Welsh Mysteries and Histories
While Wales is known for its beauty, choirs and love of rugby, the valleys and hillside are also home to some of Britain’s most curious cases. From missing people to unsolved murders, and the myths of Welsh folklore, there are stories to be told in every corner of the land.
Tending to be left out from the mainstream news and true crime industries, this podcast casts a sole spotlight on the murders, mysteries and histories of Wales.
Welsh Mysteries and Histories
Cantre’r Gwaelod = The Welsh Atlantis
In this episode, Mag’s discusses the legend of the Welsh Atlantis.
Where you can find us?
For more information on the podcast and the hosts, make sure you check out this link.
Follow us on Instagram - @welshmysteries, as well as via our individual profiles ( @kaycpage and @mags.cross).
Follow Kay on Twitter - @kaycpage.
Work with us?
If you have a particular case that you would like us to cover, please feel free to contact us via the email below.
We are also open to discussing business and sponsorship opportunities via this email.
Both hosts have access wmm@kay-page.com.
Sources
https://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/waleshistory/2012/03/legend_of_cantrer_gwaelod.html**
https://www.oxfordreference.com/display/10.1093/oi/authority.20110803095546888**
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-wales-48407795
Edwards, G. (1849). The Inundation of Cantre 'R Gwaelod. Available online: https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=t7oHAAAAQAAJ&printsec=frontcover&source=gbs_ge_summary_r&cad=0#v=onepage&q&f=false
Haslett, S. & Willis, D. (2022). The ‘lost’ islands of Cardigan Bay, Wales, UK: insights into the post-glacial evolution of some Celtic coasts of northwest Europe. Atlantic Geoscience, 58, 131–146. https://doi.org/10.4138/atlgeo.2022.005
https://snowdonia.gov.wales/discover/history-and-heritage/mythology-and-folklore/seithenyn/
https://www.literaturewales.org/our-projects/lwcommissions/tamar-eluned-williams/week-three/
https://nation.cymru/news/cantrer-gwaelod/
https://glaemscrafu.jrrvf.com/english/cantrergwaelod.html
https://www.walesonline.co.uk/news/wales-news/stunning-ancient-forest-welsh-beach-16309498
Ashton, W. (1920) The Evolution of a Coast-Line: Barrow to Aberystwyth and The Isle of Man, with notes on Lost Towns, Submarine Discoveries Available online: https://ia801600.us.archive.org/13/items/evolutionofcoast00ashtrich/evolutionofcoast00ashtrich.pdf(Accessed: December 14, 2023)
Nunn, P (2021) Worlds in Shadow: Submerged lands in Science, Memory and Myth Bloomsbury
Pe
Hello and croeso, welcome to this week’s episode of Welsh Murders and Mysteries! I’m Mags, Kay’s co-host and the non-Welsh one and this week on the spooky and mysterious side, we are going to be talking about the legend of the Welsh Atlantis. Sources will be available in the show notes!
You’ve heard of Atlantis, possibly even watched the Disney film about it, and maybe even heard of Doggerland, but have you heard of Cantre’r Gwaelod?
It’s a story that is quite well known in Wales. A few versions of the story exist, and you can find them linked in the show notes, but they all boil down to a similar theme:
Once upon a time, Amser Maith yn Ôl, was a kingdom called Meirionnydd that was richer than most, ruled by a man called Gwyddno Garanhir (all known as Longshanks, which makes the Tolkien nerd in me smile). The kingdom was by the sea, and had an area of land that was particularly special because it lay below sea level. The kingdom had built a system of sluices and embankments to protect the kingdom, and opened the sluices to flood the land as needed for agriculture, making it particularly fertile. It was said that one acre of land there was worth four acres everywhere else, the land was so blessed. The only thing was that those sluices needed to be strictly monitored and closed every night to prevent the land from being irreversibly flooded.
