31st March, 2025 in Folklore, Natural World

The Mesolithic Mermaid and the Welsh Utopia

By Peter Stevenson

A magical mermaid story extracted from the new book Welsh Folk Tales of Coast and Sea by Peter Stevenson.

The Welsh Utopia

Amser maith yn ôl / A long time ago.

The shallow sea in Cardigan Bay, from Pen Llŷn in the north to Ceredigion in the west, was once a mix of forests, lakes, rivers, swamps and saltmarsh. The nomadic people who lived there cared for their land, yet never thought they owned it. They foraged and hunted, treated animals as equals and left offerings in exchange for anything they took. This was the land of Plant Rhys Ddwfn, the Children of Rhys the Deep. Not deep below the sea – Rhys was a thinker, a dreamer, a philosopher.

He reasoned that if the mean giants who lived in the mountains ever saw his land, they would destroy it. So, he devised a cunning plan. He planted a hedge of herbs along what is now the west Welsh coast, to hide his land from their prying eyes.

Only if the giants stood on the one small clump of this herb that grew away from the coast would they see Rhys’ world, but as they had no idea where this piece of turf was, all they saw was rain.

Rhys’ children cared for each other, their numbers grew, food became scarce, and the giants heard the distant rumble of empty bellies, although they mistook it for the anger of the gods.

They turned to crafts, became toolmakers, wood carvers and basket makers, and travelled by sea to the markets in Ceredigion to trade their goods – but as soon as they were seen, prices went up. They traded with Gruffydd ap Einion, a radical free-thinker who dreamed of a fairer world. After many years, they took him to the clump of herbs, where he saw Rhys’ land with all the knowledge and wisdom in the world archived safely in forests and books. Preachers and politicians were few. Choughs and kestrels hung in the air. The land was rich beyond dreams, the utopia he had long dreamed of.

Gruffydd asked how they kept themselves safe from crime, and they explained that Rhys’ herbs hid them from an angry creature with horns, snakes and a sword that spewed toxic venom at anything it disagreed with.

When Gruffydd stepped away from the herbs, he lost sight of Rhys’ land, though he never forgot there was a better world out there in Cardigan Bay. Rhys’ children traded with their friend all his life, until one day they came to the market to find Gruffydd’s hair had turned to snow and he had passed over to the Otherworld.

As the floodwaters lapped at their feet, Rhys’ children turned to a nomadic life, following the seasons and tracks of animals along the water’s edge, fishing and foraging, carrying the bones of their ancestors to remember their stories. For pity the people who have forgotten their myths.

Marsh Girl

Seven thousand years ago, Môrwen was born into this world of rising floodwaters as one of Rhys’ children. She fishes for salmon, forages for hazelnuts, scavenges for honey, digs for celandine tubers, carves wooden spoons from holly, weaves baskets from rushes, draws animals on stone with charcoal and makes pigments from crushed rock. She knows the movements of the deer herd and follows their tracks and scents through the forest. She collects antlers shed by the old stags and sharpens the points into axe-heads with flint tools. She has no need to keep deer in enclosures – they come when she calls. She is sharp as flint, moulded from the dust of time. She has spent so much of her life up to her waist in water, friends call her Marsh Girl.

In the evenings Môrwen huddles at Nan’s feet to hear stories of the mean giants of the mountains, the mischievous old women who make potions from the herbs of the forest, the green man of no one’s land, and the girls who transform into fish, birds and wolves. She draws mammoths chased by little stick men who glory in the spilling of blood and praise themselves in poetry and song. She has never seen a mammoth, but Nan’s words paint them in her imagination. They become real when she sketches on rocks, until the rain and floods wash them away.

One day Môrwen is foraging along the riverbank when a storm gathers out to sea, waves crash over the beach, and the forest fills with floodwater. She runs for high ground but slips into the swamp and sinks up to her shoulders. She grabs hold of a clump of tough reeds and bends her knees to stop herself being sucked further into the wet peat. She hangs there for what seems like hours until the wind abates and she hauls herself on to the dry forest floor, where she lies breathless, staring at the stars.

Thoughts swish round her mind like waves. Is the sea having a laugh? Why are Rhys’ children losing their way of life to the floods? Will the sun set fire to the trees? Do her descendants have answers in the future? She knows there is a future, for she has stepped through the veil on Calan Gaeaf before.

The Cardigan Bay Mermaids

Amser maith yn ôl / A long time ago.

In the Old Welsh Dreamtime, when people were people and fish were fish, three brothers lived in a yellow stone farmhouse overlooking the forests and swamps of Cardigan Bay. Eldest Brother ploughed the land and had honey on his bread, Middle Brother farmed the sea and had salt in his porridge, whilst Little Brother wandered the old Welsh Tramping Road with a tune on his lips, head in the clouds and feet in the mud, and when his belly rumbled he asked his brothers for food. The two hard working brothers grumbled.

‘Little Brother?’ said Eldest Brother, holding a small pig on a rope, ‘Take this enchanted pig, sell it for money – and don’t swap it for anything that makes wishes come true! You know what happens to wishes in fairy tales?’

Little Brother nodded and set off along the Old Welsh Tramping Road with a tune on his lips, an enchanted pig on a rope and no thoughts about wishes in fairy tales. He walked until he came to a deep dark wood, and in the middle of the wood found a crooked lime-washed house with a red door. In the doorway stood an old woman with a thousand wrinkles round her eyes and a single yellow tooth wobbling unnervingly in thebreeze from her breath.

