Dwynwen, or the white wave, was invoked as the patroness of lovers, and became a Welsh name. It is just possible that an echo of this, on the other side of the water, may be Damhnait, or Devnet, Latinized as Dymphna, or Dympna, though the more obvious likeness in sound is damhna, a reason. An Irish princess, so called, was obliged, about the year 600, to fly from the persecutions of her father, protected by a priest, a jester, and his wife, until near Antwerp her father overtook her and cut off her head. Hanmer adds, “the Irish in the county of Lowth do honour her; belike her father dwelt there:” and Dympna, or Demmy, is not wholly extinct as a name.
This same wen, the poetical form of a woman, or fair one, enters into the composition of two other saintly Keltic names. The first, St. Mawdwen, or Modwen, was one of St. Patrick’s Irish nuns; and another later Modwen, also Irish, came to England in 840, educated Edith, daughter of King Ethelwolf, and founded an abbey at Polsworth. She was rather a favourite saint; her name is traceable in various places; and Modwenna continued in Cornwall. Perhaps it comes from modh, manners.
Cainwen is said to be Cain, the virgin. The first half means splendid or beautiful things or jewels, and is connected with the Latin Candalus. The Welsh declare that she was of princely birth; but being determined to live a holy life, she travelled on foot beyond the Severn, and there found a solitary place where no one had ever lived, because it was infested with snakes and vipers, which she forthwith, by her prayers, turned to stone, and they may still be picked up in a petrified state in the fields. Keynsham, in Somersetshire, is, in fact, famous for ammonites, which thus have given rise to another legend like those of St. Cuthbert and St. Hilda. Camden himself saw one of these stones, and was somewhat perplexed thereby.
She afterwards repaired to St. Michael’s Mount, in Cornwall, where she met her nephew, St. Cadoc, and there her name became attached to a well, in the parish of St. Neots, arched over by four trees—oak, ash, elm, and withy, all apparently growing from one root. The water was further supposed to endow whichever of a married pair first tasted it with the mastery for life. No one can forget that best of all Southey’s humorous ballads, where the Cornishman confesses,—
“I hastened, as soon as the wedding was done,
And left my wife in the porch;
But, i' faith, she had been wiser than I,
For she took a bottle to church.”
Cornishmen, apparently, never forgave St. Keyne for the properties of her well; for Carew, in his Survey of Cornwall, terms her “no over holy saint;” and Norden thus vituperates her: “this Kayne is sayde to be a woman saynte, of whom it (the well) taketh name; but it better resembleth Kayne, the devil, who had the shape of a man, the name of an apostle, and the qualitie of a traitor.” Gwenllian, white linen, is still sometimes used.
Gwyn also signifies blessed or happy, and this gwynnedd is an epithet of some of the favourite kings. Gwynaeth, a state of bliss, is a female name still in use, and often written Gyneth, though it gets translated into Venetia, and, in the latter form, named the lady whom Sir Kenelm Digby rendered famous.