Talk:Ys

Untitled
How is it pronounced? 130.132.179.160 (talk‎) 18:55, 28 July 2005‎ (UTC)


 * The SAMPA for Ys is /is/ (that's how I always heard it, and it's also the most logical French pronunciation). → SeeSchloß 08:12, 29 July 2005 (UTC)

Alternate tale
I heard a version that the kingdom was destroyed by the kings daughter who was jealous that her sister was to wed her lover. Has anybody else heard this version? jocago 22:56, 06 July 2006 (EST)

Roman Roads
"several Roman roads actually lead into the sea" can anyone actually provide details of this, a map perhaps, or link to a website doing so. This is seemingly good evidence, and should be substanciated if it is genuine. Graldensblud 15:38, 12 December 2006 (UTC)


 * I find the possibility of a single Roman road leading into the sea highly unlikely, let alone several! Armorica was pretty marginal to the Romans and not exactly covered by a major road network. This seems like yet another example of "Celtic mist". This has stood here long enough without a source being provided and should now be removed. Enaidmawr (talk) 22:50, 13 December 2007 (UTC)


 * Why wait? Here's the material I've just removed (needing a citation for 6 months): "This deluge legend differs from others because the location of Ys is well defined: the statue of Gradlon looks at it, most of the localities mentioned exist, several Roman roads actually lead into the sea (and are meant to lead to Ys), and this myth could in fact depict the engulfment of a real city during the 5th century". A few points: 1. It does not "differ from others" because its location "is well defined"; other legends of this sort could claim that too (e.g. Cantre'r Gwaelod). 2. "the statue of Gradlon looks at it" (sic!) - well, as it was erected in the Middle Ages by people familiar with the legend, what does that prove?! 3. Roman roads - see above. 4. "and this myth in fact depicts the engulfment of a real city during the fifth century". Em, just how exactly does it do that? Even if there is a "source" for this speculative nonsense it remains just that. Enaidmawr (talk) 23:02, 13 December 2007 (UTC)

Examples of rising seas
These sentences, at the bottom of the Ys section, would seem to constitute original research to me. While I'm sure sources could be found to verify that these the water level has risen in three places, it would be appear to be a synthesis of things not explicitly tied together by sources to list them here (listing them here implicitly tying them to this legend.)

Of course, if a source has actually used these examples in relation to the Ys legend, it is perfectly appropriate, but I find this unlikely. Other opinions appreciated. Picaroon (t) 02:44, 23 August 2007 (UTC)

Ys and Archaeology
According to this article, local tradition seems to "know" almost precisely where Ys once were located. Therefore one could suspect that its ruins could rather easily be discovered, if it really had existed. But have any excavations ever be made there, and has anything be found? Or have archaeologists unanimously rejected the story as so obviously pure imaginary that no one has thought it worth while to try to search it? Even if no excavations have been made or if nothing has been found despite some efforts, this should be mentioned in this article. -213.214.155.10 (talk) 16:33, 3 November 2009 (UTC)

The Cathedral
Outside France, very few people have even heard of Ys except for one reason: the legend has inspired Claude Debussy to compose his prelude "La cathédrale engloutie" (the Sunken Cathedral). A cathedral, however, implies that at least part of its population had been converted to Christianity before the city was swallowed. However, according to the legend, most of its inhabitants clearly were not, least of all Dahut, althought Saint Winwaloe had been there and possibly succeeded in converting some of the polulation. Does the legend or at least some versions of it tell that a catherdal had been build there, or was it entirely Debussy's own invention? -213.214.155.10 (talk) 16:33, 3 November 2009 (UTC)
 * I believe the legend tends to mention the church bells of Ys still being heard on the sea at times Vultur (talk) 22:33, 22 September 2010 (UTC)
 * Oh, more to the point: older versions often mention the detail that 'the only church remaining in the city was so forsaken, that the very beadle had lost the key of it' (from "Breton Legends" digitized here). This bit appears in slightly different phrasing in many 19th century tellings of the story, and I believe it goes all the way back to Souvestre's Le foyer breton: 'La seule église qu'il y eût dans la ville était si délaissée, que le bedeau en avait perdu la clef'. So yeah, there was one, it just wasn't used much. (I have seen late versions, though, that make Ys explicitly without churches; but these post-date Debussy dramatically.) Vultur (talk) 02:57, 1 November 2010 (UTC)

Tag
The {Unreferenced} tag "should be used only on articles that have no sources at all"; this article had 2 good sources plus some external links. I have replaced it with the {No footnotes} tag, since someone with access to Guyot's The Legend of the City of Ys or MacKillop's Myths and Legends of the Celts needs to add references from those books; the library I currently have access to doesn't have them. Vultur (talk) 02:57, 1 November 2010 (UTC)

Rewrite
Right now, all the information on the history of the legend is in the 'later uses' section. I think it would be better -- rather than the current breakup into a 'plot' section and then a 'history' section -- to address the main sources (eg Albert Le Grand, Villemarque's Barzaz Breizh, Souvestre's Foyer Breton).

