JOURNAL 



OF THE 



ROYAL INSTITUTION OF CORNWALL. 



No. XVII. APRIL. 1875. 



I. — Chronicles of Cornish Saints. 



VIII. — S. GuisrwALLo. 



By the Eeveeend J. Adams. 



Read at the Annual Meeting, November 24:th, 1874. 



TWO Clmrclies in Cornwall are said to owe their foundation to 

 this Saint, viz. : Landewednac and GunwaUo, and both keep 

 their parish festivals on the Sunday nearest his feast-day, which 

 in the Grallican as weU as Anglican Mart_)'rologies is March 3rd. 

 He* was the son of Fracan or Brychan,f a Welsh Chieftain, and 

 his mother's name was Gwen. About the middle of the fifth 

 century, Fracan fled into Armorica with his wife, his two sons, 

 and many of his clan, to escape from a deadly pestilence, which 



* His name is variously spelt as follows : Guingalocus, Winwalocus, Winna- 

 valocus, Vinnavinlocus, Wingalocus, Wingalotus, Wynolatus, Winebaldus, 

 Wiuwaloe, Galuntius, Gwignolen, Venole, Gwenny, Gwarog. &c. There is a 

 MS. life of the saint in the Cottonian Library, and several lives taken professedly 

 from ancient sources may be found in the Acta Sanctorum of the Bollandists — 

 3rd March — one of them is said to have been copied from the chartulary of 

 Landevennec, and to have been written by Gurdistan, a Monk of that Abbey, 

 A.D. 870. 



t This Brychan is sometimes confounded with his famous namesake Brychan 

 of Brecknock. There were three Welsh Chieftains of that name, two of them 

 belonging to the early part of the VI Century and the third to the VII. They 

 all seem to have had children who were founders of Churches and accounted 

 saints, and mediseval hagiologists, who seldom troubled themselves to investigate 

 Welsh records, supposed they were all the offspring of the Bi-ecknock Brychan. 

 Hence they attri))uted a family to him so numerous as to bring discredit upon 

 their narrative. 



