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                            CELTIC FOLKLORE

                             WELSH AND MANX

                                   BY

                        JOHN RHYS, M.A., D.Litt.

               HON. LL.D. OF THE UNIVERSITY OF EDINBURGH
                          PROFESSOR OF CELTIC
                   PRINCIPAL OF JESUS COLLEGE, OXFORD


                               VOLUME II

                                 OXFORD

                         AT THE CLARENDON PRESS
                                MDCCCCI








CHAPTER VII

TRIUMPHS OF THE WATER-WORLD


        Une des légendes les plus répandues en Bretagne est celle d'une
        prétendue ville d'Is, qui, à une époque inconnue, aurait été
        engloutie par la mer. On montre, à divers endroits de la côte,
        l'emplacement de cette cité fabuleuse, et les pécheurs vous en
        font d'étranges récits. Les jours de tempête, assurent-ils,
        on voit, dans les creux des vagues, le sommet des flèches de
        ses églises; les jours de calme, on entend monter de l'abîme
        le son de ses cloches, modulant l'hymne du jour.--Renan.


More than once in the last chapter was the subject of submersions
and cataclysms brought before the reader, and it may be convenient
to enumerate here the most remarkable cases, and to add one or two
to their number, as well as to dwell at somewhat greater length on
some instances which may be said to have found their way into Welsh
literature. He has already been told of the outburst of the Glasfryn
Lake (p. 367) and Ffynnon Gywer (p. 376), of Llyn Llech Owen (p. 379)
and the Crymlyn (p. 191), also of the drowning of Cantre'r Gwaelod
(p. 383); not to mention that one of my informants had something
to say (p. 219) of the submergence of Caer Arianrhod, a rock now
visible only at low water between Celynnog Fawr and Dinas Dinlle,
on the coast of Arfon. But, to put it briefly, it is an ancient
belief in the Principality that its lakes generally have swallowed
up habitations of men, as in the case of Llyn Syfadon (p. 73) and
the Pool of Corwrion (p. 57). To these I now proceed to add other
instances, to wit those of Bala Lake, Kenfig Pool, Llynclys, and
Helig ab Glannog's territory including Traeth Lafan.

Perhaps it is best to begin with historical events, namely those
implied in the encroachment of the sea and the sand on the coast of
Glamorganshire, from the Mumbles, in Gower, to the mouth of the Ogmore,
below Bridgend. It is believed that formerly the shores of Swansea Bay
were from three to five miles further out than the present strand,
and the oyster dredgers point to that part of the bay which they
call the Green Grounds, while trawlers, hovering over these sunken
meadows of the Grove Island, declare that they can sometimes see the
foundations of the ancient homesteads overwhelmed by a terrific storm
which raged some three centuries ago. The old people sometimes talk
of an extensive forest called Coed Arian, 'Silver Wood,' stretching
from the foreshore of the Mumbles to Kenfig Burrows, and there is
a tradition of a long-lost bridle path used by many generations
of Mansels, Mowbrays, and Talbots, from Penrice Castle to Margam
Abbey. All this is said to be corroborated by the fishing up every
now and then in Swansea Bay of stags' antlers, elks' horns, those
of the wild ox, and wild boars' tusks, together with the remains of
other ancient tenants of the submerged forest. Various references
in the registers of Swansea and Aberavon mark successive stages in
the advance of the desolation from the latter part of the fifteenth
century down. Among others a great sandstorm is mentioned, which
overwhelmed the borough of Cynffig or Kenfig, and encroached on the
coast generally: the series of catastrophes seems to have culminated
in an inundation caused by a terrible tidal wave in the early part
of the year 1607 [1].

To return to Kenfig, what remains of that old town is near the sea,
and it is on all sides surrounded by hillocks of finely powdered sand
and flanked by ridges of the same fringing the coast. The ruins of
several old buildings half buried in the sand peep out of the ground,
and in the immediate neighbourhood is Kenfig Pool, which is said to
have a circumference of nearly two miles. When the pool formed itself
I have not been able to discover: from such accounts as have come in
my way I should gather that it is older than the growing spread of
the sand, but the island now to be seen in it is artificial and of
modern make [2]. The story relating to the lake is given as follows
in the volume of the Iolo Manuscripts, p. 194, and the original,
from which I translate, is crisp, compressed, and, as I fancy, in
Iolo's own words:--

'A plebeian was in love with Earl Clare's daughter: she would not
have him as he was not wealthy. He took to the highway, and watched
the agent of the lord of the dominion coming towards the castle
from collecting his lord's money. He killed him, took the money,
and produced the coin, and the lady married him. A splendid banquet
was held: the best men of the country were invited, and they made as
merry as possible. On the second night the marriage was consummated,
and when happiest one heard a voice: all ear one listened and caught
the words, "Vengeance comes, vengeance comes, vengeance comes,"
three times. One asked, "When?" "In the ninth generation (âch),"
said the voice. "No reason for us to fear," said the married pair;
"we shall be under the mould long before." They lived on, however,
and a goresgynnyd, that is to say, a descendant of the sixth direct
generation, was born to them, also to the murdered man a goresgynnyd,
who, seeing that the time fixed was come, visited Kenfig. This was a
discreet youth of gentle manners, and he looked at the city and its
splendour, and noted that nobody owned a furrow or a chamber there
except the offspring of the murderer: he and his wife were still
living. At cockcrow he heard a cry, "Vengeance is come, is come,
is come." It is asked, "On whom?" and answered, "On him who murdered
my father of the ninth âch." He rises in terror: he goes towards the
city; but there is nothing to see save a large lake with three chimney
tops above the surface emitting smoke that formed a stinking.... [3]
On the face of the waters the gloves of the murdered man float to the
young man's feet: he picks them up, and sees on them the murdered man's
name and arms; and he hears at dawn of day the sound of praise to God
rendered by myriads joining in heavenly music. And so the story ends.'

On this coast is another piece of water in point, namely Crymlyn, or
'Crumlin Pool,' now locally called the Bog. It appears also to have
been sometimes called Pwll Cynan, after the name of a son of Rhys ab
Tewdwr, who, in his flight after his father's defeat on Hirwaen Wrgan,
was drowned in its waters [4]. It lies on Lord Jersey's estate, at a
distance of about one mile east of the mouth of the Tawe, and about a
quarter of a mile from high-water mark, from which it is separated by
a strip of ground known in the neighbourhood as Crymlyn Burrows. The
name Crymlyn means Crooked Lake, which, I am told, describes the shape
of this piece of water. When the bog becomes a pool it encloses an
island consisting of a little rocky hillock showing no trace of piles,
or walling, or any other handiwork of man [5]. The story about this
pool also is that it covers a town buried beneath its waters. Mr. Wirt
Sikes' reference to it has already been mentioned, and I have it
on the evidence of a native of the immediate neighbourhood, that he
has often heard his father and grandfather talk about the submerged
town. Add to this that Cadrawd, to whom I have had already (pp. 23,
376) to acknowledge my indebtedness, speaks in the columns of the
South Wales Daily News for February 15, 1899, of Crymlyn as follows:--

'It was said by the old people that on the site of this bog once
stood the old town of Swansea, and that in clear and calm weather the
chimneys and even the church steeple could be seen at the bottom of the
lake, and in the loneliness of the night the bells were often heard
ringing in the lake. It was also said that should any person happen
to stand with his face towards the lake when the wind is blowing
across the lake, and if any of the spray of that water should touch
his clothes, it would be only with the greatest difficulty he could
save himself from being attracted or sucked into the water. The lake
was at one time much larger than at present. The efforts made to
drain it have drawn a good deal of the water from it, but only to
convert it into a bog, which no one can venture to cross except in
exceptionally dry seasons or hard frost.'

On this I wish to remark in passing, that, while common sense would
lead one to suppose that the wind blowing across the water would
help the man facing it to get away whenever he chose, the reasoning
here is of another order, one characteristic in fact of the ways and
means of sympathetic magic. For specimens in point the reader may
be conveniently referred to page 360, where he may compare the words
quoted from Mr. Hartland, especially as to the use there mentioned of
stones or pellets thrown from one's hands. In the case of Crymlyn,
the wind blowing off the face of the water into the onlooker's face
and carrying with it some of the water in the form of spray which wets
his clothes, howsoever little, was evidently regarded as establishing a
link of connexion between him and the body of the water--or shall I say
rather, between him and the divinity of the water?--and that this link
was believed to be so strong that it required the man's utmost effort
to break it and escape being drawn in and drowned like Cynan. The
statement, supremely silly as it reads, is no modern invention; for one
finds that Nennius--or somebody else--reasoned in precisely the same
way, except that for a single onlooker he substitutes a whole army
of men and horses, and that he points the antithesis by distinctly
stating, that if they kept their backs turned to the fascinating
flood they would be out of danger. The conditions which he had in
view were, doubtless, that the men should face the water and have
their clothing more or less wetted by the spray from it. The passage
(§ 69) to which I refer is in the Mirabilia, and Geoffrey of Monmouth
is found to repeat it in a somewhat better style of Latin (ix. 7):
the following is the Nennian version:--

Aliud miraculum est, id est Oper Linn Liguan. Ostium fluminis illius
fluit in Sabrina et quando Sabrina inundatur ad sissam, et mare
inundatur similiter in ostio supra dicti fluminis et in stagno ostii
recipitur in modum voraginis et mare non vadit sursum et est litus
juxta flumen et quamdiu Sabrina inundatur ad sissam, istud litus non
tegitur et quando recedit mare et Sabrina, tunc Stagnum Liuan eructat
omne quod devoravit de mari et litus istud tegitur et instar montis in
una unda eructat et rumpit. Et si fuerit exercitus totius regionis,
in qua est, et direxerit faciem contra undam, et exercitum trahit
unda per vim humore repletis vestibus et equi similiter trahuntur. Si
autem exercitus terga versus fuerit contra eam, non nocet ei unda.

'There is another wonder, to wit Aber Llyn Lliwan. The water from the
mouth of that river flows into the Severn, and when the Severn is in
flood up to its banks, and when the sea is also in flood at the mouth
of the above-named river and is sucked in like a whirlpool into the
pool of the Aber, the sea does not go on rising: it leaves a margin
of beach by the side of the river, and all the time the Severn is in
flood up to its bank, that beach is not covered. And when the sea and
the Severn ebb, then Llyn Lliwan brings up all it had swallowed from
the sea, and that beach is covered while Llyn Lliwan discharges its
contents in one mountain-like wave and vomits forth. Now if the army
of the whole district in which this wonder is, were to be present with
the men facing the wave, the force of it would, once their clothes are
drenched by the spray, draw them in, and their horses would likewise
be drawn. But if the men should have their backs turned towards the
water, the wave would not harm them [6].'

One story about the formation of Bala Lake, or Llyn Tegid [7] as
it is called in Welsh, has been given at p. 376: here is another
which I translate from a version in Hugh Humphreys' Llyfr Gwybodaeth
Gyffredinol (Carnarvon), second series, vol. i, no. 2, p. 1. I may
premise that the contributor, whose name is not given, betrays a
sort of literary ambition which has led him to relate the story in a
confused fashion; and among other things he uses the word edifeirwch,
'repentance,' throughout, instead of dial, 'vengeance.' With that
correction it runs somewhat as follows:--Tradition relates that Bala
Lake is but the watery tomb of the palaces of iniquity; and that some
old boatmen can on quiet moonlight nights in harvest see towers in
ruins at the bottom of its waters, and also hear at times a feeble
voice saying, Dial a daw, dial a daw, 'Vengeance will come'; and
another voice inquiring, Pa bryd y daw, 'When will it come?' Then
the first voice answers, Yn y dryded genhedlaeth, 'In the third
generation.' Those voices were but a recollection over oblivion,
for in one of those palaces lived in days of yore an oppressive and
cruel prince, corresponding to the well-known description of one of
whom it is said, 'Whom he would he slew; and whom he would he kept
alive.' The oppression and cruelty practised by him on the poor farmers
were notorious far and near. This prince, while enjoying the morning
breezes of summer in his garden, used frequently to hear a voice
saying, 'Vengeance will come.' But he always laughed the threat away
with reckless contempt. One night a poor harper from the neighbouring
hills was ordered to come to the prince's palace. On his way the harper
was told that there was great rejoicing at the palace at the birth of
the first child of the prince's son. When he had reached the palace
the harper was astonished at the number of the guests, including
among them noble lords, princes, and princesses: never before had
he seen such splendour at any feast. When he had begun playing the
gentlemen and ladies dancing presented a superb appearance. So the
mirth and wine abounded, nor did he love playing for them any more
than they loved dancing to the music of his harp. But about midnight,
when there was an interval in the dancing, and the old harper had
been left alone in a corner, he suddenly heard a voice singing in a
sort of a whisper in his ear, 'Vengeance, vengeance!' He turned at
once, and saw a little bird hovering above him and beckoning him,
as it were, to follow him. He followed the bird as fast as he could,
but after getting outside the palace he began to hesitate. But the
bird continued to invite him on, and to sing in a plaintive and
mournful voice the word 'Vengeance, vengeance!' The old harper
was afraid of refusing to follow, and so they went on over bogs
and through thickets, whilst the bird was all the time hovering in
front of him and leading him along the easiest and safest paths. But
if he stopped for a moment the same mournful note of 'Vengeance,
vengeance!' would be sung to him in a more and more plaintive and
heartbreaking fashion. They had by this time reached the top of the
hill, a considerable distance from the palace. As the old harper felt
rather fatigued and weary, he ventured once more to stop and rest,
but he heard the bird's warning voice no more. He listened, but he
heard nothing save the murmuring of the little burn hard by. He now
began to think how foolish he had been to allow himself to be led away
from the feast at the palace: he turned back in order to be there in
time for the next dance. As he wandered on the hill he lost his way,
and found himself forced to await the break of day. In the morning,
as he turned his eyes in the direction of the palace, he could see
no trace of it: the whole tract below was one calm, large lake,
with his harp floating on the face of the waters.

Next comes the story of Llynclys Pool in the neighbourhood of
Oswestry. That piece of water is said to be of extraordinary depth, and
its name means the 'swallowed court.' The village of Llynclys is called
after it, and the legend concerning the pool is preserved in verses
printed among the compositions of the local poet, John F. M. Dovaston,
who published his works in 1825. The first stanza runs thus:--


        Clerk Willin he sat at king Alaric's board,
          And a cunning clerk was he;
        For he'd lived in the land of Oxenford
          With the sons of Grammarie.


How much exactly of the poem comes from Dovaston's own muse, and
how much comes from the legend, I cannot tell. Take for instance the
king's name, this I should say is not derived from the story; but as
to the name of the clerk, that possibly is, for the poet bases it on
Croes-Willin, the Welsh form of which has been given me as Croes-Wylan,
that is Wylan's Cross, the name of the base of what is supposed to have
been an old cross, a little way out of Oswestry on the north side;
and I have been told that there is a farm in the same neighbourhood
called Tre' Wylan, 'Wylan's Stead.' To return to the legend, Alaric's
queen was endowed with youth and beauty, but the king was not happy;
and when he had lived with her nine years he told Clerk Willin how he
first met her when he was hunting 'fair Blodwell's rocks among.' He
married her on the condition that she should be allowed to leave him
one night in every seven, and this she did without his once knowing
whither she went on the night of her absence. Clerk Willin promised
to restore peace to the king if he would resign the queen to him,
and a tithe annually of his cattle and of the wine in his cellar to
him and the monks of the White Minster. The king consented, and the
wily clerk hurried away with his book late at night to the rocks by
the Giant's Grave, where there was an ogo' or cave which was supposed
to lead down to Faery. While the queen was inside the cave, he began
his spells and made it irrevocable that she should be his, and that
his fare should be what fed on the king's meadow and what flowed in
his cellar. When the clerk's potent spells forced the queen to meet
him to consummate his bargain with the king, what should he behold
but a grim ogress, who told him that their spells had clashed. She
explained to him how she had been the king's wife for thirty years,
and how the king began to be tired of her wrinkles and old age. Then,
on condition of returning to the Ogo to be an ogress one night in
seven, she was given youth and beauty again, with which she attracted
the king anew. In fact, she had promised him happiness


        Till within his hall the flag-reeds tall
          And the long green rushes grow.


The ogress continued in words which made the clerk see how completely
he had been caught in his own net:


        Then take thy bride to thy cloistered bed,
          As by oath and spell decreed,
        And nought be thy fare but the pike and the dare,
          And the water in which they feed.


The clerk had succeeded in restoring peace at the king's banqueting
board, but it was the peace of the dead;


        For down went the king, and his palace and all,
          And the waters now o'er it flow,
        And already in his hall do the flag-reeds tall
          And the long green rushes grow.


But the visitor will, Dovaston says, find Willin's peace relieved by
the stories which the villagers have to tell of that wily clerk, of
Croes-Willin, and of 'the cave called the Grim Ogo'; not to mention
that when the lake is clear, they will show you the towers of the
palace below, the Llynclys, which the Brython of ages gone by believed
to be there.

We now come to a different story about this pool, namely, one which
has been preserved in Latin by the historian Humfrey Lhuyd, or Humphrey
Llwyd, to the following effect:--

'After the description of Gwynedh, let vs now come to Powys,
the seconde kyngedome of VVales, which in the time of German
Altisiodorensis [St. Germanus of Auxerre], which preached sometime
there, agaynst Pelagius Heresie: was of power, as is gathered out of
his life. The kynge wherof, as is there read, bycause he refused to
heare that good man: by the secret and terrible iudgement of God,
with his Palace, and all his householde: was swallowed vp into the
bowels of the Earth, in that place, whereas, not farre from Oswastry,
is now a standyng water, of an vnknowne depth, called Lhunclys, that
is to say: the deuouryng of the Palace. And there are many Churches
founde in the same Province, dedicated to the name of German [8].'

I have not succeeded in finding the story in any of the lives of
St. Germanus, but Nennius, § 32, mentions a certain Benli, whom he
describes as rex iniquus atque tyrannus valde, who, after refusing
to admit St. Germanus and his following into his city, was destroyed
with all his courtiers, not by water, however, but by fire from
heaven. But the name Benli, in modern Welsh spelling Benlli [9],
points to the Moel Famau range of mountains, one of which is known
as Moel Fenlli, between Ruthin and Mold, rather than to any place
near Oswestry. In any case there is no reason to suppose that this
story with its Christian and ethical motive is anything like so old
as the substratum of Dovaston's verses.

The only version known to me in the Welsh language of the Llynclys
legend is to be found printed in the Brython for 1863, p. 338, and
it may be summarized as follows:--The Llynclys family were notorious
for their riotous living, and at their feasts a voice used to be
heard proclaiming, 'Vengeance is coming, coming,' but nobody took
it much to heart. However, one day a reckless maid asked the voice,
'When?' The prompt reply was to the effect that it was in the sixth
generation: the voice was heard no more. So one night, when the sixth
heir in descent from the time of the warning last heard was giving
a great drinking feast, and music had been vigorously contributing
to the entertainment of host and guest, the harper went outside for
a breath of air; but when he turned to come back, lo and behold! the
whole court had disappeared. Its place was occupied by a quiet piece
of water, on whose waves he saw his harp floating, nothing more.

Here must, lastly, be added one more legend of submergence, namely,
that supposed to have taken place some time or other on the north
coast of Carnarvonshire. In the Brython for 1863, pp. 393-4, we
have what purports to be a quotation from Owen Jones' Aberconwy
a'i Chyffiniau, 'Conway and its Environs,' a work which I have not
been able to find. Here one reads of a tract of country supposed
to have once extended from the Gogarth [10], 'the Great Orme,' to
Bangor, and from Llanfair Fechan to Ynys Seiriol, 'Priestholme or
Puffin Island,' and of its belonging to a wicked prince named Helig
ab Glannawc or Glannog [11], from whom it was called Tyno Helig,
'Helig's Hollow.' Tradition, the writer says, fixes the spot where
the court stood about halfway between Penmaen Mawr and Pen y Gogarth,
'the Great Orme's Head,' over against Trwyn yr Wylfa; and the story
relates that here a calamity had been foretold four generations before
it came, namely as the vengeance of Heaven on Helig ab Glannog for his
nefarious impiety. As that ancient prince rode through his fertile
heritage one day at the approach of night, he heard the voice of an
invisible follower warning him that 'Vengeance is coming, coming.' The
wicked old prince once asked excitedly, 'When?' The answer was,
'In the time of thy grandchildren, great-grandchildren, and their
children.' Peradventure Helig calmed himself with the thought, that,
if such a thing came, it would not happen in his lifetime. But on the
occasion of a great feast held at the court, and when the family down
to the fifth generation were present taking part in the festivities,
one of the servants noticed, when visiting the mead cellar to draw
more drink, that water was forcing its way in. He had only time to
warn the harper of the danger he was in, when all the others, in the
midst of their intoxication, were overwhelmed by the flood.

These inundation legends have many points of similarity among
themselves: thus in those of Llynclys, Syfadon, Llyn Tegid, and Tyno
Helig, though they have a ring of austerity about them, the harper
is a favoured man, who always escapes when the banqueters are all
involved in the catastrophe. The story, moreover, usually treats the
submerged habitations as having sunk intact, so that the ancient spires
and church towers may still at times be seen: nay the chimes of their
bells may be heard by those who have ears for such music. In some cases
there may have been, underlying the legend, a trace of fact such as
has been indicated to me by Mr. Owen M. Edwards, of Lincoln College,
in regard to Bala Lake. When the surface of that water, he says,
is covered with broken ice, and a south-westerly wind is blowing,
the mass of fragments is driven towards the north-eastern end near the
town of Bala; and he has observed that the friction produces a somewhat
metallic noise which a quick imagination may convert into something
like a distant ringing of bells. Perhaps the most remarkable instance
remains to be mentioned: I refer to Cantre'r Gwaelod, as the submerged
country of Gwydno Garanhir is termed, see p. 382 above. To one portion
of his fabled realm the nearest actual centres of population are
Aberdovey and Borth on either side of the estuary of the Dovey. As
bursar of Jesus College I had business in 1892 in the Golden Valley
of Herefordshire, and I stayed a day or two at Dorstone enjoying
the hospitality of the rectory, and learning interesting facts from
the rector, Mr. Prosser Powell, and from Mrs. Powell in particular,
as to the folklore of the parish, which is still in several respects
very Welsh. Mrs. Powell, however, did not confine herself to Dorstone
or the Dore Valley, for she told me as follows:--'I was at Aberdovey
in 1852, and I distinctly remember that my childish imagination was
much excited by the legend of the city beneath the sea, and the bells
which I was told might be heard at night. I used to lie awake trying,
but in vain, to catch the echoes of the chime. I was only seven years
old, and cannot remember who told me the story, though I have never
forgotten it.' Mrs. Powell added that she has since heard it said, that
at a certain stage of the tide at the mouth of the Dovey, the way in
which the waves move the pebbles makes them produce a sort of jingling
noise which has been fancied to be the echo of distant bells ringing.

These clues appeared too good to be dropped at once, and the result
of further inquiries led Mrs. Powell afterwards to refer me to The
Monthly Packet for the year 1859, where I found an article headed
'Aberdovey Legends,' and signed M. B., the initials, Mrs. Powell
thought, of Miss Bramston of Winchester. The writer gives a sketch
of the story of the country overflowed by the neighbouring portion
of Cardigan Bay, mentioning, p. 645, that once on a time there were
great cities on the banks of the Dovey and the Disynni. 'Cities with
marble wharfs,' she says, 'busy factories, and churches whose towers
resounded with beautiful peals and chimes of bells.' She goes on to say
that 'Mausna is the name of the city on the Dovey; its eastern suburb
was at the sand-bank now called Borth, its western stretched far out
into the sea.' What the name Mausna may be I have no idea, unless it
is the result of some confusion with that of the great turbary behind
Borth, namely Mochno, or Cors Fochno, 'Bog of Mochno.' The name Borth
stands for Y Borth, 'the Harbour,' which, more adequately described,
was once Porth Wydno, 'Gwydno's Harbour.' The writer, however, goes
on with the story of the wicked prince, who left open the sluices of
the sea-wall protecting his country and its capital: we read on as
follows:--'But though the sea will not give back that fair city to
light and air, it is keeping it as a trust but for a time, and even
now sometimes, though very rarely, eyes gazing down through the green
waters can see not only the fluted glistering sand dotted here and
there with shells and tufts of waving sea-weed, but the wide streets
and costly buildings of that now silent city. Yet not always silent,
for now and then will come chimes and peals of bells, sometimes near,
sometimes distant, sounding low and sweet like a call to prayer, or as
rejoicing for a victory. Even by day these tones arise, but more often
they are heard in the long twilight evenings, or by night. English
ears have sometimes heard these sounds even before they knew the tale,
and fancied that they must come from some church among the hills, or
on the other side of the water, but no such church is there to give
the call; the sound and its connexion is so pleasant, that one does
not care to break the spell by seeking for the origin of the legend,
as in the idler tales with which that neighbourhood abounds.'

The dream about 'the wide streets and costly buildings of that now
silent city' seems to have its counterpart on the western coast of
Erin--somewhere, let us say, off the cliffs of Moher [12], in County
Clare--witness Gerald Griffin's lines, to which a passing allusion
has already been made, p. 205:--


        A story I heard on the cliffs of the West,
          That oft, through the breakers dividing,
        A city is seen on the ocean's wild breast,
          In turreted majesty riding.
        But brief is the glimpse of that phantom so bright:
          Soon close the white waters to screen it.


The allusion to the submarine chimes would make it unpardonable to
pass by unnoticed the well-known Welsh air called Clychau Aberdyfi,
'The Bells of Aberdovey,' which I have always suspected of taking its
name from fairy bells [13]. This popular tune is of unknown origin,
and the words to which it is usually sung make the bells say un,
dau, tri, pedwar, pump,  chwech, 'one, two, three, four, five, six';
and I have heard a charming Welsh vocalist putting on saith, 'seven,'
in her rendering of the song. This is not to be wondered at, as her
instincts must have rebelled against such a commonplace number as six
in a song redolent of old-world sentiment. But our fairy bells ought
to have stopped at five: this would seem to have been forgotten when
the melody and the present words were wedded together. At any rate
our stories seem to suggest that fairy counting did not go beyond the
fingering of one hand. The only Welsh fairy represented counting is
made to do it all by fives: she counts un, dau, tri, pedwar, pump; un,
dau, tri, pedwar, pump, as hard as her tongue can go. For on the number
of times she can repeat the five numerals at a single breath depends
the number of the live stock of each kind, which are to form her dowry:
see p. 8 above, and as to music in fairy tales, see pp. 202, 206, 292.

Now that a number of our inundation stories have been passed in
review in this and the previous chapter, some room may be given to
the question of their original form. They separate themselves, as
it will have been seen, into at least two groups: (1) those in which
the cause of the catastrophe is ethical, the punishment of the wicked
and dissolute; and (2) those in which no very distinct suggestion of
the kind is made. It is needless to say that everything points to the
comparative lateness of the fully developed ethical motive; and we are
not forced to rest content with this theoretical distinction, for in
more than one of the instances we have the two kinds of story. In
the case of Llyn Tegid, the less known and presumably the older
story connects the formation of the lake with the neglect to keep
the stone door of the well shut, while the more popular story makes
the catastrophe a punishment for wicked and riotous living: compare
pp. 377, 408, above. So with the older story of Cantre'r Gwaelod,
on which we found the later one of the tipsy Seithennin as it were
grafted, p. 395. The keeping of the well shut in the former case, as
also in that of Ffynnon Gywer, was a precaution, but the neglect of
it was not the cause of the ensuing misfortune. Even if we had stories
like the Irish ones, which make the sacred well burst forth in pursuit
of the intruder who has gazed into its depths, it would by no means
be of a piece with the punishment of riotous and lawless living. Our
comparison should rather be with the story of the Curse of Pantannas,
where a man incurred the wrath of the fairies by ploughing up ground
which they wished to retain as a green sward; but the threatened
vengeance for that act of culture did not come to pass for a century,
till the time of one, in fact, who is not charged with having done
anything to deserve it. The ethics of that legend are, it is clear,
not easy to discover, and in our inundation stories one may trace
stages of development from a similarly low level. The case may be
represented thus: a divinity is offended by a man, and for some reason
or other the former wreaks his vengeance, not on the offender, but on
his descendants. This minimum granted, it is easy to see, that in time
the popular conscience would fail to rest satisfied with the cruel
idea of a jealous divinity visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon
the children. One may accordingly distinguish the following stages:--

1. The legend lays it down as a fact that the father was very wicked.

2. It makes his descendants also wicked like him.

3. It represents the same punishment overtaking father and sons,
ancestor and descendants.

4. The simplest way to secure this kind of equal justice was, no doubt,
to let the offending ancestors live on to see their descendants of the
generation for whose time the vengeance had been fixed, and to let them
be swept away with them in one and the same cataclysm, as in the Welsh
versions of the Syfadon and Kenfig legends, possibly also in those
of Llyn Tegid and Tyno Helig, which are not explicit on this point.

Let us for a moment examine the indications of the time to which the
vengeance is put off. In the case of the landed families of ancient
Wales, every member of them had his position and liabilities settled
by his pedigree, which had to be exactly recorded down to the eighth
generation or eighth lifetime in Gwyned, and to the seventh in Gwent
and Dyfed. Those generations were reckoned the limits of recognized
family relationship according to the Welsh Laws, and to keep any
practical reckoning of the kind, extending always back some two
centuries, must have employed a class of professional men [14]. In
any case the ninth generation, called in Welsh y nawfed âch, which
is a term in use all over the Principality at the present day, is
treated as lying outside all recognized kinship. Thus if AB wishes to
say that he is no relation to CD, he will say that he is not related
o fewn y nawfed âch, 'within the ninth degree,' or hyd y nawfed âch,
'up to the ninth degree,' it being understood that in the ninth degree
and beyond it no relationship is reckoned. Folklore stories, however,
seem to suggest another interpretation of the word âch, and fewer
generations in the direct line as indicated in the following table. For
the sake of simplicity the founder of the family is here assumed to
have at least two sons, A and B, and each succeeding generation to
consist of one son only; and lastly the women are omitted altogether:--


                     Tâd I (Father)
                           1

             Brother A  :  II  :  B  Mâb (Son)
                 2      :      :        2
        i    Cousin Aa  : III  :  Ba Wyr (Grandson)
                3       :      :        3
        ii   Cousin Ab  :  IV  :  Bb Gorwyr (Great-Grandson)
                4       :      :        4
        iii  Cousin Ac  :   V  :  Bc Esgynnyd (G.G.Grandson)
                 5      :      :        5
        iv   Cousin Ad  :  VI  :  Bd Goresgynnyd (G.G.G.Grandson).


In reckoning the relationships between the collateral members of
the family, one counts not generations or begettings, not removes or
degrees, but ancestry or the number of ancestors, so that the father
or founder of the family only counts once. Thus his descendants Ad and
Bd in the sixth generation or lifetime, are fourth cousins separated
from one another by nine ancestors: that is, they are related in the
ninth âch. In other words, Ad has five ancestors and Bd has also five,
but as they have one ancestor in common, the father of the family,
they are not separated by 5 + 5 ancestors, but by 5 + 5 - 1, that is
by 9. Similarly, one being always subtracted, the third cousins Ac
and Bc are related in the seventh âch, and the second cousin in the
fifth âch: so with the others in odd numbers downwards, and also with
the relatives reckoned upwards to the seventh or eighth generation,
which would mean collaterals separated by eleven or thirteen ancestors
respectively. This reckoning, which is purely conjectural, is based
chiefly on the Kenfig story, which foretold the vengeance to come
in the ninth âch and otherwise in the time of the goresgynnyd, that
is to say in the sixth lifetime. This works out all right if only
by the ninth âch we understand the generation or lifetime when the
collaterals are separated by nine ancestors, for that is no other
than the sixth from the founder of the family. The Welsh version
of the Llynclys legend fixes on the same generation, as it says yn
oes wyrion, gorwyrion, esgynnyd a goresgynnyd, 'in the lifetime of
grandsons, great-grandsons, ascensors, and their children,' for these
last's time is the sixth generation. In the case of the Syfadon legend
the time of the vengeance is the ninth cenhedlaeth or generation,
which must be regarded as probably a careless way of indicating the
generation when the collaterals are separated by nine ancestors, that
is to say the sixth from the father of the family. It can hardly have
the other meaning, as the sinning ancestors are represented as then
still living. The case of the Tyno Helig legend is different, as we
have the time announced to the offending ancestor described as amser
dy wyrion, dy orwyrion, a dy esgynydion, 'the time of thy grandsons,
thy great-grandsons, and thy ascensors,' which would be only the
fifth generation with collaterals separated only by seven ancestors,
and not nine. But the probability is that goresgynydion has been here
accidentally omitted, and that the generation indicated originally
was the same as in the others. This, however, will not explain
the Bala legend, which fixes the time for the third generation,
namely, immediately after the birth of the offending prince's
first grandson. If, however, as I am inclined to suppose, the sixth
generation with collaterals severed by nine ancestors was the normal
term in these stories, it is easy to understand that the story-teller
might wish to substitute a generation nearer to the original offender,
especially if he was himself to be regarded as surviving to share in
the threatened punishment: his living to see the birth of his first
grandson postulated no extraordinary longevity.

The question why fairy vengeance is so often represented deferred
for a long time can no longer be put off. Here three or four answers
suggest themselves:--

1. The story of the Curse of Pantannas relates how the offender was
not the person punished, but one of his descendants a hundred or more
years after his time, while the offender is represented escaping the
fairies' vengeance because he entreated them very hard to let him
go unpunished. All this seems to me but a sort of protest against
the inexorable character of the little people, a protest, moreover,
which was probably invented comparatively late.

2. The next answer is the very antithesis of the Pantannas one; for
it is, that the fairies delay in order to involve all the more men
and women in the vengeance wreaked by them: I confess that I see no
reason to entertain so sinister an idea.

3. A better answer, perhaps, is that the fairies were not always in
a position to harm him who offended them. This may well have been
the belief as regards any one who had at his command the dreaded
potency of magic. Take for instance the Irish story of a king of
Erin called Eochaid Airem, who, with the aid of his magician or
druid Dalán, defied the fairies, and dug into the heart of their
underground station, until, in fact, he got possession of his queen,
who had been carried thither by a fairy chief named Mider. Eochaid,
assisted by his druid and the powerful Ogams which the latter wrote
on rods of yew, was too formidable for the fairies, and their wrath
was not executed till the time of Eochaid's unoffending grandson,
Conaire Mór, who fell a victim to it, as related in the epic story of
Bruden Dáderga, so called from the palace where Conaire was slain [15].

4. Lastly, it may be said that the fairies being supposed deathless,
there would be no reason why they should hurry; and even in case the
delay meant a century or two, that makes no perceptible approach to
the extravagant scale of time common enough in our fairy tales, when,
for instance, they make a man who has whiled ages away in fairyland,
deem it only so many minutes [16].

Whatever the causes may have been which gave our stories their
form in regard of the delay in the fairy revenge, it is clear that
Welsh folklore could not allow this delay to extend beyond the sixth
generation with its cousinship of nine ancestries, if, as I gather,
it counted kinship no further. Had one projected it on the seventh or
the eighth generation, both of which are contemplated in the Laws, it
would not be folklore. It would more likely be the lore of the landed
gentry and of the powerful families whose pedigrees and ramifications
of kinship were minutely known to the professional men on whom it
was incumbent to keep themselves, and those on whom they depended,
well informed in such matters.

It remains for me to consider the non-ethical motive of the other
stories, such as those which ascribe negligence and the consequent
inundation to the woman who has the charge of the door or lid of the
threatening well. Her negligence is not the cause of the catastrophe,
but it leaves the way open for it. What then can have been regarded
the cause? One may gather something to the point from the Irish story
where the divinity of the well is offended because a woman has gazed
into its depths, and here probably, as already suggested (p. 392),
we come across an ancient tabu directed against women, which may have
applied only to certain wells of peculiarly sacred character. It
serves, however, to suggest that the divinities of the water-world
were not disinclined to seize every opportunity of extending their
domain on the earth's surface; and I am persuaded that this was
once a universal creed of some race or other in possession of these
islands. Besides the Irish legends already mentioned (pp. 382, 384)
of the formation of Lough Neagh, Lough Ree, and others, witness the
legendary annals of early Ireland, which, by the side of battles, the
clearing of forests, and the construction of causeways, mention the
bursting forth of lakes and rivers; that is to say, the formation or
the coming into existence, or else the serious expansion, of certain of
the actual waters of the country. For the present purpose the details
given by The Four Masters are sufficient, and I have hurriedly counted
their instances as follows:--


      Anno Mundi 2532, number of the lakes  formed,  2.
       ,,    ,,  2533,   ,,   ,,  ,, lakes    ,,    1.
       ,,    ,,  2535,   ,,   ,,  ,, lakes    ,,     2.
       ,,    ,,  2545,   ,,   ,,  ,, lakes    ,,     1.
       ,,    ,,  2546,   ,,   ,,  ,, lakes    ,,     1.
       ,,    ,,  2859,   ,,   ,,  ,, lakes    ,,     2.
       ,,    ,,  2860,   ,,   ,,  ,, lakes    ,,     2.
       ,,    ,,  3503,   ,,   ,,  ,, rivers   ,,    21.
       ,,    ,,  3506,   ,,   ,,  ,, lakes    ,,     9.
       ,,    ,,  3510,   ,,   ,,  ,, rivers   ,,     5.
       ,,    ,,  3520,   ,,   ,,  ,, rivers   ,,     9.
       ,,    ,,  3581,   ,,   ,,  ,, lakes    ,,     9.
       ,,    ,,  3656,   ,,   ,,  ,, rivers   ,,     3.
       ,,    ,,  3751,   ,,   ,,  ,, lakes    ,,     1.
       ,,    ,,  3751,   ,,   ,,  ,, rivers   ,,     3.
       ,,    ,,  3790,   ,,   ,,  ,, lakes    ,,     4.
       ,,    ,,  4169,   ,,   ,,  ,, rivers   ,,     5.
       ,,    ,,  4694,   ,,   ,,  ,, lakes    ,,     1.


This makes an aggregate of thirty-five lakes and forty-six rivers,
that is to say a total of eighty-one eruptions. But I ought, perhaps,
to explain that under the head of lakes I have included not only
separate pieces of water, but also six inlets of the sea, such as
Strangford Lough and the like. Still more to the point is it to mention
that of the lakes two are said to have burst forth at the digging
of graves. Thus, A.M. 2535, The Four Masters have the following:
'Laighlinne, son of Parthalon, died in this year. When his grave
was dug, Loch Laighlinne sprang forth in Ui Mac Uais, and from him
it is named [17].' O'Donovan, the editor and translator of The Four
Masters, supposes it to be somewhere to the south-west of Tara, in
Meath. Similarly, A.M. 4694, they say of a certain Melghe Molbthach,
'When his grave was digging, Loch Melghe burst forth over the land in
Cairbre, so that it was named from him.' This is said to be now called
Lough Melvin, on the confines of the counties of Donegal, Leitrim,
and Fermanagh. These two instances are mentioned by The Four Masters;
and here is one given by Stokes in the Rennes Dindsenchas: see the
Revue Celtique, xv. 428-9. It has to do with Loch Garman, as Wexford
Harbour was called in Irish, and it runs thus: 'Loch Garman, whence
is it? Easy to say. Garman Glas, son of Dega, was buried there, and
when his grave was dug then the lake burst throughout the land. Whence
Loch Garman.' It matters not here that there are alternative accounts
of the name.

The meaning of all this seems to be that cutting the green sward or
disturbing the earth beneath was believed in certain cases to give
offence to some underground divinity or other connected with the world
of waters. That divinity avenged the annoyance or offence given him by
causing water to burst forth and form a lake forthwith. The nearness
of such divinities to the surface seems not a little remarkable, and
it is shown not only in the folklore which has been preserved for
us by The Four Masters, but also by the usual kind of story about
a neglected well door. These remarks suggest the question whether
it was not one of the notions which determined surface burials,
that is, burials in which no cutting of the ground took place,
the cists or chambers and the bodies placed in them being covered
over by the heaping on of earth or stones brought from a more or
less convenient distance. It might perhaps be said that all this
only implied individuals of a character to desecrate the ground and
call forth the displeasure of the divinities concerned; and for that
suggestion folklore parallels, it is true, could be adduced. But it is
hardly adequate: the facts seem to indicate a more general objection
on the part of the powers in point; and they remind one rather of the
clause said to be inserted in mining leases in China with the object,
if one may trust the newspapers, of preventing shafts from being sunk
below a certain depth, for fear of offending the susceptibilities of
the demons or dragons ruling underground.

It is interesting to note the fact, that Celtic folklore connects the
underground divinities intimately with water; for one may briefly
say that they have access wherever water can take them. With this
qualification the belief may be said to have lingered lately in Wales,
for instance, in connexion with Llyn Barfog, near Aberdovey. 'It is
believed to be very perilous,' Mr. Pughe says, p. 142 above, 'to let
the waters out of the lake'; and not long before he wrote, in 1853,
an aged inhabitant of the district informed him 'that she recollected
this being done during a period of long drought, in order to procure
motive power for Llyn Pair Mill, and that long-continued heavy rains
followed.' Then we have the story related to Mr. Reynolds as to Llyn
y Fan Fach, how there emerged from the water a huge hairy fellow of
hideous aspect, who stormed at the disturbers of his peace, and uttered
the threat that unless they left him alone in his own place he would
drown a whole town. Thus the power of the water spirit is represented
as equal to producing excessive wet weather and destructive floods. He
is in all probability not to be dissociated from the afanc in the
Conwy story which has already been given (pp. 130-3). Now the local
belief is that the reason why the afanc had to be dragged out of the
river was that he caused floods in the river and made it impossible
for people to cross on their way to market at Llanrwst. Some such
a local legend has been generalized into a sort of universal flood
story in the late Triad, iii. 97, as follows:--'Three masterpieces of
the Isle of Prydain: the Ship of Nefyd Naf Neifion, that carried in
her male and female of every kind when the Lake of Llïon burst; and
Hu the Mighty's Ychen Bannog dragging the afanc of the lake to land,
so that the lake burst no more; and the Stones of Gwydon Ganhebon,
on which one read all the arts and sciences of the world.' A story
similar to the Conwy one, but no longer to be got so complete, as
far as I know, seems to have been current in various parts of the
Principality, especially around Llyn Syfadon and on the banks of the
Anglesey pool called Llyn yr Wyth Eidion, 'the Pool of the Eight Oxen,'
for so many is Hu represented here as requiring in dealing with the
Anglesey afanc. According to Mr. Pughe of Aberdovey, the same feat
was performed at Llyn Barfog, not, however, by Hu and his oxen,
but by Arthur and his horse. To be more exact the task may be here
considered as done by Arthur superseding Hu: see p. 142 above. That,
however, is of no consequence here, and I return to the afanc: the Fan
Fach legend told to Mr. Reynolds makes the lake ruler huge and hairy,
hideous and rough-spoken, but he expresses himself in human speech,
in fact in two lines of doggerel: see p. 19 above. On the other hand,
the Llyn Cwm Llwch story, which puts the same doggerel, p. 21, into
the mouth of the threatening figure in red who sits in a chair on
the face of that lake, suggests nothing abnormal about his personal
appearance. Then as to the Conwy afanc, he is very heavy, it is true,
but he also speaks the language of the country. He is lured, be it
noticed, out of his home in the lake by the attractions of a young
woman, who lets him rest his head in her lap and fall asleep. When
he wakes to find himself in chains he takes a cruel revenge on
her. But with infinite toil and labour he is dragged beyond the
Conwy watershed into one of the highest tarns on Snowdon; for there
is here no question of killing him, but only of removing him where
he cannot harm the people of the Conwy Valley. It is true that the
story of Peredur represents that knight cutting an afanc's head off,
but so much the worse for the compiler of that romance, as we have
doubtless in the afanc some kind of a deathless being. However, the
description which the Peredur story gives [18] of him is interesting:
he lives in a cave at the door of which is a stone pillar: he sees
everybody that comes without anybody seeing him; and from behind the
pillar he kills all comers with a poisoned spear.

Hitherto we have the afanc described mostly from a hostile point of
view: let us change our position, which some of the stories already
given enable us to do. Take for instance the first of the whole
series, where it describes, p. 7, the Fan Fach youth's despair when
the lake damsel, whose love he had gained, suddenly dived to fetch
her father and her sister. There emerged, it says, out of the lake
two most beautiful ladies, accompanied by a hoary-headed man of noble
mien and extraordinary stature, but having otherwise all the force and
strength of youth. This hoary-headed man of noble mien owned herds of
cattle and flocks of sheep, a number of which were allowed to come
out of the lake to form his daughter's dowry, as the narrative goes
on to show. In the story of Llyn Du'r Ardu, p. 32, he has a consort
who appears with him to join in giving the parental sanction to the
marriage which their daughter was about to make with the Snowdon
shepherd. In neither of these stories has this extraordinary figure
any name given him, and it appears prima facie probable that the term
afanc is rather one of abuse in harmony with the unlovely description
of him supplied by the other stories. But neither in them does the
term yr afanc suit the monster meant, for there can be no doubt that
in the word afanc we have the etymological equivalent of the Irish
word abacc, 'a dwarf'; and till further light is shed on these words
one may assume that at one time afanc also meant a dwarf or pigmy
in Welsh. In modern Welsh it has been regarded as meaning a beaver,
but as that was too small an animal to suit the popular stories, the
word has been also gravely treated as meaning a crocodile [19]: this
is in the teeth of the unanimous treatment of him as anthropomorphic
in the legends in point. If one is to abide by the meaning dwarf or
pigmy, one is bound to regard afanc as one of the terms originally
applied to the fairies in their more unlovely aspects: compare the
use of crimbil, p. 263. Here may also be mentioned pegor, 'a dwarf
or pigmy,' which occurs in the Book of Taliessin, poem vii. (p. 135):--


        Gog6n py pegor             I know what (sort of) pigmy
          yssyd ydan vor.          There is beneath the sea.
        Gogwn eu heissor           I know their kind,
          pa6b yny oscord.         Each in his troop.


Also the following lines in the twelfth-century manuscript of the
Black Book of Carmarthen: see Evans' autotype facsimile, fo. 9b:--


        Ar gnyuer pegor            And every dwarf
          y ssit y dan mor.        There is beneath the sea,
        Ar gnyuer edeinauc         And every winged thing
          aoruc kyuoethauc.        The Mighty One hath made,
        Ac vei. vei. paup.         And were there to each
          tri trychant tauaud      Thrice three hundred tongues--
        Nyellynt ve traethaud.     They could not relate
          kyuoetheu [y] trindaud   The powers of the Trinity.


I should rather suppose, then, that the pigmies in the water-world
were believed to consist of many grades or classes, and to be
innumerable like the Luchorpáin of Irish legend, which were likewise
regarded as diminutive. With the Luchorpáin were also associated [20]
Fomori or Fomoraig (modern Irish spelling Fomhoraigh), and Goborchinn,
'Horse-heads.' The etymology of the word Fomori has been indicated at
p. 286 above, but Irish legendary history has long associated it with
muir, 'sea,' genitive mara, Welsh mor, and it has gone so far as to
see in them, as there suggested, not submarine but transmarine enemies
and invaders of Ireland. So the singular fomor, now written fomhor,
is treated in O'Reilly's Irish Dictionary as meaning 'a pirate, a
sea robber, a giant,' while in Highland Gaelic, where it is written
fomhair or famhair, it is regularly used as the word for giant. The
Manx Gaelic corresponding to Irish fomor and its derivative fomorach,
is foawr, 'a giant,' and foawragh, 'gigantic,' but also 'a pirate.' I
remember hearing, however, years ago, a mention made of the Fomhoraigh,
which, without conveying any definite allusion to their stature,
associated them with subterranean places:--An undergraduate from
the neighbourhood of Killorglin, in Kerry, happened to relate in
my hearing, how, when he was exploring some underground ráths near
his home, he was warned by his father's workmen to beware of the
Fomhoraigh. But on the borders of the counties of Mayo and Sligo
I have found the word used as in the Scottish Highlands, namely,
in the sense of giants, while Dr. Douglas Hyde and others inform me
that the Giant's Causeway is called in Irish Clochán na bh-Fomhorach.

The Goborchinns or Horse-heads have also an interest, not only in
connexion with the Fomori, as when we read of a king of the latter
called Eocha Eachcheann [21], or Eochy Horse-head, but also as a link
between the Welsh afanc and the Highland water-horse, of whom Campbell
has a good deal to say in his Popular Tales of the West Highlands. See
more especially iv. 337, where he remarks among other things, that
'the water-horse assumes many shapes; he often appears as a man,'
he adds, 'and sometimes as a large bird.' A page or two earlier
he gives a story which illustrates the statement, at the same time
that it vividly reminds one of that part of the Conwy legend which
(p. 130) represents the afanc resting his head on the lap of the
damsel forming one of the dramatis personæ. Here follows Campbell's
own story, omitting all about a marvellous bull, however, that was
in the end to checkmate the water-horse:--

'A long time after these things a servant girl went with the farmer's
herd of cattle to graze them at the side of a loch, and she sat
herself down near the bank. There, in a little while, what should
she see walking towards her but a man, who asked her to fasg his hair
[Welsh lleua]. She said she was willing enough to do him that service,
and so he laid his head on her knee, and she began to array his locks,
as Neapolitan damsels also do by their swains. But soon she got a great
fright, for growing amongst the man's hair, she found a great quantity
of liobhagach an locha, a certain slimy green weed [22] that abounds
in such lochs, fresh, salt, and brackish. The girl knew that if she
screamed there was an end of her, so she kept her terror to herself,
and worked away till the man fell asleep as he was with his head
on her knee. Then she untied her apron strings, and slid the apron
quietly on to the ground with its burden upon it, and then she took
her feet home as fast as it was in her heart [23]. Now when she was
getting near the houses, she gave a glance behind her, and there she
saw her caraid (friend) coming after her in the likeness of a horse.'

The equine form belongs also more or less constantly to the kelpie
of the Lowlands of Scotland and of the Isle of Man, where we have
him in the glashtyn, whose amorous propensities are represented as
more repulsive than what appears in Welsh or Irish legend: see p. 289
above, and the Lioar Manninagh for 1897, p. 139. Perhaps in Man and
the Highlands the horsy nature of this being has been reinforced
by the influence of the Norse Nykr, a Northern Proteus or old Nick,
who takes many forms, but with a decided preference for that of 'a
gray water-horse': see Vigfusson's Icelandic-English Dictionary. But
the idea of associating the equine form with the water divinity is by
no means confined to the Irish and the Northern nations: witness the
Greek legend of the horse being of Poseidon's own creation, and the
beast whose form he sometimes assumed.

It is in this sort of a notion of a water-horse one is probably to
look for the key to the riddle of such conceptions as that of March
ab Meirchion, the king with horse's ears, and the corresponding Irish
figure of Labraid Lorc [24]. In both of these the brute peculiarities
are reduced almost to a minimum: both are human in form save their ears
alone. The name Labraid Lorc is distinct enough from the Welsh March,
but under this latter name one detects traces of him with the horse's
ears in Wales, Cornwall, and Brittany [25]. We have also probably
the same name in the Morc of Irish legend: at any rate Morc, Marc,
or Margg, seems to be the same name as the Welsh March, which is
no other word than march, 'a steed or charger.' Now the Irish Morc
is not stated to have had horse's ears, but he and another called
Conaing are represented in the legendary history of early Erin as
the naval leaders of the Fomori, a sort of position which would seem
to fit the Brythonic March also were he to be treated in earnest as
an historical character. But short of that another treatment may be
suspected of having been actually dealt out to him, namely, that of
resolving the water-horse into a horse and his master. Of this we seem
to have two instances in the course of the story of the formation of
Lough Neagh in the Book of the Dun Cow, fo. 39-41:--

There was once a good king named Maired reigning over Munster, and he
had two sons, Eochaid and Rib. He married a wife named Ebliu (genitive
Eblinde), who fell in love with her stepson, Eochaid. The two brothers
make up their minds to leave their father and to take Ebliu with
them, together with all that was theirs, including in all a thousand
men. They proceed northwards, but their druids persuade them that they
cannot settle down in the same district, so Rib goes westwards to a
plain known as Tír Cluchi Midir acus Maic Óic, 'the Play-ground of
Mider and the Mac Óc,' so called after the two great fairy chiefs of
Ireland. Mider visits Rib's camp and kills their horses, then he gives
them a big horse of his own ready harnessed with a pack-saddle. They
had to put all their baggage on the big horse's back and go away,
but after a while the nag lay down and a well of water formed there,
which eventually burst forth, drowning them all: this is Loch Ri,
'Rib's Loch, or Lough Ree,' on the Shannon. Eochaid, the other brother,
went with his party to the banks of the Boyne near the Brug, where
the fairy chief Mac Óc or Mac ind Óc had his residence: he destroyed
Eochaid's horses the first night, and the next day he threatened to
destroy the men themselves unless they went away. Thereupon Eochaid
said that they could not travel without horses, so the Mac Óc gave
them a big horse, on whose back they placed all they had. The Mac
Óc warned them not to unload the nag on the way, and not to let him
halt lest he should be their death. However, when they had reached the
middle of Ulster, they thoughtlessly took all their property off the
horse's back, and nobody bethought him of turning the animal's head
back in the direction from which they had come: so he also made a well
[26]. Over that well Eochaid had a house built, and a lid put on the
well, which he set a woman to guard. In the sequel she neglected it,
and the well burst forth and formed Lough Neagh, as already mentioned,
p. 382 above. What became of the big horses in these stories one is not
told, but most likely they were originally represented as vanishing
in a spring of water where each of them stood. Compare the account
of Undine at her unfaithful husband's funeral. In the procession
she mysteriously appeared as a snow-white figure deeply veiled, but
when one rose from kneeling at the grave, where she had knelt nought
was to be seen save a little silver spring of limpid water bubbling
out of the turf and trickling on to surround the new grave:--Da man
sich aber wieder erhob, war die weisse Fremde verschwunden; an der
Stelle, wo sie geknieet hatte, quoll ein silberhelles Brünnlein aus
dem Rasen; das rieselte und rieselte fort, bis es den Grabhügel des
Ritters fast ganz umzogen hatte; dann rann es fürder und ergoss sich
in einen Weiher, der zur Seite des Gottesackers lag.

The late and grotesque story of the Gilla Decair may be mentioned next:
he was one of the Fomorach, and had a wonderful kind of horse on whose
back most of Finn's chief warriors were induced to mount. Then the
Gilla Decair and his horse hurried towards Corkaguiny, in Kerry, and
took to the sea, for he and his horse travelled equally well on sea
and land. Thus Finn's men, unable to dismount, were carried prisoners
to an island not named, on which Dermot in quest of them afterwards
landed, and from which, after great perils, he made his way to Tír
fo Thuinn, 'Terra sub Unda,' and brought his friends back to Erin
[27]. Now the number of Finn's men taken away by force by the Gilla
Decair was fifteen, fourteen on the back of his horse and one clutching
to the animal's tail, and the Welsh Triads, i. 93 = ii. 11, seem to
re-echo some similar story, but they give the number of persons not as
fifteen but just one half, and describe the horse as Du (y) Moroed,
'the Black of (the) Seas,' steed of Elidyr Mwynfawr, that carried
seven human beings and a half from Pen Llech Elidyr in the North to
Pen Llech Elidyr in Môn, 'Anglesey.' It is explained that Du carried
seven on his back, and that one who swam with his hands on that horse's
crupper was reckoned the half man in this case. Du Moroed is in the
story of Kulhwch and Olwen called Du March Moro, 'Black the Steed of
Moro,' the horse ridden in the hunt of Twrch Trwyth by Gwyn ab Nud,
king of the other world; and he appears as a knight with his name
unmistakably rendered into Brun de Morois in the romance of Durmart
le Galois, who carries away Arthur's queen on his horse to his castle
in Morois [28]. Lastly, here also might be mentioned the incident in
the story of Peredur or Perceval, which relates how to that knight,
when he was in the middle of a forest much distressed for the want
of a horse, a lady brought a fine steed as black as a blackberry. He
mounted and he found his beast marvellously swift, but on his making
straight for a vast river the knight made the sign of the cross,
whereupon he was left on the ground, and his horse plunged into the
water, which his touch seemed to set ablaze. The horse is interpreted
to have been the devil [29], and this is a fair specimen of the way
in which Celtic paganism is treated by the Grail writers when they
feel in the humour to assume an edifying attitude.

If one is right in setting Môn, 'Anglesey,' over against the anonymous
isle to which the Gilla Decair hurries Finn's men away, Anglesey would
have to be treated as having once been considered one of the Islands
of the Dead and the home of Other-world inhabitants. We have a trace
of this in a couplet in a poem by the medieval poet, Dafyd ab Gwilym,
who makes Blodeuwed the Owl give a bit of her history as follows:--


        Merch i arglwyd, ail Meirchion,
        Wyf i, myn Dewi! o Fon [30].

        Daughter to a lord, son of Meirchion,
        Am I, by St. David! from Mona.


This, it will be seen, connects March ab Meirchion, as it were 'Steed
son of Steeding,' with the Isle of Anglesey. Add to this that the
Irish for Anglesey or Mona was Móin Conaing, 'Conaing's Swamp,' so
called apparently after Conaing associated with Morc, a name which
is practically March in Welsh. Both were leaders of the Fomori in
Irish tales: see my Arthurian Legend, p. 356.

On the great place given to islands in Celtic legend and myth it
is needless here to expatiate: witness Brittia, to which Procopius
describes the souls of the departed being shipped from the shores of
the Continent, the Isle of Avallon in the Romances, that of Gwales
in the Mabinogion, Ynys Enlli or Bardsey, in which Merlin and his
retinue enter the Glass House [31], and the island of which we read
in the pages of Plutarch, that it contains Cronus held in the bonds
of perennial sleep [32].

Let us return to the more anthropomorphic figure of the afanc,
and take as his more favoured representative the virile personage
described emerging from the Fan Fach Lake to give his sanction to
the marriage of his daughter with the Mydfai shepherd. It is probable
that a divinity of the same order belonged to every other lake of any
considerable dimensions in the country. But it will be remembered that
in the case of the story of Llyn Du'r Ardu two parents appeared with
the lake maiden--her father and her mother--and we may suppose that
they were divinities of the water-world. The same thing also may be
inferred from the late Triad, iii. 13, which speaks of the bursting
of the lake of Llïon, causing all the lands to be inundated so that
all the human race was drowned except Dwyfan and Dwyfach, who escaped
in a mastless ship: it was from them that the island of Prydain was
repeopled. A similar Triad, iii. 97, but evidently of a different
origin, has already been mentioned as speaking of the Ship of Nefyd
Naf Neifion, that carried in it a male and female of every kind when
the lake of Llïon burst. This later Triad evidently supplies what
had been forgotten in the previous one, namely, a pair of each kind
of animal life, and not of mankind alone. But from the names Dwyfan
and Dwyfach I infer that the writer of Triad iii. 13 has developed
his universal deluge on the basis of the scriptural account of it,
for those names belonged in all probability to wells and rivers:
in other terms, they were the names of water divinities. At any rate
there seems to be some evidence that two springs, whose waters flow
into Bala Lake, were at one time called Dwyfan and Dwyfach, these names
being borne both by the springs themselves and the rivers flowing from
them. The Dwyfan and the Dwyfach were regarded as uniting in the lake,
while the water on its issuing from the lake is called Dyfrdwy. Now
Dyfrdwy stands for an older Dyfr-dwyf, which in Old Welsh was Dubr
duiu, 'the water of the divinity.' One of the names of that divinity
was Donwy, standing for an early form Danuvios or Danuvia, according
as it was masculine or feminine. In either case it was practically
the same name as that of the Danube or Danuvios, derived from a word
which is represented in Irish by the adjective dána, 'audax, fortis,
intrepidus.' The Dee has in Welsh poetry still another name, Aerfen,
which seems to mean a martial goddess or the spirit of the battlefield,
which is corroborated and explained by Giraldus [33], who represents
the river as the accredited arbiter of the fortunes of the wars in
its country between the Welsh and the English. The name Dyfrdonwy
occurs in a poem by Llywarch Brydyd y Moch, a poet who flourished
towards the end of the twelfth century, as follows [34]:--


        Nid kywiw [35] a llwfyr dwfyr dyfyrdonwy
        Kereist oth uebyd gwryd garwy.

        With a coward Dyfrdonwy water ill agrees:
        From thy boyhood hast thou loved Garwy's valour.


The prince praised was Llywelyn ab Iorwerth, whom the poet seems to
identify here with the Dee, and it looks as if the water of the Dee
formed some sort of a test which no coward could face: compare the case
of the discreet cauldron that would not boil meat for a coward [36].

The dwy, dwyf, duiu, of the river's Welsh name represent an early form
deva or deiva, whence the Romans called their station on its banks
Deva, possibly as a shortening of ad Devam; but that Deva should have
simply and directly meant the river is rendered probable by the fact
that Ptolemy elsewhere gives it as the name of the northern Dee, which
enters the sea near Aberdeen. From the same stem were formed the names
Dwyf-an and Dwyf-ach, which are treated in the Triads as masculine and
feminine respectively. In its course the Welsh Dee receives a river
Ceirw not far above Corwen, and that river flows through farms called
Ar-dwyfan and Hendre' Ar-dwyfan, and adjoining Ardwyfan is another
farm called Foty Ardwyfan, 'Shielings of Ardwyfan,' while Hendre'
Ardwyfan means the old stead or winter abode of Ardwyfan. Ardwyfan
itself would seem to mean 'On Dwyfan,' and Hendre' Ardwyfan, which
may be supposed the original homestead, stands near a burn which flows
into the Ceirw. That burn I should suppose to have been the Dwyfan, and
perhaps the name extended to the Ceirw itself; but Dwyfan is not now
known as the name of any stream in the neighbourhood. Elsewhere we have
two rivers called Dwyfor or Dwyfawr and Dwyfach, which unite a little
below the village of Llan Ystumdwy; and from there to the sea, the
stream is called Dwyfor, the mouth of which is between Criccieth and
Afon Wen, in Carnarvonshire. Ystumdwy, commonly corrupted into Stindwy,
seems to mean Ystum-dwy, 'the bend of the Dwy'; so that here also we
have Dwyfach and Dwy, as in the case of the Dee. Possibly Dwyfor was
previously called simply Dwy or even Dwyfan; but it is now explained
as Dwy-fawr, 'great Dwy,' which was most likely suggested by Dwyfach,
as this latter explains itself to the country people as Dwy-fach,
'little Dwy.' However, it is but right to say that in Llywelyn ab
Gruffyd's grant of lands to the monks of Aber Conwy they seem to be
called Dwyuech and Dwyuaur [37].

All these waters have in common the reputation of being liable to
sudden and dangerous floods, especially the Dwyfor, which drains Cwm
Strallyn and its lake lying behind the great rocky barrier on the left
as one goes from Tremadoc towards Aber Glaslyn Bridge. Still more so
is this the case with the Dee and Bala Lake, which is wont to rise at
times from seven to nine feet above its ordinary level. The inundation
which then invades the valley from Bala down presents a sight more
magnificent than comfortable to contemplate. In fact nothing could
have been more natural than for the story elaborated by the writer
of certain of the late Triads to have connected the most remarkable
inundations with the largest piece of water in the Principality,
and one liable to such sudden changes of level: in other words, that
one should treat Llyn Llïon as merely one of the names of Bala Lake,
now called in Welsh Llyn Tegid, and formerly sometimes Llyn Aerfen.

While touching at p. 286 on Gwaen Llifon with its Llyn Pencraig as one
of those claiming to be the Llyn Llïon of the Triads, it was hinted
that Llïon was but a thinner form of Llifon. Here one might mention
perhaps another Llifon, for which, however, no case could be made. I
allude to the name of the residence of the Wynns descended from Gilmin
Troeddu, namely, Glyn Llifon, which means the river Llifon's Glen;
but one could not feel surprised if the neighbouring Llyfni, draining
the lakes of Nantlle, should prove to have once been also known as
a Llifon, with the Nantlle waters conforming by being called Llyn
Llifon. But however that may be, one may say as to the flood caused
by the bursting of any such lake, that the notion of the universality
of the catastrophe was probably contributed by the author of Triad
iii. 13, from a non-Welsh source. He may have, however, not invented
the vessel in which he places Dwyfan and Dwyfach: at all events,
one version of the story of the Fan Fach represents the Lake Lady
arriving in a boat. As to the writer of the other Triad, iii. 97,
he says nothing about Dwyfan and his wife, but borrows Nefyd Naf
Neifion's ship to save all that were to be saved; and here one may
probably venture to identify Nefyd with Nemed [38], genitive Nemid,
a name borne in Irish legend by a rover who is represented as one
of the early colonizers of Erin. As to the rest, the name Neifion by
itself is used in Welsh for Neptune and the sea, as in the following
couplet of D. ab Gwilym's poem lv:--


    Nofiad a wnaeth hen Neifion    It is old Neptune that has swam
    O Droia fawr draw i Fôn.       From great Troy afar to Mona.


