Chapter VI: The Folklore of the Wells (3)

[64] In a letter dated February 9, 1899, he states, however, that as regards folklore the death of his father at the age of seventy-six, in the year 1889, had been a great loss to him; for he adds that he was perfectly familiar with the traditions of the neighbourhood and had associated with older men. Among the latter he had been used to talk with an old man whose father remembered Cromwell passing on his way to destroy the Iron Works of Pant y Gwaith, where the Cavaliers had had a cannon cast, which was afterwards used in the engagement at St. Fagan's.

[65] This term is sometimes represented as being Bendith eu Mamau, 'their Mother's Blessing,' as if each fairy were such a delightful offspring as to constitute himself or herself a blessing to his or her mother; but I have not found satisfactory evidence to the currency of Bendith eu Mamau, or, as it would be pronounced in Glamorgan, Béndith i Máma. On the whole, therefore, perhaps one may regard the name as pointing back to the Celtic goddesses known in Gaul in Roman times as the Mothers.

[66] On Pen Craig Daf Mr. Hughes gives the following note:--It was the residence of Dafyd Morgan or 'Counsellor Morgan,' who, he says, was executed on Kennington Common for taking the side of the Pretender. He had retreated to Pen y Graig, where his abode was, in order to conceal himself; but he was discovered and carried away at night. Here follows a verse from an old ballad about him:--

Dafyd Morgan ffel a ffol, Taffy Morgan, sly and daft,
Fe aeth yn ol ei hyder: He did his bent go after:
Fe neidod naid at rebel haid He leaped a leap to a rebel swarm,
Pan drod o blaid Pretender. To arm for a Pretender.

[67] A tòn is any green field that is used for grazing and not meant to be mown, land which has, as it were, its skin of grassy turf unbroken for years by the plough.

[68] On this Mr. Hughes has a note to the effect that the whole of one milking used to be given in Glamorgan to workmen for assistance at the harvest or other work, and that it was not unfrequently enough for the making of two cheeses.

[69] Since this was first printed I have learnt from Mr. Hughes that the first cry issued from the Black Cauldron in the Taff (o'r Gerwyn Du ar Daf), which I take to be a pool in that river.

[70] The Fan is the highest mountain in the parish of Merthyr Tydfil, Mr. Hughes tells me: he adds that there was on its side once a chapel with a burial ground. Its history seems to be lost, but human bones have, as he states, been frequently found there.

[71] The above, I am sorry to say, is not the only instance of this nasty trick associating itself with Gwent, as will be seen from the story of Bwca'r Trwyn in chapter x.

[72] This chapter, except where a later date is suggested, may be regarded as written in the summer of 1883.

[73] Trefriw means the town of the slope or hillside, and stands for Tref y Riw, not tref y Rhiw, which would have yielded Treffriw, for there is a tendency in Gwyned to make the mutation after the definite article conform to the general rule, and to say y law, 'the hand,' and y raw, 'the spade,' instead of what would be in books y llaw and y rhaw from yr llaw and yr rhaw.

[74] Why the writer spells the name Criccieth in this way I cannot tell, except that he was more or less under the influence of the more intelligible spelling Crugcaith, as where Lewis Glyn Cothi. I. xxiv, sang

Rhys ab Sion â'r hysbys iaith,
Gwr yw acw o Grugcaith.

This spelling postulates the interpretation Crug-Caith, earlier Crug y Ceith, 'the mound or barrow of the captives,' in reference to some forgotten interment; but when the accent receded to the first syllable the second was slurred almost out of recognition, so that Crug-ceith, or Cruc-ceith, became Crúceth, whence Crúcieth and Cricieth. The Bruts have Crugyeith the only time it occurs, and the Record of Carnarvon (several times) Krukyth.

[75] Out of excessive fondness for our Arthur English people translate this name into Arthur's Seat instead of Idris' Seat; but Idris was also somebody: he was a giant with a liking for the study of the stars. But let that be: I wish to say a word concerning his name: Idris may be explained as meaning 'War-champion,' or the like; and, phonologically speaking, it comes from Iud-rys, which was made successively into Id-rys, Idris. The syllable iud meant battle or fight, and it undergoes a variety of forms in Welsh names. Thus before n, r, l, and w, it becomes id, as in Idnerth, Idloes, and Idwal, while Iud-hael yields Ithel, whence Ab Ithel, anglicized Bethel. At the end, however, it is yd or ud, as in Gruffud or Gruffyd, from Old Welsh Grippiud, and Maredud or Meredyd for an older Marget-iud. By itself it is possibly the word which the poets write ud, and understand to mean lord; but if these forms are related, it must have originally meant rather a fighter, soldier, or champion.

[76] There is a special similarity between this and an Anglesey story given by Howells, p. 138: it consists in the sequence of seeing the fairies dance and finding money left by them. Why was the money left?

[77] It was so called by the poet D. ab Gwilym, cxcii. 12, when he sang:

I odi ac i luchio To bring snow and drifting flakes
Odiar lechwed Moel Eilio. From off Moel Eilio's slope.

[78] This is commonly pronounced 'Y Gath Dorwen,' but the people of the neighbourhood wish to explain away a farm name which could, strangely enough, only mean 'the white-bellied cat'; but y Garth Dorwen, 'the white-bellied garth or hill,' is not a very likely name either.

[79] The hiring time in Wales is the beginning of winter and of summer; or, as one would say in Welsh, at the Calends of Winter and the Calends of May respectively. In North Cardiganshire the great hiring fair was held at the former date when I was a boy, and so, as I learn from my wife, it was in Carnarvonshire.

[80] In a Cornish story mentioned in Choice Notes, p. 77, we have, instead of ointment, simply soap. See also Mrs. Bray's Banks of the Tamar, pp. 174-7, where she alludes to H. Cornelius Agrippa's statement how such ointment used to be made--the reference must, I think, be to his book De Occulta Philosophia Libri III (Paris, 1567), i. 45 (pp. 81-2).

