Gelert

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Gelert's Grave, Beddgelert

Gelert is the name of a legendary dog associated with the village of Beddgelert (Welsh: Gelert's Grave) in North Wales.

The story of Gelert is a variation on the well-worn "Faithful Hound" folktale motif. In this case the dog is alleged to have belonged to Llywelyn the Great, Prince of Gwynedd, and to have been a gift from King John of England. In the story, Llywelyn returns from hunting to find his baby's cradle overturned, the baby missing and the dog with blood around its mouth. Imagining that it has savaged the child, he draws his sword and kills the dog, which lets out a final dying yelp. He then hears the cries of the baby and finds it unharmed under the cradle, along with a dead wolf which had attacked the child and been killed by Gelert. After that day Llywelyn never spoke again. Llywelyn is then overcome with remorse and he buries the dog with great ceremony, yet he still could hear the dying yell.

This story is the basis for a poem by William Robert Spencer written around 1800 and is also recorded by George Borrow in his Wild Wales, who notes that it is a well-known legend; by Brewer's Dictionary of Phrase and Fable, which details versions of the same story from other cultures; and by The Nuttall Encyclopaedia, under the anglicised spellings "Gellert" and "Killhart". Despite this, and despite the presence of a raised mound in the village called Gelert's Grave, there is absolutely no evidence for Gelert's existence.

Isaac Taylor, Words and Places, p. 339,^[1] asserted that the village of Beddgelert has taken its name from an early saint named Kilart or Celert than from the dog. The existence of the "grave" mound is ascribed to the activities of a late eighteenth-century landlord of the Goat Hotel in Beddgelert, David Pritchard, who connected the legend to the village in order to encourage tourism and to boost his own takings.