Drudwas ap Tryffin

In the Welsh/Arthurian corpus Drudwas is presented as Drudwas ap Tryffin (Treffin/Trreffin in manuscript variants), styled in a late summary as 'son of Treffin son of the King of Denmark.' He appears in court-lists (e.g., Culhwch and Olwen, later triads) as an Arthurian knight. In a later narrative preserved in Mostyn MS 146 (rendered in English translation in online repositories), Drudwas obtained three powerful birds from his fairy wife; that late tale explains his death when a command he issued to those birds was fulfilled literally. The death-episode survives in a manuscript tradition of uncertain earlier date and may be a later (post-medieval) addition to the material in which Drudwas otherwise appears as a courtly figure.

The surviving texts provide no consistent physical description of Drudwas himself. What is described are his possessions: three very large, intelligent birds variously called 'three griffins' in the English retelling and identified in Welsh tradition as Adar Llwch Gwin. Sources characterize these birds as extremely large raptors—griffin-like in some accounts—capable of understanding human speech. The manuscripts do not give details on Drudwas's clothing, heraldry, or bodily appearance.

Drudwas himself is not depicted as inherently supernatural; his notable capacity in the tradition is ownership and command of the Adar Llwch Gwin, creatures given to him by his fairy wife. The birds obey their master's spoken orders without question and understand human language. In the preserved tale Drudwas sends the birds ahead and commands 'Slay the first who may come to the field'; the birds obey the command literally and later seize and kill Drudwas when he approaches, then descend lamenting because they have slain their master.