Mallt-y-Nos

On the wild nights, when the wind tears down off Cadair Idris and the rain comes sideways, a farmer bolts his door and does not look up. The sound reaches him first from a long way off, a baying strung out across the sky, and then something underneath it that is worse than any dog: a woman’s voice, shrieking, driving the pack on. She is not crying for help. She is enjoying herself, or she was once, and now she cannot stop.

This is Mallt-y-Nos, Matilda of the Night, and she rides with the dead. In Welsh tradition she keeps company with Arawn, lord of Annwn, at the head of the Cŵn Annwn, the hounds of the underworld, as they sweep across the country in the shape of the Wild Hunt. Her task is to keep the pack moving. She screams and wails to urge the hounds after the souls they chase, and the country below reads her passing as plainly as a bell. Somewhere a person is dying, and their soul is being run down and taken to Annwn.

The hounds she drives are old. They first appear in the Mabinogion, in the tale of Pwyll, prince of Dyfed, who blunders into Arawn’s pack feeding on a fallen stag and drives them off to feed his own dogs, a discourtesy that nearly costs him everything. In that early telling they are beautiful and strange, gleaming white with ears of red, the marked colouring of otherworldly beasts. Later folklore was less kind to them. The pack shrank to two small dogs and darkened by turns, sometimes black, sometimes liver-coloured, worst of all blood-red and dripping, with eyes like fireballs. Their hunting grounds gathered around Cadair Idris, where the howling of the great dogs was said to foretell death to anyone who heard it. They ran hardest on Christmas Eve and on the nights before holy days, and on wild and stormy nights when no sensible person was abroad.

What she looks like is harder to pin down, because the stories care more about her voice than her face. The common picture is a crone, a huge and hideous hag flung across the night sky, mouth open, hair loose. Beyond her size and the noise she makes, the accounts fall quiet. There is a stubborn older strand that insists she was lovely once, and the two images sit awkwardly together: the beauty she had in life and the horror she became after it. The horror is what the farmers remembered.

Her origins split along the same seam. In the most repeated story she was a noblewoman, beautiful and headstrong and entirely without piety, who loved the hunt above everything else in the world. She loved it so much that she said aloud that if there were no hunting in heaven, she would rather not go. The wish was granted with brutal exactness. She hunts now, and she will hunt forever, and the crying that carries across the sky is not the joy of the chase but grief at what she asked for. A second account gives her a firmer history. She was a Norman woman, one of the invaders who came with Robert Fitzhamon out of Gloucester to subdue Glamorgan and the south of Wales, and when she died it was Arawn, the Welsh god of the otherworld, who rose to claim her soul and set her among his hounds. Her very name leans toward the grim. Mallt is a Welsh form of Matilda, but it shares its root with mallter and malltod, words for blight, rot, curse, and putrefaction. Matilda of the Night carries a whisper of the blighting of the night.

She entered writing through a single poem. In 1837 Taliesin Williams put her into The Doom of Colyn Dolphyn, where she rides down the soul of an executed pirate with Annwn’s gaunt hounds at her heels. That is where the name was first fixed on the page, and the older oral scraps gathered around it afterward.

Her power is the power of the hunt itself. She is tireless in a way no living huntswoman could be, bound to no season and no rest, able to cross the whole sky in a night. She commands the attention of the hounds, turning them onto the scent of a soul with her voice alone, and her cry functions as an omen that cannot be argued with. When people hear it, they are usually right to be afraid.

Her weakness is the shape of her curse. She got what she asked for. She cannot stop hunting, cannot tire, cannot die again, and cannot reach the heaven she scorned, and the endless chase she wanted has become the punishment she serves. She does not seem able to take the living directly; her threat is prophetic rather than physical, and those who hear the pack can still bolt the door, keep from looking up, and, in the way of Welsh spectral hounds, put running water between themselves and the dark. The soul already being taken has no such luck. For everyone else, the worst of it is the sound, and the knowledge that it has come for someone.

Frequently Asked Questions

Who is Mallt-y-Nos?

Mallt-y-Nos, meaning “Matilda of the Night,” is a figure from Welsh folklore who rides with the god Arawn and the Cŵn Annwn, the Hounds of Annwn, as part of the Wild Hunt. She drives the spectral hounds onward with shrieks and wails as they chase lost souls to the Welsh otherworld of Annwn. She is usually described as a huge, hideous hag and is regarded as an omen of death.

Why is Mallt-y-Nos cursed to hunt forever?

According to the most common legend, Mallt-y-Nos was a beautiful but impious noblewoman who loved hunting so much that she declared she would rather not go to heaven if there was no hunting there. The wish was granted, and she was condemned to hunt through the night sky for eternity. She is said to have regretted the wish, which is why her voice now sounds like wailing grief rather than the joy of the chase.

What are the Cŵn Annwn that Mallt-y-Nos drives?

The Cŵn Annwn are the spectral hounds of Annwn, the Welsh otherworld, first mentioned in the Mabinogion as white dogs with red ears. In later folklore they became small dark hounds, sometimes black or blood-red with glowing eyes, whose howling foretold death. They were associated with the mountain Cadair Idris and were believed to hunt for the souls of the dying.

Is Mallt-y-Nos dangerous to living people?

Mallt-y-Nos does not typically hunt the living directly; her danger is that her cry is an omen of death. Hearing her wail and the baying of her hounds pass overhead was believed to mean a soul was being seized at the moment of death. People protected themselves by staying indoors, not looking up, and putting running water between themselves and the hunt, following common Welsh lore about spectral hounds.

Where does the name Mallt-y-Nos come from?

The name Mallt-y-Nos translates as “Matilda of the Night,” with “Mallt” being a Welsh form of the name Matilda or Maud. The same root also appears in the Welsh words “mallter” and “malltod,” which mean blight, rot, curse, or putrefaction, giving the name a darker undertone. The figure first appears by name in Taliesin Williams’s 1837 poem The Doom of Colyn Dolphyn.

Related Entries

Cŵn Annwn, Arawn, Gwyn ap Nudd, Pwyll, Gwyllgi, Cyhyraeth, Rhiannon, Cu Sith, Herne the Hunter, Black Shuck, Barghest, Banshee, Dullahan, Ankou, Odin