In the same way Môr Neifion, 'Sea of Neifion,' seems to have signified
the ocean, the high seas.

To return to the Triad about Dwyfan and Dwyfach, not only does it make
them from being water divinities into a man and woman, but there is
no certainty even that both were not feminine. In modern Welsh all
rivers are treated as feminine, and even Dyfrdwyf has usually to
submit, though the modern bard Tegid, analysing the word into Dwfr
Dwyf, 'Water of the Divinity or Divine Water,' where dwfr, 'water,'
could only be masculine, addressed Llyn Tegid thus, p. 78:


        Drwyot, er dydiau'r Drywon,
        Y rhwyf y Dyfrdwyf ei don.

        Through thee, from the days of the Druids,
        The Dwfr Dwyf impels his wave.


This question, however, of the gender of river names, or rather the sex
which personification ascribed them, is a most difficult one. If we
glance at Ptolemy's Geography written in the second century, we find
in his account of the British Isles that he names more than fifty of
our river mouths and estuaries, and that he divides their names almost
equally into masculine and feminine. The modern Welsh usage has, it is
seen, departed far from this, but not so far the folklore: the afanc is
a male, and we have a figure of the same sex appearing as the father of
the lake maiden in the Fan Fach story, and in that of Llyn Du'r Ardu;
the same, too, was the sex of the chief dweller of Llyn Cwm Llwch;
the same remark is applicable also to the greatest divinity of these
islands--the greatest, at any rate, so far as the scanty traces of his
cult enable one to become acquainted with him. As his name comes down
into legend it belongs here, as well as to the deities of antiquity,
just as much, in a sense, as the Dee. I refer to Nudons or Nodons,
the remains [39] of whose sanctuary were many years ago brought to
light on a pleasant hill in Lydney Park, on the western banks of the
Severn. In the mosaic floor of the god's temple there is a 
inscription showing the expense of that part of the work to have been
defrayed by the contributions (ex stipibus) of the faithful, and that
it was carried out by two men, of whom one appears to have been an
officer in command of a naval force guarding the coasts of the Severn
Sea. In the midst of the mosaic inscription is a round opening in the
floor of nine inches in diameter and surrounded by a broad band of red
enclosed in two of blue. This has given rise to various speculations,
and among others that it was intended for libations. The mosaics and
the lettering of the inscriptions seem to point to the third century as
the time when the sanctuary of Nudons was built under Roman auspices,
though the place was doubtless sacred to the god long before. In any
case it fell in exactly with the policy of the more astute of Roman
statesmen to encourage such a native cult as we find traces of in
Lydney Park.

One of the inscriptions began with D. M. Nodonti, 'to the great god
Nudons,' and a little bronze crescent intended for the diadem of
the god or of one of his priests gives a representation of him as
a crowned, beardless personage driving a chariot with four horses;
and on either side of him is a naked figure supposed to represent
the winds, and beyond them on each of the two sides is a triton with
the fore feet of a horse. The god holds the reins in his left hand,
and his right uplifted grasps what may be a sceptre or possibly a
whip, while the whole equipment of the god recalls in some measure
the Chariot of the Sun. Another piece of the bronze ornament shows
another triton with an anchor in one of his hands, and opposite him a
fisherman in the act of hooking a fine salmon. Other things, such as
oars and shell trumpets, together with mosaic representations of marine
animals in the floor of the temple, compel us to assimilate Nudons
more closely with Neptune than any other god of classical mythology.

The name of the god, as given in the inscriptions, varies between
Nudons and Nodens, the cases actually occurring being the dative
Nodonti, Nodenti, and Nudente, and the genitive Nodentis, so I should
regard o or u as optional in the first syllable, and o as preferable,
perhaps, to e in the second, for there is no room for reasonably
doubting that we have here to do with the same name as Irish Nuadu,
genitive Nuadat, conspicuous in the legendary history of Ireland. Now
the Nuadu who naturally occurs to one first, was Nuadu Argetlám or
Nuadu of the Silver Hand, from argat, 'silver, argentum,' and lám,
'hand.' Irish literature explains how he came to have a hand made of
silver, and we can identify with him on Welsh ground a Llud Llawereint;
for put back as it were into earlier Brythonic, this would be Ludo(ns)
Lam'-argentios: that is to say, a reversal takes place in the order of
the elements forming the epithet out of ereint (for older ergeint),
'silvern, argenteus,' and llaw, for earlier lama, 'hand.' Then comes
the alliterative instinct into play, forcing Nudo(ns) Lamargentio(s)
to become Ludo(ns) Lamargentio(s), whence the later form, Llud
Llawereint, derives regularly [40]. Thus we have in Welsh the name
Llûd, fashioned into that form under the influence of the epithet,
whereas elsewhere it is Nûd, which occurs as a man's name in the
pedigrees, while an intermediate form was probably Nudos or Nudo,
of which a genitive NVDI occurs in a post-Roman inscription found
near Yarrow Kirk in Selkirkshire. It is worthy of note that the
modification of Nudo into Ludo must have taken place comparatively
early--not improbably while the language was still Goidelic--as we
seem to have a survival of the name in that of Lydney itself.

It is very possible that we have Ludo, Llud, also in Porthlud; which
Geoffrey of Monmouth gives, iii. 20, as the Welsh for Ludesgata or
Ludgate, in London, which gate, according to him, was called after
an ancient king of Britain named Lud. He seems to have been using
an ancient tradition, and there would be nothing improbable in the
conjecture that Geoffrey's Lud was our Llud, and that the great water
divinity of that name had another sanctuary on the hill by the Thames,
somewhere near the present site of St. Paul's Cathedral, and occupying
a post as it were prophetic of Britain's rule of the water-ways in
later times.

Perhaps as one seems to find traces of Nudons from the estuary of the
Thames to that of the Severn and thence to Ireland, one may conclude
that the god was one of the divinities worshipped by the Goidels. With
regard to the Brythonic Celts, there is nothing to suggest that he
belonged also to them except in the sense of his having been probably
adopted by them from the Goidels. It might be further suggested
that the Goidels themselves had in the first instance adopted him
from the pre-Celtic natives, but in that case a goddess would have
been rather more probable [41]. In fact in the case of the Severn
we seem to have a trace of such a goddess in the Sabrina, Old Welsh
Habren, now Hafren, so called after a princess whom Geoffrey, ii. 5,
represents drowned in the river: she may have been the pre-Celtic
goddess of the Severn, and the name corresponding to Welsh Hafren
occurs in Ireland in the form of Sabrann, an old name of the river
Lee that flows through Cork. Similarly one now reads sometimes of
Father Thames after the fashion of classic phraseology, and in the
Celtic period Nudons may have been closely identified with that river,
but the ancient name Tamesa or Tamesis [42] was decidedly feminine,
and it was, most likely, that of the river divinity from times when
the pre-Celtic natives held exclusive possession of these islands. On
the whole it appears safer to regard Nudons as belonging to a race
that had developed on a larger scale the idea of a patriarchal or
kingly ruler holding sway over a comparatively wide area. So Nudons
may here be treated as ruled out of the discussion as to the origin
of the fairies, to which a few paragraphs are now to be devoted.

Speaking of the rank and file of the fairies in rather a promiscuous
fashion, one may say that we have found manifold proof of their close
connexion with the water-world. Not only have we found them supposed
to haunt places bordering on rivers, to live beneath the lakes,
or to inhabit certain green isles capable of playing hide-and-seek
with the ancient mariner, and perhaps not so very ancient either;
but other considerations have been suggested as also pointing
unmistakably to the same conclusion. Take for instance the indirect
evidence afforded by the method of proceeding to recover an infant
stolen by the fairies. One account runs thus: The mother who had lost
her baby was to go with a wizard and carry with her to a river the
child left her in exchange. The wizard would say, Crap ar y wrach,
'Grip the hag,' and the woman would reply, Rhy hwyr, gyfraglach,
'Too late, you urchin [43].' Before she uttered those words she had
dropped the urchin into the river, and she would then return to her
house. By that time the kidnapped child would be found to have come
back home [44]. The words here used have not been quite forgotten
in Carnarvonshire, but no distinct meaning seems to be attached to
them now; at any rate I have failed to find anybody who could explain
them. I should however guess that the wizard addressed his words to
the fairy urchin with the intention, presumably, that the fairies in
the river should at the same time hear and note what was about to be
done. Another, and a somewhat more intelligible version, is given in
the Gwyliedyd for 1837, p. 185, by a contributor who publishes it from
a manuscript which Lewis Morris began to write in 1724 and finished
apparently in 1729. He was a native of Anglesey, and it is probably
to that county the story belongs, which he gives to illustrate one
of the phonological aspects of certain kinds of Welsh. That account
differs from the one just cited in that it introduces no wizard,
but postulates two fairy urchins between whom the dialogue occurs,
which is not unusual in our changeling stories: see p. 62. After this
explanation I translate Morris' words thus:--

'But to return to the question of the words approaching to the
nature of the thing intended, there is an old story current among us
concerning a woman whose children had been exchanged by the Tylwyth
Teg. Whether it is truth or falsehood does not much matter, yet it
shows what the men of that age thought concerning the sound of words,
and how they fancied that the language of those sprites was of a
ghastly and lumpy kind. The story is as follows:--The woman whose two
children had been exchanged, chanced to overhear the two fairy heirs,
whom she got instead of them, reasoning with one another beyond what
became their age and persons. So she picked up the two sham children,
one under each arm, in order to go and throw them from a bridge into a
river, that they might be drowned as she fancied. But hardly had the
one in his fall reached the bottom when he cried out to his comrade
in the following words:--


    Grippiach greppiach             Grippiach Greppiach,
    Dal d'afel yn y wrach,          Keep thy hold on the hag.
    Hi aeth yn rhowyr 'faglach--    It got too late, thou urchin--
    Mi eis i ir mwthlach [45].'     I fell into the....


In spite of the obscurity of these words, it is quite clear that it
was thought the most natural thing in the world to return the fairies
to the river, and no sooner were they dropped there than the right
infants were found to have been sent home.

The same thing may be learned also from the story of the Curse of
Pantannas, pp. 187-8 above; for when the time of the fairies' revenge
is approaching, the merry party gathered together at Pantannas are
frightened by a piercing voice rising from a black and cauldron-like
pool in the river; and after a while they hear it a second time
rising above the noise of the river as it cascades over the shoulder
of a neighbouring rock. Shortly afterwards an ugly, diminutive woman
appears on the table near the window, and had it not been for the
rudeness of one of those present she would have disclosed the future
to them, but, as it was, she said very little in a vague way and
went away offended; but as long as she was there the voice from the
river was silent. Here we have the Welsh counterpart of the ben síde,
pronounced banshee in Anglo-Irish, and meaning a fairy woman who is
supposed to appear to certain Irish families before deaths or other
misfortunes about to befall them. It is doubtless to some such fairy
persons the voices belong, which threaten vengeance on the heir of
Pantannas and on the wicked prince and his descendants previous to
the cataclysm which brings a lake into the place of a doomed city:
witness such cases as those of Llynclys, Syfadon, and Kenfig.

The last mentioned deserves some further scrutiny; and I take this
opportunity of referring the reader back to pp. 403-4, in order to
direct his attention to the fact that the voice so closely identifies
itself with the wronged family that it speaks in the first person, as
it cries, 'Vengeance is come on him who murdered my father of the ninth
generation!' Now it is worthy of remark that the same personifying is
also characteristic of the Cyhiraeth [46]. This spectral female used
to be oftener heard than seen; but her blood-freezing shriek was as a
rule to be heard when she came to a cross-road or to water, in which
she splashed with her hands. At the same time she would make the most
doleful noise and exclaim, in case the frightened hearer happened
to be a wife, Fy ngwr, fy ngwr! 'my husband, my husband!' If it was
the man the exclamation would be, Fy ngwraig, fy ngwraig! 'my wife,
my wife!' Or in either case it might be, Fy mhlentyn, fy mhlentyn,
fy mhlentyn bach! 'my child, my child, my little child!' These cries
meant the approaching death of the hearer's husband, wife, or child, as
the case might be; but if the scream was inarticulate it was reckoned
probable that the hearer himself was the person foremourned. Sometimes
she was supposed to come, like the Irish banshee, in a dark mist to
the window of a person who has been long ailing, and to flap her wings
against the glass, while repeating aloud his or her name, which was
believed to mean that the patient must die [47]. The picture usually
given of the Cyhiraeth is of the most repellent kind: tangled hair,
long black teeth, wretched, skinny, shrivelled arms of unwonted length
out of all proportion to the body. Nevertheless it is, in my opinion,
but another aspect of the banshee-like female who intervenes in the
story of the Curse of Pantannas. One might perhaps treat both as
survivals of a belief in a sort of personification of, or divinity
identified with, a family or tribe, but for the fact that such language
is emptied of most of its meaning by the abstractions which it would
connect with a primitive state of society. So it is preferable, as
coming probably near the truth, to say that what we have here is a
trace of an ancestress. Such an idea of an ancestress as against that
of an ancestor is abundantly countenanced by dim figures like that
of the Dôn of the Mabinogion, and of her counterpart, after whom the
Tribes of the goddess Donu or Danu [48] are known as Tuatha Dé Danann
in Irish literature. But the one who most provokes comparison is the
Old Woman of Beare, already mentioned, pp. 393-4: she figures largely
in Irish folklore as a hag surviving to see her descendants reckoned
by tribes and peoples. It may be only an accident that a poetically
wrought legend pictures her not so much interested in the fortunes of
her progeny as engaged in bewailing the unattractive appearance of
her thin arms and shrivelled hands, together with the general wreck
of the beauty which had been hers some time or other centuries before.

However, the evidence of folklore is not of a kind to warrant our
building any heavy superstructure of theory on the supposition,
that the foundations are firmly held together by a powerful sense of
consistency or homogeneity. So I should hesitate to do anything so
rash as to pronounce the fairies to be all of one and the same origin:
they may well be of several. For instance, there may be those that
have grown out of traditions about an aboriginal pre-Celtic race,
and some may be the representatives of the ghosts of departed men
and women, regarded as one's ancestors; but there can hardly be any
doubt that others, and those possibly not the least interesting,
have originated in the demons and divinities--not all of ancestral
origin--with which the weird fancy of our remote forefathers peopled
lakes and streams, bays and creeks and estuaries. Perhaps it is not
too much to hope that the reader is convinced that in the course of
this chapter some interesting specimens have, so to say, been caught
in their native element, or else in the enjoyment of an amphibious
life of mirth and frolic, largely spent hard by sequestered lakes,
near placid rivers or babbling brooks.








CHAPTER VIII

WELSH CAVE LEGENDS

        Ekei mentoi mian einai nêson, en hê ton Kronon katheirchthai
        phrouroumenon hypo tou Briareô katheudonta; desmon gar autô
        ton hypnon memêchanêsthai, pollous de peri auton einai daimonas
        opadous kai therapontas.--Plutarch.


In previous chapters sundry allusions have been made to treasure
caves besides that of Marchlyn Mawr, which has been given at length
on pp. 234-7 above. Here follow some more, illustrative of this
kind of folklore prevalent in Wales: they are difficult to classify,
but most of them mention treasure with or without sleeping warriors
guarding it. The others are so miscellaneous as to baffle any attempt
to characterize them generally and briefly. Take for instance a
cave in the part of Rhiwarth rock nearest to Cwm Llanhafan, in the
neighbourhood of Llangynog in Montgomeryshire. Into that, according to
Cyndelw in the Brython for 1860, p. 57, some men penetrated as far as
the pound of candles lasted, with which they had provided themselves;
but it appears to be tenanted by a hag who is always busily washing
clothes in a brass pan.

Or take the following, from J. H. Roberts' essay, as given in Welsh in
Edwards' Cymru for 1897, p. 190: it reminds one of an ordinary fairy
tale, but it is not quite like any other which I happen to know:--In
the western end of the Arennig Fawr there is a cave: in fact there
are several caves there, and some of them are very large too; but
there is one to which the finger of tradition points as an ancient
abode of the Tylwyth Teg. About two generations ago, the shepherds
of that country used to be enchanted by one of them called Mary,
who was remarkable for her beauty. Many an effort was made to catch
her or to meet her face to face, but without success, as she was
too quick on her feet. She used to show herself day after day, and
she might be seen, with her little harp, climbing the bare <DW72>s of
the mountain. In misty weather when the days were longest in summer,
the music she made used to be wafted by the breeze to the ears of the
love-sick shepherds. Many a time had the boys of the Filltir Gerrig
heard sweet singing when passing the cave in the full light of day,
but they were subject to some spell, so that they never ventured to
enter. But the shepherd of Boch y Rhaiadr had a better view of the
fairies one Allhallows night (ryw noson Calangaeaf) when returning home
from a merry-making at Amnod. On the sward in front of the cave what
should he see but scores of the Tylwyth Teg singing and dancing! He
never saw another assembly in his life so fair, and great was the
trouble he had to resist being drawn into their circles.

Let us now come to the treasure caves, and begin with Ogof Arthur,
'Arthur's Cave,' in the southern side of Mynyd y Cnwc [49] in the
parish of Llangwyfan, on the south-western coast of Anglesey. The
foot of Mynyd y Cnwc is washed by the sea, and the mouth of the cave
is closed by its waters at high tide, but the cave, which is spacious,
has a vent-hole in the side of the mountain [50]. So it is at any rate
reported in the Brython for 1859, p. 138, by a writer who explored the
place, though not to the end of the mile which it is said to measure
in length. He mentions a local tradition, that it contains various
treasures, and that it temporarily afforded Arthur shelter in the
course of his wars with the Gwydelod or Goidels. But he describes also
a cromlech on the top of Mynyd y Cnwc, around which there was a circle
of stones, while within the latter there lies buried, it is believed,
an iron chest full of ancient gold. Various attempts are said to have
been made by the more greedy of the neighbouring inhabitants to dig it
up, but they have always been frightened away by portents. Here then
the guardians of the treasure are creatures of a supernatural kind,
as in many other instances, and especially that of Dinas Emrys to be
mentioned presently.

Next comes the first of a group of cave legends involving treasure
entrusted to the keeping of armed warriors. It is taken from Elijah
Waring's Recollections and Anecdotes of Edward Williams, Iolo Morgannwg
(London, 1850), pp. 95-8, where it is headed 'A popular Tale in
Glamorgan, by Iolo Morgannwg'; a version of it in Welsh will be found
in the Brython for 1858, p. 162, but Waring's version is in several
respects better, and I give it in his words:--'A Welshman walking over
London Bridge, with a neat hazel staff in his hand, was accosted by an
Englishman, who asked him whence he came. "I am from my own country,"
answered the Welshman, in a churlish tone. "Do not take it amiss, my
friend," said the Englishman; "if you will only answer my questions,
and take my advice, it will be of greater benefit to you than you
imagine. That stick in your hand grew on a spot under which are hid
vast treasures of gold and silver; and if you remember the place, and
can conduct me to it, I will put you in possession of those treasures."

'The Welshman soon understood that the stranger was what he called a
cunning man, or conjurer, and for some time hesitated, not willing to
go with him among devils, from whom this magician must have derived
his knowledge; but he was at length persuaded to accompany him into
Wales; and going to Craig-y-Dinas [Rock of the Fortress], the Welshman
pointed out the spot whence he had cut the stick. It was from the
stock or root of a large old hazel: this they dug up, and under it
found a broad flat stone. This was found to close up the entrance into
a very large cavern, down into which they both went. In the middle
of the passage hung a bell, and the conjurer earnestly cautioned the
Welshman not to touch it. They reached the lower part of the cave,
which was very wide, and there saw many thousands of warriors lying
down fast asleep in a large circle, their heads outwards, every one
clad in bright armour, with their swords, shields, and other weapons
lying by them, ready to be laid hold on in an instant, whenever the
bell should ring and awake them. All the arms were so highly polished
and bright, that they illumined the cavern, as with the light of ten
thousand flames of fire. They saw amongst the warriors one greatly
distinguished from the rest by his arms, shield, battle-axe, and a
crown of gold set with the most precious stones, lying by his side.

'In the midst of this circle of warriors they saw two very large heaps,
one of gold, the other of silver. The magician told the Welshman that
he might take as much as he could carry away of either the one or the
other, but that he was not to take from both the heaps. The Welshman
loaded himself with gold: the conjurer took none, saying that he did
not want it, that gold was of no use but to those who wanted knowledge,
and that his contempt of gold had enabled him to acquire that superior
knowledge and wisdom which he possessed. In their way out he cautioned
the Welshman again not to touch the bell, but if unfortunately he
should do so, it might be of the most fatal consequence to him, as one
or more of the warriors would awake, lift up his head, and ask if it
was day. "Should this happen," said the cunning man, "you must, without
hesitation, answer No, sleep thou on; on hearing which he will again
lay down his head and sleep." In their way up, however, the Welshman,
overloaded with gold, was not able to pass the bell without touching
it--it rang--one of the warriors raised up his head, and asked, "Is it
day?" "No," answered the Welshman promptly, "it is not, sleep thou on;"
so they got out of the cave, laid down the stone over its entrance,
and replaced the hazel tree. The cunning man, before he parted from
his companion, advised him to be economical in the use of his treasure;
observing that he had, with prudence, enough for life: but that if by
unforeseen accidents he should be again reduced to poverty, he might
repair to the cave for more; repeating the caution, not to touch
the bell if possible, but if he should, to give the proper answer,
that it was not day, as promptly as possible. He also told him that
the distinguished person they had seen was Arthur, and the others his
warriors; and they lay there asleep with their arms ready at hand,
for the dawn of that day when the Black Eagle and the Golden Eagle
should go to war, the loud clamour of which would make the earth
tremble so much, that the bell would ring loudly, and the warriors
awake, take up their arms, and destroy all the enemies of the Cymry,
who afterwards should repossess the Island of Britain, re-establish
their own king and government at Caerlleon, and be governed with
justice, and blessed with peace so long as the world endures.

'The time came when the Welshman's treasure was all spent: he went to
the cave, and as before overloaded himself. In his way out he touched
the bell: it rang: a warrior lifted up his head, asking if it was day,
but the Welshman, who had covetously overloaded himself, being quite
out of breath with labouring under his burden, and withal struck
with terror, was not able to give the necessary answer; whereupon
some of the warriors got up, took the gold away from him, and beat
him dreadfully. They afterwards threw him out, and drew the stone
after them over the mouth of the cave. The Welshman never recovered
the effects of that beating, but remained almost a <DW36> as long as
he lived, and very poor. He often returned with some of his friends
to Craig-y-Dinas; but they could never afterwards find the spot,
though they dug over, seemingly, every inch of the hill.'

This story of Iolo's closes with a moral, which I omit in order to
make room for what he says in a note to the effect, that there are two
hills in Glamorganshire called Craig-y-Dinas--nowadays the more usual
pronunciation in South Wales is Craig y Dinas--one in the parish of
Llantrissant and the other in Ystrad Dyfodwg. There was also a hill
so called, Iolo says, in the Vale of Towy, not far from Carmarthen. He
adds that in Glamorgan the tale is related of the Carmarthenshire hill,
while in Carmarthenshire the hill is said to be in Glamorgan. According
to Iolo's son, Taliesin Williams [51] or Taliesin ab Iolo, the Craig y
Dinas with which the Cave of Arthur (or Owen Lawgoch) is associated is
the one on the borders of Glamorgan and Brecknockshire. That is also
the opinion of my friend Mr. Reynolds, who describes this craig and
dinas as a very bold rocky eminence at the top of the Neath Valley,
near Pont Ned Fechan. He adds that in this tale as related to his
mother 'in her very young days' by a very old woman, known as Mari
Shencin y Clochyd 'Jenkin the Sexton's Mary,' the place of Arthur
was taken by Owen Lawgoch, 'Owen of the Red Hand,' of whom more anon.

The next Arthurian story is not strictly in point, for it makes no
allusion to treasure; but as it is otherwise so similar to Iolo's
tale I cannot well avoid introducing it here. It is included in the
composite story of Bwca 'r Trwyn, 'the Bogie of the Nose,' written
out for me in Gwentian Welsh by Mr. Craigfryn Hughes. The cave portion
relates how a Monmouthshire farmer, whose house was grievously troubled
by the bogie, set out one morning to call on a wizard who lived near
Caerleon, and how he on his way came up with a very strange and odd
man who wore a three-cornered hat. They fell into conversation, and
the strange man asked the farmer if he should like to see something of
a wonder. He answered he would. 'Come with me then,' said the wearer
of the cocked hat, 'and you shall see what nobody else alive to-day
has seen.' When they had reached the middle of a wood this spiritual
guide sprang from horseback and kicked a big stone near the road. It
instantly moved aside to disclose the mouth of a large cave; and now
said he to the farmer, 'Dismount and bring your horse in here: tie him
up alongside of mine, and follow me so that you may see something which
the eyes of man have not beheld for centuries.' The farmer, having
done as he was ordered, followed his guide for a long distance: they
came at length to the top of a flight of stairs, where two huge bells
were hanging. 'Now mind,' said the warning voice of the strange guide,
'not to touch either of those bells.' At the bottom of the stairs there
was a vast chamber with hundreds of men lying at full length on the
floor, each with his head reposing on the stock of his gun. 'Have you
any notion who these men are?' 'No,' replied the farmer, 'I have not,
nor have I any idea what they want in such a place as this.' 'Well,'
said the guide, 'these are Arthur's thousand soldiers reposing and
sleeping till the Kymry have need of them. Now let us get out as fast
as our feet can carry us.' When they reached the top of the stairs,
the farmer somehow struck his elbow against one of the bells so that
it rang, and in the twinkling of an eye all the sleeping host rose to
their feet shouting together, 'Are the Kymry in straits?' 'Not yet:
sleep you on,' replied the wearer of the cocked hat, whereupon they
all dropped down on their guns to resume their slumbers at once. 'These
are the valiant men,' he went on to say, 'who are to turn the scale in
favour of the Kymry when the time comes for them to cast the Saxon yoke
off their necks and to recover possession of their country.' When the
two had returned to their horses at the mouth of the cave, his guide
said to the farmer, 'Now go in peace, and let me warn you on the pain
of death not to utter a syllable about what you have seen for the
space of a year and a day: if you do, woe awaits you.' After he had
moved the stone back to its place the farmer lost sight of him. When
the year had lapsed the farmer happened to pass again that way, but,
though he made a long and careful search, he failed completely to
find the stone at the mouth of the cave.

To return to Iolo's yarn, one may say that there are traces of his
story as at one time current in Merionethshire, but with the variation
that the Welshman met the wizard not on London Bridge but at a fair
at Bala, and that the cave was somewhere in Merioneth: the hero was
Arthur, and the cave was known as Ogof Arthur. Whether any such cave is
still known I cannot tell; but a third and interestingly told version
is given in the Brython for 1858, p. 179, by the late Gwynionyd, who
gives the story as the popular belief in his native parish of Troed
yr Aur, halfway between Newcastle Emlyn and Aber Porth, in South
Cardiganshire. In this last version the hero is not Arthur, but the
later man as follows:--Not the least of the wonders of imagination
wont to exercise the minds of the old people was the story of Owen
Lawgoch. One sometimes hears sung in our fairs the words:--


        Yr Owain hwn yw Harri 'r Nawfed
        Syd yn trigo 'ngwlad estronied, &c.

        This Owen is Henry the Ninth,
        Who tarries in a foreign land, &c.


But this Owen Lawgoch, the national deliverer of our ancient
race of Brythons, did not, according to the Troed yr Aur people,
tarry in a foreign land, but somewhere in Wales, not far from Offa's
<DW18>. They used to say that one Dafyd Meirig of Bettws Bledrws, having
quarrelled with his father, left for Lloegr [52], 'England.' When he
had got a considerable distance from home, he struck a bargain with a
cattle dealer to drive a herd of his beasts to London. Somewhere at
the corner of a vast moor Dafyd cut a very remarkable hazel stick;
for a good staff is as essential to the vocation of a good drover as
teeth are to a dog. So while his comrades had had their sticks broken
before reaching London, Dafyd's remained as it was, and whilst they
were conversing together on London Bridge a stranger accosted Dafyd,
wishing to know where he had obtained that wonderful stick. He replied
that it was in Wales he had had it, and on the stranger's assuring
him that there were wondrous things beneath the tree on which it had
grown, they both set out for Wales. When they reached the spot and dug
a little they found that there was a great hollow place beneath. As
night was spreading out her sable mantle, and as they were getting
deeper, what should they find but stairs easy to step and great
lamps illumining the vast chamber! They descended slowly, with mixed
emotions of dread and invincible desire to see the place. When they
reached the bottom of the stairs, they found themselves near a large
table, at one end of which they beheld sitting a tall man of about
seven foot. He occupied an old-fashioned chair and rested his head on
his left hand, while the other hand, all red, lay on the table and
grasped a great sword. He was withal enjoying a wondrously serene
sleep; and at his feet on the floor lay a big dog. After casting
a glance at them, the wizard said to Dafyd: 'This is Owen Lawgoch,
who is to sleep on till a special time, when he will wake and reign
over the Brythons. That weapon in his hand is one of the swords of
the ancient kings of Prydain. No battle was ever lost in which that
sword was used.' Then they moved slowly on, gazing at the wonders
of that subterranean chamber; and they beheld everywhere the arms
of ages long past, and on the table thousands of gold pieces bearing
the images of the different kings of Prydain. They got to understand
that it was permitted them to take a handful of each, but not to
put any in their purses. They both visited the cave several times,
but at last Dafyd put in his purse a little of the gold bearing the
image of one of the bravest of Owen's ancestors. But after coming out
again they were never able any more to find Owen's subterranean palace.

Those are, says Gwynionyd, the ideas cherished by the old people
of Troed yr Aur in Keredigion, and the editor adds a note that the
same sort of story is current among the peasantry of Cumberland, and
perhaps of other parts of Britain. This remark will at once recall to
the reader's mind the well-known verses [53] of the Scottish poet,
Leyden, as to Arthur asleep in a cave in the Eildon Hills in the
neighbourhood of Melrose Abbey. But he will naturally ask why London
Bridge is introduced into this and Iolo's story, and in answer I have
to say, firstly, that London Bridge formerly loomed very large in the
popular imagination as one of the chief wonders of London, itself the
most wonderful city in the world. Such at any rate was the notion
cherished as to London and London Bridge by the country people of
Wales, even within my own memory. Secondly, the fashion of selecting
London Bridge as the opening scene of a treasure legend had been set,
perhaps, by a widely spread English story to the following effect:--A
certain pedlar of Swaffham in Norfolk had a dream, that if he went and
stood on London Bridge he would have very joyful news; as the dream was
doubled and trebled he decided to go. So he stood on the bridge two
or three days, when at last a shopkeeper, observing that he loitered
there so long, neither offering anything for sale nor asking for alms,
inquired of him as to his business. The pedlar told him his errand,
and was heartily laughed at by the shopkeeper, who said that he had
dreamt that night that he was at a place called Swaffham in Norfolk,
and that if he only dug under a great oak tree in an orchard behind
a pedlar's house there, he would find a vast treasure; but the place
was utterly unknown to him, and he was not such a fool as to follow
a silly dream. No, he was wiser than that; so he advised the pedlar
to go home to mind his business. The pedlar very quietly took in
the words as to the dream, and hastened home to Swaffham, where he
found the treasure in his own orchard. The rest of the story need
not be related here, as it is quite different from the Welsh ones,
which the reader has just had brought under his notice [54].

To return to Owen Lawgoch, for we have by no means done with him:
on the farm of Cil yr Ychen there stands a remarkable limestone
hill called y Dinas, 'the Fortress,' hardly a mile to the north of
the village of Llandybïe, in Carmarthenshire. This dinas and the
lime-kilns that are gradually consuming it are to be seen on the
right from the railway as you go from Llandeilo to Llandybïe. It
is a steep high rock which forms a very good natural fortification,
and in the level area on the top is the mouth of a very long cavern,
known as Ogo'r Dinas, 'the Dinas Cave.' The entrance into it is small
and low, but it gradually widens out, becoming in one place lofty and
roomy with several smaller branch caves leading out of it; and it is
believed that some of them connect Ogo'r Dinas with smaller caves at
Pant y Llyn, 'the Lake Hollow,' where, as the name indicates, there is
a small lake a little higher up: both Ogo'r Dinas and Pant y Llyn are
within a mile of the village of Llandybïe [55]. Now I am informed,
in a letter written in 1893 by one native, that the local legend
about Ogo'r Dinas is that Owen Lawgoch and his men are lying asleep
in it, while another native, Mr. Fisher, writing in the same year,
but on the authority of somewhat later hearsay, expresses himself as
follows:--'I remember hearing two traditions respecting Ogo'r Dinas:
(1) that King Arthur and his warriors lie sleeping in it with their
right hands clasping the hilts of their drawn swords ready to encounter
anyone who may venture to disturb their repose--is there not a dinas
somewhere in Carnarvonshire with a similar legend? (2) That Owen
Lawgoch lived in it some time or other: that is all that I remember
having heard about him in connection with this ogof.' Mr. Fisher
proceeds, moreover, to state that it is said of an ogof at Pant y Llyn,
that Owen Lawgoch and his men on a certain occasion took refuge in it,
where they were shut up and starved to death. He adds that, however
this may be, it is a fact that in the year 1813 ten or more human
skeletons of unusual stature were discovered in an ogof there [56].

To this I may append a reference to the Geninen for 1896, p. 84,
where Mr. Lleufer Thomas, who is also a native of the district,
alludes to the local belief that Owen Lawgoch and his men are asleep,
as already mentioned, in the cave of Pant y Llyn, and that they are
to go on sleeping there till a trumpet blast and the clash of arms
on Rhiw Goch rouse them to sally forth to combat the Saxons and to
conquer, as set forth by Howells: see p. 381 above. It is needless
to say that there is no reason, as will be seen presently, to suppose
Owen Lawgoch to have ever been near any of the caves to which allusion
has here been made; but that does not appreciably detract from the
fascination of the legend which has gathered round his personality;
and in passing I may be allowed to express my surprise that in such
stories as these the earlier Owen has not been eclipsed by Owen
Glyndwr: there must be some historical reason why that has not taken
place. Can it be that a habit of caution made Welshmen speak of Owen
Lawgoch when the other Owen was really meant?

The passage I have cited from Mr. Fisher's letter raises the question
of a dinas in Carnarvonshire, which that of his native parish
recalled to his mind; and this is to be considered next. Doubtless he
meant Dinas Emrys formerly called Din Emreis [57], 'the Fortress of
Ambrosius,' situated near Bedgelert, and known in the neighbourhood
simply as y Dinas, 'the Fort.' It is celebrated in the Vortigern legend
as the place where the dragons had been hidden, that frustrated the
building of that king's castle; and the spot is described in Lewis'
Topographical Dictionary of Wales, in the article on Bethgelart
(Bed-Celert), as an isolated rocky eminence with an extensive top area,
which is defended by walls of loose stones, and accessible only on
one side. He adds that the entrance appears to have been guarded by
two towers, and that within the enclosed area are the foundations of
circular buildings of loose stones forming walls of about five feet
in thickness. Concerning that Dinas we read in the Brython for 1861,
p. 329, a legend to the following effect:--Now after the departure
of Vortigern, Myrdin, or Merlin as he is called in English, remained
himself in the Dinas for a long time, until, in fact, he went away
with Emrys Ben-aur, 'Ambrosius the Gold-headed'--evidently Aurelius
Ambrosius is meant. When he was about to set out with the latter, he
put all his treasure and wealth into a crochan aur, 'a gold cauldron,'
and hid it in a cave in the Dinas, and on the mouth of the cave he
rolled a huge stone, which he covered up with earth and sods, so that
it was impossible for any one to find it. He intended this wealth
to be the property of some special person in a future generation,
and it is said that the heir to it is to be a youth with yellow hair
and blue eyes. When that one comes near to the Dinas a bell will
ring to invite him to the cave, which will open of itself as soon
as his foot touches it. Now the fact that some such legend was once
currently believed about Bedgelert and Nanhwynain is proved by the
curious stories as to various attempts made to find the treasure,
and the thunderstorms and portents which used to vanquish the local
greed for gold. For several instances in point see the Brython,
pp. 329-30; and for others, showing how hidden treasure is carefully
reserved for the right sort of heir, see p. 148 above. To prove how
widely this idea prevailed in Carnarvonshire, I may add a short story
which Mrs. Williams-Ellis of Glasfryn got from the engineer who told
her of the sacred eel of Llangybi (p. 366):--There was on Pentyrch,
the hill above Llangybi, he said, a large stone so heavy and fixed so
fast in the ground that no horses, no men could move it: it had often
been tried. One day, however, a little girl happened to be playing by
the stone, and at the touch of her little hand the stone moved. A hoard
of coins was found under it, and that at a time when the little girl's
parents happened to be in dire need of it. Search had long been made
by undeserving men for treasure supposed to be hidden at that spot; but
it was always unsuccessful until the right person touched the stone to
move. The failure of the wrong person to secure the treasure, even when
discovered, is illustrated by a story given by Mr. Derfel Hughes in
his Antiquities of Llandegai and Llanllechid, pp. 35-6, to the effect
that a servant man, somewhere up among the mountains near Ogwen Lake,
chanced to come across the mouth of a cave with abundance of vessels
of brass (pres) of every shape and description within it. He went
at once and seized one of them, but, alas! it was too heavy for him
to stir it. So he resolved to go away and return early on the morrow
with a friend to help him; but before going he closed the mouth of the
cave with stones and sods so as to leave it safe. While thus engaged
he remembered having heard how others had like him found caves and
failed to refind them. He could procure nothing readily that would
satisfy him as a mark, so it occurred to him to dot his path with
the chippings of his stick, which he whittled all the way as he went
back until he came to a familiar track: the chips were to guide him
back to the cave. So when the morning came he and his friend set out,
but when they reached the point where the chips should begin, not one
was to be seen: the Tylwyth Teg had picked up every one of them. So
that discovery of articles of brass--more probably bronze--was in
vain. But, says the writer, it is not fated to be always in vain,
for there is a tradition in the valley that it is a Gwydel, 'Goidel,
Irishman,' who is to have these treasures, and that it will happen in
this wise:--A Gwydel will come to the neighbourhood to be a shepherd,
and one day when he goes up the mountain to see to the sheep, just
when it pleases the fates a black sheep with a speckled head will
run before him and make straight for the cave: the sheep will go
in, with the Gwydel in pursuit trying to catch him. When the Gwydel
enters he sees the treasures, looks at them with surprise, and takes
possession of them; and thus, in some generation to come, the Gwydyl
will have their own restored to them. That is the tradition which
Derfel Hughes found in the vale of the Ogwen, and he draws from it
the inference which it seems to warrant, in words to the following
effect:--Perhaps this shows us that the Gwydyl had some time or other
something to do with these parts, and that we are not to regard as
stories without foundations all that is said of that nation; and
the sayings of old people to this day show that there is always some
spite between our nation and the Gwydyl. Thus, for instance, he goes
on to say, if a man proves changeable, he is said to have become a
Gwydel (Y mae wedi troi'n Wydel), or if one is very shameless and
cheeky he is called a Gwydel and told to hold his tongue (Taw yr hen
Wydel); and a number of such locutions used by our people proves,
he thinks, the former prevalence of much contention between the two
sister-nations. Expressions of the kind mentioned by Mr. Hughes are
well known in all parts of the Principality, and it is difficult to
account for them except on the supposition that Goidels and Brythons
lived for a long time face to face, so to say, with one another over
large areas in the west of our island.

The next story to be mentioned belongs to the same Snowdonian
neighbourhood, and brings us back to Arthur and his Men. For a writer
who has already been quoted from the Brython for 1861, p. 331,
makes Arthur and his following set out from Dinas Emrys and cross
Hafod y Borth mountain for a place above the upper reach of Cwmllan,
called Tregalan, where they found their antagonists. From Tregalan
the latter were pushed up the bwlch or pass, towards Cwm Dyli; but
when the vanguard of the army with Arthur leading had reached the top
of the pass, the enemy discharged a shower of arrows at them. There
Arthur fell, and his body was buried in the pass so that no enemy
might march that way so long as Arthur's dust rested there. That,
he says, is the story, and there to this day remains in the pass, he
asserts, the heap of stones called Carned Arthur, 'Arthur's Cairn':
the pass is called Bwlch y Saethau, 'the Pass of the Arrows.' Then
Ogof Llanciau Eryri is the subject of the following story given at
p. 371 of the same volume:--After Arthur's death on Bwlch y Saethau,
his men ascended to the ridge of the Lliwed and descended thence into
a vast cave called Ogof Llanciau Eryri, 'the young Men of Snowdonia's
Cave,' which is in the precipitous cliff on the left-hand side near
the top of Llyn Llydaw. This is in Cwm Dyli, and there in that cave
those warriors are said to be still, sleeping in their armour and
awaiting the second coming of Arthur to restore the crown of Britain
to the Kymry. For the saying is:--


        Llancia' 'Ryri a'u gwyn gyll a'i hennill hi.

        Snowdonia's youths with their white hazels will win it.


As the local shepherds were one day long ago collecting their sheep
on the Lliwed, one sheep fell down to a shelf in this precipice,
and when the Cwm Dyli shepherd made his way to the spot he perceived
that the ledge of rock on which he stood led to the hidden cave of
Llanciau Eryri. There was light within: he looked in and beheld a
host of warriors without number all asleep, resting on their arms and
ready equipped for battle. Seeing that they were all asleep, he felt
a strong desire to explore the whole place; but as he was squeezing
in he struck his head against the bell hanging in the entrance. It
rang so that every corner of the immense cave rang again, and all
the warriors woke uttering a terrible shout, which so frightened the
shepherd that he never more enjoyed a day's health; nor has anybody
since dared as much as to approach the mouth of the cave.

Thus far the Brython, and I have only to remark that this legend is
somewhat remarkable for the fact of its representing the Youths of
Eryri sleeping away in their cave without Arthur among them. In fact,
that hero is described as buried not very far off beneath a carned
or cairn on Bwlch y Saethau. As to the exact situation of that cairn,
I may say that my attention was drawn some time ago to the following
lines by Mr. William Owen, better known as Glaslyn, a living bard
bred and born in the district:--


        Gerllaw Carned Arthur ar ysgwyd y Wydfa
        Y gorwed gwedillion y cawr enwog Ricca.

        Near Arthur's Cairn on the shoulder of Snowdon
        Lie the remains of the famous giant Ricca.


These words recall an older couplet in a poem by Rhys Goch Eryri,
who is said to have died in the year 1420. He was a native of the
parish of Bedgelert, and his words in point run thus:--


    Ar y drum oer dramawr,      On the ridge cold and vast,
    Yno gorwed Ricca Gawr.      There the Giant Ricca lies.


From this it is clear that Rhys Goch meant that the cairn on the top of
Snowdon covered the remains of the giant whose name has been variously
written Ricca, Ritta, and Rhita. So I was impelled to ascertain from
Glaslyn whether I had correctly understood his lines, and he has been
good enough to help me out of some of my difficulties, as I do not know
Snowdon by heart, especially the Nanhwynain and Bedgelert side of the
mountain:--The cairn on the summit of Snowdon was the Giant's before
it was demolished and made into a sort of tower which existed before
the hotel was made. Glaslyn has not heard it called after Ricca's
name, but he states that old people used to call it Carned y Cawr,
'the Giant's Cairn.' In 1850 Carned Arthur, 'Arthur's Cairn,' was to
be seen on the top of Bwlch y Saethau, but he does not know whether
it is still so, as he has not been up there since the building of the
hotel. Bwlch y Saethau is a lofty shoulder of Snowdon extending in the
direction of Nanhwynain, and the distance from the top of Snowdon to
it is not great; it would take you half an hour or perhaps a little
more to walk from the one carned to the other. It is possible to
trace Arthur's march from Dinas Emrys up the <DW72>s of Hafod y Borth,
over the shoulder of the Aran and Braich yr Oen to Tregalan--or Cwm
Tregalan, as it is now called--but from Tregalan he would have to
climb in a north-easterly direction in order to reach Bwlch y Saethau,
where he is related to have fallen and to have been interred beneath
a cairn. This may be regarded as an ordinary or commonplace account
of his death. But the scene suggests a far more romantic picture;
for down below was Llyn Llydaw with its sequestered isle, connected
then by means only of a primitive canoe with a shore occupied by men
engaged in working the ore of Eryri. Nay with the eyes of Malory we
seem to watch Bedivere making, with Excalibur in his hands, his three
reluctant journeys to the lake ere he yielded it to the arm emerging
from the deep. We fancy we behold how 'euyn fast by the banke houed
a lytyl barge wyth many fayr ladyes in hit,' which was to carry
the wounded Arthur away to the accompaniment of mourning and loud
lamentation; but the legend of the Marchlyn bids us modify Malory's
language as to the barge containing many ladies all wearing black
hoods, and take our last look at the warrior departing rather in a
coracle with three wondrously fair women attending to his wounds [58].

Some further notes on Snowdon, together with a curious account of
the Cave of Llanciau Eryri, have been kindly placed at my disposal by
Mr. Ellis Pierce (Elis [59] o'r Nant) of Dolwydelan:--In the uppermost
part of the hollow called Cwmllan is Tregalan, and in the middle of
Cwm Tregalan is a green hill, or rather an eminence which hardly forms
a hill, but what is commonly called a boncyn [60] in Carnarvonshire,
and between that green boncyn and the Clogwyn Du, 'Black Precipice,' is
a bog, the depth of which no one has ever succeeded in ascertaining,
and a town--inferred perhaps from tre in Tregalan--is fabled to
have been swallowed up there. Another of my informants speaks of
several hillocks or boncyns as forming one side of this little cwm;
but he has heard from geologists, that these green mounds represent
moraines deposited there in the glacial period. From the bottom of the
Clogwyn Du it is about a mile to Bwlch y Saethau. Then as to the cave
of Llanciau Eryri, which nobody can now find, the <DW72> down to it
begins from the top of the Lliwed, but ordinarily speaking one could
not descend to where it is supposed to have been without the help
of ropes, which seems incompatible with the story of the Cwm Dyli
shepherd following a sheep until he was at the mouth of the cave;
not to mention the difficulty which the descent would have offered
to Arthur's men when they entered it. Then Elis o'r Nant's story
represents it shutting after them, and only opening to the shepherd
in consequence of his having trodden on a particular sod or spot. He
then slid down unintentionally and touched the bell that was hanging
there, so that it rang and instantly woke the sleeping warriors. No
sooner had that happened than those men of Arthur's took up their
guns--never mind the anachronism--and the shepherd made his way out
more dead than alive; and the frightened fellow never recovered from
the shock to the day of his death. When these warriors take up their
guns they fire away, we are told, without mercy from where each man
stands: they are not to advance a single step till Arthur comes to
call them back to the world.

To swell the irrelevancies under which this chapter labours already,
and to avoid severing cognate questions too rudely, I wish to add
that Elis o'r Nant makes the name of the giant buried on the top of
Snowdon into Rhitta or Rhita instead of Ricca. That is also the form
of the name with which Mrs. Rhys was familiar throughout her childhood
on the Llanberis side of the mountain. She often heard of Rhita [61]
Gawr having been buried on the top of Snowdon, and of other warriors
on other parts of Snowdon such as Moel Gynghorion and the Gist on
that moel. But Elis o'r Nant goes further, and adds that from Rhita
the mountain was called Wydfa Rhita, more correctly Gwydfa Rita,
'Rhita's Gwydfa.' Fearing this might be merely an inference, I have
tried to cross-examine him so far as that is possible by letter. He
replies that his father was bred and born in the little glen called
Ewybrnant [62], between Bettws y Coed and Pen Machno, and that his
grandfather also lived there, where he appears to have owned land not
far from the home of the celebrated Bishop Morgan. Now Elis' father
often talked, he says, in his hearing of 'Gwydfa Rhita.' Wishing to
have some more definite evidence, I wrote again, and he informs me
that his father was very fond of talking about his father, Elis o'r
Nant's grandfather, who appears to have been a character and a great
supporter of Sir Robert Williams, especially in a keenly contested
political election in 1796, when the latter was opposed by the then
head of the Penrhyn family. Sometimes the old man from Ewybrnant
would set out in his clocs, 'clogs or wooden shoes,' to visit Sir
Robert Williams, who lived at Plas y Nant, near Bedgelert. On starting
he would say to his family, Mi a'i hyibio troed Gwydfa Rhita ag mi
do'n ol rwbrud cin nos, or sometimes foru. That is, 'I'll go round
the foot of Rhita's Gwydfa and come back some time before night':
sometimes he would say 'to-morrow.' Elis also states that his father
used to relate how Rhita's Gwydfa was built, namely by the simple
process of each of his soldiers taking a stone to place on Rhita's
tomb. However the story as to Rhita Gawr being buried on the top of
Snowdon came into existence, there can be no doubt that it was current
in comparatively recent times, and that the Welsh name of y Wydfa,
derived from it, refers to the mountain as distinguished from the
district in which it is situated. In Welsh this latter is Eryri,
the habitat, as it were, of the eryr, 'eagle,' a bird formerly at
home there as many local names go to prove, such as Carreg yr Eryr
[63], 'the Stone of the Eagle,' mentioned in the boundaries of the
lands on Snowdon granted to the Abbey of Aberconwy in Llewelyn's
charter, where also Snowdon mountain is called Wedua vawr, 'the Great
Gwydfa.' Now, as already suggested, the word gwydfa takes us back to
Rhita's Carned or Cairn, as it signified a monument, a tomb or barrow:
Dr. Davies gives it in his Welsh-Latin Dictionary as Locus Sepulturæ,
Mausoleum. This meaning of the word may be illustrated by a reference
in passing to the mention in Brut y Tywysogion of the burial of Madog
ab Maredyd. For under the year 1159 we are told that he was interred
at Meifod, as it was there his tomb or the vault of his family,
the one intended also for him (y 6ydua [64]), happened to be.

Against the evidence just given, that tradition places Rhita's grave
on the top of Snowdon, a passing mention by Derfel Hughes (p. 52)
is of no avail, though to the effect that it is on the top of the
neighbouring mountain called Carned Lywelyn, 'Llewelyn's Cairn,'
that Rhita's Cairn was raised. He deserves more attention, however,
when he places Carned Drystan, 'Tristan or Tristram's Cairn,' on
a spur of that mountain, to wit, towards the east above Ffynnon y
Llyffaint [65]. For it is worthy of note that the name of Drystan,
associated with Arthur in the later romances, should figure with that
of Arthur in the topography of the same Snowdon district.

Before leaving Snowdon I may mention a cave near a small stream not
far from Llyn Gwynain, about a mile and a half above Dinas Emrys. In
the Llwyd letter (printed in the Cambrian Journal for 1859, pp. 142,
209), on which I have already drawn, it is called Ogo'r Gwr Blew, 'the
Hairy Man's Cave'; and the story relates how the Gwr Blew who lived in
it was fatally wounded by a woman who happened to be at home, alone,
in one of the nearest farm houses when the Gwr Blew came to plunder
it. Its sole interest here is that a later version [66] identifies the
Hairy Man with Owen Lawgoch, after modifying the former's designation
y Gwr Blew, which literally meant 'the Hair Man,' into y Gwr Blewog,
'the Hairy Man.' This doubtful instance of the presence of Owen
Lawgoch in the folklore of North Wales seems to stand alone.

Some of these cave stories, it will have been seen, reveal to us
a hero who is expected to return to interfere again in the affairs
of this world, and it is needless to say that Wales is by no means
alone in the enjoyment of imaginary prospects of this kind. The
same sort of poetic expectation has not been unknown, for instance,
in Ireland. In the summer of 1894, I spent some sunny days in the
neighbourhood of the Boyne, and one morning I resolved to see the
chief burial mounds dotting the banks of that interesting river;
but before leaving the hotel at Drogheda, my attention was attracted
by a book of railway advertisement of the kind which forcibly impels
one to ask two questions: why will not the railway companies leave
those people alone who do not want to travel, and why will they make
it so tedious for those who do? But on turning the leaves of that
booklet over I was inclined to a suaver mood, as I came on a paragraph
devoted to an ancient stronghold called the Grianan of Aileach, or
Greenan-Ely, in the highlands of Donegal. Here I read that a thousand
armed men sit resting there on their swords, and bound by magic sleep
till they are to be called forth to take their part in the struggle
for the restoration of Erin's freedom. At intervals they awake, it
is said, and looking up from their trance they ask in tones which
solemnly resound through the many chambers of the Grianan: 'Is the
time come?' A loud voice, that of the spiritual caretaker, is heard
to reply: 'The time is not yet.' They resume their former posture and
sink into their sleep again. That is the substance of the words I read,
and they called to my mind the legend of such heroes of the past as
Barbarossa, with his sleep interrupted only by his change of posture
once in seven years; of Dom Sebastian, for centuries expected from
Moslem lands to restore the glories of Portugal; of the Cid Rodrigo,
expected back to do likewise with the kingdom of Castile; and last,
but not least, of the O'Donoghue who sleeps beneath the Lakes of
Killarney, ready to emerge to right the wrongs of Erin. With my head
full of these and the like dreams of folklore, I was taken over the
scene of the Battle of the Boyne; and the car-driver, having vainly
tried to interest me in it, gave me up in despair as an uncultured
savage who felt no interest in the history of Ireland. However he
somewhat changed his mind when, on reaching the first ancient burial
mound, he saw me disappear underground, fearless of the Fomhoraigh;
and he began to wonder whether I should ever return to pay him his
fare. This in fact was the sheet anchor of all my hopes; for I thought
that in case I remained fast in a narrow passage, or lost my way in
the chambers of the prehistoric dead, the jarvey must fetch me out
again. So by the time I had visited three of these ancient places,
Dowth, Knowth, and New Grange, I had risen considerably in his
opinion; and he bethought him of stories older than the Battle of
the Boyne. So he told me on the way back several bits of something
less drearily historical. Among other things, he pointed in the
direction of a place called Ardee in the county of Louth, where,
he said, there is Garry Geerlaug's enchanted fort full of warriors
in magic sleep, with Garry Geerlaug himself in their midst. Once on
a time a herdsman is said to have strayed into their hall, he said,
and to have found the sleepers each with his sword and his spear
ready to hand. But as the intruder could not keep his hands off the
metal wealth of the place, the owners of the spears began to rouse
themselves, and the intruder had to flee for his life. But there that
armed host is awaiting the eventful call to arms, when they are to
sally forth to restore prosperity and glory to Ireland. That was his
story, and I became all attention as soon as I heard of Ardee, which
is in Irish Áth Fhir-dheadh, or the Ford of Fer-deadh, so called from
Fer-deadh, who fought a protracted duel with Cúchulainn in that ford,
where at the end, according to a well-known Irish story, he fell by
Cúchulainn's hand. I was still more exercised by the name of Garry
Geerlaug, as I recognized in Garry an Anglo-Irish pronunciation
of the Norse name Godhfreydhr, later Godhroedh, sometimes rendered
Godfrey and sometimes Godred, while in Man and in Scotland it has
become Gorry, which may be heard also in Ireland. I thought, further,
that I recognized the latter part of Garry Geerlaug's designation
as the Norse female name Geirlaug. There was no complete lack of
Garries in that part of Ireland in the tenth and eleventh centuries;
but I have not yet found any historian to identify for me the warrior
named or nicknamed Garry Geerlaug, who is to return blinking to this
world of ours when his nap is over. Leaving Ireland, I was told the
other day of a place called Tom na Hurich, near Inverness, where Finn
and his following are resting, each on his left elbow, enjoying a
broken sleep while waiting for the note to be sounded, which is to
call them forth. What they are then to do I have not been told: it
may be that they will proceed at once to solve the Crofter Question,
for there will doubtless be one.

It appears, to come back to Wales, that King Cadwaladr, who waged an
unsuccessful war with the Angles of Northumbria in the seventh century,
was long after his death expected to return to restore the Brythons
to power. At any rate so one is led in some sort of a hazy fashion to
believe in reading several of the poems in the manuscript known as
the Book of Taliessin. One finds, however, no trace of Cadwaladr in
our cave legends: the heroes of them are Arthur and Owen Lawgoch. Now
concerning Arthur one need at this point hardly speak, except to say
that the Welsh belief in the eventual return of Arthur was at one
time a powerful motive affecting the behaviour of the people of Wales,
as was felt, for instance, by English statesmen in the reign of Henry
II. But by our time the expected return of Arthur--rexque futurus--has
dissipated itself into a commonplace of folklore fitted only to point
an allegory, as when Elvet Lewis, one of the sweetest of living Welsh
poets, sings in a poem entitled Arthur gyda ni, 'Arthur with us':--


    Mae Arthur Fawr yn cysgu,       Great Arthur still is sleeping,
    A'i dewrion syd o'i deutu,      His warriors all around him,
        A'u gafael ar y cled:           With grip upon the steel:
    Pan daw yn dyd yn Nghymru,      When dawns the day on Cambry,
    Daw Arthur Fawr i fynu          Great Arthur forth will sally
        Yn fyw--yn fyw o'i fed!         Alive to work her weal!


Not so with regard to the hopes associated with the name of Owen
Lawgoch; for we have it on Gwynionyd's testimony, p. 464, that our old
baledwyr or ballad men used to sing about him at Welsh fairs: it is not
in the least improbable that they still do so here and there, unless
the horrors of the ghastly murder last reported in the newspapers
have been found to pay better. At any rate Mr. Fisher (p. 379) has
known old people in his native district in the Llychwr Valley who
could repeat stanzas or couplets from the ballads in question. He
traces these scraps to a booklet entitled Merlin's Prophecy [67],
together with a brief history of his life, taken from the Book of
Prognostication. This little book bears no date, but appears to
have been published in the early part of the nineteenth century. It
is partly in prose, dealing briefly with the history of Merlin the
Wild or Silvaticus, and the rest consists of two poems. The first
of these poems is entitled Dechreu Darogan Myrdin, 'the Beginning
of Merlin's Prognostication,' and is made up of forty-nine verses,
several of which speak of Owen as king conquering all his foes and
driving out the Saxons: then in the forty-seventh stanza comes the
couplet which says, that this Owen is Henry the Ninth, who is tarrying
in a foreign land. The other poem is of a more general character,
and is entitled the Second Song of Merlin's Prognostication, and
consists of twenty-six stanzas of four lines each like the previous
one; but the third stanza describes Arthur's bell at Caerlleon,
'Caerleon,' ringing with great vigour to herald the coming of Owen;
and the seventh stanza begins with the following couplet:--


        Ceir gweled Owen Law-goch yn d'od i Frydain Fawr,
        Ceir gweled newyn ceiniog yn nhref Gaerlleon-gawr.

        Owen Lawgoch one shall to Britain coming see,
        And dearth of pennies find at Chester on the Dee.


It closes with the date in verse at the end, to wit, 1668, which
takes us back to very troublous times: 1668 was the year of the
Triple Alliance of England, Sweden, and Holland against Louis XIV;
and it was not long after the Plague had raged, and London had had its
Great Fire. So it is a matter of no great surprise if some people in
Wales had a notion that the power of England was fast nearing its end,
and that the baledwyr thought it opportune to refurbish and adapt some
of Merlin's prophecies as likely to be acceptable to the peasantry of
South Wales. At all events we have no reason to suppose that the two
poems which have here been described from Mr. Fisher's data represented
either the gentry of Wales, whose ordinary speech was probably for
the most part English, or the bardic fraternity, who would have looked
with contempt at the language and style of the Prognostication. For,
apart from careless printing, this kind of literature can lay no claim
to merit in point of diction or of metre. Such productions represent
probably the baledwyr and the simple country people, such as still
listen in rapt attention to them doing at Welsh fairs and markets
what they are pleased to regard as singing. All this fits in well
enough with the folklore of the caves, such as the foregoing stories
represent it. Here I may add that I am informed by Mr. Craigfryn
Hughes of a tradition that Arthur and his men are biding their time
near Caerleon on the Usk, to wit, in a cave resembling generally those
described in the foregoing legends. He also mentions a tradition as
to Owen Glyndwr--so he calls him, though it is unmistakably the Owen
of the baledwyr who have been referred to by Mr. Fisher--that he and
his men are similarly slumbering in a cave in Craig Gwrtheyrn, in
Carmarthenshire. That is a spot in the neighbourhood of Llandyssil,
consisting of an elevated field terminating on one side in a sharp
declivity, with the foot of the rock laved by the stream of the
Teifi. Craig Gwrtheyrn means Vortigern's Rock, and it is one of the
sites with which legend associates the name of that disreputable old
king. I am not aware that it shows any traces of ancient works, but
it looks at a distance an ideal site for an old fortification. An
earlier prophecy about Owen Lawgoch than any of these occurs, as
kindly pointed out to me by Mr. Gwenogvryn Evans, in the Peniarth
MS. 94 (= Hengwrt MS. 412, p. 23), and points back possibly to the
last quarter of the fourteenth century. See also one quoted by him,
from the Mostyn MS. 133, in his Report on MSS. in the Welsh Language,
i. 106. Probably many more such prophecies might be discovered if
anybody undertook to make a systematic search for them.

But who was Owen Lawgoch, if there ever was such a man? Such a man
there was undoubtedly; for we read in one of the documents printed in
the miscellaneous volume commonly known as the Record of Carnarvon,
that at a court held at Conway in the forty-fourth year of Edward III
a certain Gruffyd Says was adjudged to forfeit all the lands which
he held in Anglesey to the Prince of Wales--who was at that time
no other than Edward the Black Prince--for the reason that the said
Gruffyd had been an adherent of Owen: adherens fuisset Owino Lawegogh
(or Lawgogh) inimico et proditori predicti domini Principis et de
consilio predicti Owyni ad mouendam guerram in Wallia contra predictum
dominum Principem [68]. How long previously it had been attempted to
begin a war on behalf of this Owen Lawgoch one cannot say, but it so
happens that at this time there was a captain called Yeuwains, Yewains,
or Yvain de Gales or Galles, 'Owen of Wales,' fighting on the French
side against the English in Edward's Continental wars. Froissart in
his Chronicles has a great deal to say of him, for he distinguished
himself greatly on various critical occasions. From the historian's
narrative one finds that Owen had escaped when a boy to the court
of Philip VI of France, who received him with great favour and had
him educated with his own nephews. Froissart's account of him is,
that the king of England, Edward III, had slain his father and given
his lordship and principality to his own son as Prince of Wales;
and Froissart gives Owen's father's name as Aymon, which should mean
Edmond, unless the name intended may have been rather Einion. However
that may have been, Owen was engaged in the Battle of Poitiers in
1356, and when peace was made he went to serve in Lombardy; but when
war between England and France broke out again in 1369, he returned
to France. He sometimes fought on sea and sometimes on land, but
he was always entrusted by the French king, who was now Charles V,
with important commands [69]. Thus in 1372 he was placed at the head
of a flotilla with 3,000 men, and ordered to operate against the
English: he made a descent on the Isle of Guernsey [70], and while
there besieging the castle of Cornet, he was charged by the king of
France to sail to Spain to invite the king of Castile to send his
fleet again to help in the attack on La Rochelle. Whilst staying
at Santander the earl of Pembroke was brought thither, having been
taken prisoner in the course of the destruction of the English fleet
before La Rochelle. Owen, on seeing the earl of Pembroke, asks him
with bitterness if he is come there to do him homage for his land,
of which he had taken possession in Wales. He threatens to avenge
himself on him as soon as he can, and also on the earl of Hereford
and Edward Spencer, for it was by the fathers of these three men,
he said, his own father had been betrayed to death. Edward III died
in 1377, and the Black Prince had died shortly before. Owen survived
them both, and was actively engaged in the siege of Mortagne sur Mer
in Poitou, when he was assassinated by one Lamb, who had insinuated
himself into his service and confidence, partly by pretending to
bring him news about his native land and telling him that all Wales
was longing to have him back to be the lord of his country--et lui
fist acroire que toute li terre de Gales le desiroient mout à ravoir à
seigneur. So Owen fell in the year 1378, and was buried at the church
of Saint-Léger [71] while Lamb returned to the English to receive
his stipulated pay. When this happened Owen's namesake, Owen Glyndwr,
was nearly thirty years of age. The latter was eventually to assert
with varying fortune on several fields of battle in this country the
claims of his elder kinsman, who, by virtue of his memory in France,
would seem to have rendered it easy for the later Owen to enter into
friendly relations with the French court of his day [72].

