 | |
(or The Marriage at Nant Gwrtheyrn)
Cym: The Blasted Tree of the Spectre
Introduction
This is anoteher tale from the Llŷn Peninsula, which this time is centred around the isolated bay of Nant Gwrtheyrn (itself named after the early Brythonic leader, Gwrtheyrn. Indeed, as we shall see later, the the tale of Rhys and Meinir's doomed love has many parallel with Gwytheyrn's own folklore. The modern village of Nant Gwrtheyrn (now a Language Centre) is shown in the image on the left which also shows the slope down from the Eifl, demonstrating how inaccessible the place was in the past.
This then is the background to the tale. Though there have been a number of literary versions of this tale, howwever, the story (and a number of variants thereof) remains an essential part of local folklore and it's this current folkloric version upon which I'll base the tale told here.
In his Tours of Wales Thomas Pennant notes that the three farms on the Nant were Tŷ Hen, Tŷ Canol and Tŷ Ychaf respectively. It so happened that Tŷ Uchaf was occupied by the orphan, Rhys Maredydd and his sister, Angharad. The neighbouring farm, Tŷ Hen was inhabited by a girl named Meinir and her father. Being cousins and neighbours Rhys and Meinir used to play together, along with Rhys' sister, Angharad. But, as they grew older Rhys and Meinir would tend to wander off together. One of their favourite spots was an ancient oak high up on the lower slopes of the Eifl. An oak clearly visible from Rhys' farm and from beneath the the protective boughs of which the children could gaze outwards across the Irish Sea and on a bright summer's day they might, just might, catch a glimpse of the clouds that shrouded the Wicklow mountains of distant Ireland.
As they grew up their childhood friendship blossomed into love and that great oak with its hollow bole and its ring crown of branches became their favourite locale for their trysts. There, at the end of day, they would watch the sun setting over the distant tip of the Llŷn Peninsula or the moonrise over the ridges of the Eifl itself. Eventually and inevitably their love led to a proposal of marriage and the prospect of a wedding.
Preparations for the wedding itself and the wedding feast and the services of the inviter, Ifan y Cilie were secured. His function being to walk through the neighbouring districts so that he could bear the good news. Each and every household was informed by Ifan that Rhys and Meinir would be married at the pilgrim church of Clynnog Fawr on the second Sunday in June.
A number of the nearest neighbours were invited down to the Nant on the Friday so that they could provide gifts for the young couple and partake of the pre-wedding meal. Many brought the traditional gifts of faggots for a new hearth, yeast dough for the new family to begin the baking of their own bread and cloth to symbolize the harmony of warp and weft. Closer relatives might bring a lamb or a piglet that the couple might start their own herd wihilst others brought flagons of cider for the wedding feast itself. On this season the lambs had fattened early, the hot sun had brought the mackerel and herring shoals close to the shore and food stocks were plentiful in Nant Gwrtheyrn.
It so happened that the people of Nant Gwrtheyrn maintained the ancient tradition of the 'Wedding Quest' where the bride would hide on the morning of the wedding and the groom would have to hunt for her. After breakfast and near dawn Meinir slipped out of her father's house and headed for the hills. About half an hour later Rhys and his companions arrived at Tŷ Hen where their way was barred by Meinir's father. After the exchange of the traditional pennillion in which those standing on the doorstep requested ingress and Meinir's father sought to prevent them from entering the house. Eventually they were allowed into the house, but Meinir had long gone. The search for her began, but wherever the men began to search Meinir was not there to be found. By lunchtime the search had to be abandoned and the men assumed that Meinir hed somehow eluded them and doubled back to make her way to the church as Clynnog. Mounting their horses, Rhys and his grooms made their way to the church, fully expecting Meinir to be waiting for them. But when they arrived she was nowhere to be seen. Even after an hour had passed beyond the appointed time for the wedding there was still no sign of Meinir. Truly worried now, Rhys ran all the way back to Nant Gwrtheyrn and searched again, even lighting torches and continuing their search deep into the night. By dawn on the following day it was obvious to all that something had happened to Meinir.
The search continued for a week, but no sign of Meinir was seen, there was no indication that she had passed a given spot or location. Soon the search parties dwindled away, leaving only Rhys to criss-cross the valley and the surrounding mountains all the while shouting 'Meinir, Meinir!' Not a day passed by, from the heat of summer to the snow-clad depths of winter when he did not venture forth to search for his beloved and soon enough the tales of a madman who daily searched the hollows of Nant Gwrtheyrn to seek his beloved. He would even make pilgrimages to the ancient oak and would gaze out from there across the Nant, just as he had done in those happy days when he stood hand-in-hand with his beloved.