[81] See the Mabinogion, pp. 1-2; Evans' Facsimile of the Black Book of Carmarthen, fol. 49b-50a; Rhys' Arthurian Legend, pp. 155-8; Edmund Jones' Spirits in the County of Monmouth, pp. 39, 71, 82; and in this volume, pp. 143, 203, above. I may mention that the Cornish also have had their Cwn Annwn, though the name is a different one, to wit in the phrase, 'the Devil and his Dandy-dogs': see Choice Notes, pp. 78-80.

[82] As it stands now this would be unmutated Césel Gýfarch, 'Cyfarch's Nook,' but there never was such a name. There was, however, Elgýfarch or Aelgýfarch and Rhygýfarch, and in such a combination as Césel Elgýfarch there would be every temptation to drop one unaccented el.

[83] Owing to some oversight he has 'a clean or a dirty cow' instead of cow-yard or cow-house, as I understand it.

[84] Cwta makes cota in the feminine in North Cardiganshire; the word is nevertheless only the English cutty borrowed. Du, 'black,' has corresponding to it in Irish, dubh. So the Welsh word seems to have passed through the stages dyv, dyw, before yw was contracted into û, which was formerly pronounced like French û, as proved by the grammar already mentioned (p. 22) of J. D. Rhys, published in London in 1592; see p. 33, to which my attention has been called by Prof. J. Morris Jones. In Old or pre-Norman Welsh m did duty for m and v, so one detects dyv as dim in a woman's name Penardim, 'she of the very black head'; there was also a Penarwen, 'she of the very blonde head.' The look of Penardim having baffled the redactor of the Branwen, he left the spelling unchanged: see the (Oxford) Mabinogion, p. 26. The same sort of change which produced du has produced cnu, 'a fleece,' as compared with cneifio, 'to fleece'; lluarth, 'a kitchen garden,' as compared with its Irish equivalent lubhghort. Compare also Rhiwabon, locally pronounced Rhuabon, and Rhiwallon, occurring sometimes as Rhuallon. But the most notable rôle of this phonetic process is exemplified by the verbal nouns ending in u, such as caru, 'to love,' credu, 'to believe,' tyngu, 'to swear,' in which the u corresponds to an m termination in Old Irish, as in sechem, 'to follow,' cretem, 'belief,' sessam or sessom, 'to stand.'

[85] In medieval Welsh poetry this name was still a dissyllable; but now it is pronounced Llyn, in conformity with the habit of the Gwyndodeg, which makes into porfyd what is written porfeyd, 'pastures,' and pronounced porféid in North Cardiganshire. So in the Lleyn name Sarn Fyllteyrn the second vocable represents Maelteyrn, in the Record of Carnarvon (p. 38) Mayltern: it is now sounded Mylltyrn with the second y short and accented. Lleyn is a plural of the people (genitive Llaën in Porth Dinllaën), used as a singular of their country, like Cymru = Cymry, and Prydyn. The singular is llain, 'a spear,' in the Book of Aneurin: see Skene, ii. 64, 88, 92.

[86] It is also called dolur byr, or the 'short disease'; I believe I have been told that it is the disease known to 'the vet.' as anthrax.

[87] Here the writer seems to have been puzzled by the mh of Amheirchion, and to have argued back to a radical form Parch; but he was on the wrong tack--Amheirchion comes from Ap-Meirchion, where the p helped to make the m a surd, which, with the syllabic accent on the succeeding vowel, became fixed as mh, while the p disappeared by assimilation. We have, later on, a similar instance in Owen y Mhaxen for Owen Amhacsen = O. ap Macsen. Another instance will be found at the opening of the Mabinogi of Branwen, to wit, in the word prynhawngweith, 'once on an afternoon,' from prynhawn, 'afternoon,' for which our dictionaries substitute prydnawn, with the accent on the ultima, though D. ab Gwilym used pyrnhawn, as in poem xl. 30. But the ordinary pronunciation continues to be prynháwn or pyrnháwn, sometimes reduced in Gwyned to pnawn. Let me add an instance which has reached me since writing the above: In the Archæologia Cambrensis for 1899, pp. 325-6, we have the pedigree of the Ameridiths from the Visitation of Devonshire in 1620: in the course of it one finds that Iuan ap Merydeth has a son Thomas Amerideth, who, knowing probably no Welsh, took to writing his patronymic more nearly as it was pronounced. The line is brought down to Ames Amerideth, who was created baronet in 1639. Amerideth of course = Ap Meredyd, and the present member of the family who writes to the Archæologia Cambrensis spells his patronymic more correctly, Ameridith; but if it had survived in Wales it might have been Amheredyd. For an older instance than any of these see the Book of Taliessin, poem xlix (= Skene, ii. 204), where one reads of Beli Amhanogan, 'B. ab Mynogan.'

[88] This is pronounced Rhiwan, though probably made up of Rhiw-wen, for it is the tendency of the Gwyndodeg to convert e and ai of the unaccented ultima into a, and so with e in Glamorgan; see such instances as Cornwan and casag, p. 29 above. It is possibly a tendency inherited from Goidelic, as Irish is found to proceed in the same way.

[89] I may mention that some of the Francises of Anglesey are supposed to be descendants of Frazers, who changed their name on finding refuge in the island in the time of the troubles which brought there the ancestor of the Frazer who, from time to time, claims to be the rightful head of the Lovat family.

[90] According to old Welsh orthography this would be written Moudin, and in the book Welsh of the present day it would have to become Meudin. Restored, however, to the level of Gallo-Roman names, it would be Mogodunum or Magodunum. The place is known as Castell Moedin, and includes within it the end of a hill about halfway between Llannarth and Lampeter.

[91] For other mentions of the colours of fairy dress see pp. 44, 139 above, where red prevails, and contrast the Lake Lady of Llyn Barfog clad in green, p. 145.

