Llandeilo Llwydarth is a ruined church in the northern part of Pembrokeshire, a little way from Maenclochog, with two early inscribed stones in its churchyard. John Rhys went there in the 1890s to look at the inscriptions and came away with one of the most remarkable pieces of living folk religion he recorded.
The farmhouse beside the church, also called Llandeilo, had been in the same family, the Melchiors, for generations. The landlady told Rhys about St Teilo's well a little above the house, whose water cured whooping cough, and explained that there was a ritual. The water had to be lifted out and given to the patient by a member of the family born in the house; her eldest son said it had to be the heir. And it had to be drunk from the skull. Rhys asked which skull. St Teilo's, he was told, and it was brought out and put in his hands: the upper part of a thick, strong skull.
A correspondent, Benjamin Gibby of Llangolman Mill, later gave Rhys the local explanation. Teilo, dying, had told a favourite maidservant from this Llandeilo to bring his skull here a year after his burial at Llandeilo Fawr in Carmarthenshire, so that it could bless future generations. An old neighbour remembered a carriage and four arriving, more than half a century earlier, full of invalids from Pen Clawdd in Gower. They drank the well water and went home no better, because they had not used the skull. They came all the way back, did it properly, and left in excellent health. Rhys, a careful scholar, was amused and plainly fascinated.
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