Floods mostly just suck, as in, they kill people and destroy homes. Occasionally, though, they also reveal interesting bits of history by uncovering things long left submerged and/or buried. That was the case in Borth, on the west coast of Wales, when floods uncovered a 5,000 year-old forest.
There is a poem children in Wales learn about the sunken kingdom of Cantre’r Gwaelod, swallowed by the sea and drowned forever after. On a quiet night, legend has it, one can hear the kingdom’s church bells ringing.
When the sea swallowed part of Britain’s western coastline this year and then spat it out again, leaving homes and livelihoods destroyed but also a dense forest of prehistoric tree stumps more exposed than ever, it was as if one had caught a faint glimpse of that Welsh Atlantis.
The Daily Mail, in a rare bit of poetic writing, describes the legend as follows:
Folklore has it that Cantre’r Gwaelod, or the Sunken Hundred, a once-fertile land and township, was lost beneath the waves in a mythical age.
The land is said to have extended 20 miles west of the present Cardigan Bay, but disaster struck and Cantre’r Gwaelod was lost to floods when Mererid, the priestess of a fairy well, apparently neglected her duties and allowed the well to overflow.
I’ve always found all that mystical stuff from the British Isles pretty spooky, but an actual ghost forest??? Well played, Wales. Well played indeed.
