Gerald of Wales passed through Caerleon in 1188 with Archbishop Baldwin, preaching the Third Crusade. When he wrote up the journey, he stopped at Caerleon to tell a story that had nothing to do with Arthur.
There lived near the town, he says, a Welshman called Meilyr who had knowledge of hidden things and of the future. It had come to him through a terrible night. He met a girl he had long loved, in a pleasant and quiet place, and while he held her she changed. In place of the girl he found in his arms a rough, hairy and hideous creature, and the sight drove him out of his mind. He stayed mad for years until he was cured in the church of St David.
The cure was not complete. Meilyr kept what Gerald calls an extraordinary familiarity with unclean spirits. He saw them, knew them, talked with them and called each by its name, and through them he foretold events, more accurately in the near future than far off. He saw them on foot, dressed as hunters with horns hanging from their necks, hunting not animals but souls, and he met them most often near monasteries and religious houses. When someone told a lie in his presence, he saw a demon dancing on the liar's tongue. Though he could not read, if he looked at a book containing falsehood he would put his finger on the place.
In the same passage Gerald, who disliked Geoffrey of Monmouth, adds that when a copy of Geoffrey's History was laid on Meilyr's lap the demons swarmed over it, and fled when the Gospel of St John was put there instead. Wirt Sikes reprinted the core of the tale in 1880, and it is one of the earliest named supernatural encounters recorded in Gwent.
Comments