Holy Martyr and Hermit Degymen of Watchet

St Decuman’s Church, Watchet, Somerset

The twenty-seventh of August is the feast-day of the præ-Schismatic Welsh hermit, Saint Degymen, who was martyred in the year 706. Though he was Welsh and a hermit rather than a monk, he was an adherent of the Roman rather than the Celtic rite. His presence on both sides of the old border between the lands of the Saxons and the lands of the Britons additionally attests to his value as a saint venerated by both peoples in later centuries.

Saint Degymen [also Decuman or Decumanus, and in other archaic sources Decombe or Dagan] was born in the far southwest of Wales, at Rhoscrowdder on the capes of Dyfed. He is still remembered there as the patron of the parish church, St Decumanus’s. He apparently formed a desire at some point in his young adulthood to become a hermit, and set off on a ‘hurdle of reeds’ (possibly a coracle) across the Bristol Channel. He made land in Somerset, near where Dunster Castle (a fort with a history dating back to the Anarchy) now stands.

He made for Watchet, where he set up a monastic cell and an oratory – now a church which bears his name. As was common among Welsh hermits and holy men of the time, he had only a single cow, and the milk from that cow provided his sole sustenance. He seems to have gotten into a conflict with the heathen in Somerset, because the spot he chose for his hermitage was apparently sacrosanct to them.

An early account of Saint Degymen’s death has this to say: ‘A certain man… more poisonous than the adder, envying the great father's sanctity, hating virtue and raging with furious mind in detestation of the Christian name, approached like a wild beast and cut off the head of the Saint of the Lord amid his prayers and holy devotions and so sent him to the heavenly kingdom.’ Stanton’s Menologion for his feast-day says only that he was ‘put to death by a murderer, in hatred of religion.’ David Nash Ford adds that his murderer beheaded Saint Degymen with a spade. Nothing is said, however, of the nature of the murderer’s hatred of religion, though perhaps this is not important. The hagiography says that Saint Degymen then took up his own head and walked to the well with it, washed it off and placed it back on his shoulders before he reposed.

There is, indeed, a holy well in Watchet attributed to Saint Degymen, whose waters are ‘sweet, healthful and necessary’ to the purposes of the people of Watchet, and have been for ages. The well is still used for baptisms, and is visited by pilgrims in Somerset.

There is indeed something delightfully contrarian about Saint Degymen – a follower of the Roman rather than the Celtic rite while in Wales, once he set foot in Saxon territory he took up not the cloistered life preferred by his hosts but instead the hermitage favoured by his own people. He went against the grain so much, it seems, that he was able to pick up his own head after his death and place it back where it belonged as though it had never happened. Truly a saint for curmudgeons, the stubborn, the stiff-necked and perhaps the slightly-perverse as well! Holy martyr Degymen, beloved hermit of Somerset, pray unto Christ our God that our souls may be saved!