Dinas Emreis

Dinas Emreis is the place in Snowdon where Lludd confines two battling dragons, ending the fierce outcry that had afflicted the Island of Britain. In the tale of Lludd and Llevelys, it is not the site where the dragons are first trapped: that happens at the island’s measured center, which Lludd finds at Oxford. Their eventual burial in Snowdon turns Dinas Emreis into the story’s point of lasting containment, and the narrative says the place was formerly called Dinas Ffaraon.

Setting and Identity

Dinas Emreis is identified as the securest place Lludd has in Snowdon, where he hides the captured dragons in a stone burial chamber. The account gives no further description of the stronghold or its surroundings. Its importance comes instead from what is concealed there: the two beings whose struggle has made the land’s third great affliction audible.

The name change is stated in a simple sequence. After Lludd has wrapped the sleeping dragons and hidden them in Snowdon, the place is called Dinas Emreis; before that, it was Dinas Ffaraon. The tale presents this as an origin story for the place-name, without explaining the name’s linguistic meaning.

The Dragons and Their Capture

Llevelys explains that one dragon belongs to Lludd’s dominion and that the other is of foreign origin. They are fighting for mastery, and the dragon of the land gives a fearful cry as it struggles. The noise makes the conflict more than a private contest between monsters: it is heard as a plague affecting the whole realm, while the foreign dragon’s presence gives the disturbance an external dimension.

Following his brother’s instructions, Lludd has the Island of Britain measured in length and breadth and digs at the exact central point, in Oxford. He places in the pit a cauldron filled with the best mead and covers it with satin, then keeps watch in person. The dragons appear as terrifying animals before taking dragon form in the air; after fighting until exhausted, they descend as two pigs onto the satin, sink with it into the cauldron, drink the mead, and fall asleep. Lludd wraps the covering around them and carries them to the secure place in Snowdon.

Burial and Consequences

The burial at Dinas Emreis completes the capture: Lludd hides the sleeping dragons in a kistvaen, securing them beneath the earth. The tale links their confinement to the end of the dragons’ outcry in Lludd’s dominion. Llevelys had warned that, while the dragons remained in a strong place, no plague would come to the Island of Britain from elsewhere; the Snowdon burial therefore serves as protection as well as concealment.

Dinas Emreis is one part of Lludd’s effort to free Britain from three plagues, rather than the setting for all of them. The Coranians are destroyed elsewhere, and Lludd later confronts the magician who steals provisions. The dragon episode has its own distinct geography: Oxford is the point of capture, while Snowdon is the place of burial and continuing restraint. The tale’s naming of Dinas Emreis after that burial fixes the site in the narrative as the landmark associated with the dragons’ defeat and the cessation of their cry.