Annwn- Celtic LocationLocation · Realm"Welsh Otherworld"

The Realm

Annwn was not underground and not across the sea, though you could reach it by going either way. You could also descend into a lake or step through mist at twilight and find yourself there. The realm occupied the same space as the mortal world but remained invisible to ordinary eyes.

Arawn ruled it as a hunter-king, riding out with white, red-eared hounds to chase quarry no mortal could see. His court feasted without end. The pigs slaughtered for the table were whole again by morning. The orchards bore fruit in every season. His queen presided beside him, though her personal name does not survive in the texts.

Pwyll in Annwn

The First Branch of the Mabinogi tells how Pwyll, Prince of Dyfed, was hunting in the woods of Glyn Cuch when he drove his own hounds onto a stag that Arawn's pack had brought down. The insult was grave. To make amends, the two kings struck a bargain: they would exchange forms and rule each other's kingdoms for a year. At the year's end, Pwyll would fight Arawn's rival Hafgan in single combat at a ford.

Pwyll lived in Annwn for the full year. The hunting was finer than any he had known, the feasting richer, the music sweeter. Each night he lay beside Arawn's queen but never touched her, turning his face to the wall. When the appointed day came, he met Hafgan at the ford and struck him a single blow. Hafgan, dying, begged for a second stroke to finish him. Pwyll refused. Arawn had warned him: a second blow would restore Hafgan to full strength. The rival king died of the single wound, and his nobles swore fealty.

When the two kings resumed their own forms, each found the other had governed well. They swore friendship, and Pwyll earned the title Pen Annwn: Head of Annwn.

The Spoils of Annwn

The poem Preiddeu Annwn in the Book of Taliesin describes Arthur's expedition to steal the treasures of the Otherworld. Three shiploads of warriors sailed aboard his ship Prydwen. Seven returned.

The prize was a cauldron. Nine maidens warmed it with their breath. It would not boil food for a coward. The poem names fortress after fortress within Annwn: Caer Sidi, the Fortress of the Mound; Caer Wydyr, the Glass Fortress. Six hundred men stood on the walls. A watchman refused to speak. Arthur took the cauldron, but the cost was nearly every man he brought.

Gwyn ap Nudd and the Hounds

In Culhwch ac Olwen, Gwyn ap Nudd appears as a warrior charged by God with containing the demons of Annwn, lest they destroy the mortal world. He gathered the souls of fallen warriors from the battlefield and led the Otherworld host. Every May Day he fought Gwythyr ap Greidawl for Creiddylad, daughter of Lludd. Neither could win. The contest would repeat until Judgment Day.

Gwyn's hounds, the Cŵn Annwn, hunted the souls of the dead across the winter sky. Their baying worked in reverse: the closer they came, the fainter they sounded. Distant, they were deafening. On dark autumn nights, people heard honking overhead and called it the Otherworld hounds passing. They shut their doors.

In later Welsh tradition, Gwyn replaced Arawn as lord of Annwn. His court was said to lie inside Glastonbury Tor, the hollow hill where the boundary between worlds was thinnest.