"All men were drowned save Noah and his
family; and then God said, 'O earth, swallow up thy waters; and thou, O
heaven, withhold thy rain;' and immediately the waters abated."
In the bardic poems of Wales we have a tradition of the Deluge which,
although recent, under the concise forms of the triads, is still
deserving of attention. As usual, the legend is localized in the
country, and the Deluge counts among three terrible catastrophes of the
island of Prydian, or Britain, the other two consisting of devastation
by fire and by drought.
"The first of these events," it is said, "was the eruption of
Llyn-llion, or 'the lake of waves,' and the inundation (bawdd) of the
whole country, by which all mankind was drowned with the exception of
Dwyfam and Dwyfach, who saved themselves in a vessel without rigging,
and it was by them that the island of Prydian was repeopled."
Pictet here observes:
"Although the triads in their actual form hardly date farther than the
thirteenth or fourteenth century, some of them are undoubtedly connected
with very ancient traditions, and nothing here points to a borrowing
from Genesis.
"But it is not so, perhaps, with another triad, speaking of the vessel
Nefyddnaf-Neifion, which at the time of the overflow of Llyon-llion,
bore a pair of all living creatures, and rather too much resembles the
ark of Noah.
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