Tyddewi

commissioned by the Istanbul Tanpinar Festival, November 2010, and translated into Turkish

The Cathedral at Tyddewi has a connection with Turkish history – a chapel dedicated to St. Nicholas of Myra

Imagine, Traveller, a city with fewer than two thousand inhabitants. I point...

A city! the Traveller exclaims in disbelief. That tiny dot on the very edge of that little country in my large atlas?

Journey with me to that city, the smallest in the land, perched on the westernmost promontory in Wales, a few fields’ span from cliffs of granite ravaged in all seasons by the untamed Irish Sea. Sometimes the city is veiled in mist or rain, sometimes it slumbers in sunshine surrounded by the green and gold of its countryside and the white sands of its beaches. It is an unknown gem, a rare jewel, held in the roughest of settings. A new city, its status not long granted by the monarch, as is the status of every city in this realm. An ancient city, its spirit and soul part of the haunted past of the Welsh people.

The Traveller and I take the road that winds and undulates away from the ferry port at Abergwaun past tall hedgerows punctuated by taller trees, past grazing cattle, past fields of gathered hay, avoiding swallows that swoop and rise, until we reach a flatter, bleaker land where telegraph poles lope alongside the narrowing road and the sky is vast. Mathri, Y Sgwar, Croes-coch, Carnhedryn; the habitations are few. Strange names, the Traveller says. An old language, I reply, you will hear it spoken in the city. You will have to listen for it among the other languages. The city has always been a place of many languages – but in past days this road and all others that lead to it thronged with travellers whose purpose was different to yours. I would explain further, but we round a corner, and Tyddewi appears before us – on this day rising out of the sunlight like a blessing.

Here is the present, the now of Tyddewi; narrow lanes where valerian and ferns grow from cracks and crevices in the walls, streets where flowers tumble from troughs and window boxes, the modest City Hall, a city information centre with an earth roof, houses of bare stone, colourful painted houses, houses for the residents, houses for guests, neat walled front gardens, cafes, taverns with umbrella-ed gardens, restaurants, a museum of samplers painstakingly sewn, plain and pious chapels, galleries of paintings, shops that sell food, drink, clothing, gifts, books and postcards, surfboards, wetsuits, candles, pots, and shops that sell dreams, that call you, Traveller, to adventures and discoveries on land and sea. The city’s greatest industry now is you and others of your ilk. In the short months of summer, rain or shine, the city sees your kind in their thousands traversing its streets, haunting its shores, riding its waves, revelling in the secret life of its fields and woods, breathing its sanctified air, delving into its past. You increase the population of the city tenfold then vanish again, leaving the inhabitants here like a tithe paid to appease the winter.

See, Traveller, how this tall Celtic cross, here in the city’s square, leads your eye to the ramparts of that hidden tower over there, and walk with me along this street of much older dwellings until we look down at the strong, square tower of this city’s reason for being – its Cathedral. It lies deep in the wooded valley of the river Alun, hidden from the sea and marauders that might row up the river from the ancient port of Porthclais. It is a cathedral built upon ruined cathedral, upon monastic church, upon holy land, defying the ravages of pillage and earthquake, of monarch and parliament, of time itself, releasing like perfume a spirituality that goes beyond the religion it celebrates. It was founded by Dewi, who became Dewi Sant, the patron saint of Wales, and it was the place of his death at the end of the sixth century. The festival of Dewi Sant is celebrated on the first day of March every year in song and poem and drama throughout a land which blazes with his symbol, the yellow daffodil, the harbinger of spring, the hope of new life.

Does he rest here, your Saint? the Traveller asks.

He does, I reply. Follow me down these wide steps and I will take you to see his shrine. Gravestones lean in the grass either side of the way we walk, children race around them, couples lie beside them under the sun. It was said that those buried in Dewi’s churchyard are safe from descent to hell. The Traveller begins to take photographs. This was a place of pilgrimage, it was considered a place of great holiness, two pilgrimages to Dewi’s shrine were the equivalent of one to Rome. Imagine the journeys those pilgrims made in distant times, over sea and land, to reach this remote place. The Traveller clicks and whirrs.

When we enter the Cathedral I point to the notice that requires the Traveller to seek permission to continue clicking and whirring. A grand piano has been rolled in to sit before the cathedral’s organ, and the pianist accompanies a woman whose voice is at one with the stone walls and oaken roof as she sings. Music features large in the life of the Cathedral in recitals and concerts that attract their own pilgrims. We stand before Dewi’s simple shrine to the soaring notes of Ave Maria. Is this it? the Traveller asks, looking around and fingering the camera. Others walk past us, glancing, staring, whispering, the patient and the impatient. Are there pilgrims among these? To be able to believe, I say, imagine the peace and contentment it must bring. The Traveller shrugs and moves towards the door.

Every day the city’s past grows longer and its future draws nearer. What will that future be? The sea riders? The adventure seeker whose life is too tame? The searchers for quiet whose lives are too busy? The music lovers who need food for their souls? The pilgrims who seek – what? – peace, validation, approval, a guarantee that they are saved? The strong Welsh speaking community able to speak its own language without fear of offending and driving away those it depends upon for its livelihood? Or the developing eco-city you may catch out of the corner of your eye with its ambition to make Tyddewi the first carbon-neutral city in the world? Some of these, all of these, none of these?

As we leave on this Friday evening, Traveller, to the peal of the Cathedral’s ten saintly bells, you and I may imagine the city’s future. But we cannot know it.