Rhys Maredudd of Tŷ Uchaf and Meinir grew up together in Nant Gwrtheyrn and played as children on the slopes of Yr Eifl, often under one great hollow oak. In time they were to be married. On the wedding morning, following the old custom, the bride ran off to hide and the groom's party had to go and find her before the ceremony.
She was never found. Rhys searched for her for the rest of his life, and it is said he went out of his mind with grief. More than thirty years later, an old man now, he took shelter under the same oak during a storm. A bolt of lightning split the trunk in two, and out of the hollow fell a skeleton still dressed in a wedding gown. Meinir had hidden in the tree, become trapped, and died there. Rhys collapsed on the spot and died of a broken heart.
The people of the valley said afterwards that no bird would land on the split oak except owls and cormorants. Visitors claim to have seen two figures walking hand in hand along the shore at night, taken to be the lovers reunited.
Nant Gwrtheyrn has other stories. The fairies were active on the mountain path to Llithfaen: the Rev. Robert Hughes told Rhys of people walking home over the mountain from a pilnos (a winter evening of work and storytelling) who were drawn into a fairy dance and woke alone on the heather in the morning. Later writers add a curse laid on the valley by monks who were driven away, but this appears to be a modern addition and is not in the older sources.
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