Now as to Yvain de Galles, the Rev. Thomas Price (Carnhuanawc)
in his Hanes Cymru, 'History of Wales,' devotes a couple of pages,
735-7, to Froissart's account of him, and he points out that Angharad
Llwyd, in her edition of Sir John Wynne's History of the Gwydir Family
[73], had found Owen Lawgoch to have been Owen ab Thomas ab Rhodri,
brother to Llewelyn, the last native prince of Wales. One of the names,
however, among other things, forms a difficulty: why did Froissart
call Yvain's father Aymon? So it is clear that a more searching study
of Welsh pedigrees and other documents, including those at the Record
Office [74], has to be made before Owen can be satisfactorily placed
in point of succession. For that he was in the right line to succeed
the native princes of Wales is suggested both by the eagerness with
which all Wales was represented as looking to his return to be the lord
of the country, and by the opening words of Froissart in describing
what he had been robbed of by Edward III, as being both lordship and
principality--la signourie et princeté. Be that as it may, there is,
it seems to me, little doubt that Yvain de Galles was no other than
the Owen Lawgoch, whose adherent Gruffyd Says was deprived of his land
and property in the latter part of Edward's reign. In the next place,
there is hardly room for doubt that the Owen Lawgoch here referred
to was the same man whom the baledwyr in their jumble of prophecies
intended to be Henry the Ninth, that is to say the Welsh successor
to the last Tudor king, Henry VIII, and that he was at the same time
the hero of the cave legends of divers parts of the Principality,
especially South Wales, as already indicated.

Now without being able to say why Owen and his analogues should become
the heroes of cave legends contemplating a second advent, it is easy
to point to circumstances which facilitated their doing so. It is
useless to try to discuss the question of Arthur's disappearance;
but take Garry Geerlaug, for instance, a roving Norseman, as we may
suppose from his name, who may have suddenly disappeared with his
followers, never more to be heard of in the east of Ireland. In the
absence of certain news of his death, it was all the easier to imagine
that he was dozing quietly away in an enchanted fortress. Then as
to King Cadwaladr, who was also, perhaps, to have returned to this
world, so little is known concerning his end that historians have
no certainty to this day when or where he died. So much the readier
therefore would the story gain currency that he was somewhere biding
his time to come back to retrieve his lost fortunes. Lastly, there is
Owen Lawgoch, the magic of whose name has only been dissipated in our
own day: he died in France in the course of a protracted war with the
kings of England. It is not likely, then, that the peasantry of Wales
could have heard anything definite about his fate. So here also the
circumstances were favourable to the cave legend and the dream that
he was, whether at home or abroad, only biding his time. Moreover,
in all these cases the hope-inspiring delusion gained currency among a
discontented people, probably, who felt the sore need of a deliverer to
save them from oppression or other grievous hardships of their destiny.

The question can no longer be prevented from presenting itself as to
the origin of this idea of a second advent of a hero of the past;
but in that form it is too large for discussion here, and it would
involve a review, for instance, of one of the cardinal beliefs of the
Latter-day Saints as to the coming of Christ to reign on earth, and
other doctrines supposed to be derived from the New Testament. On the
other hand, there is no logical necessity why the expected deliverer
should have been in the world before: witness the Jews, who are looking
forward not to the return but to the birth and first coming of their
Messiah. So the question here may be confined more or less strictly to
its cave-legend form; and though I cannot answer it, some advance in
the direction whence the answer should come may perhaps be made. In
the first place, one will have noticed that Arthur and Owen Lawgoch
come more or less in one another's way; and the presumption is that
Owen Lawgoch has been to a certain extent ousting Arthur, who may be
regarded as having the prior claim, not to mention that in the case
of the Gwr Blew cave, p. 481, Owen is made by an apparently recent
version of the story to evict from his lair a commonplace robber
of no special interest. In other words, the Owen Lawgoch legend is,
so to say, detected spreading itself [75]. That is very possibly just
what had happened at a remoter period in the case of the Arthur legend
itself. In other words, Arthur has taken the place of some ancient
divinity, such as that dimly brought within our ken by Plutarch in the
words placed at the head of this chapter. He reproduces the report of
a certain Demetrius, sent by the emperor of Rome to reconnoitre and
inspect the coasts of Britain. It was to the effect that around Britain
lay many uninhabited islands, some of which are named after deities
and some after heroes; and of the islands inhabited, he visited the
one nearest to the uninhabited ones. Of this the dwellers were few,
but the people of Britain treated them as sacrosanct and inviolable in
their persons. Among other things, they related to him how terrible
storms, diseases, and portents happened on the occasion of any one
of the mighty leaving this life. He adds:--'Moreover there is, they
said, an island in which Cronus is imprisoned, with Briareus keeping
guard over him as he sleeps; for, as they put it, sleep is the bond
forged for Cronus. They add that around him are many divinities,
his henchmen and attendants [76].'

What divinity, Celtic or pre-Celtic, this may have been who recalled
Cronus or Saturn to the mind of the Roman officer, it is impossible
to say. It is to be noticed that he sleeps and that his henchmen
are with him, but no allusion is made to treasure. No more is there,
however, in Mr. Fisher's version of the story of Ogo'r Dinas, which,
according to him, says that Arthur and his warriors there lie sleeping
with their right hands clasping the hilts of their drawn swords, ready
to encounter any one who may venture to disturb their repose. On the
other hand, legends about cave treasure are probably very ancient, and
in some at least of our stories the safe keeping of such treasure must
be regarded as the original object of the presence of the armed host.

The permission supposed to be allowed an intruder to take away a
reasonable quantity of the cave gold, I should look at in the light
of a sort of protest on the part of the story-teller against the
niggardliness of the cave powers. I cannot help suspecting in the same
way that the presence of a host of armed warriors to guard some piles
of gold and silver for unnumbered ages must have struck the fancy
of the story-tellers as disproportionate, and that this began long
ago to cause a modification in the form of the legends. That is to
say, the treasure sank into a mere accessory of the presence of the
armed men, who are not guarding any such thing so much as waiting for
the destined hour when they are to sally forth to make lost causes
win. Originally the armed warriors were in some instances presumably
the henchmen of a sleeping divinity, as in the story told to Demetrius;
but perhaps oftener they were the guardians of treasure, just as much
as the invisible agencies are, which bring on thunder and lightning
and portents when any one begins to dig at Dinas Emrys or other spots
where ancient treasure lies hidden. There is, it must be admitted,
no objection to regarding the attendants of a divinity as at the
same time the guardians of his treasure. In none, however, of these
cave stories probably may we suppose the principal figure to have
originally been that of the hero expected to return among men: he,
when found in them, is presumably to be regarded as a comparatively
late interloper. But it is, as already hinted, not to be understood
that the notion of a returning hero is itself a late one. Quite the
contrary; and the question then to be answered is, Where was that kind
of hero supposed to pass his time till his return? There is only one
answer to which Welsh folklore points, and that is, In fairyland. This
is also the teaching of the ancient legend about Arthur, who goes away
to the Isle of Avallon to be healed of his wounds by the fairy maiden
Morgen; and, according to an anonymous poet [77], it is in her charms
that one should look for the reason why Arthur tarries so long:--


        Immodice læsus Arthurus tendit ad aulam
        Regis Avallonis, ubi virgo regia, vulnus
        Illius tractans, sanati membra reservat
        Ipsa sibi: vivuntque simul, si credere fas est.

        Avallon's court see suffering Arthur reach:
        His wounds are healed, a royal maid the leech;
        His pains assuaged, he now with her must dwell,
        If we hold true what ancient legends tell.


Here may be cited by way of comparison Walter Mapes' statement as to
the Trinio, concerning whom he was quoted in the first chapter, p. 72
above. He says, that as Trinio was never seen after the losing battle,
in which he and his friends had engaged with a neighbouring chieftain,
it was believed in the district around Llyn Syfadon, that Trinio's
fairy mother had rescued him from the enemy and taken him away with her
to her home in the lake. In the case of Arthur it is, as we have seen,
a fairy also or a lake lady that intervenes; and there cannot be much
room for doubt, that the story representing him going to fairyland
to be healed is far older than any which pictures him sleeping in a
cave with his warriors and his gold all around him. As for the gold,
however, it is abundantly represented as nowhere more common than
in the home of the fairies: so this metal treated as a test cannot
greatly help us in essaying the distinction here suggested. With regard
to Owen Lawgoch, however, one is not forced to suppose that he was
ever believed to have sojourned in Faery: the legendary precedent of
Arthur as a cave sleeper would probably suffice to open the door for
him to enter the recesses of Craig y Dinas, as soon as the country
folk began to grow weary of waiting for his return. In other words,
most of our cave legends have combined together two sets of popular
belief originally distinct, the one referring to a hero gone to the
world of the fairies and expected some day to return, and the other to
a hero or god enjoying an enchanted sleep with his retinue all around
him. In some of our legends, however, such as that of Llanciau Eryri,
the process of combining the two sets of story has been left to this
day incomplete.








CHAPTER IX

PLACE-NAME STORIES

        The Dindsenchas is a collection of stories (senchasa), in
        Middle-Irish prose and verse, about the names of noteworthy
        places (dind) in Ireland--plains, mountains, ridges, cairns,
        lakes, rivers, fords, estuaries, islands, and so forth.... But
        its value to students of Irish folklore, romance (sometimes
        called history), and topography has long been recognized
        by competent authorities, such as Petrie, O'Donovan, and
        Mr. Alfred Nutt.

                                                         Whitley Stokes.


In the previous chapters some folklore has been produced in which
we have swine figuring: see more especially that concerned with the
Hwch Du Gwta, pp. 224-6 above. Now I wish to bring before the reader
certain other groups of swine legends not vouched for by oral tradition
so much as found in manuscripts more or less ancient. The first three
to be mentioned occur in one of the Triads [78]. I give the substance
of it in the three best known versions, premising that the Triad is
entitled that of the Three Stout Swineherds of the Isle of Prydain:--

i. 30a:--Drystan [79] son of Tallwch who guarded the swine of March
son of Meirchion while the swineherd went to bid Essyllt come to meet
him: at the same time Arthur sought to have one sow by fraud or force,
and failed.

ii. 56b:--Drystan son of Tallwch with the swine of March ab Meirchion
while the swineherd went on a message to Essyllt. Arthur and March and
Cai and Bedwyr came all four to him, but obtained from Drystan not even
as much as a single porker, whether by force, by fraud, or by theft.

iii. 101c:--The third was Trystan son of Tallwch, who guarded the
swine of March son of Meirchion while the swineherd had gone on a
message to Essyllt to bid her appoint a meeting with Trystan. Now
Arthur and Marchell and Cai and Bedwyr undertook to go and make an
attempt on him, but they proved unable to get possession of as much
as one porker either as a gift or as a purchase, whether by fraud,
by force, or by theft.

In this story the well-known love of Drystan and Essyllt is taken for
granted; but the whole setting is so peculiar and so unlike that of
the story of Tristan and Iselt or Iseut in the romances, that there
is no reason to suppose it in any way derived from the latter.

The next portion of the Triad runs thus:--

1 30b:--And Pryderi son of Pwyll of Annwvyn who guarded the swine of
Pendaran of Dyfed in the Glen of the Cuch in Emlyn.

ii. 56a:--Pryderi son of Pwyll Head of Annwn with the swine of
Pendaran of Dyfed his foster father. The swine were the seven brought
away by Pwyll Head of Annwn and given by him to Pendaran of Dyfed his
foster father; and the Glen of the Cuch was the place where they were
kept. The reason why Pryderi is called a mighty swineherd is that no
one could prevail over him either by fraud or by force [80].

iii. 101a:--The first was Pryderi son of Pwyll of Pendaran in Dyfed
[81], who guarded his father's swine while he was in Annwn, and it
was in the Glen of the Cuch that he guarded them.

The history of the pigs is given, so to say, in the Mabinogion. Pwyll
had been able to strike up a friendship and even an alliance with
Arawn king of Annwvyn [82] or Annwn, which now means Hades or the other
world; and they kept up their friendship partly by exchanging presents
of horses, greyhounds, falcons, and any other things calculated to give
gratification to the receiver of them. Among other gifts which Pryderi
appears to have received from the king of Annwn were hobeu or moch,
'pigs, swine,' which had never before been heard of in the island
of Prydain. The news about this new race of animals, and that they
formed sweeter food than oxen, was not long before it reached Gwyned;
and we shall presently see that there was another story which flatly
contradicts this part of the Triad, namely to the effect that Gwydion,
nephew of Math king of Gwyned and a great magician, came to Pryderi's
court at Rhudlan, near Dolau Bach or Highmead on the Teifi in what is
now the county of Cardigan, and obtained some of the swine by deceiving
the king. But, to pass by that for the present, I may say that Dyfed
seems to have been famous for rearing swine; and at the present day
one affects to believe in the neighbouring districts that the chief
industry in Dyfed, more especially in South Cardiganshire, consists
in the rearing of parsons, carpenters, and pigs. Perhaps it is also
worth mentioning that the people of the southern portion of Dyfed
are nicknamed by the men of Glamorgan to this day Moch Sir Benfro,
'the Pigs of Pembrokeshire.'

But why so much importance attached to pigs? I cannot well give a
better answer than the reader can himself supply if he will only
consider what rôle the pig plays in the domestic economy of modern
Ireland. But, to judge from old Irish literature, it was even more so
in ancient times, as pigs' meat was so highly appreciated, that under
some one or other of its various names it usually takes its place at
the head of all flesh meats in Irish stories. This seems the case,
for instance, in the medieval story called the Vision of MacConglinne
[83]; and, to go further back, to the Feast of Bricriu for instance,
one finds it decidedly the case with the Champion's Portion [84]
at that stormy banquet. Then one may mention the story of the fatal
feast on Mac-Dáthó's great swine [85], where that beast would have
apparently sufficed for the braves both of Connaught and Ulster had
Conall Cernach carved fair, and not given more than their share to
his own Ultonian friends in order to insult the Connaught men by
leaving them nothing but the fore-legs. It is right, however, to
point out that most of the stories go to show, that the gourmands
of ancient Erin laid great stress on the pig being properly fed,
chiefly on milk and the best kind of meal. It cannot have been very
different in ancient Wales; for we read in the story of Peredur that,
when he sets out from his mother's home full of his mother's counsel,
he comes by-and-by to a pavilion, in front of which he sees food, some
of which he proceeds to take according to his mother's advice, though
the gorgeously dressed lady sitting near it has not the politeness
to anticipate his wish. It consisted, we are told, of two bottles of
wine, two loaves of white bread, and collops of a milk-fed pig's flesh
[86]. The home of the fairies was imagined to be a land of luxury and
happiness with which nothing could compare in this world. In this
certain Welsh and Irish stories agree; and in one of the latter,
where the king of the fairies is trying to persuade the queen of
Ireland to elope with him, we find that among the many inducements
offered her are fresh pig, sweet milk, and ale [87]. Conversely,
as the fairies were considered to be always living and to be a very
old-fashioned and ancient people, it was but natural to suppose that
they had the animals which man found useful, such as horses, cattle,
and sheep, except that they were held to be of superior breeds, as
they are represented, for instance, in our lake legends. Similarly,
it is natural enough that other stories should ascribe to them also
the possession of herds of swine; and all this prior to man's having
any. The next step in the reasoning would be that man had obtained
his from the fairies. It is some tradition of this kind that possibly
suggested the line taken by the Pwyll story in the matter of the
derivation of the pig from Annwn: see the last chapter.

The next story in the Triad is, if possible, wilder still: it runs
as follows:--

i. 30c:--Coll son of Collfrewi [88] who guarded Henwen [89], Dallweir
Dallben's sow, which went burrowing as far as the Headland of Awstin
in Kernyw and then took to the sea. It was at Aber Torogi in Gwent
Is-coed that she came to land, with Coll keeping his grip on her
bristles whatever way she went by sea or by land. Now in Maes Gwenith,
'Wheat Field,' in Gwent she dropped a grain of wheat and a bee, and
thenceforth that has been the best place for wheat. Then she went as
far as Llonwen in Penfro and there dropped a grain of barley and a bee,
and thenceforth Llonwen has been the best place for barley. Then she
proceeded to Rhiw Gyferthwch in Eryri and dropped a wolf-cub and an
eagle-chick. These Coll gave away, the eagle to the Goidel Brynach
from the North, and the wolf to Menwaed of Arllechwed, and they came
to be known as Menwaed's Wolf and Brynach's Eagle. Then the sow went
as far as the Maen Du at Llanfair in Arfon, and there she dropped a
kitten, and that kitten Coll cast into the Menai: that came later to
be known as Cath Paluc, 'Palug's Cat.'

ii. 56c:--The third was Coll son of Kallureuy with the swine of Dallwyr
Dallben in Dallwyr's Glen in Kernyw. Now one of the swine was with
young and Henwen was her name; and it was foretold that the Isle
of Prydain would be the worse for her litter; and Arthur collected
the host of Prydain and went about to destroy it. Then one sow went
burrowing, and at the Headland of Hawstin in Kernyw she took to the
sea with the swineherd following her. And in Maes Gwenith in Gwent
she dropped a grain of wheat and a bee, and ever since Maes Gwenith
is the best place for wheat and bees. And at Llonyon in Penfro
she dropped a grain of barley and another of wheat: therefore the
barley of Llonyon has passed into a proverb. And on Rhiw Gyferthwch
in Arfon she dropped a wolf-cub and an eagle-chick. The wolf was
given to Mergaed and the eagle to Breat a prince from the North,
and they were the worse for having them. And at Llanfair in Arfon,
to wit below the Maen Du, she dropped a kitten, and from the Maen Du
the swineherd cast it into the sea, but the sons of Paluc reared it to
their detriment. It grew to be Cath Paluc, 'Palug's Cat,' and proved
one of the three chief molestations of Mona reared in the island:
the second was Daronwy and the third was Edwin king of England.

iii. 101b:--The second was Coll son of Collfrewi who guarded Dallwaran
Dallben's sow, that came burrowing as far as the Headland of Penwedic
in Kernyw and then took to the sea; and she came to land at Aber
Tarogi in Gwent Is-coed with Coll keeping his hold of her bristles
whithersoever she went on sea or land. At Maes Gwenith in Gwent she
dropped three grains of wheat and three bees, and ever since Gwent
has the best wheat and bees. From Gwent she proceeded to Dyfed and
dropped a grain of barley and a porker, and ever since Dyfed has
the best barley and pigs: it was in Llonnio Llonnwen these were
dropped. Afterwards she proceeded to Arfon (sic) and in Lleyn she
dropped the grain of rye, and ever since Lleyn and Eifionyd have the
best rye. And on the side of Rhiw Gyferthwch she dropped a wolf-cub
and an eagle-chick. Coll gave the eagle to Brynach the Goidel of Dinas
Affaraon, and the wolf to Menwaed lord of Arllechwed, and one often
hears of Brynach's Wolf and Menwaed's Eagle [the writer was careless:
he has made the owners exchange pests]. Then she went as far as the
Maen Du in Arfon, where she dropped a kitten and Coll cast it into
the Menai. That was the Cath Balwg (sic), 'Palug's Cat': it proved
a molestation to the Isle of Mona subsequently.

Such are the versions we have of this story, and a few notes on
the names seem necessary before proceeding further. Coll is called
Coll son of Collurewy in i. 30, and Coll son of Kallureuy in ii. 56:
all that is known of him comes from other Triads, i. 32-3, ii. 20,
and iii. 90. The first two tell us that he was one of the Three chief
Enchanters of the Isle of Prydain, and that he was taught his magic
by Rhudlwm the Giant; while ii. 20 calls the latter a dwarf and adds
that Coll was nephew to him. The matter is differently put in iii. 90,
to the effect that Rhudlwm the Giant learnt his magic from Eid[il]ig
the Dwarf and from Coll son of Collfrewi. Nothing is known of Dallwyr's
Glen in Kernyw, or of the person after whom it was named. Kernyw is the
Welsh for Cornwall, but if Penryn Awstin or Hawstin is to be identified
with Aust Cliff on the Severn Sea in Gloucestershire, the story would
seem to indicate a time when Cornwall extended north-eastwards as far
as that point. The later Triad, iii. 101, avoids Penryn Awstin and
substitutes Penwedic, which recalls some such a name as Pengwaed [90]
or Penwith in Cornwall: elsewhere Penwedic [91] is only given as the
name of the most northern hundred of Keredigion. Gwent Is-coed means
Gwent below the Wood or Forest, and Aber Torogi or Tarogi--omitted,
probably by accident, in ii. 56--is now Caldicot Pill, where the small
river Tarogi, now called Troggy, discharges itself not very far from
Portskewet. Maes Gwenith in the same neighbourhood is still known by
that name. The correct spelling of the name of the place in Penfro
was probably Llonyon, but it is variously given as Llonwen, Llonyon,
and Llonion, not to mention the Llonnio Llonnwen of the later form
of the Triad: should this last prove to be based on any authority
one might suggest Llonyon Henwen, so called after the sow, as the
original. The modern Welsh spelling of Llonyon would be Llonion, and
it is identified by Mr. Egerton Phillimore with Lanion near Pembroke
[92]. Rhiw Gyferthwch is guessed to have been one of the <DW72>s of
Snowdon on the Bedgelert side; but I have failed to discover anybody
who has ever heard the name used in that neighbourhood.

Arllechwed was, roughly speaking, that part of Carnarvonshire which
drains into the sea between Conway and Bangor. Brynach and Menwaed
or Mengwaed [93] seem to be the names underlying the misreadings
in ii. 56; but it is quite possible that Brynach, probably for an
Irish Bronach, has here superseded an earlier Urnach or Eurnach also
a Goidel, to whom I shall have to return in another chapter. Dinas
Affaraon [94] is the place called Dinas Ffaraon Dande in the story
of Llud and Llevelys, where we are told that after Llud had had the
two dragons buried there, which had been dug up at the centre of his
realm, to wit at Oxford, Ffaraon, after whom the place was called, died
of grief. Later it came to be called Dinas Emrys from Myrdin Emrys,
'Merlinus Ambrosius,' who induced Vortigern to go away from there in
quest of another place to build his castle [95]. So the reader will
see that the mention of this Dinas brings us back to a weird spot with
which he has been familiarized in the previous chapter: see pp. 469,
495 above. Llanfair in Arfon is Llanfair Is-gaer near Port Dinorwic
on the Menai Straits, and the Maen Du should be a black rock or black
stone on the southern side of those straits. Daronwy and Cath Paluc
are both personages on whom light is still wanted. Lastly, by Edwin
king of England is to be understood Edwin king of the Angles of Deira
and Bernicia, whom Welsh tradition represents as having found refuge
for a time in Anglesey.

Now this story as a whole looks like a sort of device for stringing
together explanations of the origin of certain place-names and of
certain local characteristics. Leaving entirely out of the reckoning
the whole of Mid-Wales, that is to say, the more Brythonic portion
of the country, it is remarkable as giving to South Wales credit for
certain resources, but to North Wales for pests alone and scourges,
except that the writer of the late version bethought himself of Lleyn
and Eifionyd as having good land for growing rye; but he was very
hazy as to the geography of North Wales--both he and the redactors of
the other Triads equally belonged doubtless to South Wales. Among the
place-names, Maes Gwenith, 'the Wheat Field,' is clear; but hardly less
so is the case of Aber Torogi, 'Mouth of the Troggy,' where torogi
is 'the pregnancy of animals,' from torrog, 'being with young.' So
with Rhiw Gyferthwch, 'the Hillside or Ascent of Cyferthwch,' where
cyferthwch means 'pantings, pangs, labour.' The name Maen Du, 'Black
Rock,' is left to explain itself; and I am not sure that the original
story was not so put as also to explain Llonion, to wit, as a sort of
plural of llawn, 'full,' in reference, let us say, to the full ears of
the barley grown there. But the reference to the place-names seems to
have partly escaped the later tellers of the story or to have failed
to impress them as worth emphasizing. They appear to have thought more
of explaining the origin of Menwaed's Wolf and Brynach's Eagle. Whether
this means in the former case that the district of Arllechwed was more
infested by wolves than any other part of Wales, or that Menwaed,
lord of Arllechwed, had a wolf as his symbol, it is impossible to
say. In another Triad, however, i. 23 = ii. 57, he is reckoned one of
the Three Battle-knights who were favourites at Arthur's court, the
others being Caradog Freichfras and Llyr Llüydog or Llud Llurugog,
while in iii. 29 Menwaed's place is taken by a son of his called
Mael Hir. Similarly with regard to Brynach's Eagle one has nothing
to say, except that common parlance some time or other would seem to
have associated the eagle in some way with Brynach the Goidel. The
former prevalence of the eagle in the Snowdon district seems to be
the explanation of its Welsh name of Eryri--as already suggested,
p. 479 above--and the association of the bird with the Goidelic
chieftain who had his stronghold under the shadow of Snowdon seems
to follow naturally enough. But the details are conspicuous by their
scarcity in Welsh literature, though Brynach's Eagle is probably to be
identified with the Aquila Fabulosa of Eryri, of which Giraldus makes
a curious mention [96]. Perhaps the final disuse of Goidelic speech
in the district is to be, to some extent, regarded as accounting for
our dearth of data. A change of language involved in all probability
the shipwreck of many a familiar mode of thought; and many a homely
expression must have been lost in the transition before an equivalent
acceptable to the Goidel was discovered by him in his adopted idiom.

This question of linguistic change will be found further illustrated
by the story to which I wish now to pass, namely that of the hunting
of Twrch Trwyth. It is one of those incorporated in the larger tale
known as that of Kulhwch and Olwen, the hero and heroine concerned:
see the Oxford Mabinogion, pp. 135-41, and Guest's translation,
iii. 306-16. Twrch Trwyth is pictured as a formidable boar at the head
of his offspring, consisting of seven swine, and the Twrch himself
is represented as carrying between his ears a comb, a razor, and a
pair of shears. The plot of the Kulhwch renders it necessary that
these precious articles should be procured; so Kulhwch prevails on
his cousin Arthur to undertake the hunt. Arthur began by sending one
of his men, to wit, Menw [97] son of Teirgwaed, to see whether the
three precious things mentioned were really where they were said to
be, namely, between Twrch Trwyth's ears. Menw was a great magician who
usually formed one of any party of Arthur's men about to visit a pagan
country; for it was his business to subject the inhabitants to magic
and enchantment, so that they should not see Arthur's men, while the
latter saw them. Menw found Twrch Trwyth and his offspring at a place
in Ireland called Esgeir Oervel [98], and in order to approach them
he alighted in the form of a bird near where they were. He tried to
snatch one of the three precious articles from Twrch Trwyth, but he
only succeeded in securing one of his bristles, whereupon the Twrch
stood up and shook himself so vigorously that a drop of venom from his
bristles fell on Menw, who never enjoyed a day's health afterwards
as long as he lived. Menw now returned and assured Arthur that the
treasures were really about the Twrch's head as it was reported. Arthur
then crossed to Ireland with a host and did not stop until he found
Twrch Trwyth and his swine at Esgeir Oervel. The hunt began and was
continued for several days, but it did not prevent the Twrch from
laying waste a fifth part of Ireland, that is in Medieval Irish cóiced,
a province of the island. Arthur's men, however, succeeded in killing
one of the Twrch's offspring, and they asked Arthur the history [99]
of that swine. Arthur replied that it had been a king before being
transformed by God into a swine on account of his sins. Here I should
remark by the way, that the narrator of the story forgets the death
of this young boar, and continues to reckon the Twrch's herd as seven.

Arthur's next move was to send one of his men, Gwrhyr, interpreter of
tongues [100], to parley with the boars. Gwrhyr, in the form of a bird,
alighted above where Twrch Trwyth and his swine lay, and addressed
them as follows: 'For the sake of Him who fashioned you in this
shape, if you can speak, I ask one of you to come to converse with
Arthur.' Answer was made by one of the boars, called Grugyn Gwrych
Ereint, that is, Grugyn Silver-bristle; for like feathers of silver,
we are told, were his bristles wherever he went, and whether in woods
or on plains, one saw the gleam of his bristles. The following, then,
was Grugyn's answer: 'By Him who fashioned us in this shape, we shall
not do so, and we shall not converse with Arthur. Enough evil has God
done to us when He fashioned us in this shape, without your coming to
fight with us.' Gwrhyr replied: 'I tell you that Arthur will fight for
the comb, the razor, and the shears that are between the ears of Twrch
Trwyth.' 'Until his life has first been taken,' said Grugyn, 'those
trinkets shall not be taken, and to-morrow morning we set out hence
for Arthur's own country, and all the harm we can, shall we do there.'

The boars accordingly set out for Wales, while Arthur with his host,
his horses, and his hounds, on board his ship Prydwen, kept within
sight of them. Twrch Trwyth came to land at Porth Clais, a small
creek south of St. David's, but Arthur went that night to Mynyw,
which seems to have been Menevia or St. David's. The next day Arthur
was told that the boars had gone past, and he overtook them killing
the herds of Kynnwas Cwrvagyl, after they had destroyed all they could
find in Deugledyf, whether man or beast. Then the Twrch went as far as
Presseleu, a name which survives in that of Preselly or Precelly, as
in Preselly Top and Preselly Mountains in North Pembrokeshire. Arthur
and his men began the hunt again, while his warriors were ranged on
both sides of the Nyfer or the river Nevern. The Twrch then left the
Glen of the Nevern and made his way to Cwm Kerwyn, the name of which
survives in that of Moel Cwm Kerwyn, one of the Preselly heights. In
the course of the hunt in that district the Twrch killed Arthur's four
champions and many of the people of the country. He was next overtaken
in a district called Peuliniauc [101] or Peuliniog, which appears to
have occupied a central area between the mountains, Llandewi Velfrey,
Henllan Amgoed, and Laugharne: it probably covered portions of the
parish of Whitland and of that of Llandysilio, the church of which is a
little to the north of the railway station of Clyn Derwen on the Great
Western line. Leaving Peuliniog for the Laugharne Burrows, he crossed,
as it seems, from Ginst Point to Aber Towy or Towy Mouth [102], which
at low water are separated mostly by tracts of sand interrupted only
by one or two channels of no very considerable width; for Aber Towy
would seem to have been a little south-east of St. Ishmael's, on the
eastern bank of the Towy. Thence the Twrch makes his way to Glynn
Ystu, more correctly perhaps Clyn Ystun, now written Clyn Ystyn [103],
the name of a farm between Carmarthen and the junction of the Amman
with the Llychwr, more exactly about six miles from that junction and
about eight and a half from Carmarthen as the crow flies. The hunt is
resumed in the Valley of the Llychwr or Loughor [104], where Grugyn
and another young boar, called Llwydawc Gouynnyat [105], committed
terrible ravages among the huntsmen. This brought Arthur and his host
to the rescue, and Twrch Trwyth, on his part, came to help his boars;
but as a tremendous attack was now made on him he moved away, leaving
the Llychwr, and making eastwards for Mynyd Amanw, or 'the Mountain of
Amman,' for Amanw is plentifully preserved in that neighbourhood in
the shortened form of Aman or Amman [106]. On Mynyd Amanw one of his
boars was killed, but he is not distinguished by any proper name: he is
simply called a banw, 'a young boar.' The Twrch was again hard pressed,
and lost another called Twrch Llawin. Then a third of the swine is
killed, called Gwys, whereupon Twrch Trwyth went to Dyffryn Amanw,
or the Vale of Amman, where he lost a banw and a benwic, a 'boar'
and a 'sow.' All this evidently takes place in the same district,
and Mynyd Amanw was, if not Bryn Amman, probably one of the mountains
to the south or south-east of the river Amman, so that Dyffryn Amanw
may have been what is still called Dyffryn Amman, or the Valley of
the Amman from Bryn Amman to where the river Amman falls into the
Llychwr. From the Amman the Twrch and the two remaining boars of
his herd made their way to Llwch Ewin, 'the lake or pool of Ewin,'
which is now represented by a bog mere above a farm house called
Llwch in the parish of Bettws, which covers the southern <DW72> of the
Amman Valley. I have found this bog called in a map Llwch is Awel,
'Pool below Breeze,' whatever that may mean.

We find them next at Llwch Tawi, the position of which is indicated
by that of Ynys Pen Llwch, 'Pool's End Isle,' some distance lower
down the Tawe than Pont ar Dawe. At this point the boars separate,
and Grugyn goes away to Din Tywi, 'Towy Fort,' an unidentified position
somewhere on the Towy, possibly Grongar Hill near Llandeilo, and thence
to a place in Keredigion where he was killed, namely, Garth Grugyn. I
have not yet been able to identify the spot, though it must have
once had a castle, as we read of a castle called Garthgrugyn being
strengthened by Maelgwn Vychan in the year 1242: the Bruts locate
it in Keredigion [107], but this part of the story is obscured by
careless copying on the part of the scribe [108] of the Red Book. After
Grugyn's death we read of Llwydawc having made his way to Ystrad Yw,
and, after inflicting slaughter on several of his assailants, he is
himself killed there. Now Ystrad Yw, which our mapsters would have
us call Ystrad Wy, as if it had been on the Wye [109], is supposed
to have covered till Henry VIII's time the same area approximately
as the hundred of Crickhowel has since, namely, the parishes of (1)
Crickhowel, (2) Llanbedr Ystrad Yw with Patrishow, (3) Llanfihangel
Cwm Du with Tretower and Penmyarth, (4) Llangattock with Llangenny,
(5) Llanelly with Brynmawr, and (6) Llangynidr. Of these Llanbedr
perpetuates the name of Ystrad Yw, although it is situated near the
junction of the Greater and Lesser Grwynë and not in the Strath of
the Yw, which Ystrad Yw means. So one can only treat Lanbedr Ystrad
Yw as meaning that particular Llanbedr or St. Peter's Church which
belongs to the district comprehensively called Ystrad Yw. Now if
one glances at the Red Book list of cantreds and cymwds, dating in
the latter part of the fourteenth century, one will find Ystrad Yw
and Cruc Howel existing as separate cymwds. So we have to look for
the former in the direction of the parish of Cwm Du; and on going
back to the Taxatio of Pope Nicholas IV dating about 1291, we find
that practically we have to identify with Cwm Du a name Stratden',
p. 273a, which one is probably to treat as Strat d'Eue [110] or some
similar Norman spelling; for most of the other parishes of the district
are mentioned by the names which they still bear. That is not all;
for from Cwm Du a tributary of the Usk called the Rhiangoll comes
down and receives at Tretower the waters of a smaller stream called
the Yw. The land on both sides of that Yw burn forms the ystrad or
strath of which we are in quest. The chief source of this water is
called Llygad Yw, and gives its name to a house of some pretensions
bearing an inscription showing that it was built in its present form
about the middle of the seventeenth century by a member of the Gunter
family well known in the history of the county. Near the house stands
a yew tree on the boundary line of the garden, and close to its trunk,
but at a lower level, is a spring of bubbling water: this is Llygad Yw,
'the Eye of the Yw.' For Llygad Yw is a succinct expression for the
source of the Yw burn [111], and the stream retains the name Yw to its
fall into the Rhiangoll; but besides the spring of Llygad Yw it has
several other similar sources in the fields near the house. There is
nothing, however, in this brook to account for the name of Ystrad Yw
having been extended to an important district; but if one traces its
short course one will at once guess the explanation. For a few fields
below Llygad Yw is the hamlet of the Gaer or fortress, consisting of
four farm houses called the Upper, Middle, and Lower Gaer, and Pen y
Gaer: through this hamlet of the Gaer flows the Yw. These, and more
especially Pen y Gaer, are supposed to have been the site of a Roman
camp of considerable importance, and close by it the Yw is supposed
to have been crossed by the Roman road proceeding towards Brecon
[112]. The camp in the Strath of the Yw was the head quarters of the
ruling power in the district, and hence the application of the name of
Ystrad Yw to a wider area. But for our story one has to regard the name
as confined to the land about the Yw burn, or at most to a somewhat
larger portion of the parish of Cwm Du, to which the Yw and Tretower
belong. The position of the Gaer in Ystrad Yw at the foot of the Bwlch
or the gap in the difficult mountain spur stretching down towards the
Usk is more likely to have been selected by the Romans than by any of
the Celtic inhabitants, whose works are to be found on several of the
neighbouring hills, such as Myarth [113] between the Yw and the Usk.

We next find Twrch Trwyth, now the sole survivor, making his way
towards the Severn: so Arthur summons Cornwall and Devon to meet him
at Aber Hafren or Severn mouth. Then a furious conflict with the Twrch
takes place in the very waters of that river, between Llyn Lliwan
(p. 407) and Aber Gwy or the mouth of the Wye. After much trouble,
Arthur's men succeed in getting possession of two out of the three
treasures of the boar, but he escapes with the third, namely, the
comb, across the Severn [114]. Then as soon as he gets ashore he
makes his way to Cornwall, where the comb is at length snatched from
him. Chased thence, he goes straight into the sea, with the hounds
Anet and Aethlem after him, and nothing has ever been heard of any
of the three from that day to this.

That is the story of Twrch Trwyth, and Dr. Stokes calls my attention
to a somewhat similar hunt briefly described in the Rennes Dindsenchas
in the Revue Celtique, xv. 474-5. Then as to the precious articles
carried by the Twrch about his head and ears, the comb, the razor,
and the shears, two out of the three--the comb and the razor--belong
to the regular stock of a certain group of tales which recount how
the hero elopes with the daughter of a giant who loses his life
in the pursuit [115]. In order to make sure of escaping from the
infuriated giant, the daughter abstracts from her father's keeping a
comb, a razor, and another article. When she and her lover fleeing
on their horse are hard pressed, the latter throws behind him the
comb, which at once becomes a rough impenetrable forest to detain
the giant for a while. When he is again on the point of overtaking
them, the lover throws behind him the razor, which becomes a steep
and sharp mountain ridge through which the pursuing giant has to
waste time tunnelling his way. The third article is usually such as,
when thrown in the giant's way, becomes a lake in which he is drowned
while attempting to swim across. In the Kulhwch story, however, as we
have it, the allusion to these objects is torn away from what might be
expected as its context. The giant is Yspadaden Penkawr, whose death
is effected in another way; but before the giant is finally disposed
of he requires to be shaved and to have his hair dressed. His hair,
moreover, is so rough that the dressing cannot be done without the
comb and shears in the possession of Twrch Trwyth, whence the hunt;
and for the shaving one would have expected the Twrch's razor to
have been requisite; but not so, as the shaving had to be done by
means of another article, namely, the tusk of Yskithyrwynn Pennbeid,
'White-tusk chief of Boars,' for the obtaining of which one is treated
briefly to another boar hunt. The Kulhwch story is in this respect
very mixed and disjointed, owing, it would seem, to the determination
of the narrator to multiply the number of things difficult to procure,
each involving a separate feat to be described.

Let us now consider the hunt somewhat more in detail, with special
reference to the names mentioned; and let us begin with that of Twrch
Trwyth: the word twrch means the male of a beast of the swine kind,
and twrch coed, 'a wood pig,' is a wild boar, while twrch daear,
'an earth pig,' is the word in North Wales for a mole. In the next
place we can practically equate Twrch Trwyth with a name at the head
of one of the articles in Cormac's Irish Glossary. There the exact
form is Orc tréith, and the following is the first part of the article
itself as given in O'Donovan's translation edited by Stokes:--'Orc
Tréith, i. e. nomen for a king's son, triath enim rex vocatur, unde
dixit poeta Oínach n-uirc tréith "fair of a king's son," i. e. food
and precious raiment, down and quilts, ale and flesh-meat, chessmen
and chessboards, horses and chariots, greyhounds and playthings
besides.' In this extract the word orc occurs in the genitive as uirc,
and it means a 'pig' or 'boar'; in fact it is, with the usual Celtic
loss of the consonant p, the exact Goidelic equivalent of the Latin
porcus, genitive porci. From another article in Cormac's Glossary, we
learn that Tréith is the genitive of Triath, which has been explained
to mean a king. Thus, Orc Tréith means Triath's Orc, Triath's Boar,
or the King's Boar; so we take Twrch Trwyth in the same way to mean
'Trwyth's Boar.' But we have here a discrepancy, which the reader will
have noticed, for twrch is not the same word as Irish orc, the nearest
form to be expected in Welsh being Wrch, not Twrch; but such a word as
Wrch does not, so far as I know, exist. Now did the Welsh render orc
by a different word unrelated to the Goidelic one which they heard? I
think not; for it is remarkable that Irish has besides orc a word
torc, meaning a 'boar,' and torc is exactly the Welsh twrch. So there
seems to be no objection to our supposing that what Cormac calls Orc
Tréith was known in the Goidelic of Wales as Torc Tréith, which had the
alliteration to recommend it to popular favour. In that case one could
say that the Goidelic name Torc Tréith appears in Welsh with a minimum
of change as Twrch Trwyth, and also with the stamp of popular favour
more especially in the retention of the Goidelic th, just as in the
name of an ancient camp or fortification on the Withy Bush Estate in
Pembrokeshire: it is called the Rath, or the Rath Ring. Here rath is
identical with the Irish word ráth, 'a fortification or earthworks,'
and we seem to have it also in Cil Râth Fawr, the name of a farm in
the neighbourhood of Narberth. Now the Goidelic word tréith appears
to have come into Welsh as treth-i, the long vowel of which must in
Welsh have become oi or ui by about the end of the sixth century;
and if the th had been treated on etymological principles its proper
equivalent in the Welsh of that time would have been d or t. The
retention of the th is a proof, therefore, of oral transmission;
that is to say, the Goidelic word passed bodily into Brythonic,
to submit afterwards to the phonological rules of that language.

A little scrutiny of the tale will, I think, convince the reader that
one of the objects of the original story-teller was to account for
certain place-names. Thus Grugyn was meant to account for the name
of Garth Grugyn, where Grugyn was killed; Gwys, to account similarly
for that of Gwys, a tributary of the Twrch, which gives its name to
a station on the line of railway between Ystalyfera and Bryn Amman;
and Twrch Llawin to account for the name of the river Twrch, which
receives the Gwys, and falls into the Tawe some distance below Ystrad
Gynlais, between the counties of Brecknock and Glamorgan.

Besides Grugyn and Twrch Llawin, there was a third brother to whom the
story gives a special name, to wit, Llwydawc Gouynnyat, and this was,
I take it, meant also to account for a place-name, which, however,
is not given: it should have been somewhere in Ystrad Yw, in the
county of Brecknock. Still greater interest attaches to the swine
that have not been favoured with names of their own, those referred
to simply as banw, 'a young boar,' and benwic, 'a young sow.' Now
banw has its equivalent in Irish in the word banbh, which O'Reilly
explains as meaning a 'sucking pig,' and that is the meaning also of
the Manx bannoo; but formerly the word may have had a somewhat wider
meaning. The Welsh appellative is introduced twice into the story of
Twrch Trwyth; once to account, as I take it, for the name Mynyd Amanw,
'Amman Mountain,' and once for Dyffryn Amanw, 'Amman Valley.' In
both instances Amanw was meant, as I think, to be accounted for by
the banw killed at each of the places in question. But how, you will
ask, does the word banw account for Amanw, or throw any light on it
at all? Very simply, if you will just suppose the name to have been
Goidelic; for then you have only to provide it with the definite
article and it makes in banbh, 'the pig or the boar,' and that could
not in Welsh yield anything but ymmanw or ammanw [116], which with
the accent shifted backwards, became Ammanw and Amman or Aman.

Having premised these explanations let us, before we proceed further,
see to what our evidence exactly amounts. Here, then, we have a
mention of seven swine, but as two of them, a banw and a benwic,
are killed at one and the same place, our figure is practically
reduced to six [117]. The question then is, in how many of these six
cases the story of the hunt accounts for the names of the places of
the deaths respectively, that is to say, accounts for them in the
ordinary way with which one is familiar in other Welsh stories. They
may be enumerated as follows:--

1. A banw is killed at Mynyd Amanw.

2. A twrch is killed in the same neighbourhood, where there is a
river Twrch.

3. A swine called Gwys is killed in the same neighbourhood still,
where there is a river called Gwys, falling into the Twrch.

4. A banw and a benwic are killed in Dyffryn Amanw.

5. Grugyn is killed at a place called Garth Grugyn.

6. A swine called Llwydawc is killed at a spot, not named, in Ystrad
Yw or not far off [118].

Thus in five cases out of the six, the story accounts for the
place-name, and the question now is, can that be a mere accident? Just
think what the probabilities of the case would be if you put them
into numbers: South Wales, from St. David's to the Vale of the Usk,
would supply hundreds of place-names as deserving of mention, to
say the least, as those in this story; is it likely then that out
of a given six among them no less than five should be accounted for
or alluded to by any mere accident in the course of a story of the
brevity of that of Twrch Trwyth. To my thinking such an accident
is inconceivable, and I am forced, therefore, to suppose that the
narrative was originally so designed as to account for them. I said
'originally so designed,' for the scribe of the Red Book, or let us
say the last redactor of the story as it stands in the Red Book, shows
no signs of having noticed any such design. Had he detected the play
on the names of the places introduced, he would probably have been
more inclined to develop that feature of the story than to efface it.

What I mean may best be illustrated by another swine story, namely,
that which has already been referred to as occurring in the Mabinogi
of Math. There we find Pryderi, king of Dyfed, holding his court at
Rhudlan on the Teifi, but though he had become the proud possessor of a
new race of animals, given him as a present by his friend Arawn, king
of Annwn, he had made a solemn promise to his people, that he should
give none of them away until they had doubled their number in Dyfed:
these animals were the hobeu or pigs to which reference was made at
p. 69 above. Now Gwydion, having heard of them, visited Pryderi's
court, and by magic and enchantment deceived the king. Successful in
his quest, he sets out for Gwyned with his hobeu, and this is how
his journey is described in the Mabinogi: 'And that evening they
journeyed as far as the upper end of Keredigion, to a place which
is still called, for that reason, Mochdref, "Swine-town or Pigs'
stead." On the morrow they went their way, and came across the Elenyd
mountains, and that night they spent between Kerry and Arwystli, in
the stead which is also called for that reason Mochdref. Thence they
proceeded, and came the same evening as far as a commot in Powys,
which is for that reason called Mochnant [119], "Swine-burn." Thence
they journeyed to the cantred of Rhôs, and spent that night within the
town which is still called Mochdref [120].' 'Ah, my men,' said Gwydion,
'let us make for the fastness of Gwyned with these beasts: the country
is being raised in pursuit of us.' So this is what they did: they made
for the highest town of Arllechwed, and there built a creu or sty
for the pigs, and for that reason the town was called Creu-Wyrion,
that is, perhaps, 'Wyrion's Sty.' In this, it is needless to state,
we have the Corwrion of chap. i: see pp. 47, 50-70 above--the name
is variously pronounced also Cyrwrion and C'rwrion.

That is how a portion of the Math story is made to account for a
series of place-names, and had the editor of the Kulhwch understood
the play on the names of places in question in the story of Twrch
Trwyth, it might be expected that he would have given it prominence,
as already suggested. Then comes the question, how it came to pass
that he did not understand it? The first thing to suggest itself as an
answer is, that he may have been a stranger to the geography of the
country concerned. That, however, is a very inadequate explanation;
for his being a stranger, though it might account for his making
blunders as to the localities, would not be likely to deter him from
venturing into geography which he had not mastered.

What was it, then, that hid from him a portion of the original in
this instance? In part, at least, it must have been a difficulty of
language. Let us take an illustration: Gwys has already been mentioned
more than once as a name applied to one of Twrch Trwyth's offspring,
and the words used are very brief, to the following effect:--'And then
another of his swine was killed: Gwys was its name.' As a matter of
fact, the scribe was labouring under a mistake, for he ought to have
said rather, 'And then another of his swine was killed: it was a sow';
since gwys was a word meaning a sow, and not the name of any individual
hog. The word has, doubtless, long been obsolete in Welsh; but it was
known to the poet of the 'Little Pig's Lullaby' in the Black Book of
Carmarthen, where one of the stanzas begins, fo. 29a, with the line:


        Oian aparchellan. aparchell. guin guis.


The late Dr. Pughe translated it thus:


        Listen, little porkling! thou forward little white pig.


I fear I should be obliged to render it less elegantly:


        Lullaby, little porker, white sow porker.


For the last four words Stokes suggests 'O pigling of a white sow';
but perhaps the most natural rendering of the words would be 'O white
porker of a sow!'--which does not recommend itself greatly on the score
of sense, I must admit. The word occurs, also, in Breton as gwiz or
gwéz, 'truie, femelle du porc,' and as gwys or guis in Old Cornish,
while in Irish it was feis. Nevertheless, the editor of the Twrch
Trwyth story did not know it; but it would be in no way surprising that
a Welshman, who knew his language fairly well, should be baffled by
such a word in case it was not in use in his own district in his own
time. This, however, barely touches the fringe of the question. The
range of the hunt, as already given, was mostly within the boundaries,
so to say, of the portion of South Wales where we find Goidelic
inscriptions in the Ogam character of the fifth or sixth century;
and I am persuaded that the Goidelic language must have lived down to
the sixth or seventh century in the south and in the north of Wales
[121], a tract of Mid-Wales being then, probably, the only district
which can be assumed to have been completely Brythonic in point of
speech. In this very story, probably, such a name as Garth Grugyn is
but slightly modified from a Goidelic Gort Grucaind, 'the enclosure
of Grucand [122] or Grugan': compare Cúchulaind or Cúchulainn made in
Welsh into Cocholyn. But the capital instance in the story of Twrch
Trwyth as has already been indicated is that of Amanw, which I detect
also as Ammann (probably to be read Ammanu), in the Book of Llan Dâv
(or Liber Landavensis), p. 199: it is there borne by a lay witness to
a grant of land called Tir Dimuner, which would appear to have been in
what is now Monmouthshire. Interpreted as standing for in Banbh, 'the
Boar,' it would make a man's name of the same class as Ibleid, found
elsewhere in the same manuscript (pp. 178, 184), meaning evidently
i Bleid, now y Blaid, 'the Wolf.' But observe that the latter was
Welsh and the former Goidelic, which makes all the difference for our
story. The Goidel relating the story would say that a boar, banbh,
was killed on the mountain or hill of in Banbh or of 'the Boar';
and his Goidelic hearer could not fail to associate the place-name
with the appellative. But a Brython could hardly understand what the
words in Banbh meant, and certainly not after he had transformed them
into Ammanw, with the nb assimilated into mm, and the accent shifted
to the first syllable. It is needless to say that my remarks have no
meaning unless Goidelic was the original language of the tale.

In the summary I have given of the hunt, I omitted a number of proper
names of the men who fell at the different spots where the Twrch is
represented brought to bay. I wish now to return to them with the
question, why were their names inserted in the story at all? It may be
suspected that they also, or at any rate some of them, were intended to
explain place-names; but I must confess to having had little success
in identifying traces of them in the ordnance maps. Others, however,
may fare better, who have a better acquaintance with the districts
in point, and in that hope I append them in their order in the story:--

1. Arthur sends to the hunt on the banks of the Nevern, in
Pembrokeshire, his men, Eli and Trachmyr, Gwarthegyd son of Caw,
and Bedwyr; also Tri meib Cledyv Divwlch, 'three Sons of the Gapless
Sword.' The dogs are also mentioned: Drudwyn, Greid son of Eri's whelp,
led by Arthur himself; Glythmyr Ledewig's two dogs, led by Gwarthegyd
son of Caw; and Arthur's dog Cavall, led by Bedwyr.

2. Twrch Trwyth makes for Cwm Kerwyn in the Preselly Mountains, and
turns to bay, killing the following men, who are called Arthur's
four rhyswyr [123] or champions--Gwarthegyd son of Caw, Tarawg of
Allt Clwyd, Rheidwn son of Eli Atver, and Iscovan Hael.

3. He turns to bay a second time in Cwm Kerwyn, and kills Gwydre son
of Arthur, Garselid Wydel, Glew son of Yscawt, and Iscawyn son of
Bannon or Panon.

4. Next day he is overtaken in the same neighbourhood, and he kills
Glewlwyd Gavaelvawr's three men, Huandaw, Gogigwr, and Penn Pingon,
many of the men of the country also, and Gwlydyn Saer, one of Arthur's
chief architects.

5. Arthur overtakes the Twrch next in Peuliniauc (p. 512 above);
and the Twrch there kills Madawc son of Teithion, Gwyn son of Tringad
son of Neued, and Eiriawn Penlloran.

6. Twrch Trwyth next turns to bay at Aber Towy, 'Towy Mouth,' and
kills Cynlas son of Cynan, and Gwilenhin, king of France.

7. The next occasion of his killing any men whose names are given,
is when he reaches Llwch Ewin (p. 515), near which he killed Echel
Vordwyd-twll, Arwyli eil Gwydawg Gwyr, and many men and dogs besides.

8. Grugyn, one of the Twrch's offspring, goes to Garth Grugyn in
Keredigion with Eli and Trachmyr pursuing him; but what happened to
them we are not told in consequence of the omission mentioned above
(p. 515) as occurring in the manuscript.

9. Llwydawc at bay in an uncertain locality kills Rudvyw Rys [124]
and many others.

10. Llwydawc goes to Ystrad Yw, where he is met by the Men of Llydaw,
and he kills Hirpeissawc, king of Llydaw, also Llygatrud Emys and
Gwrbothu Hên, maternal uncles to Arthur.

By way of notes on these items, I would begin with the last by asking,
what is one to make of these Men of Llydaw? First of all, one notices
that their names are singular: thus Hirpeissawc, 'Long-coated or
Long-robed,' is a curious name for their king, as it sounds more
like an epithet than a name itself. Then Llygatrud (also Llysgatrud,
which I cannot understand, except as a scribal error) Emys is also
unusual: one would have rather expected Emys Lygatrud, 'Emys the
Red-eyed.' As it stands it looks as if it meant the 'Red-eyed One
of Emys.' Moreover Emys reminds one of the name of Emyr Llydaw, the
ancestor in Welsh hagiology of a number of Welsh saints. It looks as
if the redactor of the Red Book had mistaken an r for an s in copying
from a pre-Norman original. That he had to work on such a manuscript
is proved by the remaining instance, Gwrbothu Hên, 'G. the Ancient,'
in which we have undoubtedly a pre-Norman spelling of Gwrfodw: the
same redactor having failed to recognize the name, left it without
being converted into the spelling of his own school. In the Book
of Llan Dâv it will be found variously written Gurbodu, Guoruodu,
and Guruodu. Then the epithet hên, 'old or ancient,' reminds one of
such instances as Math Hên and Gofynion Hên, to be noticed a little
later in this chapter. Let us now direct the reader's attention for
a moment to the word Llydaw, in order to see whether that may not
suggest something. The etymology of it is contested, so one has to
infer its meaning, as well as one can, from the way in which it is
found used. Now it is the ordinary Welsh word for Brittany or Little
Britain, and in Irish it becomes Letha, which is found applied not
only to Armorica but also to Latium. Conversely one could not be
surprised if a Goidel, writing Latin, rendered his own Letha or the
Welsh Llydaw by Latium, even when no part of Italy was meant. Now it
so happens that Llydaw occurs in Wales itself, to wit in the name of
Llyn Llydaw, a Snowdonian lake already mentioned, p. 475. It is thus
described by Pennant, ii. 339:--'We found, on arriving at the top,
an hollow a mile in length, filled with Llyn Llydaw, a fine lake,
winding beneath the rocks, and vastly indented by rocky projections,
here and there jutting into it. In it was one little island, the
haunt of black-backed gulls, which breed here, and, alarmed by such
unexpected visitants, broke the silence of this sequestered place by
their deep screams.' But since Pennant's time mining operations [125]
have been carried on close to the margin of this lake; and in the
course of them the level of the water is said to have been lowered to
the extent of sixteen feet, when, in the year 1856, an ancient canoe
was discovered there. According to the late Mr. E. L. Barnwell, who
has described it in the Archæologia Cambrensis for 1874, pp. 150-1, it
was in the possession of Dr. Griffith Griffith of Tal y Treudyn, near
Harlech, who exhibited it at the Cambrian Archæological Association's
meeting at Machynlleth in 1866 [126]. 'It measures,' Mr. Barnwell
says, 'nine feet nine inches--a not uncommon length in the Scotch
early canoes,--and has been hollowed out of one piece of wood, as is
universally the case with these early boats.' He goes on to surmise
that 'this canoe may have been used to reach the island, for the sake
of birds or eggs; or what is not impossible, the island may have been
the residence of some one who had reasons for preferring so isolated
an abode. It may, in fact, have been a kind of small natural crannog,
and, in one sense, a veritable lake-dwelling, access to and from
which was easy by means of such a canoe.' Stokes conjectures Llydaw
to have meant coast-land, and Thurneysen connects it with the Sanskrit
prthivi and Old Saxon folda [127], 'earth': and, so far as I can see,
one is at liberty to assume a meaning that would satisfy Llydaw,
'Armorica,' and the Llydaw of Llyn Llydaw, 'the Lake of Llydaw,'
namely that it signified land which one had to reach by boat, so that
it was in fact applicable to a lake settlement of any kind, in other
words, that Llydaw on Snowdon was the name of the lake-dwelling. So I
cannot help suggesting, with great deference, that the place whence
came the Men of Llydaw in the story of the hunting of Twrch Trwyth
was the settlement in Syfadon lake (p. 73), and that the name of
that stronghold, whether it was a crannog or a stockaded islet, was
also Llydaw. For the power of that settlement over the surrounding
country to have extended a few miles around would be but natural to
suppose--the distance between the Yw and Llyn Syfadon is, I am told,
under three miles. Should this guess prove well founded, we should
have to scan with renewed care the allusions in our stories to Llydaw,
and not assume that they always refer us to Brittany.

That the name Llydaw did on occasion refer to the region of Llyn
Syfadon admits of indirect proof as follows:--The church of Llangorse
on its banks is dedicated to a Saint Paulinus, after whom also is
called Capel Peulin, in the upper course of the Towy, adjacent to the
Cardiganshire parish of Llandewi Brefi. Moreover, tradition makes
Paulinus attend a synod in 519 at Llandewi Brefi, where St. David
distinguished himself by his preaching against Pelagianism. Paulinus
was then an old man, and St. David had been one of his pupils at the
Ty Gwyn, 'Whitland,' on the Taf, where Paulinus had established a
religious house [128]; and some five miles up a tributary brook of
the Taf is the church of Llandysilio, where an ancient inscription
mentions a Paulinus. These two places, Whitland and Llandysilio, were
probably in the cymwd of Peuliniog, which is called after a Paulinus,
and through which we have just followed the hunt of Twrch Trwyth
(p. 512). Now the inscription to which I have referred reads [129],
with ligatures:--


                               CLVTORIGI
                              FILI PAVLINI
                              MARINILATIO


This probably means '(the Monument) of Clutorix, son of Paulinus from
Latium in the Marsh'; unless one ought rather to treat Marini as an
epithet to Paulini. In either case Latio has probably to be construed
'of or from Latium': compare a Roman inscription found at Bath
(Hübner's No. 48), which begins with C. Murrius. | C. F. Arniensis
| Foro. Iuli. Modestus [130], and makes in English, according to
Mr. Haverfield, 'Gaius Murrius Modestus, son of Gaius, of the tribe
Arniensis, of the town Forum Iulii.' The easiest way to explain the
last line as a whole is probably to treat it as a compound with the
qualifying word deriving its meaning, not from mare, 'the sea,' but
from the Late Latin mara, 'a marsh or bog.' Thus Marini-Latium would
mean 'Marshy Latium,' to distinguish it from Latium in Italy, and
from Letha or Llydaw in the sense of Brittany, which was analogously
termed in Medieval Irish Armuirc Letha [131], that is the Armorica
of Letha. This is borne out by the name of the church of Paulinus,
which is in Welsh Llan y Gors, anglicized Llangorse, 'the Church of the
Marsh or Bog,' and that is exactly the meaning of the name given it in
the Taxatio of Pope Nicholas, which is that of Ecclesia de Mara. In
other terms, we have in the qualified Latium of the inscription the
Latium or Letha which came to be called in Welsh Llydaw. It is, in
my opinion, from that settlement as their head quarters, that the
Men of Llydaw sallied forth to take part in the hunt in Ystrad Yw,
where the boar Llwydog was killed.

The idea that the story of Twrch Trwyth was more or less topographical
is not a new one. Lady Charlotte Guest, in her Mabinogion, ii. 363-5,
traces the hunt through several places called after Arthur, such
as Buarth Arthur, 'Arthur's Cattle-pen,' and Bwrd Arthur, 'Arthur's
Table,' besides others more miscellaneously named, such as Twyn y Moch,
'the Swine's Hill,' near the source of the Amman, and Llwyn y Moch,
'the Swine's Grove,' near the foot of the same eminence. But one of
the most remarkable statements in her note is the following:--'Another
singular coincidence may be traced between the name of a brook in
this neighbourhood, called Echel, and the Echel Fordwyttwll who
is recorded in the tale as having been slain at this period of the
chase.' I have been unable to discover any clue to a brook called
Echel, but one called Egel occurs in the right place; so I take
it that Lady Charlotte Guest's informants tacitly identified the
name with that of Echel. Substantially they were probably correct,
as the Egel, called Ecel in the dialect of the district, flows into
the upper Clydach, which in its turn falls into the Tawe near Pont
ar Dawe. As the next pool mentioned is Llwch Tawe, I presume it
was some water or other which drained into the Tawe in this same
neighbourhood. The relative positions of Llwch Ewin, the Egel,
and Llwch Tawe as indicated above offer no apparent difficulty. The
Goidelic name underlying that of Echel was probably some such a one
as Eccel or Ecell; and Ecell occurs, for instance, in the Book of the
Dun Cow, fo. 80b, as the name of a noble or prince. In rendering this
name into Welsh as Echel, due regard was had for the etymological
equivalence of Goidelic cc or c to Welsh ch, but the unbroken oral
tradition of a people changing its language by degrees from Goidelic
to Welsh was subject to no such influence, especially in the matter of
local names; so the one here in question passed into Welsh as Eccel,
liable only to be modified into Egel. In any case, one may assume that
the death of the hero Echel was introduced to account for the name
of the brook Egel. Indications of something similar in the linguistic
sense occur in the part of the narrative relating the death of Grugyn,
at Garth Grugyn. This boar is pursued by two huntsmen called Eli and
Trachmyr, the name of the former of whom reminds one of Garth Eli,
in the parish of Llandewi Brefi. Possibly the original story located
at Garth Eli the death of Eli, or some other incident in which Grugyn
was concerned; but the difficulty here is that the exact position of
Garth Grugyn is still uncertain.

Lastly, our information as to the hunting of Twrch Trwyth is not
exclusively derived from the Kulhwch, for besides an extremely
obscure poem about the Twrch in the Book of Aneurin, a manuscript
of the thirteenth century, we have one item given in the Mirabilia
associated with the Historia Brittonum of Nennius, § 73, and this
carries us back to the eighth century. It reads as follows:--

Est aliud mirabile in regione quæ dicitur Buelt. Est ibi cumulus
lapidum, et unus lapis superpositus super congestum, cum vestigio
canis in eo. Quando venatus est porcum Troit, impressit Cabal, qui
erat canis Arthuri militis, vestigium in lapide, et Arthur postea
congregavit congestum lapidum sub lapide in quo erat vestigium canis
sui, et vocatur Carn Cabal. Et veniunt homines et tollunt lapidem in
manibus suis per spacium diei et noctis, et in crastino die invenitur
super congestum suum.

'Another wonder there is in the district called Buallt: there is there
a heap of stones, and one stone is placed on the top of the pile with
the footmark of a dog in it. Cafall, the dog of the warrior Arthur,
when chasing the pig Trwyd printed the mark of his foot on it, and
Arthur afterwards collected a heap of stones underneath the stone
in which was the footmark of his dog, and it is called Cafall's
Cairn. And men come and take the stone away in their hands for the
space of a day and a night, and on the following day the stone is
found on the top of its heap [132].'

Lady Charlotte Guest, in a note to the Kulhwch story in her Mabinogion,
ii. 360, appears to have been astonished to find that Carn Cavall,
as she writes it, was no fabulous mound but an actual 'mountain in
the district of Builth, to the south of Rhayader Gwy, and within
sight of that town.' She went so far as to persuade one of her
friends to visit the summit, and he begins his account of it to her
with the words: 'Carn Cavall, or as it is generally pronounced Corn
Cavall, is a lofty and rugged mountain.' On one of the cairns on the
mountain he discovered what may have been the very stone to which
the Mirabilia story refers; but the sketch with which he accompanied
his communication cannot be said to be convincing, and he must have
been drawing on his imagination when he spoke of this somewhat high
hill as a lofty mountain. Moreover his account of its name only
goes just far enough to be misleading: the name as pronounced in the
neighbourhood of Rhayader is Corn Gafallt by Welsh-speaking people,
and Corn Gavalt by monoglot Englishmen. So it is probable that at
one time the pronunciation was Carn Gavall [133]. But to return to
the incident recorded by Nennius, one has to remark that it does
not occur in the Kulhwch; nor, seeing the position of the hill,
can it have been visited by Arthur or his dog in the course of the
Twrch Trwyth hunt as described by the redactor of the story in its
present form. This suggests the reflection not only that the Twrch
story is very old, but that it was put together by selecting certain
incidents out of an indefinite number, which, taken all together,
would probably have formed a network covering the whole of South Wales
as far north as the boundary of the portion of Mid-Wales occupied by
the Brythons before the Roman occupation. In other words, the Goidels
of this country had stories current among them to explain the names
of the places with which they were familiar; and it is known that was
the case with the Goidels of Ireland. Witness the place-name legends
known in Medieval Irish as Dindsenchas, with which the old literature
of Ireland abounds. On what principle the narrator of the Kulhwch
made his selection from the repertoire I cannot say; but one cannot
help seeing that he takes little interest in the details, and that he
shows still less insight into the etymological motif of the incidents
which he mentions. However, this should be laid mainly to the charge,
perhaps, of the early medieval redactor.

