The Bwy Hir Complete Trilogy (82 page)

AUTHOR’S NOTES

All good fiction holds an element of truth; a thread of fact interlaced with a story until a fantasy world is weaved into creation.
  The myths and legends of Wales are strewn with tales of Giants and Druids. In the Bible the Nephilim are mentioned three times and described as a race of Giants. Fusing the Welsh mythological giants with the biblical Nephilim, the Bwy Hir are created.

I have included some of the reference notes that aided my storytelling and fuelled my imagination:

Nephilim

Nephilim are mentioned only a small number of times in the Bible (and the Torah):

Giants in Welsh Mythology

Giants
or
Cewri feature prominently in
Welsh
folklore and mythology. Among the most notable are
Bendigeidfran fab Llyr
, a mythological king of Britain during the
Second Branch of the Mabinogi
,
Idris Gawr
of
Cader Idris
, and
Ysbaddaden Bencawr
, the chief antagonist of the early
Arthurian
tale
How Culhwch won Olwen
. Both
Arthur
and
Gwalchmai fab Gwyar
feature prominently as giant-slayers in Welsh tradition.

In the Mabinogi of
Branwen ferch Llyr
, Britain is ruled by the giant
Bran the Blessed
, who has never been able to fit inside any dwelling. In
Culhwch and Olwen
, giants feature as antagonists throughout.
Ysbaddaden
, chief of giants, is the father of
Olwen
, a beautiful maiden sought by
Culhwch fab Cilydd
, a cousin of
King Arthur's
. He is slain at the tale's close by his nephew Goreu fab Custennin,
[2]
while Wrnach, another giant, is killed by
Cei
.

A well-known tale concerns Rhitta (or Rhudda) Gawr,
a giant who held court in
Snowdonia
. He marched against warring kings Nyniaw and Peibaw, overwhelmed their armies and took their beards as trophies of his victory and fashioned them into a cap for himself. The twenty-six kings of Britain assembled their armies to destroy Rhitta but were vanquished by the giant, who cut off the kings' beards and fashioned a great cape out of them to protect him from the cold. Sometime later, as
Arthur
"washed his hands after slaying the red-eyed giant of Cernyw", he received a message from Rhitta, demanding his beard to patch his cloak. Arthur refused, and Rhitta marched south with his armies to claim it from him. In the resulting confrontation, Rhitta is forced to shear his own beard, and retreats "much humbled in stature but much wiser in knowledge". A variant tale claims that after receiving the demands, Arthur marched furiously up to Snowdonia and fought against the giant in a duel, in which he "lifted up his sword and struck Rhitta on the crown of the head a blow so fiercely-wounding, severely-venomous and sternly-smiting that it cut through all his head armour and his skin and his flesh and clove him in twain.",
[3]
According to the story, Arthur commands that a cairn be built over his body which forms Gwyddfa Rhudda (Rhita's Cairn). Over the intervening centuries the name of Rhudda was forgotten and Gwyddfa Rhudda became known as
Yr Wyddfa
.

Maelor Gawr
, the giant of Castell Maelor, was captured in Cyfeilog, about twelve miles from his own castle and was sentenced to death. His enemies allowed him his final request to blow on his horn three times before his death. The first time he blew, his hair and beard fell out, and on the second blast of his horn, so great was the strength and force of the sounding that all his finger and toe-nails fell off completely. On the third blast of his horn the intensity of the force of the sound caused the horn to be broken into small pieces.

Maelor's son, Cornippin, who was hunting with his horse and his hound, heard the sound of his father's hand and
lamented over his suffering. He made to rescue his father and in riding with such haste and swiftness, he tore the head of his hound off its body. He spurred his horse onwards, leaped in one great bound over the Ystwyth river and attacked his father's captors. In the ensuing battle, Cornippin was slain.

The
Historia Brittonum
claims that Benlli Gawr was an early king of
Powys
, who was burned to death after acting aggressively towards
Germanus of Auxerre
.

Canthrig Bwt, a giantess and witch notorious in the folklore of
Gwynedd
, lived under a great stone in Nant Peris and killed and
ate
a number of the community's children.

Gogfran the Giant is recorded in the
Welsh Triads
as the father of
Gwenhwyfar
, Arthur's third wife. A tale tells of the imprisonment of a number of his sons by the giants of Bron Wrgan, leading to Arthur's attack on the abode to free his brothers-in-law.

