Gwenddydd

Gwenddydd first appears in literature as a character in those early Welsh poems that became associated with the poet and warrior Myrddin Wyllt, and in Geoffrey of Monmouth's Latin verse Vita Merlini.

[7] In a passage of reminiscence Myrddin makes one obscure reference to Gwenddydd:[8][9]Gwasawg, I was told your cry to Gwenddyddby the mountain madmen in Aber Craf.

His sister Ganieda and her husband Rodarchus, king of the Cumbrians, discover his whereabouts and bring him back to their court, where he has to be chained to prevent him returning to the woods.

The author now explains that in later years the boy fell from a rock, was caught in the branches of a tree beneath it, and being entangled there upside down with his head in a river he drowned.

Back in the woods Merlinus watches the stars in an observatory Ganieda has made for him, and prophesies the future history of Britain as far as the Norman kings.

The poem ends with a prophecy from Ganieda detailing events in the reign of King Stephen,[13] and a renunciation by Merlinus of his own prophetic gift in her favour.

[15] It has also been suggested that Geoffrey's Ganieda may in part be inspired by the example of his contemporary Christina of Markyate, a well-born Anglo-Saxon lady who escaped an arranged marriage to become a hermit and clairvoyant.

In one section we learn that Myrddin ran mad in the wilds of Nant Conwy in North Wales, that he prophesied, and that his sister Gwenddydd supplied him with food and drink.

Gwenddydd has five dreams at various times, and eventually she comes to Myrddin and asks him to explain them, which he does in a vein of social criticism that calls to mind William Langland's Piers Plowman.

[27] In this verse play, based largely on the Vita Merlini, Geoffrey's Ganieda is split into two characters, Merlin's sister Gwyndyth and Redderch's queen Langoreth.

[31][32] The Island of the Mighty is an epic drama in three parts by John Arden and Margaretta D'Arcy, first performed, in a truncated form, in December 1972 by the Royal Shakespeare Company at the Aldwych Theatre, London.

[36] In the 1995 novelette Namer of Beasts, Maker of Souls, by Jessica Amanda Salmonson, Merlin has a twin-sister called Ganicenda, described as "Divine Wisdom, with her head in heaven and her feet in Sheol".

[43] The Breton sculptor Louis-Henri Nicot's bas-relief Taliésin et Ganiéda (1925) forms part of the Monument néoceltique produced for the International Exhibition of Modern Decorative and Industrial Arts in Paris.