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 those of Llyn Llech Owen; and at Llyn y Fan , 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, but 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.

Cantre'r Gwaelod

Out today on the nature reserve at Ynys Hir. 'Ynys' means island in Welsh and the various bits of higher land along this area of salt marsh and peat bog called 'Ynys -' would once have stood above the waters of an area re-claimed from the water spirits who, nevertheless, hold on to a liminal existence here along with the earth spirits who have only half possessed it. The way to the reserve is through a woodland of gnarled sessile oak (sometimes called Welsh oak) which now is bare of leaves that lie as a soggy carpet on the ground. This looks level, but from here the path runs down to the marshy area along the edge of the Dyfi salt marsh and the estuary.

It is here that, according to one version of the story, the rush cradle containing the wonder child Gwion, who was re-named Taliesin, was found by Elphin. A village nearby is named 'Tre Taliesin' and the remains of a Bronze Age burial chamber up on the higher ground overlooking the estuary is called Bedd Taliesin (Taliesin's Grave). Look at these legends too closely and their fabric begins to unweave. But they provide a cultural ethos to the experience of standing out on the marsh, the bog or the liminal green world between earth and water, the ynysoedd of this contested land where now, on a bright, sharp, cold day in December a dozen species of geese, waders and other water birds can be seen at a glance from the reserve hides. Little Egrets pad across the wet ground. A Hen Harrier hovers over them and moves on. A Red Kite sails across the distant perspective of mountains on the other side of the estuary. There is a story that Arthur leaped across these wide waters on his horse Llamrei, and the mark of the horse's hoof can still be seen in the rock over there.

But myth dissolves into reality down here on the low ground where only the spit built to drain fields on the sea side of the bog keeps back the waters that have drowned the land before. Cantre'r Gwaelod, the land which was, is attested by the remains of a semi-fossilised forest on the beach at low tide. Geology rather than mythology speaks of lost realms and legendary places. The map-makers mark Caer Wyddno out in the sea at the end of the Sarn, a rocky morraine that runs out for over a mile into Cardigan Bay.

If Rhiannon's Birds sing anywhere, then they sing here half way between Harddlech and Gwales, half way between the water world and dry land. Suspended between loss and homecoming I find my way to somewhere I always want to be but can never, quite, fully attain.