One day, someone – allegedly Seithenhin of Dyfed, called one of the ‘three errant drunkards of the Island of Britain in the Triads - forgot to close the sluices (apparently after getting a little too liberal with the wine) and in one evening, in one night, the kingdom of Cantre’r Gwaelod, its sixteen cities and castle, was lost to the depths of the sea. Gwyddno and his inner circle managed to flee via SarnCynfelin but the next morning Gwyddno was so distraught he could not speak. He uttered a heartfelt sigh of deep sorrow over the sea that now covered his lost kingdom and to this day when one has a deep sorrow it is called; ochenaid gwyddno garanhir, pan droes y don dros ei dir‘the sigh of GwyddnoGaranhir, when the waves rolled over his land.” (Jones 1955
So let’s investigate this a little bit more, and as William Ashton said, ‘The trouble to the explorer of this past is to disentangle romance from fact…’ (1920)
And some of the romance and facts already start with disagreements on who was in charge of the sluices – some say it was a man named Seithennin/Seithenyn, who was either a knight or a prince of a neighbouring land, and some say it was a maiden named Mererid, who may have been the princess of the kingdom who was tasked by Gwyddno to maintain the sacred well by drawing three buckets of water every day to empty them on the land, and one day, when she had become annoyed with her continuing duties, she stopped drawing the water from the well and a few days later, it overflowed and the water never stopped flowing., Another story says Mererid was the guardian priestess of Moel Y Llyn, a magic well near a crystal clear lake. One version of the story recounts that some men came along and were so abusive to the priestess that she was distraught and the seal that she guarded on the magic well was undone and could never be closed again.
One poem calls out Seithenyn directly, saying “Seithenyn, come out, and look towards the abode of heroes: the plain of Gwyddno is overwhelmed by the sea. Cursed be the embankment which let in, after wine, the open fountain of the roaring deep. Cursed be the keep of the flood-gates, who, after his festive mirth, let in the fountain of the desolating ocean.’ (Edwards, 1849)
And now, they say if you go to Cardigan Bay, and the time of year is just right, and the tide is at its lowest, you just might have the good luck to see what remains of Cantre’r Gwaelod, and hear the bells of the lost city ringing under the Welsh sea and sky.
What’s in a name?
Cantre’r comes from the word ‘cantref’, which means one hundred. The word comes from a medieval Welsh measurement for around 460 sq uare kilometres. The ‘Gwaelod’ is thought to come from the name of the King who ruled at the time, Gwyddno.
Where could the Welsh Atlantis have been?
I actually did a bit of exploring for this, based on what I had found out whilst researching this episode! It was a cold, but sunny day when I hopped on the train at Aberystwyth station for my surprisingly short journey to a small town called Borth. One of the quaintest train stations I have ever seen greeted me; a single platform, and over on the other side, a view of the hills and sheep. I left the station, and walked up the small street of brightly coloured houses and on to the beach in search of a legend. And not just any legend, but one that is visible at low tide.
The reason I found myself in Borth is that the sources and Welsh folkloric tradition all point to Cardigan Bay – or Bae Ceredigion, to give it its proper name. Bae Ceredigion is on the weather-beaten west coast of Cymru, facing across the Irish Sea to Ireland.
There is a map, known as the Gough map, that is dated between the 14th and 15th centuries that shows two islands off the coast of Cymru in Cardigan Bay, and neither of these islands exist any more, pointing again to Cardigan Bay being the location of Cantre’r Gwaelod.
Weather has beaten the Welsh coastline for thousands of years, but particularly in 2014 and 2019, where storms revealed an ancient forest stretching between Ynyslas and Morf Borth – the pictures are spell-binding, showing ancient tree stumps, covered in peat and sand, only visible at the lowest of tides, and this is what I came in search of. The tide was actually high when I was able to visit, but I did manage to see some of the tree stumps – you can see the pictures on our instagram, and I am keento go back and visit again when the tide is much lower to explore.
The weather conditions in the 2010s were not the first time this first time the forest had been seen in modern times – a book published in 1920 (see references) has a drawing of the submerged forest remains at Borth, and talks of a mention of the forest in an 1849 publication of Archae. Cambrensis, the 1808 mention in Meyrick’s ‘History of Cardiganshire’, and in an 1832 Geological Survey paper by Rev. James Yates. Archaeological work there has dated samples of the trees to between 5000 and 4500 years old, and excavations have found flints, Mesolithic tools, and the skeleton of an auroch that was found in the 1960s. Ashton writes that ‘It is a significant fact that the area which would be dry land if the bay was uplifted 42 feet, corresponds fairly well with that assigned by tradition to the lost Cantref Gwaelod.’
Because people have lived in what is now Wales and Ireland for thousands of years, it is likely that they would have witnessed the rise in ocean surface that drowned the land bridge connecting the two together. (Nunn, 2021)
There are some land features that I mentioned earlier, namely Sarn Cynfelin. Sarn Badrig ‘boat destroyer ‘ a sarn is a raised road or an embankment or defence against the sea (Ashton, 1920), and there are several sarns in the area. There is a theory that states that Sarn Badrig and Sarn Cynfelynmay have had a connecting bank between them that could have formed part of the sea barrier, and that their solid rock foundation was an advantage to this sea barrier, where gates could have been made in the connecting bank to allow the ebb and flow of the water.
