Gwenddydd

Gwenddydd, also known as Gwendydd and Ganieda, is a character from Welsh legend. She first appears in the early Welsh poems like the Dialogue of Myrddin and Gwenddydd and in the 12th-century Latin Vita Merlini by Geoffrey of Monmouth, where she is represented as being a figure in the Old North of Britain, the sister of Myrddin or Merlin, and a prophet in her own right. Geoffrey also makes her the wife of the northern king Rhydderch Hael. She was remembered in Welsh traditions recorded in the 16th century by Elis Gruffydd, and even as late as the 18th century. Since the late 19th century she has occasionally appeared as Merlin's sister or lover in Arthurian fiction, poetry and drama by writers such as Laurence Binyon, John Cowper Powys, John Arden, Margaretta D'Arcy and Stephen R. Lawhead. Early Welsh verse 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. The relationship between these poems is contested. The poems Afallennau ("The Apple-trees") and Oianau or Hoianau ("The Greetings") both give us the prophecies of a wild man somewhere in the Old North (southern Scotland and northern England); he is not identified in either poem, but later generations were agreed in identifying him, correctly or not, with Myrddin. Gwenddydd is not said to be the wild man's sister in Afallennau, and indeed it has been argued that in the original form of the legend she was Myrddin's fairy lover; however she is twice mentioned in the poem, the poet complaining that Similarly, Oianau refers to her in the phrase "Gwenddydd does not come to me".