[92] This name means the Bridge of the Blessed Ford, but how the ford came to be so called I know not. The word bendigaid, 'blessed,' comes from the Latin verb benedico, 'I bless,' and should, but for the objection to nd in book Welsh, be bendigaid, which, in fact, it is approximately in the northern part of the county, where it is colloquially sounded Pont Rhyd Fyndiged, Fydiged, or even Fdiged, also Pont Rhyd mdiged, which represents the result of the unmutated form Bdiged coming directly after the d of rhyd. Somewhat the same is the case with the name of the herb Dail y Fendigaid, literally 'the Leaves of the Blessed' (in the feminine singular without any further indication of the noun to be supplied). This name means, I find, 'hypericum androsæmum, tutsan,' and in North Cardiganshire we call it Dail y Fyndiged or Fdiged, but in Carnarvonshire the adjective is made to qualify dail, so that it sounds Dail Bydigad or Bdigad, 'Blessed Leaves.'

[93] I am far from certain what y nos, 'the night,' may mean in such names as this and Craig y Nos, 'the Rock of the Night' (p. 254 above), to which perhaps might be added such an instance as Blaen Nos, 'the Point of (the?) Night,' in the neighbourhood of Llandovery, in Carmarthenshire. Can the allusion be merely to thickly overshadowed spots where the darkness of night might be said to lurk in defiance of the light of day? I have never visited the places in point, and leading questions addressed to local authorities are too apt to elicit misleading answers: the poetic faculty is dangerously rampant in the Principality.

[94] Dâr is a Glamorgan pronunciation, metri gratiâ of what is written daear, 'earth': compare d'ar-fochyn in Glamorgan for a badger, literally 'an earth pig.' The dwarf's answer was probably in some sort of verse, with dâr and iâr to rhyme.

[95] Applied in Glamorgan to a child that looks poorly and does not grow.

[96] In Cardiganshire a conjurer is called dyn hysbys, where hysbys (or, in older orthography, hyspys) means 'informed': it is the man who is informed on matters which are dark to others; but the word is also used of facts--Y mae 'r peth yn hysbys, 'the thing is known or manifest.' The word is divisible into hy-spys, which would be in Irish, had it existed in the language, so-scese for an early su-squestia-s, the related Irish words being ad-chiu, 'I see,' pass. preterite ad-chess, 'was seen,' and the like, in which ci and ces have been equated by Zimmer with the Sanskrit verb caksh, 'to see,' from a root quas. The adjective cynnil applied to the dyn hyspys in Glamorgan means now, as a rule, 'economical' or 'thrifty,' but in this instance it would seem to have signified 'shrewd,' 'cunning,' or 'clever,' though it would probably come nearer the original meaning of the word to render it by 'smart,' for it is in Irish conduail, which is found applied to ingenious work, such as the ornamentation on the hilt of a sword. Another term for a wizard or conjurer is gwr cyfarwyd, with which the reader is already familiar. Here cyfarwyd forms a link with the kyvarwyd of the Mabinogion, where it usually means a professional man, especially one skilled in story and history; and what constituted his knowledge was called kyvarwydyt, which included, among other things, acquaintance with boundaries and pedigrees, but it meant most frequently perhaps story; see the (Oxford) Mabinogion, pp. 5, 61, 72, 93. All these terms should, strictly speaking, have gwr--gwr hyspys, gwr cynnil, and gwr cyfarwyd--but for the fact that modern Welsh tends to restrict gwr to signify 'a husband' or 'a married man,' while dyn, which only signifies a mortal, is made to mean man, and provided with a feminine dynes, 'woman,' unknown to good Welsh literature. Thus the spoken language is in this matter nearly on a level with English and French, which have quite lost the word for vir and anêr.

[97] Rhyd y Gloch means 'the Ford of the Bell,' in allusion, as the story goes, to a silver bell that used in former ages to be at Llanwonno Church. The people of Llanfabon took a liking to it, and one night a band of them stole it; but as they were carrying it across the Taff the moon happened to make her appearance suddenly, and they, in their fright, taking it to be sunrise, dropped the bell in the bed of the river, so that nothing has ever been heard of it since. But for ages afterwards, and even at the present day indeed, nothing could rouse the natives of Llanfabon to greater fury than to hear the moon spoken of as haul Llanfabon, 'the sun of Llanfabon.'

[98] It was peat fires that were usual in those days even in Glamorgan.

[99] See Hartland's Science of Fairy Tales, pp. 112-6.

[100] In no other version has Mr. Reynolds heard cwcwll wy iâr, but either plisgyn or cibyn wy iâr, to which I may add masgal from Mr. Craigfryn Hughes' versions. The word cwcwll usually means a cowl, but perhaps it is best here to treat cwcwll as a distinct word derived somehow from conchylium or the French coquille, 'a shell.'

[101] The whole passage will be found in the Itinerarium Kambriæ, i. 8 (pp. 75-8), and Giraldus fixes the story a little before his time somewhere in the district around Swansea and Neath. With this agrees closely enough the fact that a second David, Dafyd ab Geralld or David Fitzgerald, appears to have been consecrated Bishop of St. David's in 1147, and to have died in 1176.

[102] The words in the original are: Nec carne vescebantur, nec pisce; lacteis plerumque cibariis utentes, et in pultis modum quasi croco confectis.

[103] Perhaps it is this also that suggested the name Eliodorus, as it were Hêliodôros; for the original name was probably the medieval Welsh one of Elidyr = Irish Ailithir, ailither, 'a pilgrim': compare the Pembrokeshire name Pergrin and the like. It is curious that Elidyr did not occur to Glasynys and prevent him from substituting Elfod, which is quite another name, and more correctly written Elfod for the earlier El-fodw, found not only as Elbodu but also Elbodug-o, Elbodg, Elbot and Elfod: see p. 117 above.

[104] For one or two more instances from Wales see Howells, pp. 54-7. Brittany also is a great country for death portents: see A. Le Braz, Légende de la Mort en Basse-Bretagne (Paris, 1893), also Sébillot's Traditions et Superstitions de la Haute-Bretagne (Paris, 1882), i. pp. 270-1. For Scotland see The Ghost Lights of the West Highlands by Dr. R. C. Maclagan in Folk-Lore for 1897, pp. 203-256, and for the cognate subject of second sight see Dalyell's Darker Superstitions of Scotland, pp. 466-88.

