Ein brenin a fu, ein brenin a fydd

Legendary  Landmarks

Llyn Llech owain

Llyn Llech Owain is a country park run by Carmarthenshire County Council and as such has good access and parking facilities.  It is located just off the A48 and A476 near Gorslas at SN565148.  The installation is located part way round the lake, in woodland close by the footpath.

Directions

Date:

Legend

Llyn Llech Owain (Lake of the Slab of Owain) was formed by accident by one Arthur’s knights, Sir Owain.  There are two stories of Owain’s adventures, probably both divergent versions of the same original tale.  In the first story Owain was riding through a valley when he came across a great stone slab covering a spring.  The spring was given to the shepherds of the valley by the fairies in order that their sheep might drink from it.  The stone slab formed a lid for the spring and the fairies warned the shepherds must always be replaced when they had finished with it.  As Owain rode by the spring one hot, summer’s day  he stopped to allow his tired horse a drink.  Unfortunately he did not know of the fairies warning and rode off unaware, leaving the spring open and flowing freely.  He then came to an area of woodland not too far away and decided to lay down and rest in the shadows beneath the trees.  He drifted off to sleep and when he awoke he found that the spring had been gushing up huge amounts of water and flooded all of the surrounding valley beneath the rapidly rising waters.  Owain only managed to stop the floodwater rising further by leaping on his horse and galloping around the newly formed lake three times in order to break the spell.  Some say that Owain, in a story more usually told of Arthur, his king, sleeps in a nearby cave hidden somewhere in Carmel Woods (SN 591162). Others say it was not Sir Owain who undertook these adventures but a much later hero; Owain Lawgoch of the line of Llywelyn the Last.  However this is likely a later retelling of an older story rather than the original as the story bears a number of clear similarities with another tale regarding the Sir Owain of Arthurian fame and his adventures with a magical slab and fountain.

This second and probably older version of the tale is found in the collection of tales known as the Mabinogion within the story known as ’The Lady of the Fountain’.  Here Owain left Arthur’s court,  intrigued by Kynon son of Clydno’s tales of an enchanted fountain in the forest.  Owain followed the directions given him by Kynon and at length discovered a magic fountain and poured some water onto its stone surround.  Here is the description given to Owain on his way to the Fountain by a swineherd he stops to ask for directions:

              'Take … that path that leads towards the head of the glade, and ascend the wooded steep until thou comest to its summit; and there thou wilt find an open space like to a large valley, and in the midst of it a tall tree, whose branches are greener than the greenest pine-trees. Under this tree is a fountain, and by the side of the fountain a marble slab, and on the marble slab a silver bowl, attached by a chain of silver, so that it may not be carried away. Take the bowl and throw a bowlful of water upon the slab, and thou wilt hear a mighty peal of thunder, so that thou wilt think that heaven and earth are trembling with its fury. With the thunder there will come a shower so severe that it will be scarce possible for thee to endure it and live. And the shower will be of hailstones; and after the shower, the weather will become fair, but every leaf that was upon the tree will have been carried away by the shower. Then a flight of birds will come and alight upon the tree; and in thine own country thou didst never hear a strain so sweet as that which they will sing. And at the moment thou art most delighted with the song of the birds, thou wilt hear a murmuring and complaining coming towards thee along the valley. And thou wilt see a knight upon a coal-black horse, clothed in black velvet, and with a pennon of black linen upon his lance; and he will ride unto thee to encounter thee with the utmost speed’

That knight was the Lord and Guardian of the Fountain.  The two fought and the strange knight was eventually defeated and pursued back to his castle, not far from there. The lord died of his wounds but Owain became trapped as he tried to enter the castle. A girl from the castle named Luned came to his rescue, giving him a magical ring of invisibility, one of the Thirteen Treasures of Britain.   He escaped and Luned presented him to her mistress, the recently widowed Lady of the castle.  Owain immediately fell in love with the beautiful widow and as she and the magical fountain that she was charged to protect needed a worthy custodian, she agreed to marry him. 

The similarities between this story and the previous one are obvious: the enchanted fountain, the stone slab, the deluge that accompanies the slab’s disturbance and Owain as the hero of both tales.  Although the second one does not include the formation of the lake, it is a far more detailed and in depth story.  It is for this reason that I have chosen the second version as inspiration for this particular installation.

