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The Llyn Cerrig Bach hoard can be viewed at St Fagan’s Museum of History near Cardiff. The lake itself on SW Anglesey can be visited (RAF Valley). Still a special place.
If in Snowdonia, you can see Lake Bala (Tegid), Llyn Morwynion (welly walk over bog from Llyn Bach), and Tomen y Mor. llech Gronw appears to be on private land with no footpath near. Perhaps this is why Alan Garner set his story to the south of it where the reproduction stone stands? If anyone knows better and other places, please add them.
Hello there,
You may be interested in the Englynion y Beddau (Stanzas of the Graves), there’s a nice Welsh/English edition (2015) with a lot of information about the places and their mythologies and folklore by Anthony Griffiths and John K. Bollard. You could use this book if you were planning an itinerary of places to go and see as well. I have a copy, it’s beautifully illustrated, too.
Bennathow
/|\Thank you very much. I will try to find that book. My reading pile is over my knees at the moment where there is so much to learn. I haven’t been so academically engaged and excited in years! My daughter and I (she is fluent in Welsh) tried looking at photographs of the original Mabinogi books and found that it was very different from modern Welsh. Historically I’m sure there are mustard seeds of truth in the tales. The Lake of the Maidens made me wonder if the white quartz stone (moon link?) and the recumbent female shape of the surrounding hills was significant. Bala has had a big earthquake within the last 200 years, if such an event had occurred with a high status crannog, could it have been overwhelmed with water and lost like in the tale? Being able to experience the actual locations adds a whole new dimension to the tales. I can easily imagine the evicted people of Pembrokeshire identifying with being told the tale of the deserted Dyfed in Mabinogi 3 and having to seek a craft in English towns to support themselves. Thank you very much for the book recommendation Dowgri.
Hello again,
I’ve just bumped up an old(er) thread – the Bookshelf – with members’ recommendations and some reviews of books. I started the thread a couple of years ago so as to be helpful to us all, and it was also a nice way to talk about what we were all reading. You may also find it interesting. (I’ve posted the link at the bottom.)
I agree with you about actually being able to visit the places. In my opinion, wherever you may be, a Druid must ‘walk the land’, no two places are the same, no two places have the same energy. If I’m in a Breton forest, it’s not the same as being on a lonely Cornish moor or coastal, cliff-edge path and so on even though there are also some similarities, too. Furthermore, taking into account the original meaning of the word original, I believe that all myths, legends, and folklore have a basis in truth. In Cornwall we have the legend of Lethowsow – Lyonesse – and both in Mount’s Bay (ancient flooded forest) and out towards the Scilly Isles, there’s archaeological evidence that forested and inhabited land was indeed drowned beneath the sea … so who knows?
Getting back to books, three books that I’d also recommend – more, perhaps as reference materials, would be:
Pagan Celtic Britain (1974; revised edition 2005) by Anne Ross – a noted Celticist, who was involved in the curious case of the Hexham Heads – I might post a thread about this on the main forum.
Trioedd Ynys Prydein – The Triads of the Islands of Britain
by Rachel Bromwich (ed.). 4th edition (2014), University of Wales Press.The Celtic Heroic Age: Literary Sources for Ancient Celtic Europe & Early Ireland & Wales
by John T. Koch & John Carey, Celtic Studies Publications (4 Edition: 2013)Bookshelf link:
Right well, I hope this is of some help and inspiration.
Bennathow
/|\Thank you Dowrgi. I have been enjoying the beautiful Stanzas of the Graves book you recommended. I heard a YouTube about the Hexham Heads. Very interesting. Faces have been discovered at Littledean Roman Temple overlooking the Severn, which was put over a far older polishing stone site. They have received funding to have them examined, but think many came from Wiltshire. It has the potential to be of more importance than the Nodens temple by Lydney, as there was a walkable river crossing at low tide by the “nose” loop of the river shape below.
Evening Melanie,
Nice to hear from you and I’m glad you’re enjoying the book I recommended. Re the Hexham Heads, I posted a thread on the main (open) forum, too. The thought does sometimes cross my mind – and this is a hot potato in druidry – of whether things were put in the ground ought to stay in the ground …
Bennathow
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