Gingershnek

I'm gonna preface this by saying I know nothing about Welsh culture and the only connection to it that I have is that I am like maybe half Welsh.

It began with a very isolated, very large family that lived next to the sea. They didn't live on a nice beach but on a craggy cove. They had two or three great large wooden boats, all nearly black from age and grime. This family were whalers by tradition. Every year, the whole family would go out on their boats and hunt whales. The eligible young men (and likely the young women, though the dream didn't delve into that) especially were excited for these trips because this was houe they found their spouses. The seas that surrounded their cove weren't normal, but contained "Angels": ugly, hulking sea creatures that had extraordinary capabilities.

Once a year on their great hunt, the eligible young men and women would capture an angel and incapacitate it. Only by capturing and taming it were they able to release the beautiful men and women from inside the beasts. Even after they were released, sometimes they still need to convince the angel people to be kind.

One night many years ago, an angel snuck on land while the adults were distracted. This giant dark crab found it's way into their large house and to the crib of a small infant and once there, marked the child.

This child grew up to become a strong young man soon to embark on his first whaling trip, not as a weak child meant to hide away while the adults hunted, but as one of those adults.

Before the young men and women go on their first trip as hunters though, they must participate in a strange ritual. The old and deceased members of the family are buried in random places around the country surrounding their home. Before they go, the youths must find a burial site of one of their deceased family members and destroy the corpses. The dead of this family rest for a little while, but not long after they go, their bodies begin to walk. They never stray far from their original burial places, where their prized possessions and rites of passage into the afterlife reside. Each youth must go find and destroy at least one of their deceased ancestors. After having done that, the ancestor they destroy blesses them with strength or some improvement of ability.

The young marked baby, now a young man capable of joining the hunt, goes and finds one of his ancestors- a great uncle, deceased nearly two years, and destroys him, gathering up his burial belongings and leaves with a blessing. He embarks on a hunting trip where his brother flaunts his wife, a successfully tamed angel from previous year's hunt, and his many children.

On this hunt, he successfully tames an angel and convinces her to stay with him and his family.

Upon returning to their large house, they lament on their fortune because the world is changing around them, but they must maintain their ways because their ancestors remain wandering, and the angels remain largely uncaptured. They consider many places to relocate but ultimately decide that it's best that they remain where they are.

On retrospect, this wasn't a very coherent dream, but at least it stayed all generally similar. I've had other dreams that wildly jumped from one place to another, and this one remained largely on one topic.

I woke up and immediately looked up Welsh oral histories because the people in my dream didn't write their stories. Welsh oral stories have nothing to do with my dream, so I decidedly didn't just have some grand revelation.

Today ain't that day