Among the reasons which have been suggested for the latter overlooking
and effacing the play on the place-names, I have hinted that he did
not always understand them, as they sometimes involved a language
which may not have been his. This raises the question of translation:
if the story was originally in Goidelic, what was the process by which
it passed into Brythonic? Two answers suggest themselves, and the first
comes to this: if the story was in writing, we may suppose a literary
man to have sat down to translate it word for word from Goidelic to
Brythonic, or else to adapt it in a looser fashion. In either case,
one should suppose him a master of both languages, and capable of doing
justice to the play on the place-names. But it is readily conceivable
that the fact of his understanding both languages might lead him to
miscalculate what was exactly necessary to enable a monoglot Brython
to grasp his meaning clearly. Moreover, if the translator had ideas
of his own as to style, he might object on principle to anything like
an explanation of words being interpolated in the narrative. In short,
one could see several loopholes through which a little confusion might
force itself in, and prevent the monoglot reader or hearer of the
translation from correctly grasping the story at all points as it was
in the original. The other view, and the more natural one, as I think,
is that we should postulate the interference of no special translator,
but suppose the story, or rather a congeries of stories, to have been
current among the natives of a certain part of South Wales, say the
Loughor Valley, at a time when their language was still Goidelic, and
that, as they gradually gave up Goidelic and adopted Brythonic, they
retained their stories and translated the narrative, while they did not
always translate the place-names occurring in that narrative. Thus,
for instance, would arise the discrepancy between banw and Amanw,
the latter of which to be Welsh should have been rendered y Banw,
'the Boar.' If this is approximately what took place, it is easy to
conceive the possibility of many points of nicety being completely
effaced in the course of such a rough process of transformation. In one
or two small matters it happens that we can contrast the community as
translator with the literary individual at work: I allude to the word
Trwyth. That vocable was not translated, not metaphoned, if I may so
term it, at all at the time: it passed, when it was still Treth-i, from
Goidelic into Brythonic, and continued in use without a break; for the
changes whereby Treth-i has become Trwyth have been such as other words
have undergone in the course of ages, as already stated. On the other
hand, the literary man who knew something of the two languages seems
to have reasoned, that where a Goidelic th occurred between vowels,
the correct etymological equivalent in Brythonic was t, subject to be
mutated to d. So when he took the name over he metaphoned Treth-i into
Tret-i, whence we have the Porcus Troit of Nennius, and Twrch Trwyd
[134] in Welsh poetry: these Troit and Trwyd were the literary forms
as contrasted with the popular Trwyth. Now, if my surmises as to Echel
and Egel are near the truth, their history must be similar; that is to
say, Echel would be the literary form and Ecel, Egel the popular one
respectively of the Goidelic Ecell. A third parallel offers itself
in the case of the personal name Arwyli, borne by one of Echel's
companions: the Arwyl of that name has its etymological equivalent
in the Arwystl- of Arwystli, the name of a district comprising the
eastern <DW72>s of Plinlimmon, and represented now by the Deanery of
Arwystli. So Arwystli challenges comparison with the Irish Airgialla
or Airgéill, anglicized Oriel, which denotes, roughly speaking, the
modern counties of Armagh, Louth, and Monaghan. For here we have the
same prefix ar placed in front of one and the same vocable, which in
Welsh is gwystl, 'a hostage,' and in Irish giall, of the same meaning
and origin. The reader will at once think of the same word in German
as geisel, 'a hostage,' Old High German gisal. But the divergence
of sound between Arwystl-i and Arwyl-i arises out of the difference
of treatment of sl in Welsh and Irish. In the Brythonic district
of Mid-Wales we have Arwystli with sl treated in the Brythonic way,
while in Arwyli we have the combination treated in the Goidelic way,
the result being left standing when the speakers of Goidelic in South
Wales learnt Brythonic [135].

Careful observation may be expected to add to the number of these
instructive instances. It is, however, not to be supposed that all
double forms of the names in these stories are to be explained in
exactly the same way. Thus, for instance, corresponding to Lug,
genitive Loga, we have the two forms Lleu and Llew, of which the
former alone matches the Irish. But it is to be observed that Lleu
remains in some verses [136] in the story of Math, whereas in the
prose he appears to be called Llew. It is not improbable that the
editing which introduced Llew dates comparatively late, and that it
was done by a man who was not familiar with the Venedotian place-names
of which Lleu formed part, namely, Dinlleu and Nantlleu, now Dinlle
and Nantlle. Similarly the two brothers, Gofannon and Amaethon, as
they are called in the Mabinogi of Math and in the Kulhwch story, are
found also called Gofynyon and Amathaon. The former agrees with the
Irish form Goibniu, genitive Goibnenn, whereas Gofannon does not. As
to Amaethon or Amathaon the Irish counterpart has, unfortunately,
not been identified. Gofannon and Amaethon have the appearance of
being etymologically transparent in Welsh, and they have probably been
remodelled by the hand of a literary redactor. There were also two
forms of the name of Manawydan in Welsh; for by the side of that there
was another, namely, Manawydan, liable to be shortened to Manawyd:
both occur in old Welsh poetry [137]. But manawyd or mynawyd is the
Welsh word for an awl, which is significant here, as the Mabinogi
called after Manawydan makes him become a shoemaker on two occasions,
whence the Triads style him one of the Three golden Shoemakers of
the Isle of Prydain: see the Oxford Mabinogion, p. 308.

What has happened in the way of linguistic change in one of our
stories, the Kulhwch, may have happened in others, say in the
four branches of the Mabinogi, namely, Pwyll, prince of Dyved;
Branwen, daughter of Llyr; Math, son of Mathonwy; and Manawydan,
son of Llyr. Some time ago I endeavoured to show that the principal
characters in the Mabinogi of Math, namely, the sons and daughters
of Dôn, are to be identified as a group with the Tuatha Dé Danann,
'Tribes of the Goddess Danu or Donu,' of Irish legend. I called
attention to the identity of our Welsh Dôn with the Irish Donu,
genitive Donann, Gofynion or Gofannon with Goibniu, genitive Goibnenn,
and of Lleu or Llew with Lug. Since then Professor Zimmer has gone
further, and suggested that the Mabinogion are of Irish origin; but
that I cannot quite admit. They are of Goidelic origin, but they do
not come from the Irish or the Goidels of Ireland: they come rather,
as I think, from this country's Goidels, who never migrated to the
sister island, but remained here eventually to adopt Brythonic
speech. There is no objection, however, so far as this argument
is concerned, to their being regarded as this country's Goidels
descended either from native Goidels or from early Goidelic invaders
from Ireland, or else partly from the one origin and partly from the
other. This last is perhaps the safest view to accept as a working
hypothesis. Now Professor Zimmer fixes on that of Mathonwy, among
other names, as probably the Welsh adaptation of some such an Irish
name as the genitive Mathgamnai [138], now anglicized Mahony. This
I am also prepared to accept in the sense that the Welsh form is a
loan from a Goidelic one current some time or other in this country,
and represented in Irish by Mathgamnai. The preservation of Goidelic
th in Mathonwy stamps it as ranking with Trwyth, Egel, and Arwyli,
as contrasted with a form etymologically more correct, of which we
seem to have an echo in the Breton names Madganoe and Madgone [139].

Another name which I am inclined to regard as brought in from Goidelic
is that of Gilvaethwy, son of Dôn: it would seem to involve some
such a word as the Irish gilla, 'a youth, an attendant or servant,'
and some form of the Goidelic name Maughteus or Mochta, so that the
name Gilla-mochtai meant the attendant of Mochta. This last vocable
appears in Irish as the name of several saints, but previously it
was probably that of some pagan god of the Goidels, and its meaning
was most likely the same as that of the Irish participial mochta,
which Stokes explains as 'magnified, glorified': see his Calendar of
Oengus, p. ccxiv, and compare the name Mael-mochta. Adamnan, in his
Vita S. Columbæ, writes the name Maucteus in the following passage,
pref. ii. p. 6:--

Nam quidam proselytus Brito, <DW25> sanctus, sancti Patricii episcopi
discipulus, Maucteus nomine, ita de nostro prophetizavit Patrono,
sicuti nobis ab antiquis traditum expertis compertum habetur.

This saint, who is said to have prophesied of St. Columba and died in
the year 534, is described in his Life (Aug. 19) as ortus ex Britannia
[140], which, coupled with Adamnan's Brito, probably refers him
to Wales; but it is remarkable that nevertheless he bore the very
un-Brythonic name of Mochta or Mauchta [141].

To return to the Mabinogion: I have long been inclined to identify
Llwyd, son of Kilcoed, with the Irish Liath, son of Celtchar, of
Cualu in the present county of Wicklow. Liath, whose name means
'grey,' is described as the comeliest youth of noble rank among
the fairies of Erin; and the only time the Welsh Llwyd, whose name
also means 'grey,' appears in the Mabinogion he is ascribed, not
the comeliest figure, it is true, or the greatest personal beauty,
but the most imposing disguise of a bishop attended by his suite: he
was a great magician. The name of his father, Kil-coet, seems to me
merely an inexact popular rendering of Celtchar, the name of Liath's
father: at any rate one fails here to detect the touch of the skilled
translator or literary redactor. [142] But the Mabinogi of Manawydan,
in which Llwyd figures, is also the one in which Pryderi king of
Dyfed's wife is called Kicua or Cigfa, a name which has no claim to
be regarded as Brythonic. It occurs early, however, in the legendary
history of Ireland: the Four Masters, under the year A.M. 2520,
mention a Ciocbha as wife of a son of Parthalon; and the name seems
to be related to that of a man called Cioccal, A.M. 2530. Lastly,
Manawydan, from whom the Mabinogi takes its name, is called mab Llyr,
'son of Llyr,' in Welsh, and Manannán mac Lir in Irish. Similarly
with his brother Brân, and his sister Branwen, except that she has not
been identified in Irish story. But in Irish literature the genitive
Lir, as in mac Lir, 'son of Ler,' is so common, and the nominative so
rare, that Lir came to be treated in late Irish as the nominative too;
but a genitive of the form Lir suggests a nominative-accusative Ler,
and as a matter of fact it occurs, for instance, in the couplet:--


        Fer co n-ilur gnim dar ler
        Labraid Luath Lam ar Claideb [143].

        A man of many feats beyond sea,
        Labraid swift of Hand on Sword is he.


So it seems probable that the Welsh Llyr [144] is no other word than
the Goidelic genitive Lir, retained in use with its pronunciation
modified according to the habits of the Welsh language; and in that
case [145] it forms comprehensive evidence, that the stories about
the Llyr family in Welsh legend were Goidelic before they put on a
Brythonic garb.

As to the Mabinogion generally, one may say that they are devoted
to the fortunes chiefly of three powerful houses or groups, the
children of Dôn, the children of Llyr, and Pwyll's family. This last is
brought into contact with the Llyr group, which takes practically the
position of superiority. Pwyll's family belonged chiefly to Dyfed;
but the power and influence of the sons of Llyr had a far wider
range: we find them in Anglesey, at Harlech, in Gwales or the Isle
of Grasholm off Pembrokeshire, at Aber Henvelen somewhere south of
the Severn Sea, and in Ireland. But the expedition to Ireland under
Brân, usually called Bendigeituran, 'Brân [146] the Blessed,' proved
so disastrous that the Llyr group, as a whole, disappears, making
way for the children of Dôn. These last came into collision with
Pwyll's son, Pryderi, in whose country Manawydan, son of Llyr, had
ended his days. Pryderi, in consequence of Gwydion's deceit (pp. 69,
501, 525), makes war on Math and the children of Dôn: he falls in it,
and his army gives hostages to Math. Thus after the disappearance of
the sons of Llyr, the children of Dôn are found in power in their
stead in North Wales [147], and that state of things corresponds
closely enough to the relation between the Tuatha Dé Danann and the
Lir family in Irish legend. There Lir and his family are reckoned in
the number of the Tuatha Dé Danann, but within that community Lir
was so powerful that it was considered but natural that he should
resent a rival candidate being elected king in preference to him. So
the Tuatha Dé took pains to conciliate Lir, as did also their king,
who gave his daughter to Lir to wife, and when she died he gave
him another of his daughters [148]; and with the treatment of her
stepchildren by that deceased wife's sister begins one of the three
Sorrowful Tales of Erin, known to English readers as the Fate of the
Children of Lir. But the reader should observe the relative position:
the Tuatha Dé remain in power, while the children of Lir belong to
the past, which is also the sequence in the Mabinogion. Possibly this
is not to be considered as having any significance, but it is to be
borne in mind that the Lir-Llyr group is strikingly elemental in its
patronymic Lir, Llyr. The nominative, as already stated, was ler,
'sea,' and so Cormac renders mac Lir by filius maris. How far we may
venture to consider the sea to have been personified in this context,
and how early, it is impossible to say. In any case it is deserving
of notice that one group of Goidels to this day do not say mac Lir,
'son of Lir,' filium maris, but always 'son of the lir': I allude to
the Gaels of the Isle of Man, in whose language Manannán mac Lir is
always Mannanan mac y Lir, or as they spell it, Lear; that is to say
'Mannanan, son of the ler.' Manxmen have been used to consider Manannan
their eponymous hero, and first king of their island: they call him
more familiarly Mannanan beg mac y Lear, 'Little Mannanan, son of
the ler'. This we may, though no Manxman of the present day attaches
any meaning to the word lir or lear, interpreted as 'Little Mannanan,
son of the Sea.' The wanderings at large of the children of Lir before
being eclipsed by the Danann-Dôn group, remind one of the story of
the labours of Hercules, where it relates that hero's adventures on
his return from robbing Geryon of his cattle. Pomponius Mela, ii. 5
(p. 50), makes Hercules on that journey fight in the neighbourhood
of Aries with two sons of Poseidon or Neptune, whom he calls (in
the accusative) Albiona and Bergyon. To us, with our more adequate
knowledge of geography, the locality and the men cannot appear the most
congruous, but there can hardly be any mistake as to the two personal
names being echoes of those of Albion and Iverion, Britain and Ireland.

The whole cycle of the Mabinogion must have appeared strange to the
story-teller and the poet of medieval Wales, and far removed from the
world in which they lived. We have possibly a trace of this feeling
in the epithet hên, 'old, ancient,' given to Math in a poem in the
Red Book of Hergest, where we meet with the line [149]:--


        Gan uath hen gan gouannon.

        With Math the ancient, with Gofannon.


Similarly in the confused list of heroes which the story-teller of
the Kulhwch (Mabinogion, p. 108) was able to put together, we seem to
have Gofannon, Math's relative, referred to under the designation of
Gouynyon Hen, 'Gofynion the Ancient.' To these might be added others,
such as Gwrbothu Hên, mentioned above, p. 531, and from another
source Lleu Hen [150], 'Llew the Ancient.' So strange, probably, and
so obscure did some of the contents of the stories themselves seem to
the story-tellers, that they may be now and then suspected of having
effaced some of the features which it would have interested us to find
preserved. This state of things brings back to my mind words of Matthew
Arnold's, to which I had the pleasure of listening more years ago than
I care to remember. He was lecturing at Oxford on Celtic literature,
and observing 'how evidently the mediæval story-teller is pillaging
an antiquity of which he does not fully possess the secret; he is
like a peasant,' Matthew Arnold went on to say, 'building his hut on
the site of Halicarnassus or Ephesus; he builds, but what he builds
is full of materials of which he knows not the history, or knows by
a glimmering tradition merely--stones "not of this building," but of
an older architecture, greater, cunninger, more majestical. In the
mediæval stories of no Latin or Teutonic people does this strike one as
in those of the Welsh.' This becomes intelligible only on the theory of
the stories having been in Goidelic before they put on a Welsh dress.

When saying that the Mabinogion and some of the stories contained
in the Kulhwch, such as the Hunting of Twrch Trwyth, were Goidelic
before they became Brythonic, I wish to be understood to use the
word Goidelic in a qualified sense. For till the Brythons came, the
Goidels were, I take it, the ruling race in most of the southern
half of Britain, with the natives as their subjects, except in so
far as that statement has to be limited by the fact, that we do not
know how far they and the natives had been amalgamating together. In
any case, the hostile advent of another race, the Brythons, would
probably tend to hasten the process of amalgamation. That being
so, the stories which I have loosely called Goidelic may have been
largely aboriginal in point of origin, and by that I mean native,
pre-Celtic and non-Aryan. It comes to this, then: we cannot say for
certain whose creation Brân, for instance, should be considered to
have been--that of Goidels or of non-Aryan natives. He sat, as the
Mabinogi of Branwen describes him, on the rock of Harlech, a figure
too colossal for any house to contain or any ship to carry. This would
seem to challenge comparison with Cernunnos, the squatting god of
ancient Gaul, around whom the other gods appear as mere striplings,
as proved by the monumental representations in point. In these [151]
he sometimes appears antlered like a stag; sometimes he is provided
either with three normal heads or with one head furnished with three
faces; and sometimes he is reduced to a head provided with no body,
which reminds one of Brân, who, when he had been rid of his body in
consequence of a poisoned wound inflicted on him in his foot in the
slaughter of the Meal-bag Pavilion, was reduced to the Urdawl Ben,
'Venerable or Dignified Head,' mentioned in the Mabinogi of Branwen
[152]. The Mabinogi goes on to relate how Brân's companions began to
enjoy, subject to certain conditions, his 'Venerable Head's' society,
which involved banquets of a fabulous duration and of a nature not
readily to be surpassed by those around the Holy Grail. In fact here
we have beyond all doubt one of the heathen originals of which the
Grail is a Christian version. But the multiplicity of faces or heads
of the Gaulish divinity find their analogues in a direction hitherto
unnoticed as far as I know, namely, among the Letto-Slavic peoples
of the Baltic sea-board. Thus the image of Svatovit in the island of
Rügen is said to have had four faces [153]; and the life of Otto of
Bamberg relates [154] how that high-handed evangelist proceeded to
convert the ancient Prussians to Christianity. Among other things
we are told how he found at Stettin an idol called Triglaus, a word
referring to the three heads for which the god was remarkable. The
saint took possession of the image and hewed away the body, reserving
for himself the three heads, which are represented adhering together,
forming one piece. This he sent as a trophy to Rome, and in Rome it
may be still. Were it perchance to be found, it might be expected to
show a close resemblance to the tricephal of the Gaulish altar found
at Beaune in Burgundy.

Before closing this chapter a word may be permitted as to the Goidelic
element in the history of Wales: it will come again before the reader
in a later chapter, but what has already been advanced or implied
concerning it may here be recapitulated as follows:--

It has been suggested that the hereditary dislike of the Brython for
the Goidel argues their having formerly lived in close proximity to
one another: see p. 473 above.

The tradition that the cave treasures of the Snowdon district belong
by right to the Goidels, means that they were formerly supposed
to have hidden them away when hard pressed by the Brythons: see
pp. 471-2 above.

The sundry instances of a pair of names for a single person or place,
one Goidelic (Brythonicized) still in use, and the other Brythonic
(suggested by the Goidelic one), literary mostly and obsolete, go to
prove that the Goidels were not expelled, but allowed to remain to
adopt Brythonic speech.

Evidence of the indebtedness of story-tellers in Wales to their
brethren of the same profession in Ireland is comparatively scarce; and
almost in every instance of recent research establishing a connexion
between topics or incidents in the Arthurian romances and the native
literature of Ireland, the direct contact may be assumed to have been
with the folklore and legend of the Goidelic inhabitants of Wales,
whether before or after their change of language.

Probably the folklore and mythology of the Goidels of Wales and of
Ireland were in the mass much the same, though in some instances they
reach us in different stages of development: thus in such a case as
that of Dôn and Danu (genitive Danann) the Welsh allusions in point
refer to Dôn at a conspicuously earlier stage of her rôle than that
represented by the Irish literature touching the Tuatha Dé Danann
[155].

The common point of view from which our ancestors liked to look at
the scenery around them is well illustrated by the fondness of the
Goidel, in Wales and Ireland alike, for incidents to explain his
place-names. He required the topography--indeed he requires it still,
and hence the activity of the local etymologist--to connote story or
history: he must have something that will impart the cold light of
physical nature, river and lake, moor and mountain, a warmer tint,
a dash of the pathetic element, a touch of the human, borrowed from
the light and shade of the world of imagination and fancy in which
he lives and dreams.








CHAPTER X

DIFFICULTIES OF THE FOLKLORIST

                    For priests, with prayers and other godly gear,
                    Have made the merry goblins disappear;
                    And, where they played their merry pranks before,
                    Have sprinkled holy water on the floor.--Dryden.


The attitude of the Kymry towards folklore and popular superstitions
varies according to their training and religious views; and I
distinguish two classes of them in this respect. First of all,
there are those who appear to regret the ebb of the tide of ancient
beliefs. They maintain that people must have been far more interesting
when they believed in the fairies; and they rave against Sunday schools
and all other schools for having undermined the ancient superstitions
of the peasantry: it all comes, they say, of over-educating the
working classes. Of course one may occasionally wish servant maids
still believed that they might get presents from the fairies for being
neat and tidy; and that, in the contrary case of their being sluts,
they would be pinched black and blue during their sleep by the little
people: there may have been some utility in beliefs of that kind. But,
if one takes an impartial view of the surroundings in which this
kind of mental condition was possible, no sane man could say that
the superstitious beliefs of our ancestors conduced on the whole to
their happiness. Fancy a state of mind in which this sort of thing is
possible:--A member of the family is absent, let us say, from home
in the evening an hour later than usual, and the whole household is
thrown into a panic because they imagine that he has strayed on fairy
ground, and has been spirited away to the land of fairy twilight,
whence he may never return; or at any rate only to visit his home
years, or maybe ages, afterwards, and then only to fall into a heap
of dust just as he has found out that nobody expects or even knows
him. Or take another instance:--A man sets out in the morning on an
important journey, but he happens to sneeze, or he sees an ill-omened
bird, or some other dreaded creature, crossing his path: he expects
nothing that day but misfortune, and the feeling of alarm possibly
makes him turn back home, allowing the object of his journey to be
sacrificed. That was not a satisfactory state of things or a happy one,
and the unhappiness might be wholly produced by causes over which the
patient had absolutely no control, so long at any rate as the birds
of the air have wings, and so long as sneezing does not belong to
the category of voluntary actions. Then I might point to the terrors
of magic; but I take it to be unnecessary to dwell on such things,
as most people have heard about them or read of them in books. On
the whole it is but charitable to suppose that those who regret the
passing away of the ages of belief and credulity have not seriously
attempted to analyse the notions which they are pleased to cherish.

Now, as to the other class of people, namely, those who object to
folklore in every shape and form, they may be roughly distinguished
into different groups, such as those to whom folklore is an
abomination, because they hold that it is opposed to the Bible, and
those who regard it as too trivial to demand the attention of any
serious person. I have no occasion for many words with the former,
since nearly everything that is harmful in popular superstition has
ceased in Wales to be a living force influencing one's conduct; or if
this be not already the case, it is fast becoming so. Those therefore
who condemn superstitions have really no reason to set their faces
against the student of folklore: it would be just as if historians were
to be boycotted because they have, in writing history--frequently,
the more the pity--to deal with dark intrigues, cruel murders, and
sanguinary wars. Besides, those who study folklore do not thereby
help to strengthen the hold of superstition on the people. I have
noticed that any local peculiarity of fashion, the moment it becomes
known to attract the attention of strangers, is, one may say, doomed:
a Celt, like anybody else, does not like to be photographed in a light
which may perchance show him at a disadvantage. It is much the same,
I think, with him as the subject of the studies of the folklorist:
hence the latter has to proceed with his work very quietly and very
warily. If, then, I pretended to be a folklorist, which I can hardly
claim to be, I should say that I had absolutely no quarrel with him
who condemns superstition on principle. On the other hand, I should
not consider it fair of him to regard me as opposed to the progress
of the race in happiness and civilization, just because I am curious
to understand its history.

With regard to him, however, who looks at the collecting and
the studying of folklore as trivial work and a waste of time,
I should gather that he regards it so on account, first perhaps,
of his forgetting the reality their superstitions were to those
who believed in them; and secondly, on account of his ignorance
of their meaning. As a reality to those who believed in them,
the superstitions of our ancestors form an integral part of their
history. However, I need not follow that topic further by trying to
show how 'the proper study of mankind is man,' and how it is a mark of
an uncultured people not to know or care to know about the history of
the race. So the ancient Roman historian, Tacitus, evidently thought;
for, when complaining how little was known as to the original peopling
of Britain, he adds the suggestive words ut inter barbaros, 'as usual
among barbarians.' Conversely, I take it for granted that no liberally
educated man or woman of the present day requires to be instructed
as to the value of the study of history in all its aspects, or to be
told that folklore cannot be justly called trivial, seeing that it
has to do with the history of the race--in a wider sense, I may say
with the history of the human mind and the record of its development.

As history has been mentioned, it may be here pointed out that one
of the greatest of the folklorist's difficulties is that of drawing
the line between story and history. Nor is that the worst of it; for
the question as between fact and fiction, hard as it is in itself,
is apt to be further complicated by questions of ethnology. This
may be illustrated by reference to a group of legends which project
a vanishing distinction between the two kindred races of Brythons
and Goidels in Wales; and into the story of some of them Arthur is
introduced playing a principal rôle. They seem to point to a time
when the Goidels had as yet wholly lost neither their own language
nor their own institutions in North Wales: for the legends belong
chiefly to Gwyned, and cluster especially around Snowdon, where the
characteristics of the Goidel as the earlier Celt may well have
lingered latest, thanks to the comparatively inaccessible nature
of the country. One of these legends has already been summarized as
representing Arthur marching up the side of Snowdon towards Bwlch y
Saethau, where he falls and is buried under a cairn named from him
Carned Arthur: see p. 473. We are not told who his enemies were;
but with this question has usually been associated the late Triad,
iii. 20, which alludes to Arthur meeting in Nanhwynain with Medrawd
or Medrod (Modred) and Idawc Corn Prydain, and to his being betrayed,
for the benefit and security of the Saxons in the island. An earlier
reference to the same story occurs in the Dream of Rhonabwy in the
Red Book of Hergest [156], in which Idawc describes himself as Idawc
son of Mynio, and as nicknamed Idawc Cord Prydain--which means 'Idawc
the Churn-staff of Prydain'--in reference presumably to his activity
in creating dissension. He confesses to having falsified the friendly
messages of Arthur to Medrod, and to succeeding thereby in bringing
on the fatal battle of Camlan, from which Idawc himself escaped to
do penance for seven years on the Llech Las, 'Grey Stone [157],'
in Prydain or Pictland.

Another story brings Arthur and the giant Rhita into collision, the
latter of whom has already been mentioned as having, according to
local tradition, his grave on the top of Snowdon: see pp. 474-9. The
story is a very wild one. Two kings who were brothers, Nyniaw or Nynio
and Peibiaw or Peibio, quarrelled thus: one moonlight night, as they
were together in the open air, Nynio said to Peibio, 'See, what a
fine extensive field I possess.' 'Where is it?' asked Peibio. 'There
it is,' said Nynio, 'the whole firmament.' 'See,' said Peibio,
'what innumerable herds of cattle and sheep I have grazing in thy
field.' 'Where are they?' asked Nynio. 'There they are,' said Peibio,
'the whole host of stars that thou seest, each of golden brightness,
with the moon shepherding them.' 'They shall not graze in my field,'
said Nynio. 'But they shall,' said Peibio; and the two kings got
so enraged with one another, that they began a war in which their
warriors and subjects were nearly exterminated. Then comes Rhita Gawr,
king of Wales, and attacks them on the dangerous ground of their
being mad. He conquered them and shaved off their beards [158]; but
when the other kings of Prydain, twenty-eight in number, heard of it,
they collected all their armies together to avenge themselves on Rhita
for the disgrace to which he had subjected the other two. But after a
great struggle Rhita conquers again, and has the beards of the other
kings shaved. Then the kings of neighbouring kingdoms in all directions
combined to make war on Rhita to avenge the disgrace to their order;
but they were also vanquished forthwith, and treated in the same
ignominious fashion as the thirty kings of Prydain. With the beards
he had a mantle made to cover him from head to foot, and that was a
good deal, we are told, since he was as big as two ordinary men. Then
Rhita turned his attention to the establishment of just and equitable
laws as between king and king and one realm with another [159]. But
the sequel to the shaving is related by Geoffrey of Monmouth, x. 3,
where Arthur is made to tell how the giant, after destroying the
other kings and using their beards in the way mentioned, asked him
for his beard to fix above the other beards, as he stood above them in
rank, or else to come and fight a duel with him. Arthur, as might be
expected, chose the latter course, with the result that he slew Rhita,
there called Ritho, at a place said to be in Aravio Monte, by which
the Welsh translator understood the chief mountain of Eryri [160] or
Snowdon. So it is but natural that his grave should also be there, as
already mentioned. I may here add that it is the name Snowdon itself,
probably, that underlies the Senaudon or Sinadoun of such Arthurian
romances as the English version of Libeaus Desconus, though the place
meant has been variously supposed to be situated elsewhere than in
the Snowdon district: witness Sinodun Hill in Berkshire [161].

The story of Rhita is told also by Malory, who calls that giant Ryons
and Ryence; and there the incident seems to end with Ryons being led
to Arthur's court by knights who had overcome him. Ryons' challenge,
as given by Malory [162], runs thus:--

'This meane whyle came a messager from kynge Ryons of Northwalys. And
kynge he was of all Ireland and of many Iles. And this was his message
gretynge wel kynge Arthur in this manere wyse sayenge . that kynge
Ryons had discomfyte and ouercome xj kynges . and eueryche of hem
did hym homage . and that was this . they gaf hym their berdys clene
flayne of . as moche as ther was . wherfor the messager came for kyng
Arthurs berd. For kyng Ryons had purfyled a mantel with kynges berdes
. and there lacked one place of the mantel . wherfor he sente for his
berd or els he wold entre in to his landes . and brenne and slee . &
neuer leue tyl he haue the hede and the berd.'

Rhita is not said, it is true, to have been a Gwydel, 'Goidel';
but he is represented ruling over Ireland, and his name, which is
not Welsh, recalls at first sight those of such men as Boya the Pict
or Scot figuring in the life of St. David, and such as Llia Gvitel,
'Llia the Goidel,' mentioned in the Stanzas of the Graves in the
Black Book of Carmarthen as buried in the seclusion of Ardudwy
[163]. Malory's Ryons is derived from the French Romances, where,
as for example in the Merlin, according to the Huth MS., it occurs
as Rion-s in the nominative, and Rion in régime. The latter, owing
to the old French habit of eliding d or th, derives regularly enough
from such a form as the accusative Rithon-em [164], which is the
one occurring in Geoffrey's text; and we should probably be right in
concluding therefrom that the correct old Welsh form of the name was
Rithon. But the Goidelic form was at the same time probably Ritta,
with a genitive Rittann, for an earlier Ritton. Lastly, that the
local legend should perpetuate the Goidelic Ritta slightly modified,
has its parallel in the case of Trwyd and Trwyth, and of Echel and
Egel or Ecel, pp. 541-2 and 536-7.

The next story [165] points to a spot between y Dinas or Dinas
Emrys and Llyn y Dinas as containing the grave of Owen y Mhacsen,
that is to say, 'Owen son of Maxen.' Owen had been fighting with a
giant--whose name local tradition takes for granted--with balls of
steel; and there are depressions (panylau [166]) still to be seen
in the ground where each of the combatants took his stand. Some,
however, will have it that it was with bows and arrows they fought,
and that the hollows are the places they dug to defend themselves. The
result was that both died at the close of the conflict; and Owen,
being asked where he wished to be buried, ordered an arrow to be shot
into the air and his grave to be made where it fell. The story is
similarly given in the Iolo MSS., pp. 81-2, where the combatants are
called Owen Findu ab Macsen Wledig, 'Owen of the Dark Face, son of
Prince Maxen,' and Eurnach Hen, 'E. the Ancient,' one of the Gwydyl
or 'Goidels' of North Wales, and otherwise called Urnach Wydel. He is
there represented as father (1) of the Serrigi defeated by Catwallawn
or Cadwallon Law-hir, 'C. the Long-handed,' at Cerrig y Gwydyl,
'the Stones of the Goidels,' near Malldraeth [167], in Anglesey,
where the great and final rout of the Goidels is represented as having
taken place [168]; (2) of Daronwy, an infant spared and brought up in
Anglesey to its detriment, as related in the other story, p. 504; and
(3) of Solor, who commands one of the three cruising fleets of the
Isle of Prydain [169]. The stronghold of Eurnach or Urnach is said
to have been Dinas Ffaraon, which was afterwards called Din Emreis
and Dinas Emrys. The whole story about the Goidels in North Wales,
however, as given in the Iolo MSS., pp. 78-80, is a hopeless jumble,
though it is probably based on old traditions. In fact, one detects
Eurnach or Urnach as Wrnach or Gwrnach in the story of Kulhwch and
Olwen [170] in the Red Book, where we are told that Kei or Cai, and
others of Arthur's men, got into the giant's castle and cut off his
head in order to secure his sword, which was one of the things required
for the hunting of Twrch Trwyth. In an obscure passage, also in a poem
in the Black Book, we read of Cai fighting in the hall of this giant,
who is then called Awarnach [171]. Some such a feat appears to have
been commemorated in the place-name Gwryd Cai, 'Cai's Feat of Arms,'
which occurs in Llewelyn's grant of certain lands on the Bedgelert
and Pen Gwryd side of Snowdon in 1198 to the monks of Aberconwy,
or rather in an inspeximus of the same: see Dugdale's Monasticon,
v. 673a, where it stands printed gwryt, kei. Nor is it unreasonable
to guess that Pen Gwryd is only a shortening of Pen Gwryd Cai,
'Cai's Feat Knoll or Terminus'; but compare p. 217 above. Before
leaving Cai I may point out that tradition seems to ascribe to him
as his residence the place called Caer Gai, 'Cai's Fort,' between
Bala and Llanuwchllyn. If one may treat Cai as a historical man, one
may perhaps suppose him, or some member of his family, commemorated
by the vocable Burgocavi on an old stone found at Caer Gai, and said
to read: Ic iacit Salvianus Burgocavi filius Cupitiani [172]--'Here
lies Salvianus Burgocavis, son of Cupitianus.' The reader may also
be referred back to such non-Brythonic and little known figures as
Daronwy, Cathbalug, and Brynach, together perhaps with Mengwaed,
the wolf-lord of Arllechwed, pp. 504-5. It is worth while calling
attention likewise to Goidelic indications afforded by the topography
of Eryri, to wit such cases as Bwlch Mwrchan or Mwlchan, 'Mwrchan's
Pass,' sometimes made into Bwlch Mwyalchen or even Bwlch y Fwyalchen,
'the Ousel's Gap,' near Llyn Gwynain; the remarkable remains called
Muriau'r Dre, 'the Town Walls'--otherwise known as Tre'r Gwydelod
[173], 'the Goidels' town'--on the land of Gwastad Annas at the top
of Nanhwynain; and Bwlch y Gwydel, still higher towards Pen Gwryd,
may have meant the 'Goidel's Pass.'

Probably a study of the topography on the spot would result in the
identification of more names similarly significant; but I will call
attention to only one of them, namely Bedgelert or, as it is locally
pronounced, Bethgelart, though the older spellings of the name appear
to be Beth Kellarth and Beth Kelert. Those who are acquainted with
the story, as told there, of the man who rashly killed his hound might
think that Bedgelert, 'Gelert or Kelert's Grave,' refers to the hound;
but there is a complete lack of evidence to show this widely known
story to have been associated with the neighbourhood by antiquity
[174]; and the compiler of the notes and pedigrees known as Boned y
Saint was probably right in treating Kelert as the name of an ancient
saint: see the Myvyr. Arch., ii. 36. In any case, Kelert or Gelert
with its rt cannot be a genuine Welsh name: the older spellings seem to
indicate two pronunciations--a Goidelic one, Kelert, and a Welsh one,
Kelarth or Kellarth, which has not survived. The documents, however,
in which the name occurs require to be carefully examined for the
readings which they supply.

Lastly, from the Goidels of Arfon must not be too violently severed
those of Mona, among whom we have found, pp. 504-5, the mysterious
Cathbalug, whose name, still half unexplained, reminds one of such
Irish ones as Cathbuadach, 'battle-victorious or conquering in war';
and to the same stratum belongs Daronwy, p. 504, which survives as the
name of a farm in the parish of Llanfachreth. The Record of Carnarvon,
p. 59, speaks both of a Molendinum de Darronwy et Cornewe, 'Mill of
Daronwy [175] and Cornwy,' and of Villæ de Dorronwy et Kuwghdornok,
'Vills of Daronwy and of the Cnwch Dernog,' which has been mentioned
as now pronounced Clwch Dernog, p. 457: it is situated in the adjoining
parish of Llandeusant. The name is given in the same Record as Dernok,
and is doubtless to be identified with the Ternóc not very uncommon
in Irish hagiology. With these names the Record further associates a
holding called Wele Conus, and Conus survives in Weun Gonnws, the name
of a field on the farm of Bron Heulog, adjoining Clwch Dernog. That
is not all, for Connws turns out to be the Welsh pronunciation of the
Goidelic name Cunagussus, of which we have the Latinized genitive on
the Bodfedan menhir, some distance north-east of the railway station
of Ty Croes. It reads: CVNOGVSI HIC IACIT, 'Here lies (the body) of
Cunagussus,' and involves a name which has regularly become in Irish
Conghus, while the native Welsh equivalent would be Cynwst [176]. These
names, and one [177] or two more which might be added to them, suggest
a very Goidelic population as occupying, in the fifth or sixth century,
the part of the island west of a line from Amlwch to Malldraeth.

Lastly, the chronological indications of the crushing of the power
of the Goidels, and the incipient merging of that people with the
Brythons into a single nation of Kymry or 'Compatriots,' are worthy
of a passing remark. We seem to find the process echoed in the
Triads when they mention as a favourite at Arthur's Court the lord
of Arllechwed, named Menwaed, who has been guessed, p. 507 above,
to have been a Goidel. Then Serrigi and Daronwy are signalized as
contemporaries of Cadwallon Law-hir, who inflicted on the former,
according to the later legend, the great defeat of Cerrig y Gwydyl
[178]. The name, however, of the leader of the Goidels arrayed against
Cadwallon may be regarded as unknown, and Serrigi as a later name,
probably of Norse origin, introduced from an account of a tenth
century struggle with invaders from the Scandinavian kingdom of Dublin
[179]. In this conqueror we have probably all that can be historical
of the Caswallon of the Mabinogion of Branwen and Manawydan, that is,
the Caswallon who ousts the Goidelic family of Llyr from power in this
country, and makes Pryderi of Dyfed pay homage to him as supreme king
of the island. His name has there undergone assimilation to that of
Cassivellaunos, and he is furthermore represented as son of Beli,
king of Prydain in the days of its independence, before the advent
of the legions of Rome. But as a historical man we are to regard
Caswallon probably as Cadwallon Law-hir, grandson of Cuneda and father
of Maelgwn of Gwyned. Now Cuneda and his sons, according to Nennius (§
62), expelled the Goidels with terrible slaughter; and one may say,
with the Triads, which practically contradict Nennius' statement as
to the Goidels being expelled, that Cuneda's grandson continued the
struggle with them. In any case there were Goidels still there, for
the Book of Taliessin seems to give evidence [180] of a persistent
hostility, on the part of the Goidelic bards of Gwyned, to Maelgwn
and the more Brythonic institutions which he may be regarded as
representing. This brings the Goidelic element down to the sixth
century [181]. Maelgwn's death took place, according to the oldest
manuscript of the Annales Cambriæ, in the year 547, or ten years
after the Battle of Camlan--in which, as it says, Arthur and Medrod
fell. Now some of this is history and some is not: where is the line
to be drawn? In any case, the attempt to answer that question could
not be justly met with contempt or treated as trivial.

The other cause, to which I suggested that contempt for folklore
was probably to be traced, together with the difficulties springing
therefrom to beset the folklorist's paths, is one's ignorance of the
meaning of many of the superstitions of our ancestors. I do not wish
this to be regarded as a charge of wilful ignorance; for one has
frankly to confess that many old superstitions and superstitious
practices are exceedingly hard to understand. So much so, that
those who have most carefully studied them cannot always agree
with one another in their interpretation. At first sight, some of
the superstitions seem so silly and absurd, that one cannot wonder
that those who have not gone deeply into the study of the human mind
should think them trivial, foolish, or absurd. It is, however, not
improbable that they are the results of early attempts to think out
the mysteries of nature; and our difficulty is that the thinking was
so infantile, comparatively speaking, that one finds it hard to put
one's self back into the mental condition of early man. But it should
be clearly understood that our difficulty in ascertaining the meaning
of such superstitions is no proof whatsoever that they had no meaning.

The chief initial difficulty, however, meeting any one who would
collect folklore in Wales arises from the fact that various influences
have conspired to laugh it out of court, so to say, so that those who
are acquainted with superstitions and ancient fads become ashamed to
own it: they have the fear of ridicule weighing on their minds, and
that is a weight not easily removed. I can recall several instances:
among others I may mention a lady who up to middle age believed
implicitly in the existence of fairies, and was most anxious that
her children should not wander away from home at any time when there
happened to be a mist, lest the fairies should carry them away to
their home beneath a neighbouring lake. In her later years, however,
it was quite useless for a stranger to question her on these things:
fairy lore had been so laughed out of countenance in the meantime,
that at last she would not own, even to the members of her own family,
that she remembered anything about the fairies. Another instance in
point is supplied by the story of Castellmarch, and by my failure
for a whole fortnight to elicit from the old blacksmith of Aber Soch
the legend of March ab Meirchion with horse's ears. Of course I can
readily understand the old man's shyness in repeating the story of
March. Science, however, knows no such shyness, as it is her business
to pry into everything and to discover, if possible, the why and
wherefore of all things. In this context let me for a moment revert to
the story of March, silly as it looks:--March was lord of Castellmarch
in Lleyn, and he had horse's ears; so lest the secret should be known,
every one who shaved him was killed forthwith; and in the spot where
the bodies were buried there grew reeds, which a bard cut in order to
provide himself with a pipe. The pipe when made would give no music
but words meaning March has horse's ears! There are other forms of
the story, but all substantially the same as that preserved for us
by Llwyd (pp. 233-4), except that one of them resembles more closely
the Irish version about to be summarized. It occurs in a manuscript
in the Peniarth collection, and runs thus:--March had horse's ears,
a fact known to nobody but his barber, who durst not make it known for
fear of losing his head. But the barber fell ill, so that he had to
call in a physician, who said that the patient was being killed by a
secret; and he ordered him to tell it to the ground. The barber having
done so became well again, and fine reeds grew on the spot. One day,
as the time of a great feast was drawing nigh, certain of the pipers
of Maelgwn Gwyned coming that way saw the reeds, some of which they
cut and used for their pipes. By-and-by they had to perform before
King March, when they could elicit from their pipes no strain but
'Horse's ears for March ab Meirchion' (klvstiav march i varch ab
Meirchion). Hence arose the saying--'That is gone on horns and pipes'
(vaeth hynny ar gyrn a ffibav), which was as much as to say that the
secret is become more than public [182].

The story, it is almost needless to say, can be traced also in Cornwall
and in Brittany [183]; and not only among the Brythonic peoples of
those countries, but among the Goidels of Ireland likewise. The Irish
story runs thus [184]:--Once on a time there was a king over Ireland
whose name was Labraid Lorc, and this is the manner of man he was--he
had two horse's ears on him. And every one who shaved the king used
to be slain forthwith. Now the time of shaving him drew nigh one
day, when the son of a widow in the neighbourhood was enjoined to do
it. The widow went and besought the king that her son should not be
slain, and he promised her that he would be spared if he would only
keep his secret. So it came to pass; but the secret so disagreed with
the widow's son that he fell ill, and nobody could divine the cause
until a druid came by. He at once discovered that the youth was ill
of an uncommunicated secret, and ordered him to go to the meeting of
four roads. 'Let him,' said he, 'turn sunwise, and the first tree he
meets on the right side let him tell the secret to it, and he will
be well.' This you might think was quite safe, as it was a tree and
not his mother, his sister, or his sweetheart; but you would be quite
mistaken in thinking so. The tree to which the secret was told was
a willow; and a famous Irish harper of that day, finding he wanted a
new harp, came and cut the makings of a harp from that very tree; but
when the harp was got ready and the harper proceeded to play on it,
not a note could he elicit but 'Labraid Lorc has horse's ears!' As to
the barber's complaint, that was by no means unnatural: it has often
been noticed how a secret disagrees with some natures, and how uneasy
and restless it makes them until they can out with it. The same thing
also, in an aggravated form, occurs now and then to a public man who
has prepared a speech in the dark recesses of his heart, but has to
leave the meeting where he intended to have it out, without finding
his opportunity. Our neighbours on the other side of the Channel have
a technical term for that sort of sufferer: they say of him that he is
malade d'un discours rentré, or ill of a speech which has gone into
the patient's constitution, like the measles or the small-pox when
it fails to come out. But to come back to the domain of folklore,
I need only mention the love-lorn knights in Malory's Morte Darthur,
who details their griefs in doleful strains to solitary fountains in
the forests: it seems to have relieved them greatly, and it sometimes
reached other ears than those of the wells. Now with regard to him
of the equine ears, some one might thoughtlessly suggest, that, if it
ever became a question of improving this kind of story, one should make
the ears into those of an ass. As a matter of fact there was a Greek
story of this kind, and in that story the man with the abnormal head
was called Midas, and his ears were said to be those of an ass. The
reader will find him figuring in most collections of Greek stories;
so I need not pursue the matter further, except to remark that the
exact kind of brute ears was possibly a question which different
nations decided differently. At any rate Stokes mentions a Serbian
version in which the ears were those of a goat.

What will, however, occur to everybody to ask, is--What was the
origin of such a story? what did it mean, if it had a meaning? Various
attempts have been made to interpret this kind of story, but nobody,
so far as I know, has found a sure key to its meaning. The best
guess I can make has been suggested in a previous chapter, from
which it will be seen that the horse fits the Welsh context, so to
say, best, the goat less well, and the ass probably least of all:
see pp. 433-9 above. Supposing, then, the interpretation of the
story established for certain, the question of its origin would
still remain. Did it originate among the Celts and the Greeks and
other nations who relate it? or has it simply originated among one of
those peoples and spread itself to the others? or else have they all
inherited it from a common source? If we take the supposition that
it originated independently among a variety of people in the distant
past, then comes an interesting question as to the conditions under
which it arose, and the psychological state of the human race in the
distant past. On the other supposition one is forced to ask: Did the
Celts get the story from the Greeks, or the Greeks from the Celts,
or neither from either, but from a common source? Also when and how
did the variations arise? In any case, one cannot help seeing that
a story like the one I have instanced raises a variety of profoundly
difficult and interesting questions.

Hard as the folklorist may find it to extract tales and legends from
the people of Wales at the present day, there is one thing which he
finds far more irritating than the taciturnity of the peasant, and
that is the hopeless fashion in which some of those who have written
about Welsh folklore have deigned to record the stories which were
known to them. Take as an instance the following, which occurs in
Howells' Cambrian Superstitions, pp. 103-4:--

'In Cardiganshire there is a lake, beneath which it is reported that
a town lies buried; and in an arid summer, when the water is low,
a wall, on which people may walk, extending across the lake is seen,
and supposed to appertain to the inundated city or town; on one side
is a gigantic rock, which appears to have been split, as there is
a very extensive opening in it, which nearly divides it in twain,
and which tradition relates was thus occasioned:--Once upon a time
there was a person of the name of Pannog, who had two oxen, so large
that their like was never known in any part of the world, and of whom
it might be said,


        They ne'er will look upon their like again.


It chanced one day that one of them (and it appears that they were
not endued with a quantum of sense proportionate to their bulk)
was grazing near a precipice opposite the rock, and whether it was
his desire to commit suicide, or to cool his body by laving in the
lake below, one knows not, but certain it is that down he plunged,
and was never seen more: his partner searching for him a short time
after, and not perceiving any signs of his approach, bellowed almost
as loud as the Father of the Gods, who when he spake "Earth to his
centre shook"; however, the sound of his bleating [sic] split the
opposite rock, which from the circumstance is called Uchain Pannog
(Pannog's Oxen). These oxen were said to be two persons, called in
Wales, Nyniaf and Phebiaf, whom God turned into beasts for their sins.

Here it is clear that Mr. Howells found a portion, if not the whole,
of his story in Welsh, taken partly from the Kulhwch story, and
apparently in the old spelling; for his own acquaintance with the
language did not enable him to translate Nynnya6 a pheiba6 into
'Nynio and Peibio.' The slenderness of his knowledge of Welsh is
otherwise proved throughout his book, especially by the way in which
he spells Welsh words: in fact one need not go beyond this very story
with its Uchain Pannog. But when he had ascertained that the lake was
in Cardiganshire he might have gone a little further and have told
his readers which lake it was. It is not one of the lakes which I
happen to know in the north of the county--Llyn Llygad y Rheidol on
Plinlimmon, or the lake on Moel y Llyn to the north of Cwm Ceulan,
or either of the Iwan Lakes which drain into the Merin (or Meri),
a tributary of the Mynach, which flows under Pont ar Fynach, called
in English the Devil's Bridge. From inquiry I cannot find either that
it is any one of the pools in the east of the county, such as those of
the Teifi, or Llyn Ferwyn, not far from the gorge known as Cwm Berwyn,
mentioned in Edward Richards' well known lines, p. 43:--


        Mae'n bwrw' 'Nghwm Berwyn a'r cysgod yn estyn,
        Gwna heno fy mwthyn yn derfyn dy daith.

        It rains in Cwm Berwyn, the shadows are growing,
        To-night make my cabin the end of thy journey.


There is, it is true, a pool at a place called Maes y Llyn in the
neighbourhood of Tregaron, as to which there is a tradition that a
village once occupied the place of its waters: otherwise it shows
no similarity to the lake of Howells' story. Then there is a group
of lakes in which the river Aeron takes its rise: they are called
Llyn Eidwen, Llyn Fanod, and Llyn Farch. As to Llyn Eidwen, I had
it years ago that at one time there was a story current concerning
'wild cattle,' which used to come out of its waters and rush back into
them when disturbed. In the middle of this piece of water, which has
a rock on one side of it, is a small island with a modern building on
it; and one would like to know whether it shows any traces of early
occupation. Then as to Llyn Farch, there is a story going that there
came out of it once on a time a wonderful animal, which was shot by a
neighbouring farmer. Lastly, at Llyn Fanod there are boundary walls
which go right out into the lake; and my informant thinks the same
is the case with Llyn Eidwen [185]. One of these walls is probably
what in Howells' youthful hands developed itself into a causeway. The
other part of his story, referring to the lowing of the Bannog Oxen,
comes from a well known doggerel which runs thus:--


        Llan Dewi Frefi fraith [186],
        Lle brefod yr ych naw gwaith,
        Nes hollti craig y Foelallt.

        Llandewi of Brefi the spotted,
        Where bellowed the ox nine times,
        Till the Foelallt rock split in two.


Brefi is the name of the river from which this Llandewi takes its
distinctive name; and it is pronounced there much the same as brefu,
'the act of lowing, bellowing, or bleating.' Now the Brefi runs down
through the Foelallt Farm, which lies between two very big rocks
popularly fancied to have been once united, and treated by Howells,
somewhat inconsistently, as the permanent forms taken by the two
oxen. The story which Howells seems to have jumbled up with that
of one or more lake legends, is to be found given in Samuel Rush
Meyrick's County of Cardigan: see pp. 265-6, where one reads of a
wild tradition that when the church was building there were two oxen
to draw the stone required; and one of the two died in the effort to
drag the load, while the other bellowed nine times and thereby split
the hill, which before presented itself as an obstacle. The single
ox was then able to bring the load unassisted to the site of the
church. It is to this story that the doggerel already given refers;
and, curiously enough, most of the district between Llandewi and
Ystrad Fflur, or Strata Florida, is more or less associated with the
Ychen Bannog. Thus a ridge running east and west at a distance of some
three miles from Tregaron, and separating Upper and Lower Caron from
one another, bears the name of Cwys yr Ychen Bannog, or the Furrow
of the Ychen Bannog. It somewhat resembles in appearance an ancient
<DW18>, but it is said to be nothing but 'a long bank of glacial till
[187].' Moreover there used to be preserved within the church of
Llandewi a remarkable fragment of a horn commonly called Madcorn
yr Ych Bannog, 'the mabcorn or core of the Bannog Ox's Horn.' It is
now in the possession of Mr. Parry of Llidiardau, near Aberystwyth;
and it has been pronounced by Prof. Boyd Dawkins to have belonged to
'the great urus (Bos Primigenius), that Charlemagne hunted in the
forests of Aachen, and the monks of St. Galle ate on their feast
days.' He adds that the condition of the horn proves it to have been
derived from a peat bog or alluvium [188]. On the whole, it seems
to me probable that the wild legends about the Ychen Bannog [189]
in Cardiganshire have underlying them a substratum of tradition going
back to a time when the urus was not as yet extinct in Wales. How far
the urus was once treated in this country as an emblem of divinity,
it is impossible to say; but from ancient Gaul we have such a name
as Urogeno-nertus [190], meaning a man of the strength of an Urogen,
that is, of the offspring of a urus; not to mention the Gaulish Tarvos
Trigaranus, or the bull with three cranes on his back. With this
divine animal M. d'Arbois de Jubainville would identify the Donnos
underlying such Gallo-Roman names as Donnotaurus, and that of the
wonderful bull called Donn in the principal epic story of Ireland
[191], where we seem to trace the same element in the river-name
given by Ptolemy as Mo-donnos, one of the streams of Wicklow, or
else the Slaney. This would be the earliest instance known of the
prefixing of the pronoun mo, 'my,' in its reverential application,
which was confined in later ages to the names of Goidelic saints.

To return, however, to the folklorist's difficulties, the first
thing to be done is to get as ample a supply of folklore materials
as possible; and here I come to a point at which some of the readers
of these pages could probably help; for we want all our folklore
and superstitions duly recorded and rescued from the yawning gulf of
oblivion, into which they are rapidly and irretrievably dropping year
by year, as the oldest inhabitant passes away.

Some years ago I attempted to collect the stories still remembered in
Wales about fairies and lake dwellers; and I seem to have thrown some
amount of enthusiasm into that pursuit. At any rate, one editor of a
Welsh newspaper congratulated me on being a thorough believer in the
fairies. Unfortunately, I was not nearly so successful in recommending
myself as a believer to the old people who could have related to me
the kind of stories I wanted. Nevertheless, the best plan I found was
to begin by relating a story about the fairies myself: if that method
did not result in eliciting anything from the listener, then it was
time to move on to try the experiment on another subject. Among the
things which I then found was the fact, that most of the well known
lakes and tarns of Wales were once believed to have had inhabitants
of a fairy kind, who owned cattle that sometimes came ashore and
mixed with the ordinary breeds, while an occasional lake lady became
the wife of a shepherd or farmer in the neighbourhood. There must,
however, be many more of these legends lurking in out of the way
parts of Wales in connexion with the more remote mountain tarns;
and it would be well if they were collected systematically.

One of the most complete and best known of these lake stories is
that of Llyn y Fan Fach in the Beacons of Carmarthenshire, called in
Welsh Bannau Sir Gaer. The story is so much more circumstantial than
all the others, that it has been placed at the beginning of this
volume. Next to it may be ranked that of the Ystrad Dyfodwg pool,
now known as Llyn y Forwyn, the details of which have only recently
been unearthed for me by a friend: see pp. 27-30 above. Well, in the
Fan Fach legend the lake lady marries a young farmer from Mydfai,
on the Carmarthenshire side of the range; and she is to remain his
wife so long as he lives without striking her three times without
cause. When that happens, she leaves him and calls away with her
all her live stock, down to the little black calf in the process of
being flayed; for he suddenly dons his hide and hurries away after
the rest of the stock into the lake. The three blows without cause
seem to belong to a category of very ancient determinants which
have been recently discussed, with his usual acumen and command of
instances from other lands, by Mr. Hartland, in the chapters on the
Swan Maidens in his Science of Fairy Tales. But our South Welsh story
allows the three blows only a minimum of force; and in North Wales the
determinant is of a different kind, though probably equally ancient:
for there the husband must not strike or touch the fairy wife with
anything made of iron, a condition which probably points back to the
Stone Age. For archæologists are agreed, that before metal, whether
iron or bronze, was used in the manufacturing of tools, stone was the
universal material for all cutting tools and weapons. But as savages
are profoundly conservative in their habits, it is argued that on
ceremonial and religious occasions knives of stone continued to be the
only ones admissible long after bronze ones had been in common use
for ordinary purposes. Take for example the text of Exodus iv. 25,
where Zipporah is mentioned circumcising her son with a flint. From
instances of the kind one may comprehend the sort of way in which iron
came to be regarded as an abomination and a horror to the fairies. The
question will be found discussed by Mr. Hartland at length in his
book mentioned above: see more especially pp. 305-9.

Such, to my mind, are some of the questions to which the fairies
give rise: I now wish to add another turning on the reluctance of
the fairies to disclose their names. There is one story in particular
which would serve to illustrate this admirably; but it is one which,
I am sorry to say, I have never been able to discover complete or
coherent in Wales. The substance of it should be, roughly speaking,
as follows:--A woman finds herself in great distress and is delivered
out of it by a fairy, who claims as reward the woman's baby. On a
certain day the baby will inevitably be taken by the fairy unless the
fairy's true name is discovered by the mother. The fairy is foiled by
being in the meantime accidentally overheard exulting, that the mother
does not know that his or her name is Rumpelstiltzchen, or whatever it
may be in the version which happens to be in question. The best known
version is the German one, where the fairy is called Rumpelstiltzchen;
and it will be found in the ordinary editions of Grimm's Märchen. The
most complete English version is the East Anglian one published by
Mr. Edward Clodd, in his recent volume entitled Tom Tit Tot, pp. 8-16;
and previously in an article full of research headed 'The Philosophy
of Rumpelstiltskin,' in Folk-Lore for 1889, pp. 138-43. It is first
to be noted that in this version the fairy's name is Tom Tit Tot, and
that the German and the East Anglian stories run parallel. They agree
in making the fairy a male, in which they differ from our Welsh Silly
Frit and Silly go Dwt: in what other respect the story of our Silly
differed from that of Rumpelstiltzchen and Tom Tit Tot it is, in the
present incomplete state of the Welsh one, impossible to say. Here
it may be found useful to recall the fragments of the Welsh story:
(1) A fairy woman used to come out of Corwrion Pool to spin on fine
summer days, and whilst spinning she sang or hummed to herself sìli
ffrit, sìli ffrit--it does not rise even to a doggerel couplet: see
p. 64 above. (2) A farmer's wife in Lleyn used to have visits from
a fairy woman who came to borrow things from her; and one day when
the goodwife had lent her a troell bach, or wheel for spinning flax,
she asked the fairy to give her name, which she declined to do. She
was, however, overheard to sing to the whir of the wheel as follows
(p. 229):--


        Bychan a wyda' hi           Little did she know
        Mai Sìli go Dwt             That Silly go Dwt
        Yw f'enw i.                 Is my name.


This throws some light on Silly Frit, and we know where we are; but
the story is inconsequent, and far from representing the original. We
cannot, however, reconstruct it quite on the lines of Grimm's or
Clodd's version. But I happened to mention my difficulty one day
to Dr. J. A. H. Murray, when he assured me of the existence of a
Scottish version in which the fairy is a female. He learnt it when
he was a child, he said, at Denholm, in Roxburghshire; and he was
afterwards charmed to read it in Robert Chambers' Popular Rhymes of
Scotland (Edinburgh, 1858), pp. 221-5, whence Mr. Clodd has given an
abstract of it in his 'Philosophy of Rumpelstiltskin.' Among those
popular rhymes the reader will find it as related at length by Nurse
Jenny in her inimitable fashion; but the Scotch is so broad, that I
think it advisable, at the risk of some havoc to the local colouring,
to southronize it somewhat as follows:--

'I see that you are fond of talks about fairies, children; and a story
about a fairy and the goodwife of Kittlerumpit has just come into
my mind; but I can't very well tell you now whereabouts Kittlerumpit
lies. I think it is somewhere in the Debatable Ground; anyway I shall
not pretend to know more than I do, like everybody nowadays. I wish
they would remember the ballad we used to sing long ago:--


        Mony ane sings the gerss, the gerss,
        And mony ane sings the corn;
        And mony ane clatters o' bold Robin Hood,
        Ne'er kent where he was born.


But howsoever about Kittlerumpit: the goodman was a rambling sort
of body; and he went to a fair one day, and not only never came home
again, but nevermore was heard of. Some said he 'listed, and others
that the tiresome pressgang snatched him up, though he was furnished
with a wife and a child to boot. Alas! that wretched pressgang! They
went about the country like roaring lions, seeking whom they might
devour. Well do I remember how my eldest brother Sandy was all but
smothered in the meal-chest, hiding from those rascals. After they
were gone, we pulled him out from among the meal, puffing and crying,
and as white as any corpse. My mother had to pick the meal out of
his mouth with the shank of a horn spoon.

'Ah well, when the goodman of Kittlerumpit was gone, the goodwife
was left with small means. Little resources had she, and a baby boy
at her breast. All said they were sorry for her; but nobody helped
her--which is a common case, sirs. Howsoever the goodwife had a sow,
and that was her only consolation; for the sow was soon to farrow,
and she hoped for a good litter.

'But we all know hope is fallacious. One day the woman goes to the
sty to fill the sow's trough; and what does she find but the sow lying
on her back, grunting and groaning, and ready to give up the ghost.

'I trow this was a new pang to the goodwife's heart; so she sat down
on the knocking-stone [192], with her bairn on her knee, and cried
sorer than ever she did for the loss of her own goodman.

'Now I premise that the cottage of Kittlerumpit was built on a brae,
with a large fir-wood behind it, of which you may hear more ere we go
far on. So the goodwife, when she was wiping her eyes, chances to look
down the brae; and what does she see but an old woman, almost like a
lady, coming slowly up the road. She was dressed in green, all but
a short white apron and a black velvet hood, and a steeple-crowned
beaver hat on her head. She had a long walking-staff, as long as
herself, in her hand--the sort of staff that old men and old women
helped themselves with long ago; I see no such staffs now, sirs.

'Ah well, when the goodwife saw the green gentlewoman near her, she
rose and made a curtsy; and "Madam," quoth she, weeping, "I am one
of the most misfortunate women alive."

'"I don't wish to hear pipers' news and fiddlers' tales, goodwife,"
quoth the green woman. "I know you have lost your goodman--we had
worse losses at the Sheriff Muir [193]; and I know that your sow is
unco sick. Now what will you give me if I cure her?"

'"Anything your ladyship's madam likes," quoth the witless goodwife,
never guessing whom she had to deal with.

'"Let us wet thumbs on that bargain," quoth the green woman; so thumbs
were wetted, I warrant you; and into the sty madam marches.

'She looks at the sow with a long stare, and then began to mutter to
herself what the goodwife couldn't well understand; but she said it
sounded like--


        Pitter patter,
        Holy Water.


'Then she took out of her pocket a wee bottle, with something like
oil in it; and she rubs the sow with it above the snout, behind the
ears, and on the tip of the tail. "Get up, beast," quoth the green
woman. No sooner said than done--up jumps the sow with a grunt,
and away to her trough for her breakfast.

'The goodwife of Kittlerumpit was a joyful goodwife now, and would
have kissed the very hem of the green woman's gowntail; but she
wouldn't let her. "I am not so fond of ceremonies," quoth she;
"but now that I have righted your sick beast, let us end our settled
bargain. You will not find me an unreasonable, greedy body--I like
ever to do a good turn for a small reward: all I ask, and will have,
is that baby boy in your bosom."

