St. Winefred's Well by Gerard Manley Hopkins
Gerard Manley Hopkins was born on July 28, 1844, the oldest of Manley and Katherine Hopkins’ nine children. His father was the founder of a marine insurance firm, insuring shipowners against damage to their crafts (It is interesting to note that two of Gerard Manley Hopkins’s longest poems each tell the story of a shipwreck!). Manley Hopkins was himself no unskilled poet; he was the author of several poetical publications, wrote poetry reviews for the London Times, and even authored an essay on the American poet Henry Wadsworth Longfellow; his poetry in fact would one day deeply influence his son. Gerard’s mother was the daughter of a physician and was herself very well educated. Katherine had a particular fondness for music, German philosophy and literature, and the works of Charles Dickens. Both his parents were highly religious and members of the Anglican High Church.
Hopkins attended school in Highgate, London, from 1854 to 1863, receiving an excellent classical education and beginning his career in the writing of poetry; he won several literary awards for his poems during his time at grammar school. After his graduation in 1863, he was given a scholarship to study classics at Balliol College, Oxford, where he continued to write poetry and gained many close friends. Foremost among these was Robert Bridges, who would later be Poet Laureate and posthumously collect, edit, and publish Hopkins’s poetry. During his time at the college, Hopkins also experienced a deep spiritual transformation which led him to convert to Catholicism. This decision affected not only his relationship with his deeply devout Anglican family but also with Robert Bridges. We can consider it fortunate that this temporary disagreement did not last long, else Hopkins’s poetry might never have come to light.
After leaving Oxford in 1867 and spending a year teaching Latin and Greek at a school in Birmingham, Hopkins made the dual decision to study for the priesthood and to give up his poetic endeavors. He feared that poetry would distract him from the religious pursuits that he was now preparing to devote his life to and even burned many of his adolescent works. After completing his novitiate in 1870 he spent three years studying philosophy at a Catholic school in Lancashire. He then entered St. Beuno’s College in Wales in 1874 to study theology. During these years, Hopkins became convinced that poetry could indeed be pursued in a way that was harmonious with Catholicism. Inspired by the Welsh language he heard around him and the Welsh poetry that he read during his time at St. Beuno’s, Hopkins began to create his own technique for poetical rhythm. He continued to write verses throughout the next several years while he served as priest in several different parishes and then became a professor of classics at University College in Dublin in 1884.
However, his difficulties in fulfilling a priest's role and increasing health issues led to struggles with depression during the last ten years of his life, inspiring the six poems commonly known as his “terrible sonnets”. Finally, in 1889, Hopkins’s mental and physical exhaustion overcame him and he died of typhoid fever on June 8. His best friend Robert Bridges, with the help of Hopkins’s sister Kate, would eventually succeed in publishing a collection of his manuscripts, Poems of Gerard Manley Hopkins, in 1918, nearly twenty years after his death.
St Winefred’s Well
Only seven miles from St. Beuno’s College in Wales is located the village of Holywell and St. Winefride’s Well, held to be the site of the martyrdom and resurrection of St. Winefride. This is one of the great religious sites in the United Kingdom and often referred to as one of the seven wonders of Wales.
According to tradition, Winefride was the daughter of a Welsh chieftain named Tewyth and his wife Gwenlo, sister to none other than St. Beuno himself, who succeeded in bringing Celtic monasticism to northern Wales. Winefride was both beautiful and devout and had vowed to become a nun. Unfortunately, another local chieftain, named Caradoc (pronounced kerr-ADD-ock), fell in love with Winefred and sought to seduce her. Winefride tried to flee to the nearby church where her parents were hearing Mass, but Caradoc overtook her on the side of a hill and decapitated her. Winefride’s head rolled down the hill and a spring burst from the ground in the spot where it came to rest. St. Beuno and her parents heard of what had happened and hurried to the spot where Winefred lay dead. Beuno took her head and laid it beside her body, covering both with his cloak. He finished saying the Mass and then returned to Winefride, kneeling beside her covered body and saying a prayer. When the cloak was removed, Winefride sat up as if waking from sleep, with only a white scar around her neck showing where it had been severed. Accounts vary as to the fate of Caradoc; some say that he fell dead after being cursed by St. Beuno, some that he was swallowed by the earth. The well that sprang up from site of Winefride’s martyrdom and resurrection became a holy site, reputed to have healing powers, which attracted religious pilgrims for the next fourteen hundred years.
