To Cwm Cynfal on a bright spring evening, in search of a stone I’d first seen 30 years ago. Back then, I’d asked directions to it of a woman chopping wood outside Bryn Saeth. “Dacw, yn y gornel ym mhen pella’r maes,” she’d told me. “Over there in the far corner of the field.” I crossed to the wood’s edge. A stream cascaded over mossy slabs confettied with wood anemones. Prone among drifted oak leaves was an inches-thick slate, four feet long, a shaped round hole in it. Llech Ronw (the slate of Gronw)! Quartz rocks scattered around suggested a ritual site.
I’d lifted it up, just as Gronw Pebyr had done in Math fab Mathonwy (the fourth branch of The Mabinogion – a story-cycle that’s one of the masterpieces of medieval European literature).
Gronw had conspired with his lover, Blodeuedd, wife of Lleu Llaw Gyffes, to kill her husband. He lanced Lleu’s side with a spear as he bathed; lived thereafter with Blodeuedd – a woman created for Lleu’s pleasure (no feminist fable, this) by his uncle, Gwydion the enchanter, from the flowers of oak, meadowsweet and broom.
But Lleu lived, transformed into an eagle. Gwydion found the wounded bird, restored it to health and human form. They came seeking vengeance. Lleu’s spear pierced the shield-stone Gronw had held up to protect himself from the returned blow – remember your folktale motifs? – he owed him, and shattered the adulterer’s spine. See, there’s the hole! Blodeuedd fled with her handmaidens into the desolate hills, continually looking behind them. Walking backwards, all were drowned in Llyn y Morynion – the maidens’ lake – except for their mistress, transformed by Gwydion into an owl and mockingly renamed Blodeuwedd (“flower-face”).
The stone has now been set upright, concreted into a plinth, surrounded by wire. I’d not seen it thus, thought better of finding it again, its place anyway having changed, the resonance gone, a loathsomeness of conifers around it now. Instead I went to the maidens’ wild lake at sunset. A single teal duck was gliding through silvered water. Skylarks soared, distance editing out their dry shrillings until only clear, bell-like notes remained.
