Three Plagues of Britain

The Three Plagues of Britain are a linked set of supernatural afflictions that endanger the island’s people, natural abundance, and royal households. In the story of Lludd and Llevelys, they first appear as seemingly inexplicable disasters; Llevelys’s counsel reveals a different cause for each and gives Lludd distinct means of countering them. Their progression turns a crisis of bewilderment into a sequence of acts of diagnosis and containment.

Definition and Setting

The plagues fall upon the Island of Britain after Lludd, son of Beli, has become its king. The story presents him as a prosperous ruler, a mighty warrior, and a generous host, especially devoted to London, whose walls he rebuilds and surrounds with towers. The calamities reach beyond any single city: they disrupt speech and bodily well-being across the island, and strike at the food stores of the king’s courts.

At first, only the first plague seems to offer hope of relief. The causes of the second and third are not known, and the scale and strangeness of all three make ordinary counsel inadequate. Lludd summons the nobles of his kingdom, then undertakes a secret voyage to France to seek his brother Llevelys, king there and renowned for wisdom. The journey itself reflects the first plague’s threat: the Coranians can learn speech carried by the wind, so Lludd’s expedition is prepared quietly, lest they discover its purpose.

The Three Afflictions

The first plague is the coming of the Coranians, a people whose extraordinary knowledge makes them almost impossible to injure. No conversation on the island is too quiet to escape them if the wind catches it. Their power is therefore not simply physical: it deprives the Britons of secrecy, making speech itself a vulnerability and obstructing any attempt to plan against them.

The second plague is a shriek heard at every hearth on every May-eve. Its effects spread through the whole living world. People lose their color and strength; women lose their children; young men and maidens lose their senses; animals, trees, earth, and waters are left barren. Llevelys identifies the cry as the consequence of two dragons fighting: a dragon of the island and another of foreign origin. The roar is thus the audible sign of a struggle hidden beneath the island’s apparent surface.

The third plague empties the king’s provisions. However much food and drink is prepared—even enough to last a year—nothing remains beyond what is consumed on the first night. Llevelys explains that a powerful magician takes the supplies by means of illusions and charms that make everyone sleep. The theft attacks the security of the court through both deception and exhaustion: the stores seem available, but no one can stay awake to guard them.

Llevelys’s Counsel

Lludd and Llevelys first have to overcome the Coranians’ ability to overhear speech. Although they meet at sea, each has arrived with a fleet; when Lludd sees his brother’s great force, he leaves all but one of his own ships behind and approaches in that single vessel. They greet one another warmly, but cannot safely discuss the crisis in ordinary conversation. Llevelys has a long brass horn made so they can speak through it. A demon interferes, making each hear the other’s words as harsh and hostile. Llevelys washes the horn with wine, driving the demon out and clearing their conversation. Before the remedies begin, the tale makes communication itself an obstacle that must be diagnosed and removed.

For the Coranians, Llevelys provides insects with two different uses. Lludd is to keep some alive and breed them, in case the same affliction returns; the rest are to be crushed in water. That charmed water is to be cast over Britons and Coranians gathered together for what appears to be a peace conference. It will destroy the Coranians without harming the Britons. Lludd follows the instructions on his return: the whole tribe is destroyed, while his own people remain unharmed.

For the dragons, Llevelys prescribes finding the exact center of the island by measuring its length and breadth. There Lludd must dig a pit, place in it a cauldron filled with the best mead, cover it with satin, and keep watch himself. The instructions translate an island-wide disturbance into a specific place and a watchable event. For the magician, the countermeasure is less elaborate but demands personal vigilance: Lludd must guard the provisions with a cauldron of cold water at his side and plunge into it whenever sleep threatens to overcome him.

Lludd’s Remedies and Their Consequences

Lludd carries out the dragon-catching plan at the center of the island, which he finds to be Oxford. As he watches, the dragons fight, tire, and descend upon the satin in the form of two pigs. They pull the covering into the cauldron, drink the mead, and fall asleep. Lludd wraps them in the covering and buries them in a secure place in Snowdon, inside a stone chest. The terrible cry ceases. The burial site is subsequently called Dinas Emreis, though it had previously been known as Dinas Ffaraon; the place-name preserves the remembered consequence of the encounter.

The story also begins to stage the remedy for the third plague. Lludd has a great banquet prepared and watches the provisions himself, armed and with cold water close by. Near the third watch of the night, extraordinary music and songs make him drowsy, so he repeatedly enters the water to resist sleep. A gigantic man in heavy armor then appears carrying a hamper. As on previous nights, he puts the food and drink into it and proceeds to leave; Lludd marvels that the hamper can contain so much. This scene confirms the magician’s method and shows Lludd keeping watch as Llevelys instructed, but the account presented here does not narrate the encounter’s resolution.

Narrative Significance

The three plagues move from a threat that frustrates speech, through a cry whose source is concealed, to a theft performed while its guardians sleep. Llevelys’s advice makes each danger legible: the Coranians can be defeated through a carefully prepared gathering, the dragons captured through measurement and observation, and the magician resisted by a ruler who stays awake. Lludd’s remedies depend not on a single weapon or battle but on learning how each affliction operates and responding to its particular conditions.

The remedies also leave different marks on the story’s landscape and memory. The insects are kept for possible future use, the dragons are hidden underground, and the first plague ends with the destruction of the Coranians. Together, these episodes portray kingship as the work of protecting a whole community from dangers that reach into its language, fertility, natural world, and food supply. Their marvels are not interchangeable: each has its own cause, scale, and remedy, and Lludd’s rule is restored through that distinction.