Happy magic...

I wasn’t at all surprised to find that Llanddwyn Island is where the Welsh Patron Saint of lovers came to live so that she couldn’t be loved. Well, the Welsh are a complicated people and as St Dwynwen herself said “Nothing wins hearts like cheerfulness”. Of course, she probably mumbled this as she smiled madly away to herself, living her entire life on the island as a hermit like all the best saints do.

Dwynwen, let’s call her Dwyny, was one of the 24 daughters of St Brychan, a Welsh prince who probably deserved to be sainted for simply putting up with all those women around him. She fell in love with a young man named Maelon, but rejected his advances for any one of a number of reported reasons. (1) She wished to remain chaste (2) To become a nun (3) Her father wanted her to marry another (4) She was a bloke in drag.

Either way, poor old Maelon was turned to ice by a potion that Dwyny made him drink. Then, after a good old pray, Dwyny was granted three wishes. She chose that Maelon be restored, that all true lovers find happiness, and that she would never again wish to be married and spend the rest of her days alone on the island, playing with eels and chucking breadcrumbs around.

Mind you, I could see the attraction as I wandered the crushed shell footpaths that criss-cross the island. What a magnificently isolated place to live your life in isolation – eels, breadcrumbs and all. With its ruined chapel, Celtic cross, shrine, Christian cross, lighthouse, pirate's cannon, lookout beacon; there seemed to be something mystical and wondrous at each new turn of the winding path - probably because there was.

What a place; wondrous in the truest sense of the word... a place to wonder at. The island was formed as molten lava from nearby volcanoes tumbled into the sea. Pilots once lived in the tiny windswept cottages on the island, guiding ships into the Menai Straights from the stormy Irish Sea. Sailors were saved from drowning and brought to the island for shelter by the lifeboat that once set sail from its rocky shores on stormy nights. Even the Greek Gods once roamed the islands chucking about thunderbolts – albeit for the 2009 remake of Clash of the Titans.

As I walked back along the beach, counting steps to make the walk a little easier, I was a little disappointed that I hadn’t seen a mermaid or a pirate. It would have been nice to be chased by a giant or come across a small dragon in a cove - green smoke curling from his wide-flared nostrils - and it would have been great to glimpse an unexpected elf out of the corner of my eye. But all-in-all I was pleased with the peace of the place and I left Ynys Llanddwyn with a head full of happy magic.