The Afanc: The Welsh Water Monster Dragged Over the Mountains
On the River Conwy in North Wales, a little upstream of Betws-y-Coed, the water gathers itself into a deep, dark, slow-turning pool that has carried the same name for as long as Welsh has been spoken on its banks: Llyn yr Afanc — the Afanc's Pool. Tourists photograph it now for its stillness. The parishes around it, for the better part of a thousand years, knew it as the address of the most troublesome monster in Wales: the afanc — a creature of the deep pools that dragged down cattle and swimmers, that thrashed the river into flood when it pleased, and that proved, when the exasperated country finally rose against it, impossible to kill by any weapon made. The Welsh, being a practical people, did not kill it. They moved it — in the most extraordinary monster-removal operation in European folklore, involving one brave girl, a set of iron chains, and the two most famous oxen in Britain — and where they moved it, the tradition insists, it remains to this day: in a cold little lake...