Twrch Trwyth

Nine days and nine nights of fighting in Ireland bought Arthur one dead piglet. That was the arithmetic of the whole enterprise, and it did not improve. The boar went on rooting through Irish farmland, a fifth of a country churned to mud behind him, and when Arthur’s warband finally pushed him to the coast he took to the water at Esgair Oervel and swam for Wales with his young strung out behind him in the swell.

All of this over a comb.

The comb, the razor and the shears were lodged between the boar’s ears, and Ysbaddaden Bencawr wanted them because nothing else would dress his hair and beard stiff enough for his daughter’s wedding. Ysbaddaden was a giant who expected to die on the day Olwen married, so he had set Culhwch forty impossible errands, and he saved the boar for last. It is a magnificent piece of spite. A young man wants a wife, and the price is the most destructive animal in Britain, and the reason is grooming.

Twrch Trwyth had not always had bristles. He was the son of Taredd Wledig, and he had been a king until God turned him into a swine for his sins. The tale says this in a single line and never says what the sins were, which is more unsettling than a catalogue would have been. Something in him remembered. When Arthur sent Gwrhyr Gwalstawd Ieithoedd, who understood the speech of every creature, to parley with the litter in the shape of a bird, the boar’s answer was not the grunting of an animal. He said Arthur had done him wrong. He said he would come to Britain and do what damage he could there, and that no one would take from him what he carried while there was breath in him.

What he looked like beyond his size, the tale barely says. It spends its description on his children instead, and one of them is unforgettable: Grugyn Gwrych Ereint, Silver Bristle, whose hairs were like drawn silver wire, so bright that whether he crossed woodland or open hillside a tracker could follow the glint of him. The others come with names like job titles. Llwydawg Gofyniad, the Hewer. Twrch Llawin, Gwys, Banw, Bennwig. Seven young pigs in all, and they were said to have been men once too. For the father, the storyteller seems to have decided that the wreckage was the portrait.

The wreckage is certainly detailed. He came ashore at Porth Clais in Dyfed and turned inland, and Arthur met him in Cwm Cerwyn in the Preseli hills, where the peat holds water and the ground gives underfoot. He killed four of Arthur’s men on the first day: Gwarthegydd son of Caw, Tarawg of Allt Clwyd, Rheiddwn son of Eli Adfer, Iscofan Hael. On the second day he killed four more, and one of them was Gwydre, Arthur’s son. Then he was wounded, and he went on anyway, south and east through Ceredigion and Ystrad Yw and Glamorgan, dropping his children behind him one at a time like a man losing fingers. Grugyn died in Ystrad Yw. Llwydawg killed three more warriors before he fell. The hunt crossed into England and turned for the Severn.

They took him in the estuary. Mabon son of Modron rode Gwyn Mygdwn into the tidal water and snatched the razor from between his ears; Cyledyr Wyllt on another horse came at him from the other side and got the shears. Osla Gyllellfawr was riding to do the same with his great knife when the sheath filled with river water, and the weight of it took him under and drowned him. That is the kind of death the tale hands out, sideways and without ceremony. Before they could reach the comb the boar found his feet on the riverbed and went for Cornwall.

They got the comb there, in the end, at a cost the story does not itemise. Then they drove him into the sea, and he swam, and nobody ever saw him again.

Nobody killed him.

He left a mark on the landscape all the same, and it is older in writing than Culhwch himself. The Historia Brittonum, put together around 829, lists among the wonders of Britain a stone in the district of Buellt bearing the footprint of a dog. The dog was Cabal, hound of Arthur the soldier, and he set his paw there while hunting the boar Troit. Arthur piled a cairn under the stone and it is called Carn Cabal. Carry the stone away a full day and a night, the account says, and by morning it is back on top of its mound. The place is still on the map as Carn Gafallt, above the upper Wye.

Ireland kept a version of him too, or something that rhymes with one. Old Irish has Torc Triath, king of boars, and Sanas Chormaic glosses *orc tréith* as a king’s son, with *tríath* meaning either king or boar depending on how you take it. A transformed prince in the shape of a pig sits very neatly on top of that. Whether the Welsh borrowed the Irish name or the two grew from a shared inheritance has been argued for well over a century, John Rhys pressing the connection and Rachel Bromwich unconvinced that either side needed to borrow anything, treating Trwyth as a late mangling of an older form. The argument is unfinished.

His power is mostly a kind of terrible durability. He is faster over broken country than mounted men, strong enough to hold his line against Arthur’s household in open battle for nine days, intelligent enough to negotiate and refuse, and he commands seven offspring who fight as a war party rather than a herd. He does not tire in water. Weapons reach him and hurt him and never finish him, and the tale is careful never to show him bleeding out.

His limits are the limits of a hunted animal with something to protect. He can be driven, and every stage of the hunt is a matter of pushing him where the hunters want him. He can be robbed, because the treasures sit exposed on the crown of his head and a rider going flat out beside him can reach them. He can be worn thin: the piglets die because the pursuit never stops, and each loss costs him part of his strength. And whatever he was before God changed him, he cannot undo it. He can outrun Arthur, outfight him, and outlive him. He cannot get his hands back.

Frequently Asked Questions

What is Twrch Trwyth?

Twrch Trwyth is a gigantic wild boar from Welsh mythology, best known from the tale of Culhwch and Olwen. He was originally a king, son of Taredd Wledig, whom God transformed into a boar as punishment for his sins. He keeps a comb, a razor and a pair of shears lodged between his ears.

Why did King Arthur hunt Twrch Trwyth?

Arthur hunted the boar to win the comb, razor and shears it carried, which the giant Ysbaddaden Bencawr demanded before he would allow his daughter Olwen to marry Culhwch. It was the last and hardest of the forty tasks Ysbaddaden set. Because Culhwch was Arthur’s cousin, Arthur took the hunt on himself and committed his whole warband to it.

Was Twrch Trwyth ever killed?

No. Arthur’s men took the razor and the shears from him in the Severn estuary and the comb later in Cornwall, then drove him into the sea, and he was never seen again. The tale gives him no death scene, which is unusual for a monster of his stature.

Who were the seven pigs that followed Twrch Trwyth?

They were his young, said to have been men before the transformation, and they fought alongside him for the length of the hunt. Named among them are Grugyn Gwrych Ereint, whose bristles were like silver wire, and Llwydawg Gofyniad the Hewer, along with Twrch Llawin, Gwys, Banw and Bennwig. Each was killed in turn as the chase moved across Wales and into England.

What is Carn Gafallt’s connection to Twrch Trwyth?

The Historia Brittonum, written around 829, records that Arthur’s hound Cabal left a footprint in a stone while hunting the boar Troit, and that Arthur raised a cairn beneath it called Carn Cabal. The site is identified with Carn Gafallt in Powys, above the upper Wye. This makes the boar hunt one of the earliest Arthurian traditions recorded in writing, older than the surviving text of Culhwch and Olwen.

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