I have begun to do so, adding info sourced from two scholarly articles about the history of the legend. I've renamed the section about the history as 'Development of the legend'.

Also, I'm re-writing the notable bits of the popular culture stuff into an 'adaptations in the arts' section. Vultur (talk) 10:56, 7 February 2011 (UTC)

Removed references
Here's everything I cut out; it's mostly things where Ys is not central to the work. I've left in all the retellings of the legend, even pretty obscure ones, and works based mostly on the Ys legend.


 * Marcel Proust, writing as Ernest Renan in his collection of pastiches "The Lemoine Affair", refers to jewels in the stained glass windows of a hundred drowned cathedrals in the city of Ys.


 * Christopher Stasheff used the City of Ys in his book "The Oathbound Wizard" as a means to enter a castle invested by sorcery. In the book, he went into a brief possible history of the city and it's destruction.


 * The American video game company Bungie Studios included a subtle reference Ys in their Myth series; the "Drowned Kingdom of Yer-Ks" [sic] is visible at the far northeastern corner of the world map. Myth@Bungie.org -> Legends and Lore -> Encyclopedia -> Where


 * The computer game Stonekeep has a reference to Ys as a city rivaling Atlantis in the game's history.


 * Jack Vance cited Ys as one of the cities in the kingdom of South Ulfland in his Lyonesse Trilogy.


 * Jacqueline Carey references the Ys myth in her novel Kushiel's DartVultur (talk) 11:45, 7 February 2011 (UTC)

Marie de France
"The medieval poet Marie de France also wrote poetry and stories based around the Ys legend."

...but did she? My sources say that the first appearance of Ys is centuries after Marie de France. Possibly this is referring to her Lai de Graelent; Graelent is a form of, or cognate to, Gradlon. I cannot determine yet whether this is the same character as Gradlon Meur, king of Ys, or another Gradlon; but in any case there seems to be no city of Ys here. So I have removed this unless somebody says otherwise (if anyone can read the Marie de France stuff in the original, that would be very helpful). Vultur (talk) 11:44, 7 February 2011 (UTC)
 * The introduction to Guyot's The Legend of the City of Ys says it is the same Gradlon, but even so, that should go in Gradlon not here. Vultur (talk) 20:43, 13 May 2011 (UTC)

History of the legend...
The heavily-cited introduction to Guyot's The Legend of the City of Ys (in the English translation, anyway) gives a slightly different story on the development of the legend than the sources cited for that section do. It traces the story back to Bertrand d'Argentre's L'histoire de Bretagne and mystery plays on the life of Saint Guenole- thus appearing in the late sixteenth century. It also puts the version of the story involving Dahut as only appearing in Albert le Grand's third edition -- 1680. (It's the same passage quoted in the sources already cited...) And the bit where Dahut falls/is pushed off Gradlon's horse in the flight from the sinking city is said to come from Jacques Cambry. Dahut's sorcery, association with the Korrigans and dragons, is said to come from Souvestre's Foyer breton. Vultur (talk) 20:43, 13 May 2011 (UTC)

Pierre Le Baud
The french wikipedia article about Ys (http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ys) suggests that a version of the legend of Ys, minus the daughter dahut, appears in the works of Pierre le Baud c. 1495. If anyone has access to Pierre le Baud's works and could confirm this, it would mean the english wiki article's claim that, "The earliest known version of the story of Ys appears in 1637" is wrong. If it is not so, the french article could be set straight (well, straighter: the french article is rather a mess at the moment). Eigenbanana (talk) 10:26, 5 December 2011 (UTC)


