May Eve

May Eve is the recurring night of a supernatural cry that forms the second of the three plagues afflicting the Island of Britain in the story of Lludd and Llevelys. Its significance lies in the way the yearly sound turns a hidden conflict into a public calamity: the cry is heard across the island, its effects reach people and the natural world, and its source is finally found in two dragons locked in combat.

Recurrence and Effects

The shriek comes on every May Eve and passes over every hearth in the Island of Britain. Its force is described through the damage it does: people lose their strength and colour, women miscarry, young men and maidens lose their senses, and animals, trees, earth, and waters become barren. The recurrence makes the plague more than a single disaster; it returns on a fixed night, renewing its harm throughout the kingdom.

The cry is identified as the second of three afflictions. The first is the arrival of the Coranians, whose extraordinary hearing lets them learn even speech carried on the wind. The third is the disappearance of food and provisions from royal courts after the first night, a theft concealed by enchantment and sleep. Lludd does not initially know the causes of the three plagues, and the recurring shriek is especially alarming because its origin is unknown.

The Dragons Behind the Cry

Seeking counsel, Lludd goes to his brother Llevelys, king of France. Llevelys explains that the shriek comes from a dragon in Lludd’s dominion fighting a dragon of foreign origin. The island’s dragon cries out as the other strives to overcome it. The spectacle is therefore not a deliberate attack on the people: the island suffers as the consequence of a struggle taking place beyond ordinary human control.

Llevelys gives Lludd a procedure for locating and containing the combatants. Lludd must measure the Island of Britain lengthwise and breadthwise, find its exact centre, and watch there as the dragons fight. They will eventually fall into a pit prepared with a cauldron of mead covered in satin; after drinking the mead, they will sleep, allowing Lludd to wrap them in the covering and bury them securely.

Lludd’s Remedy and the End of the Cry

Lludd carries out the instructions. The island’s measured centre is found at Oxford, where he has the earth dug and places a cauldron of the best mead beneath a satin covering. Watching in person, he sees the dragons fight, become exhausted, and fall onto the satin. They sink with it into the cauldron, drink the mead, and fall asleep. Lludd wraps them in the covering and hides them in a stone chest in the strongest place in his dominions, in Snowdon.

The burial ends the fierce outcry in Lludd’s dominion. The site is thereafter called Dinas Emreis; before this, it was called Dinas Ffaraon. The resolution links May Eve’s recurring disturbance to a concrete, contained cause: once the dragons are trapped and buried, the noise that had repeatedly afflicted the island ceases.

Narrative Significance

May Eve gives the plague a precise rhythm while withholding its explanation until Lludd seeks his brother’s counsel. The movement from an island-wide, seemingly inexplicable sound to a conflict that can be witnessed, contained, and buried turns helplessness into action. The dragons’ struggle also connects environmental desolation and human suffering to a single hidden source, while Lludd’s careful measurement and watchfulness provide the means to end a calamity that force alone could not explain.