Bwy Hir and Longevity

In the Red Book of Hergest, Text, vol ii p.218 it is written:

‘Three months and three long years,

And full three hundred years

With occasional battles, he will rule.’

(The Four Ancient Books of Wales, Milton Keynes, 2013, p. 567)

The traditional Welsh name for Stonehenge is
Côr y Cewri
or "Council of the Giants".

Bards and Druids

Druids, the ancient priests of Britain and Ireland, have long intrigued and kindled the imagination of large popular audiences. The stereotypical image of the white robed wise man, carrying perhaps a golden sickle and mistletoe, or clasping a white staff, remains strong with us today, the outcome of many centuries of thinking and invention. Yet what evidence do we have for these powerful but elusive figures? (
http://www.museumwales.ac.uk/en/rhagor/article/ancient_druids/, accessed January 2013)

Earliest mention of Druids comes during the 1st century BC, referring to
druidae
in Gaul (France) and Britain, who were wise men, observers of natural phenomena and moral philosophers. Similar to the druids were the bards (
bardoi
) - singers and poets, and diviners (
vates
), who interpreted sacrifices in order to foretell the future.

Druids and bards were common in medieval Welsh and Irish texts, probably giving account of much earlier oral tradition, passed on by word of mouth.

The visual appearance of druids - what they wore and what possessions they owned - is difficult to clarify. There are few illustrations or inscriptions of the time, whilst archaeology rarely provides certain answers. A druidic ceremony described by Pliny, in his
Natural History,
describes, a white robed druid climbing an oak tree to cut down mistletoe with a golden sickle.

In Wales, the roles and privileges of bards related to laws set down by Hywel Dda in the 10th century AD. During the 18th century, druids came to be seen as the ancestors of the bards, the praise poets, musicians and genealogists, who flourished in Welsh medieval society.

A revival of interest in druids began during the Renaissance (14th to 16th-centuries), when translations of Classical Greek and Roman texts became widely available. A number of sources describe the druids as performing human sacrifice. Places of worship were described as isolated wooded groves and near sacred pools and lakes. According to one source, the druidic groves on Mona (Anglesey) had the blood of prisoners drenched upon their altars.

Some accounts suggested that the stone circles at Avebury and Stonehenge had been druidic temples. Similarly, a number of megalithic monuments on Anglesey were thought as the temples and sacrificial altars of druids. However, with advances in archaeological understanding during the 19th century, it became clear that these monuments were built over 4,000 years ago, long before the appearance of druids. Nevertheless, modern druids and bards continue to meet within stone circles today.

Archaeology does however provide evidence for the religious expression of Celtic Iron Age people. The tradition of offering gifts to the gods is well illustrated at the site of Llyn Cerrig Bach on Anglesey. Here, between 300BC and AD100, chariots, weapons, tools and decorated metalwork items were cast from a causeway or island into a small lake. Coincidentally, an account by the Roman author Tacitus vividly recounts the crushing of a druidic stronghold on Anglesey by the Roman army, leading some to infer that Llyn Cerrig Bach was a druidic site.

Other instances of Celtic Iron Age ritual have also been identified. For example, a probable sacrificial victim preserved in peat has been found at Lindow Moss in Cheshire (England). Recently, the famous Cerrig-y-Drudion bowl, elaborately decorated in the Celtic or La Tène art style, has also been convincingly interpreted as a ceremonial crown. This and a number of other crowns and regalia, found with burials or in temples in Britain, may have denoted priestly office.

In this prehistoric world, the power of the pagan Celtic gods was keenly felt, ever present and intermingled within everyday life.

The druids have long been associated with Anglesey in popular imagination. The historical evidence upon which this association is based is an account by the Roman author Tacitus, who wrote of the Roman conquest of Anglesey:

"On the beach stood the adverse array [of Britons], a serried mass of arms and men, with women flitting between the ranks. In the style of Furies, in robes of deathly black and with disheveled hair, they brandished their torches; while a circle of Druids, lifting their hands to heaven and showering imprecations, struck the troops with such an awe at the extraordinary spectacle that, as though their limbs were paralysed, they exposed their bodies to wounds without an attempt at movement. Then, reassured by their general, and inciting each other never to flinch before a band of females and fanatics, they charged behind the standards, cut down all who met them, and enveloped the enemy in his own flames. The next step was to install a garrison among the conquered population, and to demolish the groves consecrated to their savage cults; for they considered it a pious duty to slake the altars with captive blood and to consult their deities by means of human entrails." (Translated by John Jackson, published by William Heinemann, 1951).

