Trioedd Bae Ceredigion

The Three Deluged Giants of Cardigan Bay

Nodon, who had a well on the great plain of Maes Maichgen, now under the sea.

He would drink from it and bathe in it and guarded it jealously.

So Merid, the well maiden, kept it covered and opened for none but he.

Gwyddno Garanhir of Cantre’r Gwaelod whose long legs bestrode the waters like a crane.

He had a well kept by Mererid on his land which spread at the foot of the mountains in a great plain.

Seithennin betrayed him and Mererid fled so he will not look over this land ever again.

Bendigeidfran who crossed the rivers of Lli and Archen to reach Iwerddon beyond them.

He was a bridge for his people who came to recover the Cauldron and rescue Branwen.

His head led a remnant of his people over the sea to Gwales when the Cauldron was broken.

The Three Violated Maidens of Cardigan Bay

Merid who kept the well of Nodon on the plain of Maichghen far to the West.

She was left bereft by a drunkard who broke the well-head to his cost.

The waters rose behind him and overtook him and the plain now is lost.

Mererid who kept the well of Gwyddno Garanhir and the cup of plenty.

Seithennin would drink from her cup so he drained it until it was empty.

Mererid on a bay mare fled as the flood waters rose and rushed over the land to the sea.

Branwen went with the Cauldron – or it went with her – over the sea to wed.

Her tears for Gwern and the many slain swelled as the blood of conflict was shed.

A sea of sorrow brought her death from a broken heart and the grave is now her bed. 

*

These triads of my own making reflect a reading of local folklore pertaining to Cardigan Bay which I discuss on The Guardian of the Well HERE ~>

Mererid and the Deluge

 The popular version of the legend of Cantre'r Gwaelod, the sunken land beneath the sea in Cardigan Bay, West Wales, is that a character called Seithenyn got drunk and failed to close the sluice gates before the tide came in, and so the sea drowned the land. This version is comparatively recent, though it allows one of Iolo Morganwg's phony triads featuring Seithenyn as one of the three great drunkards of Ynys Prydain. In the older story Seithenyn was not the culpable drunkard but the king of Maes Gwyddno. The story is told in verses in the Black Book of Carmarthen of a young woman called Mererid who removes a vital stone to allow the water in becuase she is distraught at the death of her lover who has been killed in battle on behalf of Seithenyn. The verse accuses her of pride ('traha') and suggests that she cries to God in remorse for what she has done . It has been suggested that one of the verses may have been responsible for the later 'drunkard' story:

Diaspad mererid y ar gwineu kadir
kedaul duu ae goreu
gnaud guydi gormot eisseu

translated originally as

Meredid's cry over strong wines
bounteous God has wrought it:
after excess comes privation.

However, the words 'gwineu kadir' do not in the opinion of recent scholars mean 'strong wines' but refer to the chesnut coloured horse Mererid rides (gwineu = 'reddish-brown).

 But is the tale of Mererid herself a rationalisation of an even earlier story? John Rhŷs suggests that there are parallels with well legends in which the guardian of the well or spring might, if violated or offended, release the cap on the conduit from a vast deposit of water - perhaps from the Other World - which then inundates the area around the spring. This Rhŷs suggests, is the origin of several lake legends such as that of Llyn Llech Owen, and Llyn y Fan from which, as is well known, an Other World woman came through to our world carrying her own taboo of violation.

 If the story of Mererid ('pearl') is such a rationalisation then we must regard the legend as a fluid(!) story, changing according to the predelictions of different ages, and decide if this particular restructuring of the 'original' has meaning for us; if the return of the water world speaks to our condition in the 21st century. If so the significance it carries of lands inundated  because the guardian of the gateway to the waterworld has been angered is potentially greater than the playful interaction with legend. However deeply embedded in archetypal imagery of the deluge, it may become a dynamic image of our own experience of a deluge that flows through legendary gateways into our own dry comfort zone. Then we may think:

The oyster containing Mererid's pearl
Is no mermaid's tale or
Cultured setting of disaster:
Intact it seals our future.

Beachcombing

items of driftwood

I live a mile or so from the sea, which means that although I do most of my adventurous walking in the mountains, just a little way inland, we also often walk along the seashore. Some time ago we also began taking a couple of bags with us to pick up small pieces of driftwood to feed the fire. These are mainly irregularly shaped pieces, worn by the waves and the shingle into fissured shards of the trees they came from, or smaller pieces worn smooth by the same process. They make elegant piles on the hearth and, well-seasoned, burn well, sometimes with a blue flame from the salt in them. But we soon moved on from this to taking our estate car as near as we could to particularly good spots and filling it with larger pieces of wood and have now extended our capacity further by buying a small electric chain saw to cut up even bigger pieces when we get them home.

So now it is not so much a matter of picking up wood on a walk as incorporating a walk in a wood-gathering expedition. This has almost replaced the need to buy-in logs and all we need is a small amount of coal to keep the fire burning. This also means that we go more often and so have become more familiar with the inhabitants of the tide line: the waders foraging on the shore and the gulls dipping into the crashing waves as they roll onto the beach.

But on a recent visit all was silent. The beach was covered with sheets of ice and not a bird was to be seen. Today, though, was different. The gulls swooped overhead and oyster catchers stood in the foam of the waves that ran across the sand. On the cliffs huge icicles hung down, but dripping in the slow thaw. As the temperature rose there were shifts in the cliff face. Lumps of earth fell away and a huge boulder came crashing down onto the shingle shelf above the edge of the sand at the high tide line.

This is a coastline in transition. Five thousand years ago a forest grew on what had previously been marsh. Then the waters returned and all the beaches north and south of here have the remains of trees buried beneath them and sometimes exposed, as at Borth where the semi-fossilised stumps are often visible sticking out of the sand at low tide. The legendary expression of this fact is the story of Cantre’r Gwaelod a land lost beneath the waves. As the cliffs erode and water levels begin to rise perhaps some of what is now standing against the coast – the leisure centre, the caravan park and miles of cliffs – will be washed by waves running in relentlessly over fallen rocks, bricks and mortar.

In the meantime we’ll carry on going to our favourite beach where two currents meet and pile up rows of seaweed, driftwood and other debris along the side of the estuary of a small river that meets the sea here and brings down tree branches and other items onto the beach from inland. The wood we take, if left, would rot and release its carbon into the air, and we only accelerate the process by burning it. We also remove from the beach much natural and manufactured timber such as fence posts, bits of boat and other unidentifiable items. Perhaps it is naïve to believe that burning this instead of coal or electricity will do much to delay the onset of climate change that may eventually make the beach a ‘lost land’. But it keeps us in touch with the pulse of life at the edge of the ocean and also keeps our midwinter hearth burning bright.