List of Legendary Kings of Britain - Iolo Morganwg's Welsh Kings

Iolo Morganwg's Welsh Kings

Iolo Morganwg between 1801 and 1807 published a series of Welsh Triads he claimed to have discovered in manuscript form, with the help of the antiquarian William Owen Pughe. These were later revealed to be a mixture of forgeries by Morganwg and Williams' alterations to authentic traids. Exactly how much "authentic" content there is of Morganwg's published work remains disputed by scholars today. Morganwg's traids describe the earliest occupation of Britain (Prydain) and contain a pseudo-historical reign of kings, beginning with Hu Gadarn, the "Plough King".

Hu Gadarn is described by Morganwg in his triads as being the earliest inhabitant of Britain having traveled from the "Summerland, called Deffrobani, where Constantinople now stands" in 1788 BC. He is credited as having founded the first civilization in Britain and introduced agriculture. Morganwg's Barddas (1862, p. 348) further states that king is descended from Hu, but that after a huge flood (see Afanc) only two people, Dwyfan and Dwyfach, survived from whom the later inhabitants of Britain descended. The Welsh clergmen Edward Davies included this myth in his Celtic Researches on the Origin, Traditions and Languages of the Ancient Britons (1804):

First, the bursting of the lake of waters, and the overwhelming of the face of all lands, so that all mankind drowned, excepting Dwyvan and Dwyvach, who escaped in a naked vessel and from then the Island of Britain was re-peopled.

Several 19th century Christian authors, for example Henry Hoyle Howorth interpreted this myth to be evidence for the Biblical flood of Noah, yet in Morganwg's chronology Dwyfan and Dwyfach are dated to the 18th or 17th century BC, which does not fit the Biblical estimate for the Noachian deluge.