Malgven

Malgven , in the Breton legendary , is the queen of “North”. She becomes a time the mistress of the king Gradlon and gives rise to Dahud. She is indirectly associated with the legend of the town of Ys.

The queen of North

Gradlon, king of Cornwall, share to plunder the septentrional regions with the head of a considerable fleet. After long and harassing navigation, it arrives at the borders of the kingdom of North. The Bretons fight a first battle, a carnage which does not give the advantage to any of the two camps. The history is repeated the following day, similar battle and even slaughter, but this Malgven time takes share with the engagements. The king of Cornwall besieges vainly a fortress brood at the bottom of a Fjord, but with the approach of the winter, the army refuses to remain and embarks for the Armorique, leaving the king alone. Each night, he seeks the means of penetrating in the place. One evening, a woman awaits it the foot of the ramparts, it is the Malgven queen who declares her love to him and embraces it. She says to him that it is impossible to take the city and its treasure without its assistance. She proposes to him to make it enter, but it must kill the king, man old, covetous and inaccurate and whose sword is rusted. In the citadel, Gradlon kills the husband of the queen, while this one sleeps of a aviné sleep. And both flee with the treasure overlapping Morvac' H (the sea horse), the mythical animal.

The horse springs on the sea and joined the boat of Gradlon, the return voyage lasts one year. From its loves with Malgven is born a girl Dahud, but the mother dies during the childbirth.

Gradlon cannot comfort death of sound amante and defers all its affection on his/her daughter.

Dahud and the town of Ys

Destroyed by the pain of the disappearance of Malgven, Gradlon is divided between the love which it carries to his daughter and the growing influence of the men of the new religion, in particular, Guénolé de Landévennec. The more Dahud advances in age, the more it resembles his/her mother as well by the beauty as by its intrepid character. In it the culture of the queen of North survives. Faithful to the Religion of the Celts, it enters openly in conflict with the monks and asks his father to build a city to him to live there with the manner of old. When Guénolé, ulcerated by the prosperity and the lust of Ys, convinces Gradlon to build a church there, Dahud requires of the druidesses island of Center, the Gallisenae, to raise the turns of its palate and to set up locks to insulate the city. During the immersion of the city, Dahud clings to his/her father who overlaps Morvarc' H, but Guénolé precipitates it in the ocean. She survives in the form of a siren that the sailors of the Baie of Douarnenez call Marie Morgane.

Sources

Charles Guyot, the Legend of the town of Ys , Coop Breizh, Spézet, 1998,
Thierry Jigourel, Merlin, Tristan, Is and other tales brittonic , Jean Picollec editor, Paris, 2005,

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