Marged ferch Ifan

Marged ferch Ifan

Marged ferch Ifan lived in Llanberis in the C18 and it appears that she was a very refined lady: she could play the harp and compose music, was a skilled carpenter, cobbler and tailor, and they say that she was stronger than the combined strength of the area’s two strongest men. Several men asked for her hand in marriage, but in the end, she accepted the proposal of the weakest, most cowardly candidate, knowing that she would then be the mistress.

Marged and her husband kept the Tafarn y Telyrniau inn in Drws y Coed for some years, and Marged had the upper hand there too, keeping control of the copper miners who drank there. Marged had a contract with the copper mines and she would row minerals across the Padarn and Peris lakes. For this reason, she became known as ‘Queen of the Lakes’.

A series of Welsh rhymes were composed, capturing Marged’s colourful character perfectly. Marged died around the year 1789, aged 102 years old, a short time after the death of her favourite maid who had served her for over forty years.