The first of the Four Branches of the Mabinogi begins with Pwyll, prince of Dyfed, at his court in Arberth deciding to go hunting in Glyn Cuch, the valley of the little river Cych, which runs down through thick woods to join the Teifi at Abercych.
Pwyll blew his horn, loosed his dogs and followed them, and got separated from his companions. Listening to his own pack, he heard another, crying in the opposite direction. Through the trees he saw a clearing, and a stag running before the other pack, which pulled it down in the middle of the glade. He looked at the dogs rather than the stag, and they were like nothing he had seen: a shining clear white, with red ears. He drove them off and set his own hounds on the kill, and at that moment a grey-clad rider on a great grey horse came up and rebuked him for his discourtesy. It was Arawn, a crowned king in Annwn, the otherworld. To make amends Pwyll agreed to take Arawn's shape and rule his kingdom for a year, and to fight Arawn's enemy for him, while Arawn ruled Dyfed in Pwyll's likeness.
Wirt Sikes quoted this passage in 1880 as the clearest statement of the Cwn Annwn, the hounds of the otherworld, which in later Welsh belief were heard baying through the air as an omen of death. He noted that the vales and streams of the tale were still familiar to people in Pembroke, Carmarthen and Cardigan shires, and Glyn Cuch is one of them.
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