Afagddu: a Brythonic and Cymric god (Utter Darkness)

Celtic Gods: The Brythonic and Cymric God, Afagddu, Utter Darkness

Afagddu

A Brythonic and Cymric God: Utter Darkness

This deity is known from the tale Cymric of Taliesin and the Mabinogi of Culhwch ac Olwen and is a god of the Battle Dead, who later becam the embodiment of ugliness and evil.

Synonyms: Morfrân eil Tegid
Cym: Utter Darkness

According to the legend of Taliesyn Afagddu was the son of Cerridwen and Tegid Foel. Born the ugliest man in the Island of the Mighty he also known as Morfrân (great crow), and his sister, Creirwy was the fairest maiden in the world.

The least favoured of all men, Afagddu’s mother, Cerridwen decided to create a special brew in her Cauldron of Inspiration so that her son would gain clear sight, poetic majesty and knowledge of the future.

Such a powerful brew required careful tending as the potion had to seep for a year and a day. As a result Cerridwen appointed the blind man, Morda, to tend the fire whilst Gwion Bach was set to stir the brew. After a year and a day of tedious stirring and Gwion approached exhaustion, three drops of the brew accidentally flew from the cauldron and fell on Gwion’s finger, scalding him. Instinctively he placed his finger in his mouth to suck at the burn and immediately he gained the knowledge of all things and the potion remaining in the cauldron was converted to poison. With seething toxin within, the cauldron immediately burst and Afagddu had to remain ill-favoured.

He also appears in the tale of Culhwch ac Olwen as a member of Arthur’s court. So ugly was he [Morfrân] that he was not attacked at the battle of Camlan because everyone supposed he was an attending demon; he had hair on him like a stag...

Afagddu may be the shadow of a ‘Dark Lord’ the origin and mythology of whom is now almost entirely lost. Indeed, Afagddu's name is the cognate of that of the Gaulish god Veradunus ('utter darkness') and is also related to the Irish ancestral deity Donn 'Darkness'. Like Afagddu Donn was a god of death who lives in isolation from other gods. Could Afagddu represent a Brythonic survival of the dark ancestral deity of the underworld? This would certainly account for Afagddu's reputation for hideousness in later Medieval tales, for in Christian times Donn also gained many of the aspects of the devil.

However, his name lives on in modern Cymric parlance as a pitch-black or a dark and desolate place is said to be fel Afagddu (like unto ‘Afagddu’). Afagddu's other epithet of Morfrân also suggests the names of the raven gods and goddesses that occur in Cymric as well as Irish mythology and suggest that like them Morfrân may also have been a deity of the battle dead and might once have functioned as a psychopomp. Perhaps this is why he later became reviled and why, mythologically speaking, he survived the battle of Camlan; for it was his function as the collector of the battle dead to do so.

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