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Gwrach y Rhibyn

The legend of the cyhyraeth is sometimes conflated with tales of the Gwrach-y-Rhibyn or Hag of the Mist, a monstrous Welsh spirit in the shape of a hideously ugly woman – a Welsh saying, to describe a woman without good looks, goes, “Y mae mor salw â Gwrach y Rhibyn” (she is as ugly as the Gwrach y Rhibyn) – with a harpy-like appearance: unkempt hair and wizened, withered arms with leathery wings, long black teeth and pale corpse-like features. She approaches the window of the person about to die by night and calls their name, or travels invisibly beside them and utters her cry when they approach a stream or crossroads, and is sometimes depicted as washing her hands there. Most often the Gwrach y Rhibyn will wail and shriek “Fy ngŵr, fy ngŵr!” (My husband! My husband!) or “Fy mhlentyn, fy mhlentyn bach!” (My child! My little child!), though sometimes she will assume a male’s voice and cry “Fy ngwraig! Fy ngwraig!” (My wife! My wife!).

If it is death that is coming, the name of the one doomed to die is supposed to be heard in her “shrill tenor”. Often invisible, she can sometimes be seen at a crossroad or a stream when the mist rises.

Some speculation has been asserted that this apparition may have once been a water deity, or an aspect of the Welsh goddess Dôn. She is the wife of Afagddu, the despised son of Ceridwen and Tegid Foel, in some retellings of the Taliesin myth.

From Wikipedia

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If I were to show you the autocorrelation traces of two femtosecond laser pulses on an expensive oscilloscope in a dark laser lab it us unlikely that you would be thinking of the witch, the hag of the mist, Gwrach-y-Rhibyn. The two things do not correlate for most.

A part of my maternal family hails from Snowdonia, the foot of Snowdon,  in North Wales and the family legend has it that at least one of my maternal relatives, a granny of sorts, was a Gwrach, a witch, perhaps a seeress. In that context then there is a chance that I inherited the bloodline and hence the “gift” so to speak. As such it was entirely natural {and perhaps inevitable} that I would be interested in shamanism and shamanic ritual.

Of course in terms of someone able to write Fortan programs to calculate Franck Condon factors for anharmonic oscillator molecular vibronic photon excitations that seems far-fetched.

Contextually the vice versa might apply. Why would a shaman piss about with fancy lasers and science?

In Brittany there remains an interest in {and perhaps practice of} witchcraft. This is no way freaks me out. It is possible the practises here were sourced in the Welsh diaspora arriving. They are of similar roots.

I’ll speculate that a blog post like this would not enhance my promotion prospects were I still institutionalised in science academia.

I have always loved the mist and the fog. I nearly died on The Old Man of Coniston once. I was alone and following crows up a trail in the snow deep into the fog, alone on the mountain. It was exciting. Luckily before I got completely lost in the otherworld, I turned back. I have had much similar fun on Kinder Scout in dense fog. There is something womb-like and enveloping.

Of a still and misty night, when the full moon is partially veiled and you heard a voice at your window calling your name, what would you do.

Could you take secure refuge in the omniscience of your infallible reason?

Or would your blood run cold?