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Large, natural late glacial lake which formed a central feature in pre-Norman Brycheiniog and is now the focus for nature conservation and watersports. The lake is associated with much early folklore and with artificial island or crannog unique to Wales which formed an early medieval royal residence. Evidence of much earlier, Mesolithic activity and sediments of significant regional palaeoenvironmental potential.
Llangorse Lake (Llyn Syfaddan), is the second largest natural lake in Wales and rich in natural resources, was a focal point in the pre-Norman kingdom of Brycheiniog and was a further rich source of myth and legend from early times.
One interpretation the Welsh name of the lake, Llyn Syfaddan, is that it is derived from the name of a pre-Christian deity, suggesting that may have been the focus of an early pagan cult.
In the later 12th century, Gerald of Wales in his Description of Wales notes that it was celebrated locally for its miracles.
Since early times the lake has been an important feeding place for waterfowl and it is probably no coincidence that one of the early folk-tales relates to birds upon the lake.
Gerald records an ‘ancient saying in Wales that if the natural prince of the country, coming to this lake, shall order the birds to sing, they will immediately obey him’ and records an instance of this during the reign of Henry I (‘Mauds’ father in ‘Pillars of the Earth), when Gruffudd, son of Rhys ap Tewdwr, succeeded in this challenge where the two Normans who accompanied him -Milo, earl of Hereford and lord of Brecknock, and Payne FitzJohn-had failed.
Gerald also noted that the lake was also sometimes seen by the inhabitants ‘covered and adorned with buildings, pastures, gardens and orchards’. A related legend is recounted by Walter Map in a manuscript of anecdotes and tales held by the Bodleian Library in Oxford known as ‘De Nugis Curialium’ (‘Courtiers’ Trifles’).
Map, a friend of Gerald and most probably a native of Herefordshire, who became archdeacon of Oxford in 1197, recounts a folk-tale that the palace or town within the lake was drowned because of the wickedness of the prince and his subjects.
It belongs to a tradition of inundation legends of a kind associated with other lakes in Wales and elsewhere, including Llyn Tegid near Bala, but perhaps in this instance based upon a folk-memory of the early medieval ‘Crannog’. ‘Time Team’, the archaeological t.v. programme, excavated this ‘Crannog’ which is a small ‘man made’ Island a short distance from the shore of the lake.
The team found quite a few artifacts in, on and around the island including remnants of a wooden ‘pier’ which allowed access onto the Crannog in those early times.
With the revival in interest in folklore in the modern era this and other tales about Llangorse Lake were to be retold in publications such as Sir John Rhys’s Celtic Folklore published in 1901 and W. Jenkyn Thomas’s The Welsh Fairy Book of 1907.