'The goodwife of Kittlerumpit, who now knew her customer, gave a shrill
cry like a stuck swine. The green woman was a fairy, no doubt; so
she prays, and cries, and begs, and scolds; but all wouldn't do. "You
may spare your din," quoth the fairy, "screaming as if I was as deaf
as a door-nail; but this I'll let you know--I cannot, by the law we
live under, take your bairn till the third day; and not then, if you
can tell me my right name." So madam goes away round the pig-sty end;
and the goodwife falls down in a swoon behind the knocking-stone.

'Ah well, the goodwife of Kittlerumpit could not sleep any that night
for crying, and all the next day the same, cuddling her bairn till
she nearly squeezed its breath out; but the second day she thinks of
taking a walk in the wood I told you of; and so with the bairn in her
arms, she sets out, and goes far in among the trees, where was an
old quarry-hole, grown over with grass, and a bonny spring well in
the middle of it. Before she came very near, she hears the whirring
of a flax wheel, and a voice singing a song; so the woman creeps
quietly among the bushes, and peeps over the brow of the quarry;
and what does she see but the green fairy tearing away at her wheel,
and singing like any precentor:--


        Little kens our guid dame at hame,
        That Whuppity Stoorie is my name.


'"Ha, ha!" thinks the woman, "I've got the mason's word at last; the
devil give them joy that told it!" So she went home far lighter than
she came out, as you may well guess--laughing like a madcap with the
thought of cheating the old green fairy.

'Ah well, you must know that this goodwife was a jocose woman,
and ever merry when her heart was not very sorely overladen. So she
thinks to have some sport with the fairy; and at the appointed time
she puts the bairn behind the knocking-stone, and sits on the stone
herself. Then she pulls her cap over her left ear and twists her
mouth on the other side, as if she were weeping; and an ugly face
she made, you may be sure. She hadn't long to wait, for up the brae
climbs the green fairy, neither lame nor lazy; and long ere she got
near the knocking-stone she screams out--"Goodwife of Kittlerumpit,
you know well what I come for--stand and deliver!"

'The woman pretends to cry harder than before, and wrings her hands,
and falls on her knees, with "Och, sweet madam mistress, spare my
only bairn, and take the wretched sow!"

'"The devil take the sow, for my part," quoth the fairy; "I come not
here for swine's flesh. Don't be contramawcious, huzzy, but give me
the child instantly!"

'"Ochone, dear lady mine," quoth the crying goodwife; "forgo my poor
bairn, and take me myself!"

'"The devil is in the daft jade," quoth the fairy, looking like the
far end of a fiddle; "I'll bet she is clean demented. Who in all the
earthly world, with half an eye in his head, would ever meddle with
the likes of thee?"

'I trow this set up the woman of Kittlerumpit's bristle: for though she
had two blear eyes and a long red nose besides, she thought herself
as bonny as the best of them. So she springs off her knees, sets the
top of her cap straight, and with her two hands folded before her,
she makes a curtsy down to the ground, and, "In troth, fair madam,"
quoth she, "I might have had the wit to know that the likes of me is
not fit to tie the worst shoe-strings of the high and mighty princess,
Whuppity Stoorie."

'If a flash of gunpowder had come out of the ground it couldn't have
made the fairy leap higher than she did; then down she came again
plump on her shoe-heels; and whirling round, she ran down the brae,
screeching for rage, like an owl chased by the witches.

'The goodwife of Kittlerumpit laughed till she was like to split;
then she takes up her bairn, and goes into her house, singing to it
all the way:--


        A goo and a gitty, my bonny wee tyke,
        Ye'se noo ha'e your four-oories;
        Sin' we've gien Nick a bane to pyke,
        Wi' his wheels and his Whuppity Stoories.'


That is practically Chambers' version of this Scottish story; and as
to the name of the fairy Whuppity Stoorie, the first syllable should
be the equivalent of English whip, while stoor is a Scotch word for
dust in motion: so the editor asks in a note whether the name may
not have originated in the notion 'that fairies were always present
in the whirls of dust occasioned by the wind on roads and in streets
[194].' But he adds that another version of the story calls the green
woman Fittletetot, which ends with the same element as the name Tom
Tit Tot and Silly go Dwt. Perhaps, however, the Welsh versions of
the story approached nearest to one from Mochdrum in Wigtownshire,
published in the British Association's Papers of the Liverpool Meeting,
1896, p. 613. This story was contributed by the Rev. Walter Gregor,
and the name of the fairy in it is Marget Totts: in this we have a
wife, who is in great distress, because her husband used to give her
so much flax to spin by such and such a day, that the work was beyond
human power. A fairy comes to the rescue and takes the flax away,
promising to bring it back spun by the day fixed, provided the woman
can tell the fairy's name. The woman's distress thereupon becomes
as great as before, but the fairy was overheard saying as she span,
'Little does the guidwife ken it, my name is Marget Totts.' So the
woman got her flax returned spun by the day; and the fairy, Marget
Totts, went up the chimney in a blaze of fire as the result of rage
and disappointment. Here one cannot help seeing that the original,
of which this is a clumsy version, must have been somewhat as follows


        Little does the guidwife wot
        That my name is Marget Tot.


To come back to Wales, we have there the names Silly Frit and
Silly go Dwt, which are those of females. The former name is purely
English--Silly Frit, which has been already guessed (p. 66) to mean
a silly sprite, or silly apparition, with the idea of its being a
fright of a creature to behold: compare the application elsewhere to
a fairy changeling of the terms crimbil (p. 263) and cyrfaglach or
cryfaglach (p. 450), which is explained as implying a haggard urchin
that has been half starved and stunted in its growth. Leaving out
of the reckoning this connotation, one might compare the term with
the Scottish habit of calling the fairies silly wights, 'the Happy
Wights.' See J. Jamieson's Scottish Dictionary, where s. v. seily,
seely, 'happy,' he purports to quote the following lines from 'the
Legend of the Bishop of St. Androis' in a collection of Scottish
Poems of the Sixteenth Century (Edinburgh, 1801), pp. 320-1:--


        For oght the kirk culd him forbid,
        He sped him sone, and gat the thrid;
        Ane Carling of the Quene of Phareis,
        That ewill win gair to elphyne careis,

        Through all Braid Albane scho hes bene,
        On horsbak on Hallow ewin;
        And ay in seiking certayne nyghtis,
        As scho sayis, with sur [read our] sillie wychtis.


Similarly, he gives the fairies the name of Seely Court, and cites as
illustrating it the following lines from R. Jamieson's Popular Ballads,
(i. 236, and) ii. 189:--


        But as it fell out on last Hallowe'en,
        When the Seely Court was ridin' by,
        The queen lighted down on a gowan bank,
        Nae far frae the tree where I wont to lye.


Into Welsh, however, the designation Silly Frit must have come,
not from Scotland, but from the Marches; and the history of Sìli go
Dwt must be much the same. For, though construed as Welsh, the name
would mean the Silly who is go Dwt [195], 'somewhat tidy or natty';
but the dwt (mutated from twt) was suggested doubtless by the tot of
such fairy names as Tom Tit Tot. That brings me to another group,
where the syllable is trot or trut, and this we have in the Welsh
doggerel, mentioned at p. 229, as follows:--


        Bychan a wyda' hi       Little did she know
        Mai Trwtyn-Tratyn       That Trwtyn Tratyn
        Yw f'enw i.             Is my name.


But this name Trwtyn-Tratyn sounds masculine, and not that of
a she-fairy such as Silly Frit. The feminine would have been
Trwtan-Tratan in the Carnarvonshire pronunciation, and in fact
trwtan is to be heard there; but more frequently a kind of derivative
trwdlan, meaning an ungainly sort of woman, a drudge, a short-legged
or deformed maid of all work. Some Teutonic varieties of this group
of stories will be found mentioned briefly in Mr. Clodd's article on
the 'Philosophy of Rumpelstiltskin [196].' Thus from the Debatable
Ground on the borders of England and Scotland there comes a story
in which the fairy woman's name was Habetrot; and he alludes to an
Icelandic version in which the name is Gillitrut; but for us still
more interest attaches to the name in the following rhyme [197]:--


        Little does my lady wot
        That my name is Trit-a-Trot.


This has been supposed to belong to a story coming from Ireland; but
whether that may prove true or not, it is hardly to be doubted that
our Trwtyn Tratyn is practically to be identified with Trit-a-Trot,
who is also a he-fairy.

That is not all; for since the foregoing notes were penned, a tale
has reached me from Mr. Craigfryn Hughes about a fairy who began
by conducting himself like the brownies mentioned at pp. 287, 324-5
above. The passages here in point come from the story of which a part
was given at pp. 462-4; and they are to the following effect:--Long
ago there was in service at a Monmouthshire farm a young woman who was
merry and strong. Who she was or whence she came nobody knew; but many
believed that she belonged to the old breed of Bendith y Mamau. Some
time after she had come to the farm, the rumour spread that the house
was sorely troubled by a spirit. But the girl and the elf understood
one another well, and they became the best of friends. So the elf
proved very useful to the maid, for he did everything for her--washing,
ironing, spinning and twisting wool; in fact they say that he was
remarkably handy at the spinning-wheel. Moreover, he expected only
a bowlful of sweet milk and wheat bread, or some flummery, for his
work. So she took care to place the bowl with his food at the bottom
of the stairs every night as she went to bed. It ought to have been
mentioned that she was never allowed to catch a sight of him; for he
always did his work in the dark. Nor did anybody know when he ate his
food: she used to leave the bowl there at night, and it would be empty
by the time when she got up in the morning, the bwca having cleared
it. But one night, by way of cursedness, what did she do but fill the
bowl with some of the stale urine which they used in dyeing wool and
other things about the house. But heavens! it would have been better
for her not to have done it; for when she got up next morning what
should he do but suddenly spring from some corner and seize her by
the neck! He began to beat her and kick her from one end of the house
to the other, while he shouted at the top of his voice at every kick:--


        Y faidan din dwmp--
        Yn rhoi bara haid a thrwnc
                  I'r bwca!

        The idea that the thick-buttocked lass
        Should give barley bread and p--
                  To the bogie!


Meanwhile she screamed for help, but none came for some time; when,
however, he heard the servant men getting up, he took to his heels
as hard as he could; and nothing was heard of him for some time. But
at the end of two years he was found to be at another farm in the
neighbourhood, called Hafod yr Ynys, where he at once became great
friends with the servant girl: for she fed him like a young chicken,
by giving him a little bread and milk all the time. So he worked
willingly and well for her in return for his favourite food. More
especially, he used to spin and wind the yarn for her; but she wished
him in time to show his face, or to tell her his name: he would by no
means do either. One evening, however, when all the men were out, and
when he was spinning hard at the wheel, she deceived him by telling
him that she was also going out. He believed her; and when he heard
the door shutting, he began to sing as he plied the wheel:--


        Hi warda'n iawn pe gwypa hi,
        Taw Gwarwyn-a-throt yw'm enw i.

        How she would laugh, did she know
        That Gwarwyn-a-throt is my name!


'Ha! ha!' said the maid at the bottom of the stairs; 'I know thy name
now.' 'What is it, then?' he asked. She replied, 'Gwarwyn-a-throt';
and as soon as she uttered the words he left the wheel where it was,
and off he went. He was next heard of at a farmhouse not far off,
where there happened to be a servant man named Moses, with whom he
became great friends at once. He did all his work for Moses with
great ease. He once, however, gave him a good beating for doubting
his word; but the two remained together afterwards for some years
on the best possible terms: the end of it was that Moses became
a soldier. He went away to fight against Richard Crookback, and
fell on the field of Bosworth. The bogie, after losing his friend,
began to be troublesome and difficult to live with. He would harass
the oxen when they ploughed, and draw them after him everywhere,
plough and all; nor could any one prevent them. Then, when the sun
set in the evening he would play his pranks again, and do all sorts
of mischief about the house, upstairs, and in the cowhouses. So the
farmer was advised to visit a wise man (dyn cynnil), and to see if
he could devise some means of getting rid of the bogie. He called
on the wise man, who happened to be living near Caerleon on the
Usk; and the wise man, having waited till the moon should be full,
came to the farmer's house. In due time the wise man, by force of
manoeuvring, secured the bogie by the very long nose which formed
the principal ornament of his face, and earned for him the name of
Bwca'r Trwyn, 'the Bogie of the Nose.' Whilst secured by the nose,
the bogie had something read to him out of the wise man's big book;
and he was condemned by the wise man to be transported to the banks of
the Red Sea for fourteen generations, and to be conveyed thither by
'the upper wind' (yr uwchwynt). No sooner had this been pronounced
by the cunning man than there came a whirlwind which made the whole
house shake. Then came a still mightier wind, and as it began to
blow the owner of the big book drew the awl out of the bogie's nose;
and it is supposed that the bogie was carried away by that wind,
for he never troubled the place any more.

Another version of the story seems to have been current, which
represented the bogie as in no wise to blame [198]: but I attach
some importance to the foregoing tale as forming a link of connexion
between the Rumpelstiltzchen group of fairies, always trying to get
hold of children; the brownie kind, ever willing to serve in return
for their simple keep; and the troublesome bogie, that used to haunt
Welsh farm houses and delight in breaking crockery and frightening
the inmates out of their wits. In fact, the brownie and the bogie
reduce themselves here into different humours of the same uncanny
being. Their appearance may be said to have differed also: the bogie
had a very long nose, while the brownie of Blednoch had only 'a hole
where a nose should have been.' But one of the most remarkable points
about the brownie species is that the Lincolnshire specimen was a
small creature, 'a weeny bit of a fellow'--which suggests a possible
community of origin with the banshee of the Irish, and also of the
Welsh: witness the wee little woman in the story of the Curse of
Pantannas (pp. 188-9), who seems to come up out of the river. All
alike may perhaps be said to suggest various aspects of the dead
ancestor or ancestress; but Bwca'r Trwyn is not to be severed from
the fairy woman in the Pennant Valley, who undertakes some of the
duties, not of a dairymaid, as in other cases mentioned, but those
of a nurse. Her conduct on being offered a gown is exactly that of
the brownie similarly placed: see p. 109 above. But she and Bwca'r
Trwyn are unmistakably fairies who take to domestic service, and
work for a time willingly and well in return for their food, which,
as in the case of other fairies, appears to have been mostly milk.

After this digression I wish only to point out that the Welsh bogie's
name, Gwarwyn-a-throt, treated as Welsh, could only mean white-necked
and (or with) a trot; for a throt could only mean 'and (or with) a
trot.' So it is clear that a throt is simply the equivalent of a-Trot,
borrowed from such an English combination as Trit-a-Trot, and that
it is idle to translate Gwarwyn-a-throt. Now trot and twt are not
native Welsh words; and the same remark applies to Trwtyn Tratyn, and
of course to Sìli ffrit and Sìli go Dwt. Hence it is natural to infer
that either these names have in the Welsh stories merely superseded
older ones of Welsh origin, or else that there was no question of name
in the Welsh stories till they had come under English influence. The
former conjecture seems the more probable of the two, unless one should
rather suppose the whole story borrowed from English sources. But
it is of no consequence here as regards the reluctance of fairies to
disclose their names; for we have other instances to which the reader
may turn, on pp. 45, 87-8, 97 above. One of them, in particular,
is in point here: see pp. 54, 61. It attaches itself to the Pool of
Corwrion in the neighbourhood of Bangor; and it relates how a man
married a fairy on the express condition that he was neither to know
her name nor to touch her with iron, on pain of her instantly leaving
him. Of course in the lapse of years the conditions are accidentally
violated by the luckless husband, and the wife flies instantly away
into the waters of the pool: her name turned out to be Belene.

Thus far of the unwillingness of the fairies to tell their names: I
must now come to the question, why that was so. Here the anthropologist
or the student of comparative folklore comes to our aid; for it is
an important part of his business to compare the superstitions of
one people with those of another; and in the case of superstitions
which have lost their meaning among us, for instance, he searches
for a parallel among other nations, where that parallel forms part
of living institutions. In this way he hopes to discover the key to
his difficulties. In the present case he finds savages who habitually
look at the name as part and parcel of the person [199]. These savages
further believe that any part of the person, such as a hair off one's
head or the parings of one's nails, if they chanced to be found by an
enemy, would give that enemy magical power over their lives, and enable
him to injure them. Hence the savage tendency to conceal one's name. I
have here, as the reader will perceive, crowded together several
important steps in the savage logic; so I must try to illustrate them,
somewhat more in detail, by reference to some of the survivals of them
after the savage has long been civilized. To return to Wales, and to
illustrate the belief that possession of a part of one's person, or
of anything closely identified with one's person, gives the possessor
of it power over that person, I need only recall the Welsh notion,
that if one wished to sell one's self to the devil one had merely
to give him a hair of one's head or the tiniest drop of one's blood,
then one would be for ever his for a temporary consideration. Again,
if you only had your hair cut, it must be carefully gathered and hidden
away: by no means must it be burnt, as that might prove prejudicial
to your health. Similarly, you should never throw feathers into the
fire; for that was once held, as I infer, to bring about death among
one's poultry: and an old relative of mine, Modryb Mari, 'Aunt Mary,'
set her face against my taste for toasted cheese. She used to tell
me that if I toasted my cheese, my sheep would waste away and die:
strictly speaking, I fancy this originally meant only the sheep
from whose milk the cheese had been made. But I was not well versed
enough in the doctrines of sympathetic magic to reply, that it did
not apply to our cheese, which was not made from sheep's milk. So
her warning used to frighten me and check my fondness for toasted
cheese, a fondness which I had doubtless quite innocently inherited,
as anybody will see who will glance at one of the Hundred Mery Talys,
printed by John Rastell in the sixteenth century, as follows:--'I
fynde wrytten amonge olde gestes, howe God mayde Saynt Peter porter of
heuen, and that God of hys goodnes, sone after his passyon, suffered
many men to come to the kyngdome of Heuen with small deseruynge; at
whyche tyme there was in heuen a great companye of Welchemen, whyche
with their crakynge and babelynge troubled all the other. Wherfore
God sayde to Saynte Peter that he was wery of them, and that he wolde
fayne haue them out of heuen. To whome Saynte Peter sayd: Good Lorde,
I warrente you, that shall be done. Wherfore Saynt Peter wente out of
heuen gates and cryed wyth a loud voyce Cause bobe [200], that is as
moche to saye as rosted chese, whiche thynge the Welchemen herynge,
ranne out of Heuen a great pace. And when Saynt Peter sawe them all
out, he sodenly wente into Heuen, and locked the dore, and so sparred
all the Welchemen out. By this ye may se, that it is no wysdome for a
man to loue or to set his mynde to moche upon any delycate or worldely
pleasure, wherby he shall lose the celestyall and eternall ioye.'

To leave the Mery Talys and come back to the instances mentioned,
all of them may be said to illustrate the way in which a part, or
an adjunct, answered for the whole of a person or thing. In fact,
having due regard to magic as an exact science, an exceedingly exact
science, one may say that according to the wisdom of our ancestors
the leading axiom of that science practically amounted to this: the
part is quite equal to the whole. Now the name, as a part of the man,
was once probably identified with the breath of life or with the soul,
as we shall see later; and the latter must have been regarded as a
kind of matter; for I well remember that when a person was dying in
a house, it was the custom about Ponterwyd, in North Cardiganshire,
to open the windows. And a farmer near Ystrad Meurig, more towards
the south of the county, told me some years ago that he remembered
his mother dying when he was a boy: a neighbour's wife who had been
acting as nurse tried to open the window of the room, and as it would
not open she deliberately smashed a pane of it. This was doubtless
originally meant to facilitate the escape of the soul; and the same
idea has been attested for Gloucestershire, Devon, and other parts
of the country [201]. This way of looking at the soul reminds one of
Professor Tylor's words when he wrote in his work on Primitive Culture,
i. 440: 'and he who says that his spirit goes forth to meet a friend,
can still realize in the phrase a meaning deeper than metaphor.'

Then if the soul was material, you may ask what its shape was; and
even this I have a story which will answer: it comes from the same
Modryb Mari who set her face against caws pobi, and cherished a good
many superstitions. Therein she differed greatly from her sister,
my mother, who had a far more logical mind and a clearer conception
of things. Well, my aunt's story was to the following effect:--A
party of reapers on a farm not far from Ponterwyd--I have forgotten
the name--sat down in the field to their midday meal. Afterwards
they rested awhile, when one of their number fell fast asleep. The
others got up and began reaping again, glancing every now and then
at the sleeping man, who had his mouth wide open and breathed very
loudly. Presently they saw a little black man, or something like a
monkey, coming out of his mouth and starting on a walk round the
field: they watched this little fellow walking on and on till he
came to a spot near a stream. There he stopped and turned back:
then he disappeared into the open mouth of the sleeper, who at once
woke up. He told his comrades that he had just been dreaming of his
walking round the field as far as the very spot where they had seen
the little black fellow stop. I am sorry to say that Modryb Mari
had wholly forgotten this story when, years afterwards, I asked her
to repeat it to me; but the other day I found a Welshman who still
remembers it. I happened to complain, at a meeting of kindred spirits,
how I had neglected making careful notes of bits of folklore which I
had heard years ago from informants whom I had since been unable to
cross-examine: I instanced the story of the sleeping reaper, when my
friend Professor Sayce at once said that he had heard it. He spent part
of his childhood near Llanover in Monmouthshire; and in those days he
spoke Welsh, which he learned from his nurse. He added that he well
remembered the late Lady Llanover rebuking his father for having his
child, a Welsh boy, dressed like a little Highlander; and he remembered
also hearing the story here in question told him by his nurse. So far
as he could recall it, the version was the same as my aunt's, except
that he does not recollect hearing anything about the stream of water.

Several points in the story call for notice: among others, one
naturally asks at the outset why the other reapers did not wake the
sleeping man. The answer is that the Welsh seem to have agreed with
other peoples, such as the Irish [202], in thinking it dangerous to
wake a man when dreaming, that is, when his soul might be wandering
outside his body; for it might result in the soul failing to
find the way back into the body which it had temporarily left. To
illustrate this from Wales I produce the following story, which has
been written out for me by Mr. J. G. Evans. The scene of it was a
field on the farm of Cadabowen, near Llan y Bydair, in the Vale of
the Teifi:--'The chief point of the madfall incident, which happened
in the early sixties, was this. During one mid-morning hoe hogi,
that is to say, the usual rest for sharpening the reaping-hooks,
I was playing among the thirty or forty reapers sitting together:
my movements were probably a disturbing element to the reapers, as
well as a source of danger to my own limbs. In order, therefore, to
quiet me, as seems probable, one of the men directed my attention to
our old farm labourer, who was asleep on his back close to the uncut
corn, a little apart from the others. I was told that his soul (ened)
had gone out of his mouth in the form of a black lizard (madfall
du), and was at that moment wandering among the standing corn. If I
woke the sleeper, the soul would be unable to return; and old Thomas
would die, or go crazy; or something serious would happen. I will not
trust my memory to fill in details, especially as this incident once
formed the basis of what proved an exciting story told to my children
in their childhood. A generation hence they may be able to give an
astonishing instance of "genuine" Welsh folklore. In the meanwhile,
I can bear testimony to that "black lizard" being about the most
living impression in my "memory." I see it, even now, wriggling at
the edge of the uncut corn. But as to its return, and the waking of
the sleeper, my memory is a blank. Such are the tricks of "memory";
and we should be charitable when, with bated breath, the educated no
less than the uneducated tell us about the uncanny things they have
"seen with their own eyes." They believe what they say, because they
trust their memory: I do not. I feel practically certain I never saw
a lizard in my life, in that particular field in which the reapers
were.' Mr. Evans' story differs, as it has been seen, from my aunt's
version in giving the soul the shape of a lizard; but the little black
fellow in the one and the black lizard in the other agree not only
in representing the soul as material, but also as forming a complete
organism within a larger one. In a word, both pictures must be regarded
as the outcome of attempts to depict the sleeper's inner man.

If names and souls could be regarded as material substances, so could
diseases; and I wish to say a word or two now on that subject, which a
short story of my wife's will serve to introduce. She is a native of
the Llanberis side of Snowdon; and she remembers going one morning,
when a small child, across to the neighbourhood of Rhyd-du with a
servant girl called Cadi, whose parents lived there. Now Cadi was a
very good servant, but she had little regard for the more civilized
manners of the Llanberis folk; and when she returned with the child in
the evening from her mother's cottage, she admitted that the little
girl was amazed at the language of Cadi's brothers and sisters;
for she confessed that, as she said, they swore like colliers,
whereas the little girl had never before heard any swearing worth
speaking of. Well, among other things which the little girl saw
there was one of Cadi's sisters having a bad leg dressed: when the
rag which had been on the wound was removed, the mother made one of
her other children take it out and fix it on the thorn growing near
the door. The little girl being inquisitive asked why that was done,
and she was told that it was in order that the wound might heal all the
faster. She was not very satisfied with the answer, but she afterwards
noticed the same sort of thing done in her own neighbourhood. Now the
original idea was doubtless that the disease, or at any rate a part
of it--and in such matters it will be remembered that a part is quite
equal to the whole--was attached to the rag; so that putting the rag
out, with a part of the disease attached to it, to rot on the bush,
would bring with it the disappearance of the whole disease.

Another and a wider aspect of this practice was the subject of
notice in the chapter on the Folklore of the Wells, pp. 359-60,
where Mr. Hartland's hypothesis was mentioned. This was to the effect
that if any clothing, or anything else which had been identified
with your person, were to be placed in contact with a sacred tree,
sacred well, or sacred edifice, it would be involved in the effluence
of the divinity that imparts its sacred character to the tree, well,
or temple; and that your person, identified with the clothing or other
article, would also be involved or soaked in the same divine effluence,
and made to benefit thereby. We have since had this kind of reasoning
illustrated, pp. 405-7 above, by the modern legend of Crymlyn, and
the old one of Llyn Lliwan; but the difficulty which it involves is
a very considerable one: it is the difficulty of taking seriously the
infantile order of reasoning which underlies so much of the philosophy
of folklore. I cannot readily forget one of the first occasions of
my coming, so to say, into living contact with it. It was at Tuam in
Connaught, whither I had gone to learn modern Irish from the late
Canon Ulick J. Bourke. There one day in 1871 he presented me with
a copy of The Bull 'Ineffabilis' in Four Languages (Dublin, 1868),
containing the Irish version which he had himself contributed. On
the blue cover was a gilt picture of the Virgin, inscribed Sine Labe
Concepta. No sooner had I brought it to my lodgings than the woman
who looked after the house caught sight of it. She was at once struck
with awe and admiration; so I tried to explain to her the nature of
the contents of the volume. 'So the Father has given you that holy
book!' she exclaimed; 'and you are now a holy man!' I was astonished
at the simple and easy way in which she believed holiness could be
transferred from one person or thing to another; and it has always
helped me to realize the fact that folklorists have no occasion
to invent their people, or to exaggerate the childish features of
their minds. They are still with us as real men and real women, and
at one time the whole world belonged to them; not to mention that
those who may, by a straining of courtesy, be called their leaders
of thought, hope speedily to reannex the daring few who are trying
to tear asunder the bonds forged for mankind in the obscurity of a
distant past. I shall never forget the impression made on my mind
by a sermon I heard preached some years later in the cathedral of
St. Stephen in Vienna. That magnificent edifice in a great centre of
German culture was crowded with listeners, who seemed thoroughly to
enjoy what they heard, though the chief idea which they were asked
to entertain could not possibly be said to rise above the level of
the philosophy of the Stone Age.








CHAPTER XI

FOLKLORE PHILOSOPHY

        To look for consistency in barbaric philosophy is to
        disqualify ourselves for understanding it, and the theories
        of it which aim at symmetry are their own condemnation. Yet
        that philosophy, within its own irregular confines, works
        not illogically.--Edward Clodd.


It will be remembered that in the last chapter a story was given,
p. 602, which represented the soul as a little fellow somewhat
resembling a monkey; and it will probably have struck the reader
how near this approaches the idea prevalent in medieval theology and
Christian art, which pictured the soul as a pigmy or diminutive human
being. I revert to this in order to point out that the Christian fancy
may possibly have given rise to the form of the soul as represented
in the Welsh story which I heard in Cardiganshire and Professor Sayce
in Monmouthshire; but this could hardly be regarded as touching the
other Cardiganshire story, in which the soul is likened to a madfall
or lizard. Moreover I would point out that a belief incompatible with
both kinds of story is suggested by one of the uses of the Welsh
word for soul, namely, enaid. I heard my father, a native of the
neighbourhood of Eglwys Fach, near the estuary of the Dyfi, use the
word of some portion of the inside of a goose, but I have forgotten
what part it was exactly. Professor Anwyl of Aberystwyth, however,
has sent me the following communication on the subject:--'I am quite
familiar with the expression yr enaid, "the soul," as applied to the
soft flesh sticking to the ribs inside a goose. The flesh in question
has somewhat the same appearance and structure as the liver. I have no
recollection of ever hearing the term yr enaid used in the case of any
bird other than a goose; but this may be a mere accident, inasmuch as
no one ever uses the term now except to mention it as an interesting
curiosity.' This application of the word enaid recalls the use of
the English word 'soul' in the same way, and points to a very crude
idea of the soul as material and only forming an internal portion of
the body: it is on the low level of the notion of an English pagan
of the seventeenth century who thought his soul was 'a great bone
in his body [203].' It is, however, not quite so foolish, perhaps,
as it looks at first sight; and it reminds one of the Mohammedan
belief that the os coccygis is the first formed in the human body,
and that it will remain uncorrupted till the last day as a seed from
which the whole is to be renewed in the resurrection [204].

On either savage theory, that the soul is a material organism inside
a bulkier organism, or the still lower one that it is an internal
portion of the larger organism itself, the idea of death would be
naturally much the same, namely, that it was what occurred when the
body and the soul became permanently severed. I call attention to this
because we have traces in Welsh literature of a very different notion
of death, which must now be briefly explained. The Mabinogi of Math
ab Mathonwy relates how Math and Gwydion made out of various flowers
a most beautiful woman whom they named Blodeuwed [205], that is to
say anthôdês, or flowerlike, and gave to wife to Llew Llawgyffes;
how she, as it were to prove what consummate artists they had been,
behaved forthwith like a woman of the ordinary origin, in that she
fell in love with another man named Gronw Pebyr of Penllyn; and how
she plotted with Gronw as to the easiest way to put her husband to
death. Pretending to be greatly concerned about the welfare of Llew
and very anxious to take measures against his death (angheu), she
succeeded in finding from him in what manner one could kill (llad)
him. His reply was, 'Unless God kill me ... it is not easy to kill me';
and he went on to describe the strange attitude in which he might be
killed, namely, in a certain position when dressing after a bath: then,
he said, if one cast a spear at him it would effect his death (angheu),
but that spear must have been a whole year in the making, during
the hour only when the sacrifice was proceeding on Sunday. Blodeuwed
thanked heaven, she said, to find that all this was easy to avoid. But
still her curiosity was not satisfied; so one day she induced Llew
to go into the bath and show exactly what he meant. Of course she had
Gronw with his enchanted spear in readiness, and at the proper moment,
when Llew was dressing after the bath, the paramour cast his spear at
him. He hit him in the side, so that the head of the spear remained
in Llew, whilst the shaft fell off: Llew flew away in the form of an
eagle, uttering an unearthly cry. He was no more seen until Gwydion,
searching for him far and wide in Powys and Gwyned, came to Arfon,
where one day he followed the lead of a mysterious sow, until the beast
stopped under an oak at Nantlle. There Gwydion found the sow devouring
rotten flesh and maggots, which fell from an eagle whenever the bird
shook himself at the top of the tree. He suspected this was Llew,
and on singing three englyns to him the eagle came lower and lower,
till at last he descended on Gwydion's lap. Then Gwydion struck him
with his wand, so that he assumed his own shape of Llew Llawgyffes,
and nobody ever saw a more wretched looking man, we are told: he was
nothing but skin and bones. But the best medical aid that could be
found in Gwyned was procured, and before the end of the year he was
quite well again.

Here it will be noticed, that though the fatal wounding of Llew, at
any rate visibly, means his being changed into the form of an eagle,
it is treated as his death. When the Mabinogion were edited in their
present form in a later atmosphere, this sort of phraseology was not
natural to the editor, and he shows it when he comes to relate how
Gwydion punished Blodeuwed, as follows:--Gwydion, having overtaken
her in her flight, is made to say, 'I shall not kill thee (Ny ladaf
i di): I shall do what is worse for thee, and that is to let thee
go in the form of a bird.' He let her go in fact in the form of an
owl. According to the analogy of the other part of the story this
meant his having killed her: it was her death, and the words 'I shall
not kill thee' are presumably not to be regarded as belonging to the
original story. To come back to the eagle, later Welsh literature,
re-echoing probably an ancient notion, speaks of a nephew of Arthur,
called Eliwlod, appearing to Arthur as an eagle seated likewise among
the branches of an oak. He claims acquaintance and kinship with Arthur,
but he has to explain to him that he has died: they have a dialogue
[206] in the course of which the eagle gives Arthur some serious
Christian advice. But we have in this sort of idea doubtless the
kind of origin to which one might expect to trace the prophesying
eagle, such as Geoffrey mentions more than once: see his Historia,
ii. 9 and xii. 18 [207]. Add to these instances of transformation
the belief prevalent in Cornwall almost to our own day, that Arthur
himself, instead of dying, was merely changed by magic into a raven,
a form in which he still goes about; so that a Cornishman will not
wittingly fire at a raven [208]. This sort of transformation is not
to be severed from instances supplied by Irish literature, such as
the story of Tuan mac Cairill, related in the Book of the Dun Cow,
fo. 15a-16b. Tuan relates to St. Finnen of Magbile, in the sixth
century, the early history of Ireland from the time of Partholan
down, which he was enabled to do because he had lived through it all,
passing from one form to another without losing his memory. First of
all he was a man, and when old age had come upon him he was transformed
into a stag of the forest. For a while he was youthful and vigorous;
but again old age overtook him, and he next became a wild boar. When
old age and decrepitude overcame him next he was renewed in the form
of a powerful bird, called in the original seig. The next renewal
was in the form of a salmon: here the manuscript fails us. The
form of a salmon was also the one taken by the woman Liban when
she was overwhelmed by the flood, which became the body of water
known as Lough Neagh: her handmaid at the same time became an otter
(fo. 40b). There was an ancient belief that the soul leaves the body
like a bird flying out of the mouth of the man or woman dying, and
this maybe said to approach the favourite Celtic notion illustrated
by the transformations here instanced, to which may be added the case
of the Children of Lir, pp. 93, 549, changed by the stroke of their
wicked stepmother's wand into swans, on Lough Erne. The story has,
in the course of ages, modified itself into a belief that the swans
haunting that beautiful water at all seasons of the year, are the
souls of holy women who fell victims to the repeated visitations of
the pagan Norsemen, when Ireland was at their cruel mercy [209]. The
Christian form which the Irish peasant has given the legend does not
touch its relevancy here. Perhaps one might venture to generalize,
that in these islands great men and women were believed to continue
their existence in the form of eagles, hawks or ravens, swans or
owls. But what became of the souls of the obscurer majority of the
people? For an answer to this perhaps we can only fall back on the
Psyche butterfly, which may here be illustrated by the fact that
Cornish tradition applies the term 'pisky' both to the fairies and to
moths, believed in Cornwall by many to be departed souls [210]. So in
Ireland: a certain reverend gentleman named Joseph Ferguson, writing
in 1810 a statistical account of the parish of Ballymoyer, in the
county of Armagh, states that one day a girl chasing a butterfly was
chid by her companions, who said to her: 'That may be the soul of
your grandmother [211].' This idea, to survive, has modified itself
into a belief less objectionably pagan, that a butterfly hovering
near a corpse is a sign of its everlasting happiness.

The shape-shifting is sometimes complicated by taking place on the
lines of rebirth: as cases in point may be mentioned Lug, reborn as
Cúchulainn [212], and the repeated births of Étáin. This was rendered
possible in the case of Cúchulainn, for instance, by Lug taking the
form of an insect which was unwittingly swallowed by Dechtere, who
thereby became Cúchulainn's mother; and so in the case of Étáin [213]
and her last recorded mother, the queen of Etar king of Eochraidhe. On
Welsh ground we have a combination of transformations and rebirth in
the history of Gwion Bach in the story of Taliessin. Gwion was in the
service of the witch Ceridwen; but having learned too much of her
arts, he became the object of her lasting hatred; and the incident
is translated as follows in Lady Charlotte Guest's Mabinogion,
iii. 358-9:--'And she went forth after him, running. And he saw her,
and changed himself into a hare and fled. But she changed herself into
a greyhound and turned him. And he ran towards a river, and became a
fish. And she in the form of an otter-bitch chased him under the water,
until he was fain to turn himself into a bird of the air. Then she,
as a hawk, followed him and gave him no rest in the sky. And just
as she was about to swoop upon him, and he was in fear of death, he
espied a heap of winnowed wheat on the floor of a barn, and he dropped
amongst the wheat, and turned himself into one of the grains. Then
she transformed herself into a high-crested black hen, and went to the
wheat and scratched it with her feet, and found him out and swallowed
him. And, as the story says, she bore him nine months, and when she
was delivered of him, she could not find it in her heart to kill him,
by reason of his beauty. So she wrapped him in a leathern bag, and
cast him into the sea to the mercy of God on the twenty-ninth day of
April. And at that time the weir of Gwydno was on the strand between
Dyvi and Aberystwyth, near to his own castle, and the value of an
hundred pounds was taken in that weir every May eve.' The story goes
on to relate how Gwydno's son, Elphin, found in the weir the leathern
bag containing the baby, who grew up to be the bard Taliessin. But
the fourteenth century manuscript called after the name of Taliessin
teems with such transformations as the above, except that they are by
no means confined to the range of the animal and vegetable kingdoms. I
heard an amusing suggestion of metempsychosis the other day: it is
related of a learned German, who was sitting at table, let us say,
in an Oxford hotel, with most of his dinner in front of him. Being,
however, a man of immediate foresight, and anxious to accustom himself
to fine English, he was not to be restrained by scruples as to any
possible discrepancy between words like bekommen and become. So to
the astonishment of everybody he gravely called out to the waiter,
'Hereafter I vish to become a Velsh rabbit.' This would have done
admirably for the author of certain poems in the Book of Taliessin,
where the bard's changes are dwelt upon. From them it appears that the
transformation might be into anything that the mind of man could in
any way individualize. Thus Taliessin claims to have been, some time
or other, not only a stag or a salmon, but also an axe, a sword, and
even a book in a priest's hand, or a word in writing. On the whole,
however, his history as a grain of corn has most interest here, as
it differs from that which has just been given: the passage [214]
is sadly obscure, but I understand it to say that the grain was duly
sown on a hill, that it was reaped and finally brought on the hearth,
where the ears of corn were emptied of their grains by the ancient
method of dexterously applying a flame to them [215]. But while the
light was being applied the grain which was Taliessin, falling from
the operator's hand, was quickly received and swallowed by a hostile
hen, in whose interior it remained nine nights; but though this
seemingly makes Taliessin's mother a bird, he speaks of himself,
without mentioning any intervening transformation, as a gwas or
young man. Such an origin was perhaps never meant to be other than
incomprehensible. Lastly as to rebirth, I may say that it has often
struck me that the Welsh habit, especially common in Carnarvonshire and
Anglesey, of one child in a family being named, partially or wholly,
after a grandparent, is to be regarded as a trace of the survival from
early times of a belief in such atavism as has been suggested above
[216].

The belief in transformations or transmigrations, such as have been
mentioned, must have lent itself to various developments, and two
at least of them are deserving of some notice here. First may be
mentioned one which connects itself intimately with the druid or
magician: he is master of his own transformations, as in the case of
Ceridwen and Gwion, for he had acquired his magic by tasting of the
contents of Ceridwen's Cauldron of Sciences, and he retained his memory
continuously through his shape-shiftings, as is best illustrated,
perhaps, by the case of Tuan mac Cairill. The next step was for him
to realize his changes, not as matters of the past but as present
and possible; in fact, to lay claim to being anybody or anything he
likes at any moment. Of this we have a remarkable instance in the case
of Amairgen, seer and judge of the Milesians or Sons of Míl, in the
story of their conquest of Ireland, as told in the Book of Leinster,
fo. 12b. As he first sets his right foot on the land of Erin he sings a
lay in which he says, that he is a boar, a bull, and a salmon, together
with other things also, such as the sea-breeze, the rolling wave,
the roar of the billows, and a lake on the plain. Nor does he forget
to pretend to wisdom and science beyond other men, and to hint that
he is the divinity that gives them knowledge and sense. The similarity
between this passage and others in the Book of Taliessin has attracted
the attention of scholars: see M. d'Arbois de Jubainville's Cycle
mythologique irlandais, pp. 242 et seq. On the whole, Taliessin revels
most in the side of the picture devoted to his knowledge and science:
he has passed through so many scenes and changes that he has been an
eye-witness to all kinds of events in Celtic story. Thus he was with
Brân on his expedition to Ireland, and saw when Mordwyt Tyllion was
slain in the great slaughter of the Meal-bag Pavilion. This, however,
was not all; he represents himself as also a sywedyd [217], 'vates or
prophet, astrologer and astronomer,' a sage who boasts his knowledge
of the physical world and propounds questions which he challenges
his rivals to answer concerning earth and sea, day and night, sun and
moon. He is not only Taliessin, but also Gwion, and hence one infers
his magical powers to have been derived. If he regards anybody as
his equal or superior, that seems to have been Talhaiarn, to whom he
ascribes the greatest science. Talhaiarn is usually thought of only as
a great bard by Welsh writers, but it is his science and wisdom that
Taliessin admires [218], whereby one is to understand, doubtless,
that Talhaiarn, like Taliessin, was a great magician. To this day
Welsh bards and bardism have not been quite dissociated from magic,
in so far as the witch Ceridwen is regarded as their patroness.

The boasts of Amairgen are characterized by M. d'Arbois de Jubainville
as a sort of pantheism, and he detects traces of the same doctrine,
among other places, in the teaching of the Irishman, known as Scotus
Erigena, at the court of Charles the Bald in the ninth century:
see the Cycle mythologique, p. 248. In any case, one is prepared
by such utterances as those of Amairgen to understand the charge
recorded in the Senchus Mór, i. 23, as made against the Irish druids
or magicians of his time by a certain Connla Cainbhrethach, one of the
remarkable judges of Erin, conjectured by O'Curry--on what grounds
I do not know--to have lived in the first century of our era. The
statement there made is to the following effect:--'After her came
Connla Cainbhrethach, chief doctor of Connaught; he excelled the
men of Erin in wisdom, for he was filled with the grace of the Holy
Ghost; he used to contend with the druids, who said that it was they
that made heaven and earth, and the sea, &c., and the sun and moon,
&c.' This view of the pretensions of the druids is corroborated by
the fact that magic, especially the power of shape-shifting at will,
was regarded as power par excellence [219], and by the old formula
of wishing one well, which ran thus: Bendacht dee ocus andee fort,
'the blessing of gods and not-gods upon thee!' The term 'gods' in this
context is explained to have meant persons of power [220], and the term
'not-gods' farmers or those connected with the land, probably all those
whose lives were directly dependent on farming and the cultivation
of the soil, as distinguished from professional men such as druids
and smiths. This may be further illustrated by a passage from the
account of the second battle of Moytura, published by Stokes with a
translation, in the Revue Celtique, xii. 52-130. See more especially
pp. 74-6, where we find Lug offering his services to the king, Nuada
of the Silver Hand. Among other qualifications which Lug possessed, he
named that of being a sorcerer, to which the porter at once replied:
'We need thee not; we have sorcerers already. Many are our wizards
and our folk of might'--that is, those of our people who possess
power--ar lucht cumachtai. Wizards (druith) and lucht cumachtai came,
it is observed, alike under the more general designation of sorcerers
(corrguinigh).

One seems to come upon traces of the same classification of a
community into professionals and non-professionals, for that is
what it comes to, in an obscure Welsh term, Teulu Oeth ac Anoeth,
which may be conjectured to have meant 'the Household of Oeth and
Anoeth' in the sense of Power and Not-power [221]. However that
may be, the professional class of men who were treated as persons
of power and gods seem to have attained to their position by virtue
of the magic of which they claimed to be masters, and especially of
their supposed faculty of shape-shifting at will. In other words,
the druidic pantheism [222] which Erigena was able to dress in the
garb of a fairly respectable philosophy proves to have been, in point
of genesis, but a few removes from a primitive kind of savage folklore.

None of these stories of shape-shifting, and of being born again, make
any allusion to a soul. To revert, for instance, to Llew Llawgyffes,
it is evident that the eagle cannot be regarded as his soul. The
decayed state of the eagle's body seems to imply that it was somehow
the same body as that of Llew at the time when he was wounded by
Gronw's poisoned spear: the festering of the eagle's flesh looks as
if considered a continuation of the wound. It is above all things,
however, to be noted that none of the stories in point, whether Irish
or Welsh, contain any suggestion of the hero's life coming to an end,
or in any way perishing; Llew lives on to be transformed, under the
stroke of Gwydion's wand, from being an eagle to be a man again; and
Tuan mac Cairill persists in various forms till he meets St. Finnen in
the sixth century. Then in the case of Étáin, we are told in the Book
of the Dun Cow, fo. 129a, that her first-mentioned birth and the next
one were separated by more than a thousand years. So practically we may
say that these stories implied that men and women were imperishable,
that they had no end necessarily to their existence. This sort of
notion may be detected in Llew's words when he says, 'Unless God kill
me ... it is not easy to kill me.' The reference to the Almighty may
probably be regarded as a comparatively late interpolation due to
Christian teaching. A similar instance seems to occur in a poem in
the Black Book of Carmarthen, fos. 47b-8b, where Arthur loudly sings
the praises of his friend Cai. The couplet in point runs thus:--


        Ny bei duv ae digonhei.
        Oet diheit aghev kei.

        Unless it were God that wrought it,
        Hard to effect were the death of Cai.


I am not sure, however, of the meaning; for, among other things,
diheit, which I am inclined to interpret as 'hard to reach' or 'not
easy to effect,' has been rendered otherwise by others [223]. In any
case, the other instance seems to imply that at one time the heroes
of Llew's world were not necessarily expected to die at all; and when
they happened to do so, it was probably regarded, as among savages at
the present day, as a result brought about by magic. Any reader who may
feel astonished at such a crudeness of belief, will find something to
contrast and compare in the familiar doctrine, that but for the fall
of Adam and Eve we should have never heard of death, whether of man
or of beast. But if he proceeds to ask questions about the economy of
our world in case nobody died, he must be satisfied to be told that
to ask any such question is here not only useless but also irrelevant.

Now, suppose that in a society permeated by the crude kind of
notions of which one finds traces in the Mabinogion and other old
Welsh literature, a man arose who had a turn for philosophizing and
trying to think things out: how would he reason? It seems probable
that he would argue, that underneath all the change there must be some
substratum which is permanent. If Tuan, he would say, changed from one
form to another and remembered all that he had gone through, there must
have been something which lasted, otherwise Tuan would have come to an
end early in the story, and the later individual would not be Tuan at
all. Probably one thing which, according to our folklore philosopher's
way of thinking, lasted through the transformations, was the material
of Tuan's body, just as one is induced to suppose that Llew's body, and
that of the eagle into which he was transformed, were considered to be
one and the same body labouring under the mortifying influence of the
wound inflicted on Llew by Gronw's enchanted spear. Further, we have
already found reasons to regard the existence of the soul as forming a
part of the creed of some at any rate of the early inhabitants of this
country, though we have no means of gathering what precise attributes
our philosopher might ascribe to it besides the single one, perhaps,
of continuing to exist. In that case he might otherwise describe
Tuan's shape-shifting as the entrance of Tuan's soul into a series
of different bodies. Now the philosopher here sketched agrees pretty
closely with the little that is known of the Gaulish druid, such as he
is described by ancient authors [224]. The latter seem to have been
agreed in regarding him as believing in the immortality of the soul,
and several of them appear to have thought his views similar to those
of Pythagoras and his school. So we may perhaps venture to suppose that
the druids, like Pythagoras, believed in the transmigration of souls,
including that from the human to an animal form and the reverse. If,
in the absence of an explicit statement, one may ascribe this latter
form of that belief to the druids, the identity of their creed becomes
almost complete with that of our conjectured folklore philosopher. At
one time I was inclined to fancy that the druids of Gaul had received
no unimportant part of their teaching from Greek philosophy by way
of Massilia, but I am now more disposed to believe their doctrines
to have been gradually developed, in the way above suggested, from
the unfailing resources of that folklore which revelled in scenes of
shape-shifting and rebirth. Possibly the doctrines of Pythagoras may
have themselves had a like origin and a somewhat parallel development,
or let us say rather that the Orphic notions had, which preceded
Pythagoreanism.

But as to Gaul generally, it is not to be assumed that the Gaulish
druids and all the other Gauls held the same opinion on these
questions: we have some evidence that they did not. Thus the Gauls
in the neighbourhood of Massilia [225], who would accept a creditor's
promise to pay up in the next world, can hardly have contemplated the
possibility of any such creditor being then a bird or a moth. Should
it be objected that the transformations, instanced above as Brythonic
and Goidelic, were assumed only in the case of magicians and other
professional or privileged persons, and that we are not told what was
held to happen in the case of the rank and file of humanity, it is
enough to answer that neither do we know what the druids of Gaul held
to be the fate of the common people of their communities. No lever
can be applied in that direction to disturb the lines of the parallel.

In previous chapters, pp. 45, 54, 61, 88, 97, 229, instances
from Welsh sources have been given of the fairies concealing
their names. But Wales is not the only Celtic land where we find
traces of this treatment of one's name: it is to be detected also
on Irish ground. Thus, when a herald from an enemy's camp comes to
parley with Cúchulainn and his charioteer, the latter, being first
approached, describes himself as the 'man of the man down there,'
meaning Cúchulainn, to whom he pointed; and when the herald comes to
Cúchulainn himself, he asks him whose man he is: Cúchulainn describes
himself as the 'man of Conchobar mac Nessa.' The herald then inquires
if he has no more definite designation, and Cúchulainn replies that
what he has given will suffice [226]: neither of the men gives his
name. Thus Celts of both groups, Brythons and Goidels, are at one in
yielding evidence to the same sort of cryptic treatment of personal
names, at some stage or other in their past history.

The student of man tells us, as already pointed out, that the reason
for the reluctance to disclose one's name was of the same nature as
that which makes savages, and some men belonging to nations above the
savage state feel anxious that an enemy should not get possession of
anything identified with their persons, such as a lock of one's hair,
a drop of one's blood, or anything closely connected with one's person,
lest it should give the enemy power over one's person as a whole,
especially if such enemy is suspected of possessing any skill in
handling the terrors of magic. In other words, the anthropologist would
say that the name was regarded as identified with the person; and,
having said this, he has mostly felt satisfied that he has definitively
disposed of the matter. Therein, however, he is possibly wrong; for
when he says that the name was probably treated as a part of the man,
that only leads one to ask the question, What part of the man? At any
rate, I can see nothing very unreasonable in such a question, though
I am quite willing to word it differently, and to ask: Is there any
evidence to show with what part of a man his name was associated?

As regards the Aryan nations, we seem to have a clue to an answer in
the interesting group of Aryan words in point, from which I select
the following:--Irish ainm, 'a name,' plural anmann; Old Welsh anu,
now enw, also 'a name'; Old Bulgarian imen (for *ienmen, *anman);
Old Prussian emnes, emmens, accusative emnan; and Armenian anwan
(for a stem *anman)--all meaning a name. To these some scholars [227]
would add, and it may be rightly, the English word name itself, the
Latin nomen, the Sanskrit naman, and the Greek ynoma; but, as some
others find a difficulty in thus grouping these words, I abstain
from laying any stress on them. In fact, I have every reason to be
satisfied with the wide extent of the Aryan world covered by the other
instances enumerated as Celtic, Prussian, Bulgarian, and Armenian.

Now, such is the similarity between Welsh enw, 'name,' and enaid,
'soul,' that I cannot help referring the two words to one and the same
origin, especially when I see the same or rather greater similarity
illustrated by the Irish words, ainm, 'name,' and anim, 'soul.' This
similarity between the Irish words so pervades the declension of
them, that a beginner frequently falls into the error of confounding
them in medieval texts. Take, for instance, the genitive singular,
anma, which may mean either animæ or nominis; the nominative plural,
anmand, which may be either animæ or nomina; and the gen. anmand,
either animarum or nominum, as the dative anmannaib may likewise be
either animabus or nominibus. In fact, one is at first sight almost
tempted to suppose that the partial differentiation of the Irish forms
was only brought about under the influence of Latin, with its distinct
forms of anima and nomen. That would be pressing the point too far;
but the direct teaching of the Celtic vocables is that they are
all to be referred to the same origin in the Aryan word for 'breath
or breathing,' which is represented by such words as Latin anima,
Welsh anadl, 'breath,' and a Gothic anan, 'blow or breathe,' whence
the compound preterite uz-on, twice used by Ulfilas in the fifteenth
chapter of St. Mark's Gospel to render exepneuse, 'gave up the ghost.'

Now the lessons which the words here grouped together contain for the
student of man is, that the Celts, and certain other widely separated
Aryans, unless we should rather say the whole of the Aryan family,
were once in the habit of closely associating both the soul and one's
name with the breath of life. The evidence is satisfactory so far as
it goes; but let us go a little more into detail, and see as exactly
as we can to what it commits us. Commencing at the beginning, we may
set out with the axiom that breathing is a physical action, and that
in the temperate zone one's breath is not unfrequently visible. Then
one may say that the men who made the words--Welsh, enaid (for an
earlier anatio-s), 'soul'; Irish, anim (from an earlier stem, animon);
Latin, anima, also animus, 'feeling, mind, soul'; and Greek, anemos,
'air, wind'--must have in some way likened the soul to one's breath,
which perhaps first suggested the idea. At all events they showed
not only that they did not contemplate the soul as a bone, or any
solid portion of a man's frame, or even as a manikin residing inside
it: in fact they had made a great advance in the direction of the
abstract notion of a spirit, in which some of them may have been
helped by another association of ideas, namely, that indicated by
speaking of the dead as shades or shadows, umbræ, skiai. Similarly,
the words in point for 'name' seem to prove that some of the ancient
Aryans must have, in some way, associated one's name with the breath
of life. On the other hand, we find nothing to show that the name and
the soul were directly compared or associated with one another, while
the association of the name with the breath represents, probably, a
process as much earlier as it is cruder, than likening the soul to the
breath and naming it accordingly. This is countenanced to some extent
by the general physiognomy, so to say, of words like enaid, anima,
as contrasted with enw, ainm, nomen, name. Speaking relatively, the
former might be of almost any date in point of comparative lateness,
while the latter could not, belonging as they do to a small declension
which was not wont to receive accessions to its numbers.

In what way, then, or in what respect did early folklore identify the
name with the breath? Before one could expect to answer this question
in anything like a convincing fashion, one would have to examine
the collector of the folklore of savages, or rather to induce him to
cross-examine them on the point. For instance, among the Singhalese
[228], when in the ceremony of name-giving the father utters the baby's
name in a low whisper in the baby's ear, is that called breathing the
name? and is the name so whispered called a breath or a breathing? In
the case of the savages who name their children at their birth, is
the reason ever advanced that a name must be given to the child in
order to make it breathe, or, at least, in order to facilitate its
breathing? Some such a notion of reinforcing the child's vitality and
safety would harmonize well enough with the fact that, as Mr. Clodd
[229] puts it, 'Barbaric, Pagan, and Christian folklore is full of
examples of the importance of naming and other birth-ceremonies,
in the belief that the child's life is at the mercy of evil spirits
watching the chance of casting spells upon it, of demons covetous to
possess it, and of fairies eager to steal it and leave a "changeling"
in its place.' Provisionally, one must perhaps rest content to
suppose the association of the name to have taken place with the
breath regarded as an accompaniment of life. Looked at in that sense,
the name becomes associated with one's life, and, speaking roughly,
with one's person; and it is interesting to notice that one seems to
detect traces in Welsh literature of some confusion of the kind. Thus,
when the hero of the story of Kulhwch and Olwen was christened he
was named Kulhwch, which is expressed in Welsh as 'forcing or driving
Kulhwch on him' (gyrru kulh6ch arna6 [230]); Kulh6ch, be it noticed,
not the name Kulhwch. Similarly when Brân, on the eve of his expedition
to Ireland, left seven princes, or knights as they are also called,
to take charge of his dominions, we have an instance of the kind. The
stead or town was named after the seven knights, and it is a place
which is now known as Bryn y Saith Marchog, 'the Hill of the Seven
Knights,' near Gwydelwern, in Merionethshire. But the wording of the
Mabinogi of Branwen is o acha6s hynny y dodet seith marcha6c ar y dref
[231], meaning 'for that reason the stead was called Seven Knights,'
literally 'for that reason one put Seven Knights on the stead.' In
Guest's Mabinogion, iii. 116, this will be found rendered wrongly,
though not wholly without excuse--'for this reason were the seven
knights placed in the town.' It is probable that the redactor of the
stories from which the two foregoing instances come--and more might
be cited--was not so much courting ambiguities as adhering to an old
form of expression which neglected from the first to distinguish,
in any formal way, between names and the persons or things which they
would, in modern phraseology, be said to represent [232].

An instance has been already mentioned of a man's name being put or
set on him, or rather forced on him: at any rate, his name is on him
both in Welsh and Irish, and the latter language also speaks of it as
cleaving or adhering to him. Neither language contemplates the name,
however closely identified with him, as having become an inseparable
part of him, or else as something he has secured for himself. In the
neo-Celtic tongues, both Welsh and Irish, all things which a man owns,
and all things for which he takes credit, are with him or by him;
but all things which he cannot help having, whether creditable or
discreditable, if they are regarded as coming from without are on him,
not with him. Thus, if he is wealthy there is money with him; but if
he is in debt and owes money, the money is on him. Similarly, if he
rejoices there is joy with him; whereas if he is ashamed or afraid,
shame or fear is on him. This is a far-reaching distinction, of capital
importance in Celtic phraseology, and judged by this criterion the
name is something from without the man, something which he cannot
take credit to himself for having acquired by his own direct willing
or doing. This is to be borne in mind when one speaks of the name as
identified or closely bound up with one's life and personality. But
this qualified identification of the name with the man is also what
one may infer from savage folklore; for many, perhaps most, of the
nations who name their children at their birth, have those names
changed when the children grow up. That is done when a boy has to be
initiated into the mysteries of his tribe or of a guild, or it may
be when he has achieved some distinction in war. In most instances,
it involves a serious ceremony and the intervention of the wise man,
whether the medicine-man of a savage system, or the priest of a higher
religion [233]. In the ancient Wales of the Mabinogion, and in pagan
Ireland, the name-giving was done, subject to certain conditions,
at the will and on the initiative of the druid, who was at the same
time tutor and teacher of the youth to be renamed [234]. Here I may
be allowed to direct attention to the two following facts: the druid,
recalling as he does the magician of the Egypt of the Pentateuch
and the shaman of the Mongolian world of our own time, represented
a profession probably not of Celtic origin. In the next place, his
method of selecting names from incidents was palpably incompatible
with what is known to have been the Aryan system of nomenclature,
by means of compounds, as evinced by the annals of most nations of
the Aryan family of speech: such compounds, I mean, as Welsh Pen-wyn,
'white-headed,' Gaulish Penno-ouindos, or Greek Hipparchos, Archippos,
and the like. Briefly, one may say that the association of the name
with the breath of life was probably Aryan, but without, perhaps,
being unfamiliar to the aborigines of the British Isles before their
conquest by the Celts. On the other hand, in the druid and his method
of naming we seem to touch the non-Aryan substratum, and to detect
something which was not Celtic, not Aryan [235].

Perhaps the reader will not regard it as wholly irrelevant if here
I change the subject for a while from one's name to other words and
locutions in so far as they may be regarded as illustrative of the
mental surroundings in which the last paragraph leaves the name. I
allude especially to the exaggerated influence associated with
a form of words, more particularly among the Irish Celts. O'Curry
gives a tragic instance: the poet Néde mac Adnai, in order to obtain
possession of the throne of Connaught, asked an impossible request of
the king, who was his own father's brother and named Caier. When the
king declared his inability to accede to his demand the poet made the
refusal his excuse for composing on the king what was called in Irish
an áir or áer, written later aor, 'satire,' which ran approximately
thus:--


        Evil, death, short life to Caier!
        May spears of battle wound Caier!
        Caier quenched, Caier forced, Caier underground!
        Under ramparts, under stones with Caier!


O'Curry goes on to relate how Caier, washing his face at the
fountain next morning, discovered that it had three blisters on it,
which the satire had raised, to wit, disgrace, blemish, and defect,
in colours of crimson, green, and white. So Caier fleeing, that
his plight might not be seen of his friends, came to Dun Cearmna
(now the Old Head of Kinsale, in county Cork), the residence of
Caichear, chief of that district. There Caier was well received as
a stranger of unknown quality, while Néde assumed the sovereignty
of Connaught. In time, Néde came to know of Caier being there, and
rode there in Caier's chariot. But as Néde approached Caier escaped
through his host's house and hid himself in the cleft of a rock,
whither Néde followed Caier's greyhound; and when Caier saw Néde,
the former dropped dead of shame [236]. This abstract of the story
as told by O'Curry, will serve to show how the words of the satirist
were dreaded by high and low among the ancient Irish, and how their
demands had to be at once obeyed. It is a commonplace of Irish
literature that the satirist's words unfailingly raised blisters on
the face of him at whom they were aimed. A portion at least of the
potency of the poet's words seems to have been regarded as due to
their being given a certain metrical form. That, however, does not
show how the poet had acquired his influence, and one cannot shut
one's eyes to the fact that the means he might adopt to make his
influence felt and his wishes instantly attended to, implied that
the race with which he had to deal was a highly sensitive one: I may
perhaps apply to it the adjective thin-skinned, in the literal sense
of that word. For the blisters on the face are only an exaggeration
of a natural phenomenon. On this point my attention has been called
by a friend to the following passages in a review of a work on the
pathology of the emotions [237]:--

'To both the hurtful and curative effects of the emotions M. Féré
devotes much attention, and on these points makes some interesting
remarks. That the emotions act on the body, more by their effects on
the circulation than by anything else, is no new thesis, but M. Féré
is developing some new branches of it. That the heart may be stopped
for a few seconds, and that there may be localised flush and pallor of
the skin, owing to almost any strong emotion, whether it be joy, anger,
fear, or pain, is a matter of common observation; and that there may
be many changes of nutrition due to vaso-motor disturbance is a point
easy to establish. The skin is particularly easily affected; passion
and pain may produce a sweat that is truly hemorrhagic (Parrot);
and the scientific world is obliged to admit that in the stigmata of
Louise Lateau the blood vessels were really broken, and not broken by
anything else than an emotional state as cause. In a shipwreck Follain
tells us that the pilot was covered in an hour with pustules from his
fear; and the doctor sees many dermato-neuroses, such as nettle-rash,
herpes, pemphigus, vitiligo, &c, from the choc moral.'

I can illustrate this from my own observation: when I was an
undergraduate there was with me at college a Welsh undergraduate, who,
when teased or annoyed by his friends, was well known to be subject
to a sort of rash or minute pustules on his face: it would come on
in the course of an hour or so. There is a well-known Welsh line on
this subject of the face which is to the point:--


        Ni chel grud gystud càlon.

        The cheek hides not the heart's affliction.


So a man who was insulted, or whose honour was assailed, might be
said to be thereby put to the blush or to be otherwise injured in his
face; and the Irish word enech, 'face,' is found commonly used as a
synonym for one's honour or good name. The same appears to have been
the case with the Welsh equivalent, wyneb, 'face,' and dyn di-wyneb,
literally 'a faceless man,' appears to be now used in Carnarvonshire
and Glamorgan in the sense of one who is without a sense of honour,
an unprincipled fellow. So when Welsh law dealt with insults and
attacks on one's honour the payment to be made to the injured person
was called gwynebwerth, 'the price of one's face,' or gwynebwarth,
'the payment for disgracing one's face.' Irish law arranged for similar
damages, and called them by analogous names, such as enech-gris,
'a fine for injuring or raising a blush on the face,' and enech-lóg or
enech-lann, 'honour price'; compare also enech-ruice, 'a face-reddening
or blushing caused by some act or scandal which brought shame on
a family.' Possibly one has to do with traces of somewhat the same
type of 'face,' though it has faded away to the verge of vanishing,
when one speaks in English of keeping another in countenance.

