Ein brenin a fu, ein brenin a fydd

Legendary  Landmarks

corngafallt

The cairns themselves are fairly inaccessible.  They are situated near the summit of a substantial hill at a distance of at least 500 metres over wild moorland from the footpath at SN 943644.  Take the minor road from Elan village until you reach a group of farm buildings, the footpath leads up a farm track from the road and through a wood, up and out on to the moor.  Double back upon yourself along the back of the wood, you should see them after about 500 metres walk.   Due to this inaccessibility the installation is situated at the Elan valley visitors centre in nearby Elan village at SN 928647.

Directions

Date:

Legend

 

Corngafallt itself is a sizable, wooded hill between the town of Rhayader and the scenic Elan Valley.  Over fifteen hundred feet high the hill is capped by three prehistoric cairns one of which is said to be the famed Carn Cabal, the cairn of King Arthur’s hound Cabal.  The cairn is so named as it is supposed to contain a stone which bears the miraculous paw print of Cabal, made during the hunt across Wales for the monstrous boar Twrch Trwyth.  The print is mentioned by the ninth century monk Nennius as being one of the marvels of Wales:

 

             There is another marvel in the district which is called Buelt. Here is a heap of stones,              and at the top of the heap one stone bearing the footprint of a dog.  When they              hunted the boar Trwyth, Cabal which was the dog of Arthur the soldier, put his foot              on that stone and marked it; and Arthur afterwards piled up a heap of stones and              that stone on top, on which was the dog’s footprint, and called it Carn Cabal.  And              men come and carry away the stone in their hands for a day and a night and the              next morning there it is back again on its heap.

 

The hunting of the Twrch Trwyth is an important piece of early Arthurian legend, some saying it forms part of a pre-Christian myth whilst others maintain it is an allegorical record of true events in which Arthur and his men pursued an band of Irish raiders across Wales.  In the story Twrch Trwyth was a king of Ireland turned into a boar by God on account of his terrible wickedness.  Arthur’s nephew Cullhwch had been set the task of capturing it in order to obtain a comb, razor and shears from between its ears, just one of many seemingly impossible tasks he was set in order to obtain the hand of the Princess Olwen, the marriage of whom would bring death upon her father the giant Yspadaddan.  Arthur was pledged to help him nephew and so his men set off after the boar.  There were many clashes in which the Boar slew several of Arthur’s men, including two of his sons, but eventually one of his companions Mabon obtained the razor and another Cyledyr the shears and they pursued it further seeking the comb and eventually they got it.  The boar however escaped and fled into the sea after which it swam off and was never seen again.  It was during this hunt that the hound Cabal was said to have made this print and to commemorate the event and the battle that took place Arthur supposedly erected this cairn.  When visiting the site around the turn of the twentieth century Lady Charlotte Guest, first translator of the Mabinogion into English in which much of the above story appears, reported discovering a stone that she was convinced was the stone spoken of in the legend.  She described it as being about two feet by one foot with a paw shaped hollow four inches long, three wide and two deep.  When I visited the site a century on I could see no such stone although I did discover several very similar only with smaller imprints than that described.  This is perhaps unsurprising when one understands that geologically the stones in this area are conglomerate and it is not uncommon for embedded pebbles to come away from larger rocks leaving behind imprints.

ARTIST:

The three cairns that stand atop Carn Gafallt above the Elan valley, one of which is held to be Carn Cabal.

To contact chris:

E-mail: legendarylandmarks@hotmail.co.uk

Press/Venues: for publicity material click here

The Completed artwork:

This installation takes a form inspired by the legend associated with this site.  The legend states that whilst hunting the monstrous boar the Twrch Trwyth Arthur’s dog Cabal left his paw imprinted upon a rock here.  Arthur ordered a cairn to be erected to mark the site of the conflict with the boar and topped the cairn with the rock in which Cabal had left his mark.  Early Welsh chronicler Nennius listed this cairn as a ‘marvel’ stating that if any man was to take this stone away then the next day it would appear back upon the cairn as it always was.  The installation takes the form of a new ‘cairn’, a sculpture composed of numerous small rocks and stones held together in a gabion structure akin to an enclosed dry stone wall.  The choice of materials reflects the artist’s philosophy of utilising the visual language of the modern and mundane as opposed to that of conventional art (ie. the stone walls and anti-erosion measures that are familiar features of the local landscape as opposed to using painting or some similar medium) to reinvigorate the ancient and transcendent (ie. legend and folklore).  In a similar vein is the fact that at the cairn’s heart are ten drums of water from the Caban Coch Reservoir, tying the legendary traditions of the local landscape to its current function.  On top of the cairn is mounted an engraved plaque depicting a stylised image of Cabal’s footprint.  The installation is interactive in that there are crayons and paper available in the visitor’s centre so that visitors can make rubbings of the footprint to take home with them whilst like in the legend the original print can not be removed from atop its cairn.  This follows recent artistic currents regarding the proliferation of artists multiples, highly accessible, it is both a stone sculpture and a starting point for semi-autonomous disposable multiples.  This ties in with the alternative vision of this project, already a step away from the gallery/urban centralised art tradition, in that these multiples are in their very essence anti-commercial.  They are far from unique art objects, instead they are a free art form for everyone, regardless of social status, much like the very stories and folk traditions that inspired them.  The profusion of replicas contrasted with the illusive nature of the original stone echoes the nature of such myths: the primary source is often impossible to find but there are often dozens of versions derived from it, all subtly different but basically united around its fundamental form.

Here above to the left is the image of one of the imprints that I discovered in a stone on one of the cairns, I have traced the imprint with a dotted red line as it is tricky to make out in the photograph.  Above and to the right is a copy of an engraving commissioned by Lady Guest to depict the stone that she discovered on her visit to the site.  The two stones are in many ways similar although mine is slightly smaller.  This amply demonstrates however the type of rock patterns that can be found on these cairns.

1st April onwards

Chris Collier

Photographs of the completed installation:

The finished work stands about four feet wide by four feet high over two tiers.  It is located just behind the Elan Valley Visitors Centre near Rhayader.  It is to the rear of the centre by the picnic benches and childrens’ play area, with spectacular views of the Caban Coch dam which creates an atmospheric setting that can not be done justice in photographs.

Above left you can see the cairn in its dramatic setting in the valley and directly above how the plaque fits in place atop the cairn.  The plaque can also be seen in more detail below left.  The picture to the left shows the piece  in the middle of construction whilst the image below shows the location of the installation and the Visitors Centre from the viewpoint of up on the dam.