Skip to content
Atlas NoctisA nocturnal atlas of folklore
A — documented

Cŵn Annwn

the United Kingdom
Wales: Gwynedd (Cadair Idris) and southern Wales (Brecon Beacons)

Cŵn Annwn — the pack of spectral hounds of Welsh folklore, white with red ears, that hunts souls in the night.

In the cloudy sky above a Welsh ridge a pack of white hounds with red ears runs in the Wild Hunt behind a cloaked rider; below, a shepherd with his crook turns towards the sound, among the sheep.
Variants and names
Cŵn Annwn, the hounds of Annwn; variants Cŵn Wybir, hounds of the sky, Cŵn Bendith y Mamau, Cŵn Mamau; British parallels Gabriel Hounds or Ratchets, the Yeth Hounds and Wish Hounds of Devon, the Dandy Dogs of Cornwall
What is told
A pack of spectral hounds, often white with red ears, a colour combination that in Celtic tradition indicates the Otherworld and death. They are led by Arawn, king of Annwn, in the First Branch of the Mabinogi, and in later tradition by Gwyn ap Nudd, and they take part in the Wild Hunt. Their most remarkable distinguishing trait is acoustic: their baying is louder when they are far off and fades as they come closer. They work as an omen of death and as an escort of souls towards the Otherworld, and they pursue the wicked.
What it was forthe author’s reading
An omen of death for the community, since the cry heard at night announces a decease, and a moral sanction against the guilty. The sources also record the naturalistic rationalisation of the call of wild geese on night migration, a valuable attestation because it shows the perceptual mechanism underlying the belief.
Where it is attested
Pwyll Pendefig Dyfed, the First Branch of the Mabinogi, in the manuscripts of the Llyfr Gwyn Rhydderch, about 1350, and of the Llyfr Coch Hergest, about 1382-1410, with narrative material datable to the 11th-12th century; the tradition of Gwyn ap Nudd in the medieval Welsh corpus; Wirt Sikes, British Goblins, 1880; John Rhŷs, Celtic Folklore: Welsh and Manx, Oxford, 1901. Archives at St Fagans National Museum of History, Amgueddfa Cymru.
Caution
Annwn is not Hell but an Otherworld of youth and abundance: the equation with Hell and with the Hounds of Hell is a medieval Christian reinterpretation, and treating it as the original meaning is a widespread error. Wirt Sikes, United States consul at Cardiff, is to be used with caution because at times he reworks the material. The etymology of Annwn is debated and unresolved. The contemporary revival of Calan Gaeaf, the calendrical context of reference, is in part a neo-tradition and should be classified B.

The grade says how well the entry is documented, not how interesting it is. How the grades are assigned.

In the same country

AKelpiethe United Kingdom — Scotland: Highlands and North-East (Aberdeenshire, Banffshire, Morayshire, Perthshire)AEach-uisgethe United Kingdom — Scotland: western Highlands and Hebrides, sea and sea lochsBBlack Shuckthe United Kingdom — East Anglia: Norfolk, Suffolk, Essex, with offshoots in CambridgeshireASpring-heeled Jackthe United Kingdom — London and its suburbs (Peckham, Bow, Old Ford, Limehouse), 1838; then Aldershot 1877 and Liverpool 1904BWill-o'-the-wispthe United Kingdom — the Fens and the Lincolnshire carrs; with the Welsh and European frameBSelkiethe United Kingdom — Orkney and Shetland; the Hebrides, the Irish coast and the Faroes as cognate area

Related by theme

Entries that share the motif, the phenomenon behind it or the history of their collection — not the geography.

BSanta CompañaSpain — Galicia, with the greatest density of ethnographic collections on the Costa da Morte; parallel forms in Asturias, León and northern PortugalAAnkouFrance — Lower Brittany: Trégor, Goëlo, Léon and Breton Cornouaille, with the collecting nucleus at Port-BlancAHaint e haint bluethe United States — Southern Appalachia and the Gullah Geechee Lowcountry (South Carolina and Georgia)BLe sorchie e la «synagogue»the Aosta Valley — The whole of the Valle d'Aosta, with a lexical line separating the upper and middle valley from the lower valley; the documented trial of 1439 is in the community of FénisBWill-o'-the-wispthe United Kingdom — the Fens and the Lincolnshire carrs; with the Welsh and European frameADullahanIreland — Munster: County Cork — the Blackwater valley between Castle Hyde, Ballyhooly and Doneraile, the country round Mallow, and the road from Glanmire into Cork city — in Croker's pages; in the manuscript collections of 1937-1939, County Limerick between Newtown and Glin and County Clare at KilrushBEl SilbónVenezuela — the Venezuelan Llanos: the two earliest sources I have read, of 1952 and 1953, place him in certain districts of the states of Portuguesa and Barinas; later texts attest him in Apure and Guárico and in the Colombian Llanos Orientales (Casanare, Arauca, Meta)BEl CadejoGuatemala — the Guatemalan highlands, from the capital to Sacatepéquez and Amatitlán; the same figure in El Salvador, Honduras, Nicaragua, Costa Rica and PanamaADomovojRussia — Russia, with denser documentation in the Russian North (Arkhangelsk, Olonets, Vologda) and in the central regionsBErchituSardinia — Central Sardinia, Barbagia and the Nuoro area

← Back to the atlas of the world