It has been suggested that if a magician got a man's name he could
injure him by means of his arts: now the converse seems to have been
the case with the Irish áer or satire, for to be effective it had,
as in the instance of Caier, to mention the victim's name; and a
curious instance occurs in the Book of Leinster, fo. 117, where
the poet Atherne failed to curse a person whose name he could not
manipulate according to the rules of his satire. This man Atherne is
described as inhospitable, stingy, and greedy to the last degree. So
it is related how he sallied forth one day, taking with him a cooked
pig and a pot of mead, to a place where he intended to gorge himself
without being observed. But no sooner had he settled down to his meal
than he saw a man approaching, who remarked to him on his operating
on the food all alone, and unceremoniously picked up the porker and
the pot of mead. As he was coolly walking away with them, Atherne
cried out after him, 'What is thy name?' The stranger replied that
it was nothing very grand, and gave it as follows:--


        Sethor . ethor . othor . sele . dele . dreng gerce
        Mec gerlusce . ger ger . dír dír issed moainmse.

        Sethor-Ethor-Othor-Sele-Dele-Dreng gerce
        Son of Gerlusce ger-ger-dír-dír, that is my name.


The story goes on to say that Atherne neither saw his meal any more
nor succeeded in making a satire on the name of the stranger, who
accordingly got away unscathed. It was surmised, we are told, that
he was an angel come from God to teach the poet better manners. This
comic story brings us back to the importance of the name, as it implies
that the cursing poet, had he been able to seize it and duly work it
into his satire, could not have failed to bring about the intruder's
discomfiture. The magician and folklore philosopher, far from asking
with Juliet, 'What's in a name?' would have rather put it the other
way, 'What's not in a name?' At any rate the ancients believed that
there was a great deal in a name, and traces of the importance which
they gave it are to be found in modern speech: witness the article on
name or its equivalent in a big dictionary of any language possessed
of a great literature.

It has been seen that it is from the point of view of magic that the
full importance of one's name was most keenly realized by our ancient
Celts; that is, of magic more especially in that stage of its history
when it claimed as its own a certain degree of skill in the art of
verse-making. Perhaps, indeed, it would be more accurate to suppose
that verse-making appertained from the outset to magic, and that
it was magicians, medicine-men, or seers, who, for their own use,
first invented the aids of rhythm and metre. The subject, however,
of magic and its accessories is far too vast to be treated here: it
has been touched upon here and there in some of the previous chapters,
and I may add that wizardry and magic form the machinery, so to say,
of the stories called in Welsh the 'Four Branches of the Mabinogi'
namely those of Pwyll, Branwen, Manawydan, and Math. Now these four,
together with the adventure of Llûd and Llevelys, and, in a somewhat
qualified sense, the story of Kulhwch and Olwen, represent in a
Brythonicized form the otherwise lost legends of the Welsh Goidels;
and, like those of the Irish Goidels, they are remarkable for their
wizardry. Nor is that all, for in the former the kings are mostly
the greatest magicians of their time: or shall I rather put it the
other way, and say that in them the greatest magicians function as
kings? Witness Math son of Mathonwy king of Gwyned, and his sister's
son, Gwydion ab Dôn, to whom as his successor he duly taught his magic;
then come the arch-enchanter Arawn, king of Annwn, and Caswallon
ab Beli, represented as winning his kingdom by the sheer force of
magic. To these might be added other members of the kingly families
whose story shows them playing the rôle of magicians, such as Rhiannon,
who by her magic arts foiled her powerful suitor, Gwawl ab Clûd,
and secured as her consort the man of her choice, Pwyll prince of
Dyfed. Here also, perhaps, one might mention Manawydan ab Llyr, who,
as Manannán mac Lir, figures in the stories of the Goidels of Erin
and Man as a consummate wizard and first king of the Manx people: see
p. 314 above. In the Mabinogi, however, no act of magic is ascribed
to Manawydan, though he is represented successfully checkmating the
most formidable wizard arrayed against him and his friends, to wit,
Llwyd ab Kilcoed. Not only does one get the impression that the ruling
class in these stories of the Welsh Goidels had their magic handed down
from generation to generation according to a fixed rule of maternal
succession (pp. 326, 503, 505), but it supplies the complete answer
to and full explanation of questions as to the meaning of the terms
already mentioned, Tuatha Dé ocus Andé, and Lucht Cumachtai, together
with its antithesis. Within the magic-wielding class exercising
dominion over the shepherds and tillers of the soil of the country, it
is but natural to suppose that the first king was the first magician
or greatest medicine-man, as in the case of Manannán in the Isle of
Man. This must of course be understood to apply to the early history
of the Goidelic race, or, perhaps more correctly speaking, to one of
the races which had contributed to its composition: to the aborigines,
let us say, by whatsoever name or names you may choose to call them,
whether Picts or Ivernians. It is significant, among other things,
that our traditions should connect the potency of ancient wizardry
with descent in the female line of succession, and, in any case, one
cannot be wrong in assuming magic to have begun very low down in the
scale of social progress, probably lower than religion, with which
it is essentially in antagonism. As the crude and infantile pack of
notions, collectively termed sympathetic magic--beginning with the
belief that any effect may be produced by imitating the action of the
cause of it, or even doing anything that would recall it [238]--grew
into the panoply of the magician, he came to regard himself, and to
be regarded by others, as able for his own benefit and that of his
friends to coerce all possible opponents, whether men or demons,
heroes or gods. This left no room for the attitude of prayer and
worship: religion in that sense could only come later.








CHAPTER XII

RACE IN FOLKLORE AND MYTH

        The method of philological mythology is thus discredited by the
        disputes of its adherents. The system may be called orthodox,
        but it is an orthodoxy which alters with every new scholar
        who enters the sacred enclosure.--Andrew Lang.


It has been well said, that while it is not science to know the
contents of myths, it is science to know why the human race has
produced them. It is not my intention to trace minutely the history
of that science, but I may hazard the remark, that she could not
be said to have reached years of discretion till she began to
compare one thing with another; and even when mythology had become
comparative mythology, her horizon remained till within recent years
comparatively narrow. In other words, the comparisons were wont to
be very circumscribed: you might, one was told, compare the myths of
Greeks and Teutons and Hindus, because those nations were considered
to be of the same stock; but even within that range comparisons were
scarcely contemplated, except in the case of myths enshrined in the
most classical literatures of those nations. This kind of mythology
was eclectic rather than comparative, and it was apt to regard myths
as a mere disease of language. By-and-by, however, the student showed
a preference for a larger field and a wider range; and in so doing he
was, whether consciously or unconsciously, beginning to keep step with
a larger movement extending to the march of all the kindred sciences,
and especially that of language.

At one time the student of language was satisfied with mummified
speech, wrapped up, as it were, in the musty coils of the records
of the past: in fact, he often became a mere researcher of the dead
letter of language, instead of a careful observer of the breath
of life animating her frame. So long as that remained the case,
glottology deserved the whole irony of Voltaire's well-known account
of etymology as being in fact, 'une science où les voyelles ne font
rien, et les consonnes fort peu de chose.' In the course, however, of
recent years a great change has come over the scene: not only have the
laws of the Aryan consonants gained greatly in precision, but those
of the Aryan vowels have at last been discovered to a considerable
extent. The result for me and others who learnt that the Aryan
peasant of idyllic habits harped eternally on the three notes of a,
i, u, is that we have to unlearn this and a great deal more: in fact,
the vowels prove to be far more troublesome than the consonants. But
difficult as these lessons are, the glottologist must learn them,
unless he is content to remain with the stragglers who happen to be
unable to move on. Now the change to which I allude, in connexion
with the study of language, has been inseparably accompanied with the
paying of increased attention to actual speech, with a more careful
scrutiny of dialects, even obscure dialects such as the literary man
is wont to regard with scorn.

Similarly the student of mythology now seeks the wherewithal of
his comparisons from the mouth of the traveller and the missionary,
wherever they may roam; not from the Rig-Veda or the Iliad alone,
but from the rude stories of the peasant, and the wild fancies of
the savage from Tierra del Fuego to Greenland's icy mountains. The
parallel may be drawn still closer. Just as the glottologist,
fearing lest the written letter may have slurred over or hidden
away important peculiarities of ancient speech, resorts for a
corrective to the actuality of modern Aryan, so the mythologist,
apt to suspect the testimony of the highly respectable bards of the
Rig-Veda, may on occasion give ear to the fresh evidence of a savage,
however inconsequent it may sound. The movements to which I allude
in glottology and mythology began so recently that their history has
not yet been written. Suffice it to say that in glottology, or the
science of language, the names most intimately connected with the new
departure are those of Ascoli, J. Schmidt, and Fick, those of Leskien,
Brugmann, Osthoff, and De Saussure; while of the names of the teachers
of the anthropological method of studying myths, several are by this
time household words in this country. But, so far as I know, the first
to give a systematic exposition of the subject was Professor Tylor,
in his work on Primitive Culture, published first in 1871.

Such has been the intimate connexion between mythology and glottology
that I may be pardoned for going back again to the latter. It
is applicable in its method to all languages, but, as a matter
of fact, it came into being in the domain of Aryan philology, so
that it has been all along principally the science of comparing the
Aryan languages with one another. It began with Sir William Jones'
discovery of the kinship of Sanskrit with Greek and Latin, and for
a long time it took the lead of the more closely related sciences:
this proved partly beneficial and partly the reverse. In the case of
ethnology, for instance, the influence of glottology has probably
done more harm than good, since it has opened up a wide field for
confounding race with language. In the case of mythology the same
influence has been partly helpful, and it has partly fallen short of
being such. Where names could be analysed with certainty, and where
they could be equated, leaving little room for doubt, as in the case
of that of the Greek Zeus, the Norse Týr, and the Sanskrit Dyaus,
the science of language rendered a veritable help to mythology; but
where the students of language, all pointing in different directions,
claimed each to hold in his hand the one safety-lamp, beyond the
range of which the mythologist durst not take a single step except at
the imminent risk of breaking his neck, the help may be pronounced,
to say the least of it, as somewhat doubtful. The anthropological
method of studying myths put an end to the unequal relation between
the students of the two sciences, and it is now pretty well agreed
that the proper relationship between them is that of mutual aid. This
will doubtless prove the solution of the whole matter, but it would be
premature to say that the period of strained relations is quite over,
since the mythologist has so recently made good his escape from the
embarrassing attentions of the students of language, that he has not
yet quite got out of his ears the bewildering notes of the chorus of
discordant cries of 'Dawn,' 'Sun,' and 'Storm-cloud.'

Now that I have touched on the friendly relations which ought to exist
between the science of language and the science of myth, I may perhaps
be allowed to notice a point or two where it is possible or desirable
for the one to render service to the other. The student of language
naturally wants the help of the student of myth, ritual, and religion
on matters which most immediately concern his own department of study;
and I may perhaps be excused for taking my stand on Celtic ground, and
calling attention to some of my own difficulties. Here is one of them:
when one would say in English 'It rains' or 'It freezes,' I should have
to say in my own language, Y mae hi'n bwrw glaw and Y mae hi'n rhewi,
which literally means 'She is casting rain' and 'She is freezing.' Nor
is this sort of locution confined to weather topics, for when you
would say 'He is badly off' or 'He is hard up,' a Welshman might say,
Y mae hi'n drwg arno or Y mae hi'n galed arno, that is literally,
'She is evil on him' or 'She is hard on him.' And the same feminine
pronoun fixes itself in other locutions in the language. Now I wish
to invoke the student of myth, ritual, and religion to help in the
identification of this ubiquitous 'she' of the Welsh. Whenever it is
mentioned to Englishmen, it merely calls to their minds the Highland
'she' of English and Scotch caricature, as for instance when Sir Walter
Scott makes Donald appeal in the following strain to Lord Menteith's
man, Anderson, who had learnt manners in France: 'What the deil, man,
can she no drink after her ain master without washing the cup and
spilling the ale, and be tamned to her!' The Highlander denies the
charge which our caricature tries to fasten on him; but even granting
that it was once to some extent justified, it is easy to explain it
by a reference to Gaelic, where the pronouns se and sibh, for 'he'
and 'you' respectively, approach in pronunciation the sound of the
English pronoun 'she.' This may have led to confusion in the mouths
of Highlanders who had but very imperfectly mastered English. In any
case, it is far too superficial to be quoted as a parallel to the hi,
'she,' in question in Welsh. A cautious Celtist, if such there be,
might warn us, before proceeding further with the search, to make sure
that the whole phenomenon is not a mere accident of Welsh phonetics,
and that it is not a case of two pronouns, one meaning 'she' and
the other 'it,' being confounded as the result merely of phonetic
decay. The answer to that is, that the language knows nothing of any
neuter pronoun which could assume the form of the hi which occupies us;
and further, that in locutions where the legitimate representative of
the neuter might be expected, the pronoun used is a different one,
ef, e, meaning both 'he' and 'it,' as in ï-e for ï-ef, 'it is he,
she, it or they,' nag-e, 'not he, she, it or they,' ef a allai or
fe allai, 'perhaps, peradventure, peut-être, il est possible.' The
French sentence suggests the analogous question, what was the original
force of denotation of the 'il' in such sentences as 'il fait beau,'
'il pleut,' and 'il neige'? In such cases it now denotes nobody in
particular, but has it always been one of his names? French historical
grammar may be able, unaided, to dispose of the attenuated fortunes of
M. Il, but we have to look for help to the student of myth and allied
subjects to enable us to identify the great 'she' persistently eluding
our search in the syntax of the Welsh language. Only two feminine names
suggest themselves to me as in any way appropriate: one is tynghed,
'fate or fortune,' and the other is Dôn, mother of some of the most
nebulous personages in Celtic literature.

There is, however, no evidence to show that either of them is
really the 'she' of whom we are in quest; but I have something to
say about both as illustrating the other side of the theme, how
the study of language may help mythology. This I have so far only
illustrated by a reference to the equation of Zeus with Dyaus and
their congeners. Within the range of Celtic legend the case is similar
with Dôn, who figures on Welsh ground, as I have hinted, as mother
of certain heroes of the oldest chapters of the Mabinogion. For it
is from her that Gwydion, the bard and arch-magician, and Gofannon
the smith his brother, are called sons of Dôn; and so in the case of
Arianrhod, daughter of Dôn, mother of Llew, and owner of the sea-laved
castle of Caer Arianrhod, not far distant from the prehistoric mound
of Dinas Dinlle, near the western mouth of the Menai Straits, as
already mentioned in another chapter, p. 208 above. In Irish legend,
we detect Dôn under the Irish form of her name, Danu or Donu, genitive
Danann or Donann, and she is almost singular there in always being
styled a divinity. From her the great mythical personages of Irish
legend are called Tuatha Dé Danann, or 'the Goddess Danu's Tribes,'
and sometimes Fir Déa, or 'the Men of the Divinity.' The last stage
in the Welsh history of Dôn consists of her translation to the skies,
where the constellation of Cassiopeia is supposed to constitute Llys
Dôn or Dôn's Court, as the Corona Borealis is identified with Caer
Arianrhod or 'the Castle of Dôn's Daughter'; but, as was perhaps
fitting, the dimensions of both are reduced to comparative littleness
by Caer Gwydion, 'the Magician Gwydion's Battlements,' spread over the
radiant expanse of the whole Milky Way [239]. Now the identification
of this ancient goddess Danu or Dôn as that in whom the oldest legends
of the Irish Goidels and the Welsh Goidels converge, has been the
work not so much of mythology as of the science of language; for it
was the latter that showed how to call back a little colouring into
the vanishing lineaments of this faded ancestral divinity [240].

For my next illustration, namely tynghed, 'fate,' I would cite a
passage from the opening of one of the most Celtic of Welsh stories,
that of Kulhwch and Olwen. Kulhwch's father, after being for some
time a widower, marries again, and conceals from his second wife
the fact that he has a son. She finds it out and lets her husband
know it; so he sends for his son Kulhwch, and the following is the
account of the son's interview with his stepmother, as given in Lady
Charlotte Guest's translation, ii. 252:--'His stepmother said unto him,
"It were well for thee to have a wife, and I have a daughter who is
sought of every man of renown in the world." "I am not of an age to
wed," answered the youth. Then said she unto him, "I declare to thee,
that it is thy destiny not to be suited with a wife until thou obtain
Olwen, the daughter of Yspadaden Penkawr." And the youth blushed,
and the love of the maiden diffused itself through all his frame,
although he had never seen her. And his father inquired of him, "What
has come over thee, my son, and what aileth thee?" "My stepmother
has declared to me, that I shall never have a wife until I obtain
Olwen, the daughter of Yspadaden Penkawr." "That will be easy for
thee," answered his father. "Arthur is thy cousin. Go, therefore,
unto Arthur to cut thy hair, and ask this of him as a boon."'

The physical theory of love for an unknown lady at the first mention
of her name, and the allusion to the Celtic tonsure, will have
doubtless caught the reader's attention, but I only wish to speak
of the words which the translator has rendered, 'I declare to thee,
that it is thy destiny not to be suited with a wife until thou obtain
Olwen.' More closely rendered, the original might be translated thus:
'I swear thee a destiny that thy side touch not a wife till thou
obtain Olwen.' The word in the Welsh for destiny is tynghet (for an
earlier tuncet), and the corresponding Irish word is attested as
tocad. Both these words have a tendency, like 'fate,' to be used
mostly in peiorem partem. Formerly, however, they might be freely
used in an auspicious sense likewise, as for instance in the woman's
name Tunccetace, on an early inscribed stone in Pembrokeshire. If her
name had been rendered into Latin she would have probably been called
Fortunata, as a namesake of good fortune. I render the Welsh mi a
tynghaf dynghet itt [241] into English, 'I swear thee a destiny';
but, more literally still, one might possibly render it 'I swear
thee a swearing,' that is, 'I swear thee an oath,' meaning 'I swear
for thee an oath which will bind thee.' The stepmother, it is true,
is not represented going through the form of words, for what she said
appears to have been a regular formula, just like that of putting a
person in Medieval Irish story under gessa or bonds of magic; but an
oath or form of imprecation was once doubtless a dark reality behind
this formula. In the southern part of my native county of Cardigan,
the phrase in question has been in use within the last thirty years,
and the practice which it denotes is still so well known as to be
the subject of local stories. A friend of mine, who is not yet fifty,
vividly remembers listening to an uncle of his relating how narrowly he
once escaped having the oath forced on him. He was in the hilly portion
of the parish of Llanwenog, coming home across country in the dead of a
midsummer's night, when leaping over a fence he unexpectedly came down
close to a man actively engaged in sheep-stealing. The uncle instantly
took to his heels, while the thief pursued him with a knife. If the
thief had caught him, it is understood that he would have held his
knife at his throat and forced on him an oath of secrecy. I have not
been able to ascertain the wording of the oath, but all I can learn
goes to show that it was dreaded only less than death itself. In
fact, there are stories current of men who failed to recover from the
effects of the oath, but lingered and died in a comparatively short
time. Since I got the foregoing story I have made inquiries of others
in South Cardiganshire, and especially of a medical friend of mine,
who speaks chiefly as to his native parish of Llangynllo. I found
that the idea is perfectly familiar to him and my other informants;
but, strange to say, from nobody could I gather that the illness is
considered to result necessarily from the violent administration of the
tynghed to the victim, or from the latter's disregarding the secrecy
of it by disclosing to his friends the name of the criminal. In fact,
I cannot discover that any such secrecy is emphasized so long as the
criminal is not publicly brought before a court of justice. Rather is
it that the tynghed effects blindly the ruin of the sworn man's health,
regardless of his conduct. At any rate, that is the interpretation
which I am forced to put on what I have been told.

The phrase tyngu tynghed [242], intelligible still in Wales, recalls
another instance of the importance of the spoken word, to wit,
the Latin fatum. Nay, it seems to suggest that the latter might
have perhaps originally been part of some such a formula as alicui
fatum fari, 'to say one a saying,' in the pregnant sense of applying
to him words of power. This is all the more to the point, as it is
well known how closely Latin and Celtic are related to one another,
and how every advance in the study of those languages goes to add
emphasis to their kinship. From the kinship of the languages one may
expect, to a certain extent, a similarity of rites and customs, and
one has not to go further for this than the very story which I have
cited. When Kulhwch's father first married, he is said to have sought
a gwreic kynmwyt ac ef [243], which means 'a wife of the same food
with him.' Thus the wedded wife was she, probably, who ate with her
husband, and we are reminded of the food ceremony which constituted
the aristocratic marriage in ancient Rome: it was called confarreatio,
and in the course of it an offering of cake, called farreum libum,
used to be made to Jupiter. A great French student of antiquity,
M. Fustel de Coulanges, describes the ceremony thus [244]:--'Les
deux époux, comme en Grèce, font un sacrifice, versent la libation,
prononcent quelques prières, et mangent ensemble un gâteau de fleur
de farine (panis farreus).' Lastly, my attention has been directed
to the place given to bread in the stories of Llyn y Fan Fach and
Llyn Elfarch. For on turning back to pp. 3-6, 17-8, 28, the reader
will find too much made of the bread to allow us to suppose that it
had no meaning in the courtship. The young farmer having fallen in
love at first sight with the lake maiden, it looks as if he wished,
by inducing her to share the bread he was eating, to go forthwith
through a form of marriage by a kind of confarreation that committed
her to a contract to be his wife without any tedious delay.

To return to the Latin fatum, I would point out that the Romans had
a plurality of fata; but how far they were suggested by the Greek
moirai is not quite clear: nor is it known that the ancient Welsh had
more than one tynghed. In the case, however, of old Norse literature,
we come across the Fate there as one bearing a name which is perhaps
cognate with the Welsh tynghed. I allude to a female figure, called
Þokk, who appears in the touching myth of Balder's death. When Balder
had fallen at the hands of Loki and Hödr, his mother Frigg asked who
would like to earn her good will by going as her messenger to treat
with Hell for the release of Balder. Hermódr the Swift, another
of the sons of Woden, undertook to set out on that journey on his
father's charger Sleipnir. For nine dreary nights he pursued his
perilous course without interruption, through glens dark and deep,
till he came to the river called Yell, when he was questioned as to
his errand by the maid in charge of the Yell bridge. On and on he rode
afterwards till he came to the fence of Hell's abode, which his horse
cleared at full speed. Hermódr entered the hall, and there found his
brother Balder seated in the place of honour. He abode with him that
night, and in the morning he asked Hell to let Balder ride home with
him to the Anses. He urged Hell to consider the grief which everybody
and everything felt for Balder. She replied that she would put that to
the test by letting Balder go if everything animate and inanimate would
weep for him; but he would be detained if anybody or anything declined
to do so. Hermódr made his way back alone to the Anses, and announced
to Frigg the answer which Hell had given to her request. Messengers
were sent forth without delay to bid all the world beweep Woden's son
out of the power of Hell. This was done accordingly by all, by men and
animals, by earth and stones, by trees and all metals, 'as you have
doubtless seen these things weep,' says the writer of the Prose Edda,
'when they pass from frost to warmth.' When the messengers, however,
were on their way home, after discharging their duty, they chanced
on a cave where dwelt a giantess called Þokk, whom they ordered to
join in the weeping for Balder; but she only answered:--


        Þokk will weep dry tears
          At Balder's bale-fire.
        What is the son of man, quick or dead, to me!
          Let Hell keep what she holds [245].


In this ogress Þokk, deaf to the appeals of the tenderer feelings,
we seem to have the counterpart of our Celtic tocad and tynghed;
and the latter's name as a part of the formula in the Welsh story,
while giving us the key of the myth, shows how the early Aryan knew of
nothing more binding than the magic force of an oath. On the one hand,
this conception of destiny carries with it the marks of its humble
origin, and one readily agrees with Cicero's words, De Divinatione,
ii. 7, when he says, anile sane et plenum superstitionis fati nomen
ipsum. On the other hand, it rises to the grim dignity of a name
for the dark, inexorable power which the whole universe is conceived
to obey, a power before which the great and resplendent Zeus of the
Aryan race is a mere puppet.

Perhaps I have dwelt only too long on the policy of 'give and take'
which ought to obtain between mythology and glottology. Unfortunately,
one can add without fear of contradiction, that, even when that
policy is carried out to the utmost, both sciences will still have
difficulties more than enough. In the case of mythology these
difficulties spring chiefly from two distinct sources, from the
blending of history with myth, and from the mixing of one race with
another. Let us now consider the latter: the difficulties from this
source are many and great, but every fresh acquisition of knowledge
tending to make our ideas of ethnology more accurate, gives us a
better leverage for placing the myths of mixed peoples in their
proper places as regards the races composing those peoples. Still,
we have far fewer propositions to lay down than questions to ask:
thus to go no further afield than the well-known stories attaching to
the name of Heracles, how many of them are Aryan, how many Semitic,
and how many Aryan and Semitic at one and the same time? That is
the sort of question which besets the student of Celtic mythology at
every step; for the Celtic nations of the present day are the mixed
descendants of Aryan invaders and the native populations which those
Aryan invaders found in possession. So the question thrusts itself
on the student, to which of these races a particular myth, rite, or
custom is to be regarded as originally belonging. Take, for instance,
Brân's colossal figure, to which attention has already been called,
pp. 552-3 above. Brân was too large to enter a house or go on board
a ship: is he to be regarded as the outcome of Celtic imagination,
or of that of a people that preceded the Celts in Celtic lands? The
comparison with the Gaulish Tricephal would seem to point in the
direction of the southern seaboard of the Baltic (p. 553): what then?

The same kind of question arises in reference to the Irish hero
Cúchulainn: take, for instance, the stock description of Cúchulainn
in a rage. Thus when angered he underwent strange distortions: the
calves of his legs came round to where his shins should have been; his
mouth enlarged itself so that it showed his liver and lungs swinging
in his throat; one of his eyes became as small as a needle's, or else
it sank back into his head further than a crane could have reached,
while the other protruded itself to a corresponding length; every
hair on his body became as sharp as a thorn, and held on its point a
drop of blood or a spark of fire. It would be dangerous then to stop
him from fighting, and even when he had fought enough, he required
for his cooling to be plunged into three baths of cold water; the
first into which he went would instantly boil over, the second would
be too hot for anybody else to bear, and the third only would be of
congenial warmth. I do not ask whether that strange picture betrays
a touch of the solar brush, but I should be very glad to know whether
it can be regarded as an Aryan creation or not.

It is much the same with matters other than mythological: take,
for instance, the bedlamite custom of the couvade [246], which is
presented to us in Irish literature in the singular form of a cess,
'suffering or indisposition,' simultaneously attacking the braves of
ancient Ulster. We are briefly informed in the Book of the Dun Cow,
fo. 60a, that the women and boys of Ulster were free from it. So was
any Ultonian, we are told, who happened to be outside the boundaries
of his country, and so were Cúchulainn and his father, even when
in Ulster. Any one who was rash enough to attack an Ultonian warrior
during this his period of helplessness could not, it is further stated,
expect to live afterwards either prosperously or long. The question for
us, however, is this: was the couvade introduced by the Aryan invaders
of Ireland, or are we rather to trace it to an earlier race? I should
be, I must confess, inclined to the latter view, especially as the
couvade was known among the Iberians of old, and among the ancient
Corsicans [247]. It may, of course, have been both Aryan and Iberian,
but it will all the same serve as a specimen of the sort of question
which one has to try to answer.

Another instance, the race origin of which one would like to ascertain,
offers itself in the curious belief, that, when a child is born, it is
one of the ancestors of the family come back to live again. Traces of
this occur in Irish literature, namely, in one of the stories about
Cúchulainn. There we read to the following effect:--The Ultonians
took counsel on account of Cúchulainn, because their wives and girls
loved him greatly; for Cúchulainn had no consort at that time. This
was their counsel, namely, that they should seek for Cúchulainn a
consort pleasing to him to woo. For it was evident to them that a man
who has the consort of his companionship with him would be so much
the less likely to attempt the ruin of their girls and to receive
the affection of their wives. Then, moreover, they were anxious
and afraid lest the death of Cúchulainn should take place early,
so they were desirous for that reason to give him a wife in order
that he might leave an heir; for they knew that it was from himself
that his rebirth (athgein) would be. That is what one reads in the
eleventh-century copy of the ancient manuscript of the Book of the
Dun Cow, fo. 121b; and this atavistic belief, which was touched upon
in connexion with the transformations discussed in the last chapter,
I need scarcely say, is well known elsewhere to the anthropologist,
as one will find on consulting the opening pages of Dr. Tylor's second
volume on Primitive Culture. He there mentions the idea as familiar
to American Indians, to various African peoples, to the Maoris and
the aborigines of Australia, to Cheremiss Tartars and Lapps. Among
such nations the words of Don Diègue to his victorious son, the Cid,
could hardly fail to be construed in a sort of literal sense when
he exclaims:--


        ............ ton illustre audace
        Fait bien revivre en toi les héros de ma race.


Let us return to Cúchulainn, and note the statement, that he and his
father, Sualdaim, were exempt from the couvade, which marks them out
as not of the same race as the Ultonians, that is to say, as the
Fír Ulaid, or 'True Ultonians'--presumably ancient inhabitants of
Ulster. Furthermore, we have an indication whence his family had come,
for Cúchulainn's first name was Setanta Beg, 'the Little Setantian,'
which points to the coast of what is now Lancashire, as already
indicated at p. 385 above. Another thing which marks Cúchulainn as
of a different racial origin from the other Ultonians is the belief
of the latter, that his rebirth must be from himself. The meaning of
this remarkable statement is that there were two social systems face
to face in Ulster at the time represented by the Cúchulainn story, and
that one of them recognized fatherhood, while the other did not. Thus
for Cúchulainn's rebirth to be from himself, he must be the father
of a child from whom should descend a man who would be a rebirth or
avatar of Cúchulainn. The other system implied was one which reckoned
descent by birth alone [248]; and the Cúchulainn story gives one the
impression that it contemplated this system as the predominant one,
while the Cúchulainn family, with its reckoning of fatherhood, comes
in as an exception. At all events, that is how I now understand a
passage, the full significance of which had till recently escaped me.

Allusion has already been made to the story of Cúchulainn being
himself a rebirth, namely, of Lug, and the story deserves still
further consideration in its bearing on the question of race,
to which the reader's attention has been called. It is needless,
however, to say that there are extant fragments of more stories than
one as to Cúchulainn's origin. Sometimes, as in the Book of Leinster,
fo. 119a, he is called gein Loga, or Lug's offspring, and in the epic
tale of the Táin Bó Cuailnge, Lug as his father comes from the Síd or
Faery to take Cúchulainn's place in the field, when the latter was
worn out with sleeplessness and toil. Lug sings over him éli Loga,
or 'Lug's enchantment,' and Cúchulainn gets the requisite rest and
sleep [249]: this we read in the Book of the Dun Cow, fo. 78a. In
another version of the story, Cúchulainn is an incarnation of Lug:
the narrative relates how a foster-son was accepted by Dechtere,
sister to Conchobar MacNessa, king of Ulster. But her foster-son died
young, to the great grief of Dechtere; and her lamentations for him
on the day of his funeral having made her thirsty, she inadvertently
swallowed with her drink a diminutive creature which sprang into her
mouth. That night she had a dream, in which a man informed her that
she was pregnant, that it was he who was in her womb, that he had been
her foster-son, and that he was Lug; also that when his birth should
take place, the name was to be Setanta. After an incident which I can
only regard as a clumsy attempt to combine the more primitive legend
with the story which makes him son of Sualdaim, she gives birth to the
boy, and he is duly called Setanta [250]: that was Cúchulainn's first
name. Now compare this with what Dr. Tylor mentions in the case of
the Lapps, namely, that 'the future mother was told in a dream what
name to give her child, this message being usually given her by the
very spirit of the deceased ancestor, who was about to be incarnate
in her [251].' If the mother got no such intimation in a dream, the
relatives of the child had to have recourse to magic and the aid of
the wise man, to discover the name to be given to the child.

Here let it suffice to say, that the similarity is so close between
the Irish and the Lapp idea, and so unlike anything known to have
been Aryan, that it is well worth bearing in mind. The belief in
rebirth generally seems to fit as a part of the larger belief in the
transmigration of souls which is associated with the teachings of the
ancient druids, a class of shamans or medicine-men who were probably,
as already hinted, not of Celtic or Aryan origin; and probably the
beliefs here in question were those of some non-Aryan people of these
islands, rather than of any Aryans who settled in them. This view need
hardly be regarded as incompatible with the fact, that Lug's name,
genitive Loga, would seem to have meant light, and that Lug was a
sun-god, very possibly a Celtic sun-god: or more correctly speaking,
that there was a series of Lugs, so to say, or sun-gods, called in
ancient Spain, Switzerland, and on the banks of the Rhine, Lugoves
[252]. For one is sorely tempted to treat this much as a rescue from
the wreckage of the solar myth theory, as against those who, having
regard mainly to Lug's professional skill and craft as described in
Irish story, make of him a kind of Hermes or Mercury. In other words,
we have either to regard a Celtic Lug as having become the centre of
certain non-Celtic legends, or else to suppose neither Lug nor his
name to be of Aryan origin at all. It is hard to say which is the
sounder view to take.

The next question which I wish to suggest is as to the ethnology
of the fairies; but before coming to that, one has to ask how the
fairies have been evolved. The idea of fairies, such as Welshmen have
been familiar with from their childhood, clearly involves elements of
two distinct origins. Some of those elements come undoubtedly from
the workshop of the imagination, as, for example, the stock notion
that their food and drink are brought to the fairies by the mere
force of wishing, and without the ministration of servants; or the
notion, especially prevalent in Arfon, that the fairies dwell in a
country beneath the lakes of Snowdon; not to mention the more general
connexion of a certain class of fairies with the world of waters,
as indicated in chapter vii. Add to this that the dead ancestor has
also probably contributed to our bundle of notions about them; but
that contains also an element of fact or something which may at any
rate be conceived as historical. Under this head I should place the
following articles of faith concerning them: the sallowness of their
skins and the smallness of their stature, their dwelling underground,
their dislike of iron, and the comparative poverty of their homes in
the matter of useful articles of furniture, their deep-rooted objection
to the green sward being broken up by the plough, the success of the
fairy wife in attending to the domestic animals and to the dairy, the
limited range generally of the fairies' ability to count; and lastly,
one may perhaps mention their using a language of their own (p. 279),
which would imply a time when the little people understood no other,
and explain why they should be represented doing their marketing
without uttering a syllable to anybody (p. 161).

The attribution of these and similar characteristics to the fairies
can scarcely be all mere feats of fancy and imagination: rather do they
seem to be the result of our ancestors projecting on an imaginary world
a primitive civilization through which tradition represented their
own race as having passed, or, more probably, a civilization in which
they saw, or thought they saw, another race actually living. Let us
recur for examples also to the two lake legends which have just been
mentioned (p. 650): in both of them a distinction is drawn between
the lake fairy's notion of bread and that of the men and women of the
country. To the fairy the latter's bread appeared crimped or overbaked:
possibly the backward civilization, to which she was supposed to
belong, was content to support itself on some kind of unleavened bread,
if not rather on a fare which included nothing deserving to be called
bread at all. Witness Giraldus Cambrensis' story of Eliodorus, in which
bread is conspicuous by its absence, the nearest approach to it being
something of the consistency of porridge: see p. 270 above. Then take
another order of ideas: the young man in both lake legends lives with
his mother (pp. 3, 27): there is no father to advise or protect him:
he is in this respect on a level with Undine, who is the protegee of
her tiresome uncle, Kühleborn. Seemingly, he belongs to a primitive
society where matriarchal ideas rule, and where paternity is not
reckoned [253]. This we are at liberty at all events to suppose to
have been the original, before the narrator had painted the mother
a widow, and given the picture other touches of his later brush.

To speak, however, of paternity as merely not reckoned is by no means
to go far enough; so here we have to return to take another look at
the imaginary aspect of the fairies, to which a cursory allusion has
just been made. The reader will possibly recall the sturdy smith of
Ystrad Meurig, who would not reduce the notions which he had formed of
the fairies when he was a child to conformity with those of a later
generation around him. In any case, he will remember the smith's
statement that the fairies were all women: see p. 245. The idea was
already familiar to me as a Welshman, though I cannot recollect how
I got it. But the smith's words brought to my mind at once the story
of Condla Rúad or the Red, one of the fairy tales first recorded in
Irish literature (p. 291). There the damsel who takes Condla away in
her boat of glass to the realm of the Everliving sings the praises of
that delectable country, and uses, among others, the following words,
which occur in the Book of the Dun Cow, fo. 120:--


        Ni fil cenel and nammá acht mná ocus ingena [254].

        There is no race there but women and maidens alone.


Now what people could have come by the idea of a race of women
only? Surely no people who considered that they themselves had fathers:
it must have been some community so low in the scale of civilization
as never to have had any notion whatsoever of paternity: it is their
ignorance that would alone render possible the notion of a race all
women. That this was a matter of belief in the past of many nations,
is proved by the occurrence of widely known legends about virgin
mothers [255]; not to mention that it has been lately established,
that there are savages who to this day occupy the low place here
indicated in the scale of civilization. Witness the evidence of Spencer
and Gillen in their recently published work on The Native Tribes of
Central Australia, and also what Frazer, author of The Golden Bough,
says of a passage in point, in the former, as follows:--

'Thus, in the opinion of these savages, every conception is what we
are wont to call an immaculate conception, being brought about by the
entrance into the mother of a spirit apart from any contact with the
other sex. Students of folklore have long been familiar with notions
of this sort occurring in the stories of the birth of miraculous
personages, but this is the first case on record of a tribe who
believe in immaculate conception as the sole cause of the birth of
every human being who comes into the world. A people so ignorant of
the most elementary of natural processes may well rank at the very
bottom of the savage scale [256].'

Nevertheless, it is to some population in that low position, in the
remote prehistory of this country, that one is to trace the belief
that the fairies were all women. It is to be regarded as a position
distinctly lower than that of the Ultonians in the time of Cúchulainn;
for the couvade seems to me to argue a notion of paternity--perhaps,
in their case, as clear a notion of paternity as was possible for a
community which was not quite out of the promiscuous stage of society.

The neo-Celtic nations of these islands consist, speaking roughly,
of a mixture of the invading Celts with the earlier inhabitants whom
the Celts found in possession. These two or more groups of peoples may
have been in very different stages of civilization when they first came
in contact with one another. They agreed doubtless in many things,
and perhaps, among others, in cherishing an inherited reluctance to
disclose their names, but the Celts as Aryans were never without the
decimal system of counting. Like the French, the Celtic nations of
the present day show a tendency, more or less marked, to go further
and count by scores instead of by tens. But the Welsh are alone among
them in having, in certain instances, gone back from counting by tens
to counting by fives, which they do when they count between 10 and
20: for 16, 17, 18, and 19 are in Welsh 1 on 15, 2 on 15, 3 on 15,
and 4 on 15 respectively; and similarly with 13 and 14 [257]. We have
seen how the lake fairy reckoned by fives (pp. 8, 418) all the live
stock she was to have as her dowry; and one otherwise notices that
the fairies deal invariably in the simplest of numbers. Thus if you
wish, for example, to find a person who has been led away by them,
ten to one you have to go 'this day next year' to the spot where he
disappeared. Except in the case of the alluring light of the full
moon, it is out of the question to reckon months or weeks, though
it is needless to say that to reckon the year correctly would have
been in point of fact far more difficult; but nothing sounds simpler
than 'this day next year.' In that simple arithmetic of the fairies,
then, we seem to have a trace of a non-Aryan race, that is to say,
probably of some early inhabitants of these islands.

Unfortunately, the language of those inhabitants has died out, so
that we cannot appeal to its numerals directly; and the next best
course to adopt is to take as a sort of substitute for their language
that of possible kinsmen of a pre-Celtic race in this country. Now the
students of ethnology, especially those devoted to the investigation of
skulls and skins, tell us that we have among us, notably in Wales and
Ireland, living representatives of a dark-haired, long-skulled race of
the same description as one of the types which occur, as they allege,
among the Basque populations of the Pyrenees. We turn accordingly to
Basque, and what do we find? Why, that the first five numerals in that
language are bat, bi, iru, lau, bost, all of which appear to be native;
but when we come to the sixth numeral we have sei, which looks like an
Aryan word borrowed from Latin, Gaulish, or some related tongue. The
case is much the same with 'seven,' for that is in Basque zazpi,
which is also probably an Aryan loan-word. Basque has native words,
zortzi and bederatzi, for eight and nine, but they are longer than
the first five, and appear to be of a later formation affecting, in
common with sei and zazpi, the termination i. I submit, therefore,
that here we have evidence of the former existence of a people in the
West of Europe who at one time only counted as far as five. Some of
the early peoples of the British Isles may have been on the same level,
so that our notions about the fairies have probably been derived, to a
greater or less extent, from ideas formed by the Celts concerning those
non-Celtic, non-Aryan natives of whose country they took possession.

As regards my appeal to the authority of craniology, I have to confess
that it is made with a certain amount of reservation, since the case
is far less simple than it looks at first sight. Thus, in August,
1891, the Cambrian Archæological Association, including among them
Professor Sayce, visited the south-west of Ireland. During our pleasant
excursions in Kerry, the question of race was one of our constant
topics; and Professor Sayce was reminded by what he saw in Ireland
of his visit to North Africa, especially the hilly regions of the
country inhabited by the Berbers. Among other things, he used to say
that if a number of Berbers from the mountains were to be brought to
an Irish village and clad as Irishmen, he felt positive that he should
not be able to tell them from the Irishmen themselves, such as we saw
on our rambles in Kerry. This struck me as all the more remarkable,
since his reference was to fairly tall, blue-eyed men whose hair could
not be called black. On the other hand, owing perhaps to ignorance
and careless ways of looking at things around me, I am a little
sceptical as to the swarthy long-skulls: they did not seem to meet
us at every turn in Ireland; and as for Wales, which I know as well
as most people do, I cannot in my ignorance of craniology say with
any confidence that I have ever noticed vast numbers of that type. I
should like, however, to see the heads of some of the singers whom
I have noticed at our Eistedfodau at Cardiff, Aberdare, and Swansea,
placed under the hands of an experienced skull-man. For I have long
suspected that we cannot regard as of Aryan origin the vocal talent
so general in Wales, and so conspicuous in our choirs of working
people as to astonish all the great musicians who have visited our
national festival. Beyond all doubt, race has not a little to do with
the artistic feelings: a short-skull may be as unmusical, for example,
as I am; but has anybody in this country ever known a narrow long-skull
to be the reverse of unmusical? or has any one ever considered how few
clergymen of the tall, fair-haired, blue-eyed type have been converted
to the ritualistic and æsthetic movement in the Church of England?

As it seems to me that the bulk of the Welsh people would have to be
described as short-skulls, it would be very gratifying to see those
who are wont to refer freely to the dark-complexioned long-skulls
of Wales catch a respectable number of specimens. I trust there are
plenty to be found; and of course I do not care how they are taken,
whether it be by an instantaneous process of photography or in the
meshes of some anthropometric sportsman, like Dr. Beddoe. Let them
be secured anyhow, so that one may rest assured that the type is
still numerically safe, and be able to judge with one's own eyes how
heads long and swarthy look on the shoulders of living Welshmen. We
might then be in a position also to compare with them the prevalent
description of fairy changelings; for when the fairies steal nice,
blond babies, they usually place in their stead their own aged-looking
brats with short legs, sallow skins, and squeaky voices. Unfortunately
for me, all the adult changelings of whom I happen to have heard any
account had died some years before I began to turn my attention to
the population of Faery, with the exception, perhaps, of one whose
name I obtained under the seal of secrecy. It was that of the wife of
a farmer living near Nefyn, in West Carnarvonshire. It was whispered
that she was a changeling, so I am inclined to regard her as no other
than one of the representatives of the same aboriginal stock to which
one might conjecture some of her neighbours also to belong; she ought
to be an extreme specimen of the type. It is to be hoped that the
photographer and his anthropometric brother have found her out in
time and in good humour; but it is now many years since I heard of her.

To return again to the fairies, some of them are described as
more comely and good-looking than the rest (pp. 83, 250), but
the fairy women are always pictured as fascinating, though their
offspring as changelings are as uniformly presented in the light
of repulsive urchins; but whole groups of the fairy population are
sometimes described as being as ugly of face as they were thievish
in disposition--those, for instance, of Llanfabon, in Glamorganshire
(p. 262). There is one district, however, which is an exception to the
tenor of fairy physiognomy: it is that of the Pennant neighbourhood, in
Carnarvonshire, together with the hills and valleys, roughly speaking,
from Cwm Strallyn to Llwytmor and from Drws y Coed to Dolbenmaen. The
fairies of that tract are said to have been taller than the others,
and characterized by light or even flaxen hair, together with eyes of
clear blue: see pp. 89, 93-7, 105-8. Nor is that all, for we are told
that they would not let a person of dark complexion come near them
(p. 96). The other fairies, when kidnapping, it is true, preferred
the blond infants of other people to their own swarthy brats, which,
perhaps, means that it was a policy of their people to recruit itself
with men of the superior physique of the more powerful population
around them. The supposed fairy ancestress of the people of the Pennant
Valley bears, in the stories in point, such names as Penelope, Bella,
Pelisha, and Sibi, while her descendants are still taunted with their
descent--a quarrel which, within living memory, used to be fought
out with fists at the fairs at Penmorfa and elsewhere. This seems to
indicate a comparatively late settlement [258] in the district of a
family or group of families from without, and an origin, therefore,
somewhat similar to that of the Simychiaid and Cowperiaid (p. 67) of a
more eastern portion of the same county, rather than anything deserving
to be considered with the rest of the annals of Faery. Passing by
this oasis, then, such snap-shot photographs as I have been able
to take, so to speak, of fairyland cleared of the glamour resting
on its landscape, seem to disclose to the eye a swarthy population
of short stumpy men occupying the most inaccessible districts of
our country. They appear to have cared more for soap than clothing
[259], and they lived on milk taken once a day, when they could
get it. They probably fished and hunted, and kept domestic animals,
including, perhaps, the pig; but they depended largely on what they
could steal at night or in misty weather. Their thieving, however,
was not resented, as their visits were believed to bring luck and
prosperity (p. 251). Their communities formed as it were islands,
owing to the country round about them having been wrested from them
by later comers of a more warlike disposition and provided with better
weapons. But the existence of the scattered groups of the fairies was
in no danger of coming to a violent end: they were safe in consequence
of the superstitious beliefs of their stronger neighbours, who probably
regarded them as formidable magicians, powerful, among other things,
to cause or to cure disease as they pleased. Such, without venturing
to refresh my memory by perusing what has been written about dwarf
races in other parts of the world, are the impressions made on my mind
in the course of analysing and sifting the folklore materials crowded
into this volume. That applies, of course, in so far only as regards
the fairies in their character of a real people as distinguished from
them as creatures of the imagination. But, as I have no wish to earn
the displeasure of my literary friends, let me hasten to say that I
acknowledge the latter, the creatures of the imagination, to be the
true fairies, the admiration of one's childhood and the despair of
one's later years: the other folk--the aborigines whom I have been
trying to depict--form only a sort of substratum, a kind of background
to the fairy picture, which I should be the last man to wish to mar.

It is needless to say that we have no trace of any fairies approaching
the minute dimensions of Shakespeare's Queen Mab; for, after all,
our fairies are mostly represented as not extravagantly unlike other
people in personal appearance--not so unlike, in fact, that other folk
might not be mistaken for them now and then as late as the latter
part of the fifteenth century. Witness the following passage from
Sir John Wynne's History of the Gwydir Family, p. 74:--

'Haveing purchased this lease, he removed his dwelling to the castle
of Dolwydelan, which at that time was in part thereof habitable,
where one Howell ap Jevan ap Rys Gethin, in the beginning of Edward
the Fourth his raigne, captaine of the countrey and an outlaw, had
dwelt. Against this man David ap Jenkin rose, and contended with him
for the sovreignety of the countrey; and being superiour to him,
in the end he drew a draught for him, and took him in his bed at
Penanmen with his concubine, performing by craft, what he could
not by force, and brought him to Conway Castle. Thus, after many
bickerings betweene Howell and David ap Jenkin, he being too weake,
was faigne to flie the countrey, and to goe to Ireland, where he was
a yeare or thereabouts. In the end he returned in the summer time,
haveing himselfe, and all his followers clad in greene, who, being
come into the countrey, he dispersed here and there among his friends,
lurking by day, and walkeing in the night for feare of his adversaries;
and such of the countrey as happened to have a sight of him and his
followers, said they were the fairies, and soe ran away.'

But what has doubtless helped, above all other things, to perpetuate
the belief in the existence of fairies may be said to be the popular
association with them of the circles in the grass, commonly known
in English as fairy rings. This phenomenon must have answered
for ages the purpose for our ancestors, practically speaking, of
ocular demonstration, as it still does no doubt in many a rustic
neighbourhood.

The most common name for the fairies in Welsh is y Tylwyth Teg,
'the Fair or Beautiful Family'; but in South Cardiganshire we have
found them called Plant Rhys Dwfn, 'the Children of Rhys the Deep'
(pp. 151, 158), while in Gwent and Morgannwg they are more usually
known as Bendith y Mamau, 'the Blessing of the Mothers' (p. 174). Our
fourteenth century poet, D. ab Gwilym, uses the first-mentioned term,
Tylwyth Teg, in poem xxxix, and our prose literature has a word corr,
cor in the sense of a dwarf, and corres for a she dwarf. The old
Cornish had also cor, which in Breton is written korr [260], with a
feminine korrez, and among the other derivatives one finds korrik,
'a dwarf, a fairy, a wee little sorcerer,' and korrigez or korrigan,
'a she dwarf, a fairy woman, a diminutive sorceress.' The use of
these words in Breton recalls the case of the cor, called Rhudlwm
or else Eidilig, teaching his magic to Coll, son of Collfrewi:
see pp. 326, 503, 505. Then we have uncanny dwarfs in the romances,
such, for example, as the rude cor in the service of Edern ab Nud,
as described in French in Chrétien's romance of Erec et Enide and in
Welsh in that of Gereint vab Erbin, also the cor and corres who figure
in the story of Peredur. The latter had belonged to that hero's father
and mother till the break-up of the family, when the dwarfs went to
Arthur's Court, where they lived a whole year without speaking to
anybody. When, however, Peredur made his rustic appearance there,
they hailed him loudly as the chief of warriors and the flower of
knighthood, which brought on them the wrath of Cai, on whom they were
eventually avenged by Peredur. In the case [261] of both Edern and
Peredur we find the dwarfs loyally interested in the fortunes of their
masters and their masters' friends. With them also the shape-shifting
Menw, though not found placed in the same unfavourable light, is
probably to be ranged, as one may gather from his name and his rôle
of wizard scout for Arthur's men (p. 510). In the like attachment on
the part of the fairies, which was at times liable to develop into
devotedness of an embarrassing nature (p. 250), we seem to have one of
the germs of the idea of a household fairy or banshee, as illustrated
by the case of the ugly wee woman in the Pantannas legend (p. 188);
and it seems natural to regard the interested voices in the Kenfig
legend, and other stories of the same kind (p. 452), as instances of
amalgamating the idea of a fairy with that of an ancestral person.

At all events, we have obtained something to put by the side of the
instances already noticed of the fairy girl who gives, against her will
at first, her services in the dairy of her captor (pp. 45, 87); of the
other fairy who acts as a nurse for a family in the Pennant Valley,
till she is asked to dress better (p. 109); and of Bwca'r Trwyn who
works willingly and well, both at the house and in the field, till
he has tricks played on him (pp. 593-6). To make this brief survey
complete, one has to mention the fairies who used to help Eilian
with her spinning (pp. 211-3), and not to omit those who were found
to come to the rescue of a woman in despair and to assist her on the
condition of getting her baby. The motive here is probably not to be
confounded with that of the fairies who stealthily exchanged babies:
the explanation seems in this case to be that the fairies, or some of
the fairies, were once regarded as cannibals, which is countenanced by
such a story as that of Canrig Bwt, 'Canrig the Stumpy.' At Llanberis
the latter is said to have lived beneath the huge stone called y
Gromlech, 'the Dolmen,' opposite Cwmglas and near the high-road to
the Pass. When the man destined to dispatch her came, she was just
finishing her dinner off a baby's flesh. There are traces of a similar
story in another district, for a writer who published in the year 1802
uses the following words:--'There was lately near Cerrig y Drudion,
in Merionethshire, a subterraneous room composed of large stones,
which was called Carchar Cynric Rwth, i. e. "The Prison of Cynric
Rwth," which has been taken notice of by travellers.' Cynric Rwth
may be rendered 'Cynric the Greedy or Broad-mouthed.' A somewhat
similar ogress is located by another story on the high ground at
Bwlch y Rhiw Felen, on the way from Llangollen to Llandegla, and she
is represented by the local tradition as contemporary with Arthur
[262]. I am inclined to think the Cwmglas cromlech natural rather than
artificial; but I am, however, struck by the fact that the fairies are
not unfrequently located on or near ancient sites, such as seem to
be Corwrion (pp. 57, 526), the margin of Llyn Irdyn (pp. 148, 563),
Bryn y Pibion (pp. 212-4), Dinllaen (p. 227), Carn Bodüan (p. 227),
on which there are, I am told, walls and hut foundations similar to
those which I have recently seen on Carn Fadrun in the same district,
Moedin camp (p. 245), and, perhaps, Ynys Geinon Rock and the immediate
vicinity of Craig y Nos, neither of which, however, have I ever visited
(p. 254). Local acquaintance with each fairy centre would very possibly
enable one to produce a list that would be suggestive.

In passing one may point out that the uncanny dwarf of Celtic story
would seem to have served, in one way or another, as a model for
other dwarfs in the French romances and the literatures of other
nations that came under the influence of those romances, such as that
of the English. But the subject is too large to be dealt with here;
so I return to the word cor, in order to recall to the reader's mind
the allusion made, at p. 196, to a certain people called Coranneit or
Coranyeit, pronounced in later Welsh Corániaid, 'Corannians.' They come
in the Adventure of Llûd and Llevelys, and there they have ascribed
to them one of the characteristics of consummate magicians, namely,
the power of hearing any word that comes in contact with the wind;
so it was, we are told, impossible to harm them. Llûd, however, was
advised to circumvent them in the following manner:--he was to bruise
certain insects in water and sprinkle the water on the Corannians and
his own people indiscriminately, after calling them together under
the pretence of making peace between them; for the sprinkling would
do no harm to his own subjects, while it would kill the others. This
unholy water proved effective, and the Corannians all perished. Now
the magic power ascribed to them, and the method of disposing of them,
combine to lend them a fabulous aspect, while their name, inseparable
as it seems from cor, 'a dwarf,' warrants us in treating them as
fairies, and in regarding their strange characteristics as induced
on a real people. If we take this view, that Coraniaid was the name
of a real people, we are at liberty to regard it as possible, that
their name suggested to the Celts the word cor for a dwarf, rather
than that cor has suggested the name of the Corannians. In either
case, I may mention that Welsh writers have sometimes thought--and
they are probably right--that we have a closely related word in the
name of Ptolemy's Coritani or Coritavi. He represents the people so
called as dwelling, roughly speaking, between the Trent and Norfolk,
and possessed of the two towns of Lindum, 'Lincoln,' and Ratæ (p. 547),
supposed to have been Leicester. There we should have accordingly to
suppose the old race to have survived so long and in such numbers,
that the Celtic lords of southern Britain called the people of that
area by a name meaning dwarfs. There also they may be conjectured
to have had quiet from invaders from the Continent, because of the
inaccessible nature of the fens, and the lack of inviting harbours
on the coast from the country of the Iceni up to the neighbourhood
of the Humber. How far their territory extended inland from the
fens and the sea one cannot say, but it possibly took in one-half
of what is now Northamptonshire, with the place called Pytchley,
from an older Pihtes Léa, meaning the Meadow of the Pict, or else
of a man named Pict. In any case it included Croyland in the fens
between Peterborough and the Wash. It was there, towards the end of
the seventh century, that St. Guthlac built his cell on the side of an
ancient mound or tumulus, and it was there he was assailed by demons
who spoke Bryttisc or Brythonic, a language which the saint knew, as
he had been an exile among Brythons. For this he had probably not to
travel far; and it is remarkable that his father's cognomen or surname
was Penwall, which we may regard as approximately the Brythonic for
'Wall's End.' That is to say, he was 'So-and-so of the Wall's End,'
and had got to be known by the latter designation instead of his own
nomen, which is not recorded, for the reason, possibly, that it was
so Brythonic as not to admit of being readily reduced into an Anglian
or Latin form. It is not quite certain that he belonged to the royal
race of Mercia, whose genealogy, however, boasts such un-English names
as Pybba, Penda, and Peada; but the life [263] states, with no little
emphasis, that he was a man whose pedigree included the most noble
names of illustrious kings from the ancient stock of Icel: that is,
he was one of the Iclingas or Icklings [264]. Here one is tempted
to perpetrate a little glottologic alchemy by changing l into n,
and to suppose Iclingas the form taken in English by the name of
the ancient people of the Iceni. In any case, nothing could be more
reasonable to suppose than that some representatives of the royal
race of Prasutagus and Boudicca, escaping the sword of the Roman,
found refuge among the Coritanians at the time of the final defeat
of their own people: it is even possible that they were already the
ruling family there. At all events several indications converge to
show that communities speaking Brythonic were not far off, to wit,
the p names in the Mercian genealogy, Guthlac's father's surname,
Guthlac's exile among Brythons, and the attack on him at Croyland by
Brythonic speaking foes. Portions of the Coritanian territory were
eminently fitted by nature to serve as a refuge for a broken people
with a belated language: witness as late as the eleventh century the
stand made in the Isle of Ely by Hereward against the Norman conqueror
and his mail-clad knights [265].

Among the speakers of Goidelic in Ireland and the Highlands of Scotland
the fairies take their designation chiefly from a word síd or síth
(genitive síde or sída), which one may possibly consider as of a common
origin with the Latin word sedes, and as originally meaning a seat or
settlement, but it sooner or later came to signify simply an abode
of the fairies, whence they were called in Medieval Irish aes síde,
'fairy folk,' fer síde, 'a fairy man,' and ben síde, 'a fairy woman
or banshee.' By the side of síd, an adjective síde, 'of or belonging
to the síd,' appears to have been formed, so that they are found also
called simply síde, as in Fiacc's Hymn, where we are told that before
the advent of St. Patrick the pagan tribes of Erin used to worship
síde or fairies [266]. Borrowed from this, or suggested by it [267],
we have in Welsh Caer Sidi, 'the Fortress of the Fairies,' which is
mentioned twice in the Book of Taliessin [268]. It first occurs at
the end of poem xiv, where we have the following lines, which recall
Irish descriptions of Tír na nÓg or the Land of the Young:--


        Ys kyweir vyg kadeir ygkaer sidi.
        Nys pla6d heint a heneint a uo yndi.
        Ys gwyr mana6yt a phryderi.
        Teir oryan y am tan agan recdi.
        Ac am y banneu ffrydyeu g6eilgi.
        Ar ffynnha6n ffr6ythla6n yssyd oduchti.
        Ys whegach nor g6in g6yn yllyn yndi.

        Perfect is my seat in the fort of Sidi,
        Nor pest nor age plagues him who dwells therein:
        Manawydan and Pryderi know it.
        Three organs play before it about a fire.
        Around its corners Ocean's currents flow,
        And above it is the fertile fountain,
        And sweeter than white wine is the drink therein.


The wine is elsewhere mentioned, but the arrangement of the organs
around a fire requires explanation, which I cannot give. The fortress
is on an island, and in poem xxx of the Book of Taliessin we read
of Arthur and his men sailing thither in his ship Prydwen: the poem
is usually called the 'Spoils of Annwn,' and the lines in point
run thus:--


        Bu kyweir karchar g6eir ygkaer sidi.
        Tr6y ebostol p6yll aphryderi.
        Neb kyn noc ef nyt aeth idi.
        Yr gad6yn tromlas kywirwas ae ketwi.
        Arac preideu ann6fyn tost yt geni.
        Ac yt ura6t paraha6t ynbard wedi.
        Tri lloneit prytwen yd aetham ni idi.
        Nam seith ny dyrreith o gaer sidi.

        Perfect was the prison of Gwair in Caer Sidi,
        Thanks to Pwyll and Pryderi's emissary.
        Before him no one entered into it,
        To the heavy, dark chain held by a faithful youth;
        And before the spoils of Annwn sorely he sang,
        And thenceforth remains he till doom a bard.
        Three freights of Prydwen went we thither,
        But only seven returned from Caer Sidi.


The incidents in these lines are mostly unintelligible to me, but the
incarceration of Gweir or Gwair, together with other imprisonments,
including that of Arthur in Caer Oeth and Anoeth (p. 619), are
mentioned also in the Triads: see i. 50, ii. 7, 49, iii. 61. It is not
improbable that the legend about Gwair located his prison on Lundy,
as the Welsh name of that island appears to have been Ynys Wair,
'Gwair's Isle.' Pwyll and Pryderi did not belong to Annwn, nor did
Pryderi's friend Manawydan; but the Mabinogi of Pwyll relates how
for a whole year Pwyll exchanged crown and kingdom with Arawn king
of Annwn, from whom he obtained the first breed of domestic pigs for
his own people (pp. 69, 525).

In the lowlands of Scotland, together with the Orkneys and Shetlands,
the Picts have to a certain extent taken the place of our fairies,
and they are colloquially called Pechts. Now judging from the
remains there ascribed to the Pechts, their habitations were either
wholly underground or else so covered over with stones and earth and
grass as to look like natural hillocks and to avoid attracting the
attention of strangers. This was helped by making the entrance very
low and as inconspicuous as possible. But one of the most remarkable
things about these síds is that the cells within them are frequently
so small as to prove beyond doubt, that those who inhabited them
were of a remarkably short stature, though it is demonstrated by the
weight of the stones used, that the builders were not at all lacking
in bodily strength [269]. Here we have, accordingly, a small people
like our own fairies. In Ireland one of the most famous kings of
the fairies was called Mider of Brí Léith, where he resided in a síd
or mound in the neighbourhood of Ardagh, in the county of Longford;
and thither Irish legend represents him carrying away Étain, queen of
Eochaid Airem, king of Ireland during a part of Conchobar MacNessa's
time. Now Eochaid was for a whole year unable to find where she was,
but his druid, Dalán, wrote Ogams and at last found it out. Eochaid
then marched to Brí Léith, and began to demolish Mider's síd, whereupon
Mider was eventually so frightened that he sent forth the queen to
her husband, who then went his way, leaving the mound folk to digest
their wrath. For it is characteristic of them that they did not fight,
but chose to bide their time for revenge. In this instance it did not
arrive till long after Eochaid's day [270]. I may add that Étain was
herself one of the síde or fairies; and one of Mider's reasons for
taking her away was, that she had been his wife in a previous stage
of existence. Now it is true that the fairy Mider is described as
resembling the other heroes of Irish story, in having golden yellow
hair and bright blue eyes [271], but he differs completely from them in
being no warrior but a great wizard; and though he is not said to have
been of small stature, the dwarfs were not far off. For in describing
the poet Atherne, who was notorious for his stinginess (p. 635), the
story-teller emphasizes his words by representing him taking from Mider
three of his dwarfs and stationing them around his own house, in order
that their truculent looks and rude words might drive away anybody who
came to seek hospitality or to present an unwelcome request [272],
a rôle which recalls that of Edern ab Nud's dwarf already mentioned
(p. 672). Here the Irish word used is corr, which is probably to
be identified with the Brythonic cor, 'a dwarf,' though the better
known meaning of corr in Irish is 'crane or heron.' From the former
also is hardly to be severed the Irish corrguinigh, 'sorcerers,' and
corrguinacht [273], or the process of cursing to which the corrguinigh
resorted, as, for instance, when Néde called forth the fatal blisters
on Caier's face (p. 632). The rôle would seem exactly to suit the
little people, who were consummate magicians.

Let me for a moment leave the little people, in order to call attention
to another side of this question of race. It has recently been shown
[274] by Professor J. Morris Jones, of the University College of North
Wales, that the non-Aryan traits of the syntax of our insular Celtic
point unmistakably to that of old Egyptian and Berber, together with
kindred idioms belonging to the southern shore of the Mediterranean
Sea. He has thereby reduced to articulate speech, so to say, the
physiognomical convictions of Professor Sayce (p. 665), to which
the reader's attention has been called. To the linguistic argument
he appends a statement cited from a French authority and bearing on
the question of descent by birth, to the effect, that when among the
Berbers the king dies or is deposed, as happens often enough, it is
not his son that is called to succeed, but the son of his sister, as
in the case of the historical Picts of Scotland down to the twelfth
century or thereabouts. Here I would add, that my attention has been
called by Professor Sayce to old Egyptian monuments representing
the Libyan chiefs with their bodies tattooed, a habit which seems
not to be yet extinct among the Touaregs and Kabyles [275]. Lastly,
Mr. Nicholson has recently directed attention to the fact that some
princes of ancient Gaul are represented with their faces tattooed
on certain coins found in the west of France so far south as the
region once occupied by the ancient Pictones. We have a compendious
commentary on this in the occurrence of a word Chortonicum in a
High German manuscript written before the year 814: I allude to the
Wessobrunn Codex at Munich, in which, among a number of geographical
names connected with Gaul and other countries, that vocable is so
placed as to allow of our referring it to Poitou or to all Gaul as the
country once of the ancient Pictones. The great German philologist
Pott, who called attention to it, brought it at once into relation
with Cruithne, plural Cruithni, 'the Picts of Britain and Ireland,'
a word which has been explained at p. 281 above [276].

