Aber Alaw
Welsh: "Mouth of the Alaw"

The mouth of the river Alaw on Anglesey; it is here, according to "Branwen ferch Lyr", that Branwen died of grief after escaping the destruction of Ireland. She and the seven survivors of Prydein landed at Talebolyon, and upon seeing the coasts of both Ireland and Prydein, she died of a broken heart upon seeing the havoc, blaming herself for it.

At Llanddeusant, Anglesey on the banks of the Alaw can be found the cairn called Bedd Branwen, her supposed grave. Now in ruins, it still has one standing stone. It was dug up in 1800, and again in the 1960s by Frances Lynch, who found several urns with human ashes.


SOURCES

The Mabinogion. ed. and trans. by Jeffrey Gantz. NY: Penguin, 1972.

Morgan, Victoria. "Bedd Branwen--Ring Cairn in Anglesey." WWW: The Megalithic Portal. Sept. 24, 2002. URL: http://www.megalithic.co.uk/article.php?sid=5954

Back to "A" | Back to JCE
Home

Mary Jones © 2009