 * Aargh! So we now have yet another version... as if the two cited 'earliest appearances' (1637 in 'Albert Le Grand's Vie des Saincts de la Bretagne Armorique, according to the Doan 1981 article; and the late sixteenth century, in mystery plays and Bertrand d'Argentre's La histoire de Bretagne, according to [the introduction to the English translation of] Guyot's The Legend of the City of Ys [1979]) we already had weren't problem enough...
 * Sadly, I'm not a French-speaker so can only read the French article through Google Translate; however, that's clear enough to show that the French article has serious problems...
 * 1)The pagan origins stuff. It even claims that no trace remains of the original pagan myth! I have never seen any evidence - only bare claims - to support this 'pagan origins of the legend' stuff, and given that there's something like a thousand-year gap (or more!) between the Christianization of the region and the appearance of the legend, and given also that the form of the legend even in early forms is rather dependent on St Winwaloe/Corentin and an idea of divine justice/retribution, I'm *deeply* skeptical of any Celtic-pagan origin of the legend (though elements might have been cross-borrowed from other older deluge or sunken land myths). Older legends about Gradlon (before the origins of the Ys legend) certainly do exist, but still the paganism bit doesn't seem to fit.
 * 2)Tied in with the above, the idea that the legend as we have it is some propagandizing Christianization of an earlier legend; again, entirely without evidence as it runs into the severe problem that the early sources often tend to be things like saints' lives, mystery plays etc.! (and the enormous-time-gap issue again)
 * 3) The bizarre claim that the legend originated in the first quarter of the 20th century; Perhaps this is referring to Guyot's Legend of the City of Ys, which the article calls 'the first truly comprehensive version' (and 1926 isn't 'the first quarter of the 20th century' anyway!), but the 19th century Le Foyer Breton-derived versions are probably as close to a 'standard' version as anything else is, and the legend's major elements are definitely present in the 17th century in Albert Le Grand. (Yes, it's cited to Christian J. Guyonvarc'h; it's still either misquoted/out of context/misinterpreted [and not, I think, by me: I don't know French, but I can see that 'du premier quart du XX e siècle' is in the French] or too fringe to be in the article).
 * 4) In the list of works bit, nothing between Pierre Le Baud and Barzaz Breizh is mentioned, skipping much crucial development of the legend.
 * I'll look into the specific Pierre Le Baud bit, but I think any significant use of the French article in this one is unwise, as this one looks better in most parts/more tied to its sources. Vultur (talk) 03:18, 28 December 2011 (UTC)
 * Yeah, it does seem to be there - I can only find re-printed versions of Le Baud, but unless it's outright inserted it's there, with Gradlon as king and the 'name of Paris' bit, but minus Dahut. Le Baud on Google Books Vultur (talk) 23:49, 10 March 2012 (UTC)
 * OK, I edited the first paragraph of 'Development of the legend' to incorporate this plus the Bertrand d'Argentre/mystery plays information. Vultur (talk) 00:18, 11 March 2012 (UTC)

'The legend' section
Would anyone object to my replacing the uncited version currently in the 'the legend' section with one based on the Foyer Breton-derived later-19th-century version? (As for anything like 'standard' versions, it's probably that or Guyot, and the Guyot thing is a bit too late, IMO, to be really appropriate...) Vultur (talk) 03:18, 28 December 2011 (UTC)

Ys in popular culture
The opening track of the Breton musician Alan Stivell's "Renaissance of the Celtic Harp" is titled "Ys". 99.242.18.246 (talk) 15:06, 9 May 2013 (UTC)

it's true
a fisherman reported seeing the sum of the cathedral in the waves trying to loosen the anchor stuck between the bars of the window

i can't give you source but maybe you can search and find them... — Preceding unsigned comment added by 5.254.142.208 (talk) 16:44, 1 January 2014 (UTC)

The adventure game bearing this actual name...
...is that worthy of mention, or is it merely a bit of title appropriation for a roleplaying videogame which actually has nothing in common with the older legend? It doesn't get much press any more but it was reasonably well known in the early 90s... 193.63.174.211 (talk) 13:37, 24 April 2015 (UTC)

Video game series
There is a whole video game series that's based on this. Maybe this should be mentioned at some point. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2001:16B8:1448:7100:E822:C5BE:8D66:2F7F (talk) 01:46, 23 May 2018 (UTC)


 * Maybe it was. Someone just deleted a bunch of popular culture listings citing WP:POPCULTURE (that means, in their opinion, they weren't "notable"). I haven't had the time to go through it and check them yet.
 * You can see the edit there:


 * Flordeneu (talk) 15:24, 23 May 2018 (UTC)

Another mention in popular culture
In the TTRPG Exalted, 3rd Edition, Ysyr is an island nation ruled by the Ys sorcerors. If this is noteworthy, the reference would be Exalted Third Edition pp. 93-95, White Wolf Publishing 2016, numerous authors, editor Stephen Lea Sheppard. 2601:441:4400:1740:A18B:5282:CC9F:9030 (talk) 22:36, 20 May 2022 (UTC)

I'm not sure. When I rewrote the article twelve years ago, I cut it down to only examples where Ys was central to the work (not merely referenced). But others have been added since, so who knows if that change had any support. On that basis the Christopher Stasheff and Sunless Sea examples shouldn't be there either. Vultur~enwiki (talk) 01:28, 15 February 2023 (UTC)