Morgens

Also Known As: also Morgen, morgan, mari-morgan, mary-morgan, Marie-Morgane; Welsh morgen; cf. Irish Muirgen
Region/Culture: Brittany and Wales (Breton and Welsh)
Mythos: Celtic, French, Welsh
Primary Type/Nature: Fairy Folk and Spirit Beings
Mythical Attributes: Beautiful, ageless water women who draw sailors and fishermen down to drown, using their singing, their long golden hair, and the shine of sunken gold.
Role in Mythos: They are the presiding supernatural inhabitants of Brittany’s coasts and the lakes and wells of Wales, drowning most of the men they lure and sometimes carrying them off alive to be husbands in their undersea palaces.
Relation to Humans: Mortals feared their voices and their beauty and were warned to answer neither, since most encounters ended in a drowning or a one-way marriage beneath the waves. A smaller strand of the tales allows benevolent morgens who took human lovers and gave them supernatural cattle, the secrets of healing, or a safe way home.

On a rock at the mouth of a Breton river, a woman sits combing her long hair in the last of the light, and the water beneath her is very deep. The hair is gold and wet, and the comb she draws through it is gold as well, and the song she sings carries out across the bay to where the men are bringing in their boats. One of them will lean toward it. That is the whole arrangement. The morgen does not need to leave her rock.

Along the coasts of Brittany and in the lakes and wells of Wales, these water women went by a handful of names. In Breton they were the mari-morgan, the mary-morgan, the Marie-Morgane; in Welsh, simply morgen. The word is old, older than any of the stories told about it. It reaches back to a Common Celtic form, Morigenos in the masculine and Morigena in the feminine, meaning born of the sea, and the Bretons heard their own language inside it, mor for sea and ganet for born, so that the name explained itself as a thing salt water had made. The same root surfaces in the Irish Muirgen, the name given to a woman called Lí Ban after the waters closed over her drowned country and turned her into a mermaid.

They were beautiful and they did not age. Where sailors saw them plainly they were women to the waist and fish below, or women entirely, cold to look at, with hair so long it lifted and drifted around them in the current. They combed it without stopping. In the older Welsh belief they kept to fresh water, the deep lakes and rivers and the black wells, and there they drowned men with no ceremony at all; the Breton morgens ranged out into the sea and the tidal rivers and took a slower road to the same place.

Their houses were said to lie under the water, palaces of mother-of-pearl and crystal set at the foot of the cliffs, at cave mouths and river mouths where the fresh water met the tide. The floors were heaped with the gold of wrecked ships and drowned men, and it was the gold as much as the singing that finished the greedy ones. A man who dived after the gleam did not come back up. Those a morgen fancied she brought down alive to the pearl halls and married, and the marriage was as final as the drowning, since a husband cannot breathe seawater however fond of him his wife may be.

Not every tale ended in the dark. Some morgens took mortal lovers and gave them herds of strange cattle, or the knowledge of how to cure the sick, or only years of company beneath the sea, and a few stories let a stolen man walk home again in the end, changed and quiet and never wholly settled on dry land afterward. The being that circulated in Brittany was never only a killer, but a killer was what most fishermen expected, and the safe assumption was the pessimistic one.

The name reaches back further than the folklore that clings to it. When Geoffrey of Monmouth wrote his Life of Merlin around the year 1150, he placed on the Isle of Apples a woman called Morgen, the eldest and most gifted of nine sisters, who knew the virtue of every healing plant, could put on new shapes at will, and could fly across the sky on strange wings; to her the wounded Arthur was carried after his last battle. Whether the sea-women of the Breton coast and the enchantress of Avalon began as one figure or only grew into the same name is a question the stories decline to settle. What holds across all of it is the sense of deep water and of a woman who is more than she looks.

The most famous of them was made rather than born. The city of Ys stood behind a great sea wall on land the tide should have covered, and its gate was unlocked each night with a key the king carried, until his daughter Dahut, whom some call Ahes, stole the key for a lover and let the sea walk in and take the city whole. Dahut drowned with it. The salt water did not so much kill her as claim her, and it made a Marie-Morgane of her, and on moonlit nights the fishermen off that coast still tell of a woman on the rocks where Ys went down, combing her long gold hair and singing something with grief buried in it. She is looking, they say, for the men she can pull down after her.

What power the morgens had was the oldest kind there is. A morgen did not fight. She sang, and combed her hair, and let the gold shine up through the water, and the hunger she counted on was already sitting inside the man who heard her. Against a voice like that a sailor had almost nothing to bring. He could stop his ears, or refuse to turn his head, or hold his boat well out past the rocks, and in the end the old warnings came down to exactly that, which is to say: do not go and look. Their reach stopped at the water’s edge and a short way past it. On land they had no grip at all, and a man who never leaned out, never dived, never followed the singing down, lived to be old and never once found out what it was he had turned away from. The morgens could afford to wait. The sea is patient, and there is always another boat coming in.

Frequently Asked Questions

What is a Morgen?

A morgen (also mari-morgan or Marie-Morgane) is a female water spirit from Welsh and Breton folklore, a beautiful, ageless being who lives in the sea, lakes, rivers, and wells. Morgens are best known for luring sailors and fishermen to their deaths by drowning, usually with their singing and their striking golden hair.

What does the name Morgen mean?

The name comes from a Common Celtic form, Morigenos or Morigena, meaning “sea-born.” Breton speakers connected it to their own words mor (“sea”) and ganet (“born”), so that Marie-Morgane came to mean a being born of the sea. The same root appears in the Irish name Muirgen.

How do Morgens kill people?

Morgens rarely use force; they rely on temptation. They sit on rocks combing their long golden hair and singing enchanting songs that draw men to the water, and the glimmer of gold hoarded in their undersea palaces lures the greedy to dive after it and drown. Some victims are simply pulled under, while others are carried down alive to be married in the morgen’s palace, which for a mortal amounts to the same fatal end.

Are Morgens always evil?

Not entirely. Most Breton and Welsh tales treat morgens as deadly, but a minority of stories describe benevolent ones who took mortal lovers and rewarded them with supernatural cattle, healing knowledge, or a safe return home. Fishermen generally assumed the worst, since the safest response to a morgen’s song was to ignore it.

Who was Dahut and how is she connected to the Morgens?

Dahut, also called Ahes, was the princess of the legendary sunken city of Ys in Breton legend. When she stole the key that held back the sea and Ys was flooded, she drowned and was transformed into a Marie-Morgane. She is said to still appear on the rocks where the city went down, combing her golden hair and singing for the men she can draw into the water.