[105] Another word for the toeli is given by Silvan Evans as used in certain parts of South Wales, namely, tolaeth or dolath, as to which he mentions the opinion that it is a corruption of tylwyth, a view corroborated by Howells using, p. 31, the plural tyloethod; but it could not be easily explained except as a corruption through the medium of English. Elias Owen, p. 303, uses the word in reference to the hammering and rapping noise attending the joinering of a phantom coffin for a man about to die, a sort of rehearsal well known throughout the Principality to every one who has ears spiritually tuned. Unfortunately I have not yet succeeded in locating the use of the word tolaeth, except that I have been assured by a Carmarthen man that it is current in Welsh there as toleth, and by a native of Pumsant that it is in use from Abergwili up to Llanbumsant.

[106] See, for instance, pp. 200, 221, 228.

[107] Mrs. Williams-Ellis of Glasfryn writes to me that the place is now called Bwlch Trwyn Swncwl, that it is a gap on the highest part of the road crossing from Llanaelhaearn to Pistyll, and that it is quite a little mountain pass between bleak heather-covered hillsides, in fact a very lonely spot in the outskirts of the Eifl, and with Carnguwch blocking the horizon in the direction of Cardigan Bay.

[108] For this I am indebted to Mr. Gwenogvryn Evans' Report on MSS. in the Welsh Language, i. 585 k. The words were written by Williams about the beginning of the seventeenth century, and his û does not mean w. He was, however, probably thinking of cawr, cewri, and such instances as tawaf, 'taceo,' and tau, 'tacet.' At all events there is no trace of u in the local pronunciation of the name Tre'r Ceiri. I have heard it also as Tre' Ceiri without the definite article; but had this been ancient one would expect it softened into Tre' Geiri.

[109] See the Oxford Mabinogion, pp. 110, 113, and 27-9, 36-41, 44, also 309, where a Triad explains that the outposts were Anglesey, Man, and Lundy. But the other Triads, i. 3 = iii. 67, make them Orkney, Man, and Wight, for which we have the older authority of Nennius. § 8. The designation Tair Ynys Brydain, 'The Three Isles of Prydain,' was known to the fourteenth-century poet, Iolo Goch: see his works edited by Ashton, p. 669.

[110] For Prydyn in the plural see Skene's Four Ancient Books of Wales, ii. 209, also 92, where Pryden is the form used. In modern Welsh the two senses of Cymry are distinguished in writing as Cymry and Cymru, but the difference is merely one of spelling and not very ancient.

[111] So Geoffrey (i. 12-15) brings his Trojans on their way to Britain into Aquitania, where they fight with the Pictavienses, whose king he calls Goffarius Pictus.

[112] Cadarn and cadr postulate respectively some such early forms as catrno-s and cadro-s, which according to analogy should become cadarn and cadr. Welsh, however, is not fond of dr; so here begins a bifurcation: (1) retaining the d unchanged cadro-s yields cadr, or (2) dr is made into dr, and other changes set in resulting in the ceir of ceiri, as in Welsh aneirif, 'numberless,' from eirif, 'number,' of the same origin as Irish áram from *ad-rim = *ad-rima, and Welsh eiliw, 'species, colour,' for ad-liw, in both of which i follows d combinations; but that is not essential, as shown by cader, cadair, for Old Welsh cateir, 'a chair,' from Latin cat[h]edra. The word that serves as our singular, namely cawr, is far harder to explain; but on the whole I am inclined to regard it as of a different origin, to wit, the Goidelic word caur, 'a giant or hero,' borrowed. The plural cewri or cawri is formed from the singular cawr, which means a giant, though, associated in the plural with ceiri, it has sometimes to follow suit with that vocable in connoting dress.

[113] The most important of these are the old Breton kazr, now kaer, 'beautiful or pretty,' and old Cornish caer of the same meaning; elsewhere we have, as in Greek, the Doric kekadmai and kekadmenos, to be found used in reference to excelling or distinguishing one's self; also kosmos, 'good order, ornament,' while in Sanskrit there is the theme çad, 'to excel or surpass.' The old meaning of 'beautiful,' 'decorated,' or 'loudly dressed,' is not yet lost in the case of ceiri.

[114] For the text see the Oxford Mabinogion, pp. 193-4, and for comparisons of the incident see Nutt's Holy Grail, p. 154 et seq.; and Rhys' Arthurian Legend, pp. 75-6. A more exact parallel, however, is to be mentioned in the next chapter.

[115] This chapter was written mostly in 1891.

[116] The spelling there used is phynnodderee, to the perversity of which Cregeen calls attention in his Dictionary. In any case the pronunciation is always approximately fun-ó-dur-i or fun-ód-ri, with the accent on the second syllable.

[117] I am inclined to think that the first part of the word fenodyree is not fynney, the Manx word for 'hair,' but the Scandinavian word which survives in the Swedish fjun, 'down.' Thus fjun-hosur (for the fjun-hosa suggested by analogy) would explain the word fenodyree, except its final ee, which is obscure. Compare also the magic breeks called finn-brækr, as to which see Vigfusson's Icelandic Dict. s. v. finnar.

[118] Cumming's Isle of Man (London, 1848), p. 30, where he refers his readers to Waldron's Description of the Isle of Man: see pp. 28, 105.

[119] See Windisch's Irische Grammatik, p. 120.

