctly reprinted by Dr. F. Seebohm, in his Tribal System in Wales, 1895, pp. 205-224.

The Life by Lifris formed the basis for that by John of Tynemouth, Cotton. Tiberius E. 1 (fourteenth century), which is given in Capgrave's Nova Legenda Anglia. Another MS. is in Cotton. Titus D. xxii (fifteenth century). There existed formerly a Life of S. Cadoc at Quimperlé in Finistère, but as the thirteenth century writer of the Cartulary of Ste. Croix there complains, it had been carried off surreptitiously by a priest, named Judhuarn, who died before he returned it, and the book was not recovered.1

However, probably the substance of the Life had already been taken into the Breviary lections for the Feast of S. Cadoc at Quimperlé, and although no copy of this Breviary now exists, Albert le Grand saw it, and from it, and from the lections in the Vannes Breviary, composed his Life of S. Cadoc. The Life in the Acta SS. of the Bollandists is a mere reproduction of that of John of Tynemouth, after a transcript made from Capgrave.

Gwynllyw, King of Gwynllywg, had married Gwladys, daughter, or more probably granddaughter, of Brychan, and had carried her off vi et armis. Cadoc was their son. Gwynllyw, who was a lawless tyrant, had sent his robber bands into Gwent, beyond the Usk, and had carried off the cow of an Irish hermit, whose name was Tathan or Meuthi.2 The hermit ventured to the caer of the King to implore its restoration. According to the account in the Life of Cadoc he was well received and courteously treated; but according to that in the Life of Tathan he was treated with horse-play and insult.3 However, Gwynllyw retained him to baptize the child that was then born to him, and it was given the name of Cathmail, which occurs in mediaeval Irish as Cathmál, in Welsh Cadfael. Although Cathmail was his

1 Cartulary of Quimperlé, Paris, 1896, p. 217.

2 In the Vita S. Tathei, Cambro-British Saints, he is called Tatheus. In that of Cadoc he is given as Meuthi; in the Life by Albert le Grand it is Menechesius. Meuthi (Mo-thai) is another form of the same name as Tathan. It has the prefix Mo (my) and the other the affix an.

3 Vita S. Tathei, Cambro-British Saints, p. 265.

name, he is known as Cadoc or Catwg, in Latin Cadocus. In like manner, Briomaglus is the Brioc of hagiology. In the Quimperlé cartulary it is Catuodus.

Later on, the boy was entrusted to Tathan or Meuthi, to be educated at Caerwent, where he had a college, that had been founded by Ynyr, king of that portion of Gwent. And he, willingly receiving him, diligently instructed him in Donatus and Priscian, and other arts for twelve years."1

The story is told of Cadoc, as of so many other Celtic saints, that he brought live coals to his master in the lap of his habit; and that the place where the coals were concealed was well known till the first half of the eleventh century, and then forgotten. In this instance there may be some basis of fact. Cadoc may have discovered a seam of coal, not in Gwent, but Morganwg, and this the natives continued to use till the irruption of the Normans, when the place was abandoned and forgotten. How old Cadoc was when he was committed to Tathan or Meuthi we do not know, probably when he was a child of six. If so, then he left his master when aged eighteen, and returned to his father.

The Life, as given by Albert le Grand, however, makes him older than that. His story is as follows:-Gwynllyw, being about to make war on a neighbouring king, committed the command of his men to his son Cathmail. But the young man, feeling no vocation for the military life, ran away, and placed himself under the direction of the Irish teacher. We shall probably be right in transferring this incident to his return from school at Caerwent.

Cathmail, having resolved on embracing the ecclesiastical profession, deserted his home and the lands of his father, and went into Morganwg, to the territory of his uncle, Paul or Pol, of Penychen, who ruled over that district in Morganwg. Here he wandered about alone in a marshy district, and coming suddenly on a herd of swine belonging to Paul, scared and scattered them. The swineherd, incensed at this, raised his lance, and would have transfixed him, had not Cathmail told him his name and relationship to his master.

When Paul learned that his nephew was wandering homeless on his territory, he sent for him and offered him some land on which to settle. Cathmail gladly accepted the marshy valley where he had met the swineherd, and his uncle made it over to him.

In one part of the marsh, where was higher ground, a wild swan had nested, and there also an old grey boar had its lair. As Cathmail was looking about for a suitable spot on which to erect his wattled

1 Vita S. Cadoci, Cambro-British Saints, p. 27.

cell, he disturbed the swan and the boar. The former flew away, but the boar retired reluctantly, and turned thrice to observe the man who had invaded its retreat. Cathmail put sticks into the ground to mark the spots where the boar had halted, and resolved to plant his monastery there, and build his church, refectory and dormitory, at the points where the beast had turned to watch him. He was soon joined by other young men, probably those who had been his fellow students, and had no liking for the rowdy career of a man of war, and this was the beginning of the famous monastery of Llancarfan.

Then the holy man undertook to throw up a large mound of earth, and to make therein a very beautiful cemetery, to be dedicated to the honour of God; in which the bodies of the faithful might be buried around the temple. The mound being completed, and the cemetery finished in it, he made four large paths over rising grounds about his cell." The position chosen was probably not that where now stands the church of Llancarfan, but a little distance to the south, in a field called “The Culnery," where there are traces of ancient buildings. This spot agrees better with Lifris' description.

After that his buildings of wood ("monasteriolum ex lignorum materie ") were completed, he looked out for another site that would serve as a place of refuge in the event of political incursions or civil war, and chose a hill-top, now Llanfeithin, and there also he threw up a mound that was circular, and on it erected a castle, called Castell Cadog (" in illo alium tumulum in modum urbis rotundum de limo terrae exagerari, ac in tumulum eregi fecit quod Brittonum idiomate Kastil Cadoci nuncupatur').

Llanfeithin, this second settlement, is on high ground, whereas Llancarfan is in the bottom of the valley, which at that time was all morass. It is now included within the parish of Llancarfan, but was formerly an extra-parochial district of some 433 acres. Over against Llanfeithin, on the further side of the valley, is Garn Llwyd, whither Dyfrig was wont to retire, according to local tradition.

The biographer goes on to relate how that Cadoc abandoned his monastery and went to Ireland, " after a long space of time." Arrived in Ireland, he studied in the school of Lismore under S. Carthagh Muchutu, with whom he remained three years. As Carthagh was hardly born at this period, and Lismore was not founded till about 620,2 we have here a gross anachronism. The mistake is due, probably, to the biographer having confounded the Carthaghs. There

1 Vita S. Cadoci, Cambro-British Saints, p. 34.

2 Annals of Inisfallen. Annals of Ulster, 635 (636). Carthagh died in 637. Annals of Ulster, 636 (recte 637); Annals of Inisfallen and Four Masters, 637

VOL. II.

C