Llantwit’s Anwyl Day and the pirate O’Neil

On 3 May Llantwit Major kept Llantwit’s Anwyl, its darling or pet day, in memory of the capture of an Irish pirate named O’Neil. The story went that the town’s women danced in the meadows near Colhugh Point to lure him ashore while one slipped away to rouse the men, who seized him and burnt him at a stake. Every year an effigy of the pirate was burnt in Colhugh meadows and a King and Queen were chosen. The revels ceased about 1850 to 1855, and the Oddfellows’ church parade and dinner that replaced them ended in 1907.