Waterfalls Reprise 2024

Merlin's Pool/Craflwyn Waterfalls and Hyrddod Waterfalls, which had eluded my list for 15 years, and revisiting Pistyll Cain and Rhaeadr Mawddach.

Craflwyn Estate

The Craflwyn Estate is a tourist destination near Beddgelert in North Wales. It has parking, which is sometimes stated as free with a suggested donation, but other visitors who used it told us they had been obliged to pay. Because of this, and because it has gates that could potentially be closed, I chose to start the waterfall walk at a nearby free location, near the Sygun Copper Mine. Its waterfalls are mostly marked on the maps, but without any names. In the last few years, the National Trust reworked the estate's paths, specifically to improve access to the waterfalls. They were then mentioned on their website as a specific attraction (the Internet Archive recorded it first in 2023).

The National Trust do not name the waterfalls at all, but refer to the lowest waterfall's plunge pool as "Merlin's pool" (yes, lower case), and that is first known to have been mentioned in 2021. Strictly speaking, they do not actually name the pool - they mention it as a pool from a Merlin legend which is based in the estate - but because this is written on their website, some people have since adopted it as a name for the waterfall, and often upper-cased the letter. The Internet, however, disagrees, and it had previously been referred to unimaginatively as "Craflwyn waterfall" (particularly on the Geograph website in 2006). Neither name is official, both are used. And I would like to mention that the pool in the Merlin legend is supposed to be hidden underground, so it is not consistent with the legend, and is all a tourist gimmick anyway. But whatever, the waterfall now has two names, deal with it.

The upper waterfalls do not have any official name. Both sets of waterfalls are on the unimaginatively named Afon-y-cwm (river of the valley), so calling one set of them "Afon-y-cwm waterfalls" would be very confusing. As a result, I refer to the upper set as Hyrddod Waterfalls (say "her thod", with a voiced th like in "this"), because they are formed by the Afon-y-cwm spilling out of the Cwm yr Hyrddod hanging valley (meaning valley of the rams).

An important part of the Arthurian legends are based here, which give rise to the dragon symbol used on the Welsh flag. The legend written by Welsh monk Nennius in the Latin book Historia Brittonum in 828 CE - one of many variations of the Welsh Dragon legend, which was based on existing legends - is that Celtic warrior king Vortigern, who lived around 450 CE (assuming he was real, evidence is lacking), wanted to build a castle to defend against the invading Saxons, but each night, the walls would fall down. He was told by his advisors that it is a curse, and he must sacrifice a boy who was born of a virgin mother (this story sounds awfully familiar!). After searching for the boy, it turned out that the boy, has prophetic abilities (gee, I wonder where a monk might get the idea for this story from). In the book, the boy is named Ambrosius, a Latin name meaning "immortal", whose Welsh form is Emrys. Ambrosius told him that the red Welsh Dragon and the white English/Saxon dragon were fighting beneath the mountain each night, at an underground pool, shaking the mountain so that the walls fell. Vortigern's men tunnelled into the mountain to release the dragons, and the dragons fought until the red Welsh Dragon chased away the white English dragon. The red dragon returned to its lair, to sleep peacefully beneath the mountain. Vortigern spared Ambrosius's life, and had the Dinas Emrys castle built, named in Welsh after Ambrosius. After Vortigern's death, he was succeeded by Ambrosius, presumed to be the boy from earlier, who had become a respected leader, and who would have therefore inherited the castle. Ambrosius is typically assumed to be legendary Celtic leader Ambrosius Aurelianus, known in Welsh as Emrys Wledig, who supposedly fought against the Saxons. The book also describes the legendary Arthur (spelled like that, without a surname), but he is mentioned only as a Celtic leader who also fought against the Saxons, not associated with Ambrosius.

The character Myrddin Wyllt (Merlin the wild), later also known as Myrddin Emrys (Merlin the immortal), appeared in Welsh folklore in a series of poems around 800-1000 CE (such as Armes Prydein in about 930 CE), with some describing him living wild in the forests of northern Scotland, writing poetry, and developing prophetic abilities. In Scotland, he was previously known as Lailoken, but some of the Welsh stories are likely to be independently developed, and combined with the Lailoken stories, with some of the stories possibly dating from around 500-700 CE. Geoffrey of Monmouth's 1136 book Historia Regum Britanniae then rewrote Nennius's stories, renamed the prophetic boy as Merlinus (Merlin), after the Welsh Myrddin Wyllt. It mentions Ambrosius Aurelianus as a separate person from Merlin, with Merlin based on the existing Myrddin Wyllt and Ambrosius's Dinas Emrys legends, and Ambrosius Aurelianus being treated as just being a Celtic leader, not a prophetic boy. It gave the new stories of Arthur Pendragon (now with a surname), such as the Sword In The Stone and the Lady Of The Lake. Merlin was now given the role of advisor to Arthur Pendragon and his father Uther Pendragon.

Though the Welsh later adopted the red dragon onto the flag, it should be noted that the dragon symbol itself came into Britain from the Romans (who learned about it from various Middle Eastern cultures), who often depicted them with just a solid head and a fluttering fabric tail, without legs or wings. It was adopted by the Celtic Britons as a symbol of fierce warriors, with leaders like the mythical Mynyddog Mwynfawr (of Scotland or Northern England around 470-550 CE), Owain Gwynedd (reign 1137-1170), Llywelyn ap Gruffudd (reign 1246-1282) and Owain Glyndŵr (reign 1400-1409) often being described as dragons. Other British regions had their own dragons (4 legs, 2 wings), wyverns (2 legs, 2 wings), amphiptere (no legs, 2 wings) and wyrms (no legs or wings), such as the Saxon Kingom Of Wessex using a golden wyvern in 752 CE, and a red, white and golden wyvern in 1066. Other cultures also had drakes (4 legs, no wings) and lindworms (2 legs, no wings). Some cultures have other variations too, such as the Greek hydra, a wyrm with multiple heads (though Western adaptations often depict it as a drake), and sea serpents, which are typically depicted as wyrms with dorsal frills and tail fins, but sometimes have pectoral fins. (The Chinese lóng is typically a drake with a very long body, but sometimes a wyrm or lindworm instead. It normally has scales but sometimes has fur, such as a mane or whiskers. There are many other types, including some with fish bodies and fins.)

The Welsh Dragon was first described as being red by Nennius, and a yellow wyvern symbol on a white background, with a yellow border, was used by Owain Glyndŵr. The current colours of the flag are in fact the colours of the House of Tudor (originally from Anglesey), and a red dragon on a white and green background (along with a motto, fireballs, and the English flag of St. George!) was first used by King Henry VII Tudor in 1485 as a part of his battle standard, while taking over England, and establishing the Tudor dynasty. The modern Welsh flag design is from 1959, and is a simplified version of that battle standard.

Coed-y-Brenin