[120] The Manx word for the rowan tree, incorrectly called a mountain ash, is cuirn, which is in Mod. Irish caorthann, genitive caorthainn, Scotch Gaelic caorunn; but in Welsh books it is cerdin, singular cerdinen, and in the spoken language mostly cerdin, cerding, singular cerdinen, cerdingen. This variation seems to indicate that these words have possibly been borrowed by the Welsh from a Goidelic source; but the berry is known in Wales by the native name of criafol, from which the wood is frequently called, especially in North Wales, coed criafol, singular coeden griafol or pren criafol. The sacredness of the rowan is the key to the proper names Mac-Cáirthinn and Der-Cháirthinn, with which the student of Irish hagiology is familiar. They mean the Son and the Daughter of the Rowan respectively, and the former occurs as Maqui Cairatini on an Ogam inscribed stone recently discovered in Meath, not very far from the Boyne.

[121] I am sorry to say that it never occurred to me to ask whether the shooting was done with such modern things as guns. But Mr. Arthur Moore assures me that it is always understood to be bows and arrows, not guns.

[122] Edited by Oswald Cockayne for the Master of the Rolls (London, 1864-6): see more especially vol. ii. pp. 156-7, 290-1, 401; vol. iii. pp. 54-5.

[123] Mr. Moore is not familiar with this term, but I heard it at Surby, in the south; and I find buidseach and buidseachd given as Highland Gaelic words for a witch and witchcraft respectively.

[124] See Stokes' Goidelica, p. 151.

[125] This chapter was written in 1891, except the portions of it which refer to later dates indicated.

[126] See the Stokes-O'Donovan edition of Cormac (Calcutta, 1868), pp. 19, 23.

[127] Sir John Sinclair's Statistical Account of Scotland, xi. 620; Pennant's Tour in Scotland in 1769 (3rd edition, Warrington, 1774), i. 97, 186, 291; Thomas Stephens' Gododin, pp. 124-6; and Dr. Murray in the New English Dictionary, s. v. Beltane.

[128] In my Hibbert Lectures on Celtic Heathendom, pp. 517-21.

[129] As to the Thargelia and Delia, see Preller's Griechische Mythologie, i. 260-2, and A. Mommsen's Heortologie, pp. 414-25.

[130] See section H of the Report of the Liverpool Meeting of the British Association in 1896, pp. 626-56.

[131] It is my impression that it is crowned with a small tumulus, and that it forms the highest ground in Jurby, which was once an island by itself. The one between Ramsey and Bride is also probably the highest point of the range. But these are questions which I should like to see further examined, say by Mr. Arthur Moore or Mr. Kermode.

[132] Cronk yn Irree Laa, despite the gender, is the name as pronounced by all Manxmen who have not been misled by antiquarians. To convey the other meaning, referring to the day watch, the name would have to be Cronk ny Harrey Laa; in fact, a part of the Howe in the south of the island is called Cronk ny Harrey, 'the Hill of the Watch.' Mr. Moore tells me that the Jurby cronk was one of the eminences for 'Watch and Ward'; but he is now of opinion that the high mountain of Cronk yn Irree Laa in the south was not. As to the duty of the inhabitants to keep 'Watch and Ward' over the island, see the passage concerning it extracted from the Manx Statutes (vol. i. p. 65) by Mr. Moore in his Manx Surnames, pp. 183-3; also my preface to the same work, pp. v-viii.

[133] Quoted from Oliver's Monumenta de Insula Manniæ, vol. i. (Manx Society, vol. iv) p. 84: see also Cumming's Isle of Man, p. 258.

[134] See the New English Dictionary, s. v. 'Allhallows.'

[135] This comes near the pronunciation usual in Roxburghshire and the south of Scotland generally, which is, as Dr. Murray informs me, Hunganay without the m occurring in the other forms to be mentioned presently. But so far as I have been able to find, the Manx pronunciation is now Hob dy naa, which I have heard in the north, while Hob ju naa is the prevalent form in the south.

[136] See my Hibbert Lectures, pp. 514-5; and as to hiring fairs in Wales see pp. 210-2 above.

[137] See Robert Bell's Early Ballads (London, 1877), pp. 406-7, where the following is given as sung at Richmond in Yorkshire:--

To-night it is the New-Year's night, to-morrow is the day,
And we are come for our right, and for our ray,
As we used to do in old King Henry's day.
Sing, fellows, sing, Hagman-heigh.
If you go to the bacon-flick, cut me a good bit;
Cut, cut and low, beware of your maw;
Cut, cut and round, beware of your thumb,
That me and my merry men may have some.
Sing, fellows, sing, Hagman-heigh.
If you go to the black-ark bring me X mark;
Ten mark, ten pound, throw it down upon the ground,
That me and my merry men may have some.
Sing, fellows, sing, Hagman-heigh.

[138] The subject is worked out in Nicholson's Golspie, pp. 100-8, also in the New English Dictionary, where mention is made of a derivation involving calendæ, which reminds me of the Welsh call for a New-Year's Gift--Calennig! or C'lennig! in Arfon 'Y Ngh'lennig i! 'My Calends gift if you please!'

[139] On being asked, after reading this paper to the Folk-Lore Society, who was supposed to make the footmarks in the ashes, I had to confess that I had been careless enough never to have asked the question. I have referred it to Mr. Moore, who informs me that nobody, as I expected, will venture on any explanation by whom the footmarks are made.

[140] This seems to imply the application of the same adjective, some time or other, to clean water and a handsome man, just as we speak in North Cardiganshire of dwr glân, 'clean water,' and bachgen glân, 'a handsome boy.'

[141] In Phillips' Book of Common Prayer this is called Lá nolick y biggy, 'Little Nativity Day,' and Lá ghian blieny, 'The Day of the Year's End,' meaning, of course, the former end of the year, not the latter: see pp. 55, 62, 66.

[142] See my Hibbert Lectures, pp. 514-5, and the Brython, ii. 20, 120: an instance in point occurs in the next chapter.

[143] This has been touched upon in my Hibbert Lectures, p. 676; but to the reasons there briefly mentioned should be added a reference to the position allotted to intercalary months in the Norse calendar, namely, at the end of the summer half, that is, as I think, at the end of the ancient Norse year.

[144] My paper was read before the Folk-Lore Society in April or May, 1891, and Miss Peacock's notes appeared in the journal of the Society in the following December: see pp. 509-13.

