Gelert

Gelert is a legendary dog associated with the village of Beddgelert (whose name means "Gelert's Grave") in Gwynedd, north-west Wales. The story of Gelert is a variation on the well-worn "Faithful Hound" folk-tale motif, which lives on as an urban legend. It is classified as Aarne–Thompson type 178A.

Here, the dog is alleged to have belonged to Llywelyn the Great, Prince of Gwynedd, a gift from King John of England. In this legend, Llywelyn returns from hunting to find his baby missing, the cradle overturned, and the dog with a blood-smeared mouth. Believing the dog savaged the child, Llywelyn draws his sword and kills it. After the dog's dying yelp Llywelyn hears the cries of the baby, unharmed under the cradle, along with a dead wolf which had attacked the child and been killed by Gelert. Llywelyn is then overcome with remorse and he buries the dog with great ceremony, yet he can still hear the dying yelp. After that day Llywelyn never smiled again.

This story formed the basis for several English poems, among which are "Beth Gêlert; or, the Grave of the Greyhound" by William Robert Spencer written around 1800; "Beth Gelert" by Richard Henry Horne; "Gelert" by Francis Orray Ticknor and the dramatic poem "Llewellyn" by Walter Richard Cassels. The tale is also alluded to by John Critchley Prince in lines 24 to 29 of his poem "North Wales:" "Thou hast not trod with pilgrim foot the ground / Where sleeps the canine martyr of distrust, / Poor Gelert, famed in song, as brave a hound / As ever guarded homestead, hut, or hall, / Or leapt exulting at the hunter’s call; / As ever grateful man consigned to dust." Despite this, and despite the presence of a raised mound in the village called Gelert's Grave, historians do not believe that Gelert ever existed.

It is recorded in Wild Wales (1862) by George Borrow, who notes it as a well known legend; by Brewer's Dictionary of Phrase and Fable, which details versions of the same story from other cultures; and by The Nuttall Encyclopaedia, under the Anglicised spellings "Gellert" and "Killhart". John Fiske discusses Gelert in his Myths and Myth-makers, saying regretfully that "as the Swiss must give up his Tell, so must the Welshman be deprived of his brave dog Gellert, over whose cruel fate I confess to having shed more tears than I should regard as well bestowed upon the misfortunes of many a human hero of romance." He notes that "to this day the visitor to Snowdon is told the touching story, and shown the place, called Beth-Gellert, where the dog's grave is still to be seen. Nevertheless, the story occurs in the fireside lore of nearly every Aryan people."

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