‘Would you like to buy an enchanted pig?’ asked Little Brother. The woman pulled on the one grey hair in the middle of her chin, and drooled. ‘Mmm, roast pork! I’ll swap your pig for my enchanted handmill. It will make your wildest wishes come true.’ The pig hid behind Little Brother’s legs.

Little Brother completely forgot about wishes in fairy tales, and the deal was done. He set off back along the Old Welsh Tramping Road to the shores of Cardigan Bay with a tune on his lips and an enchanted handmill under his arm, and as the red door closed, he heard the squealing of a pig.

Little Brother returned to the yellow stone farmhouse overlooking Cardigan Bay, and thought, ‘I’d like a cottage of my own.’

‘Little mill, little mill, grind me a handsome house.
Little mill, little mill, grind it without a mouse.’

And the handmill ground out a pink-washed longhouse with a table, a chair, a bottle of wine and a roaring fire. Now he would never need to ask his brothers for food again.

Eldest Brother looked out of the window of the yellow stone farmhouse and saw a pink-washed longhouse that wasn’t there yesterday. He knocked on the door and there stood Little Brother.

‘Little Brother, last time I saw you, you were poor as a church mouse, now you’re rich as a lord. Where has all this money come from?’ and Eldest Brother poured out a bottle of home-brewed beer. Before Little Brother passed out, he told Eldest Brother all about the handmill.

Eldest Brother took the handmill home to the yellow stone farmhouse, placed it on the kitchen table and made a wish.

‘Little mill, little mill, grind me maids and ale.
‘Little mill, little mill, grind them dark and pale.
Oh – and a little fish for my tea.’

Eldest Brother was a simple man.

The handmill began to grind out strong beer till it covered the floor, then a dark girl with the tail of a fish, followed by a pale girl, also with a fish tail. Soon the beer covered Eldest Brother’s feet, his knees, waist, belly, chin, and mermaids were frolicking in the sea of ale, so he shouted ‘Stop!’, but the handmill continued grinding ‘til the door burst open and a river of beer and mermaids flowed down into Cardigan Bay, flooding the forests and swamps until Eldest Brother drowned, as he would have wanted to go, with a drunken fish-girl on either arm.

Little Brother awoke with a headache to the sound of rowdy mermaids frolicking in the floodwater. At that moment, Middle Brother, the one who ploughed the sea, sailed into Cardigan Bay in his red-masted ship with a cargo of salt from a faraway land, to find a sea full of mermaids singing rude sea shanties and impolitely inviting him to remove his trousers and join them.

He dropped anchor, waded ashore and went to the yellow stone farmhouse, where he found Little Brother holding a handmill that was still grinding out beer and mermaids.

‘Little Brother, when I left, this was all land and now it’s water. And where have all these drunken mermaids come from?’

Middle Brother produced a bottle of smuggled Jamaican Rum and before he passed out, Little Brother told Middle Brother about the handmill.

Middle Brother took the handmill back to his ship, placed it on the deck and made a wish.

‘Little mill, little mill, grind me salty salt.
Little mill, little mill, grind it without a halt!’

for with an endless supply of salt, he would never have to sail to faraway lands, live on mouldy biscuits or be looted by pirates.

The handmill began to grind until the deck was covered in salt, and soon it covered his feet, knees, waist, belly and chin, so he climbed the red mast but the salt climbed higher and under its weight, the ship sank to the bottom of the sea, where Middle Brother, like Eldest Brother, drowned in the arms of rowdy mermaids.

Little Brother woke with another headache and went to the seashore for a drink, but the water tasted of salt, beer and mermaids, and now he remembered. ‘Is this what happens to wishes in fairy tales?’

So he set off along the old Welsh Tramping Road with a tune on his lips, head in the clouds and feet in the mud, in search of fresh water and food from the forests.

And the handmill? Well, it’s still there on the wrecked deck of the ship on the seabed in Cardigan Bay, forever churning out salt, beer and mermaids, who are often mistaken by the environmental services for dolphins. And that’s why a swim in the Salty Welsh Sea leaves you feeling as if you have been swimming with drunken mermaids.

Calan Gaeaf

It’s Calan Gaeaf, the first of November. Mischief night, the first day of winter in the Welsh calendar, when the veil between this world and the Otherworld is at its thinnest and spirits from the past are able to pass through and haunt our dreams with scary stories of forgotten ancestors. A bit like a Welsh Day of the Dead, or Halloween when people wear bedsheets and pretend to be ghosts, or witches in green make-up with fake blood dripping from their mouths. Time isn’t linear on this day. It travels in endless circles, swirling through space. You can travel around the coast of Wales in one day at any time in history.

Môrwen hauls herself out of the swamp and stands up, dripping mud on to the mossy forest floor. She remembers Nan’s stories about the ice mountains melting and filling the valleys with floodwaters where her people live. She wonders if it will ever stop? And what happened to the mammoths? Did they drown? Môrwen can hunt like a wolf, swim like a mermaid and speak the language of birds, so she will escape the inundations – but what will happen to her people? She places a sprig of rowan in her pocket, faces the sea, sweeps back her hair, curses three times, and steps through the veil into her future.

Time passes in a moment.

Years, hundreds of them. Thousands. Millennia.

Môrwen hasn’t enough fingers, toes, tails or limpet shells to count them all.