Gerard Manley Hopkins had entered St. Beuno’s College in 1874 to pursue studies in theology. On October 8 of that year, he and a fellow novitiate walked the seven miles to visit Holywell and the well. Hopkins later wrote of this visit in his journal, describing the well thus: “The sight of the water in the well as clear as glass, greenish like beryl or aquamarine, trembling at the surface with the force of the springs, and shaping out the five foils of the well, quite drew and held my eyes to it…even now the stress and buoyancy and abundance of the water is before my eyes.” The well and the legend of St. Winefride inspired the work that would haunt him the rest of his life. In 1879 Hopkins began to write a play, “a tragedy on St. Winefred’s martyrdom.” His deep enthusiasm for this project is evident from his letters of the time…and yet we possess only three fragments of St. Winefred’s Well (not including his twin poems “The Leaden Echo” and “The Golden Echo”, which were meant to form the maidens' chorus within the play): the opening scene in which Winefred’s father orders her to prepare a room for her uncle Beuno and his companion, then tells the audience of his great love for his daughter and his premonition of disaster involving her; Caradoc’s soliloquy after he has murdered Winefred; and Beuno’s song of praise to God after Winefred is raised. All three fragments are written in Hopkins’s signature “sprung rhythm”; this unusual and revolutionary type of meter consists of a set number of stressed syllables, with the intervals between to be filled with as many unstressed syllables as desired. This lends a more conversational and honest feel to the play (all three fragments consist almost entirely of soliloquy) than the more traditional iambic pentameter of longer epic works would have.
Caradoc’s monologue after his crime is committed is a fascinating piece, possessing a tone and voice unique from that which is found in Hopkin’s other works. Caradoc begins by musing upon what he has done, attempting to justify his deed, then moving to recall the scene of Winefred's murder. He pictures Winefred’s beauty, her purity, her innocence. He recalls how her eyes, usually modestly cast down, appeared to look up to heaven as her head rolled down the hill, imagining Winefred as making a final appeal to heaven’s justice. And yet, he is hardened in his crime; this section of his soliloquy echoes the attitude of Cain. He says that “in a world of defiance, Caradoc lives alone, loyal to no soul, laying his own law down, no law nor Lord now curb him for ever.” Caradoc’s monologue ends with his musing upon what he has lost in his slaying of Winefred. He says that he is the one who will miss her most, the one who had the power to end her life or preserve it, but who chose to kill her because of the disappointment of his passion for her. He says that by killing her, he has instead killed himself and his life must savor of murder forever.
St. Beuno’s short monologue holds a completely tone from that of Caradoc. Caradoc’s monologue is brooding, tragic, and defiant. Beuno’s is both a hymn of praise to the Lord and a foreshadowing of the future of the holy site. He envisions pilgrims from all lands near and far journeying to the well, those suffering from ailments of all kinds coming to find healing, “as long as men are mortal and God merciful”. This piece is more classic Hopkins than Caradoc’s speech, full of repeated syllables, invented words ("lipmusic", "the uproll and the downcarol", "frothpit", "waterfearer") and the musical flow of words and lines that mark his most famous poems.
Act II. – Scene, a wood ending in a steep bank over a dry dene, Winefred having been murdered within. Re-enter Caradoc with a bloody sword.
C. My heart, where have we been? What have we seen, my
mind?
What stroke has Caradoc’s right arm dealt? What done?
