Llech Gronw

Llech Gronw is the slab Gronw Pebyr used as a shield when he faced Llew Llaw Gyffes in a formal exchange of blows on the bank of the Cynvael River. Llew’s dart pierced the stone and passed through Gronw’s back, killing him. Left with its hole on the riverbank in Ardudwy, the slab became a lasting physical trace of the encounter and was known by the name Llech Gronw.

The Slab and Its Setting

The narrative identifies the object first as a slab lying on the river’s bank, not as a weapon or an enchanted relic. Its defining feature is the hole made through it during the duel. The story locates it beside the Cynvael River, in Ardudwy, and says that it remains there. This precise geographical detail makes the object more than a disposable prop: the account anchors the violence of the episode to a place where its material evidence is said still to be visible.

Its Part in the Duel

The confrontation follows Gronw’s attempt to make amends for the injury he had dealt Llew. After withdrawing to Penllyn, Gronw sent messengers to offer land, domain, gold, or silver as compensation. Llew refused those alternatives and demanded that Gronw stand where Llew had been wounded while Llew took the corresponding position and aimed a dart at him. Gronw’s household and foster-brothers would not take the blow in his place, so he agreed to meet Llew himself.

At the river, each man stood in the position the other had occupied when the first attack occurred. Gronw asked to place the slab between himself and the dart, invoking the woman’s wiles as the means by which he had wronged Llew. Llew granted this request. The stone therefore enters the scene as an accepted barrier: it offers Gronw a last measure of protection, but does not cancel the terms of the reversed encounter. Llew’s dart passed through the slab and through Gronw’s back. Gronw was slain despite the shield he had chosen.

Name, Trace, and Aftermath

The account explicitly connects the object’s present name to the wound in its surface: the slab on the riverbank has a hole through it, and for that reason it is called Llech Gronw. The name preserves both the defeated man’s identity and the particular form of his death. Rather than leaving the duel only as a remembered exchange, the story gives it a durable mark in the landscape: stone, pierced by the dart, remains as evidence of the blow that passed through it.

The duel also restores Llew’s position. After Gronw’s death, Llew takes possession of the land a second time and governs it prosperously, becoming lord over Gwynedd. The slab does not itself cause that political restoration, but its survival attaches a visible, named remnant to the violent resolution that precedes it. Llech Gronw thus stands at the point where a personal reckoning becomes both a recorded death and a renewed rule.