Images

Image of Bedd Taliesin (Chambered Cairn) by GLADMAN

I’d been here once before... 2007, if I recall... and just a’passing through. Unlike the others, however, I was rather taken by just how substantial this monument is this time around.

Image credit: Robert Gladstone
Image of Bedd Taliesin (Chambered Cairn) by Kammer

Taken 5th June 2003: Looking approximately west towards the farm. In the foreground is the largest visible kerb stone and behind it is the capstone.

Image credit: Simon Marshall
Image of Bedd Taliesin (Chambered Cairn) by Kammer

Taken 5th June 2003: From the south west (approximately speaking). To the left of the shot the capstone is propped up on a pile of stones, and the cist is to the right of it.

In the background is my car in the only possible parking space, and the road heading off up the Cletwr Valley towards Cylch Derwyddol.

Image credit: Simon Marshall
Image of Bedd Taliesin (Chambered Cairn) by Kammer

Taken 5th June 2003: The cairn from the north. The cap stone is easy to see in the centre of the shot, but the kerb stones are less obvious. You can see the largest kerb stone to the left of the cairn.

Image credit: Simon Marshall
Image of Bedd Taliesin (Chambered Cairn) by Kammer

Taken 26th August 2002: This photo shows the capstone, propped up on a little stone pillar. The stone is covered in modern carvings, which are themselves relatively weathered, and from a distance look almost like an intentional pattern.

Image credit: Simon Marshall
Image of Bedd Taliesin (Chambered Cairn) by Kammer

Taken 26th August 2002: A photo of the cist and capstone, with my Dad for scale. This was my first visit to Bedd Taliesin, and having seen other photos of the site (without anyone in them) I expected it to be bigger.

It was a sunny and slightly hazy day, but the views were amazing. You can just make out the Dyfi Estuary behind Dad, and we thought we could see Snowdon (off to the right and out of shot).

Image credit: Simon Marshall

Articles

Bedd Taliesin

Even though I had seen Kammer’s picture of the chamber (with dad for scale) I was still surprised at how dinky it was, also those dastardly black crap bags are still there obviously the local farmer hasn’t got an artists eye, or just doesn’t appreciate where he lives. If you don’t mind a bit of rough ground there are two places to park. The cairn is still fairly big and the chamber capstone looks really precarious propped up on a pile of stones thats squiffy to say the least, I wouldn’t be getting into it for a minute never mind a whole night even if it did make me a poet, the dolmen on Tal y fan boasts similar and is much roomier. A climb up the hill right next to the cairn is worth it with great views out to the coast.

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Bedd Taliesin

Visited 5th June 2003: This was my third visit to Bedd Taliesin. I thought I’d try and get a better understanding of the site as a cairn, rather than focussing my attention on the exposed cist and capstone. There are large kerb stones visible around the site (the largest on the east side), and what remains of the cairn mound suggests that it was originally relatively large. Perhaps this is why it is so well known locally.

The sites I went on to visit further up the valley suggest to me that Bedd Taliesin stood at the head of some sort of sacred route, stretching down from the mountains (or up from the sea?) along the Cletwr Valley. This would be similar to the nearby strand of sites leading up towards Pumlumon from Plas Gogerddan.

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Bedd Taliesin

Visited 26th August 2002: Having dragged everyone around the countryside looking for non-existent standing stones, I had Bedd Taliesin tucked up my sleeve as the grande finale of the day. I had never visited the site before, but I knew the stones were small (smaller than they look in some photos). I warned everyone not to expect too much ‘mega’ in their lithic.

When we arrived at the cairn, everyone including me was surprised at how small the stones are! The cist is really diddy, and it made me chuckle when I thought about Rhiannon’s story about spending a night in the chamber. I think you might well go mad if you managed to squeeze yourself into such a tight space, but you’d get cramp first.

The cairn is beautifully situated, with views of the Dyfi Estuary and Aberdyfi. The weather was also excellent, but it was all a bit marred by a big stack of smelly silage that the farmer had stacked in the next door field. Well worth a visit though.

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Folklore

Bedd Taliesin
Chambered Cairn

About eight miles north of Aberystwyth is an ancient grave known as Bedd Taliesin. According to a local tradition, Taliesin, Chief Bard of the Island of Britain was buried on this spot. The grave, which is composed of stones, is in the centre of a large heap of earth or mound surrounded by stone circles, and some generations ago bones, and even a human skull, were found in it, which probably were the remains of the great ancient poet.

There is a superstition respecting Bedd Taliesin that should anyone sleep in it for one night, he would the next day become either a poet or an idiot. There is a similar popular belief in connection with Cader Idris, in Merionethshire, where an eminant bard once tried the experiment.

Taliesin’s Grave is in the Parish of Llanfihangel genau’r Glyn, and in the adjoining parish of Llancynfelin there is a village bearing the name of Taliesin; and, according to the ‘Mabinogion,’ the great poet was born somewhere between the Dyvi and Aberystwyth. The people of North Cardiganshire believe to this day that Taliesin was both born and buried in their district. The origin of his birth, which was supposed to be very miraculous, and other legends which cling to the memory of this great man are to be found in the Mabinogion.

from ‘Folk-lore of west and mid-Wales’ by John Ceredig Davies (1911).
archive.org/stream/folkloreofwestmi00daviuoft#page/n7/mode/2up

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Folklore

Bedd Taliesin
Chambered Cairn

One of the links on the Llangynfelyn website mentions another local site – two stones in a field belonging to the Yurglawdd farm (there is an Erglodd farm in the vicinity? which would sound similar). Allegedly, once a third stone appears then that’ll be the end of the world. I wonder if the two stones are still there?

llangynfelyn.org/dogfennau/bedd_taliesin_mynegiad.html
(This super website has masses of information on the stones).

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I can’t see them mentioned on Coflein. The folklore book above says they are ‘in a field called Llettyngharad on this farm [Eurglawdd], which is in the parish of Llanfihangel Genau’r Glyn, there are two stones respecting which an ancient prophecy says that when the third appears, the end of the world will be at hand’. Erglodd was the site of a mine.

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Sites within 20km of Bedd Taliesin