The years passed and still Rhys searched, until one windswept night over thirty years from the planned wedding day Rhys was bearing a lighted torch as he made his way once more towards the ncient oak. A roll of thunder rumbled overhead and the sky was split with a searing bolt of lightning that struck the oak itself full-square on its trunk. With a sizzle of ozone and a crack of frying wood the oak itself was rent in two as one massive side of the tree creaked and fell away to reveal the hollow in the tree's heart. Another bolt of lightning seared the air and its brief flash revealed a truly horrific image to Rhys' eyes.
For in the instant of the lightning flash Rhys saw, trapped within the heart of the oak, the gleam of a bleached skeleton still wearing its wedding dress. With a cry of anguish Rhys raised his torch and rushed towards the blasted oak. With each step his heart pounded faster in his chest as the pale white form resolved itself in more and more clarity. With a cry he fell upon the corpse, dropping his torch to the ground and cradling the skeleton in his arms. Another flash of lightning and the skeleton fell out of the tree and into Rhys' arms. It is said that the died of a broken heart that night on the hillside and he was found two days later with the corpse of Meinir still in his arms. They were eventually buried together in the same grave.
About half a century later the first reports of ghosts seen in Nant Gwytheyrn were reported. These tales begin with a fisherman, who on a stormy night reported seeing a skeletal figure drifting across the beach at Nant Gwrtheyrn. Later many people claimed to have seen two ghosts down on the beach moving hand-in-hand. They were a man with a long beard and long hair and a woman dressed in white with hollow sockets where her eyes should be.
The lightning-struck oak is still there just above the modern village and it's said that no bird will alight upon it save the owl and the cormorant [the owl being associated in Cymric mythos with Blodeuwedd, wife of Lleu Llaw Gyffess a god associated with oak trees. The Cormorant is associated with Manawyddan; god of the sea and its storms].
The myth itself shares a large number of features in common with the tale of Gwrtheyrn as it involves the fatherless child, the wedding to a cousin, the flight across the land and the final lightning strike that burnt Gwrtheyrn's tower but which revealed Meinir to Rhys. The tale itself seems to have been initially recorded in English (circa 1850) as 'Ceubren yr Ellyll' which was translated in the tale as 'The Bride of Nant Gwrtheyrn'; with the lovers' names in this version being Anglicized to Rees and Margaret. The more familiar tale, however, appeared in the 1862–1864 collection of folk tales in Welsh called Cymru Fu (The Wales that Was). Here it was titled 'Priodas yn Nant Gwrtheyrn' (A Wedding in Nant Gwrtheyrn). Though no author's name was attached to the tale it is widely believed that it was penned by Owen Wynne Jones [1828–1870] (also known by his bardic name of Glasynys). As a result of this, and because of the continuation of the tale in local folklore the story is known by many names: Ceubren yr Ellyll (Blasted tree of the Spectre); Priodas yn Nant Gwrtheyrn (A Wedding at Nant Gwrtheyrn); Stori Rhys a Meinir (The Tale of Rhys and Meinir) and Priodferch Nant Gwrtheyrn (The Bride of Nant Gwrtheyrn).
The tale also relates to an older myth relating to Nant Gwrtheyrn. It is said that during the time after Gwrtheyrn (the beginning of the sixth century) three monks making the pilgrimage from Clynnog to Ynys Enlli at the end of the Llŷn Peninsula found their way to Nant Gwrtheyrn. There they encountered the isolated community and were desirous of building a church on the spot, but the local people on seeing these strangers gathered stones (which are plentiful in the scree-falls of the area) and began to throw them at the monks. After their initial shock of being treated this way the monks retreated and from the safety of the pass above the Nant they cast down three curses upon the place: The first was that the Nant's ground would never be holy and that no one would be buried in its soil; the second, that the community of the Nant would succeed and then fail three times, and the third fall would be permanent; the final curse was that members of the same family would never be allowed to marry one another. It is said that on the evening of the monks' departures the men of the village (who were all fishermen by this time) were drowned in a violent storm that blew-in from the north. With no men-folk the women had to depart and thus the settlement of Nant Gwrtheyrn fell for the first time. Though this tale has an obvious bearing on that of Rhys and Meinir it is likely to originate as propaganda by the church of Rome which was (circa 777 CE) attempting to bring the separate Celtic Church into the Roman Catholic fold.
