The legend of the sunken city of Ys, the Breton Atlantis

The mythical tale that describes how the lost city of Ys was swallowed up by the waves of the ocean most likely derives from historical events that really happened around the fifth century AD, but, as Massimo Centini argues, for example, the moralistic emphasis of an event natural of limited proportions could reveal the attempt by the Christian invaders to strike at the previous Druid religion and its priestly class, especially the female one.


di Francis Lamendola
originally published in the press review of Arianna Publishing

cover: Nicholas Roerich

The disappearance of the rich and powerful city of Ys, which stood on the English Channel at the tip of the Brittany coast and which was swept away by the force of the sea, has been handed down over the centuries under the mythical guise of an allegorical and moral parable. It must be said that the stories - historical, semi-historical or semi-legendary - relating to the cities submerged by the waters have always exercised a particular fascination, so much so as to give rise to a whole literature, oral and written, relating to these natural disasters; in which, almost always, it is present an element of human imprudence, or perversion, or in any case of moral iniquity.

For example, in the novel by the German writer Elisabetta Werner "Vineta", there is talk of a mysterious coastal city on the Baltic Sea which was swallowed up by the waters and which sometimes, in exceptional circumstances, it can be glimpsed under the surface of the sea, similar to a mirage or a Morgana fairy, with its bell towers, the sharp roofs of the houses and the profile of the streets, now enveloped in an aquatic and ghostly silence. The legend connects Vineta with the island of Usedom, which it allegedly offered a kind of pedestal to emerge from the sea. It is an indefinable charm, but powerfully suggestive, which well knows those who, since childhood, were familiar with a similar phenomenon of transparency of the houses of a submerged village under the surface of a lake in the Carnic Prealps (for the curious, the village is that of Redona and the lake, that of Tramonti).

In the case of Ys, the ruin of the ancient city, submerged by the Atlantic Ocean in the mid-fifth century AD - when the Roman dominion over northern Gaul had already almost crumbled under the irresistible impact of the Germanic invasions, which began across the Rhine at the very beginning of that century - it was attributed, by ancient tradition, to moral sins of the shameless daughter of King Gradlon, a certain Dahut. At that time, historiography, which had fallen to the level of a gross and semi-fantastic anecdotal, often resorted to alleged faults of queens or princesses to "explain" the catastrophes that were falling on the Roman world or on the Roman-Germanic kingdoms that arose. from its collapse.

Nicholas Roerich, Moon People 1915
Nicholas Roerich, "Moon People", 1915

We recall only one example: that of Paolo Diacono, who, in his "Historia Langobardorum" (IV, 38), attributes the fall of Cividale into the hands of the ferocious Avars, at the beginning of the seventh century, to a betrayal of the wicked and lustful Duchess Romilda, who fell in love with the enemy king Cacano, from whom she was then "rewarded" with the torture of impalement. In his famous work "The world before the creation of man" (Italian translation by Diego Sant'Ambrogio, Milan, Sonzogno Publishing Company, 1911, pp. 267-270), thus the French scientific popularizer Camillus Flammarion recalls the legendary tale about the dramatic end of Ys:

Β«In the bay of Douarnenez there was once a famous city, the city of Is, whose tragic end was illustrated by the legend of King Gradlon. In the first centuries of our era, this city was still flourishing, although already threatened by the sea and protected by dams. It is believed that the invasion of the waters that definitively engulfed these populations took place in the year 444. You can still see today, at low tide, some old walls that bear the name of "Mogher-Greghi" walls of the Greeks.

This story of the submergence of IS deserves to pause for a moment, although the documents that we are gathering here for the first time under the eyes of our readers are so numerous that all our efforts tend, as can be seen, to limit with sparing our account of these documents themselves, in order not to prolong this chapter too long, which is nevertheless of primary importance. We present in a few words this tradition of great significance.

It is on the desolate shores of the Baia de 'Trapassati (Finisterre) that the vestiges of the ancient city are found. Many ancient roads nowadays end up in the sea, and in the past they extended into the bay of Douarnenez. Breton traditions say that the city of Is was protected against the ocean by powerful dams, whose locks were opened once a month under the presidency of the king., to give passage to the overabundance of waterways. The city was of excessive magnificence, the palace sumptuous, and the court devoted to all sorts of pleasures. The king's daughter, Princess Dahut, was beautiful, flirtatious and licentious, and despite her paternal austerity, she indulged in crazy orgies. Gradlon had promised to impose her authority, and to curb the scandals of her daughter, but paternal indulgence had always prevailed in her heart.

