Myths and folklore

The Welsh name Yr Wyddfa contains the element gwyddfa, meaning burial cairn or tumulus — a direct reference to the legend that the summit is the burial place of the giant king Rhita Gawr. According to Welsh tradition, Rhita Gawr was a fearsome giant who conquered many kings of Britain and wore a cloak made from their beards.

King Arthur was the last to challenge him. The two met at dawn on the summit of Yr Wyddfa in a battle that ended with Arthur slaying Rhita Gawr and burying him beneath a cairn at the very top. The mountain thus became Gwyddfa Rhitta — the tomb of Rhita — a name that persisted through the centuries into the modern Welsh name.

The legend gives Yr Wyddfa a pre-Arthurian dimension: it was a site of significance in Welsh mythology long before the post-Roman period with which Arthur is associated. The summit, in this tradition, is both a battlefield and a monument.

The Watkin Path passes through Bwlch y Saethau — the Pass of the Arrows — a dramatic col between the summit of Yr Wyddfa and the ridge of Y Lliwedd. According to Arthurian tradition, this was the site of Arthur's final battle, where he was struck by an arrow and mortally wounded.

After the battle, the legend holds that Arthur's faithful companion Bedwyr (Bedivere) carried him to the shore of Glaslyn — the vivid blue-green lake cradled below the summit crags, visible from both the Pyg Track and Miners' Track — and cast Excalibur into its depths. Three maidens then appeared to bear Arthur to Avalon for healing.

Arthur's warriors, in some versions of the tale, did not die but sleep in a cave on Y Lliwedd, the ridge south-east of the summit, awaiting Britain's hour of need and the call to return. This makes Yr Wyddfa and its surrounding ridges a central place in the British Arthurian geography.

The location of Glaslyn directly below the summit crags and the drama of the Bwlch y Saethau col make the physical landscape and the mythology unusually well-matched. Walking the Watkin Path through these places carries a particular narrative weight.

Glaslyn — the turquoise lake visible below the summit crags — is the final resting place of the Afanc, a monstrous water creature from Welsh mythology. The Afanc is described variously as resembling an enormous beaver, a crocodile, or a demonic beast, and was associated with drowning and floods wherever it dwelt.

The creature originated in the River Conwy, where it caused repeated floods and drowned those who entered the water. Attempts to destroy it failed. Eventually a maiden lulled it to sleep with a lullaby, allowing the giant Hu Gadarn's mighty oxen to drag it, in chains, from the Conwy to its final prison in the cold depths of Glaslyn.

There it has remained, imprisoned but not destroyed. Local tradition held that the blue-green copper tint of Glaslyn's water was itself a sign of the creature's presence. The lake's unusual colour is in fact caused by copper deposits from centuries of mining activity, but the visual effect — startling and otherworldly against the grey mountain rock — makes the myth entirely credible when you stand above the lake.

Though not on Snowdon itself, Dinas Emrys — an Iron Age hilltop near Beddgelert, visible from the Nant Gwynant valley — is one of the most significant mythological sites in Wales and closely connected to the broader landscape around Yr Wyddfa.

According to the Historia Brittonum and later the Mabinogion, the British king Vortigern attempted to build a fortress on this hill, but the walls collapsed each night. His advisers told him the only remedy was to find a boy born without a father and use his blood in the foundations.

The boy — Myrddin Emrys, later identified with Merlin — was brought to the hill but instead of accepting his fate revealed the true cause of the nightly collapse: beneath the foundations lay a pool containing two dragons — one red, one white — locked in endless combat. When the pool was excavated, the dragons flew up and resumed fighting. The red dragon eventually drove out the white, and Merlin interpreted this as a prophecy: the red dragon represented the Britons (Welsh), who would ultimately prevail over the Anglo-Saxon invaders (the white dragon). The red dragon became and remains the symbol of Wales.

The pool described in the legend was excavated by archaeologists in the 1950s; a Dark Age cistern was found on the site. Dinas Emrys remains a genuinely ancient and atmospheric site accessible by footpath from Nant Gwynant.