The Breton folk tell many different tales about the sunken city of Ys, its king, and his daughter. Bearing in mind that these often disagree, let us give a synopsis of the basic medieval story.
Grallon (sometimes rendered “Gradlon”) was ruler of Cornouaille, along the southwestern shore of Brittany, with his seat at Quimper, which some say he helped found. Once he took a great fleet overseas and made war on Malgven, Queen of the North. In conquering her country he also won her heart, as she did his. They started off together for his home, but terrible weather kept them at sea for a year. During this time Malgven bore a girl child, and died in so doing. When the heartbroken Grallon finally returned, he could deny nothing to his daughter Dahut (in some versions, Ahes). She grew up beautiful and evil.
While hunting, Grallon met a hermit, Corentin, who lived in the forest. This man was miraculously nourished; each day he drew a fish from the water, ate half, and threw the other half back, whereupon it became whole and alive again. However, it was his wisdom that most impressed the king. Grallon persuaded Corentin to join him in Quimper, and there the holy man won the people over to righteous ways. Other legends maintain that he was the actual founder or cofounder of the city, and its first bishop.
Dahut felt oppressed by the piety all around her, and begged her father to give her a place of her own. He built Ys on the shore—Ys of the hundred towers, walled against the waters that forever threatened its splendor. Hung upon his breast, Grallon kept the silver key that alone could unlock the sea gate. Otherwise he gave Dahut free rein and turned a blind eye to her wickedness.
Led by her, Ys became altogether iniquitous. The rich ground down the poor, gave themselves to licentious pleasures, forgot their duty to God, and even blasphemed Him. Dahut herself took a different lover every night, and in the morning had him cast to his death in the sea.
Another holy man, St. Guénolé, was stirred to enter the city and plead with the people to mend their ways. For a while he did succeed in frightening many into reform; but the baneful influence of Dahut was too strong, and they drifted back into sin.
At last God determined to destroy Ys, and gave the Devil leave to carry out the mission. Taking the guise of a handsome young man, he sought Dahut in her palace and was soon welcomed into her bed. Him she did not have killed. Rather, she fell wildly in love. He demanded, as a sign of her affection, that she bring him the key Grallon bore. Dahut stole it while the king was asleep and gave it to her lover. The night was wild with storm. He slipped out and unlocked the gate. The sea raged in and overwhelmed Ys.
It had no power over St. Guénolé, who awakened innocent Grallon and warned him to flee. Barely did the king’s great charger carry him through the waters as they surged in between the city walls. Dahut screamed in terror. Her father saw, and tried to save her. The saint told him he must not, for the weight of her sins would drag him down too; and she was swept away from his grasp. None but Grallon and Guénolé escaped, as Ys went under the waves.
Guénolé laid the doom on the city that it would remain sunken until a Mass was said in it upon a Good Friday. Dahut became a siren, haunting the coast, luring sailors to shipwreck among the many rocks thereabouts. Grallon gave up his crown and ended his days in the abbey of Landevennec which Guénolé had founded.
A later story relates how one mariner was borne benath the water by certain strange swimmers. Somehow he did not drown, and they led him to the sunken city and into a church where a service was going on. He was afraid to give the responses, when no one else did. Afterward his guides brought him ashore and let him go; but first they asked sadly, “Why did you not say what you should have at the Mass? Then we would all have been released.”
Ys is still there under the sea.
Thus far the tradition. As for its origin, the prosaic fact is that stories about submerged towns are common along the Welsh and Cornish coasts. Folk from those parts could well have carried the idea with them during their massive emigration to Armorica in the fifth and sixth centuries. In the course of time it came to be associated with Grallon and with several of the host of Breton saints. On the other hand, the tale could conceivably have been a native one which the Bretons found when they arrived, and this we have assumed for our purposes.
Among the disagreements between versions of the legend, conspicuous is that concerning the site. Some accounts put Ys on the Baie de Douarnenez, others on the Baie d’Audierne, still others on the Baie des Trépassés. We have chosen the last of these.
Obviously we have made a good many more choices! First and foremost, we have imagined that there really was an Ys.
If so, when did it perish? Saints Corentin and Guénolé are assigned to the fifth and sixth centuries respectively; therefore they could not both have been involved. We picked the earlier era. (If nothing else, the farther back in time, the more plausible it is that no record would survive of the city and its destruction. At that, we have had to offer some explanation of why the Romans left none.) Therefore Corentin must needs assume the role that folklore gives to Guénolé. Besides, legend associates him with the founding of Quimper and makes St. Martin consecrate him its bishop.
Since no kingdom of Cornouaille existed at this time, our Grallon would have had to begin as the ruler of Ys, which must thus have been flourishing long before his birth. He in turn would have had no reason to start a settlement at what was to become Quimper until after the loss of his realm. The need for a new stronghold, in the chaos that was spreading through Gaul, would be clear to him if he was himself a Roman, as we have supposed.
From the first-century geographer Pomponius Mela we have adopted and adapted the Gallicenae. True, he describes them as vestal virgins, but with his own sources all being indirect, he was not necessarily right about this. The sixth-century historian Procopius gives an account of the Ferriers of the Dead; he says they took their unseen passengers from Gaul to Britain, but we depict men so engaged between Ys and the Île de Sein. The king who must win and defend his crown in mortal combat is best known from Lake Nemi, as described by Sir James Frazer in The Golden Bough. However, the practice has occurred elsewhere too, in various guises, around the world, so we could reasonably attribute it to Ys.
Aside from such modifications, logically required, we have stayed as close as possible to the legends. After all, this is a fantasy. Yet we have at the same time tried to keep it within the framework of facts that are well established.
For us it all began one day in 1979, when we were staying on a farm near Médréac in Brittany and Karen, on impulse, wrote the poem with which our story ends. Earlier in the same trip we had visited a number of Roman remains in England and stood on Hadrian’s Wall. Now somehow this came together with Ys, of which our surroundings reminded us, and the first dim outlines of the tale appeared. At home we thought and talked about it more and more often, until by 1982 our ideas were clear enough that we returned to Brittany for a look at sites we had not examined before. There followed about a year’s worth of book research, and then the actual writing—occasionally interrupted to meet other commitments—lasted into the spring of 1987. The whole business has been a strange and rewarding experience. We hope readers will enjoy what has come out of it.