The Owain of the story is most likely the early British king Owain ap Urien of Rheged (modern day Cumbria and southern Scotland) who is a regular character in early Welsh poetry and Arthurian romance.  He was a popular figure with the Bards of the Middle Ages too, especially with Lewis Glyn Cothi, who in an ode to Gruffudd ap Nicholas, a powerful chieftain of Carmarthenshire, and one of the descendants of Urien Rheged speaks of the family carrying Owain’s coat of arms which is still borne by his descendants of the House of Dynevor and the Bard also probably intended an allusion to one of the principal incidents of the story of the Lady of the Fountain when he talks of a lion.  The Carmarthenshire connection here could explain the localising of Owain’s adventure at the fountain in this particular area.

A similar tale is told of the fountain of Baranton in Brittany which was believed to be a haunt of the fairies to whom offerings could be made in order to bring about rain or storms.  It is this fountain that is alluded to in Chretien de Troyes’ French version of the Owain tale entitled ‘Yvain’.  The Lady of the Fountain, the Countess Laudine, probably derives from just such a fountain fairy and ultimately from a pagan Celtic divinity comparable to the nymphs of Greek myth.  Evidence of the survival of pagan practices was found at the fountain of Baranton up until fairly modern times: in August 1835, when there was an unusual drought in Brittany, all the inhabitants of nearby Concoret formed in a great procession with banners and crucifix at their head, and with chants and ringing of church bells marched to this same fountain of Baranton and prayed for rain.  Apparently this event was reported in July 1909 by a peasant who lived near the fountain, and who heard it from his parents; and he added that the foot of the crucifix was planted in the water to aid the rain-making creating an interesting combination of paganism and Christianity.

I would propose the likely evolution of the legend at Llyn Llech Owain went as follows:

Lost Pagan Celtic saga telling of a god’s/demi-god’s liason with a spring/water goddess. > Historical figure of Owain ap Urien becomes conflated with the divine hero of the above myth. > Drawing on this fluid oral tradition that has migrated from western Britain to Brittany, Chretien de Troyes records, embellishes and contemporises for his own time the above story. >  Surviving remnants of a pagan cult in which the goddess has been transposed as a fairy at the fountain of Baranton become associated with the fountain of the tale and the fountain’s fairy inhabitant with the story’s countess character. > The story is written into Welsh in a combination of the early oral tradition and Chretien’s contemporised version. > Knowing that local noble Dynevor family claim descent from Owain ap Urien, Carmarthenshire folklore conflates elements of the above fountain legend (the ‘fairies’, the slab, the bowl, the deluge-inducing effect) with a local landscape feature (the lake) localising the adventures of Owain to their familiar surroundings.

It is however possible that this local version is either older or indeed independent of the Brittany tale.

 

 

ARTIST:

Llyn Llech Owain (Lake of the Slab of Owain), apparently formed by Arthur’s knight Owain when he accidentally disturbed an enchanted fountain.

To contact chris:

E-mail: legendarylandmarks@hotmail.co.uk

Press/Venues: for publicity material click here

The completed artwork:

The installation deals with the legend regarding the formation of the lake and references comparable legends which tell similar stories across the UK and as far a field as Brittany.  The work comprises a stone slab of a few feet in length by approximately a foot wide with some latin carving and traditional Celtic decoration upon it in the style of memorial stones from the fifth and sixth centuries, the supposed period of the legendary Owain.  The inscription details the legend of the marvels that may follow the pouring of water upon the slab and attached to the slab by way of a short length of chain is a turned wooden bowl..  The piece aims to tell the story of Owain as found in the Mabinogion tale ‘The Lady of the Fountain’, which is essentially a version of the story told of Llyn Llech Owain’s legendary formation.  The piece is positioned in a wooded area close to the path and the slab is surrounded by a number of bird boxes, referencing the part of the Mabinogion tale in which a flock of birds amass at the disturbance of the slab.  The piece is accompanied by an interpretation board, explaining itself and the story and linking the story to contemporary environmental issues, ie. the flooding in the story caused by Owain’s negligence compared to the projected mass flooding that contemporary environmental negligence is predicted to produce. 

Summer 2006

Chris Collier

Photographs of the completed Installation: