Chapter VI: The Folklore of the Wells (2)

There is, however, another Welsh legend concerning a great overflow in which a well does figure: I allude to that of Cantre'r Gwaelod, or the Bottom Hundred, a fine spacious country supposed to be submerged in Cardigan Bay. Modern euhemerism treats it as defended by embankments and sluices, which, we are told, were in the charge of the prince of the country, named Seithennin, who, being one day in his cups, forgot to shut the sluices, and thus brought about the inundation, which was the end of his fertile realm. This, however, is not the old legend: that speaks of a well, and lays the blame on a woman--a pretty sure sign of antiquity, as the reader may judge from other old stories which will readily occur to him. The Welsh legend to which I allude is embodied in a short poem in the Black Book of Carmarthen [173]: it consists of eight triplets, to which is added a triplet from the Englynion of the Graves. The following is the original with a tentative translation:--

Seithenhin sawde allan.
ac edrychuirde varanres mor.
maes guitnev rytoes.

Boed emendiceid y morvin
aehellygaut guydi cvin.
finaun wenestir [174] mor terruin.

Boed emendiceid y vachteith.
ae . golligaut guydi gueith.
finaun wenestir mor diffeith.

Diaspad mererid y ar vann caer.
hid ar duu y dodir.
gnaud guydi traha trangc hir.

Diaspad mererid . y ar van kaer hetiv.
hid ar duu y dadoluch.
gnaud guydi traha attreguch.

Diaspad mererid am gorchuit heno.
ac nimhaut gorlluit.
gnaud guydi traha tramguit.

Diaspad mererid y ar gwinev kadir
kedaul duv ae gorev.
gnaud guydi gormot eissev.

Diaspad mererid . am kymhell heno
y urth uyistauell.
gnaud guydi traha trangc pell.

Bet seithenhin synhuir vann
rug kaer kenedir a glan.
mor maurhidic a kinran.

Seithennin, stand thou forth
And see the vanguard of the main:
Gwydno's plain has it covered.

Accursed be the maiden
Who let it loose after supping,
Well cup-bearer of the mighty main.

Accursed be the damsel
Who let it loose after battle,
Well minister of the high sea.

Mererid's cry from a city's height,
Even to God is it directed:
After pride comes a long pause.

Mererid's cry from a city's height to-day,
Even to God her expiation:
After pride comes reflection.

Mererid's cry o'ercomes me to-night,
Nor can I readily prosper:
After pride comes a fall.

Mererid's cry over strong wines,
Bounteous God has wrought it:
After excess comes privation.

Mererid's cry drives me to-night
From my chamber away:
After insolence comes long death.

Weak-witted Seithennin's grave is it
Between Kenedyr's Fort and the shore,
With majestic Mor's and Kynran's.

The names in these lines present great difficulties: first comes that of Mererid, which is no other word than Margarita, 'a pearl,' borrowed; but what does it here mean? Margarita, besides meaning a pearl, was used in Welsh, e.g. under the form Marereda [175], as the proper name written in English Margaret. That is probably how it is to be taken here, namely, as the name given to the negligent guardian of the fairy well. It cannot very well be, however, the name belonging to the original form of the legend; and we have the somewhat parallel case of Ffynnon Grassi, or Grace's Well; but what old Celtic name that of Mererid has replaced in the story, I cannot say. In the next place, nobody has been able to identify Caer Kenedyr, and I have nothing to say as to Mor Maurhidic, except that a person of that name is mentioned in another of the Englynion of the Graves. It runs thus in the Black Book, fol. 33a:--

Bet mor maurhidic diessic unben.
post kinhen kinteic.
mab peredur penwetic.

The grave of Mor the Grand, ... prince,
Pillar of the ... conflict,
Son of Peredur of Penwedig.

The last name in the final triplet of the poem which I have attempted to translate is Kinran, which is otherwise unknown as a Welsh name; but I am inclined to identify it with that of one of the three who escaped the catastrophe in the Irish legend. The name there is Curnán, which was borne by the idiot of the family, who, like many later idiots, was at the same time a prophet. For he is represented as always prophesying that the waters were going to burst forth, and as advising his friends to prepare boats. So he may be set, after a fashion, over against our Seithenhin synhuir vann, 'S. of the feeble mind.' But one might perhaps ask why I do not point out an equivalent in Irish for the Welsh Seithennin, as his name is now pronounced. The fact is that no such equivalent occurs in the Irish story in question, nor exactly, so far as I know, in any other.

That is what I wrote when penning these notes; but it has occurred to me since then, that there is an Irish name, an important Irish name, which looks as if related to Seithenhin, and that is Setanta Beg, 'the little Setantian,' the first name of the Irish hero Cúchulainn. The nt, I may point out, makes one suspect that Setanta is a name of Brythonic origin in Irish; and I have been in the habit of associating it with that of the people of the Setantii [176], placed by Ptolemy on the coast of what is now Lancashire. Whether any legend has ever been current about a country submerged on the coast of Lancashire I cannot say, but the soundings would make such a legend quite comprehensible. I remember, however, reading somewhere as to the Plain of Muirthemhne, of which Cúchulainn, our Setanta Beg, had special charge, that it was so called because it had once been submarine and become since the converse, so to say, of Seithennin's country. The latter is beneath Cardigan Bay, while the other fringed the opposite side of the sea, consisting as it did of the level portion of County Louth. On the whole, I am not altogether indisposed to believe that we have here traces of an ancient legend of a wider scope than is represented by the Black Book triplets, which I have essayed to translate. I think that I am right in recognizing that legend in the Mabinogi of Branwen, daughter of Llyr. There we read that, when Brân and his men crossed from Wales to Ireland, the intervening sea consisted merely of two navigable rivers, called Lli and Archan. The story-teller adds words to the effect, that it is only since then the sea has multiplied its realms [177] between Ireland and Ynys y Kedyrn, or the Isle of the Keiri, a name which has already been discussed: see pp. 279-83.

These are not all the questions which such stories suggest; for Seithennin is represented in later Welsh literature as the son of one Seithyn, associated with Dyfed; and the name Seithyn leads off to the coast of Brittany. For I learn from a paper by the late M. le Men, in the Revue Archéologique for 1872 (xxiii. 52), that the Île de Sein is called in Breton Enez-Sun, in which Sun is a dialectic shortening of Sizun, which is also met with as Seidhun. That being so, one would seem to be right in regarding Sizun as nearly related to our Seithyn. That is not all--the tradition reminds one of the Welsh legend: M. le Men refers to the Vie du P. Maunoir by Boschet (Paris, 1697) p. 126, and adds that, in his own time, the road ending on the Pointe du Raz opposite the Île de Sein passed 'pour être l'ancien chemin qui conduisait à la ville d'Is (Kaer-a-Is, la ville de la partie basse).' It is my own experience, that nobody can go about much in Brittany without hearing over and over again about the submerged city of Is. There is no doubt that we have in these names distant echoes of an inundation story, once widely current in both Britains and perhaps also in Ireland. With regard to Wales we have an indication to that effect in the fact, that Gwydno, to whom the inundated region is treated as having belonged, is associated not only with Cardigan Bay, but also with the coast of North Wales, especially the part of it situated between Bangor and Llandudno [178]. Adjoining it is supposed to lie submerged a once fertile district called Tyno Helig, a legend about which will come under notice later. This brings the inundation story nearer to the coast where Ptolemy in the second century located the Harbour of the Setantii, about the mouth of the river Ribble, and in their name we seem to have some sort of a historical basis for that of the drunken Seithennin [179]. I cannot close these remarks better than by appending what Professor Boyd Dawkins has recently said with regard to the sea between Britain and Ireland:--

'It may be interesting to remark further that during the time of the Iberian dominion in Wales, the geography of the seaboard was different to what it is now. A forest, containing the remains of their domestic oxen that had run wild, and of the indigenous wild animals such as the bear and the red deer, united Anglesey with the mainland, and occupied the shallows of Cardigan Bay, known in legend as "the lost lands of Wales." It extended southwards from the present sea margin across the estuary of the Severn, to Somerset, Devon, and Cornwall. It passed northwards across the Irish Sea off the coast of Cheshire and Lancashire, and occupied Morecambe Bay with a dense growth of oak, Scotch fir, alder, birch, and hazel. It ranged seawards beyond the ten-fathom line, and is to be found on most shores beneath the sand-banks and mud-banks, as for example at Rhyl and Cardiff. In Cardigan Bay it excited the wonder of Giraldus de Barri [180].'

To return to fairy wells, I have to confess that I cannot decide what may be precisely the meaning of the notion of a well with a woman set carefully to see that the door or cover of the well is kept shut. It will occur, however, to everybody to compare the well which Undine wished to have kept shut, on account of its affording a ready access from her subterranean country to the residence of her refractory knight in his castle above ground. And in the case of the Glasfryn Lake, the walling and cover that were to keep the spring from overflowing were, according to the story, not water-tight, seeing that there were holes made in one of the stones. This suggests the idea that the cover was to prevent the passage of some such full-grown fairies as those with which legend seems to have once peopled all the pools and tarns of Wales. But, in the next place, is the maiden in charge of the well to be regarded as priestess of the well? The idea of a priesthood in connexion with wells in Wales is not wholly unknown.

I wish, however, before discussing these instances, to call attention to one or two Irish ones which point in another direction. Foremost may be mentioned the source of the river Boyne, which is now called Trinity Well, situated in the Barony of Carbury, in County Kildare. The following is the Rennes Dindsenchas concerning it, as translated by Dr. Stokes, in the Revue Celtique, xv. 315-6:--'Bóand, wife of Nechtán son of Labraid, went to the secret well which was in the green of Síd Nechtáin. Whoever went to it would not come from it without his two eyes bursting, unless it were Nechtán himself and his three cup-bearers, whose names were Flesc and Lám and Luam. Once upon a time Bóand went through pride to test the well's power, and declared that it had no secret force which could shatter her form, and thrice she walked withershins round the well. (Whereupon) three waves from the well break over her and deprive her of a thigh [? wounded her thigh] and one of her hands and one of her eyes. Then she, fleeing her shame, turns seaward, with the water behind her as far as Boyne-mouth, (where she was drowned).' This is to explain why the river is called Bóand, 'Boyne.' A version to the same effect in the Book of Leinster, fol. 191a, makes the general statement that no one who gazed right into the well could avoid the instant ruin of his two eyes or otherwise escape with impunity. A similar story is related to show how the Shannon, in Irish Sinann, Sinand, or Sinend, is called after a woman of that name. It occurs in the same Rennes manuscript, and the following is Stokes' translation in the Revue Celtique, xv. 457:--'Sinend, daughter of Lodan Lucharglan son of Ler out of Tir Tairngire (Land of Promise, Fairyland), went to Connla's Well, which is under sea, to behold it. That is a well at which are the hazels and inspirations (?) of wisdom, that is, the hazels of the science of poetry, and in the same hour their fruit and their blossom and their foliage break forth, and these fall on the well in the same shower, which raises on the water a royal surge of purple. Then the salmon chew the fruit, and the juice of the nuts is apparent on their purple bellies. And seven streams of wisdom spring forth and turn there again. Now Sinend went to seek the inspiration, for she wanted nothing save only wisdom. She went with the stream till she reached Linn Mna Feile, "the Pool of the Modest Woman," that is Bri Ele--and she went ahead on her journey; but the well left its place, and she followed it [181] to the banks of the river Tarr-cáin, "Fair-back." After this it overwhelmed her, so that her back (tarr) went upwards, and when she had come to the land on this side (of the Shannon) she tasted death. Whence Sinann and Linn Mna Feile and Tarr-cain.'

