Dahud-Ahès, Breton Goddess of the Land and the Sea
The name of the ancient Breton Goddess, Dahud-Ahès, lives on in the legends told by the elders living in Brittany who remember the old tales. ‘
Dahud translates to ‘good witch’, and Ahès to ‘key holder’.
She belongs to the wild land and seascape where the waves meet the shore at the tip of the peninsula of French Brittany.
The legends say that the pagan King Gradlon of Cornwall fell in love with a bansidh, a woman of the fairy-mounds, called Malgven. Together they had a daughter named Dahud, who was raised in the ways of the Goddess by her mother before Malgven died.
The king built Dahud a city where all traditions and religions were respected, and practiced equally. It was called Ker-Ys, and it was founded on the magical, liminal space between the Earth and the Sea.
Dahud inherited from her fairy mother a strong connection to the vast ocean, and the shadowy realm of the underworld.
When Christianity and patriarchy reached Ker-Ys, the priests accused Dahud and her people of worshipping the Devil, and of following his ways. Refusing to let the priests take over her city of freedom, sensual pleasures and abundance, one night Dahud went to the woods to find her lover and friend, the Horned God Cernunnos.
Together they agreed to hide Ker-Ys in the Underworld to protect their ancient knowledge from patriarchy. Dahud stole the golden key which hung on a chain around her father’s neck, opened the door to the sea channel, and let the waves submerge the city.
The king escaped with the priests, but Dahud chose to remain in the Underworld as a Marie-Morgane, or mermaid, until she could rise again with her kingdom.
When the bells of Ker-Ys, ‘the city in the depths’, would be heard across the Sea, the Mother Goddess would be worshipped again....