Sometimes the best discoveries are the ones you weren’t looking for.
Recently, while researching for an upcoming television project, I found myself following an unexpected trail into one of the lesser-known corners of Welsh folklore.
Mermaids.
I’ll level with you, its not a subject I was overly familiar with, but I thought it might be a bit of fun so I took it on.
At first, I wasn’t finding very much. Marie Trevelyan didn’t mention them. Nor did Wirt Sikes. So I started to assume there would be little to find. May be us Welsh didn’t really go in for them. After all, when we think of Celtic mermaids, Ireland has its merrows, Scotland its selkies, and Brittany its mysterious Morgans. Wales, by comparison, rarely gets a mention.
As it turns out, that assumption is not 100% on the money.
The Welsh may not have left us dozens of mermaid legends, but the stories that have survived are haunting, morally complex and deeply rooted in the relationship between coastal communities and the sea. These are not the naked breasted, comb-wielding beauties of Victorian paintings or modern fairy tales. The “môr-forwyn” meaning “sea maiden” was a supernatural being capable of rewarding kindness, punishing cruelty and reminding people that the sea always demands respect. More in common with the stories of the “Tylwyth Teg” or “fairy folk” than mermaid stories from other parts of northern Europe.
The story that captivated me most comes from Conwy.
According to folklore recorded by the great Welsh scholar Sir John Rhŷs, a violent storm cast a mermaid ashore near the town. Unable to return to the water, she begged the local fishermen to carry her back to the sea. They refused.
As her strength faded, she pleaded for just one small kindness: if they would not return her to the sea, could they at least place her tail in the water so she might breathe more easily? Again, they turned their backs on her.
Before she died, she uttered a terrible curse. The people of Conwy, she declared, would never prosper.
For generations afterwards, locals repeated the tale as an explanation for the town’s modest fortunes. Rhŷs even recorded the wry observation that if someone attempted to pay with a gold sovereign in Conwy, the shopkeeper might have to fetch change from across the river because so little money circulated in the town.
Like so many folk tales, it is less about whether the event happened than about the lesson it teaches. Compassion towards strangers is rewarded; indifference brings consequences.
Interestingly, another version of the same tradition tells the opposite story. In this telling, the fishermen take pity on the stranded môr-forwyn and carry her safely back into the sea. Rather than cursing them, she blesses them with abundant catches and lasting prosperity. The message is unmistakable: how we treat those in need determines what we receive in return.
The Conwy legend isn’t the only glimpse we get of Welsh sea maidens. Along the Llŷn Peninsula and around Bardsey Island appears the mysterious figure of Gwenhidw, the “White Enchantment”, whose flock were said to be the white horses racing across the waves and whose sheep became the foam upon the sea.
Only in Wales can we correlate mermaids with sheep.
Elsewhere, especially in Pembrokeshire and Cardigan Bay, tales blur the line between mermaids and the fairy folk, describing beautiful women who dwell beneath the waves in crystal halls, emerging to sing, warn of storms or lure the unwary beneath the sea.
Also, we cannot rule out in this study, creatures from Welsh folklore that may not strictly be mermaids but which share some common ground. So for example, the Scottish tradition of the “selkie” is effectively a seal which is capable of removing its animal skin to reveal a beautiful maiden underneath.
Now we’ve got hundreds of stories where that is the general theme.
I am reminded of one in particular. It is set on Barry Island, back in the days when it was still an island and had no buildings on it.
Two boys were fishing on the island when they saw two elegant swans come in to land on the beach below. They peered over the cliff edge and to their amazement they saw the birds cast off their feathers to reveal themselves as beautiful maidens who bathed and frolicked in the sea water. Feeling mischievous, the boys climbed down and hid their feathers, thinking this would be a great ruse. But when the maidens saw they had gone they become inconsolably grief stricken.
This was not what the boys had in mind at all.
Realising the prank had back fired, they quickly gathered the feathers from their hiding place and offered them up to the maidens with heart-felt apologise for their conduct.
The maidens remained crest fallen.
Until now they had been able to put on and take off their feathers at will. But now they had been touched by human hands, they were useless.
Feeling guilty the boys took the maidens in. Clothed and fed them and tried to make amends. And as they got to know each other, they began to get on well. Soon they fell in love and were married. And the only indication left that the girls had ever been swans, was that their children had suspiciously long necks.
I love that one.
We also have the tradition of “Wynches”. A sort of fresh water mermaid. They are much more inline with the traditional mermaid stories from other parts of the country as they use their beauty and feminine charms to lure young men to their death. Just they choose to live in rivers.
Wynches aside though, most of these stories reveal something fascinating about Welsh folklore. Water is rarely just water. Lakes conceal enchanted kingdoms. Rivers remember saints. The sea itself is a living boundary between our world and another, inhabited by beings who are neither wholly benevolent nor wholly malicious, but who respond to human actions with uncanny fairness.
Perhaps that’s why the Mermaid of Conwy has stayed with me. She isn’t simply a mythical creature. She represents hospitality refused, compassion withheld and the price communities sometimes pay for forgetting their humanity.
And if you ever find yourself walking the quayside at Conwy, with the tide rolling beneath the castle walls, spare a thought for the môr-forwyn who asked for just one act of kindness. According to legend, the town has been living with the consequences ever since.