In these stories the reader will have noticed that the foremost punishment on any intruder who looked into the forbidden well was the instant ruin of his two eyes. One naturally asks why the eyes are made the special objects of the punishment, and I am inclined to think the meaning to have originally been that the well or spring was regarded as the eye of the divinity of the water. Should this prove well founded it looks natural that the eyes, which transgressed by gazing into the eye of the divinity, should be the first objects of that divinity's vengeance. This is suggested to me by the fact that the regular Welsh word for the source of a river is llygad, Old Welsh licat, 'eye,' as for instance in the case of Licat Amir mentioned by Nennius, § 73; of Llygad Llychwr, 'the source of the Loughor river' in the hills behind Carreg Cennen Castle; and of the weird lake in which the Rheidol [182] rises near the top of Plinlimmon: it is called Llyn Llygad y Rheidol, 'the Lake of the Rheidol's Eye.' By the way, the Rheidol is not wholly without its folklore, for I used to be told in my childhood, that she and the Wye and the Severn sallied forth simultaneously from Plinlimmon one fine morning to run a race to the sea. The result was, one was told, that the Rheidol won great honour by reaching the sea three weeks before her bigger sisters. Somebody has alluded to the legend in the following lines:--

Tair afon gynt a rifwyd
Ar dwyfron Pumlumon lwyd,
Hafren a Gwy'n hyfryd ei gwed,
A'r Rheidol fawr ei hanrhyded.

Three rivers of yore were seen
On grey Plinlimmon's breast,
Severn, and Wye of pleasant mien,
And Rheidol rich in great renown.

To return to the Irish legends, I may mention that Eugene O'Curry has a good deal to say of the mysterious nuts and 'the salmon of knowledge,' the partaking of which was synonymous with the acquisition of knowledge and wisdom: see his Manners and Customs of the Ancient Irish, ii. 142-4. He gives it as his opinion that Connla's Well was situated somewhere in Lower Ormond; but the locality of this Helicon, with the seven streams of wisdom circulating out of it and back again into it, is more intelligible when regarded as a matter of fairy geography. A portion of the note appended to the foregoing legend by Stokes is in point here: he traces the earliest mention of the nine hazels of wisdom, growing at the heads of the chief rivers of Ireland, to the Dialogue of the Two Sages in the Book of Leinster, fol. 186b, whence he cites the poet Néde mac Adnai saying whence he had come, as follows:--a caillib .i. a nói collaib na Segsa ... a caillib didiu assa mbenaiter clessa na súad tanacsa, 'from hazels, to wit, from the nine hazels of the Segais ... from hazels out of which are obtained the feats of the sages, I have come.' The relevancy of this passage will be seen when I add, that Segais was one of the names of the mound in which the Boyne rises; so it may be safely inferred that Bóand's transgression was of the same nature as that of Sinand, to wit, that of intruding on sacred ground in quest of wisdom and inspiration which was not permitted their sex: certain sources of knowledge, certain quellen, were reserved for men alone.

Before I have done with the Irish instances I must append one in the form it was told me in the summer of 1894: I was in Meath and went to see the remarkable chambered cairns on the hill known as Sliabh na Caillighe, 'the Hag's Mountain,' near Oldcastle and Lough Crew. I had as my guide a young shepherd whom I picked up on the way. He knew all about the hag after whom the hill was called except her name: she was, he said, a giantess, and so she brought there, in three apronfuls, the stones forming the three principal cairns. As to the cairn on the hill point known as Belrath, that is called the Chair Cairn from a big stone placed there by the hag to serve as her seat when she wished to have a quiet look on the country round. But usually she was to be seen riding on a wonderful pony she had: that creature was so nimble and strong that it used to take the hag at a leap from one hill-top to another. However, the end of it all was that the hag rode so hard that the pony fell down, and that both horse and rider were killed. The hag appears to have been Cailleach Bhéara, or Caillech Bérre, 'the Old Woman of Beare,' that is, Bearhaven, in County Cork [183]. Now the view from the Hag's Mountain is very extensive, and I asked the shepherd to point out some places in the distance. Among other things we could see Lough Ramor, which he called the Virginia Water, and more to the west he identified Lough Sheelin, about which he had the following legend to tell:--A long, long time ago there was no lake there, but only a well with a flagstone kept over it, and everybody would put the flag back after taking water out of the well. But one day a woman who fetched water from it forgot to replace the stone, and the water burst forth in pursuit of the luckless woman, who fled as hard as she could before the angry flood. She continued until she had run about seven miles--the estimated length of the lake at the present day. Now at this point a man, who was busily mowing hay in the field through which she was running, saw what was happening and mowed the woman down with his scythe, whereupon the water advanced no further. Such was the shepherd's yarn, which partly agrees with the Boyne and Shannon stories in that the woman was pursued by the water, which only stopped where she died. On the other hand, it resembles the Llyn Llech Owen legend and that of Lough Neagh in placing to the woman's charge only the neglect to cover the well. It looks as if we had in these stories a confusion of two different institutions, one being a well of wisdom which no woman durst visit without fatal vengeance overtaking her, and the other a fairy well which was attended to by a woman who was to keep it covered, and who may, perhaps, be regarded as priestess of the spring. If we try to interpret the Cantre'r Gwaelod story from these two points of view we have to note the following matters:--Though it is not said that the moruin, or damsel, had a lid or cover on the well, the word golligaut or helligaut, 'did let run,' implies some such an idea as that of a lid or door; for opening the sluices, in the sense of the later version, seems to me out of the question. In two of the Englynion she is cursed for the action implied, and if she was the well minister or well servant, as I take finaun wenestir to mean, we might perhaps regard her as the priestess of that spring. On the other hand, the prevailing note in the other Englynion is the traha, 'presumption, arrogance, insolence, pride,' which forms the burden of four out of five of them. This would seem to point to an attitude on the part of the damsel resembling that of Bóand or Sinand when prying into the secrets of wells which were tabu to them. The seventh Englyn alludes to wines, and its burden is gormod, 'too much, excess, extravagance,' whereby the poet seems to lend countenance to some such a later story as that of Seithennin's intemperance.

Lastly, the question of priest or priestess of a sacred well has been alluded to once or twice, and it may be perhaps illustrated on Welsh ground by the history of Ffynnon Eilian, or St. Elian's Well, which has been mentioned in another context, p. 357 above. Of that well we read as follows, s. v. Llandrillo, in the third edition of Lewis' Topographical Dictionary of Wales:--'Fynnon Elian, ... even in the present age, is frequently visited by the superstitious, for the purpose of invoking curses upon the heads of those who have grievously offended them, and also of supplicating prosperity to themselves; but the numbers are evidently decreasing. The ceremony is performed by the applicant standing upon a certain spot near the well, whilst the owner of it reads a few passages of the sacred Scriptures, and then, taking a small quantity of water, gives it to the former to drink, and throws the residue over his head, which is repeated three times, the party continuing to mutter imprecations in whatever terms his vengeance may dictate.' Rice Rees, in his Essay on the Welsh Saints (London, 1836), p. 267, speaks of St. Elian as follows: 'Miraculous cures were lately supposed to be performed at his shrine at Llanelian, Anglesey; and near to the church of Llanelian, Denbighshire, is a well called Ffynnon Elian, which is thought by the peasantry of the neighbourhood to be endued with miraculous powers even at present.'

Foulkes, s. v. Elian, in his Enwogion Cymru, published in Liverpool in 1870, expresses the opinion that the visits of the superstitious to the well had ceased for some time. The last person supposed to have had charge of the well was a certain John Evans, but some of the most amusing stories of the shrewdness of the caretaker refer to a woman who had charge of the well before Evans' time. A series of articles on Ffynnon Eilian appeared in 1861 in a Welsh periodical called Y Nofelyd, printed by Mr. Aubrey at Llanerch y Med, in Anglesey. The articles in question were afterwards published, I am told, as a shilling book, which I have not seen, and they dealt with the superstition, with the history of John Evans, and with his confessions and conversion. I have searched in vain for any account in Welsh of the ritual followed at the well. When Mrs. Silvan Evans visited the place, the person in charge of the well was a woman, and Peter Roberts, in his Cambrian Popular Antiquities, published in London in 1815, alludes to her or a predecessor of hers in the following terms, p. 246:--'Near the Well resided some worthless and infamous wretch, who officiated as priestess.' He furthermore gives one to understand that she kept a book in which she registered the name of each evil wisher for a trifling sum of money. When this had been done, a pin was dropped into the well in the name of the victim. This proceeding looks adequate from the magical point of view, though less complicated than the ritual indicated by Lewis. This latter writer calls the person who took charge of the well the owner; and I have always understood that, whether owner or not, he or she used to receive gifts, not only for placing in the well the names of men who were to be cursed, but also from those men for taking their names out again, so as to relieve them from the malediction. In fact, the trade in curses seems to have been a very thriving one: its influence was powerful and widespread.

Here there is, I think, very little doubt that the owner or guardian of the well was, so to say, the representative of an ancient priesthood of the well. That priesthood dated its origin probably many centuries before a Christian church was built near the well, and coming down to later times we have unfortunately no sufficient data to show how the right to such priesthood was acquired, whether by inheritance or otherwise; but we know that a woman might have charge of St. Elian's Well.

Let me cite another instance, which I unexpectedly discovered some years ago in the course of a ramble in quest of early inscriptions. Among other places which I visited was Llandeilo Llwydarth, near Maen Clochog, in the northern part of Pembrokeshire. This is one of the many churches bearing the name of St. Teilo in South Wales: the building is in ruins, but the churchyard is still used, and contains two of the most ancient post-Roman inscriptions in the Principality. If you ask now for 'Llandeilo' in this district, you will be understood to be inquiring after the farm house of that name, close to the old church; and I learnt from the landlady that her family had been there for many generations, though they have not very long been the proprietors of the land. She also told me of St. Teilo's Well, a little above the house: she added that it was considered to have the property of curing the whooping-cough. I asked if there was any rite or ceremony necessary to be performed in order to derive benefit from the water. Certainly, I was told: the water must be lifted out of the well and given to the patient to drink by some member of the family. To be more accurate, I ought to say that this must be done by somebody born in the house. Her eldest son, however, had told me previously, when I was busy with the inscriptions, that the water must be given to the patient by the heir, not by anybody else. Then came my question how the water was lifted, or out of what the patient had to drink, to which I was answered that it was out of the skull. 'What skull?' said I. 'St. Teilo's skull,' was the answer. 'Where do you get the saint's skull?' I asked. 'Here it is,' was the answer, and I was given it to handle and examine. I know next to nothing about skulls; but it struck me that it was the upper portion of a thick, strong skull, and it called to my mind the story of the three churches which contended for the saint's corpse. That story will be found in the Book of Llan Dâv, pp. 116-7, and according to it the contest became so keen that it had to be settled by prayer and fasting. So, in the morning, lo and behold! there were three corpses of St. Teilo--not simply one--and so like were they in features and stature that nobody could tell which were the corpses made to order and which the old one. I should have guessed that the skull which I saw belonged to the former description, as not having been much thinned by the owner's use of it; but this I am forbidden to do by the fact that, according to the legend, this particular Llandeilo was not one of the three contending churches which bore away in triumph a dead Teilo each. The reader, perhaps, would like to take another view, namely, that the story has been edited in such a way as to reduce a larger number of Teilos to three, in order to gratify the Welsh weakness for triads.

Since my visit to the neighbourhood I have been favoured with an account of the well as it is now current there. My informant is Mr. Benjamin Gibby of Llangolman Mill, who writes mentioning, among other things, that the people around call the well Ffynnon yr Ychen, or the Oxen's Well, and that the family owning and occupying the farm house of Llandeilo have been there for centuries. Their name, which is Melchior (pronounced Melshor), is by no means a common one in the Principality, so far as I know; but, whatever may be its history in Wales, the bearers of it are excellent Kymry. Mr. Gibby informs me that the current story solves the difficulty as to the saint's skull as follows:--The saint had a favourite maid servant from the Pembrokeshire Llandeilo: she was a beautiful woman, and had the privilege of attending on the saint when he was on his death-bed. As his end was approaching he gave his maid a strict and solemn command that in a year's time from the day of his burial at Llandeilo Fawr, in Carmarthenshire, she was to take his skull to the other Llandeilo, and to leave it there to be a blessing to coming generations of men, who, when ailing, would have their health restored by drinking water out of it. So the belief prevailed that to drink out of the skull some of the water of Teilo's Well ensured health, especially against the whooping-cough. The faith of some of those who used to visit the well was so great in its efficacy, that they were wont to leave it, he says, with their constitutions wonderfully improved; and he mentions a story related to him by an old neighbour, Stifyn Ifan, who has been dead for some years, to the effect that a carriage, drawn by four horses, came once, more than half a century ago, to Llandeilo. It was full of invalids coming from Pen Clawd, in Gower, Glamorganshire, to try the water of the well. They returned, however, no better than they came; for though they had drunk of the well, they had neglected to do so out of the skull. This was afterwards pointed out to them by somebody, and they resolved to make the long journey to the well again. This time they did the right thing, we are told, and departed in excellent health.

Such are the contents of Mr. Gibby's Welsh letter; and I would now only point out that we have here an instance of a well which was probably sacred before the time of St. Teilo: in fact, one would possibly be right in supposing that the sanctity of the well and its immediate surroundings was one of the causes why the site was chosen by a Christian missionary. But consider for a moment what has happened: the well paganism has annexed the saint, and established a belief ascribing to him the skull used in the well ritual. The landlady and her family, it is true, neither believe in the efficacy of the well, nor take gifts from those who visit the well; but they continue, out of kindness, as they put it, to hand the skull full of water to any one who perseveres in believing in it. In other words, the faith in the well continues in a measure intact, while the walls of the church have long fallen into utter decay. Such is the great persistence of some primitive beliefs; and in this particular instance we have a succession which seems to point unmistakably to an ancient priesthood of a sacred spring.

NOTES

[1] As to the spelling of Welsh names, it may be pointed out for the benefit of English readers that Welsh f has the sound of English v, while the sound of English f is written ff (and ph) in Welsh, and however strange it may seem to them that the written f should be sounded v, it is borrowed from an old English alphabet which did so likewise more or less systematically. Th in such English words as thin and breath is written th, but the soft sound as in this and breathe is usually printed in Welsh dd and written in modern Welsh manuscript sometimes like a small Greek delta: this will be found represented by d in the Welsh extracts edited by me in this volume.--J. R.

[2] 'Blaensawde, or the upper end of the river Sawde, is situate about three-quarters of a mile south-east from the village of Llandeusant. It gives its name to one of the hamlets of that parish. The Sawde has its source in Llyn y Fan Fach, which is nearly two miles distant from Blaensawde House.'

[3] The rendering might be more correctly given thus: 'O thou of the crimped bread, it is not easy to catch me.'--J. R.

[4] 'Mydfai parish was, in former times, celebrated for its fair maidens, but whether they were descendants of the Lady of the Lake or otherwise cannot be determined. An old pennill records the fact of their beauty thus:--

Mae eira gwyn
Ar ben y bryn,
A'r glasgoed yn y Ferdre,
Mae bedw mân
Ynghoed Cwm-brân,
A merched glân yn Mydfe.

Which may be translated,

There is white snow
On the mountain's brow,
And greenwood at the Verdre,
Young birch so good
In Cwm-brân wood,
And lovely girls in Mydfe.'

[5] Similarly this should be rendered: 'O thou of the moist bread, I will not have thee.'--J. R.