Head of a rebel
Struck off it has; written upon lovely limbs,
In bloody letters, lessons of earnest, of revenge;
Monuments of my earnest, records of my revenge,
On one that went against me whéreas I had warned her –
Warned her! Well she knew. I warned her of this work.
What work? What harm’s done? There is no harm don,
none yet;
Perhaps we struck no blow, Gwenvrewi[i] lives perhaps;
To makebelieve my mood was – mock. I might think so
But here, here is a workman from his day’s task sweats.
Wiped I am sure this was; it seems not well; for still,
Still the scarlet swings and dances on the blade.
So be it. Thou steel, thou butcher,
I cán scour thee, fresh burnish thee, sheathe thee in thy
dark lair; these drops
Never, never, never in their blue banks again.
The woeful, Cradock, the woeful word! Then what,
What have we seen? Her head, sheared from her shoulders,
fall,
And lapped in shining hair, roll to the bank’s edge; then
Down the beetling banks, like water in waterfalls,
It stooped and flashed and fell and ran like water away.
Her eyes, oh and her eyes!
In all her beauty, and sunlight to it is a pit, den, darkness,
Foam-falling is not fresh to it, rainbow by it not beaming,
In all her body, I say, no place was like her eyes,
No piece matched those eyes kept most part much cast down
But, being lifted, immortal, of immortal brightness.
Several times I saw them, thrice or four times turning;
Round and round they came and flashed towards heaven:
O there,
There they did appeal. Therefore airy vengeances
Are afoot; heaven-vault fast purpling portends[ii], and what
first lightning
Any instant falls means me[iii]. And I do not repent;
I do not and I will not repent, not repent.
The blame bear who aroused me. What I have done violent
I have like a lion done, lionlike done,
Honouring an uncontrolled royal wrathful nature,
Mantling passion in a grandeur, crimson grandeur.
Now be my pride then perfect, all one piece. Henceforth
In a wide world of defiance Caradoc lives alone,
Loyal to his own soul, laying his own law down, no law nor
Lord now curb him for ever. O daring! O deep insight!
What is virtue? Valour; only the heart valiant.
And right? Only resolution; will, his will unwavering
Who, like me, knowing his nature to the heart home,
nature’s business,
Despatches[iv] with no flinching. But will flesh, O can flesh
Second this fiery strain? Not always; O no no!
We cannot live this life out; sometimes we must weary
And in this darksome world what comfort can I find?
Down in this darksome world cómfort whére can I find
When ‘ts light I quenched; its rose, time’s one rich rose,
my hand,
By her bloom, fast by her fresh, her fleecèd bloom,
Hideous dashed down, leaving earth a winter withering
With no now, no Gwenvrewi. I must miss her most
That might have spared her were it but for passion-sake. Yes,
To hunger and not have, yét hope ón for, to storm and
strive and
Be at every assault fresh foiled, worse flung, deeper dis-
appointed,
The turmoil and the torment, it has, I swear, a sweetness,
Keeps a kind of joy in it, a zest, an edge, an ecstasy,
Next after sweet success. I am not left even this;
I all my being have hacked in half with her neck: one part,
Reason, selfdisposal, choice of better or worse way,
Is corpse now, cannot change; my other self, this soul,
Life’s quick, this kínd, this kéen self-feeling,
With dreadful distillation of thoughts sour as blood,
Must all day long taste murder. What do nów then?
Do? Nay,
Deed-bound I am; one deed treads all down here cramps
all doing. What do? Not yield,
Not hope, not pray; despair; ay, that: brazen[v] despair out,
Brave all, and take what comes – as here this rabble is come,
Whose bloods I reck no more of, no more rank with hers
Than sewers with sacred oils. Mankind, that mobs, comes.
Come!
Enter a crowd, among them Teryth, Gwenlo, Beuno.
……………
After Winefred’s raising from the dead and the breaking out of the fountain.
BEUNO. O now while skies are blue, now while seas are salt,
While rushy rains shall fall or brooks shall fleet from
fountains,
While sick men shall cast sighs, of sweet health all despairing.
