Cauldron of Ceridwen

A fire that has been burning for eleven months does not roar. It ticks, settles into its own ash, and needs feeding before dawn or the whole year is lost. In Penllyn that work fell to a blind man called Morda, who tended a heat he could not see, under a cauldron whose contents he had no way of checking. Above him the broth went on reducing. Herbs cut on particular days and at particular hours had been going into it since the previous spring, and all of that was being boiled down toward three drops.

The woman who set the fire was Ceridwen, wife of Tegid Foel, and their house stood in the middle of Llyn Tegid. She had a daughter, Creirwy, reckoned the fairest girl in the world, and a son so ill-favoured that the tellings give him two names for it, Morfran and Afagddu. Beauty was not going to be arranged for him. Knowledge might be. Working from the books of the Fferyllt, she set a cauldron of inspiration and science on the fire and undertook to keep it boiling for a year and a day, and she put a boy named Gwion Bach, son of Gwreang of Llanfair in Caereinion, to the stirring.

What was in the pot has a name of its own. *Awen* is the Welsh word for inspiration, and behind it sits a root meaning to blow, the same one that gives *awel*, a breeze. It surfaces in writing around the turn of the ninth century, in a Latin history that pauses to say that Talhaearn, father of awen, was then renowned in poetry. Gerald of Wales met people in the twelfth century who were understood to be full of it, the *awenyddion*, and his description is not flattering: they roared, went out of themselves, answered a question sideways after a great deal of ornamented nonsense, had to be shaken awake afterwards, and could not recall a word they had said. That is what the cauldron was making. Not cleverness. Possession.

The vessel holding it is never described. This is worth dwelling on, because Welsh poetry can describe a cauldron perfectly well when it wants to. The one in *Preiddeu Annwn* has a ridge and pearls around its rim and is warmed by the breath of nine maidens, and it will not boil a coward’s food. Ceridwen’s is known only by its work and by how it ended.

It ended on the last day. Ceridwen was out gathering, and three drops of the charmed liquor leapt from the pot onto Gwion’s finger. He did what anyone does with a scald and put the finger in his mouth. Everything arrived at once: what had been, what was coming, and, immediately and inconveniently, the certainty that Ceridwen would kill him for it. He ran. Behind him the cauldron burst in two, because everything in it apart from those three drops was poison, and the poison went down into the stream and killed the horses of Gwyddno Garanhir, and the place kept the name of that afterwards. Ceridwen came back to a cracked pot and a year gone, picked up a billet of wood, and struck Morda across the head until one of his eyes came out onto his cheek. The blind man had done nothing.

Then she went after Gwion, and the chase is the part everyone remembers. He became a hare and she a greyhound. He took to the river as a fish and she followed as an otter. He went up as a bird and she came after him as a hawk, and with her closing he dropped into a heap of winnowed wheat and made himself one grain among thousands. She turned into a high-crested black hen, scratched through the pile, found him, and ate him. He was not destroyed, only relocated. She carried him nine months, could not bring herself to kill something that beautiful when it was born, and set him adrift in a leather bag instead. He came up in Gwyddno’s weir between the Dyfi and Aberystwyth, and the man who opened the bag looked at the child’s forehead and said, behold a radiant brow. Taliesin.

The power of the cauldron is best measured by who kept invoking it. Cuhelyn Fardd was asking for its inspiration by the early twelfth century. Cynddelw Brydydd Mawr named Ceridwen as the source of his art. Llywarch ap Llywelyn, called Prydydd y Moch, asked plainly that God grant him sweet awen as from the cauldron of Ceridwen, and Elidr Sais said his poetry shone out of the cauldron of awen. Those poems are older than any surviving copy of the story about Gwion Bach, whose earliest text sits in Elis Gruffydd’s chronicle in the first half of the sixteenth century. The image came first and the plot caught up with it later, which is an odd shape for a legend and a true one here.

Its limits are built into it. A year and a day of labour yields three drops and no more, and the entire remainder is lethal. It cannot be aimed: Ceridwen ran the whole operation for her son and it went to the help. It cannot be repeated, because the vessel cracks in the act of delivering. And it could be argued away. By the later Middle Ages the bardic grammars were naming the Holy Spirit as the proper source of awen, and Siôn Cent in the fifteenth century dismissed the older claim as a lying awen, born of hell’s furnace underground.

The three-rayed mark that now stands for awen on banners, headstones and eisteddfod chairs belongs to none of this. Edward Williams, who wrote as Iolo Morganwg, devised it and held the first Gorsedd on Primrose Hill in 1792. He made little use of the symbol himself. It reached the Proclamation Scroll at Cardiff in 1833, spread to gorsedd banners by 1850 and to members’ certificates around 1860, and by the 1950s it was required on every national Chair and Crown. The sign is younger than the steam engine. The cauldron under it is not.

Frequently Asked Questions

What is the Cauldron of Ceridwen?

The Cauldron of Ceridwen is the vessel in Welsh tradition that brews awen, poetic inspiration, in the form of three potent drops. Ceridwen boiled it for a year and a day intending the drops for her ugly son Morfran, also called Afagddu. Everything in the cauldron apart from those three drops was poison.

What is awen?

Awen is the Welsh word for inspiration, particularly poetic inspiration, from a root meaning to blow. It is first recorded around the turn of the ninth century in the epithet of the poet Talhaearn, father of awen. Gerald of Wales described people called awenyddion in the twelfth century who fell into a roaring trance, answered questions obliquely, and remembered nothing afterwards.

Who drank from the Cauldron of Ceridwen?

Gwion Bach, the boy Ceridwen set to stir the pot, and he did it by accident. Three drops splashed onto his finger, and he put the finger in his mouth to cool the burn. The knowledge that came with them included the fact that Ceridwen would kill him for taking them.

What happened to the Cauldron of Ceridwen?

It burst in two the moment the three drops were lost. The poisonous remainder drained into a stream and killed the horses of Gwyddno Garanhir, and the spot was named for that afterwards. No source describes what the cauldron looked like, only what it produced and how it broke.

Is the Cauldron of Ceridwen ancient Welsh tradition or a later invention?

The cauldron is genuinely medieval. Welsh court poets from Cuhelyn Fardd in the early twelfth century to Elidr Sais in the thirteenth name it as the source of their awen, and it appears in the Book of Taliesin. The familiar story of Gwion Bach survives first in a sixteenth-century manuscript, and the three-rayed awen symbol was devised by Iolo Morganwg in the 1790s.

Related Entries

Taliesin, Gwydion, Arianrhod, Blodeuwedd, Math Fab Mathonwy, Bendigeidfran, Branwen, Arawn, Cŵn Annwn, Gwyn ap Nudd, Merlin, Salmon of Knowledge, Finn mac Cumhal, Dagda