Y: Yamquisapa to Yurlunggur 301
canals constructed around an immense “basin.” In other words, similar if not identical
to the alternating rings of concentric land and water Plato described as the city-plan of
Atlantis. A central palace was resplendent with marble floors, cedar roofs, and gold-
sheeted walls, again recalling Plato’s opulent sunken city. Suspended by a chain around
Gradlon Meur’s neck was a silver key the monarch alone possessed to open and close
the great basin’s sluice gates, thereby accommodating the rhythm of the tides.
One night, however, his sinful daughter, Dahut, stole the key from her father
while he slept, and tried to open the sea-doors for one of her numerous lovers.
The legend describes her as having “made a crown of her vices and taken for her
pages the seven deadly sins.” Unskilled in their operation, Dahut inadvertently
sprang open the city’s whole canal system, thereby unleashing a huge inundation.
Awakened by an admonishing vision of Saint Gwennole, King Gradlon swung on
his horse, and galloped down one of the interconnecting causeways, the swiftly
rising torrent close behind. He alone escaped, for Ys with all its inhabitants,
including Dahut, disappeared beneath the ocean.
His horse swam to coastal France, where Gradlon Meur finally arrived at
Quimper. A very old statue of him once stood there, between two towers belonging
to the cathedral. But in 1793, the monument’s head was violently removed as part
of the anti-aristocracy hysteria then sweeping France. A new head was affixed 66
years later, or the original restored. Like the Greek flood hero Deucalion, Gradlon
introduced wine to Europe. During the Middle Ages, the story of Gradlon was
reenacted every Saint Cecilia’s Day, when a chorus sang of lost Ys. While engaged
in their musical narrative, an actor would climb up on his statue to offer the ante-
diluvian king a golden cup of wine. This done, he wiped the statue’s mustache
with a napkin, drank the wine himself, then tossed the empty cup into the crowd.
Whoever caught it before it could strike the ground and returned it to the acting
company received a prize of 200 Crowns.
Dahut still does mischief, but as a mermaid who tempts unwary fishermen,
dragging them into the waters covering the city she also drowned. The Ys myth
describes her as “the white daughter of the sea,” recalling the first lady of Atlantis
in Plato’s account, Leukippe—the “White Mare,” for foaming waves. The Breton
legend’s pre-Christian origins appear in a Welch version of Ys, whose king was
remembered as Gwyddno.
As the renowned mythologist Lewis Spence concluded, “If the legend of Ys is
not a variant of that of Atlantis, I am greatly mistaken” (226).Yurlunggur
Remembered by the Australian Aborigines as a colossal serpent in the sky. It
deluged the whole Earth with a flood that drowned large tracks of land. Afterward,
Yurlunggur signaled an end to the catastrophe by twisting himself into a rainbow—
the same imagery found in the Hebrew Genesis and among the South American
Incas.
(See Asteroid Theory)