Now at last I come to the question, what pre-Celtic race or races
make themselves evident in the mass of things touched on in this
and the foregoing chapters? The answer must, I think, recognize at
least two. First comes the race of the mound folk, consisting of the
short swarthy people variously caricatured in our fairy tales. They
formed isolated fractions of a widely spread race possessed of
no political significance whatsoever; but, with the inconsistency
ever clinging to everything connected with the fairies, the weird
and uncanny folk emerging from its underground lairs seems to have
exercised on other races a sort of permanent spell of mysteriousness
amounting to adoration. In fact, Irish literature tells us that the
síde were worshipped (p. 678). Owing to his faculty of exaggeration,
combined with his inability to comprehend the little people, the Celt
was enabled to bequeath to the great literatures of Western Europe a
motley train of dwarfs and brownies, a whole world of wizardry and
magic. The real race of the little people forms the lowest stratum
which we can reach, to wit, at a level no higher, seemingly, than
that of the present-day natives of Central Australia. Thus some of
the birth stories of Cúchulainn and Étáin seem to have passed through
their hands, and they bear a striking resemblance to certain notions of
the Lapps (pp. 657-8). In fact, the nature of the habitations of our
little people, together with other points which might be mentioned,
would seem at first sight to betoken affinity with the Lapps; but
I am warned by experts [277] that there are serious craniological
difficulties in the way of any racial comparison with the Lapps,
and that one must look rather to the dwarf populations once widely
spread over our hemisphere, and still to be found here and there
in Europe, as, for example, in Sicily. To come nearer our British
Isles, the presence of such dwarfs has been established with regard
to Switzerland in neolithic times [278].

The other race may be called Picts, which is probably the earliest
of the names given it by the Celts; and their affinities appear
to be Libyan, possibly Iberian. It was a warlike stock, and stood
higher altogether than the mound inhabitants; for it had a notion of
paternity, though, on account of its promiscuity, it had to reckon
descent by birth (pp. 654-6). To it probably belonged all the great
family groups figuring in the Mabinogion and the corresponding class of
literature in Irish: this would include the Danann-Dôn group and the
Lir-Llyr group, together with the families represented by Pwyll and
Rhiannon, who were inseparable from the Llyr group in Welsh, just as
the Lir group was inseparable from the Tuatha Dé Danann in Irish legend
(pp. 548-9). The Picts made slaves and drudges of the mound-haunting
race, but how far any amalgamation may have taken place between them
it is impossible to say. Even without any amalgamation, however, the
little people, if employed as nurses to their Pictish lords' children,
could not help leaving their impress in time on the language of the
ruling nationality. But it may be that the treatment of the Picts, by
Scottish legend, as a kind of fairies really points to amalgamation,
though it is not impossible that archæology may be able to classify the
remains of the dwellings ascribed to the Pechts, that is, to assign
a certain class to the warlike Picts of history and another to the
dwarf race of the síds. A certain measure of amalgamation may also be
the meaning of the Irish tradition, that when the Milesian Irish came
and conquered, the defeated Tuatha Dé Danann gave up their life above
ground and retired inside the hills like the fairies. This account of
them may be as worthless as the story of the extermination of the Picts
of Scotland: both peoples doubtless lived on to amalgamate in time
with the conquering race; but it may mean that some of them retreated
before the Celts, and concealed themselves after the manner of the
little people--in underground dwellings in the less accessible parts
of the country. In any case, it may well be that they got their magic
and druidism from the dwellers of the síds. In the next place, it has
been pointed out (pp. 550-1) how the adjective hên, 'old, ancient,'
is applied in Welsh to several of the chief men of the Dôn group,
and by this one may probably understand that they were old not merely
to those who told the stories about them in Welsh, but to those who
put those stories together in Goidelic ages earlier. The geography
of the Mabinogion gives the prehistoric remains of Penmaen Mawr and
Tre'r Ceiri to the Dôn group; but by its name, Tre'r Ceiri should
be the 'Town of the Keiri,' a word probably referring to the Picts
(pp. 279-83): this, so far as it goes, makes the sons of Dôn belong
by race to the Picts. Lastly, it is the widely spread race of the
Picts, conquered by the Celts of the Celtican or Goidelic branch and
amalgamating with their conquerors in the course of time, that has
left its non-Aryan impress on the syntax of the Celtic languages of
the British Isles.

These, it is needless to say, are conjectures which I cannot establish;
but possibly somebody else may. For the present, however, they cannot
fail to suggest a moral, habitually ignored with a light heart by most
people--including the writer of these words--that men in his plight,
men engaged in studies which, owing to a rapid accumulation of fresh
facts or the blossoming of new theories, are in a shifting condition,
should abstain from producing books or anything longer than a magazine
article now and then. Even such minor productions should be understood
to be liable to be cast into a great bonfire lit once a year, say on
Halloween. This should help to clear the air of mistaken hypotheses,
whether of folklore and myth or of history and language, and also
serve to mark Nos Calangaeaf as the commencement of the ancient Celtic
year. The business of selecting the papers to be saved from the burning
might be delegated to an academy constituted, roughly speaking, on
the lines of Plato's aristocracy of intellect. Such academy, once
in the enjoyment of its existence, would also find plenty of work
in addition to the inquisitional business which I have suggested:
it should, for example, be invested with summary jurisdiction over
fond parents who venture to show any unreasonable anxiety to save
their mental progeny from the annual bonfire. The best of that class
of writers should be ordered by the academy to sing songs or indite
original verse. As for the rest, some of them might be told off to
gesticulate to the gallery, and some to administer the consolations
of platitude to stragglers tired of the march of science. There is a
mass of other useful work which would naturally devolve on an academy
of the kind here suggested. I should be happy, if space permitted,
to go through the particulars one by one, but let a single instance
suffice: the academy might relieve us of the painful necessity of
having seriously to consider any further the proposal that professors
found professing after sixty should be shot. This will serve to
indicate the kind of work which might advantageously be entrusted to
the august body which is here but roughly projected.

There are some branches of learning in the happy position of having
no occasion for such a body academical. Thus, if a man will have
it that the earth is flat, as flat in fact as some people do their
utmost to make it, 'he will most likely,' as the late Mr. Freeman
in the Saturday Review once put it, 'make few converts, and will be
forgotten after at most a passing laugh from scientific men.' If a
man insists that the sum of two and two is five, he will probably
find his way to a lunatic asylum, as the economy of society is, in
a manner, self-acting. So with regard to him who carries his craze
into the more material departments of such a science as chemistry: he
may be expected to blow out his own eyes, for the almighty molecule
executes its own vengeance. 'But,' to quote again from Mr. Freeman,
if that man's 'craze had been historical or philological'--and above
all if it had to do with the science of man or of myth--'he might
have put forth notions quite as absurd as the notion that the earth
is flat, and many people would not have been in the least able to
see that they were absurd. If any scholar had tried to confute him we
should have heard of "controversies" and "differences of opinion."' In
fact, the worst that happens to the false prophet who shines in any
such a science is, that he has usually only too many enthusiastic
followers. The machinery is, so to say, not automatic, and hence
it is that we want the help of an academy. But even supposing such
an academy established, no one need feel alarmed lest opportunities
enough could no longer be found for cultivating the example of those
of the early Christians who had the rare grace to suffer fools gladly.

Personally, however, I should be against doing anything in a hurry;
and, considering how little his fellows dare expect from the man
who is just waiting to be final and perfect before he commit himself
to type, the establishment of an academy invested with the summary
powers which have been briefly sketched might, perhaps, after all,
conveniently wait a while: my own feeling is that almost any time,
say in the latter half of the twentieth century, would do better
than this year or the next. In the meantime one must be content to
entrust the fortunes of our studies to the combined forces of science
and common sense. Judging by what they have achieved in recent years,
there is no reason to be uneasy with regard to the time to come, for
it is as true to-day as when it was first written, that the best of
the prophets of the Future is the Past.








ADDITIONS AND CORRECTIONS


P. 81. I learn that the plural of bodach glas was in Welsh bodachod
gleision, a term which Elis o'r Nant remembers his mother applying to a
kind of fairies dressed in blue and fond of leading people astray. She
used to relate how a haymaking party once passed a summer's night
at the cowhouse (beudy) of Bryn Bygelyd (also Bryn Mygelyd), and how
they saw in the dead of night a host of these dwarfs (corynnod) in blue
dancing and capering about the place. The beudy in question is not very
far from Dolwydelan, on the way to Capel Curig. A different picture
of the bodach is given in Jenkins' Bed Gelert, p. 82; and lastly
one may contrast the Highland Bodach Glas mentioned at p. 520 above,
not to mention still another kind, namely the one in Scott's Waverley.

P. 130. To Sarn yr Afanc add Llyn yr Afanc, near Llandinam (Beauties
of Wales, N. Wales, p. 841), and Bed yr Afanc, 'the Afanc's Grave,'
the name of some sort of a tumulus, I am told, on a knoll near the
Pembrokeshire stream of the Nevern. Mr. J. Thomas, of Bancau Bryn
Berian close by, has communicated to me certain echoes of a story
how an afanc was caught in a pool near the bridge of Bryn Berian,
and how it was taken up to be interred in what is now regarded as its
grave. A complete list of the afanc place-names in the Principality
might possibly prove instructive. As to the word afanc, what seems
to have happened is this: (1) from meaning simply a dwarf it came to
be associated with such water dwarfs as those mentioned at p. 432;
(2) the meaning being forgotten, the word was applied to any water
monster; and (3) where afanc occurs in place-names the Hu story has
been introduced to explain it, whether it fitted or not. This I should
fancy to be the case with the Bryn Berian barrow, and it would be
satisfactory to know whether it contains the remains of an ordinary
dwarf. Peredur's lake afanc may have been a dwarf; but whether that
was so or not, it is remarkable that the weapon which the afanc handled
was a llechwaew or flake-spear, that is, a missile tipped with stone.

P. 131. With the rôle of the girl in the afanc story compare that of
Tegau, wife of Caradog Freichfras, on whom a serpent fastens and can
only be allured away to seize on one of Tegau's breasts, of which
she loses the nipple when the beast is cut off. The defect being
replaced with gold, she is ever after known as Tegau Eur-fron, or
'Tegau of the golden Breast.' That is a version inferred of a story
which is discussed by M. Gaston Paris in an article, on Caradoc et
le Serpent, elicited by a paper published (in the November number of
Modern Language Notes for 1898) by Miss C. A. Harper, of Bryn Mawr
College, U.S.: see the Romania, xxviii. 214-31. One of Miss Harper's
parallels, mentioned by M. Paris at p. 220, comes from Campbell:
it is concerning a prince who receives from his stepmother a magic
shirt which converts itself into a serpent coiled round his neck,
and of which he is rid by the help of a woman acting in much the
same way as Tegau. We have an echo of this in the pedigrees in the
Jesus College MS. 20: see the Cymmrodor, viii. 88, where one reads
of G6ga6n keneu menrud a vu neidyr vl6ydyn am y von6gyl, 'Gwgon the
whelp of Menrud (?) who was a year with a snake round his neck'--his
pedigree is also given. In M. Paris' suggested reconstruction of
the story (p. 228) from the different versions, he represents the
maiden who is to induce the serpent to leave the man on whom it has
fastened, as standing in a vessel filled with milk, while the man
stands in a vessel filled with vinegar. The heroine exposes herself
to the reptile, which relinquishes his present victim to seize on
one of the woman's breasts. Now the appropriateness of the milk is
explained by the belief that snakes are inordinately fond of milk,
and that belief has, I presume, a foundation in fact: at any rate I am
reminded of its introduction into the plot of more than one English
story, such as Stanley Weyman's book From the Memoirs of a Minister
of France (London, 1895), p. 445, and A. Conan Doyle's Adventures
of Sherlock Holmes (London, 1893), pp. 199-209. In Wales, however,
it is to a woman's milk that one's interest attaches: I submit two
references which will explain what I mean. The first of them is to
Owen's Welsh Folk-Lore, p. 349, where he says that 'traditions of
flying snakes were once common in all parts of Wales,' and adds as
follows:--'The traditional origin of these imaginary creatures was
that they were snakes, which by having drunk the milk of a woman,
and by having eaten of bread consecrated for the Holy Communion,
became transformed into winged serpents or dragons.' The other is
to the Brython for 1861, p. 190, where one reads in Welsh to the
following effect:--'If a snake chances to have an opportunity to
drink of a woman's milk it is certain to become a gwiber. When a
woman happens to be far from her child, and her breasts are full and
beginning to give her pain, she sometimes milks them on the ground in
order to ease them. To this the peasantry in parts of Cardiganshire
have a strong objection, lest a snake should come there and drink the
milk, and so become a gwiber.' The word gwiber is used in the Welsh
Bible for a viper, but the editor of the Brython explains, that in
our folklore it means a huge kind of snake or dragon that has grown
wings and has its body cased in hard scales: for a noted instance
in point he refers the reader to the first number of the Brython,
p. 3. It is believed still all over Wales that snakes may, under
favourable circumstances, develop wings: in fact, an Anglesey man
strongly wished, to my knowledge, to offer to the recent Welsh Land
Commission, as evidence of the wild and neglected state of a certain
farm, that the gorse had grown so high and the snakes so thriven in
it that he had actually seen one of the latter flying right across
a wide road which separated two such gorse forests as he described:
surprised and hurt to find that this was not accepted, he inferred
that the Commissioners knew next to nothing about their business.

Pp. 148, 170. With 'the spell of security' by catching hold of grass
may perhaps be compared a habit which boys in Cardiganshire have of
suddenly picking up a blade of grass when they want a truce or stoppage
in a sort of game of tig or touchwood. The grass gives the one who
avails himself of it immunity for a time from attack or pursuit,
so as to allow him to begin the game again just where it was left off.

P. 228. Bodermud would probably be more correctly written Bodermyd,
and analysed possibly into Bod-Dermyd, involving the name which
appears in Irish as Diarmait and Dermot.

P. 230. Since this was printed I have been assured by Mr. Thomas
Prichard of Llwydiarth Esgob, in Anglesey, that the dolur byr is
more commonly called clwy' byr, and that it is the disease known in
English as 'black quarter.'

Pp. 259, 268. I am assured on the part of several literary natives of
Glamorgan that they do not know dâr for daear, 'ground, earth.' Such
negative evidence, though proving the literary form daear to prevail
now, is not to be opposed to the positive statement, sent by Mr. Hughes
(p. 173) to me, as to the persistence in his neighbourhood of dâr and
clâr (for claear, 'lukewarm'), to which one may add, as unlikely to
be challenged by anybody, the case of harn for haearn, 'iron.' The
intermediate forms have to be represented as daer, claer, and haern,
which explain exactly the gaem of the Book of St. Chad, for which
modern literary Welsh has gaeaf, 'winter': see the preface to the
Book of Llan Dâv, p. xlv.

P. 290. It ought to have been pointed out that the fairies, whose
food and drink it is death to share, represent the dead.

P. 291. For Conla read Connla or Condla: the later form is Colla. The
Condla in question is called Condla Rúad in the story, but the heading
to it has Ectra Condla Chaim, 'the Adventure of C. the Dear One.'

P. 294. I am now inclined to think that butch was produced out of
the northern pronunciation of witch by regarding its w as a mutation
consonant and replacing it, as in some other instances, by b as
the radical.

P. 308. With the Manx use of rowan on May-day compare a passage to
the following effect concerning Wales--I translate it from the faulty
Welsh in which it is quoted by one of the competitors for the folklore
prize at the Liverpool Eistedfod, 1900: he gave no indication of its
provenance:--Another bad papistic habit which prevails among some
Welsh people is that of placing some of the wood of the rowan tree
(coed cerdin or criafol) in their corn lands (llafyrieu) and their
fields on May-eve (Nos Glamau) with the idea that such a custom brings
a blessing on their fields, a proceeding which would better become
atheists and pagans than Christians.

P. 325. In the comparison with the brownie the fairy nurse in the
Pennant Valley has been overlooked: see p. 109.

P. 331, line 1. For I. 42-3 read ii. 42-3.

Pp. 377, 395. With the story of Ffynnon Gywer and the other fairy
wells, also with the wells which have been more especially called
sacred in this volume, compare the following paragraph from Martin's
Description of the Western Islands of Scotland (London, 1703),
pp. 229-30: it is concerning Gigay, now more commonly written Gigha,
the name of an island near the west coast of Kintyre:--'There is
a well in the north end of this isle called Toubir-more, i. e. a
great well, because of its effects, for which it is famous among the
islanders; who together with the inhabitants use it as a Catholicon for
diseases. It's covered with stone and clay, because the natives fancy
that the stream that flows from it might overflow the isle; and it is
always opened by a Diroch, i. e. an inmate, else they think it would
not exert its vertues. They ascribe one very extraordinary effect to
it, and 'tis this; that when any foreign boats are wind-bound here
(which often happens) the master of the boat ordinarily gives the
native that lets the water run a piece of money, and they say that
immediately afterwards the wind changes in favour of those that are
thus detain'd by contrary winds. Every stranger that goes to drink
of the water of this well, is accustomed to leave on its stone cover
a piece of money, a needle, pin, or one of the prettiest variegated
stones they can find.' Last September I visited Gigha and saw a well
there which is supposed to be the one to which Martin refers. It is
very insignificant and known now by a name pronounced Tobar a veac,
possibly for an older Mo-Bheac: in Scotch Gaelic Bëac, written
Beathag, is equated with the name Sophia. The only tradition now
current about the well is that emptying it used to prove the means
of raising a wind or even of producing great storms, and this appears
to have been told Pennant: see his Tour in Scotland and Voyage to the
Hebrides, MDCCLXXII (Chester, 1774), p. 226:--'Visit the few wonders
of the isle: the first is a little well of a most miraculous quality,
for in old times, if ever the chieftain lay here wind-bound, he had
nothing more to do than cause the well to be cleared, and instantly
a favorable gale arose. But miracles are now ceased.'

P. 378. A similar rhyme is current in the neighbourhood of Dolgelley,
as Miss Lucy Griffith informs me, as follows:--

        Dolgelle dol a gollir,
        Daear a'i llwnc, dw'r 'n 'i lle.

        Dolgelley, a dale to be lost;
        Earth will swallow it, and water take its place.

P. 394. With regard to wells killing women visiting them, I may
mention a story, told me the other day by Professor Mahaffy after a
friend whose name he gave, concerning the inhabitants of one of the
small islands on the coast of Mayo--I understood him to say off the
Mullet. It was this: all the men and boys, having gone fishing, were
prevented by rough weather from returning as soon as they intended,
and the women left alone suffered greatly from want of water, as
not one of them would venture to go to the well. By-and-by, however,
one of them gave birth to a boy, whereupon another of them carried
the baby to the well, and ventured to draw water.

P. 418. As to Clychau Aberdyfi I am now convinced that the chwech and
saith are entirely due to the published versions, the editors of which
seem to have agreed that they will have as much as possible for their
money, so to say. I find that Mrs. Rhys learnt in her childhood to
end the words with pump, and that she cannot now be brought to sing
the melody in any other way: I have similar testimony from a musical
lady from the neighbourhood of Wrexham; and, doubtless, more evidence
of the same sort could be got.

P. 443. For Llywelyn ab Gruffyd read Llywelyn ab Iorwerth.

Pp. 450-1. Some additional light on the doggerel dialogue will be
found thrown by the following story, which I find cited in Welsh by
one of the Liverpool Eistedfod competitors:--There is in the parish
of Yspytty Ifan, in Carnarvonshire, a farm called Trwyn Swch, where
eighty years ago lived a man and his wife, who were both young, and had
twins born to them. Now the mother went one day to milk, leaving the
twins alone in the cradle--the husband was not at home--and who should
enter the house but one of the Tylwyth Teg! He took the twins away
and left two of his own breed in the cradle in their stead. Thereupon
the mother returned home and saw what had come to pass; she then in
her excitement snatched the Tylwyth Teg twins and took them to the
bridge that crosses the huge gorge of the river Conwy not very far
from the house, and she cast them into the whirlpool below. By this
time the Tylwyth Teg had come on the spot, some trying to save the
children, and some making for the woman. 'Seize the old hag!' (Crap
ar yr hen wrach!) said one of the chiefs of the Tylwyth Teg. 'Too
late!' cried the woman on the edge of the bank; and many of them ran
after her to the house. As they ran three or four of them lost their
pipes in the field. They are pipes ingeniously made of the blue stone
(carreg las) of the gully. They measure three or four inches long,
and from time to time several of them have been found near the cave
of Trwyn Swch.--This is the first indication which I have discovered,
that the fairies are addicted to smoking.

P. 506. A Rhiw Gyferthwch (printed Rywgyverthwch) occurs in the Record
of Carnarvon, p. 200; but it seems to have been in Merionethshire,
and far enough from Arfon.

P. 521. In the article already cited from the Romania, M. Paris finds
Twrch Trwyth in the boar Tortain of a French romance: see xxviii. 217,
where he mentions a legend concerning the strange pedigree of that
beast. The subject requires to be further studied.

P. 535. A less probable explanation of Latio would be to suppose orti
understood. This has been suggested to me by Mr. Nicholson's treatment
of the Llanaelhaiarn inscription as Ali ortus Elmetiaco hic iacet,
where I should regard Ali as standing for an earlier nominative
Alec-s, and intended as the Celtic equivalent for Cephas or Peter:
Ali would be the word which is in Med. Irish ail, genitive ailech,
'a rock or stone.'

P. 545. We have the Maethwy of Gilvaethwy possibly still further
reduced to Aethwy in Porth Aethwy, 'the Village of Menai Bridge,'
in spite of its occurring in the Record of Carnarvon, p. 77,
as Porthaytho.

P. 548. To the reference to the Cymmrodor, ix. 170, as to Beli being
called son of Anna, add the Welsh Elucidarium, p. 127, with its belim
vab anna, and The Cambro-British Saints, p. 82, where we have Anna
... genuit Beli.

P. 560. Two answers to the query as to the Llech Las are now to be
found in the Scottish Antiquary, xv. 41-3.

P. 566. Caer Gai is called also Caer Gynyr, after Cai's father Cynyr,
to wit in a poem by William Lleyn, who died in 1587. This I owe to
Professor J. Morris Jones, who has copied it from a collection of
that poet's works in the possession of Myrdin Fard, fo. 119.

P. 569. Here it would, perhaps, not be irrelevant to mention Caer
Dwrgynt, given s. v. Dwr in Morris' Celtic Remains, as a name of
Caergybi, or Holyhead. His authority is given in parenthesis thus:
(Th. Williams, Catal.). I should be disposed to think the name based
on some such an earlier form as Kair D6bgint, 'the Fortress of the
Danes,' who were called in old Welsh Dub-gint (Annales Cambriæ,
A. D. 866, in the Cymmrodor, ix. 165), that is to say 'Gentes Nigræ
or Black Pagans,' and more simply Gint or Gynt, 'Gentes or Heathens.'

Pp. 579-80. The word banna6c, whence the later bannog, seems to be
the origin of the name bonoec given to the famous horn in the Lai du
Corn, from which M. Paris in his Romania article, xxviii. 229, cites
Cest cor qui bonoec a non, 'this horn which is called bonoec.' The
Welsh name would have to be Corn (yr) ych banna6c, 'the horn of (the)
bannog ox,' with or without the article.

P. 580, note 1. One of the Liverpool Eistedfod competitors cites
W. O. Pughe to the following effect in Welsh:--Llyn dau Ychain,
'the Lake of Two Oxen,' is on Hiraethog Mountain; and near it is the
footmark of one of them in a stone or rock (carreg), where he rested
when seeking his partner, as the local legend has it. Another cites a
still wilder story, to the effect that there was once a wonderful cow
called Y Fuwch Fraith, 'the Parti- Cow.' 'To that cow there
came a witch to get milk, just after the cow had supplied the whole
neighbourhood. So the witch could not get any milk, and to avenge her
disappointment she made the cow mad. The result was that the cow ran
wild over the mountains, inflicting immense harm on the country; but
at last she was killed by Hu near Hiraethog, in the county of Denbigh.'

P. 592. With trwtan, Trwtyn-Tratyn, and Trit-a-trot should doubtless
be compared the English use of trot as applied contemptuously to a
woman, as when Grumio, in Shakespeare's Taming of the Shrew, Act i,
sc. 2, speaks of 'an old trot with ne'er a tooth in her head': the
word was similarly used by Thomas Heywood and others.

P. 649. With regard to note 1, I find that Professor Zimmer is of
opinion--in fact he is quite positive--that tyngu and tynghed are
in no way related: see the Göttingische gelehrte Anzeigen for 1900
(No. 5), pp. 371-2.

P. 673. I am tempted to rank with the man-eating fairies the Atecotti,
who are known to have been cannibals, and whose name seems to mean
the ancient race. Should this prove tenable, one would have to admit
that the little people, or at any rate peoples with an admixture
of the blood of that race, could be trained to fight. Further, one
would probably have to class with them also such non-cannibal tribes
as those of the Fir Bolg and the Galiúin of Irish story. Information
about both will be found in my Hibbert Lectures, in reading which,
however, the mythological speculations should be brushed aside. Lastly,
I anticipate that most of the peoples figuring in the oldest class
of Irish story will prove to have belonged either (1) to the dwarf
race, or (2) to the Picts; and that careful reading will multiply
the means of distinguishing between them. Looking comprehensively
at the question of the early races of the British Isles, the reader
should weigh again the concluding words of Professor Haddon's theory,
quoted on p. 684 above.








NOTES


[1] For most of my information on this subject I have to thank
Mr. David Davies, editor of the South Wales Daily Post, published
at Swansea.

[2] I am indebted for this information to Mr. J. Herbert James of
Vaynor, who visited Kenfig lately and has called my attention to an
article headed 'The Borough of Kenfig,' in the Archæologia Cambrensis
for 1898: see more especially the maps at pp. 138-42.

[3] Here the Welsh has a word edafwr, the exact meaning of which
escapes me, and I gather from the remarks of local etymologers that
no such word is now in use in Glamorgan.

[4] See the Book of Aberpergwm, printed as Brut y Tywysogion, in the
Myvyrian Archaiology, ii. 524; also Morgan's Antiquarian Survey of East
Gower, p. 66, where the incident is given from 'Brut y Tywysogion,
A. D. 1088.' It is, however, not in what usually passes by the name
of Brut y Tywysogion, but comes, as the author kindly informs me,
from a volume entitled 'Brut y Tywysogion, the Gwentian Chronicle of
Caradoc of Llancarvan, with a translation by the late Aneurin Owen,
and printed for the Cambrian Archæological Association, 1863': see
pp. 70-1.

[5] For this also I have to thank Mr. Herbert James, who recently
inspected the spot with Mr. Glascodine of Swansea.

[6] I do not know whether anybody has identified the spot which the
writer had in view, or whether the coast of the Severn still offers
any feature which corresponds in any way to the description.

[7] Supposed to be so called after a certain Tegid Foel, or 'Tegid
the Bald,' of Penllyn: the name Tegid is the phonetic spelling of
what might be expected in writing as Tegyd--it is the Latin Tacitus
borrowed, and comes with other Latin names in Pedigree I. of the
Cuneda dynasty; see the Cymmrodor, xi. 170. In point of spelling one
may compare Idris for what might be expected written Idrys, of the
same pronunciation, for an earlier Iudrys or Iudris.

[8] The translation was made by Thomas Twyne, and published in 1573
under the title of The Breuiary of Britayne, where the passage here
given occurs, on fol. 69b. The original was entitled Commentarioli
Britannicæ Descriptionis Fragmentum, published at Cologne in 1572. The
original of our passage, fol. 57a, has Guynedhia and Llunclis. The stem
llwnc of llyncaf, 'I swallow,' answers, according to Welsh idiom, to
the use of what would be in English or Latin a participle. Similarly,
when a compound is not used, the verbal noun (in the genitive) is
used: thus 'a feigned illness,' in Welsh 'a made illness,' is saldra
gwneyd, literally 'an indisposition or illness of making.' So 'the
deuouryng of the Palace' is incorrect, and based on Llwyd's vorago
Palatij instead of Palatium voratum.

[9] For other occurrences of the name, see the Black Book, fol. 35a,
52a, and Morris' Celtic Remains, where, s. v. Benlli, the Welsh name
of Bardsey, to wit, Ynys Enlli, is treated by somebody, doubtless
rightly, as a shortening of Ynys Fenlli.

[10] The meaning of this name is not certain, but it seems to equate
with the Irish Fochard, anglicized Faughard, in County Louth: see
O'Donovan's Four Masters, A. D. 1595; also the Book of the Dun Cow,
where it is Focherd, genitive Focherda, dative Focheird, fo. 70b,
73b, 75a, 75b, 76a, 77a.

[11] This is sometimes given as Glannach, which looks like the Goidelic
form of the name: witness Giraldus' Enislannach in his Itin. Kambriæ,
ii. 7 (p. 131).

[12] See Choice Notes, p. 92, and Gerald Griffin's Poetical and
Dramatic Works, p. 106.

[13] Failing to see this, various writers have tried to claim the
honour of owning the bells for Aberteifi, 'Cardigan,' or for Abertawe,
'Swansea'; but no arguments worthy of consideration have been urged
on behalf of either place: see Cyfaill yr Aelwyd for 1892, p. 184.

[14] For some of the data as to the reckoning of the pedigrees
and branching of a family, see the first volume of Aneurin Owen's
Ancient Laws--Gwyned, III. i. 12-5 (pp. 222-7); Dyfed, II. i. 17-29
(pp. 408-11); Gwent, II. viii. 1-7 (pp. 700-3); also The Welsh People,
pp. 230-1.

[15] See the Book of the Dun Cow, fol. 99a & seq.

[16] For instances, the reader may turn back to pp. 154 or 191,
but there are plenty more in the foregoing chapters; and he may also
consult Howells' Cambrian Superstitions, pp. 123-8, 141-2, 146. In one
case, p. 123, he gives an instance of the contrary kind of imagination:
the shepherd who joined a fairy party on Frenni Fach was convinced,
when his senses and his memory returned, that, 'although he thought he
had been absent so many years, he had been only so many minutes.' The
story has the ordinary setting; but can it be of popular origin? The
Frenni Fach is a part of the mountain known as the Frenni Fawr,
in the north-east of Pembrokeshire; the names mean respectively the
Little Breni, and the Great Breni. The obsolete word breni meant,
in Old Welsh, the prow of a ship; local habit tends, however, to the
solecism of Brenin Fawr, with brenin, 'king,' qualified by an adjective
mutated feminine; but people at a distance who call it Frenni Fawr,
pronounce the former vocable with nn. Lastly, Y Vrevi Va6r occurs in
Maxen's Dream in the Red Book (Oxford Mab. p. 89); but in the White
Book (in the Peniarth collection), col. 187, the proper name is written
Freni: for this information I have to thank Mr. Gwenogvryn Evans.

[17] It is right to say that another account is given in the Rennes
Dindsenchas, published by Stokes in the Revue Celtique, xvi. 164,
namely, that Laiglinne with fifty warriors 'came to the well of
Dera son of Scera. A wave burst over them and drowned Laiglinne with
his fifty warriors, and thereof a lake was made. Hence we say Loch
Laiglinni, Laiglinne's Lake.'

[18] The Oxford Mabinogion, p. 224, and Guest's, i. 343.

[19] See Afanc in the Geiriadur of Silvan Evans, who cites instances
in point.

[20] See the Revue Celtique, i. 257, and my Hibbert Lectures, pp. 92-3.

[21] The Four Masters, A.M. 3520.

[22]  In another version Campbell had found it to be sand and
nothing else.

[23]  As to this incident of a girl and a supernatural, Campbell says
that he had heard it in the Isle of Man also, and elsewhere.

[24]  See the Revue Celtique, ii. 197. He was also called Labraid
Longsech, and Labraid Longsech Lorc. The explanation of Labraid
Lorc is possibly that it was originally Labraid Morc, and that the
fondness for alliteration brought it into line as Labraid Lorc:
compare Llûd Llaweraint in Welsh for Nûd Llaweraint. This is not
disproved by the fact that Labraid Lorc's grandfather is said to have
been called Loegaire Lorc: Loegaire Lorc and Labraid Lorc are rather
to be regarded perhaps as duplicates of the same original.

[25]  See my Arthurian Legend, p. 70; also Hibbert Lectures, p. 590.

[26] The original has in these passages respectively siblais a fual
corbo thipra, 'minxit urinam suam so that it was a spring'; ar na
siblad a fúal ar na bad fochond báis doib, 'ne mingat urinam suam
lest it should be the cause of death to them'; and silis, 'minxit,'
fo. 39b. For a translation of the whole story see Dr. O'Grady's Silva
Gadelica, pp. 265-9; also Joyce's Old Celtic Romances, pp. 97-105.

[27] See the story in Dr. O'Grady's Silva Gadelica, pp. 292-311.

[28] See Stengel's edition of li Romans de Durmart le Galois (Tübingen,
1873), lines 4185-340, and my Arthurian Legend, pp. 68-9.

[29] See Williams' Scint Greal, pp. 60-1, 474-5; Nutt's Holy Grail,
p. 44; and my Arthurian Legend, pp. 69-70.

[30] Bardoniaeth D. ab Gwilym, poem 183. A similar descent of
Blodeuwed's appears implied in the following englyn--one of two--by
Anthony Powel, who died in 1618: it is given by Taliesin ab Iolo
in his essay on the Neath Valley, entitled Traethawd ar Gywreined,
Hynafiaeth, a hen Bendefigion Glynn Ned (Aberdare, 1886), p. 15:--

        Crug ael, carn gadarn a godwyd yn fryn,
          Yn hen fraenwaith bochlwyd;
        Main a'i llud man y lladwyd,
          Merch hoewen loer Meirchion lwyd.

It refers, with six other englynion by other authors, to a remarkable
rock called Craig y Dinas, with which Taliesin associated a cave
where Arthur or Owen Lawgoch and his men are supposed, according
to him, to enjoy a secular sleep, and it implies that Blodeuwed,
whose end in the Mabinogi of Mâth was to be converted into an owl,
was, according to another account, overwhelmed by Craig y Dinas. It
may be Englished somewhat as follows:

        Heaped on a brow, a mighty cairn built like a hill,
        Like ancient work rough with age, grey-cheeked;
        Stones that confine her where she was slain,
        Grey Meirchion's daughter quick and bright as the moon.

[31]  This comes from the late series of Triads, iii. 10, where
Merlin's nine companions are called naw beird cylfeird: cylfeird
should be the plural of cylfard, which must be the same word as the
Irish culbard, name of one of the bardic grades in Ireland.

[32]  For some more remarks on this subject generally, see my Arthurian
Legend, chapter xv, on the 'Isles of the Dead.'

[33]  See his Itinerarium Kambriæ, ii. 11 (p. 139); also my Celtic
Britain, p. 68, and Arthurian Legend, p. 364.

[34]  From the Myvyrian Archaiology of Wales, i. 302.

[35] I regard nid kywiw as a corruption of ni chywiw from cyf-yw,
an instance of the verb corresponding to cymod (= cym-bod), 'peace,
conciliation.' The preterite has, in the Oxford Bruts, A.D. 1217
(p. 358), been printed kynni for what one may read kymu: the words
would then be y kymu reinald y bre6ys ar brenhin, 'that Reginald de
Breos was reconciled with the king, or settled matters with him.'

[36] See the Book of Taliessin, poem xxx, in Skene's Four Ancient
Books, ii. 181; also Guest's Mabinogion, ii. 354, and the Brython
for 1860, p. 372b, where more than one article of similar capacity
of distinguishing brave men from cowards is mentioned.

[37] See Dugdale's Monasticon, v. 672, where they are printed Dwynech
and Dwynaur respectively.

[38] See my Hibbert Lectures, pp. 649-50.

[39] A full account of them will be found in a volume devoted to
them, and entitled Roman Antiquities at Lydney Park, Gloucestershire,
being a posthumous work of the Rev. W. Hiley Bathurst, with Notes
by C. W. King, London, 1879. See also an article entitled 'Das
Heiligtum des Nodon,' by Dr. Hübner in the Jahrbücher des Vereins
von Alterthumsfreunden im Rheinlande, lxvii. pp. 29-46, where several
things in Mr. King's book are criticized.

[40] See my Hibbert Lectures, pp. 122, 125.

[41] On this subject, see The Welsh People, especially pp. 54-61.

[42] Why our dictionary makers have taken into their heads to treat it
as Tamesis I know not. The Welsh is Tafwys with a diphthong regularly
representing an earlier long e or ei in the second syllable. There
is, as far as I know, no reason to suppose Tafwys an invention,
rather than a genuine vocable of the same origin as the name of the
Glamorganshire river <DW75>, in Welsh Taf, which is also the name of
the river emptying itself at Laugharne, in Carmarthenshire. Tafwys,
however, does not appear to occur in any old Welsh document; but no
such weakness attaches to the testimony of the French Tamise, which
could hardly come from Tamesis: compare also the place-name Tamise
near the Scheldt in East Flanders; this, however, may be of a wholly
different origin.

[43] A more difficult version has been sent me by Dewi Glan Ffrydlas,
of Bethesda: Caffed y wrach, 'Let him seize the hag'; Methu'r
cryfaglach, 'You have failed, urchin.' But he has not been able to
get any explanation of the words at the Penrhyn Quarries. Cryfaglach
is also the form in Mur y Cryfaglach, 'the Urchin's Wall,' in Jenkins'
Bed Gelert, p. 249. He informs me that this is the name of an old ruin
on an elevated spot some twenty or thirty yards from a swift brook,
and not far in a south-south-easterly direction from Sir Edward
Watkin's chalet.

[44] For this I am indebted to Mr. Wm. Davies (p. 147 above), who tells
me that he copied the original from Chwedlau a Thradodiadau Gwyned,
'Gwyned Tales and Traditions,' published in a periodical, which I
have not been able to consult, called Y Gordofigion, for the year 1873.

[45] The meaning of the word mwthlach is doubtful, as it is now current
in Gwyned only in the sense of a soft, doughy, or puffy person who
is all of a heap, so to say. Pughe gives mwythlan and mwythlen with
similar significations. But mwthlach would seem to have had some such a
meaning in the doggerel as that of rough ground or a place covered with
a scrubby, tangled growth. It is possibly the same word as the Irish
mothlach, 'rough, bushy, ragged, shaggy'; see the Vision of Laisrén,
edited by Professor K. Meyer, in the Otia Merseiana, pp. 114, 117.

[46] The account here given of the Cyhiraeth is taken partly from
Choice Notes, pp. 31-2, and partly from Howells, pp. 31-4, 56-7,
who appears to have got uncertain in his narrative as to the sex of
the Cyhiraeth; but there is no reason whatsoever for regarding it as
either male or female--the latter alone is warranted, as he might
have gathered from her being called y Gyhiraeth, 'the Cyhiraeth,'
never y Cyhiraeth as far as I know. In North Cardiganshire the spectre
intended is known only by another name, that of Gwrach y Rhibyn, but
y Gyhiraeth or yr hen Gyhiraeth is a common term of abuse applied
to a lanky, cadaverous person, both there and in Gwyned; in books,
however, it is found sometimes meaning a phantom funeral. The word
cyhiraeth would seem to have originally meant a skeleton with cyhyrau,
'sinews,' but no flesh. However, cyhyrau, singular cyhyr, would be
more correctly written with an i; for the words are pronounced--even
in Gwyned--cyhir, cyhirau. The spelling cyhyraeth corresponds to no
pronunciation I have ever heard of the word; but there is a third
spelling, cyheuraeth, which corresponds to an actual cyhoereth
or cyhoyreth, the colloquial pronunciation to be heard in parts
of South Wales: I cannot account for this variant. Gwrach y Rhibyn
means the Hag of the Rhibyn, and rhibyn usually means a row, streak,
a line--ma' nhw'n mynd yn un rhibyn, 'they are going in a line.' But
what exactly Gwrach y Rhibyn should connote I am unable to say. I
may mention, however, on the authority of Mr. Gwenogvryn Evans, that
in Mid-Cardiganshire the term Gwrach y Rhibyn means a long roll or
bustle of fern tied with ropes of straw and placed along the middle
of the top of a hayrick. This is to form a ridge over which and on
which the thatch is worked and supported: gwrach unqualified is,
I am told, used in this sense in Glamorganshire. Something about
the Gwrach sprite will be found in the Brython for 1860, p. 23a,
while a different account is given in Jenkins' Bed Gelert, pp. 80-1.

[47] This statement I give from Choice Notes, p. 32; but I must
confess that I am sceptical as to the 'wings of a leathery and bat-like
substance,' or of any other substance whatsoever.

[48] For more about her and similar ancestral personages, see The
Welsh People, pp. 54-61.

[49] This seems to be the Goidelic word borrowed, which in Mod. Irish
is written cnocc or cnoc, 'a hill': the native Welsh form is cnwch,
as in Cnwch Coch in Cardiganshire, Cnwch Dernog (corrupted into Clwch
Dernog) in Anglesey, printed Kuwgh Dernok in the Record of Carnarvon,
p. 59, where it is associated with other interesting names to be
noticed later.

[50] All said by natives of Anglesey about rivers and mountains in
their island must be taken relatively, for though the country has a
very uneven surface it has no real mountain: they are apt to call a
brook a river and a hillock a mountain, though the majestic heights
of Arfon are within sight.

[51] See pp. 13-16 of his essay on the Neath Valley, referred to in
a note at p. 439 above, where Craig y Dinas is also mentioned.

[52] This is an interesting word of obscure origin, to which I should
like our ingenious etymologists to direct their attention.

[53] See the Poetical Works of John Leyden (Edinburgh, 1875), p. 36
(Scenes of Infancy, part ii); also my Arthurian Legend, p. 18.

[54] I am indebted for the English story to an article entitled 'The
Two Pedlar Legends of Lambeth and Swaffham,' contributed by Mr. Gomme
to the pages of the Antiquary, x. 202-5, in which he gives local
details and makes valuable comparisons. I have to thank Mr. Gomme
also for a cutting from the weekly issue of the Leeds Mercury for
Jan. 3, 1885, devoted to 'Local Notes and Queries' (No. cccxii), where
practically the same story is given at greater length as located at
Upsall Castle in Yorkshire.

[55] I have never been to the spot, and I owe these particulars partly
to Mr. J. P. Owen, of 72 Comeragh Road, Kensington, and partly to
the Rev. John Fisher, already quoted at p. 379. This is the parish
where some would locate the story of the sin-eater, which others
stoutly deny, as certain periodical outbursts of polemics in the
pages of the Academy and elsewhere have shown. Mr. Owen, writing to
me in 1893, states, that, when he last visited the dinas some thirty
years previously, he found the mouth of the cave stopped up in order
to prevent cattle and sheep straying into it.

[56] Mr. Fisher refers me to an account of the discovery published
in the Cambrian newspaper for Aug. 14, 1813, a complete file of which
exists, as he informs me, in the library of the Royal Institution of
South Wales at Swansea. Further, at the Cambrians' meeting in 1892
that account was discussed and corrected by Mr. Stepney-Gulston:
see the Archæologia Cambrensis for 1893, pp. 163-7. He also 'pointed
out that on the opposite side of the gap in the ridge the noted cave
of Owain Law Goch was to be found. Near the Pant-y-llyn bone caves
is a place called Craig Derwydon, and close by is the scene of the
exploits of Owain Law Goch, a character who appears to have absorbed
some of the features of Arthurian romance. A cave in the locality
bears Owain's name.'

[57] As in Llewelyn's charter to the Monks of Aberconwy, where we have,
according to Dugdale's Monasticon, v. 673a, a Scubordynemreis, that is
Scubor Dyn Emreis, 'Din-Emreis Barn,' supposed to be Hafod y Borth,
near Bedgelert: see Jenkins' Bed Gelert, p. 198. In the Myvyrian,
i. 195a, it has been printed Din Emrais.

[58]  See Somer's Malory's Morte Darthur, xxi. v (= vol. i. p. 849),
and as to the Marchlyn story see p. 236 above. Lastly some details
concerning Llyn Llydaw will be found in the next chapter.

[59]  The oldest spellings known of this name occur in manuscript
A of the Annales Cambriæ and in the Book of Llan Dâv as Elized and
Elised, doubtless pronounced Elissed until it became, by dropping the
final dental, Elisse. This in time lost its identity by assimilation
with the English name Ellis. Thus, for example, in Wynne's edition
of Powell's Caradog of Llancarfan's History of Wales (London, 1774),
pp. 22, 24, Elised is reduced to Elis. In the matter of dropping the
d compare our Dewi, 'St. David,' for Dewid, for an instance of which
see Duffus Hardy's Descriptive Catalogue, i. 119. The form Eliseg
with a final g has no foundation in fact. Can the English name Ellis
be itself derived from Elised?

[60]  Boncyn is derived from bonc of nearly the same meaning, and
bonc is merely the English word bank borrowed: in South Wales it is
pronounced banc and used in North Cardiganshire in the sense of hill
or mountain.

[61] The name occurs twice in the story of Kulhwch and Olwen: see the
Mabinogion, p. 107, where the editors have read Ricca both times in
'Gormant, son of Ricca.' This is, however, more than balanced by Rita
in the Book of Llan Dâv, namely in Tref Rita, 'Rita's town or stead,'
which occurs five times as the name of a place in the diocese of
Llandaff; see pp. 32, 43, 90, 272. The uncertainty is confined to
the spelling, and it has arisen from the difficulty of deciding in
medieval manuscripts between t and c: there is no reason to suppose
the name was ever pronounced Ricca.

[62] This can hardly be the real name of the place, as it is pronounced
Gwybrnant (and even Gwybrant), which reminds me of the Gwybr fynyd on
which Gwyn ab Nûd wanders about with his hounds: see Evans' facsimile
of the Black Book of Carmarthen, p. 50a, where the words are, dy
gruidir ar wibir winit.

[63]  Dugdale has printed this (v. 673a) Carrecerereryr with one er too
much, and the other name forms part of the phrase ad capud Weddua-Vaur,
'to the top of the Great Gwydfa'; but I learn from Mr. Edward Owen,
of Gray's Inn, that the reading of the manuscript is Wedua vawr and
Carrecereryr.

[64]  The MSS. except B have y 6ylva, which is clearly not the right
word, as it could only mean 'his place of watching.'

[65] See Derfel Hughes' Llandegai and Llanllechid, p. 53. As to
Drystan it is the Pictish name Drostan, but a kindred form occurs
in Cornwall on a stone near Fowey, where years ago I guessed the
ancient genitive Drustagni; and after examining it recently I am
able to confirm my original guess. The name of Drystan recalls that
of Essyllt, which offers some difficulty. It first occurs in Welsh
in the Nennian Genealogies in the Harleian MS. 3859: see Pedigree
I in the Cymmrodor, ix. 169, where we read that Mermin (Merfyn) was
son of Etthil daughter of Cinnan (Cynan), who succeeded his father
Rhodri Molwynog in the sovereignty of Gwyned in 754. The spelling
Etthil is to be regarded like that of the Welsh names in Nennius, for
some instances of which see § 73 (quoted in the next chapter) and the
Old Welsh words calaur, nouel, patel, so spelt in the Juvencus Codex:
see Skene, ii. 2: in all these l does duty for ll. So Etthil is to be
treated as pronounced Ethill or Ethyll; but Jesus College MS. 20 gives
a more ancient pronunciation (at least as regards the consonants) when
it calls Cynan's daughter Ethellt: see the Cymmrodor, viii. 87. Powell,
in his History of Wales by Caradog of Llancarfan, as edited by Wynne,
writes the name Esylht; and the Medieval Welsh spelling has usually
been Essyllt or Esyllt, which agrees in its sibilant with the French
Iselt or Iseut; but who made the Breton-looking change from Eth to Es
or Is in this name remains a somewhat doubtful point. Professor Zimmer,
in the Zeitschrift für französische Sprache und Litteratur, xiii. 73-5,
points out that the name is an Anglo-Saxon Ethylda borrowed, which
he treats as a 'Kurzform für Ethelhild': see also the Revue Celtique,
xii. 397, xiii. 495. The adoption of this name in Wales may be regarded
as proof of intermarriage or alliance between an English family and
the royal house of Gwyned as early as the eighth century.

[66] See the Brython for 1861, pp. 331-2, also Cymru Fu, p. 468, where
Glasynys was also inclined to regard the Hairy Fellow as being Owen.

[67] I have never seen a copy, but Mr. Fisher gives me the title as
follows: Prophwydoliaeth Myrdin Wyllt yn nghyda ber Hanes o'i Fywyd,
wedi eu tynu allan o Lyfr y Daroganau ... Caerfyrdin ... Pris dwy
Geiniog. It has no date, but Mr. Fisher once had a copy with the
date 1847. Recently he has come across another versified prophecy
written in the same style as the printed ones, and referring to
an Owain who may have been Owen Lawgoch. The personage meant is
compared to the most brilliant of pearls, Owain glain golyaf. The
prophecy is to be found at the Swansea Public Library, and occurs in
a seventeenth century manuscript manual of Roman Catholic Devotion,
Latin and Welsh. It gives 1440 as the year of the deliverance of the
Brytaniaid. It forms the first of two poems (fo. 37), the second of
which is ascribed to Taliessin. Such is Mr. Fisher's account of it,
and the lines which he has copied for me cling to the same theme of
the ultimate triumph of the Kymry. Quite recently I have received
further information as to these prophecies from Mr. J. H. Davies,
of Lincoln's Inn (p. 354), who will, it is to be hoped, soon publish
the results of his intimate study of their history in South Wales.

[68] Record of Carnarvon, p. 133, to which attention was called by
me in the Report of the Welsh Land Commission, p. 648: see now The
Welsh People, pp. 343-4, 593-4.

[69] Nor was Owen the only Welshman in the king of France's service:
there was Owen's chaplain, who on one occasion distinguished himself
greatly in battle. He is called in Froissart's text David House, but
the editor has found from other documents that the name was Honvel
Flinc, which is doubtless Howel, whatever the second vocable may have
been: see Froissart, viii, pp. xxxviii, 69.

[70] As to the original destination of the flotilla, see Kervyn de
Lettenhove's edition of Froissart (Brussels, 1870-7), viii. 435-7,
where the editor has brought together several notes, from which it
appears that Owen tried unsuccessfully to recruit an army in Spain,
but that he readily got together in France a considerable force. For
Charles V, on May 8, 1372, ordered the formation of an army, to be
placed under Owen's command for the reconquest of his ancestors'
lands in Wales, and two days later Owen issued a declaration as to
his Welsh claims and his obligations to the French king; but the
flotilla stopped short with Guernsey. It is not improbable, however,
that the fear in England of a descent on Wales by Owen began at least
as early as 1369. In his declaration Owen calls himself Evain de Gales,
which approaches the Welsh spelling Ewein, more frequently Ywein,
modern Ywain, except that all these forms tended to be supplanted by
Owain or Owen. This last is, strictly speaking, the colloquial form,
just as Howel is the colloquial form of Hywel, and bowyd of bywyd,
'life.'

[71] For the account of Owen's life see the Chroniques de J. Froissart
publiées pour la Société de l'Histoire de France, edited with abstracts
and notes by Siméon Luce, more especially vols. viii. pp. 44-9, 64,
66-71, 84, 122, 190, and ix. pp. 74-9, where a summary is given of his
life and a complete account of his death. In Lord Berners' translation,
published in Henry VIII's time, Owen is called Yuan of Wales, as if
anybody could even glance at the romances without finding that Owen
ab Urien, for instance, became in French Ywains or Ivains le fils
Urien in the nominative, and Ywain or Ivain in régime. Thomas Johnes
of Hafod, whose translation was published in 1803-6, betrays still
greater ignorance by giving him the modern name Evan; but he had the
excuse of being himself a Welshman.

[72] For copies of some of the documents in point see Rymer's Foedera,
viii. 356, 365, 382.

[73] I have not been able to find a copy of this work, and for
drawing my attention to the passage in Hanes Cymru I have again to
thank Mr. Fisher. The pedigree in question will be found printed in
Table I in Askew Roberts' edition of Sir John Wynne's History of
the Gwydir Family (Oswestry, 1878); and a note, apparently copied
from Miss Llwyd, states that it was in a Hengwrt MS. she found the
identification of Owen Lawgoch. The editor surmises that to refer
to p. 865 of Hengwrt MS. 351, which he represents as being a copy of
Hengwrt MS. 96 in the handwriting of Robert Vaughan the Antiquary.

[74] This has already been undertaken: on Feb. 7, 1900, a summary of
this chapter was read to a meeting of the Hon. Society of Cymmrodorion,
and six weeks later Mr. Edward Owen, of Gray's Inn, read an elaborate
paper in which he essayed to fix more exactly Yvain de Galles' place
in the history of Wales. It would be impossible here to do justice to
his reasoning, based as it was on a careful study of the records in
point. Let it suffice for the present, however, that the paper will
in due course appear in the Society's Transactions. Mr. J. H. Davies
also informs me that he is bringing together items of evidence,
which tend, as he thinks, to show that Miss Llwyd's information was
practically correct. Before, however, the question can be considered
satisfactorily answered, some explanation will have to be offered of
Froissart's statement, that Yvain's father's name was Aymon.

[75] We seem also to have an instance in point in Carmarthenshire,
where legend represents Owen and his men sleeping in Ogof Myrdin,
the name of which means Merlin's Cave, and seems to concede priority
of tenancy to the great magician: see the extinct periodical Golud
yr Oes (for 1863), i. 253, which I find to have been probably drawing
on Eliezer Williams' English Works (London, 1840), p. 156.

[76] For the Greek text of the entire passage see the Didot edition
of Plutarch, vol. iii. p. 511 (De Defectu Oraculorum, xviii); also my
Arthurian Legend, pp. 367-8. It is curious to note that storms have,
in a way, been associated in England with the death of her great men
as recently as that of the celebrated Duke of Wellington: see Choice
Notes, p. 270.

[77] See my Arthurian Legend, p. 335. I am indebted to Professor
Morfill for rendering the hexameters into English verse.

[78] They are produced here in their order as printed at the beginning
of the second volume of the Myvyrian Archaiology of Wales, and the
series or versions are indicated as i, ii, iii. Version ii will be
found printed in the third volume of the Cymmrodor, pp. 52-61, also in
the Oxford Mabinogion, pp. 297-308, from the Red Book of Hergest of the
fourteenth century. The letter (a, b, c) added is intended to indicate
the order of the three parts of the Triad, for it is not the same in
all the series. Let me here remark in a general way that the former
fondness of the Welsh for Triads was not peculiar to them. The Irish
also must have been at one time addicted to this grouping. Witness the
Triad of Cleverest Countings, in the Book of the Dun Cow, fol. 58a,
and the Triad of the Blemishes of the Women of Ulster, ib. 43b.

[79] As to the names Drystan (also Trystan) and Essyllt, see the
footnote on p. 480 above.

[80] This was meant to explain the unusual term g6rdueichyat, also
written g6rdueichat, g6rueichyat, and gwrddfeichiad. This last comes
in the modern spelling of iii. 101, where this clause is not put in
the middle of the Triad but at the end.

[81] The editor of this version seems to have supposed Pendaran to
have been a place in Dyfed! But his ignorance leaves us no evidence
that he had a different story before him.

[82] This word is found written in Mod. Welsh Annwfn, but it has been
mostly superseded by the curtailed form Annwn, which appears twice
in the Mabinogi of Math. These words have been studied by M. Gaidoz
in Meyer and Stern's Zeitschrift für Celtische Philologie, i. 29-34,
where he equates Annwfn with the Breton anauon, which is a plural used
collectively for the souls of the departed, the other world. His view,
however, of these interesting words has since been mentioned in the
same Zeitschrift, iii. 184-5, and opposed in the Annales de Bretagne,
xi. 488.

[83] Edited by Professor Kuno Meyer (London, 1892): see for instance
pp. 76-8.

[84] See Windisch's Irische Texte, p. 256, and now the Irish Text
Society's Fled Bricrend, edited with a translation by George Henderson,
pp. 8, 9.

[85] Windisch, ibid. pp. 99-105.

[86] See the Oxford Mabinogion, p. 196, and Guest's trans., i. 302,
where the Welsh words a gol6ython o gic meluoch are rendered 'and
collops of the flesh of the wild boar,' which can hardly be correct;
for the mel in mel-uoch, or mel-foch in the modern spelling, is
the equivalent of the Irish melg, 'milk.' So the word must refer
either to a pig that had been fed on cows' milk or else a sucking
pig. The former is the more probable meaning, but one is not helped
to decide by the fact, that the word is still sometimes used in books
by writers who imagine that they have here the word mel, 'honey,'
and that the compound means pigs whose flesh is as sweet as honey:
see Dr. Pughe's Dictionary, where melfoch is rendered 'honey swine,'
whatever that may mean.

[87] Windisch's Irische Texte, p. 133, where laith lemnacht = Welsh
llaeth llefrith, 'sweet milk.'

[88] Collfrewi was probably, like Gwenfrewi, a woman's name: this is
a point of some importance when taken in connexion with what was said
at p. 326 above as to Gwydion and Coll's magic.

[89] This reminds one of Geoffrey of Monmouth's Henvinus, whom he
makes into dux Cornubiæ and father of Cunedagius or Cuneda: see ii. 12,
15. Probably Geoffrey's connecting such names as those of Cuneda and
Dyfnwal Moelmud (ii. 17) with Cornwall is due to the fact, that the
name of the Dumnonia of the North had been forgotten long before that
of the Dumnonia to be identified with Devon and Cornwall.

[90] See the Oxford Mabinogion, p. 104, and the Oxford Bruts, p. 292.

[91] See the Oxford Bruts, pp. 299, 317, 345-6, 348, 384. I learn from
Prof. Anwyl that Castell Penwedig is still remembered at Llanfihangel
Genau'r Glyn as the old name of Castell Gwallter in that parish.

[92] See his note in Owen's Pembrokeshire, p. 237, where he also
notices Aber Tarogi, and the editor's notes to p. 55.

[93]  Mergaed for Mengwaed hardly requires any explanation; and as
to Breat or rather Vreat, as it occurs in mutation, we have only
to suppose the original carelessly written Vreac for Vreach, and we
have the usual error of neglecting the stroke indicating the n, and
the very common one of confounding c with t. This first-mentioned
name should possibly be analysed into Mengw-aed or Menw-aed for an
Irish Menb-aed, with the menb, 'little,' noticed at p. 510 below;
in that case one might compare such compounds of Aed as Beo-aed and
Lug-aed in the Martyrology of Gorman. Should this prove well founded
the Mod. Welsh transcription of Menwaed should be Menwaed. I have had
the use of other versions of the Triads from MSS. in the Peniarth
collection; but they contribute nothing of any great importance as
regards the proper names in the passages here in question.

[94]  See the Oxford Mabinogion, pp. 41, 98, and Guest's trans.,
iii. 313.

[95] See Geoffrey's Historia Regum Britanniæ, vi. 19, viii. 1, 2;
also Giraldus, Itinerarium Kambriæ, ii. 8 (p. 133).

[96] Itinerarium Kambriæ, ii. 9 (p. 136).

[97] Menw's name is to be equated with the Irish word menb, 'little,
small,' and connected with the Welsh derivative di-fenw-i, 'belittling
or reviling': it will be seen that he takes the form of a bird, and
his designation Menw fab Teirgwaed might perhaps be rendered 'Little,
son of Three-Cries.'

[98] Identified by Professor Kuno Meyer in the Transactions of the
Cymmrodorion Society, 1895-6, p. 73, with a place in Leinster called
Sescenn Uairbeóil, 'the Marsh of Uairbhél,' where Uairbhél may possibly
be a man's name, but more likely that of a pass or gap described as
Cold-mouth: compare the Slack or Sloc in the Isle of Man, called in
Manx 'the big Mouth of the Wind.' The Irish name comes near in part
to the Welsh Esgeir Oervel or Oerfel, which means 'the mountain Spur
of cold Weather.'

[99] The word used in the text is ystyr, which now means 'meaning
or signification'; but it is there used in the sense of 'history,'
or of the Latin 'historia,' from which it is probably borrowed.

[100] In the original his designation is Gwrhyr Gwalstawt Ieithoed, and
the man so called is in the Kulhwch credited with the mastery of all
languages, including those of certain birds and quadrupeds. Gwalstawt,
found written also gwalstot, is the Anglo-Saxon word wealhstód,
'an interpreter,' borrowed. The name Gwrhyr is possibly identical
with that of Ferghoir, borne by the Stentor of Fionn mac Cumhaill's
following. Ferghoir's every shout is said to have been audible over
three cantreds. Naturally one who was to parley with a savage host
had good reason to cultivate a far-reaching voice, if he wished to
be certain of returning to his friends. For more about it see the
footnote at p. 489 of my Hibbert Lectures.

[101] The original has Pelumyawc, p. 138, and the name occurs in the
(Red Book) Bruts, p. 355, as Pelunyawc, and p. 411, as Pelunea(wc)
between the commots of Amgoed and Velfrey. The identification here
suggested comes from Mr. Phillimore, who has seen that Peuliniawc
must be a derivative from the name Paulinus, that is of the
Paulinus, probably, who is mentioned in an ancient inscription
at Llandysilio. There are other churches called after Tysilio, so
this one used to be distinguished as Llandysilio yn Nyfed, that is,
Llandysilio-in-Dyfed; but the pronunciation was much the same as
if it had been written Llandysilio yn Yfed, meaning 'Llandysilio
a-drinking,' 'whereof arose a merrye jest,' as George Owen tells us
in his Pembrokeshire, p. 9. It is now sometimes called Llandysilio'r
Gynffon, or 'Llandysilio of the Tail,' from the situation of a part
of the parish on a strip, as it were a tail, of Carmarthenshire land
running into Pembrokeshire.

[102] This Aber Towy appears to have been a town with a harbour in
1042, for we read in Brut y Tywysogion of a cruel engagement fought
there between Gruffyd ab Llewelyn and Howel ab Edwin, who, with
Irish auxiliaries, tried to effect a landing. Not long ago a storm,
carrying away the accumulation of sand, laid bare a good deal of the
site. It is to be hoped that excavations will be made soon on the spot.

[103] See the Transactions of the Cymmrodorion, 1894-5,
pp. 146-7. There are a good many clyns about South Wales, but our
etymologists are careful to have them in most cases written glyn,
'a glen.' Our story, however, shows that the word came under the
influence of glyn long ago, for it should be, when accented, clûn,
corresponding to Irish cluain, 'a meadow.' We have it as clun in Clun
Kein in the Black Book, p. 34b, where I guess it to mean the place
now called Cilcain, 'Kilken' in Flintshire, which is accented on the
first syllabic; and we have had it in y Clun Hir, 'the Long Meadow,'
mentioned above at p. 22.

[104] Cas Llychwr, 'Loughor Castle,' is supposed to involve in its
Llychwr, Llwchwr, or Loughor, the name of the place in the Antoninus
Itinerary, 484, 1, to wit Leucarum; but the guttural spirant ch between
vowels in Llychwr argues a phonetic process which was Goidelic rather
than Brythonic.

[105] Llwydawc Gouynnyat would seem to mean Llwydawc the Asker
or Demander, and the epithet occurs also in the Kulhwch in the
name Gallcoyt Gouynynat (Mabinogion, 106), to be read doubtless
G. Gouynnyat, 'G. who asks or demands': possibly one should rather
compare with Go-uynnyat the word tra-mynyat, 'a wild boar': see
Williams' Seint Greal, pp. 374, 381. However, the epithets in the Twrch
Trwyth story do not count so far as concerns the place-names derived.

[106] Other instances of the like shortening occur in words like
cefnder, 'a cousin,' for cefnderw, and ardel, 'to own,' for ardelw. As
to Amman, it enters, also, into a group of Glamorganshire place-names:
witness Aber Amman and Cwm Amman, near Aberdare.

[107] It should perhaps be looked for near Brechfa, where there is
a Hafod Grugyn, and, as I am told, a Garth also which is, however,
not further defined. For it appears that both Brechfa and Cayo,
though now in Carmarthenshire, once belonged to Keredigion: see Owen's
Pembrokeshire, p. 216. But perhaps another spot should be considered:
J. D. Rhys, the grammarian (p. 22 above), gives in the Peniarth MS. 118
a list of caers or castles called after giants, and among them is that
of Grugyn in the parish, he says, of 'Llan Hilar.' I have, however, not
been able to hear of any trace of the name there, though I should guess
the spot to have been Pen y Castell, called in English Castle Hill, the
residence of Mr. Loxdale in the parish of Llanilar, near Aberystwyth.

