Llyn Barfog, near Aberdyfi, Gwynedd, Wales
Incident period: Undated lake traditions; versions printed in 1853 and 1860
Llyn Barfog holds more than one kind of water mystery. A monster is dragged from its depths, a horse leaves a mark in stone, and a remarkable cow makes a farmer rich until a woman calls her herd back to the lake. John Rhys collected the stories while also asking how much their nineteenth-century literary form owed to the writers who preserved them.
A small lake with several different stories
Rhys places Llyn Barfog in the hills near Aberdyfi, above the Dyfi estuary. His discussion draws on John Pughe’s contribution to Archaeologia Cambrensis in 1853 and a later Welsh account in the Brython of 1860. These are the dated printed stages of the record used here; they are not dates assigned to the lake’s supposed supernatural events.
The site is also recorded by the Royal Commission’s Coflein inventory as a lake associated with several folk traditions. That geographical record helps identify the correct place. The afanc, Arthur’s horse and the returning cattle nevertheless enter the literature through distinguishable tales, rather than through one continuous witnessed incident.
Drawing the afanc from the water
The afanc is an aquatic being whose removal from a lake belongs to a wider Welsh group of stories. In the Llyn Barfog material, Arthur and his horse are associated with hauling it out. A mark in a stone is identified with the strain of the horse’s hoof, giving the tale a visible feature in the surrounding landscape.
Rhys compares this with the story of Hu Gadarn and the powerful oxen drawing the afanc from Llyn Llion. The two should not be collapsed into a single expedition with Arthur, Hu and both teams taking part. Names, animals and lakes vary across the tradition, and those variations are part of its history.
The hoof-mark connection is known as Carn March Arthur. A named stone can keep a narrative attached to a place long after the story’s supposed time has become indefinite. It gives visitors something to point towards, without supplying a dated record of a monster being captured.
A lake whose water could change
Pughe’s material also includes a practical story about the lake. In a period of drought its water was drawn off for a mill, followed by heavy rain and the restoration of the lake. An older woman’s recollection appears in the discussion. Rhys sets such remembered changes beside supernatural explanations of what lives around the shore.
This is one reason the landscape should not be treated as a static stage. Water level, drainage and the use of the surrounding ground mattered to people who lived nearby. The cattle story likewise turns on familiar concerns: stock, milk, pasture, breeding and the loss of a household’s prosperity.
The farmer who gained an extraordinary cow
In the developed narrative, a farmer at Dyssyrnant gains possession of a beautiful stray cow connected with the lake. She thrives in his care and produces valuable offspring. Milk, butter and cheese become abundant, and his fortunes improve as her descendants enlarge the herd.
The animal is useful long before she is mysterious. The story allows prosperity to build through ordinary agricultural work, making the farmer’s later decision more striking. Instead of preserving the source of his success, he eventually has the cow fattened for slaughter.
When the butcher raises his arm to strike, he cannot complete the act. The intervention arrives at precisely the point when a living source of continuing wealth is about to be turned into one final gain. The narrative makes that choice the turning point of the household’s fortunes.
The woman who calls the herd away
A woman in green appears on a rock and calls the cattle. The cow returns to her, accompanied by her descendants. They circle the lake before disappearing into it. The farmer loses the special herd on which his prosperity depended and falls back into poverty.
Rhys reproduces the calling verse as part of the tradition. Its naming and summoning of the animals makes the departure more than a generic fairy disappearance. The herd belongs to a different owner all along, and the human farmer’s apparent possession ends when that owner exercises her claim.
Named informants and a collector’s questions
Thomas of Abergraes is named in the material as an informant for traditions of green-clad women and unusual cattle. Rhys also discusses accounts involving the Cŵn Annwn, the otherworldly hounds, in the surrounding district. These names and places show a cluster of local beliefs; they do not establish that every story came from the same teller or occurred on one occasion.
Rhys is attentive to Pughe’s elaborate prose. He asks how far the literary presentation represents the form of the local account and how far it has been developed by the writer. That is a concrete issue of transmission, rather than a reason to erase the narrative. Readers can enjoy the returning herd while still recognising the different hands through which its wording has passed.
Following the lake rather than combining the legends
Llyn y Fan Fach offers an illuminating comparison: there too a relationship with the otherworld ends in the departure of cattle. Its lake-wife, marriage conditions and medical descendants belong to another case. Llyn Barfog’s distinctive sequence is a stray cow, agricultural wealth, the threatened slaughter and the green woman’s recall.
The map marks Llyn Barfog itself, using the Royal Commission’s lake record. It does not identify a verified underwater enclosure or a precise point where the afanc emerged. The surviving source trail is strongest when it keeps the individual tales visible: a feat linked with Arthur, remembered changes to the water and a farmer whose wealth was never entirely his own.
Timeline
Undated legendary setting — afanc removal and Arthur’s horse-mark tradition.
Undated local narrative — the farmer acquires the cow, prospers and loses the herd.
1853 — Pughe’s account appears in Archaeologia Cambrensis, pages 201–205.
1860 — related material appears in the Brython, pages 183–184.
1901 — Rhys collects and compares the versions in Celtic Folklore.
Sources & further reading
John Rhys, Celtic Folklore: Welsh and Manx, volume 1, Llyn Barfog discussion — Public-domain comparison of Pughe, the Brython material, local informants and the returning cattle narrative.
Coflein, lake record NPRN 402570 — Royal Commission site record, checked for the lake’s identification and grid reference; not an incident report.
Related case files
The Lady of Llyn y Fan Fach: the three blows, the returning cattle and the physicians of Myddfai
Llyn Llech Owain: the forgotten well-cover, the galloping horse and three different Owens
Location note: Lake-area reference from Coflein, not a claimed monster sighting point or the exact position of the hoof-mark stone.
UKPX historical case file. Researched and checked 4 November 2026. Explore the UK case map · Links & Sources.