Ys
Ys ([ iːs ], also Ker Ys , Breton , Kêr-Is) is a myth about a sunken city in the Bay of Douarnenez in Brittany . In different stories it is described how the city of Ys came to its wealth. The highlight of every representation is, however, the storm night, in which the city of Ys sinks into the floods and the king has to hand over his daughter Dahut to the floods and thus to death in order to save the city.
Even today, according to legend, the princess, combing her long blond hair, appears to fishermen as a siren on moonlit nights . It is also often said that the city emerges from the sea at sunrise as a warning example. On clear and windless days, the fishermen should hear the bells of the city sunk in the sea.
Impact history
The legend was often artistically processed. The French composer Claude Debussy found inspiration in legend for his Prelude La cathédrale engloutie . In his work you can hear how the bells of a cathedral, which is also part of some versions of the story, slowly emerge from the sea until it appears musically symbolically visible on the horizon. Towards the end of the piece, Ys sinks into the water. The composer Édouard Lalo wrote the opera Le roi d'Ys in the period from 1875 to 1887 , in which the water-rich fate of this sunken city is also the plot slide. The French composer Paul Le Flem wrote a symphonic opera about the sunset of the city : La Magicienne de la mer .
In 1871 Joseph Victor Widmann's romantic-ironic punching epic Der Wunderbrunnen von Is appeared (which he also published under the pseudonym "Messer Lodovico Ariosto Helvetico" with the title Kalospinthechromokrene or the Wunderbrunnen von Is ), which is based on Breton legends.
The science fiction author Poul Anderson wrote the novel cycle The King of Ys with his wife Karen . The singer and harpist Joanna Newsom released the album Ys in 2006 , in which she refers to the legend of the city.
The Polish author Andrzej Sapkowski also worked the legend into one of his short stories about the witcher Geralt . It is contained in the short story collection Miecz przeznaczenia (1993), in German: The Sword of Providence , with the title A Little Sacrifice . He skilfully woven into it the story of Hans Christian Andersen's Little Mermaid , who appears there as a rather unruly siren and at first does not want to get any legs, only to be married by a “ two-legged ” in love with her.
Poul Anderson's tetralogy The King of Ys (Roma Mater, Gallicenae, Dahut and The Dog and the Wolf) is based on the legend of Ys and Frazer's Golden Branch . The Roman legionnaire Gratillonius becomes King of Ys after defeating his predecessor in a duel. The novels are set at the time of the Bagauden uprising .
In the computer game The Witcher (based on Andrzej Sapkowski's series of novels), published in 2007 by the Polish publisher CD Projekt , the topic of the city of Ys was also taken up again and so it appears to the player in one chapter of the game as a mirage over the sea. There is also an ingredient for potions that can be found in the game, which is called the “Stone of Ys”.
The city of Ys plays a central role in the fifth volume of the French comic series Le chant d'Excalibur . The comic novel Bran Ruz by Auclair and Alain Deschamps also takes place in part in Ys.
In Under the Spell of the Water Fairy by Sharon Morgan, the legend was woven into a historical love story with fantastic elements. Alongside her father, King Gradlon, Dahut is one of the main characters.
See also
literature
- Keris , collected and published by E. Souvestre in Le foyer de bretons translated into Breton fairy tales pp. 221–227; ed. and translated by Ré Soupault ; Eugen Diederichs Verlag Cologne Düsseldorf 1959
- Thomas Harlan: The city of Ys and other stories of eternal life , Eichborn 2007, ISBN 3-8218-0717-2