Chapter VIII: Welsh Cave Legends (2)

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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