[108] I have re-examined the passage, and I have no doubt that the
editors were wrong in printing Gregyn: the manuscript has Grugyn,
which comes in the last line of column 841. Now besides that the line
is in part somewhat faint, the scribe has evidently omitted something
from the original story, and I guess that the lacuna occurs in the
first line of the next column after the words y llas, 'was killed,'
which seem to end the story of Grugyn.

[109] Those who have discovered an independent Welsh appellative wy
meaning water are not to be reasoned with. The Welsh wy only means
an egg, while the meaning of Gwy as the name of the Wye has still to
be discovered.

[110] This name also occurs in a passage quoted in Jones' Brecknock,
ii. 501, from a Carte MS. which he treats as relating to the year 1234:
the MS. is said to be at the Bodleian, though I have not succeeded in
tracing it. But Jones gives Villa de Ystraddewi, and speaks of a chapel
of St. John's of Stradtewi, which must have been St. John's Church,
at Tretower, one of the ecclesiastical districts of Cwm Du: see also
p. 497. The name is probably to be treated as Strad or Strat d'Ewe.

[111] A river may in Welsh be briefly called after anybody or
anything. Thus in North Cardiganshire there is a stream called Einon,
that is to say 'Einion's river,' and the flat land on both sides of
it is called Ystrad Einon, which looks as if one might translate
it Einion's Strath, but it means the Strath of Einion's river, or
of the stream called Einon, as one will at once see from the upper
course of the water being called Blaen Einon, which can only mean the
upper course of the Einon river. So here yw is in English 'yew,' but
Ystrad Yw and Llygad Yw have to be rendered the Strath of the Yew burn
and the Eye of the Yew burn respectively. It is moreover felt by the
Welsh-speaking people of the district that yw is the plural of ywen,
'a single yew,' and as there is only one yew at the source somebody had
the brilliant idea of making the name right by calling it Ywen, and
this has got into the maps as Ewyn, as though it were the Welsh word
for foam. Who began it I cannot say, but Theophilus Jones has it in
his History of the County of Brecknock, published in 1809. Nevertheless
the name is still Yw, not Ywen or Ewyn, in the Welsh of the district,
though Lewis gives it as Ywen in his article on Llanvihangel-Cwm-Du.

[112] For exact information as to the Gaer, the Yw, and Llygad Yw,
I am indebted chiefly to the courtesy of Lord Glanusk, the owner of
that historic strath, and to the Rector of Llansantffread, who made
a special visit to Llygad Yw for me; also to Mr. Francis Evans, of
the Farmers' Arms at the Bwlch, who would be glad to change the name
Llygad Yw into Llygad dan yr Ywen, 'the Source beneath the Yew-tree,'
partly on account of the position 'of the spring emanating under the
but of the yew tree,' and partly because there is only a single yew
there. Theophilus Jones complained a century ago that the Gaer in
Ystrad Yw had not attracted the attention it deserved; and I have
been greatly disappointed to find that the Cambrian Archæological
Association has had nothing to say of it. At any rate, I have tried
the Index of its proceedings and found only a single mention of
it. The whole district is said to teem with antiquities, Celtic,
Roman, and Norman.

[113] Theophilus Jones, in his Brecknockshire, ii. 502, describes
Miarth or Myarth as a 'very extensive' camp, and proceeds as
follows:--'Another British camp of less extent is seen on a knoll on
Pentir hill, westward of the Rhiangoll and the parish church of Cwmdu,
above a wood called Coed y Gaer, and nearly opposite to the peak or
summit called Cloch y Pibwr, or the piper's call.' This would probably
be more accurately rendered the Piper's Rock or Stone, with cloch
treated as the Goidelic word for a stone rather than the Brythonic
word for a bell: how many more clochs in our place-names are Goidelic?

[114] The Twrch would seem to have crossed somewhere opposite the
mouth of the Wye, let us say not very far from Aust; but he escapes to
Cornwall without anything happening to him, so we are left without any
indication whether the story originally regarded Kernyw as including
the Penrhyn Awstin of the Coll story given at p. 503.

[115] For this suggestion I am indebted to the Rev. Dr. Gaster in the
Cymmrodorion's Transactions for 1894-5, p. 34, and also for references
in point to M. Cosquin's Contes Populaires de la Lorraine, i. 134,
141, 152. Compare also such Gaelic stories as that of the Bodach Glas,
translated by Mrs. Mackellar, in the Celtic Magazine, xii. 12-6, 57-64.

[116] In some native Welsh words we have an option between a prefix
ym and am, an option arising out of the fact that originally it
was neither ym nor am, but m, for an earlier mbi, of the same origin
as Latin ambi and Greek amphi, 'around, about.' The article, its
meaning in the combination in banbh being forgotten, would fall under
the influence of the analogy of the prefix, now am or ym, so far as
the pronunciation was concerned.

[117] Possibly the benwic was thrown in to correct the reckoning when
the redactor discovered, as he thought, that he had one too many to
account for: it has been pointed out that he had forgotten that one
had been killed in Ireland.

[118] It is just possible, however, that in an older version it was
named, and that the place was no other than the rock just above
Ystrad Yw, called Craig Lwyd or, as it is said to be pronounced,
Craig Llwyd. If so, Llwyd would seem to have been substituted for
the dissyllable Llwydog: compare the same person called Llwyt and
Llwydeu in the Mabinogion, pp. 57, 110, 136.

[119] The name is well known in that of Llanrhaiadr yn Mochnant,
'Llanrhaiadr in Mochnant,' in the north of Montgomeryshire.

[120] Between Colwyn Bay and Llandudno Junction, on the Chester and
Holyhead line of railway.

[121] I have discussed some of the traces of the Goidels in Wales in
the Arch. Camb. for 1895, pp. 18-39, 264-302; 1899, pp. 160-7.

[122] In fact the genitive Grúcind occurs in the Book of Leinster,
fo. 359a.

[123] The sort of question one would like to ask in that district is,
whether there is a spot there called Bed y Rhyswyr, Carn y Rhyswyr,
or the like. The word rhyswr is found applied to Arthur himself in
the Life of Gruffyd ab Cynan, as the equivalent probably of the
Latin Arthur Miles (p. 538 below): see the Myvyrian Archaiology,
ii. 590. Similarly the soldiers or champions of Christ are called
rys6yr crist in the Welsh Life of St. David: see the Elucidarium and
other Tracts (in the Anecdota Oxoniensia), p. 118.

[124] Rudvyw Rys would be in Modern Welsh Rhudfyw Rys, and probably
means Rhudfyw the Champion or Fighter, as Rhys is likely to have been
synonymous with rhyswr. The corresponding Irish name was Russ or Ross,
genitive Rossa, and it appears to come from the same origin as Irish
ross, 'a headland, a forest,' Welsh rhos, 'moorland, uncultivated
ground.' The original meaning was presumably 'exposed or open and
untilled land'; and Stokes supposes the word to stand for an early
(p)ro-sto- with sto of the same origin as Latin sto, 'I stand,' and
as the English word stand itself. In that case Ros, genitive Rossa,
Welsh Rhys, would mean one who stands out to fight, a prostatês,
so to say. But not only are these words of a different declension
implying a nominative Ro-stus, but the Welsh one must have been once
accented Ro-stús on the ending which is now lost, otherwise there is
no accounting for the change of the remaining vowel into y. Other
instances postulating an early Welsh accentuation of the same kind
are very probably llyg, 'a fieldmouse,' Irish luch, 'a mouse'; pryd,
'form,' Irish cruth; pryf, 'a worm,' Irish cruim; so also with ych,
'an ox,' and nyth, 'a nest,' Irish nett, genitive nitt, derived by
Stokes from nizdo-, which, however, must have been oxytone, like the
corresponding Sanskrit nidhá. There is one very interesting compound of
rhys, namely the saint's name Rhwydrys, as it were Redo-rostus to be
compared with Gaulish Eporedo-rix, which is found in Irish analysed
into rí Eochraidhi, designating the fairy king who was father to
Étáin: see Windisch's Irische Texte, p. 119. Bledrws, Bledrus, as
contrasted with Bledrys, Bledris, postulate Goidelic accentuation,
while one has to treat Bledruis as a compromise between Bledrws and
Bledris, unless it be due to misreading a Bledruif (Book of Llan Dâv,
pp. 185, 221-2, and Arch. Camb. for 1875, p. 370). The Goidelic accent
at an early date moved to first syllables, hence cruth (with its vowel
influenced by the u of a stem qurt) under the stress accent, became,
when unstressed, cridh (from a simplified stem crt) as in Noicride
(also Nóicrothach, Windisch, ibid., pp. 259, 261, 266)
and Luicridh (Four Masters, A.D. 748), Luccraid, genitive Luccraide
(Book of Leinster, 359f), Luguqurit- in Ogam.

[125] These operations cannot have been the first of the kind in
the district, as a writer in the Archæologia Cambrensis for 1862,
pp. 159-60, in extracting a note from the Proceedings of the Society
of Antiquaries (series II, vol. i. p. 10) relative to the discovery
of the canoe, adds a statement based on the same volume, p. 161,
to the effect that 'within half a mile of Llyn Llydaw there are the
remains of a British town, not marked in the ordnance map, comprising
the foundations of numerous circular dwellings. In some of them
quantities of the refuse of copper smeltings were found. This town
should be visited and examined with care by some of the members of
our Association.'  This was written not far short of forty years ago;
but I am not aware that the Association has done anything positive
as yet in this matter.

[126] According to Jenkins' Bed Gelert, p. 300, the canoe was
subsequently sold for a substantial price, and nobody seems to
know what has eventually become of it. It is to be hoped this is
not correct.

[127] See Holder's Alt-celtischer Sprachschatz, s. v. Litavia.

[128] For these notes I am indebted to Williams' Dictionary of Eminent
Welshmen, and to Rees' Welsh Saints, pp. 187, 191; for our Paulinus
is not yet recognized in the Dictionary of Christian Biography. His
day was Nov. 22.

[129] There are two other inscriptions in South Wales which contain
the name Paulinus, one on a stone found in the neighbourhood of Port
Talbot in Glamorgan, reading Hic iacit Cantusus Pater Paulinus,
which seems to imply that Paulinus set up the stone to the memory
of a son of his named Cantusus. The other, found on the site of the
extinct church of Llanwrthwl, near Dolau Cothi in Carmarthenshire,
is a remarkable one in a kind of hexameter to the following effect:--

    Servatur fidæi patrieque semper amator
    Hic Paulinus iacit cultor pientisimus æqui.

Whether we have one or two or three Paulini in these inscriptions
I cannot say. Welsh writers, however, have made the name sometimes
into Pawl Hên, 'Paul the Aged,' but, so far as I can see, without
rhyme or reason.

[130] Since I chanced on this inscription my friend Professor Lindsay
of St. Andrews has called my attention to Plautus' Asinaria, 499
(II. iv. 92), where one reads, Periphanes Rhodo mercator dives,
'Periphanes a wealthy merchant of Rhodes'; he finds also Æsculapius
Epidauro (Arnobius, 278. 18), and elsewhere Nepos Philippis and
Priscus Vienna.

[131]  See Stokes' Patrick, pp. 16, 412.

[132] This will give the reader some idea of the pre-Norman orthography
of Welsh, with l for the sound of ll and b for that of v.

[133] The softening of Cafall to Gafall could not take place after the
masculine corn, 'a horn'; but it was just right after the feminine
carn, 'a cairn.' So here corn is doubtless a colloquial corruption;
and so is probably the t at the end, for as llt has frequently been
reduced to ll, as in cyfaill, 'a friend,' from the older cyfaillt,
in Medieval Irish comalta, 'a foster brother or sister,' the language
has sometimes reversed the process, as when one hears hollt for holl,
'all,' or reads fferyllt, 'alchemist, chemist,' for fferyll from
Vergilius. The Nennian orthography does not much trouble itself to
distinguish between l and ll, and even when Carn Cabal was written the
pronunciation was probably Carn Gavall, the mutation being ignored
in the spelling, which frequently happens in the case even of Welsh
people who never fail to mutate their consonants in speaking. Lastly,
though it was a dog that was called Cafall, it is remarkable that
the word has exactly the form taken by caballus in Welsh: for cafall,
as meaning some sort of a horse, see Silvan Evans' Geiriadur.

[134] An instance or two of Trwyd will be found in a note by Silvan
Evans in Skene's Four Ancient Books of Wales, ii. 393.

[135] For more about these names and kindred ones, see a note of mine
in the Arch. Cambrensis, 1898, pp. 61-3.

[136] See my Hibbert Lectures, pp. 398-401.

[137] See the Black Book of Carmarthen in Evans' facsimile, p. 47b;
Thomas Stephens' Gododin, p. 146; Dent's Malory, preface, p. xxvi;
and Skene's Four Ancient Books of Wales, ii. 51, 63, 155.

[138] See the Göttingische gelehrte Anzeigen for 1890, p. 512.

[139] See De Courson's Cartulaire de l'abbaye de Redon, pp. 163, 186.

[140] See Reeves' note to the passage just cited in his edition of
Adamnan's Vita, pp. 6, 7.

[141] Here possibly one might mention likewise Gilmin Troetu or
Troeddu, 'Gilmin of the Black Foot,' the legendary ancestor (p. 444)
of the Wynns of Glyn Llifon, in Carnarvonshire. So the name might be a
shortening of some such a combination as Gilla-min, 'the attendant of
Min or Men,' a name we have also in Mocu-Min, 'Min's Kin,' a family
or sept so called more than once by Adamnan. Perhaps one would also
be right in regarding as of similar origin the name of Gilberd or
Gilbert, son of Cadgyffro, who is mentioned in the Kulhwch, and in
the Black Book, fo. 14b: at any rate I am not convinced that the name
is to be identified with the Gillebert of the Normans, unless that
was itself derived from Celtic. But there is a discrepancy between
Gilmin, Gilbert, with unmutated m and b, and Gilvaethwy with its
mutation consonant v. In all three, however, Gil, had it been Welsh,
would probably have appeared as Gill, as indicated by the name Gilla
in the Kulhwch (Oxford Mabinogion, p. 110), in which we seem to have
the later form of the old name Gildas. Compare such Irish instances
as Fiachna and Cera, which seem to imply stems originally ending in
-asa-s (masculine) and -asa (feminine); and see the Journal of the
Royal Society of Antiquaries of Ireland, 1899, P. 402.

[142] An article in the Rennes Dindsenchas is devoted to Liath: see the
Rev. Celtique, xvi. 78-9. As to Celtchar, genitive Celtchair, the name
would seem to have meant 'him who is fond of concealment.' The Mabinogi
form of the Welsh name is Llwyt uab kil coet, which literally meant
'Ll. son of (him of) the Retreat of the Wood.' But in the Twrch Trwyth
story, under a slightly different form of designation, we appear to
have the same person as Llwydeu mab kelcoet and Llwydeu mab kel coet,
which would seem to mean 'Ll. son of (him of) the Hidden Wood.' It
looks as if the bilingual story-teller of the language transition
had not been able to give up the cel of Celtchar at the same time
that he rendered celt by coet, 'wood or trees,' as if identifying
it with cailt: witness the Medieval Irish caill, 'a wood or forest,'
dative plural cailtib, derivative adjective caillteamhuil, 'silvester';
and see Windisch's Irische Texte, p. 410, s. v. caill.

[143] Windisch's Irische Texte, p. 217, and the Book of the Dun Cow,
fo. 47b.

[144] There has been a good deal of confusion as to the name Llyr:
thus for instance, the Welsh translations of Geoffrey of Monmouth
make the Leir of his Latin into Llyr, and the personage intended is
represented as the father of three daughters named Gonerilla, Regan,
and Cordeilla or Cordelia. But Cordelia is probably the Creurdilad of
the Black Book, p. 49b, and the Creidylat of the Kulhwch story (the
Oxford Mabinogion, pp. 113, 134), and her father was Llûd Llawereint (=
Irish Nuada Airgetlám) and not Llyr. Then as to the Leir of Geoffrey's
Latin, that name looks as if given its form on the strength of the
legr- of Legraceaster, the Anglo-Saxon name of the town now called
Leicester, of which William of Malmesbury (Gesta Pontificum, § 176)
says, Legrecestra est civitas antiqua in Mediterraneis Anglis, a Legra
fluvio præterfluente sic vocata. Mr. Stevenson regards Legra as an old
name of the Soar, and as surviving in that of the village of Leire,
spelled Legre in Domesday. It seems to point back to a Legere or
Ligere, which recalls Liger, 'the Loire.'

[145] I say in that case, as this is not quite conclusive; for Welsh
has an appellative llyr, 'mare, æquor,' which may be a generalizing
of Llyr; or else it may represent an early lerio-s from lero-s (see
p. 549 below), and our Llyr may possibly be this and not the Irish
genitive Lir retained as Llyr. That, however, seems to me improbable
on the whole.

[146] Here it is relevant to direct the reader's attention to Nutt's
Legend of the Holy Grail, p. 28, where, in giving an abstract of the
Petit saint Graal, he speaks of the Brân of that romance, in French
Bron, nominative Brons, as having the keeping of the Grail and dwelling
'in these isles of Ireland.'

[147] The Dôn and Llyr groups are not brought into conflict or even
placed in contact with one another; and the reason seems to be that
the story-teller wanted to introduce the sons of Beli as supreme
in Britain after the death of Brân. Beli and his sons are also
represented in Maxen's Dream as ruling over Britain when the Roman
conqueror arrives. What is to be made of Beli may be learnt from The
Welsh People, pp. 41-3.

[148] These things one learns about Lir from the story mentioned
in the text as the 'Fate of the Children of Lir,' as to which it is
right, however, to say that no ancient manuscript version is known:
see M. d'Arbois dc Jubainville's Essai d'un Catalogue de la Litérature
épique de l'Irlande, p. 8.

[149] See Skene's Four Ancient Books of Wales, ii. 303, also 108-9,
where the fragment of the poem as given in the Book of Taliessin is
printed. The line here quoted has been rendered in vol. i. 286, 'With
Matheu and Govannon,' which places the old pagan Gofannon in rather
unexpected company. A few lines later in the poem mention is made of a
Kaer Gofannon: where was that? Skene, in a note on it (ii. 452), says
that 'In an old list of the churches of Linlithgow, printed by Theiner,
appears Vicaria de Gumanyn. The place meant is probably Dalmeny, on
the Firth of Forth, formerly called Dumanyn.' This is interesting only
as showing that Gumanyn is probably to be construed Dumanyn, and that
Dalmeny represents an ancient Dún Manann in a neighbourhood where one
already has Clach Manann, 'the stone of Manau,' and Sliabh Manann,
'Mountain of Manau' now respectively Clackmannan and Slamannan,
in what Nennius calls Manau Guotodin.

[150] This occurred unrecognized and, therefore, unaltered by the
scribe of the Nennian Pedigree no. xvi in the Cymmrodor, ix. 176,
as he found it written in an old spelling, Louhen. map. Guid
gen. map. Caratauc. map. Cinbelin, where Caradog is made father of
Gwydion; for in Guid-gen we seem to have the compound name which
suggested Gwydion. This agrees with the fact that the Mabinogi of
Math treats Gwydion as the father of Llew Llawgyffes; but the pedigree
itself seems to have been strangely put together.

[151] See Bertrand's Religion des Gaulois, pp. 314-9, 343-5, and
especially the plates.

[152] The Oxford Mabinogion, pp. 40-3; Guest's Mabinogion, iii. 124-8.

[153] See Louis Leger's Cyrille et Méthode (Paris, 1868), p. 22.

[154] See Pertz, Monumenta Germaniæ Historia Scriptorum, xii. 794. The
whole passage is worth quoting; it runs thus: Erat autem simulacrum
triceps, quod in uno corpore tria capita habens Triglaus vocabatur;
quod solum accipiens, ipsa capitella sibi cohærentia, corpore
comminuto, secum inde quasi pro tropheo asportavit, et postea Romam
pro argumento conversionis illorum transmisit.

[155] See The Welsh People, pp. 56-7.

[156] The Oxford Mabinogion, p. 147; Guest's Mabinogion, ii. 398.

[157] This may have meant the 'Blue Slate or Flagstone'; but there is
no telling so long as the place is not identified. It may have been
in the Pictish district of Galloway, or else somewhere beyond the
Forth. Query whether it was the same place as Llech Gelydon in Prydyn,
mentioned in Boned y Saint: see the Myvyrian Archaiology, ii. 49.

[158] The story of Kulhwch and Olwen has a different legend which
represents Nynio and Peibio changed by the Almighty into two oxen
called Ychen Banna6c: see the Oxford Mabinogion, p. 121, also my
Arthurian Legend, p. 304, and the remarks which are to follow in this
chapter with respect to those oxen.

[159] For the story in Welsh see the Iolo MSS., pp. 193-4, where a
footnote tells the reader that it was copied from the book of 'Iaco
ab Dewi.' From his father's manuscript, Taliesin Williams printed
an abstract in English in his notes to his poem entitled the Doom
of Colyn Dolphyn (London, 1837), pp. 119-20, from which it will be
found translated into German in the notes to San-Marte's Geoffrey of
Monmouth's Historia Regum Britanniæ, pp. 402-3.

[160] Oxford Bruts, p. 213: compare p. 146, together with Geoffrey's
Latin, vii. 3, x. 3.

[161] See Kölbing's Altenglische Bibliothek, the fifth volume of
which consists of Libeaus Desconus, edited by Max Kaluza (Leipsic,
1890), lines 163, 591, and Introduction, p. cxxxxiv. For calling my
attention to this, I have to thank my friend, Mr. Henry Bradley.

[162] Malory's Morte Darthur, i. 27: see also i. 17-8, 28; ii. 6, 8-9.

[163] See Evans' Autotype Facsimile, fo. 33a: could the spot so called
(in the Welsh text argel Ardudwy) be somewhere in the neighbourhood of
Llyn Irdyn (p. 148), a district said to be rich in the remains of a
prehistoric antiquity? J. Evans, author of the North Wales volume of
the Beauties of England and Wales, says, after hurriedly enumerating
such antiquities, p. 909: 'Perhaps in no part of Britain is there
still remaining such an assemblage of relicks belonging to druidical
rites and customs as are found in this place, and the adjacent parts.'

[164] As to Rion, see Gaston Paris and Ulrich's Merlin (Paris, 1886),
i. 202, 239-46. Other instances will readily occur to the reader,
such as the Domesday Roelend or Roelent for Rothelan, in Modern
Welsh Rhudlan; but for more instances of this elision by French and
Anglo-Norman scribes of vowel-flanked d and th, see Notes and Queries
for Oct. 28, 1899, pp. 351-2, and Nov. 18, p. 415; also Vising's Étude
sur le Dialecte anglo-normand du xije Siècle (Upsala, 1882), p. 88; and
F. Hildebrand's article on Domesday, in the Zeitschrift für romanische
Philologie, 1884, p. 360. According to Suchier in Gröber's Grundriss
der rom. Philologie, i. 581, this process of elision became complete in
the twelfth century: see also Schwan's Grammatik des Altfranzösischen
(Leipsic, 1888), p. 65. For most of these references, I have to thank
my friend and neighbour, Mr. Stevenson of Exeter College.

[165] It comes from the same Llwyd MS. which has already been cited
at pp. 233-4: see the Cambrian Journal for 1859, pp. 209-10.

[166] I notice in the maps a spot called Panylau, which is nearer to
Llyn Gwynain than to Llyn y Dinas.

[167] See Morris' Celtic Remains, s. v. Serigi, and the Iolo MSS.,
p. 81.

[168] The Iolo MSS., p. 81, have Syrigi Wydel son of Mwrchan son of
Eurnach Hen.

[169] See Triads, ii. 12, and the Mabinogion, p. 301: in Triads,
i. 72, iii. 86, instead of Solor we have Doler and Dolor.

[170] See the Oxford Mabinogion, pp. 125-8.

[171] Evans' Autotype Facsimile, fo. 48a; see also my preface to
Dent's Malory, p. xxvii; likewise p. 457 above.

[172] See my Lectures on Welsh Philology, pp. 377-9; and, as to the
Caer Gai tradition, the Arch. Camb. for 1850, p. 204, and Morris'
Celtic Remains, p. 63. I may add as to Llanuwchllyn, that the oldest
inhabitants pronounce that name Llanuwllyn.

[173]  I cannot discover that it has ever been investigated by the
Cambrian Archæological Association or any other antiquaries. Compare
the case of the neighbouring site with the traces of the copper
smeltings mentioned in the note on p. 532 above. To my knowledge the
Cambrians have twice failed to make their way nearer to the ruins
than Llanberis, or at most Llanberis Pass, significantly called in
Welsh Pen Gorffwysfa for the older name Gorffwysfa Beris, 'Peris'
Resting-place': thus we loyally follow the example of resting set by
the saint, and leave alone the archæology of the district.

[174] The subject has been discussed at length by Mr. Jacobs, in a
note to the legend, in his Celtic Fairy Tales, pp. 259-64; and quite
recently by Mr. D. E. Jenkins in his Bed Gelert (Portmadoc, 1899),
pp. 56-74.

[175] Professor J. Morris Jones, to whom I am indebted for the
particulars connected with these names, informs me that the local
pronunciation is Drónwy; but Mrs. Rhys remembers that, years ago,
at Amlwch, it was always sounded Darónwy. The Professor also tells
me that Dernog is never made into Dyrnog: the Kuwgh of the Record is
doubtless to be corrected into Knwgh, and probably also Dornok into
Dernok, which is the reading in the margin. Cornewe is doubtless the
district name which we have still in Llanfair y'Nghornwy, 'St. Mary's
in Cornwy': the mill is supposed to be that of Bodronyn.

[176] The Book of Llan Dáv has an old form Cinust for an earlier
Cingust or Congust. The early Brythonic nominative must have
been Cunogústu-s and the early Goidelic Cúnagusu-s, and from the
difference of accentuation come the o of Conghus, Connws, and the y
of the Welsh Cynwst: compare Irish Fergus and Welsh Gurgúst, later
Gurúst (one syllable), whence Grwst, finally the accented rwst of
Llanrwst, the name of a small town on the river Conwy. Moreover the
accentuation Cúnogusi is the reason why it was not written Cunogussi:
compare Bárrivendi and Véndubari in one and the same inscription
from Carmarthenshire.

[177] Such as that of a holding called Wele Dauid ap Gwelsantfrait,
the latter part of which is perversely written or wrongly read so for
Gwas Sant Freit, a rendering into Welsh of the very Goidelic name,
Mael-Brigte, 'Servant of St. Bridget.' This Wele, with Wele Conus and
Wele More, is contained in the Extent marginally headed Darronwy cum
Hameletta de Kuwghdernok.

[178] This comes in Triad i. 49 = ii. 40; as to which it is to be noted
that the name is Catwallawn in i and ii, but Caswallawn in iii. 27,
as in the Oxford Mabinogion.

[179] Serrigi, Serigi, or Syrigi looks like a Latin genitive torn
out of its context, but derived in the last resort from the Norse
name Sigtrygg-r, which the Four Masters give as Sitriucc or Sitriug:
see their entries from 891 to 1091. The Scandinavians of Dublin and
its neighbourhood were addicted to descents on the shores of North
Wales; and we have possibly a trace of occupation by them in Gauell
Seirith, 'Seirith's holding,' in the Record of Carnarvon, p. 63,
where the place in question is represented as being in the manor of
Cemmaes, in Anglesey. The name Seirith was probably that written by
the Four Masters as Sichfraith Sichraidh (also Serridh, A. D. 971),
that is to say the Norse Sigræd-r before it lost the f retained in its
German equivalent Siegfried. We seem to detect Seirith later as Seri
in place-names in Anglesey--as for example in the name of the farms
called Seri Fawr and Seri Bach between Llandrygarn and Llannerch y Med,
also in a Pen Seri, 'Seri's Knoll or Hill,' at Bryn Du, near Ty Croes
station, and in another Pen Seri on Holyhead Island, between Holyhead
and Llain Goch, on the way to the South Stack. Lastly Dugdale, v. 672b
mentions a Claud Seri, 'Seri's <DW18> or Ditch,' as being somewhere
in the neighbourhood of Llanwnda, in Carnarvonshire--not very far
perhaps from the Gwyrfai and the spot where the Iolo MSS. (pp. 81-2)
represent Serrigi repulsed by Caswallon and driven back to Anglesey,
previous to his being crushed at Cerrig y Gwydyl. The reader must,
however, be warned that the modern Seri is sometimes pronounced Sieri
or Sheri, which suggests the possibility of some of the instances
involving rather a form of the English word sheriff.

[180]  See my Hibbert Lectures, pp. 546-8.

[181]  The case with regard to the extreme south of the Principality
is somewhat similar; for inscriptions in Glamorgan seem to bring the
last echoes there of Goidelic speech down to the seventh century:
see the Archæologia Cambrensis for 1899, pp. 160-6.

[182] See Evans' Report on MSS. in the Welsh Language, p. 837, where
the Welsh is quoted from p. 131 of the Peniarth MS. 134.

[183] See my Arthurian Legend, p. 70.

[184] See the Revue Celtique, ii. 197-9, where Dr. Stokes has published
the original with a translation and notes; also p. 435 above.

[185] The gentlemen to whom I am chiefly indebted for the information
embodied in the foregoing notes are the following four: the Rev. John
Jones of Ystad Meurig, Professor Robert Williams of St. David's
College, the Vicar of Llandewi Brefi, Mr. J. H. Davies of Cwrt Mawr
and Lincoln's Inn (p. 354); and as to the 'wild cattle' story of Llyn
Eidwen, Mr. J. E. Rogers of Aber Meurig is my authority.

[186] So I had it many years ago from an old woman from Llangeitho,
and so Mr. J. G. Evans remembers his mother repeating it; but now it
is made into Llan Dewi Brefi braith, with the mutations disregarded.

[187] See the Archæologia Cambrensis for 1868, p. 88.

[188]  See ib. p. 87. I have ascertained on the best authority the
identity of the present owner of the horn, though I have not succeeded
in eliciting from him any reply to my inquiries. I conclude that
there is something wrong with the postal service in my native county.

[189] Several passages bearing on the word bannog have been brought
together in Silvan Evans' Geiriadur. He gives the meaning as 'high,
lofty, prominent, conspicuous.' The word is derived from ban, 'a
summit or peak,' plural bannau, so common in the names of hills
and mountains in South Wales--as in y Fan in Carmarthenshire,
Bannwchdeni (p. 22) in Breconshire, Pen y Bannau near Pont Rhyd
Fendigaid in Cardiganshire, Bannau Brycheiniog and Bannau Sir Gaer,
the mountains called in English the Beacons of Breconshire and
Carmarthenshire respectively. In North Wales we have it possibly in
the compound Tryfan, which the mapsters will have us call Tryfaen;
and the corresponding word in Scotch Gaelic appears in such names
as Ben Nevis and the like, while in Irish the word benn meant a horn
or peak. I am, nevertheless, not at all sure that Ychen Bannog meant
horned oxen or even tall and conspicuous oxen; for there is a Welsh
word man, meaning a spot or mark (Latin menda), and the adjective
was mannawc, mannog, 'spotted, marked, particoloured.' Now in the
soft mutation all four words--ban, bannog, and man, mannog--would
begin with f = v, which might help to confusion between them. This
may be illustrated in a way from Williams' Seint Greal (pp. 88-92),
where Gwalchmai has a dream in which he sees 150 bulls with spots or
patches of colour on them, except three only which were 'without any
spot in the world' (neb ryw vann or byt), or as it is also put 'without
spot' (heb vann). This word vann, applied to the colour of the bulls,
comes from the radical form mann; and the adjective was mannawc or
mannog, which would mean spotted, particoloured, or having patches
of colour. Now the oxen of Welsh legends are also sometimes called
Ychen Mannog (pp. 131-2), and it is possible, that, whichever way the
term is written, it should be interpreted to mean spotted, marked,
or particoloured oxen. I take it also that Llan Dewi Frefi fraith was
meant as synonymous with Llan Dewi Frefi fannog, which did not fit the
rhyme. Lastly, the Dyfed use of the saying Fel dau ych bannog, 'Like
two Bannog oxen,' in the sense of 'equal and inseparable companions'
(as instanced in the Geiriadur), sounds like the antithesis of the
passage in the Kulhwch (Mabinogion, p. 121). For there we have words
to the following effect: 'Though thou shouldst get that, there is
something which thou wilt not get, namely the two oxen of Bannog,
the one on the other side of the Bannog mountain and the other on
this side, and to bring them together to draw the same plough. They
are, to wit, Nynio and Peibio, whom God fashioned into oxen for their
sins.' Here the difficulty contemplated was not to separate the two,
but to bring them together to work under the same yoke. This is more
in harmony with the story of the mad quarrel between the two brother
kings bearing those names as mentioned above.

[190] See the Revue Celtique, iii. 310, after Gruter, 570, 6.

[191] An important paper on the Tarvos Trigaranus, from the pen of
M. Salomon Reinach, will be found in the Revue Celtique, xviii. 253-66;
and M. d'A. de Jubainville's remarkable equations are to be read in
the same periodical, xix. 245-50: see also xx. 374-5.

[192] This, we are told, was a stone with a hollow in it for pounding
corn, so as to separate the husks from the grain; and such a stone
stood formerly somewhere near the door of every farm house in Scotland.

[193] The editor here explains in a note that 'this was a common
saying formerly, when people were heard to regret trifles.'

[194] I have heard of this belief in Wales late in the sixties;
but the presence was assumed to be that of a witch, not of a fairy.

[195] The word twt, 'tidy,' is another vocable which has found its
way into Wales from the western counties of England; and though its
meaning is more universally that of 'tidy or natty,' the term gwas twt,
which in North Cardiganshire means a youth who is ready to run on all
kinds of errands, would seem to bring us to its earlier meaning of the
French tout--as if gwas twt might be rendered a 'garçon à tout'--which
survives as tote in the counties of Gloucester and Hereford, as I
am informed by Professor Wright. Possibly, however, one may prefer
to connect twt with the nautical English word taut; but we want more
light. In any case one may venture to say that colloquial Welsh swarms
with words whose origin is to be sought outside the Principality.

[196] See Folk-Lore for 1889, pp. 144-52.

[197] Ibid. for 1891, p. 246, where one will find this rhyme the
subject of a note--rendered useless by a false reference--by Köhler;
see also the same volume, p. 132, where Mr. Kirby gives more lines
of the rhyme.

[198] See Choice Notes from 'Notes and Queries,' p. 35.

[199] A number of instructive instances will be found mentioned,
and discussed in his wonted and lucid fashion, by Mr. Clodd in his
Tom Tit Tot, pp. 80-105.

[200] The Welsh spelling is caws pob, 'baked (or roasted) cheese,'
so called in parts of South Wales, such as Carmarthenshire, whereas in
North Wales it is caws pobi. It is best known to Englishmen as 'Welsh
rabbit,' which superior persons 'ruling the roast' in our kitchens
choose to make into rarebit: how they would deal with 'Scotch woodcock'
and 'Oxford hare,' I do not know. I should have mentioned that copies
of the Hundred Mery Talys are exceedingly scarce, and that the above,
which is the seventy-sixth in the collection, has here been copied
from the Cymmrodor, iii. 115-6, where we have the following sapient
note:--'Cause bobe, it will be observed, is St. Peter's rendering of
the phrase Caws wedi ei bobi. The chief of the Apostles apparently had
only a rather imperfect knowledge of Welsh, which is not to be wondered
at, as we know that even his Hebrew was far from giving satisfaction
to the priests of the capital.' From these words one can only say that
St. Peter would seem to have known Welsh far better than the author
of that note, and that he had acquired it from natives of South Wales,
perhaps from the neighbourhood of Kidwelly. I have to thank my friend
Mr. James Cotton for a version of the cheese story in the Bodleian
Library, namely in Malone MS. 19 (p. 144), where a certain master at
Winchester School has put it into elegiacs which make St. Peter cry
out with the desired effect: Tostus io Walli, tostus modo caseus.

[201] See Choice Notes from 'Notes and Queries,' pp. 117-8.

[202] For instance, when Cúchulainn had fallen asleep under the
effect of fairy music, Fergus warned his friends that he was not to
be disturbed, as he seemed to be dreaming and seeing a vision: see
Windisch's Irische Texte, p. 208; also the Revue Celtique, v. 231. For
parallels to the two stories in this paragraph, see Tylor's first
chapter on Animism in his Primitive Culture, and especially the legend
of King Gunthram, i. 442.

[203] See Mr. Gomme's presidential address to the Folk-Lore Society,
printed in Folk-Lore for 1892, pp. 6-7.

[204] See Sale's preliminary discourse to his translation of the Koran,
§ iv.

[205] Perhaps we may regard this as the more Goidelic account of
Blodeuwed's origin: at any rate, traces of a different one have been
noticed in a note at p. 439 above.

[206] One version of it is given in the Myvyrian Archaiology, i. 176-8;
and two other versions are to be found in the Cymmrodor, viii. 177-89,
where it is suggested that the author was Iolo Goch, who flourished
in the fourteenth century. See also my Arthurian Legend, pp. 57-8.

[207] See also the notes on these passages, given in San-Marte's
edition of Geoffrey, pp. 219, 463-5, and his Beiträge zur bretonischen
und celtisch germanischen Heldensage (Quedlinburg and Leipsic, 1847),
p. 81.

[208] See Choice Notes, pp. 69-70.

[209] See Wood-Martin's Pagan Ireland (London, 1895), p. 140.

[210] See Choice Notes, p. 61, where it is also stated that the
country people in Yorkshire used to give the name of souls to certain
night-flying white moths. See also the Athenæum, No. 1041, Oct. 9,
1847.

[211] For this also I am indebted to Wood-Martin's book, p. 140.

[212] See the Book of the Dun Cow, fo. 198, and Windisch's Irische
Texte, pp. 136-45. An abstract of the story will be found in the
Hibbert Lectures on Celtic Heathendom, p. 502.

[213] See the Book of the Dun Cow, fo. 129a-133a; Windisch's Irische
Texte, pp. 117-33, more especially pp. 127-31; also my Arthurian
Legend, pp. 29-33.

[214] See the Book of Taliessin, poem vii, in Skene's Four Ancient
Books of Wales, ii. 136-7; also poem viii, p. 137 et seq.

[215] Some account of this process will be found in Elton's Origins of
English History (London, 1882), p. 33, where he has drawn on Martin's
Description of the Western Islands of Scotland, published in 1703:
see pp. 204-5.

[216] For one or two instances of the nomenclature in question,
see pp. 76-7 above.

[217] Sywedyd is probably a word of Goidelic origin: compare Irish súi,
'a sage,' genitive súad, and derivative súithe, 'wisdom.' Stokes
suggests the derivation su-vet, in which case súi = su-vi, for
su-viss = su-vet-s, and sú-ithe = suvetia, while the Welsh sywedyd
is formally su-vetios or su-vetiios. Welsh has also syw, from súi,
like dryw, 'a druid,' from Goidelic drúi. Syw, it is true, now only
means elegant, tidy; but Dr. Davies of Mallwyd believed its original
signification to have been 'sapiens, doctus, peritus.' The root vet
is most probably to be identified with the wet of Med. Welsh gwet-id,
'a saying,' dy-wawt, 'dixit,' whence it appears that the bases were vet
and vat, with the latter of which Irish fáith, 'a poet or prophet,'
Latin vates, agrees, as also the Welsh gwawd, 'poetry, sarcasm,' and
in Mod. Welsh, 'any kind of derision.' In the Book of Taliessin syw
has, besides the plurals sywyon and sywydon (Skene, ii. 142, 152),
possibly an older plural, sywet (p. 155) = su-vet-es,  while for
súithe = su-vetia we seem to have sywyd or sewyd (pp. 142, 152, 193);
but all the passages in point are more or less obscure, I must confess.

[218] See the Book of Taliessin, in Skene's Four Ancient Books of
Wales, ii. 130-1, 134, 142, 151-2, 155.

[219]  As, for instance, in the account given of Uath mac Imomain in
Fled Bricrenn: see the Book of the Dun Cow, fo. 110b, and Windisch's
Irische Texte, p. 293.

[220]  The Book of the Dun Cow, fo. 77a, and the Book of Leinster,
fo. 75b: compare also the story of Tuan mac Cairill in the Book of
the Dun Cow, fo. 16b, where the Tuatha Dé Danann are represented as
Tuatha Dee ocus Ande, 'the tribes of gods and not-gods,' to whom one
of the manuscripts adds a people of legendary Ireland called the
Galiúin. See the story as recently edited by Professor Kuno Meyer
in Nutt's Voyage of Bran, ii. 291-300, where, however, the sense
of § 12 with its allusion to the fall of Lucifer is missed in the
translation. It should read, I think, somewhat as follows:--'Of these
are the Tuatha Dee and Ande, whose origin is unknown to the learned,
except that they think it probable, judging from the intelligence of
the Tuatha and their superiority in knowledge, that they belong to
the exiles who came from heaven.'

[221] See Evans' Black Book of Carmarthen, fo. 33b; also the
Mabinogion, pp. 104, 306. The Irish lucht cumachtai would be in Welsh
literally rendered llwyth cyfoeth, 'the cyfoeth tribe or host,'
as it were. For cyfoeth, in Med. Welsh, meant power or dominion,
whence cyfoethog, 'powerful,' and holl-gyfoethog, 'almighty'; but in
Mod. Welsh cyfoeth and cyfoethog have been degraded to mean 'riches'
and 'rich' respectively. Now if we dropped the prefix cum from the
Irish cumachtai, and its equivalent cyf from the Welsh cyfoeth,
we should have lucht cumachtai reduced to an approximate analogy
to llwyth Oeth, 'the Oeth tribe,' for which we have the attested
equivalent Teulu Oeth, 'the Oeth household or family.' Oeth, however,
seems to have meant powerful rather than power, and this seems to
have been its force in Gwalchmai's poetry of the twelfth century,
where I find it twice: see the Myvyrian Arch., i. 196b, 203a. In
the former passage we have oeth dybydaf o dybwyf ryd, 'I shall be
powerful if I be free,' and in the latter oeth ym uthrwyd, 'mightily
was I astonished or dismayed.' An-oeth was the negative of oeth, and
meant weak, feeble, frivolous: so we find its plural, anoetheu, applied
in the story of Kulhwch to the strange quests on which Kulhwch had to
engage himself and his friends, before he could hope to obtain Olwen to
be his wife. This has its parallel in the use of the adjective gwan,
'weak,' in the following instance among them:--Arthur and his men
were ready to set out in search of Mabon son of Modron, who was said
to have been kidnapped, when only three nights old, from between his
mother Modron and the wall; and though this had happened a fabulously
long time before Arthur was born, nothing had ever been since heard
of Mabon's fate. Now Arthur's men said that they would set out in
search of him, but they considered that Arthur should not accompany
them on feeble quests of the kind: their words were (p. 128), ny elli
di uynet ath lu y geissa6 peth mor uan ar rei hynn, 'thou canst not
go with thy army to seek a thing so weak as these are.' Here we have
uan as the synonym of an-oeth; but Oeth ac Anoeth probably became a
phrase which was seldom analysed or understood; so we have besides
Teulu Oeth ac Anoeth, a Caer Oeth ac Anoeth, or fortress of O. and
A., and a Carchar Caer Oeth ac Anoeth, or the Prison of Caer O. and
A., which is more shortly designated also Carchar Oeth ac Anoeth,
or the Prison of O. and A. A late account of the building of that
strange prison and fortress by Manawydan is given in the Iolo MSS.,
pp. 185-6, 263, and it is needless to point out that Manawydan, son
of Llyr, was no other than the Manannán mac Lir of Irish literature,
the greatest wizard among the Tuatha Dé or Tuatha Dé Danann; for the
practical equivalence of those names is proved by the Book of the
Dun Cow, fo. 16b. For further details about Oeth and Anoeth, Silvan
Evans' Geiriadur may be consulted, s. v. Anoeth, where instances are
cited of the application of those terms to tilled land and wild or
uncultivated land. Here the words seem to have the secondary meanings
of profitable and unprofitable lands, respectively: compare a somewhat
analogous use of grym, 'strength, force,' in a passage relating to
the mutilated horses of Matholwch--hyt nad oed rym a ellit ar meirch,
'so that no use was possible in the case of the horses,' meaning that
they were of no use whatever, or that they had been done for: see the
Oxford Mabinogion, p. 29, and Lady Charlotte Guest's, iii. 107, where
the translation 'and rendered them useless' is barely strong enough.

[222] It is right, however, to state that M. d'A. de Jubainville's
account of the views of Erigena is challenged by Mr. Nutt, ii. 105.

[223] For instance, by Silvan Evans in his Geiriadur, where,
s. v. dihaed, he suggests 'unmerited' or 'undeserved' as conveying
the sense meant.

[224] The reader will find them quoted under the word Druida in
Holder's Alt-celtischer Sprachschatz: see also M. Alexandre Bertrand's
Religion des Gaulois, especially the chapter entitled Les Druides,
pp. 252-76, and Nutt's Voyage of Bran, ii. 107-12.

[225] See Valerius Maximus, ii. 6. 10.

[226] See the Book of the Dun Cow, fo. 68a.

[227] Notably Johannes Schmidt in Kuhn's Zeitschrift, xxiii. 267, where
he gives the following gradations of the stem in question:--1. anman;
2. anaman; 3. naman; 4. naman.

[228] See Clodd's Tom Tit Tot, p. 97.

[229]  Tom Tit Tot, p. 89.

[230] The Oxford Mabinogion, p. 100.

[231]  The Oxford Mabinogion, p. 35.

[232]  As to Irish, I would not lay much stress on the question
'What is your name?' being put, in a fourteenth or fifteenth century
version of the French story of Fierabras, as ca hainm tú?--literally,
'what name art thou?' see the Revue Celtique, xix. 28. It may be
mentioned here that the Irish writers of glossaries had a remarkable
way of appearing to identify words and things. Thus, for instance,
Cormac has Cruimther .i. Gædelg indi as presbyter, which O'Donovan
(edited by Stokes) has translated, p. 30, as 'Cruimther, i. e. the
Gaelic of presbyter': literally it would be rather 'of the thing
which is presbyter.' Similarly, Cormac's explanation of the Irish
aiminn, now aoibhinn, 'delightful,' runs thus in Latin, Aimind ab
eo quod est amoenum, 'from the word amoenus,' literally, 'from that
which is amoenus.' But this construction is a favourite one of Latin
grammarians, and instances will be found in Professor Lindsay's
Latin Language (Oxford, 1894), pp. 26, 28, 42, 53. On calling his
attention to it, he kindly informed me that it can be traced as far
back as Varro, from whose Lingua Latina, vi. 4, he cites Meridies ab
eo quod medius dies. So in this matter, Irish writers have merely
imitated their Latin models; and one detects a trace of the same
imitation in some of the Old Welsh glosses, for instance in the
Juvencus Codex, where we have XPS explained as irhinn issid crist,
'that which is Christ,' evidently meaning, 'the word Christos or
Christus.' So with regia, rendered by gulat, 'a state or country,'
in celsi thronus est cui regia caeli; which is glossed issit padiu
itau gulat, 'that is the word gulat for him' = 'he means his country':
see Kuhn's Beiträge, iv. 396, 411.

[233] Some instances in point, accompanied with comments on certain
eminently instructive practices and theories of the Church, will be
found in Clodd's Tom Tit Tot, pp. 100-5.

[234] For some instances of name-giving by the druid, the reader
may consult The Welsh People, pp. 66-70; and druidic baptism will be
found alluded to in Stokes' edition of Coir Anmann, and in Stokes and
Windisch's Irische Texte, iii. 392, 423. See also the Revue Celtique,
xix. 90.

[235] See The Welsh People, more especially pp. 71-4, where it has
been attempted to discuss this question more at length.

[236] See Stokes' Cormac's Glossary, translated by O'Donovan, p. 87,
and O'Curry's Manners and Customs of the Ancient Irish, ii. 218-9.

[237] See Mind for 1893, p. 390: the review is by Mr. A. T. Myers,
and the title of the book noticed is La Pathologie des Émotions,
Études physiologiques et cliniques, par Charles Féré, médecin de
Bicêtre (Paris, 1892).

[238] See Frazer's Golden Bough, i. 9, where a few most instructive
instances are given.

[239] See Guest's Mabinogion, iii. 255, where, however, Dôn is wrongly
treated as a male.

[240] One has, however, to admit that the same agency may also mar
the picture. Since the above was written I have read in Stokes'
Festschrift, pp. 7-19, a very interesting article by L. Chr. Stern,
in which he discusses some of the difficulties attaching to the term
Tuatha Dé Danann. Among other things he suggests that there was a
certain amount of confusion between Danann and dána, genitive of dán,
'art or profession'--the word meant also 'lot or destiny,' being
probably of the same origin as the Latin donum, in Welsh dawn, which
means a gift, and especially 'the gift of the gab.' But it would invert
the natural sequence to suppose any such a formula as Tuatha Dé Dána
to have preceded Tuatha Dé Danann; for why should anybody substitute
an obscure vocable Danann for dána of well-known meaning? Dr. Stern
has some doubts as to the Welsh Dôn being a female; but it would have
been more satisfactory if he had proved his surmise, or at any rate
shown that Dôn has nothing to do with Danann or Donann. I am satisfied
with such a passage in the Mabinogi of Math as that where Gwydion,
addressing Math, describes Arianrhod, daughter of Dôn, in the words,
dy nith uerch dy ch6aer, 'thy niece daughter of thy sister': see the
Mabinogion, p. 68, and, for similar references to other children of
Dôn, consult pp. 59 and 65. Arianrhod is in the older Triads, i. 40,
ii. 15, called daughter of Beli, whom one can only have regarded as
her father. So for the present I continue to accept Stokes' rendering
of Tuatha Dé Danann as 'the Folks of the Goddess Danu.'

[241] See the Oxford Mabinogion, p. 102; Guest's trans., ii. 252. The
combination occurs also in the Book of Aneurin: see Stephens' Gododin
(London, 1888), p. 322.

[242] It will be noticed that there is a discrepancy between the
gutturals of these two words: tyngu, 'to swear' (O. Ir. tongu,
'I swear'), has ng--the Kulhwch spelling, tynghaf, should probably
be tyngaf--while tynghed and its Irish equivalent imply an nc. I
do not know how to explain this, though I cannot doubt the fact of
the words being treated as cognate. A somewhat similar difference,
however, occurs in Welsh dwyn, 'to bear, carry, steal,' and dwg,
'carries, bears': see the Revue Celtique, vi. 18-9.

[243] See the Oxford Mabinogion, p. 100, and Guest's trans., ii. 249,
where it is rendered 'a wife as a helpmate,' which is more commonplace
than suggestive.

[244] La Cité antique (Paris, 1864), p. 50; see also Joachim
Marquardt's Privatleben der Römer (Leipsic, 1886), pp. 49-51, and among
the references there given may be mentioned Dionysius of Halicarnassus,
ii. 25.

[245] See Vigfusson and Powell's Corpus Poeticum Boreale, i. 126,
181-3, 197; the Prose Edda in Edda Snorronis Sturlæi (Copenhagen,
1848), i. 90-2, 102, 104, 172-86; and Simrock's Edda (Stuttgart,
1855), pp. 292-3, 295-6, 299, 316-20.

[246] Two versions of a story to account for the Ultonian couvade have
been published with a translation into German, by Prof. Windisch,
in the Berichte der k. sächs. Gesellschaft der Wissenschaften
(phil.-hist. Classe) for 1884, pp. 338 et seq. Sundry references to
the couvade will also be found in my Hibbert Lectures, where certain
mythological suggestions made with reference to it require to be
reconsidered. But when touching on this point it occurred to me that
the wholesale couvade of the Ultonian braves, at one and the same time
of the year, implied that the birth of Ultonian children, or at any
rate those of them that were to be reared, took place (in some period
or other of the history of their race) at a particular season of the
year, namely, about the beginning of the winter, that is when food
would be most abundant. I have since been confirmed in this view by
perusing Westermarck's work on the History of Human Marriage, and by
reading especially his second chapter entitled 'A Human Pairing Season
in Primitive Times.' For there I find a considerable body of instances
in point, together with a summary treatment of the whole question. But
in the case of promiscuity, such as originally prevailed doubtless
at the Ultonian Court, the question what men were to go into couvade
could only be settled by the confinement of them all, wherein we have
an alternative if not an additional reason for a simultaneous couvade.

[247] See Strabo, iii. 165, and Diodorus, v. 14.

[248] For some more detailed remarks on the reckoning of descent by
birth, see The Welsh People, pp. 36 et seq.

[249] In Welsh eli means 'ointment,' probably so called from spells
pronounced over it when used as a remedy. In the Twrch Trwyth story
(Oxford Mabinogion, p. 138) one of Arthur's men bears the curious
designation of Reid6n uab Eli Atuer, which might be Englished
'R. son of the Restoring Ointment,' unless one should rather say
'of the Restoring Enchantment.'

[250] See the Book of the Dun Cow, fo. 128b, and Windisch's Irische
Texte, pp. 138-9. The rebirth of Lug as Cúchulainn has been touched
upon in my Hibbert Lectures, p. 431; but since then the whole question
of rebirth has been discussed at length in Nutt and Meyer's volumes
entitled The Voyage of Bran (London, 1895).

[251] Tylor's Primitive Culture, ii. 4, where he gives a reference
to Gustav Klemm's Culturgeschichte, iii. 77, and Klemm's authority
proves to be Jessen, whose notes are given in a 'tractatus' bound
with Knud Leem De Lapponibus Finmarchiæ (Copenhagen, 1767): Jessen's
words in point read as follows, p. 33:--Et baptismum quidem, quem
ipsi Laugo, i. e. lavacrum appellabant, quod attinet, observandum
occurrit, foeminam Lapponicam, jam partui vicinam, atque in eo
statu Sarakkæ impensius commendatam, de nomine, nascituro infanti
imponendo, per insomnia plerumque a Jabmekio quodam admonitam
fuisse et simul de Jabmekio illo, qui, ut ipsi quidem loqui amarunt,
in hoc puero resuscitandus foret, edoctam. Hujusmodi per insomnia
factas admonitiones niëgost nuncuparunt Lappones. Si gravida mulier
a Jabmekio hac ratione edocta non fuerit, recens nati infantis vel
parenti vel cognatis incubuit, per to Myran, in tympano, securi
vel balteo susceptum, vel etiam Noaaidum consulendo, explorare, quo
potissimum nomine infans appellandus esset. In the body of Leem's work,
p. 497, one reads, that if the child sickens or cries after baptism,
this is taken to prove that the right ancestor has not been found;
but as he must be discovered and his name imposed on the child, resort
is had to a fresh baptism to correct the effects of the previous one.

[252] See Holder's Alt-celtischer Sprachschatz, s. v. Lugus; also
the index to my Hibbert Lectures, s. v. Lleu, Lug, Lugoves.

[253] For more on this subject see the chapter on the Pictish question
in The Welsh People, pp. 36-74.

[254] It is right to say that the story represents the fairies as
living under the rule of a rí, a title usually rendered by 'king';
but rí (genitive rig) was probably at one time applicable to either
sex, just as we find Gaulish names like Biturix and Visurix borne by
women. The wonder, however, is that such a line as that just quoted
has not been edited out of the verses long ago, just as one misses
any equivalent for it in Joyce's English expansion of the story in
his Old Celtic Romances, pp. 106-11. Compare, however, the Land of
the Women in the Voyage of Maildun (Joyce, pp. 152-6), and in Meyer
and Nutt's Voyage of Bran, i. 30-3.

[255] This conclusion has been given in a note at the foot of p. 37
of The Welsh People; but for a variety of instances to illustrate it
see Hartland's chapters on Supernatural Birth in his Legend of Perseus.

[256] See Frazer's article on 'The Origin of Totemism' in the
Fortnightly Review for April, 1899, p. 649. The passage to which it
refers will be found at p. 265 of Spencer and Gillen's volume, where
one reads as follows:--'Added to this we have amongst the Arunta,
Luritcha, and Ilpirra tribes, and probably also amongst others such as
the Warramunga, the idea firmly held that the child is not the direct
result of intercourse, that it may come without this, which merely,
as it were, prepares the mother for the reception and birth also of
an already-formed spirit child who inhabits one of the local totem
centres. Time after time we have questioned them on this point, and
always received the reply that the child was not the direct result
of intercourse.' It is curious to note how readily the Australian
notion here presented would develop into that of the Lapps, as given
at p. 658 from Jessen's notes.

[257] This feature of Welsh has escaped M. de Charencey, in his
instructive letter on 'Numération basque et celtique,' in No. 48 of the
Bulletin de la Soc. de Linguistique de Paris, pp. cxv-cxix. In passing,
I may be allowed to mention a numerical curiosity which occurs in
Old Irish: it has probably an important historical significance. I
refer to the word for 'seven men' occurring sometimes as morfeser,
which means, as it were, a magnus seviratus or 'big sixer.'

[258] The non-Welsh names of the fairy ancestress ought possibly to
lead one to discover the origin of that settlement; and a careful
study perhaps of the language of the Belsiaid or Bellisians, if their
Welsh has any dialectic peculiarities, might throw further light on
their past.

[259] Our stories frequently delight in giving the fairy women fine
dresses and long trains; but I would rely more on the Ystrad Meurig
smith's account (p. 245), and the case of the Pennant fairy who tears
to shreds the gown offered her (p. 109).

[260] The difference between Mod. Welsh cor and Breton korr is one
of spelling, for the reformed orthography of Welsh words only doubles
the r where it is dwelt on in the accented syllable of a longer word:
in other terms, when that syllable closes with the consonant and
the next syllable begins with it. Thus cor has, as its derivatives,
cór-rach, 'a dwarf,' plural co-ráchod, cór-ryn, 'a male dwarf,'
plural co-rýnnod. Some of these enter into place-names, such as Cwm
Corryn near Llanaelhaearn (p. 217) and Cwm Corryn draining into the
Vale of Neath; so possibly with Corwen for Cor-waen, in the sense of
'the Fairies' Meadow.' Cor and corryn are also used for the spider,
as in gwe'r cor or gwe'r corryn, 'a spider's web,' the spider being so
called on account of its spinning, an occupation in which the fairies
are represented likewise frequently engaged; not to mention that
gossamer (gwawn) is also sometimes regarded as a product of the fairy
loom (p. 103). The derivation of cor is not satisfactorily cleared
up: it has been conjectured to be related to a Med. Irish word cert,
'small, little,' and Latin curtus, 'shortened or mutilated.' To me
this means that the origin of the word still remains to be discovered.

[261] For Edern's dwarf see Foerster's Erec, lines 146-274 and passim,
the Oxford Mabinogion, pp. 248-61, and Guest's trans., ii. 73-92; and
for Peredur's the latter books, pp. 197-9 and i. 304-7 respectively.

[262] The story of Canrig (or Cantrig) Bwt is current at Llanberis,
but I do not recollect seeing it in print: I had it years ago from
my father-in-law. The statement as to Carchar Cynric Rwth comes from
William Williams' Observations on the Snowdon Mountains (London,
1802). The Bwlch y Rhiw Felen legend was read by me to the British
Archæological Association at its meeting at Llangollen, and it was
printed in its Journal for December, 1878. It is right to say that
the Llangollen story calls the woman a giantess, but I attach no
importance to that, as the picture is blurred and treated in part
allegorically. Lastly, the use of the word carchar, 'prison,' in
the term Carchar Cynric Rwth recalls Carchar Oeth ac Anoeth, or 'the
Prison of Oeth and Anoeth,' p. 619 above: the word would appear to
have been selected because in both cases the structure was underground.

[263] See the Acta Sanctorum, April 11, where one finds published the
Latin life written by Felix not long after Guthlac's death. See also
an Anglo-Saxon version, which has been edited with a translation by
Ch. W. Goodwin (London, 1848).

[264] In connexion with them Mr. Bullock Hall reminds me of Icklingham,
in West Suffolk; and there seem to be several Ickletons, and an
Ickleford, most or all of them, I am told, on the Icknield Way. The
name Icel, whose genitive Icles is the form in the original life, has
probably been inferred from the longer word Iclingas, and inserted
in due course in the Mercian pedigree, where it occupies the sixth
place in descent from Woden.

[265] Since the above was written, Dr. Ripley's important work on the
Races of Europe (London, 1900) has reached me, but too late to study. I
notice, however, that he speaks of an island of ancient population
to the north of London and extending over most of the counties of
Hertford, Buckingham, Bedford, Rutland, and Northampton, as far as
those of Cambridge and Lincoln. A considerable portion of this area
must have been within the boundaries of Coritanian territory, and it is
now characterized, according to him, by nigrescence, short stature,
and rarity of suicide, such as remind him of Wales and Cornwall:
see his maps and pp. 322, 328, 521.

[266] See Fiacc's Hymn in Stokes' Goidelica, p. 127, l. 41.

[267] The Welsh passages unfortunately fail to show whether it was
pronounced sidi or sidi: should it prove the latter, I should regard
it as the Irish word borrowed.

[268] Skene's Four Ancient Books of Wales, ii. 153-5, 181-2.

[269] For more about Picts and Pechts see some most instructive papers
recently published by Mr. David MacRitchie, such as 'Memories of the
Picts' in the Scottish Antiquary, last January, 'Underground Dwellings'
in Scottish Notes and Queries, last March, and 'Fairy Mounds' in the
Antiquary, last February and March.

[270] See p. 424 above, where, however, the object of the Ogams
written on four twigs of yew has been misconceived. I think now that
they formed simply so many letters of inquiry addressed by Dalán to
other druids in different parts of Ireland. We seem to have here a
ray of light on the early history of Ogam writing.

[271] See the Book of the Dun Cow, fo. 130b.

[272] See the Book of Leinster, fo. 117a.

[273] Corrguinigh occurs in the story of 'The Second Battle of
Moytura,' where Stokes has rendered it 'sorcerers' in the Revue
Celtique, xii. 77; and corrguinacht heads an article in O'Davoren's
Glossary, published in Stokes' Three Irish Glossaries, p. 63, where
it is defined as beth for leth cois 7 for leth laimh 7 for leth suil
ag denam na glaime dicinn, 'to be on one foot and with one hand and
one eye doing the glám dicenn.' The glám dicenn was seemingly the
special elaboration of the art of making pied de nez, which we have
tragically illustrated in the case of Caier.

[274] In Appendix B to The Welsh People, pp. 617-41.

[275] See Rosellini's Monumenti dell' Egitto (Pisa, 1832),
vol. i. plates clvi, clx, and Maspero's Histoire Ancienne (Paris,
1897), ii. 430.

[276] One may now consult Nicholson's paper on 'The Language of the
Continental Picts': see Meyer and Stern's Zeitschrift, iii. 326-8,
331-2, and note especially his reference to Herodian, iii. 14, § 8. For
Chortonicum see Die althochdeutschen Glossen (edited by Steinmeyer
and Sievers), iii. 610; also my paper on 'The Celts and the other
Aryans of the P and Q Groups' read before the Philological Society,
February 20, 1891, p. 11.

[277] I am chiefly indebted to my friend Professor A. C. Haddon for
references to information as to the dwarf races of prehistoric times. I
find also that he, among others, has anticipated me in my theory as
to the origins of the fairies: witness the following extract from the
syllabus of a lecture delivered by him at Cardiff in 1894 on Fairy
Tales:--'What are the fairies?--Legendary origin of the fairies. It
is evident from fairy literature that there is a mixture of the
possible and the impossible, of fact and fancy. Part of fairydom
refers to (1) spirits that never were embodied: other fairies are
(2) spirits of environment, nature or local spirits, and household
or domestic spirits; (3) spirits of the organic world, spirits of
plants, and spirits of animals; (4) spirits of men or ghosts; and (5)
witches and wizards, or men possessed with other spirits. All these and
possibly other elements enter into the fanciful aspect of fairyland,
but there is a large residuum of real occurrences; these point to
a clash of races, and we may regard many of these fairy sagas as
stories told by men of the Iron Age of events which happened to men
of the Bronze Age in their conflicts with men of the Neolithic Age,
and possibly these, too, handed on traditions of the Palæolithic Age.'

[278] See the Berlin Zeitschrift für Ethnologie for 1894,
vol. xxvi. pp. 189-254, which are devoted to an elaborate paper by
Dr. Jul. Kollmann, entitled 'Das Schweitzersbild bei Schaffhausen und
Pygmäen in Europa.' It closes with a long list of books and articles
to be consulted on the subject.






End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Celtic Folklore: Welsh and Manx
(Volume 2 of 2), by John Rhys

*** 