The young princess formed a plot to seize royal authority, and the old king was not long in being relegated to the bottom of his own palace. She presided over the ceremony and even the opening of the locks, and she had the fantasy of opening them herself on a day of high tide!… It was evening; the king saw Saint GuΓ©nolΓ©, the apostle from Brittany, come before him to announce his daughter's imprudence; the sea penetrated the city, the storm pushed it in front of it, and there was now more than to flee, as the whole city was now destined to disappear. Gradlon still wanted to save her daughter from the consequences of her insane recklessness; he sent for her, took her on the back of his horse and, followed by her officers, headed for the gates of the city.

As he passed them, a long bellow rang out behind him; he turned and shouted! In place of the city of Is there was an immense bay, on which the light of the stars was reflected. But the quivering waves were already reaching him. They were about to catch up with him and land him, despite the gallop of the horses, when a voice shouted: β€œGradlon! If you don't want to perish, get rid of the devil you carry behind you ”. Dahout, terrified, felt her strength leave her; a veil spread over her eyes; his hands, which convulsively gripped his father's chest, froze and fell back without strength; it fell overwhelmed by the waves. As soon as they had swallowed it, they stopped. As for the king, he arrived safely at Quimper, and settled in this city which became the capital of Cornwall. "

What we told is undoubtedly a legend: but it covers a fund of truth: the unquestionable submersion of a large city in the fifth century of our era. To the city of Is we can add as an example of regions submerged by sea invasions, the city of Herbadilla, near Nantes, of which Gregory of Tours speaks. (it was under his jurisdiction) and which was swallowed up in its time, around 580; that of Tolento, not far from Brest; that of Nazado, near Erqy; that of Garloine, in the plain of Dol, which disappeared at the time of Charlemagne. From the mouth of the Loire to Finisterre, there is no coast where no vestiges of residence are found. The Morhiban coast seems to have dropped five meters at Closmadeuc.

There were forests on the shore of Dunkirk, occupying the beaches bathed today by the sea. Etaples Beach contained such a large number of trees buried in the beach that the state awarded the right to extract them. Roman foundations were discovered in Sangatte. The remains of a submerged forest were found west of Calais, in the middle of which bison bones (auroch) and freshwater shells were recognized, which proves how, in a recent geological era, the coast it was higher than today. At this time, at the beginning of the Quaternary period, the Calais pass was not yet open to the waters of the ocean rushing into the waters of the North Sea; England was still conjoined with France. "

Evariste-Vital Luminais - Fuite de Gradlon (about 1884)
Evariste-Vital Luminais, β€œFuite de Gradlon”, 1884

Another study on the mystery of the city of Ys and its tragic disappearance in the waves of the Atlantic Ocean is carried out by RenΓ© Thevenin in his now classic monograph "The legendary villages" (original title: "Les pays lΓ©gendaires devant la science"; Italian translation by Luigi Confalonieri, Milan, Garzanti, 1950, pp. 75-78):

Β«It is not necessary for an event to be very distant in time for the legend to take hold of it, if this event only exists in the state of memory. Events have happened, in our countries and at a historical date, which the mystery still surrounds, as if they belonged to ancient mythology. And, as in antiquity, commentators fail to come to an agreement when they want to free the truth from the veils of the fable. […] Here the fact acquires all its importance and the resulting legend has no more than a secondary value. [...]

But let's summarize the novel in the meantime. We are in the fifth century of our era, at the end of the Brittany promontory, near that wild Raz cape, where the sea always seems tormented, even in calm weather. There, at the bottom of a bay, stands a thriving city, Ys, founded by the Romans and now ruled by King Grallon, or Gradlon. The city is protected towards the sea by powerful dams interrupted by locks that allow you to regulate the movement of the ever-threatening waters during tidal hours. These locks can be opened or locked by means of a key, evidently symbolic, which the king alone is in possession of.

