I recorded this poem (link below) at the burial site of St Ia on her Feast Day, 3 February. It is the first poem I had ever recorded and doing it out of doors was not the best idea sound-wise! However, it feels like a piece of history now as this was performed during a 2021 ‘lockdown’. The town was empty of visitors and the doors of the Parish Church of St Ia, dedicated to her since 1434, were locked. The medieval building replaced a shrine that marked her grave, after her martyrdom at the hands of Tewdwr Mawr, who ruled over West Penwith from 544-577 from his base at Carnsew, overlooking Hayle estuary. The remains of a hill fort are still there today.
Legend has it she was killed at Hayle River and her body taken back to St Ives and buried where she had already established an oratory in a grove where the Parish Church now stands. With the construction of the Church around 600 years ago, the town of St Ives grew in importance.
See also my poem The Sacred Grove that imagines St Ia’s arrival to the town.
The Martyrdom of St Ia
You from the west
some miracle of craft
you from the east
cold wind following
meet here midway
on this strangers’ coast
this stretch of sand
below Carnsew.
You barely share
a common tongue
scraps of Celtic Latin
bits of local dialect
but understand this
well enough
you are kneeling there
all neck
and stubborn innocence.
Must be hard to kill
an unarmed woman
at her prayers
and prayers for you
what you have done
and are about to do
even for one well versed
in weapons and their use.
Perhaps you delegate
the task against the curse
that comes from killing
what does not
fight back
from killing
something holy.
A leaf spins
in the flood of tide
an estuary
of blood in salt
meets water
coming from the land
which balks
and floods its banks.
Someone took you
to the other shore
to a clearing
by the boats
and he moved on
to other deaths.
But it is your name,
slipped in time
that’s dropped
in tourist brochures
business plans
your woollen shift
still dipped in blood
for all the tides
that ebb and flow
into Porth Ia.
What did it mean
for those who built a town
on sacrifice and murder?
And what does it mean
for us today
to be our martyr’s keeper?