Noyala

Saint Noyala (Noyale, Noaluen or Nolwenn) is a virgin martyr from Britain, honored in Brittany and Cornwall. The accounts of her are closer to legend and place her in the fifth or sixth century.

According to the legend, she was the daughter of a British king. Wishing to give herself to God, she fled from her father, who wanted to marry her off, and crossed to Brittany with her maidservant at about the age of twenty. A local lord, named Nizan, wanted to take her as his wife; she refused firmly, and in his rage he had her beheaded. It is said that the saint took her head in her hands and went on to Noyal-⁠Pontivy. At Pontivy, in the eighteenth century, a chapel dedicated to her had paintings on gold grounds showing this story. Modern scholars suspect that she was one of the many settlers who came from Wales to Brittany.

In Cornwall she is patron of Newlyn East, where a fig tree grows from the church wall and is said to have sprung from her staff, and a nearby well is held to be the place of her martyrdom. She is invoked against headaches. She is commemorated on 6 July as a saint of the undivided Church, by the New Calendar; in Cornwall her day is 27 April.