While blind men’s eyes shall thirst after daylight, draughts
of daylight,
Or deaf ears shall desire that lipmusic that’s lost upon them,
While cripples are, while lepers, dancers in dismal limb-
dance,
Fallers in dreadful frothpits, waterfearers wild,
Stone, palsy[vi], cancer, cough, lung wasting, womb not bearing,
Rupture[vii], running sores, what more? in brief, in burden,
As long as men are mortal and God merciful,
So long to this sweet spot, this leafy lean-over,
This Dry Dene, now no longer dry nor dumb, but moist
and musical
With the uproll and the downcarol of day and night
delivering
Water, which keeps thy name, (for not in róck wrítten,
But in pale water, frail water, wild rash and reeling water,
That will not wear a print, that will not stain a pen,
Thy venerable record, virgin, is recorded).
Here to this holy well shall pilgrimages be,
And not from purple Wales only nor from elmy England,
But from beyond seas, Erin[viii], France and Flanders[ix], every-
where,
Pilgrims, still pilgrims, móre pílgrims, still more poor pilgrims.
……………
What sights shall be when some that swung, wretches, on
crutches
Their crutches shall cast from them, on heels of air departing,
Or they go rich as roseleaves hence that loathsome cáme
hither!
Not now to náme even
Those dearer, more divine boons whose haven the heart is.
……………
As sure as what is most sure, sure as that spring primroses
Shall new-dapple next year, sure as to-morrow morning,
Amongst come-back-again things, thíngs with a revival,
things with a recovery,
Thy name…
………………
[i] Gwenvrewi is Winefred’s Welsh name; Winefred is the Latin form.
[ii] To presage as an omen; to foretell by supernatural means (Oxford English Dictionary).
[iii] It appears that Caradoc expects heaven to avenge the deed he has done.
[iv] Making away with by putting to death; killing; death by violence (OED).
[v] Hardened in insolence or audacity; shameless (OED).
[vi] Paralysis or weakness in all or part of the body (OED).
[vii] A break, tear, or split in the skin or other tissue (OED).
[viii] Ireland
[ix] The English name of a region and former country now divided between Belgium, France, and the Netherlands (OED).
Bibliography/For Further Reference
Feeney, Joseph J. “A Brief Biography”. https://hopkinspoetry.com/biography/
Hopkins, Gerard Manley, Robert Bridges. “Poems”. https://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/22403/pg22403.html
Pierson, Lance. “What Was Hopkins’ Favourite Poem? St. Winefred’s Well?” http://gerardmanleyhopkins.org/lectures_2015/st_winefreds_well.html
Reid, Cowie John. “Gerard Manley Hopkins”. Encyclopedia Britannica. https://www.britannica.com/biography/Gerard-Manley-Hopkins
“Gerard Manley Hopkins”. https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poets/gerard-manley-hopkins
“The Story of St. Winefride”. http://www.stwinefrideswell.org.uk/st-winefride--the-well.html
“Saint Winifred”. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saint_Winifred
“Winefride, Saint”. https://www.catholic.com/encyclopedia/winefride-saint
Bibliography/For Further Reference
Feeney, Joseph J. “A Brief Biography”. https://hopkinspoetry.com/biography/
Hopkins, Gerard Manley, Robert Bridges. “Poems”. https://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/22403/pg22403.html
Pierson, Lance. “What Was Hopkins’ Favourite Poem? St. Winefred’s Well?” http://gerardmanleyhopkins.org/lectures_2015/st_winefreds_well.html
Reid, Cowie John. “Gerard Manley Hopkins”. Encyclopedia Britannica. https://www.britannica.com/biography/Gerard-Manley-Hopkins
“Gerard Manley Hopkins”. https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poets/gerard-manley-hopkins
“The Story of St. Winefride”. http://www.stwinefrideswell.org.uk/st-winefride--the-well.html
“Saint Winifred”. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saint_Winifred
“Winefride, Saint”. https://www.catholic.com/encyclopedia/winefride-saint
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