[145] See Choice Notes, p. 76.

[146] See the third edition of Wm. Nicholson's Poetical Works (Castle-Douglas, 1878), pp. 78, 81.

[147] See p. 321 above and the references there given; also Howells' Cambrian Superstitions, p. 58.

[148] Pomponius Mela De Chorographia, edited by Parthey, iii, chap. 6 (p. 72); see also my Hibbert Lectures, pp. 195-6, where, however, the identification of the name Sena with that of Sein should be cancelled. Sein seems to be derived from the Breton Seidhun, otherwise modified into Sizun and Sun: see chap. vi below.

[149] See my Hibbert Lectures, pp. 195-7; also my Arthurian Legend, pp. 367-8, where a passage in point is cited at length from Plutarch De Defectu Oraculorum, xviii. (= the Didot edition of Plutarch's works, iii. 511); the substance of it will be found given likewise in chap. viii below.

[150] For an allusion to the traffic in winds in Wales see Howells, p. 86, where he speaks as follows:--'In Pembrokeshire there was a person commonly known as the cunning man of Pentregethen, who sold winds to the sailors, after the manner of the Lapland witches, and who was reverenced in the neighbourhood in which he dwelt, much more than the divines.'

[151] This may turn out to be all wrong; for I learn from the Rev. John Quine, vicar of Malew, in Man, that there is a farm called Balthane or Bolthane south of Ballasalla, and that in the computus (of 1540) of the Abbey Tenants it is called Biulthan. This last, if originally a man's name, would seem to point back to some such a compound as Beo-Ultán. In his Manx Names, p. 138, Mr. Moore suggests the possibility of explaining the name as bwoailtyn, 'folds or pens'; but the accentuation places that out of the question. See also the Lioar Manninagh, iii. 167, where Mr. C. Roeder, referring to the same computus passage, gives the name as Builthan in the boundary inter Cross Jvar Builthan. This would be read by Mr. Quine as inter Cross Ivar et Biulthan, 'between Cross-Ivar and Bolthane.' For the text of the boundary see Johnstone's edition of the Chronicon Manniæ (Copenhagen, 1786), p. 48, and Oliver's Monumenta de Insula Manniæ, vol. i. p. 207; see also Mr. Quine's paper on the Boundary of Abbey Lands in the Lioar Manninagh, iii. 422-3.

[152] I say 'approximately,' as, more strictly speaking, the ordinary pronunciation is Sndaen, almost as one syllable, and from this arises a variant, which is sometimes written Stondane, while the latest English development, regardless of the accentuation of the Anglo-Manx form, which is Santon, pronounced Sántn, makes the parish into a St. Ann's! For the evidence that it was the parish of a St. Sanctán see Moore's Names, p. 209.

[153] The Athenæum for April 1, 1893, p. 415. I may here remark that Mr. Borlase's note on do fhagaint is, it seems to me, unnecessary: let do fhagaint stand, and translate, not 'I leave' but 'to leave.' The letter should be consulted for curious matter concerning Croagh Patrick, its pagan stations, cup-markings, &c.

[154] Since this paper was read to the Folk-Lore Society a good deal of information of one kind or another has appeared in its journal concerning the first-foot: see more especially Folk-Lore for 1892, pp. 253-64, and for 1893, pp. 309-21.

[155] This was written at the beginning of the year 1892.

[156] With this compare what Mr. Gomme has to say of a New Year's Day custom observed in Lanarkshire: see p. 633 of the Ethnographic Report referred to at p. 103 above, and compare Henderson, p. 74.

[157] Old-fashioned grammarians and dictionary makers are always delighted to handle Mrs. Partington's broom: so Kelly thinks he has done a fine thing by printing guee, 'prayer,' and gwee, 'cursing.'

[158] This was written at the end of 1892, and read to a joint meeting of the Cymmrodorion and Folk-Lore Societies on January 11, 1893.

[159] Some account of them was given by me in Folk-Lore for 1892, p. 380; but somehow or other my contribution was printed unrevised, with results more peculiar than edifying.

[160] In Folk-Lore for 1893, pp. 58-9.

[161] In the neighbourhood I find that the word gwaeldyn in this verse is sometimes explained to mean not a worthless but an ailing person, on the strength of the fact that the adjective gwael is colloquially used both for vile and for ailing.

[162] Since writing the above remarks the following paragraph, purporting to be copied from the Liverpool Mercury for November 18, 1896, appeared in the Archæologia Cambrensis for 1899, p. 334:--'Two new fishes have just been put in the "Sacred Well," Ffynnon y Sant, at Tyn y Ffynnon, in the village of Nant Peris, Llanberis. Invalids in large numbers came, during the last century and the first half of the present century, to this well to drink of its "miraculous waters"; and the oak box, where the contributions of those who visited the spot were kept, is still in its place at the side of the well. There have always been two "sacred fishes" in this well; and there is a tradition in the village to the effect that if one of the Tyn y Ffynnon fishes came out of its hiding-place when an invalid took some of the water for drinking or for bathing purposes, cure was certain; but if the fishes remained in their den, the water would do those who took it no good. Two fishes only are to be put in the well at a time, and they generally live in its waters for about half a century. If one dies before the other, it would be of no use to put in a new fish, for the old fish would not associate with it, and it would die. The experiment has been tried. The last of the two fishes put in the well about fifty years ago died last August. It had been blind for some time previous to its death. When taken out of the water it measured seventeen inches, and was buried in the garden adjoining the well. It is stated in a document of the year 1776 that the parish clerk was to receive the money put in the box of the well by visitors. This money, together with the amount of 6s. 4d., was his annual stipend.' Tyn y Ffynnon means 'the Tenement of the Well,' tyn being a shortened form of tydyn, 'a tenement,'as mentioned at p. 33 above; but the mapsters make it into ty'n = ty yn, 'a house in,' so that the present instance, Ty'n y Ffynnon, could only mean 'the House in the Well,' which, needless to say, it is not. But one would like to know whether the house and land were once held rent-free on condition that the tenant took care of the sacred fish.