Taliesin the Bard

Taliesin (Talyesin, Talyessin, Taliessin) is a Cymric (Welsh) master poet and hero known from both history and the mythology of the
Ystoria Taliesin
. He is first mentioned in Nennius'
Historia Brittonum
as one of the first of the Welsh bards as well as a mention in Aneirin's
Gododdin
. His poems survive in the Book of Taliesin where he is the praise-poet of Urien of Rheged.

Extract of a poem from the Book of Taliesin XXV111. Text, vol ii p 179:

‘A wonder that there is not proclaimed

An acknowledgement of heaven and earth.

Of the coming of a giant Ruler…’

(The Four Ancient Books of Wales, Milton Keynes, 2013, p. 567)

The Triskele

In the Bwy Hir Trilogy, the Triskele is the symbol of the three branches: Bwy Hir, Druid and The Chosen.
A triskele
is believed by many people and archaeologists to be an ancient symbol of pre-Celtic and Celtic beliefs, the triple spiral appears in various forms in pre-Celtic and Celtic art, with the earliest examples having been carved on pre-Celtic stone monuments, and later examples found in the Celtic Christian illuminated manuscripts of Insular art. The triple spiral was possibly the precursor to the later triskele design found in the manuscripts. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Triple_spiral, accessed November 2013)

What the symbol meant to the pagans who built Newgrange and other monuments is unknown; but, as Christianity came into the forefront in Ireland before the 5th century, AD, the triskele took on new meaning, as a symbol of the Trinity (i.e., Father, Son, and Holy Spirit) and, therefore, also a symbol of eternity. Its popularity continues today as a decorative symbol of faith for Christians of Celtic descent around the world and represents the Christian trinity.
Neopagan
religions such as Celtic Reconstructionist Paganism and Wicca use the symbol to represent a variety of triplicities from their belief systems.

In the Black Book of Caermarthen (Text, vol 11. P. 7) it is written:

On as many pivots as there are under the sea,

On as many winged ones as the Almighty made,

And should every one have thrice three hundred tongues,

They could not relate the power of the Trinity.

(The Four Ancient Books of Wales, Milton Keynes, 2013, p. 504)

Cerdd Carega

Translates in the Bwy Hir Trilogy as ‘here and there stones’ or ‘singing stones’. There are numerous standing stones all over Wales and Great Britian, including Mynydd y Gelli
.

Laurence Main in his book ‘The Spirit Paths of Wales’ claims that ley lines or ‘spirit paths’ connect a number of these standing stones and he has dowsed and mapped a number of walks all over Wales.

Cup marks are also a prevalent feature on a number of the stones and was where the spiral symbol on the Cerdd Carega was derived from. No-one knows what these marking are, or why the stones were placed where they were including the larger stone monuments like Stonehenge.

According to history these stones are notoriously difficult to move and are recorded as dangerous as well as bewildering. When a nineteenth-century landowner tried to shift stones named Long Meg and her Daughters in Cumbria, a violent storm put his workman to fright, similarly in Somerset, a survey of stones was enough to produce terrifying thunder (Mythology of the British Isles., Ashe, G., London, 1990, p. 50)

Character Names

All the characters names in the Bwy Hir Trilogy have a meaning nature and are Welsh or Celtic.

Aeron Ddu: Aeron: God of battle or slaughter Ddu: Black = Black Battle

Afagddu (the Druid): Malformed / half formed / utter darkness

Anwen: Very fair

Arawn: God of the Annwfn (Underworld Kingdom of the dead), revenge, terror, and war.

Artio: Goddess of Horses

Awel: Gentle breeze

Cadno: Fox

Celyn Bach: Celyn: Holly, meaning wisdom. Bach means small.

Dafydd: Beloved

Gwrnach: A giant from the Mabinogi whose name means Alder River

Gwyn: Fair white son

Mab Rhedyn Haf: Mab: Merry or Queen of the Fairies, Haf: Summer

Olwen: Goddess of the Sun

Rhiannon: Goddess of birds and enchantments

Taliesin: God of bards, wisdom and poetry