[6] In the best Demetian Welsh this word would be hwedel, and in the Gwentian of Glamorgan it is gwedel, mutated wedel, as may be heard in the neighbourhood of Bridgend.--J. R.

[7] This is not generally accepted, as some Welsh antiquarians find reasons to believe that Dafyd ap Gwilym was buried at Strata Florida.--J. R.

[8] This is not quite correct, as I believe that Dr. C. Rice Williams, who lives at Aberystwyth, is one of the Medygon. That means the year 1881, when this chapter was written, excepting the portions concerning which the reader is apprised of a later date.--J. R.

[9] Later it will be seen that the triban in the above form was meant for neither of the two lakes, though it would seem to have adapted itself to several. In the case of the Fan Fach Lake the town meant must have been Carmarthen, and the couplet probably ran thus:

Os na cha'i lonyd yn ym lle,
Fi foda dre' Garfyrdin.

[10] Llwch is the Goidelic word loch borrowed, and Llyn Cwm y Llwch literally means the Lake of the Loch Dingle.

[11] I make no attempt to translate these lines, but I find that Mr. Llewellyn Williams has found a still more obscure version of them, as follows:--

Prw med, prw med, prw'r gwartheg i dre',
Prw milfach a malfach, pedair llualfach,
Llualfach ac Acli, pedair lafi,
Lafi a chromwen, pedair nepwen,
Nepwen drwynog, brech yn llyn a gwaun dodyn,
Tair bryncethin, tair cyffredin,
Tair caseg du, draw yn yr eithin;
Dewch i gyd i lys y brenin.

[12] The Ty-fry is a house said to be some 200 years old, and situated about two miles from Rhonda Fechan: more exactly it is about one-fourth of a mile from the station of Ystrad Rhonda, and stands at the foot of Mynyd yr Eglwys on the Treorky side. It is now surrounded by the cottages of colliers, one of whom occupies it. For this information I have to thank Mr. Probert Evans.

[13] It is to be borne in mind that the sound of h is uncertain in Glamorgan pronunciation, whether the language used is Welsh or English. The pronunciation indicated, however, by Mr. Evans comes near enough to the authentic form written Elfarch.

[14] In the Snowdon district of Gwyned the call is drwi, drwi, drw-i bach, while in North Cardiganshire it is trwi, trwi, trw-e fach, also pronounced sometimes with a surd r, produced by making the breath cause both lips to vibrate--tR'wi, tR'wi, which can hardly be distinguished from pR'wi, pR'wi. For the more forcibly the lips are vibrated the more difficult it becomes to start by closing them to pronounce p: so the tendency with R' is to make the preceding consonant into some kind of a t.

[15] This is the Welsh form of the borrowed name Jane, and its pronunciation in North Cardiganshire is Siân, with si pronounced approximately like the ti of such French words as nation and the like; but of late years I find the si made into English sh under the influence, probably, to some extent of the English taught at school. This happens in North Wales, even in districts where there are still plenty of people who cannot approach the English words fish and shilling nearer than fiss and silling. Siôn and Siân represent an old importation of English John and Jane, but they are now considered old-fashioned and superseded by John and Jane, which I learned to pronounce Dsiòn and Dsiên, except that Siôn survives as a family name, written Shone, in the neighbourhood of Wrexham.

[16] This term dafad (or dafaden), 'a sheep,' also used for 'a wart,' and dafad (or dafaden) wyllt, literally 'a wild sheep,' for cancer or epithelioma, raises a question which I am quite unable to answer: why should a wart have been likened to a sheep?

[17] The name is probably a shortening of Cawellyn, and that perhaps of Cawell-lyn, 'Creel or Basket Lake.' Its old name is said to have been Llyn Tardenni.

[18] Tyn is a shortening of tydyn, which is not quite forgotten in the case of Tyn Gadlas or Tyn Siarlas (for Tydyn Siarlys), 'Charles' Tenement,' in the immediate neighbourhood. Similarly the Anglesey Farm of Tyn yr Onnen used at one time to be Tydyn yr Onnen in the books of Jesus College, Oxford, to which it belongs.

[19] That is the pronunciation which I have learnt at Llanberis, but there is another, which I have also heard, namely Derwenyd.

[20] Ystrad is the Welsh corresponding to Scotch strath, and it is nearly related to the English word strand. It means the flat land near a river.

[21] Betws (or Bettws) Garmon seems to mean Germanus's Bede-hus or House of Prayer, but Garmon can hardly have come down in Welsh from the time of the famous saint in the fifth century, as it would then have probably yielded Gerfon and not Garmon: it looks as if it had come through the Goidelic of this country.

[22] One of the rare merits of our Welsh bards is their habit of assuming permanent noms de plume, by means of which they prevent a number of excellent native names from falling into utter oblivion in the general chaos of Anglo-Hebrew ones, such as Jones, Davies, and Williams, which cover the Principality. Welsh place-names have similarly been threatened by Hebrew names of chapels, such as Bethesda, Rehoboth, and Jerusalem, but in this direction the Jewish mania has only here and there effected permanent mischief.

[23] The Brython was a valuable Welsh periodical published by Mr. Robert Isaac Jones, at Tremadoc, in the years 1858-1863, and edited by the Rev. Chancellor Silvan Evans, who was then the curate of Llangïan in Lleyn: in fact he was curate for fourteen years! His excellent work in editing the Brython earned for him his diocesan's displeasure, but it is easier to imagine than to describe how hard it was for him to resign the honorarium of £24 derived from the Brython when his stipend as a clergyman was only £92, at the same time that he had dependent on him a wife and six children. However much some people affect to laugh at the revival of the national spirit in Wales, we have, I think, got so far as to make it, for some time to come, impossible for a Welsh clergyman to be snubbed on account of his literary tastes or his delight in the archæology of his country.