[163] See Ashton's Iolo Goch, p. 234, and Lewis' Top. Dict.

[164] See my Hibbert Lectures, p. 229, and the Iolo MSS., pp. 42-3, 420-1.

[165] A curious note bearing on this name occurs in the Jesus College MS. 20 (Cymmrodor, viii. p. 86) in reference to the name Morgannwg, 'Glamorgan':--O enw Morgant vchot y gelwir Morgannwc. Ereill a dyweit. Mae o en&wwelsh; Mochteyrn Predein. 'It is from the name of the above Morgan that Morgannwg is called. Others say that it is from the name of the mochdeyrn of Pictland.' The mochteyrn must have been a Pictish king or mórmáer called Morgan. The name occurs in the charters from the Book of Deer in Stokes' Goidelica. pp. 109, 111, as Morcunt, Morcunn, and Morgunn undeclined, also with Morgainn for genitive; and so in Skene's Chronicles of the Picts and Scots, pp. 77, 317, where it is printed Morgaind; see also Stokes' Tigernach, in the Revue Celtique, xvii. 198. Compare Geoffrey's story, ii. 15, which introduces a northern Marganus to account for the name Margan, now Margam, in Morgannwg.

[166] M. Loth's remarks in point will be found in the Revue Celtique, xiii. 496-7, where he compares with tut the Breton teuz, 'lutin, génie malfaisant ou bienfaisant'; and for the successive guesses on the subject of the name Morgan tut one should also consult Zimmer's remarks in Foerster's Introduction to his Erec, pp. xxvii-xxxi, and my Arthurian Legend, p. 391, to which I should add a reference to the Book of Ballymote, fo. 360a, where we have o na bantuathaib, which O'Curry has rendered 'on the part of their Witches' in his Manners and Customs of the Ancient Irish, iii. 526-7. Compare dá bhantuathaigh, 'two female sorcerers,' in Joyce's Keating's History of Ireland, pp. 122-3.

[167] For all about the Children of Lir, and about Liban and Lough Neagh, see Joyce's Old Celtic Romances, pp. 4-36, 97-105.

[168] On my appealing to Cadrawd, one of the later editors, he has found me the exact reference, to wit, volume ix of the Cyfaill (published in 1889), p. 50; and he has since contributed a translation of the story to the columns of the South Wales Daily News for February 15, 1899, where he has also given an account of Crymlyn, which is to be mentioned later.

[169] Judging from the three best-known instances, y bala meant the outlet of a lake: I allude to this Bala at the outlet of Llyn Tegid; Pont y Bala, 'the Bridge of the bala,' across the water flowing from the Upper into the Lower Lake at Llanberis; and Bala Deulyn, 'the bala of two lakes,' at Nantlle. Two places called Bryn y Bala are mentioned s. v. Bala in Morris' Celtic Remains, one near Aberystwyth, at a spot which I have never seen, and the other near the lower end of the Lower Lake of Llanberis, as to which it has been suggested to me that it is an error for Bryn y Bela. It is needless to say that bala has nothing to do with the Anglo-Irish bally, of such names as Ballymurphy or Ballynahunt: this vocable is in English bailey, and in South Wales beili, 'a farm yard or enclosure,' all three probably from the late Latin balium or ballium, 'locus palis munitus et circumseptus.' Our etymologists never stop short with bally: they go as far as Balaklava and, probably, Ballarat, to claim cognates for our Bala.

[170] Cadrawd here gives the Welsh as '2 bladur ... 2 dyd o wair,' and observes that the lacuna consists of an illegible word of three letters. If that word was either sef, 'that is,' or neu, 'or,' the sense would be as given above. In North Cardiganshire we speak of a day's mowing as gwaith gwr, 'a man's work for a day,' and sometimes of a gwaith gwr bach, 'a man's work for a short day.'

[171] See By-Gones for May 24, 1899. The full name of Welshpool in Welsh is Trallwng Llywelyn, so called after a Llywelyn descended from Cuneda, and supposed to have established a religious house there; for there are other Trallwngs, and at first sight it would seem as if Trallwng had something to do with a lake or piece of water. But there is a Trallwng, for instance, near Brecon, where there is no lake to give it the name; and my attention has been called to Thos. Richards' Welsh-English Dictionary, where a trallwng is said to be 'such a soft place on the road (or elsewhere) as travellers may be apt to sink into, a dirty pool.' So the word seems to be partly of the same derivation as go-llwng, 'to let go, to give way.' The form of the word in use now is Trallwm, not Trallwng or Trallwn.

[172] See the Book of the Dun Cow, fo. 39a-41b and Joyce's Old Celtic Romances, pp. 97-105; but the story may now be consulted in O'Grady's Silva Gadelica, i. 233-7, translated in ii. 265-9. On turning over the leaves of this great collection of Irish lore, I chanced, i. 174, ii. 196, on an allusion to a well which, when uncovered, was about to drown the whole locality but for a miracle performed by St. Patrick to arrest the flow of its waters. A similar story of a well bursting and forming Lough Reagh, in County Galway, will be found told in verse in the Book of Leinster; fo. 202b: see also fo. 170a, and the editor's notes, pp. 45, 53.

[173] See Evans' autotype edition of the Black Book of Carmarthen, fos. 53b, 54a, also 32a: the punctuation is that of the MS. In the seventh triplet kedaul is written keadaul, which seems to mean kadaul corrected into kedaul; but the a is not deleted, so other readings are possible.

[174] In the Iolo MSS., p. 89, finaun wenestir is made into Ffynon-Wenestr and said to be one of the ornamental epithets of the sea; but I am convinced that it should be rather treated as ffynnon fenestr with wenestir or fenestr mutated from menestr, which meant a servant, attendant, cup-bearer: for one or two instances see Pughe's Dictionary. The word is probably, as suggested by M. Loth in his Mots Latins, p. 186. the old French menestre, 'cup-bearer,' borrowed. Compare the mention of Nechtán's men having access to the secret well in Sid Nechtáin, p. 390 below, and note that they were his three menestres or cup-bearers.