Grallon reigns with justice, as a good Christian. But her daughter Ahès (her name varies according to her texts) has already several times attracted the threat of divine anger to her for her misconduct and her heresy. Finally, one night, during a scandalous orgy, she takes possession of her, on a pretext whose reason the legend does not clearly reveal, of the lock key, and opens them. The sea, swollen by a sudden and formidable storm, invades the city. Grallon barely has time to jump on horseback and ride her daughter. But the waves reach him: he is about to be overwhelmed. He understands that he is carrying the object of divine punishment with him: he abandons Ahès to her fate, who is dragged away by the ebb. The old king manages to save himself. But the city, witness to the orgies of the cursed, remains submerged, as can still be seen today with low tide and calm sea, seeing, under the transparency of the waters, in the bay of Douarnenez, the city of Ys.

Of this tragic story, which has many variations, an indisputable fact remains, the last. It is true that in our days, when circumstances and time permit, the vestiges of a submerged city are found in those places. It is in fact an ancient city, terminus of Roman roads and which, if one tries to clarify its history, was destroyed by a furious storm or by a sinking of the ground, in 441, or according to other writers, in 395.

Now, it is enough to study the relief of this whole Brittany coast, of the Norman coast that is close to it, and of the English coast that faces it, to realize the incessant struggle between sea and land and the victory that the attacker brings on defense. passive of the besieged. This is not the place to review the episodes of this struggle, engaged with different fortunes, for hundreds of millions of years, from the day when the first Breton granites emerged from the bosom of a hitherto deserted ocean. But without going back to those origins it can be remembered that at the moment of one of the greatest advances of the continental emergence, in the Pliocene, that is, in a time relatively close to ours, in which the bison, the horse, or the elephant, France and Holland reunited with England, and England reunited with Ireland, formed only a vast western promontory, through which the Rhine swollen by the Elbe and the Thames, by the Tweed, meandered northwards. and from the Tay, before flowing into the sea at the latitude of Scotland, while the Seine, which received the rivers of Brittany and those of northern England, crossed territories extending to the north of Normandy and Brittany and flowed only into the ocean that much west of the latter.

The catastrophe of Ys is therefore only a brief episode of this struggle and is only important because history has collected and interpreted its echo in its own way. We know nothing for sure about the personality of King Grallon and his turbulent progeny. But at the lowest tides of the equinox, near the Cape of Van and Trongueur, in the bay of Douarnenez, the submerged streets and city walls have been found since the XNUMXth century. This, on the other hand, has retained a certain celebrity thanks to the characters who let themselves live there, rightly or wrongly. But it is not the only one of the same regions that has suffered the same fate at the same time. Near Plogoff, under the surface of the "menhirs" (megalithic monuments), the walls and the paved streets are clearly distinguished. Other cities have been found submerged at the bottom of the Aber Vrac'h, near Erquy, etc. And the annals of Charlemagne's time tell us that, in the bay of Cancale, the citadel of Gardoine or Gardone, which had dared to resist the great emperor victoriously and thus incurred his curse, was in turn swallowed into the sea by God's wrath. . "

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Nicholas Roerich, "The Doomed City"

A more elaborate interpretation of this legend is carried out by Massimo Centini in his beautiful book "Cities, places and continents disappeared", in which he suggests that Dahut, the daughter of King Gadlon, was actually but a mighty Druid priestess; and that, therefore, the story of his phallus (of a sexual nature) and the relative catastrophe of the community of the inhabitants of Ys, was elaborated in a Christian environment to discredit and blame the druidic cult in general and the female priesthood in particular.

READ MOREΒ  From Pan to the Devil: the 'demonization' and removal of ancient European cults

He also recalls a passage from Tacitus relating to the conquest of the island of Mona (perhaps Man or perhaps, more likely, Anglesey: since the invaders' horses waded across the arm of the sea between the mainland and the island) by the Roman army and the destruction of the ancient Druid center existing there. In that passage, in fact, it speaks of the priestesses who frantically incited the Celtic warriors to fight against the profaners, until death and total annihilation. But we have already dealt with this in a previous, specific work (cf. F. Lamendola, Β«Suetonius Paulinus destroys theβ€œ sanctuary ”of the druidic resistance on the island of MonaΒ», available on the website of Arianna Editrice).

