Hare Goddess?
All the documentary evidence we have about Melangell revolves around the legend and is from the late Middle Ages. Although other evidence, such as the depiction of her on the rood screen in the church, allows us to take the provenance of her story back a little further than the manuscript sources, there is little to confirm the existence of an historical person in the sixth or the seventh century when she is supposed to have lived.
It has been suggested that the story of the saint as we have it may have been used to legitimate claims for the church as a place of special sanctuary. So might the saint's legend have been developed out of remnant folk memories of a hare goddess in the pennant valley?
In his scholarly edition of the Historia Divae Monacellae [refs] Huw Pryce comments:
"... the legend of the hare taking refuge with the saint almost certainly derives from local folklore".
This local folkore includes accounts of miracles performed by hares themselves rather than by the saint.
So given that there is no definite evidence of the actual existence of an historical person called Melangell or Monacella, and that we can only take the cult of her as a saint back to the twelfth century or a little earlier, there is at least a possibility that her story is based on earlier accounts of a legendary female.
Her cult as a saint was very much localised to the area around the Pennant valley and could have grown out of survivals of an earlier hare goddess to whom the valley was sacred. The case for this is strengthened by the fact that the church is far from any other habitation but is built on a Bronze Age site where a ring of yew trees predating the church mark the place as having special significance.
Hares continued to be a feature of the folklore of the valley after the Reformation when the cult of the saint would have gone into abeyance. A seventeenth century account tells of hares not being hunted there and being known as 'Melangell's Lambs' [refs]. This is repeated in the eighteenth century [refs].
Finally there is an independent folkore account of the flat rock where Melangell is said to have slept also being known as the bed of a giantess[refs]. This is recorded in a book about the giants of Wales and suggests stories of an aboriginal being or chthonic spirit of some sort inhabiting the valley.
*[refs] above refers to information on the 'Sources' page.