[24] This parish is called after a saint named Tegái or Tygái, like Tyfaelog and Tysilio, and though the accent rests on the final syllable nothing could prevent the grammarian Huw Tegai and his friends from making it into Tégai in Huw's name.

[25] For can they now usually put Ann, and Mr. Hughes remembers hearing it so many years ago.

[26] I remember seeing a similar mound at Llanfyrnach, in Pembrokeshire; and the last use made of the hollow on the top of this also is supposed to have been for cock-fights.

[27] My attention has also been called to freit, frete, freet, fret, 'news, inquiry, augury,' corresponding to Anglo-Saxon freht, 'divination.' But the disparity of meaning seems to stand in the way of our ffrit being referred to this origin.

[28] The Oxford Mabinogion, p. 63; Guest, iii. 223.

[29] See the Itinerarium Kambriæ, i. 2 (pp. 33-5), and Celtic Britain, p. 64.

[30] As for example in the Archæologia Cambrensis for 1870, pp. 192-8; see also 1872, pp. 146-8.

[31] Howells has also an account of Llyn Savadhan, as he writes it: see his Cambrian Superstitions, pp. 100-2, where he quaintly says that the story of the wickedness of the ancient lord of Syfadon is assigned as the reason why 'the superstitious little river Lewenny will not mix its water with that of the lake.' Lewenny is a reckless improvement of Mapes' Leueni (printed Lenem); and Giraldus' Clamosum implies an old spelling Llefni, pronounced the same as the later spelling Llyfni, which is now made into Llynfi or Llynvi: the river so called flows through the lake and into the Wye at Glasbury. As to Safadan or Syfadon, it is probably of Goidelic origin, and to be identified with such an Irish name as the feminine Samthann: see Dec. 19 in the Martyrologies. To keep within our data, we are at liberty to suppose that this was the name of the wicked princess in the story, and that she was the ancestress of a clan once powerful on and around the lake, which lies within a Goidelic area indicated by its Ogam inscriptions.

[32] These were held, so far as I can gather from the descriptions usually given of them, exactly as I have seen a kermess or kirchmesse celebrated at Heidelberg, or rather the village over the Neckar opposite that town. It was in 1869, but I forget what saint it was with whose name the kermess was supposed to be connected: the chief features of it were dancing and beer drinking. It was by no means unusual for a Welsh Gwyl Fabsant to bring together to a rural neighbourhood far more people than could readily be accommodated; and in Carnarvonshire a hurriedly improvised bed is to this day called gwely g'l'absant, as it were 'a bed (for the time) of a saint's festival.' Rightly or wrongly the belief lingers that these merry gatherings were characterized by no little immorality, which made the better class of people set their faces against them.

[33] Since the editing of this volume was begun I have heard that it is intended to publish the Welsh collection which Mr. Jones has made: so I shall only give a translation of the Edward Llwyd version of the afanc story: see section v. of this chapter.

[34] This word is not in Welsh dictionaries, but it is Scotch and Manx Gaelic, and is possibly a remnant of the Goidelic once spoken in Gwyned.

[35] Our charlatans never leave off trying to make this into Tryfaen so as to extract maen, 'stone,' from it. They do not trouble themselves to find out whether it ever was Tryfaen or not: in fact they rather like altering everything as much as they can.

[36] Ystrádllyn, with the accent on the penult, is commonly pronounced Strállyn, and means 'the strand of the lake,' and the hollow is named after it Cwm Strállyn, and the lake in it Llyn Cwm Strállyn, which literally means 'the Lake of the Combe of the Strand of the Lake'--all seemingly for the luxury of forgetting the original name of the lake, which I have never been able to ascertain.

[37] So Mr. Jones puts it: I have never heard of any other part of the Principality where the children are usually baptized before they are eight days old.

[38] I cannot account for this spelling, but the ll in Bellis is English ll, not the Welsh ll, which represents a sound very different from that of l.

[39] Where not stated otherwise, as in this instance, the reader is to regard this chapter as written in the latter part of the year 1881.

[40] See Giraldus' Itinerarium Kambriæ, i. 8 (pp. 75-8); some discussion of the whole story will be found in chapter iii of this volume.

[41] Dr. Moore explains this to be cabbages and potatoes, pounded and mixed with butter or lard.

[42] It would be interesting to know what has become of this letter and others of Llwyd's once in the possession of the canon, for it is not to be supposed that the latter ever took the trouble to make an accurate copy of them any more than he did of any other MSS.

[43] There is also a Sarn yr Afanc, 'the Afanc's Stepping Stones,' on the Ogwen river in Nant Ffrancon: see Pennant's Tours in Wales, iii. 101.

[44] The oxen should accordingly have been called Ychain Pannog; but the explanation is not to be taken seriously. These oxen will come under the reader's notice again, to wit in chapter x.

[45] The lines are copied exactly as given at p. 189 (I. vi. 25-30) of The Poetical Works of Lewis Glyn Cothi, edited for the Cymmrodorion by Gwallter Mechain and Tegid, and printed at Oxford in the year 1837.

[46] This, I should say, must be a mistake, as it contradicts all the folklore which makes the rowan an object of dread to the fairies.

