Annwn

Also Known As: Middle Welsh *Annwfn*, *Annwuyn*, *Annwfyn*; Charlotte Guest’s *Annwvyn*; the lord of it is *Pen Annwfn*, Head or Chief of Annwn
Region/Culture: Northern Europe
Mythos: Celtic Mythology, Welsh Mythology
Primary Type/Nature: Mythological Places
Mythical Attributes: Annwn is the Welsh otherworld, a realm of kings, courts and fortresses whose hounds, animals, cauldron and poetry are finer than anything in the mortal island.
Role in Mythos: It is the land Pwyll rules for a year in the First Branch of the Mabinogi, the source of the swine that start a war in the Fourth, and the target of Arthur’s disastrous raid in the poem *Preiddeu Annwn*.
Relation to Humans: Mortals enter it by invitation, by accident at the edge of a hunt, or by force from the sea, and the texts never describe an ordinary road. Those who keep faith there come home with honour and gifts, while the raiders of the poem lose all but seven of three shiploads of men.

The dogs are the first thing wrong. Pwyll, prince of Dyfed, has ridden out to hunt in Glyn Cuch and lost his companions in the wood, and in a glade he sees a pack already dragging down a stag. Their coats are a brilliant, shining white. Their ears are red, and as the white of the bodies shines, the red of the ears glistens. He has never seen hounds like them in the world, and so, without thinking very hard about whose they might be, he drives them off the kill and sets his own dogs on it.

Their owner rides up on a large light-grey horse, dressed for hunting in grey wool with a horn at his neck, and he does not return the greeting. He is Arawn, a crowned king, and when Pwyll asks where he comes from the answer is a single word: Annwn.

No text gives it a map. The First Branch of the Mabinogi, written down in Middle Welsh and preserved in the White Book of Rhydderch and the Red Book of Hergest, never says whether Annwn lies under the ground, across the sea or simply one step sideways from a wood in west Wales. It has a border somewhere near Glyn Cuch and a ford where its kings fight. It has more than one king, too: Arawn rules one kingdom, and a rival named Hafgan holds the dominions opposite and makes war on him every year. Arawn leads Pwyll in with the words that nothing will detain him on the way, and the story does not describe the journey at all. Pwyll is in the forest, and then he is in sight of the court.

The name has been argued over for a long time. The older spelling is *Annwfn*, and its second half looks like the Welsh *dwfn*, deep, a word that can also mean world. The first half is *an-*, which in Welsh can either strengthen a word or cancel it, so the name can be read as “very deep” or as “not-world”, and both readings have had their champions. Lady Charlotte Guest, putting the tales into English in the 1840s, simply footnoted it as Hades. That is not quite right either. Nobody in the First Branch is dead.

What Pwyll finds instead is the best court on earth. There are sleeping-rooms, halls and chambers, and buildings more beautiful than any he has seen. Pages take his hunting clothes and dress him in silk and gold, and when the household comes in to eat it is the most comely and best-equipped company he has ever laid eyes on. The queen sits beside him in a yellow robe of shining satin, and he finds her the noblest and most gracious talker he has ever met. The tables are crowded with vessels of gold and royal jewels, and the year passes in hunting, song and feasting, the cups going round and nobody noticing that their king has changed.

That was the bargain. Arawn gave Pwyll his own face and form, took Pwyll’s in exchange and went to rule Dyfed, and Pwyll was to keep the tryst with Hafgan a year later. He had one instruction. Strike once, and whatever Hafgan says, do not strike again, because the last time Arawn gave him a second blow he rose the next day as well as ever.

At the ford, with the nobles of the kingdom standing aside to watch, the man wearing Arawn’s face hit Hafgan square on the boss of his shield. The shield split, the armour broke, and Hafgan went backwards over his horse’s crupper an arm’s and a spear’s length onto the ground. He asked, reasonably enough, what right his enemy had to kill him, and then begged him to finish it. Pwyll refused. Hafgan’s men carried him away to die, and by noon the next day both kingdoms of Annwn had submitted to the man they took for Arawn.

The other test was quieter, and the story keeps it for last. When Arawn came home and went to bed, he talked with his wife and turned to her with affection, and she lay silent and would not answer him. For a year, she said at last, from the moment they got under the bedclothes, there had been no pleasure, no conversation, not even his face turned towards her. Arawn understood what his friend had done, and said so: firm in friendship was the man he had found. Pwyll had slept beside the most beautiful woman in either world every night for a year and never touched her.

That, and the single stroke at the ford, is why he came home with a new name. The men of Dyfed told him his rule had never been so wise or so generous as in the past year, and Pwyll told them whom to thank. From then on the two kings sent each other horses, greyhounds, hawks and treasures, and the prince of Dyfed was called Pwyll Pen Annwn, Chief of Annwn, for the rest of his life.