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Nicholas Roerich, "Lord of the Night", 1918

Massimo Centini therefore writes in the book "Cities, places and continents disappeared" (De Vecchi Editore, Milan, 2003, pp. 115-116), about the enigma of Ys:

β€œThe thriving city of Ys, according to tradition, was on the coast of Brittany. It is said that King Gradlon administered this city wisely, but that his daughter Dahut, too spoiled, indulged in all kinds of transgressions. One day, to go to find a lover, she stole the key with which the large doors that regulated the inflows of the water could be raised and lowered: far from home, she forgot to return before the high tide and Ys was devastated by the waters . According to a recurring model, therefore, the city was destroyed following an alteration of the rules - which in these "schemes" are almost always moral - by a member of the community.

Perhaps, behind the legend about the destruction of Ys there is a natural event (a tsunami?) Which also involved other localities, but for some unknown reason only this city acquired some notoriety: along the whole coast of Brittany, "large and small towns inhabited, as well as many villas and isolated manor houses, sank into the waves. But only Ys became famous, only Ys acquired the value of a symbol, because it was located on that western promontory which was at the same time the extreme point, the end of the world of men, the outstretched arm of humanity towards nothingness. . And only by slandering Ys could the Druidic religion be attacked"(H. Schreiber," Disappeared cities ", Milan, 1971, p. 27).

Among the many theories circulating on the disappearance of Ys there is the one that hypothesizes the emphasis of a natural event of limited proportions following the need of the invaders to overthrow the power of the druids, priests of the Celts. The intervention would have been all the more profound if we consider that in Ys the druidesses, priestesses with the same rights as male colleagues and of whom we know very little, would have had a sacred place. In fact, there are those who argue that Dahut, in reality, was not the name of the king's daughter, but that of a great and powerful druidess who in the mythical tale is considered guilty of having ignored the good of the community to give exclusive vent to her desires. .

Historical sources do not allow us to establish whether one was actually active female priestly class, even if in the past this belief was quite widespread (and not always with the necessary critical lucidity), perhaps following the desire to identify at all costs a connection with the mythical religious female universe to which, between the nineteenth century and the Twentieth century, figures from the mythical and folkloristic world (fairies, witches, etc.) were often connected.

Strabo highlights ("La Geografia", IV, 5), referring to Posidonio, who in "an island at the mouth of the Ligeris" (the Loire), there was a "tribe of women" often overwhelmed by a kind of fury. A theme that refers to Tacitus, who in the "Annals" (XXIX-XXX), when he narrates the capture of the island of Mona in 61 d. C., refers to women like furies who wielded torches. For Tacitus and Pliny the Elder (β€œHistoria Naturalis”, II, 75), that island would be Anglesey, a center of druidic worship and refuge for the rebels of Rome; for Julius Caesar (β€œDe Bello Gallico”, V, 13) β€œinsula appellatur Mona” would instead be the current Isle of Man, but there are those who maintain that there were also other localities in these women had their sacred center.

The historian Lampridio, in the biography dedicated to Alexander Severus (LIX, 6) tells that the emperor was warned by a "druidic prophetess" about the reliability of his army. Of the same tenor is the experience of Diocletian who, according to what is narrated in the "Life of the emperor Numerian of Vopiscus" (XIV, 2), had indications of his future from a "druidess". Furthermore, according to Vopiscus ("Life of Aurelian", XLIV, 4), Diocletian was able to address the "drydaes”To obtain concrete indications to be implemented in the course of his dynastic policy.

Thus Pilinius the Elder: "The women of the Britons after having sprinkled their bodies (with black ointment) appear naked in some ceremonies imitating the color of the Ethiopians" ("Historia Naturalis", XXII, 2). Even Strabo ("La Geografia", III, 2) did not hold back his astonishment as a Western observer at the work of the Cimbrian women who followed their men into war, even pushing them to clash with frenetic actions in the camps, playing instruments and shaking their weapons (a "process" that could be related to a sort of ritual dance).

Beyond the contaminations and hazards determined by comparativism, it should however be noted that in the classical sources there is no female term that can be correlated to our druidess / druid. Pomponio Mela, in the "De Chorographia", refers to the "Gallicenaeβ€œ, Which later, with the mediation of the epic tradition, became part of ballads and legends, always without having any precise referent in history. "

Archer, James, 1823-1904; La mort d'Arthur
James Archer, "La Mort d'Arthur"

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