One day, [Sawyl] and his party broke in [to the monastery of S. Cadoc], and carried off meat and drink, but did no further damage. Cadoc was absent at the moment, but on his return learnt what had been done, and was further informed that the marauders were at a little distance, eating and drinking what they had ravished from his larder and cellars.

After they had gorged themselves with meat and ale, Sawyl and his rogues lay down to sleep. Cadoc seized the opportunity to inflict on them a stinging insult. He set his monks to shave half the heads of the drunken men, and then with the razors to slash off the ears and lips of their horses.

We are informed that Sawyl and his men had retreated to a hill-top for their carouse, and if our identification of the localities be accepted, this can have been none other than the Garn Goch. When the barbers had done their work, Cadoc and fifty of his clerics assumed their ecclesiastical vestments, and marched in procession to the hill to meet, and if possible, to mitigate the resentment of the freebooter.

What happened is veiled in fable. The earth opened and swallowed up Sawyl and his men, "and the ditch where they were engulfed is known unto this day to all the passers-by". That nothing of the sort took place we may be pretty sure. What probably occurred was that the settlers in the neighbourhood assembled and assumed a threatening attitude, and the bully was fain to decamp.
[..] After this, Cadoc sang Te Deum, and blessed the men who had made his adversaries ridiculous, and had so barbarously mutilated the dumb beasts.

It was possibly whilst Cadoc was at Llangadog that he was annoyed by Sawyl Benuchel, who had established himself in the pleasant mountain basin of Cynwyl Gaio, where a bunch of rock, starting out of the level bottom that was once a lake bed, offered a suitable position for a caer, commanding as it did the entire basin. It bears the significant name of Pen-y-Ddinas, showing that at one time a stronghold occupied its crown, but the ruins of prehistoric fortifications have disappeared, as the hill has been converted into a rabbit-warren.

Below it stands Llansawel, leaving us to suspect that this ruffian in his old age turned saint and founder [...] The church is supposed to be dedicated to S. Sawyl Felyn ab Bledri Hir, and this may have been the chief who worried Cadoc, and later turned serious and founded the church [...]