There’s also Sarn Wallog, a causeway that runs about 2.5 miles north out of Aberystwyth – reaching 7 miles in to the sea that has some old ruins are near its end point, called Caer Wyddno, folkloric tradition has it that the royal palace once stood here, and sightings of it out in the sea have been recorded as far back as 1833 (walesonline.co.uk). The town of Aberystwyth itself was surrounded by walls and ditches until at least 1760, when some of the walls were taken down, with the rest being removed in the following 50 years (Ashton, 1920)
The Romans constructed similar embankments on the South Holland coast, and other embankments have been found on the North German coast that suffer from similar inundations, causing them to be strengthened and lengthened repeatedly over time.
There is an outlier in the myth of the Welsh Atlantis, and it is Llys Helif CHLIS HELIG, near Llandudno. According to Historic Uk https://www.historic-uk.com/HistoryUK/HistoryofWales/Tyno-Helig-The-Welsh-Atlantis/, this comes under another legendary name – Tyno Helig, and not Cantre’rGwaelod.
What can be stated is that, whether you believe in Cantre’r Gwaelod or not, the possibility exists of a city having been sunken under the waves hundreds, if not thousands, of years ago; we are witnessing the real-time sinking of settlements in the wake of climate change and global warming, just take a look at Kiribati, Tuvalu, even the coastlines of Britain. And if Cantre’r Gwaelod did sink, the waves of the ocean could have carried away any definitive evidence of the city over the years since it succumbed to the depths of Davy Jones’ Locker.
One question you may have is when did it sink?
The first written mention of the Cantre’r Gwaelod flood is in The Black Book of Carmarthen, a 9th-12th century collection of secular and religious poetry ( , ), which is kept in the Welsh National Library in Aberystwyth – you can view it online, and there is a link in the show notes if you want to take a look yourself.
It is also mentioned in the Mabinogion –Bendigeidfran waded across [to Ireland]… Later the sea spread out when it flooded the kingdoms.’ (Haslett & Willis, 2022)
The 9th century Historia Brittonum tells of a marine phenomenon in the 5th or 6th century where there were unusual tidal conditions, and a mountainous wave (Haslett & Willis, 2022)
The Triads that I mentioned, called Trioedd Ynys Prydein are medieval Welsh manuscripts that preserve Welsh folklore, mythology and traditional history in groups of three, hence the triad.
According to geomythology – which is the study of geological events combined with stories and legends that have been handed downover centuries, there are several stories across the British Isles that talk of something happening in the 5th or 6th centuries, for example, in the map made by Ptolemy, Cornwall is shown as extending much further west, and Arthurian myth tells that Lyonesse (the land west of Cornwall and associated with King Arthur) was lost in the 6th century. A hero-king could very well have ruled over Cornwall (and maybe parts of Devon and Somerset), and this hero-king is believed to have been born in 501A.D, which matches the 6th century loss date. However, there are other sources that show this as having happened as late as the 14th century.
Other stories speak of a great tidal wave that overwhelmed Winchester and Rye (Sussex) in the 6thcentury, and the course of the Rother river was changed. The remains of an ancient church near Glastonbury Tor are held to have been shaken down in the the 6th century, according to local lore. The 5th century is when local tradition tells us that Lancashire and Cheshire were separated by a violent convulsion (Ashton, 1920).
Seven earthquakes are recorded as having occurred in the 6th century in Britain and Ireland, and that one that occurred on the 6th September 543AD was felt ‘throughout the then known world.’ (Ashton, 1920) This could be the date when Cantre’r Gwaelod (and Lyonesse, and other inundations that occurred across the north of Europe) was lost.
The trees in Borth have been sampled and sent for scientific evaluation, which has dated them to around 5000-4500 years ago. While that may seem out of the date range, the scientific analysis shows that the forest was ‘flourishing’ then, and the date they sank has not actually been established.
All that to say, we’re not sure when it actually sank, so I can’t answer that question for you!
If you are interested in learning more about Cantre’r Gwaelod, Neil Oliver has an episode on his history podcast, Love Letter to the British Isles that you can listen to and you can check out our show notes for further resources.
And we are going to end with a quote from a poem called the Inundation of the Cantre’r Gwaelod by Griffith Edwards that I found particularly poignant:
The ocean rolled his mountain wave,
Where lofty towers reached the sky ;
And turned the palace to a grave —
Now vessels sail where cities lie ! (Edwards,
I hope you’ve enjoyed this episode of Welsh Murders and Mysteries, and that you’ll join Kay and myself on another episode! Special thanks to my Welsh Whisperer who is helping me out with my pronunciation, and mistakes are my own as a learner of this beautiful language.Hwyl Fawr, and see you next time!
