The Yew of the Mother of Wales
Eyes that compel across time
Quest
Visit the yew. You will feel the same sensation as when you stare at the portrait.
Corrections? Experiences? Comments? Art? Photos? Please...
The yew stands in Llanefydd Church and stands over the resting place of Catrin O Ferain, known (perhaps sardonically) as the Mother of Wales.
Catrin was a noblewoman and relative of King Henry VII, born in 1540, and with an apparently mesmeric quality. She had four husbands, each of them a member of a highly influential family. With them she had six children and then stepchildren and 30 grandchildren, spread across the great houses of Britain and Europe. She is said to have murdered her lovers when they outlived their usefulness to her, but this may be contemporary gossip due to her vast wealth.
In 1568 the Frisian artist Adriaen van Cronenburgh, for unknown reasons, sought Catrin out to paint her, and travelled from the Netherlands to create the portrait that now hangs in the National Museum, Caerdydd.
The portrait itself has perpetuated Catrin's hypnotic qualities, and these were not lost on Hermann Göring, the infamous Nazi and founder of the Gestapo. During WWII, he sent out operatives to steal the portrait and, and became obsessed with staring at it.
Try staring at the eyes in the portrait! You'll understand...
WHAT'S IN THE AREA
The Hawk and Buckle is a seventeenth-century inn, but there has been a hostelry on the site since much earlier. It is a quiet, restful place in the centre of the village of Llanefydd in the plunging valleys and hills of Denbighshire.
It is the centre of a Site of Special Mythological Interest because of the unusual number of mythological sites in the vicinity.
The Inn is famed for its Myrddin’s Mist cocktail. Guidance is available to local mythological sites from the landlord - who is known to occasionally serve in armour.
