So Gradion did what any good father would do, namely, he shoved his daughter into the sea, which "swallowed her up." The sea also swallowed the rest of Ys, which kind of sucked for the inhabitants, given that it wasn't really their fault that the princess was a little morally challenged. As for Princess Dahut herself, she became a mermaid, and is still hanging around to tempt sailors into jumping into the ocean to their deaths. And according to legend, on windy days, you can still hear the bells of the drowned cathedral of Ys if you stand along the shore of Douarnenez Bay.
The Flight of King Gradion, by Évariste-Vital Luminais, 1884 (in the Musée des Beaux-Arts de Quimper, Brittany, France) [Image is in the Public Domain]
Kind of a cool story, in a heartless, Grimm's Fairy Tales sort of way, even if Winwaloe and Gradion, not to mention God, do come across as pro-patriarchy assholes. And whatever else you think, you have to admit that Debussy's piece is gorgeous (go back and give a listen to the recording of it I linked above, if you haven't already done so).
What I haven't told you, yet, though, is the other thing I found out while looking up the Legend of the Drowned City of Ys...
... is that French archaeologists diving only a few kilometers away from Douarnenez Bay just found the remnants of a seawall, now underwater, dating from seven thousand years ago.
The structure, found off the Ile de Sein at Brittany's westernmost tip, is a 120 meter long, twenty meter thick, two meter high wall with large granite monoliths sticking up from it at regular intervals. When it was built, it would have been right at the shoreline -- at that point, we were just coming out of the last ice age, and the sea level was considerably lower than it is now -- but now it's under nine meters of water. The archaeologists are unsure of its purpose, but given the legend the likeliest answer is that it was a seawall to prevent flooding.
"It was built by a very structured society of hunter-gatherers, of a kind that became sedentary when resources permitted. That or it was made by one of the Neolithic populations that arrived here around 5,000 B.C.E.," said archaeologist and study co-author Yvan Pailler. "It is likely that the abandonment of a territory developed by a highly structured society has become deeply rooted in people's memories... The submersion caused by the rapid rise in sea level, followed by the abandonment of fishing structures, protective works, and habitation sites, must have left a lasting impression."
What strikes me about all this is that building this thing took an astonishing amount of work. The mass of the stones is estimated at 3,300 tonnes. Putting together a wall of this size, without any heavy equipment, was not an insignificant task.
But then, neither are Stonehenge, the Mayan and Egyptian and Aztec pyramids, Machu Picchu, Angkor Wat, the Easter Island moai, and the Great Wall of China. To name a few. I guess if you have sufficient motivation and building materials, not to mention large amounts of cheap and/or slave labor, there's not much you can't do.
But the whole thing in this case is rather sad, really. The seawall ultimately failed; as the Tenth Doctor said, in the iconic (and tragic) episode of Doctor Who "The Waters of Mars," "Water is patient, Adelaide. Water just waits. Wears down the cliff tops, the mountains. The whole of the world. Water always wins."
It certainly did in this case. The sea level rise between fourteen and five thousand years ago flooded the entirety of Doggerland, which used to connect Britain to mainland Europe but now lies at the bottom of the North Sea, and the Gulf of Carpentaria, which now separates Australia from New Guinea. It's unsurprising that changes of this magnitude would stick around in the cultural consciousness -- and get worked into folk tales and legends.
So while the story of the wicked Princess Dahut and virtuous (if ruthless) Saint Winwaloe and the magical horse is certainly made up, the flooding of the city of Ys might have a basis in fact. Further indication that when indigenous people tell us what happened in the past, maybe we should pay better attention.
And to stay in the same mood, let's indulge in a little more Debussy, shall we? How about his orchestral work, The Sea? That seems a fitting way to end this discussion, doesn't it?
And to stay in the same mood, let's indulge in a little more Debussy, shall we? How about his orchestral work, The Sea? That seems a fitting way to end this discussion, doesn't it?
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