CARNEDD ELIDIR
Jim Perrin won’t call this summit by its usual name, Elidir Fawr – yet this heavily industrialised mountain somehow rises above it all
“…a man who was fishing in [Marchlyn] found himself enveloped in the clouds that had descended from the hills to the water. A sudden gust of wind cleared a road through the mist that hung over the lake, and revealed to his sight a man busily engaged in thatching a stack. The man, or rather the fairy, stood on a ladder. The stack and the ladder rested on the surface of the lake.”
Reverend Elias Owen
THAT HAUNTING IMAGE, recorded by the folklorist and headmaster of Llanllechid School Elias Owen (1833-1899), comes from his seminal 1896 study, Welsh Folklore – still one of the indispensable works on the subject, and recently republished with an authoritative introduction by Rob Mimpriss’s Cockatrice Press of Bangor. It captures something of the strange atmosphere of what used to be one of the very finest cymoedd [valleys] in Eryri – an atmosphere changed out of all recognition since Marchlyn was harnessed as the upper lake for the Dinorwig pumped storage scheme. This took ten years to complete before it was finally commissioned, appropriately enough in 1984. Its main purpose – admitted at the time of its construction in publicity caravans that toured local towns and villages – was to provide a source of instant power to cope with surges in demand as the British populace en masse turns on its electric kettles to make tea at the end of each episode of Coronation Street, EastEnders, or whatever’s the favourite viewing of the time. So this fine Welsh cwm was turned into a disturbing sink with a plughole through which all Marchlyn’s water – its level fluctuating by 100 feet – disappeared twice a day, to be returned to source by means of the energy generated by its descent. There was a degree of resistance to it, and a campaign of sabotage and disruption went unrecorded in the press (does that sound familiar?).
I could go on. Better perhaps to move on to consider what remains. For Carnedd Elidir is still a very fine hill, the bold northern bastion of the classic ridge that runs from Gallt yr Ogof above Capel Curig to Mynydd Llandegai between Llanberis and Bethesda.
I remember setting off at dawn on a winter’s day early in 1967 from a bunkhouse in Nant Peris, taking the steadily ascending zig-zag path into Cwm Dudodyn, toiling up its rushy length with the broad north-western faces of Foel Goch and Y Garn on my right hand. Where the headwall of the cwm reared up, I jagged left and kicked steps up a thousand feet of perfect névé to reach Bwlch y Brecan and follow the narrow ridge round westwards to the summit cairn of our mountain. Which I will not refer to by the name given it on the Ordnance Survey maps. That name is a 19th-Century invention, like so much of the revised and illresearched toponymy throughout the Celtic realms. If you want to know more about this vexed subject, I refer you to Brian Friel’s great 1980 play Translations, which tackles the major theme of how suppression of indigenous nomenclature is culturally destructive – and perhaps intentionally so.
So – Elidir Fawr, and its equally coined junior relation Elidir Fach. They came into being as late as the second half of the 19th Century. The first editions of the Ordnance Survey one-inch maps from the 1840s have no trace of either. By the time of the exquisite coloured sheets of the 1887-1895 edition, which are such masterpieces of the cartographic art (I have a framed and mounted Snowdon sheet hanging on my study wall that was given to me by my dear late friend Alan Bevan, himself a fine and discerning artist), lo and behold! ‘Elidir Fawr’ and the equally fraudulent ‘Elidir Fach’ have appeared out of nowhere. The latter is barely a separate hill anyway. Its Welsh name is Allt Melynwyn. For ‘Elidir Fawr’, let’s enlist the assistance of Terry Marsh, from his guide to the 600-metre Eryri summits, The Summits of Snowdonia (1984): “Elidir Fawr was once known as Carnedd Elidir, commemorating Elidir Mwynfawr, son-in-law of Maelgwn, Prince of Gwynedd.”
This Elidir, who was commander of Maelgwn’s army, no other legitimate claimant to the succession having emerged after Maelgwn’s death, laid claim to the throne of Gwynedd. The problem was that he was English, and then as now there was strong feeling against an English prince of Wales. A fierce battle took place at Abermeweddus (thought to have been near Clynnog Fawr), and Elidir was duly slaughtered by the men he’d formerly commanded. But to show there were no hard feelings, those he’d once led built a huge cairn for him on the prominent summit above Marchlyn: “His followers named the pile ‘Carnedd Elidir’. It seems a more preferable name.”
It does indeed, Mr Marsh; and it’s the one I’m sticking with, whatever confusion it causes amongst Southampton colonialists. Let’s start reclaiming in the outdoor community the rightful name for this fine and characterful hill. I used to live high on its western flank in Dinorwig and would often run up to its summit through the old Dinorwig quarries, which now thrum with the electricity generated by the power scheme. Don’t let the latter put you off.
The summit is somehow aloof from all such mayhem – protected by that fairy, perhaps?
FURTHER INFORMATION:
MAP: OS Outdoor Leisure 17, Snowdon Area.
FURTHER READING: Sir John Rhys, Celtic Folklore, Welsh and Manx
(1901); For more on Elidir and his marvellous steed, see Rachel Bromwich’s fascinating edition of the medieval verses Trioedd Ynys Prydein.
FACILITIES: If in need of exercise after a gigantic Pete’s Eats chip butty, start from Llanberis and take Llwybr O-gam-i-gam. Alternatively, the Vaynol Arms in Nant Peris is convenient for the path up Cwm Dudodyn. In the summer there’s sometimes a tea-wagon at Allt Ddu, by the entrance to the Dinorwig quarries, tracks and inclines within which will take you to high on Allt Melinwyn.
“The summit is somehow aloof from all the mayhem around it...”