Mybbard (MewbredorMebbred),also known as Calrogus was a 6th century hermit and is a local Cornish saint[1] said to be the son of a King of Ireland.
Very little is known of his life though he is recorded as having been beheaded, with two others, by the pagan ruler Melyn ys Kynrede in what is today the parish of Lanteglos-by-Fowey, near Fowey,[2]Cornwall.
He was later re-invented as an Irish prince.[3]William Worcester names him as the son of an Irish king who became a Cornish hermit.[4] He was a contemporary of St Mannacus and St Wyllow.[5] An image of him carrying an extra head in his hands is included in a stained glass window in the church of St Neot alongside St Mabyn.[6]
Mannacus may be the same person as Mancus, Mybbard's companion and also a hermit. Mancus is said, on the authority of Robert Bracey, to lie in the church of Lanreath, two miles from Fowey. However, the canons of Launceston claim he was buried in the parish of Lanteglos.[7]
Both are commemorated on the Thursday next before Whitsunday, along with Saint Wyllow, who was beheaded at the same time.
William of Worcester prefaced the account of the three martyrs by the sentence "there were three brothers under the name of St. Genesius and each carried his head, one of them archbishop of Lismore."[9]
^Doble, Gilbert Hunter (1939). A History of the Church and Parish of St. Meubred, Cardynham. Shipston on Stour: King's Stone Press. p. 97.
^Thacker, Alan; Sharpe, Richard (2002). Local Saints and Local Churches in the Early Medieval West. Oxford University Press. p. 356. ISBN978-0-19-820394-0.
^Mattingly, Joanna (2003). "Pre-Reformation Saints' Cults in Cornwall - with Particular Reference to the St Neot Windows". In Cartwright, Jane (ed.). Celtic Hagiography and Saints' Cults. Cardiff: University of Wales Press. pp. 249–270. ISBN978-0-70-831749-5.
