Jawnomicon

Cwn Annwn

Also called Cwn Mamau, Dogs of Hell, Cwn y Wybyr, Spiritual Hunting Dogs.

Cwn Annwn are the spectral hounds of Welsh tradition, the hunting pack of the Otherworld whose baying grows softer as it draws near, foretelling a death without necessarily causing one.

At a glance

Tradition
Welsh folkloreCeltic mythology (general)
Region
Wales (place of origin)
Trait family
The Threshold-Keepers

Near this figure

Traits

Read from the figure's description, which a model wrote. Open "why" for the sentence a trait came from.

Form

Behaviour

  • Leads spectral wild hunt across the sky
    why

    Older material associates them with Arawn, king of Annwn in the Mabinogion, who hunts with a pack of exactly this description; later folklore sometimes substitutes other huntsmen, including figures drawn from the general Wild Hunt motif found across northern Europe. Their defining behaviour is auditory and inverted: where an ordinary pack sounds louder as it approaches, the cry of the Cwn Annwn grows fainter the nearer it comes, until it is barely audible directly overhead — a detail collectors record consistently and treat as the surest way to identify them.

Omens

  • Portent sound precedes death
    why

    To hear them is taken as a sign that someone nearby will die soon, sometimes within days, though the tradition is careful that the hounds are a portent rather than a cause: they do not kill, they announce.

Curses

  • Death omen
    why

    To hear them is taken as a sign that someone nearby will die soon, sometimes within days, though the tradition is careful that the hounds are a portent rather than a cause: they do not kill, they announce.

Roles

Judged from the works' own entries, not from the description. Carries: the figure holds the role. Meets: the role is in its stories, held by something it meets.