[47] See Choice Notes from 'Notes and Queries' (London, 1859), p. 147.

[48] It is more likely that it is a shortening of Llyn y Barfog, meaning the Lake of the Bearded One, Lacus Barbati as it were, the Bearded One being somebody like the hairy monster of another lake mentioned at p. 18 above, or him of the white beard pictured at p. 127.

[49] So far from afanc meaning a crocodile, an afanc is represented in the story of Peredur as a creature that would cast at every comer a poisoned spear from behind a pillar standing at the mouth of the cave inhabited by it; see the Oxford Mabinogion, p. 224. The corresponding Irish word is abhac, which according to O'Reilly means 'a dwarf, pigmy, manikin; a sprite.'

[50] I should not like to vouch for the accuracy of Mr. Pughe's rendering of this and the other Welsh names which he has introduced: that involves difficult questions.

[51] The writer meant the river known as Dyfi or Dovey; but he would seem to have had a water etymology on the brain.

[52] This involves the name of the river called Disynni, and Diswnwy embodies a popular etymology which is not worth discussing.

[53] It would, I think, be a little nearer the mark as follows:--

Come thou, Einion's Yellow One,
Stray-horns, the Particoloured Lake Cow,
And the Hornless Dodin:
Arise, come home.

But one would like to know whether Dodin ought not rather to be written Dodyn, to rhyme with Llyn.

[54] Hywel's real name is William Davies, Tal y Bont, Cardiganshire. As adjudicator I became acquainted with several stories which Mr. Davies has since given me permission to use, and I have to thank him for clues to several others.

[55] Or Llech y Deri, as Mr. Williams tells me in a letter, where he adds that he does not know the place, but that he took it to be in the Hundred of Cemmes, in North-west Pembrokeshire. I take Llech y Derwyd to be fictitious; but I have not succeeded in finding any place called by the other name either.

[56] Perhaps the more usual thing is for the man returning from Faery to fall into dust on the spot: see later in this chapter the Curse of Pantannas, which ends with an instance in point, and compare Howells, pp. 142, 146.

[57] B. Davies, that is, Benjamin Davies, who gives this tale, was, as I learn from Gwynionyd, a native of Cenarth. He was a schoolmaster for about twelve years, and died in October, 1859, at Merthyr, near Carmarthen: he describes him as a good and intelligent man.

[58] This is ordinarily written Cenarth, the name of a parish on the Teifi, where the three counties of Cardigan, Pembroke, and Carmarthen meet.

[59] The name Llan Dydoch occurs in the Bruts, A.D. 987 and 1089, and is the one still in use in Welsh; but the English St. Dogmael's shows that it is derived from that of Dogfael's name when the mutation consonant f or v was still written m. In Welsh the name of the saint has been worn down to Dogwel, as in St. Dogwell's near Fishguard, and Llandogwel in Llanrhudlad parish in Anglesey: see Reece's Welsh Saints, p. 211. It points back to an early Brythonic form Doco-maglos, with doco of the same origin as Latin dux, ducis, 'a leader,' and maglo-s = Irish mal, 'a lord or prince.' Dogfael's name assumes in Llan Dydoch a Goidelic form, for Dog-fael would have to become in Irish Doch-mhal, which, cut down to Doch with the honorific prefix to, has yielded Ty-doch; but I am not clear why it is not Ty-doch. Another instance of a Goidelic form of a name having the local preference in Wales to this day offers itself in Cyfelach and Llan Gyfelach in Glamorganshire. The Welsh was formerly Cimeliauc (Reece, p. 274). Here may also be mentioned St. Cyngar, otherwise called Docwinnus (Reece, p. 183), but the name occurs in the Liber Landavensis in the genitive both as Docunn-i and Docguinni, the former of which seems easily explained as Goidelic for an early form of Cyngar, namely Cuno-caros, from which would be formed To-chun or Do-chun. This is what seems to underlie the Latin Docunnus, while Docguinni is possibly a Goidelic modification of the written Docunni, unless some such a name as Doco-vindo-s has been confounded with Docunnus. In one instance the Book of Llan Dâv has instead of Abbas Docunni or Docguinni, the shorter designation, Abbas Dochou (p. 145), which one must not unhesitatingly treat as Dochon, seeing that Dochou would be in later book Welsh Dochau, and in the dialect of the district Docha; and that this occurs in the name of the church of Llandough near Cardiff, and Llandough near Cowbridge. The connexion of a certain saint Dochdwy with these churches does not appear at all satisfactorily established, but more light is required to help one to understand these and similar church names.

[60] This name which may have come from Little England below Wales, was once not uncommon in South Cardiganshire, as Mr. Williams informs me, but it is now mostly changed as a surname into Davies and Jones! Compare the similar fortunes of the name Mason mentioned above, p. 68.

[61] I have not succeeded in discovering who the writer was, who used this name.

[62] This name as it is now written should mean 'the Gold's Foot,' but in the Demetian dialect aur is pronounced oer, and I learn from the rector, the Rev. Rhys Jones Lloyd, that the name has sometimes been written Tref Deyrn, which I regard as some etymologist's futile attempt to explain it. More importance is to be attached to the name on the communion cup, dating 1828, and reading, as Mr. Lloyd kindly informs me, Poculum Eclyseye de Tre-droyre. Beneath Droyre some personal name possibly lies concealed.

[63] Y Ferch o Gefn Ydfa ('The Maid of Cefn Ydfa'), by Isaac Craigfryn Hughes, published by Messrs. Daniel Owen, Howell & Co., Cardiff, 1881.