The magical desolation of Dyved’s seven cantrefs

The magical desolation of Dyved’s seven cantrefs turns a familiar, prosperous country into an empty landscape and separates its inhabitants from the four survivors. Its effects reach beyond disappearance: the land becomes a place of isolation, precarious survival, and enchantment, until Manawyddan’s persistence compels the spell’s author to undo it and restore Dyved to cultivation and habitation.

The Sudden Emptying of Dyved

The change comes while Pryderi, Manawyddan, Rhiannon, and Kicva sit together at the Gorsedd of Narberth. A peal of thunder is followed by a dense fall of mist, so thick that the four cannot see one another. When the mist clears, the populated country they had known has vanished from view: there are no houses, cattle, herds, smoke, fires, people, or other signs of habitation. Their court buildings stand empty, and their companions have disappeared without the four learning what became of them.

The desolation is made concrete through a search of the places where life and authority had been organized. The hall, castle, sleeping place, mead-cellar, and kitchen contain no one; the last two offer no provisions either. As the four inspect their lands and possessions, they find only wild beasts in the houses and dwellings. The loss is therefore at once social and material: they have been cut off from their household and retinue, while the structures of their former life remain standing but deserted.

Survival and Exile

At first, the four continue to feast, hunt, and take their pleasure. When their stored food runs out, they live on the animals they hunt and honey from wild swarms. They endure this way for two years, but eventually become weary of remaining in the empty country. Manawyddan proposes leaving for Lloegyr to find a craft with which they can support themselves.

In Hereford, Manawyddan makes saddles and saddle housings, decorating the work with blue enamel. His workmanship draws customers away from the local saddlers: they buy from him unless he cannot supply what they want. The saddlers, seeing their trade diminish, assemble and agree to kill him and his companions. Pryderi advocates answering the threat with violence, but Manawyddan refuses to kill them. Rather than meet the plot with another, he chooses to leave Lloegyr and return with Pryderi to Dyved.

Back at Narberth, they kindle fires and live by hunting. They remain there through a month and then a year, again with their dogs around them. The return does not break the enchantment. Instead, the apparently empty land produces a new mystery: one morning, some of the dogs approach a nearby bush, recoil with their hair bristling, and draw back toward the men.

The White Boar and the Castle

A pure white boar rises from the bush. The dogs pursue it, and the animal retreats in stages, making a stand before fleeing again as the hunters draw near. The chase leads them to a vast, lofty castle, newly built in a place where they had never seen any building. The boar runs inside, followed by the dogs; from the Gorsedd, the men listen for them but hear nothing.

Pryderi insists on entering to seek his dogs. Manawyddan warns that the castle has appeared where no castle was before and advises him not to go in, reasoning that whoever has cast a spell over the land may have caused it to appear. Pryderi nevertheless enters because he will not abandon the dogs. The castle contains neither people nor animals, and he finds no boar or dogs. At its centre is a fountain surrounded by marble work. On its edge rests a golden bowl on a marble slab, while chains hang down from above with no visible end.

The bowl’s beauty and workmanship draw Pryderi to take hold of it. The instant he does, his hands stick to the bowl and his feet to the slab; his joy leaves him, and he cannot speak. When Manawyddan returns without him, Rhiannon hears what has happened and reproaches him for losing his companion. She goes to the castle herself, finds Pryderi holding the bowl, and takes hold of it with him. She too becomes fast to the bowl and slab and loses the power of speech. As night falls, thunder and mist return, and the castle vanishes with both captives.

The Mouse and the Terms of Restoration

With Pryderi and Rhiannon gone, only Manawyddan and Kicva remain in the palace. Kicva grieves in despair, but Manawyddan promises friendship and fidelity to her and to Pryderi, assuring her that she need not fear him. His response preserves the bond among the four even as the enchantment has left him with only one companion.

Manawyddan later catches a mouse among the wheat and refuses to let it go. When a bishop offers first seven pounds, then twenty-four, and then horses and baggage for its release, Manawyddan rejects each offer. He demands instead that Rhiannon and Pryderi be freed and that the enchantment be removed from the seven cantrefs of Dyved. The bishop agrees, but Manawyddan continues to hold the mouse and asks who it is. The bishop reveals that the mouse is his pregnant wife.

The bishop identifies himself as Llwyd son of Kilcoed and admits that he cast the enchantment to avenge Gwawl, to whom he had been devoted. His grievance reaches back to the Game of Badger in the Bag, which Pwyll had played against Gwawl at the court of Heveydd Hen. Llwyd explains that members of his household first took mouse form to destroy Manawyddan’s wheat and crops; on the third night, his wife and the court’s ladies joined them. Because his wife is pregnant, Manawyddan was able to catch her. Llwyd offers to restore Pryderi and Rhiannon and lift the spell, and Manawyddan also secures a promise that no further vengeance will be taken against the captives or himself.

Restoration and Narrative Significance

Once Pryderi and Rhiannon appear, Manawyddan releases Llwyd’s wife. Llwyd touches her with a magic wand, and she becomes a young woman again. He then tells Manawyddan to look over the land: the fields are tilled, and herds and dwellings have returned. The restoration reverses the desolation in its most visible terms, replacing wildness and abandonment with cultivation, livestock, and habitation.

The sequence links a sweeping regional affliction to a chain of particular encounters: the empty court, the inexplicable castle, the golden bowl, and finally the captive mouse. Manawyddan’s refusal to retaliate against the saddlers contrasts with his firmness in bargaining with Llwyd; in each case he resists the immediate violent answer, but he does not surrender his claims. The cause disclosed at the end also connects the crisis to an older grievance against Pwyll. Dyved’s emptiness is thus not an unexplained backdrop: its restoration depends on identifying the person behind the enchantment, securing the captives’ release, and obtaining a guarantee against renewed vengeance.