The gifts did not stay harmless. In the Fourth Branch, Pwyll’s son Pryderi owns a herd of small animals whose flesh is better than beef, animals never before seen in the island. They were sent to him from Annwn by Arawn, the tale says, and it is Gwydion’s scheme to talk his way into Pryderi’s hall disguised as a bard and carry them off that starts the war in which Pryderi dies. Annwn gives freely. It does not give safely.

The poem *Preiddeu Annwn*, “The Spoils of Annwn”, in the Book of Taliesin, shows the realm from the outside, and it is a grimmer view. Its date is uncertain, anywhere from the ninth to the twelfth century on the evidence of its language. A prisoner named Gweir lies in a heavy blue-grey chain in Caer Sidi, the Mound Fortress, and the poem ties his captivity to the story of Pwyll and Pryderi. Arthur sails to fetch something back in his ship Prydwen, with three shiploads of men. The fortresses come one after another: the Four-Peaked Fortress, the isle of the strong door, where flowing water and jet are mingled and bright wine is served to the retinue; the Fortress of Mead-Drunkenness; the Fortress of Hardness; the Glass Fortress, where six thousand men stood upon the wall and it was hard to speak with their sentinel. At the centre is the cauldron of the Chief of Annwn, with a dark ridge around its rim and pearls, kindled by the breath of nine maidens. It will not boil the food of a coward. A flashing sword is raised to it. Each stanza closes on the same refrain. Except seven, none rose up.

Seven came back.

The poem also sets lamps burning before the door of hell, and later Welsh writing leans that way. In *Culhwch and Olwen*, God has placed Gwyn son of Nudd over the brood of devils in Annwn, lest they destroy the people of this world. A Welsh Life of Saint Collen, in a form no earlier than the sixteenth century, calls Gwyn king of Annwn and of the fairies and puts his court on the hill at Glastonbury: a magnificent castle, a feast, courtiers in red and blue. Collen refuses to eat, calling the food leaves of the trees, throws holy water over them, and the whole court vanishes, leaving nothing but green hillocks. Arawn’s golden hall had become a glamour to be sprinkled away.

What Annwn offers, across all these texts, is surplus. Better hounds, better animals, a better-run kingdom, a cauldron that feeds only the brave, poetry kindled from a cauldron by nine breaths. What it demands is harder to pin down, but the pattern holds. Pwyll keeps his word twice and is rewarded. Pryderi’s gift draws thieves and a war. Arthur goes in by force, with three ships’ worth of men, and comes out with seven.

Frequently Asked Questions

What is Annwn in Welsh mythology?

Annwn is the otherworld of medieval Welsh literature, a realm with its own kings, courts and fortresses. It appears in the First and Fourth Branches of the Mabinogi, in the poem *Preiddeu Annwn* in the Book of Taliesin, and in *Culhwch and Olwen*. The early texts present it as a rich and splendid kingdom rather than simply a land of the dead.

Who rules Annwn?

In the First Branch of the Mabinogi, Annwn has two rival kings, Arawn and Hafgan. After Pwyll, prince of Dyfed, kills Hafgan while disguised as Arawn, both kingdoms submit to Arawn, and Pwyll earns the title Pen Annwn, Chief of Annwn. Later Welsh texts, including *Culhwch and Olwen* and the Life of Saint Collen, connect Annwn with Gwyn ap Nudd instead.

What does the name Annwn mean?

The name’s older form is Annwfn, which appears to combine the prefix an- with dwfn, meaning deep or world. Because an- can either intensify or negate a word in Welsh, the name has been read as “very deep” or as “not-world”. Charlotte Guest glossed it as Hades in her 1840s translation, although the First Branch does not treat Annwn as a land of the dead.

What happens in the Spoils of Annwn?

*Preiddeu Annwn*, “The Spoils of Annwn”, is a poem in the Book of Taliesin in which Arthur sails to Annwn in his ship Prydwen with three shiploads of men. It names a series of otherworld fortresses, a prisoner called Gweir held in chains in Caer Sidi, and the cauldron of the Chief of Annwn, which is rimmed with pearls and will not boil a coward’s food. The refrain repeats that only seven men returned.

How did Pwyll become Chief of Annwn?

Pwyll insulted Arawn, a king of Annwn, by driving his hounds off a stag, and made amends by taking Arawn’s shape and ruling in his place for a year. He killed Arawn’s rival Hafgan with a single blow at a ford and refused to strike a second. He also never slept with Arawn’s wife during that year, and in recognition of both he was called Pwyll Pen Annwn from then on.