[175] See the Cymmrodor, viii. 88 (No. xxix), where a Marereda is mentioned as a daughter of Madog son of Meredyd brother to Rhys Gryg.

[176] There is another reading which would make them into Segantii, and render it irrelevant--to say the least of it--to mention them here.

[177] See the Mabinogion, p. 35: the passage has been mistranslated in Lady Charlotte Guest's Mabinogion, iii. 117.

[178] See my Arthurian Legend, pp. 263-4.

[179] I do not profess to see my way through the difficulties which the probable etymological connexion between the names Setantii, Setanta, Seithyn, and Seithennin implies. But parts of the following string of guesses may be found to hold good:--Seithyn is probably more correct than Seithin, as it rhymes with cristin = Cristyn (in Cristynogaeth: see Silvan Evans' Geiriadur, s. v., and Skene's Four Ancient Books, ii. 210); and it might be assumed to be from the same stem as Seizun; but, supposing it to represent an earlier Seithynt, it would equate phonologically with Setanta, better Setinte, of which the genitive Setinti actually occurs, as a river name, in the Book of the Dun Cow, fo. 125b: see my Hibbert Lectures, p. 455, and see also the Revue Celtique, xi. 457. It would mean some such an early form Setntio-s, and Seithenhin, another derivative from the same stem, Setntino-s. But the retention of n before t in Setinte proves it not to be unconnected with Seithyn, but borrowed from some Brythonic dialect when the latter was pronounced Seithntio-s. If this be anywhere nearly right one has to assume that the manuscripts of Ptolemy giving the genitive plural as Setantiôn or Segantiôn should have read Sektantiôn, unless one should rather conjecture Segtantiôn with cht represented by gt as in Ogams in Pembrokeshire: witness Ogtene and Maqui Quegte. This conjecture as to the original reading would suggest that the name was derived from the seventh numeral sechtn, just as that of the Galloway people of the Novantæ seems to be from the ninth numeral. Ptolemy's next entry to the Harbour of the Setantii is the estuary of the Belisama, supposed to be the Mersey; and next comes the estuary of the Seteia or Segeia, supposed to be the Dee. Now the country of the Setantii, when they had a country, may have reached from their harbour near the mouth of the Ribble to the Seteia or the Dee without the name Seteia or Segeia having anything to do with their own, except that it may have influenced the latter in the manuscripts of Ptolemy's text. Then we possibly have a representative of Seteia or Segeia in the Saidi or Seidi, sometimes appended to Seithyn's name. In that case Seithyn Saidi, in the late Triad iii. 37, would mean Seithyn of Seteia, or the Dee. A Mab Saidi occurs in the Kulhwch story (Mabinogion, p. 106), also Cas, son of Saidi (ib. 110); and in Rhonabwy's Dream Kadyrieith, son of Saidi (ib. 160); but the latter vocable is Seidi in Triad ii. 26 (ib. 303). It is to be borne in mind that Ptolemy does not represent the Setantii as a people in his time: he only mentions a harbour called after the Setantii. So it looks as if they then belonged to the past--that in fact they were, as I should put it, a Goidelic people who had been conquered and partly expelled by Brythonic tribes, to wit, by the Brigantes, and also by the Cornavii in case the Setantii had once extended southwards to the Dee. This naturally leads one to think that some of them escaped to places on the coast, such as Dyfed, and that some made for the opposite coast of Ireland, and that, by the time when the Cúchulainn stories came to be edited as we have them, the people in question were known to the redactors of those stories only by the Brythonic form of their name, which underlies that of Setanta Beg, or the Little Setantian. Those of them who found a home on the coast of Cardigan Bay may have brought with them a version of the inundation story with Seithennin, son of Seithyn, as the principal figure in it. So in due time he had to be attached to some royal family, and in the Iolo MSS., pp. 141-2, he is made to descend from a certain Plaws Hen, king of Dyfed, while the saints named as his descendants seem to have belonged chiefly to Gwyned and Powys.

[180] See the Professor's Address on the Place of a University in the History of Wales, delivered at Bangor at the opening ceremony of the Session of 1899-1900 (Bangor, 1900), p. 6. The reference to Giraldus is to his Itin. Kambriæ, i. 13 (p. 100), and the Expugnatio Hibernica, i. 36 (p. 284).

[181] Instead of 'she followed it' one would have expected 'it followed her'; but the style is very loose and rough.

[182] As a 'Cardy' I have here two grievances, one against my Northwalian fellow countrymen, that they insist on writing Rheidiol out of sheer weakness for the semivowel i; and the other against the compilers of school books on geography, who give the lake away to the Wye or the Severn. I am told that this does not matter, as our geographers are notoriously accurate about Natal and other distant lands; so I ought to rest satisfied.

[183] Professor Meyer has given a number of extracts concerning her in his notes to his edition of The Vision of Mac Conglinne (London, 1892), pp. 131-4, 208-10, and recently he has published The Song of the Old Woman of Beare in the Otia Merseiana (London, 1899), pp. 119-28, from the Trinity College codex, H. 3, 18, where we are told, among other things, that her name was Digdi, and that she belonged to Corcaguiny. The name Béara, or Bérre, would seem to suggest identification with that of Bera, daughter of Eibhear, king of Spain, and wife of Eoghan Taidhleach, in the late story of The Courtship of Moméra, edited by O'Curry in his Battle of Magh Leana (Dublin, 1855); but the other name Digdi would seem to stand in the way. However none of the literature in point has yet been discovered in any really old manuscript, and it may be that the place-name Berre, in Caillech Bérri, has usurped the place of the personal name Béra, whose antiquity in some such a form as Béra or Méra is proved by its honorific form Mo-mera: see O'Curry's volume, p. 166, and his Introduction, p. xx.