The Grey King

[amelia_petkova]

"On the day of the dead, when the year too dies, / Must the youngest open the oldest hills"

Why can't my Halloween every be as interesting as Will and Bran's?

A question for The Dark is Rising fans: Does anyone know if the brenin llwyd and the milgwn (apologies if I misspelled) are based on Welsh myth, or did Susan Cooper make them up out of thin air?

Happy Halloween/Samhain!

Just over six hours until NaNoWriMo begins in this time zone...good luck everyone.

Comments

[eirendel.livejournal.com]

Ironic that I find this post of yours almost a year later, while I'm researching the same thing. From what I've found the Brenin Llwyd is a real myth, as is the breath of the grey king, though there is some dispute as to which mountain he haunts. Milgwn is plural for greyhound, though I haven't found any evidence of myths about giant grey foxes that can shapeshift.

[amelia-petkova.livejournal.com]

I do remember that at the beginning of the book, Cooper said that she didn't make them up, but I wasn't able to find anything else about them. Where did you look?

(Maybe milgwn are related to one of the versions about the dogs of the Wild Hunt.)

[eirendel.livejournal.com]

I just googled both subjects. One site I found did equate the Brenin Llwyd with Arawn, and therefore the Grey King would need hounds to hunt with. But no specific references to the milgyn as something supernatural. Not in english, anyway, though I found several links to welsh pages that mentioned that word.

Some places I visited:

http://www.maryjones.us/jce/breninllwyd.html
http://www.pagannews.com/cgi-bin/gods3.pl?Arawn
http://theshatteredrealm.blogspot.com/2006_10_01_archive.html