_Spoken._ Please to give us a 'apenny.

Some of these rhymes are heard in Glamorganshire and elsewhere at

Christmas and New Year's.

The puzzling jug is a vessel in use in some quarters as a means of

increasing the hilarity of a Hallow-e'en party. It is a stone jug,

'out of which each person is compelled to drink. From the brim,

extending about an inch below the surface, it has holes fantastically

arranged so as to appear like ornamental work, and which are not

perceived except by the perspicacious; three projections, of the size

and shape of marbles, are around the brim, having a hole of the size

of a pea in each; these communicate with the bottom of the jug through

the handle, which is hollow, and has a small hole at the top, which,

with two of the holes being stopped by the fingers, and the mouth

applied to the one nearest the handle, enables one to suck the

contents with ease; but this trick is unknown to every one, and

consequently a stranger generally makes some mistake, perhaps applying

his mouth as he would to another jug, in which case the contents

(generally ale) issue through the fissures on his person, to the no

small diversion of the spectators.'[130]

Another merry custom of All Hallows was--and is--twco am 'falau,

bobbing for apples. A large tub (crwc) is brought into the kitchen of

a farm-house and filled with water; a dozen apples are thrown into it,

and the rustic youths bob for them with their mouths. To catch up two

apples at a single mouthful is a triumphant achievement. Again the

revellers will form a semicircle before the fire, while there depends

above their mouths from a hook in the ceiling, a string with a stick

attached. At one end of the stick is an apple, at the other end a

candle. To snatch the apple with the lips, and yet avoid the candle,

is the aim of the competitors. The stick is so hung that it turns

easily on its axis, and the bobbers often find themselves catching

the candle in their hair while aiming at the apple. This appears to be

a relic of the ancient Welsh game of quintain, or gwyntyn.

FOOTNOTES:

[129] Brand, 'Pop. Ant.,' i., 191.

[130] 'Camb. Sup.,' 174.

V.

November the Fifth, the anniversary of the Gunpowder Plot, is much

observed in Wales. 'God grant,' said Bishop Sanderson in one of his

sermons, 'that we nor ours ever live to see November the Fifth

forgotten, or the solemnity of it silenced.' The words are similar to

those used by a great American, of the early days of the Republic,

with regard to the 4th of July--God grant it might never be forgotten.

But the rites by which both days are celebrated are as old as

tradition, and much older than history. As the Americans have given a

historical significance to bonfires and fireworks, so the English

before them did to sacrificing a puppet on Guy Fawkes' Day; and so

again some Catholic nations have made the rite a religious one, in the

hanging of Judas. All three customs are traced to the same

original--the ancient Druidic sacrifices to the sun-god Beal or

Moloch. It is noteworthy that the Fifth of November and the Fourth of

July--or rather the fiery features of these days--are alike voted a

nuisance by respectable and steady-going people in the countries to

which they respectively belong.

VI.

On St. Clement's Day (the 23rd of November) it was customary in

Pembrokeshire in the last century to parade an effigy of a carpenter,

which had been hung to the church steeple the night before. Cutting

the effigy down from where it hung, the people carried it about the

village, repeating loudly some doggerel verses which purported to be

the last will and testament of St. Clement, distributing to the

different carpenters in town the several articles of dress worn by the

effigy. After the image was thus stripped of its garments, one by one,

the padded remains were thrown down and carefully kicked to pieces by

the crowd.

CHAPTER IV.

Nadolig, the Welsh Christmas--Bell-Ringing--Carols--Dancing

to the Music of the Waits--An Evening in

Carmarthenshire--Shenkin Harry, the Preacher, and the Jig

Tune--Welsh Morality--Eisteddfodau--Decorating Houses and

Churches--The Christmas Thrift-box--The Colliers' Star--The

Plygain--Pagan Origin of Christmas Customs.

I.

We come now to the most interesting holiday season of the year, by

reason of its almost universality of observance among Christian

peoples, and the variety of customs peculiar to it. In the land of

Arthur and Merlin it is a season of such earnest and widespread

cordiality, such warm enthusiasm, such hearty congratulations between

man and man, that I have been nowhere equally impressed with the

geniality and joyousness of the time. In some Catholic countries one

sees more merriment on the day itself; indeed, the day itself is not

especially merry in Wales, at least in its out-door aspects. It is the

season rather than the day which is merry in Wales. The festival is

usually understood, throughout Christendom, to include twelve days;

the Welsh people not only make much of the twelve days, but they

extend the peculiar festivities of the season far beyond those limits.

Christmas has fairly begun in Wales a week or two before

Christmas-day. The waits are patrolling the streets of Cardiff as

early as December 5th, and Christmas festivals are held as early as

December 19th, at which Christmas-trees are displayed, and their

boughs denuded of the toys and lollipops in which the juvenile heart

delights. After Christmas-day the festival continues I know not just

how long, but apparently for weeks.

The characteristic diversions of the Christmas season are, in the

main, alike in all Christian countries. In Wales many well-known old

customs are retained which in some other parts of Great Britain have

disappeared, such as the mummers, the waits, carols, bell-ringings,

etc. Not only do the bell-ringers of the several churches throughout

the principality do their handsomest on their own particular bells,

but there are grand gatherings, at special points, of all the

bell-ringers for leagues around, who vie with each other in showing

what feats they can perform, how they can astonish you with their

majors, bob-majors, and triple bob-majors, on the brazen clangers of

the steeples. At Cowbridge, for instance, on Christmas will come

together the ringers from Aberdare, Penarth, St. Fagan's, Llantrisant,

Llanblethian, and other places, thirty or forty in number, and after

they have rung till the air above the town is black with flying clefs

and quavers from the steeples, they will all sit down to a jolly

Christmas-dinner at the Bear. The bands of waits, or 'pipers of the

watch,' who wake the echoes of the early morning with their carols,

are heard in every Welsh town and village. In some towns there are

several bands and much good-natured rivalry. The universal love of

music among the Welsh saves the waits from degenerating into the

woe-begone creatures they are in some parts, where the custom has that

poor degree of life which can be kept in it by shivering clusters of

bawling beggars who cannot sing. Regularly organised and trained

choirs of Welshmen perambulate the Cambrian country, chanting carols

at Christmas-tide, and bands of musicians play who, in many cases,

would not discredit the finest military orchestras. Carols are sung in

both Welsh and English; and, generally, the waits are popular. If

their music be not good, they are not tolerated; irate gentlemen

attack them savagely and drive them off. Not exactly that boot-jacks

and empty bottles are thrown at them, but they are excoriated in

'letters to the editor,' in which strong language is hurled at them as

intolerable nuisances, ambulatory disturbers of the night's quiet, and

inflicters of suffering upon the innocent. But such cases are rare.

The music is almost invariably good, and the effect of the soft

strains of melodiously-warbled Welsh coming dreamily to one's ears

through the darkness and distance on a winter morning is sweet and

soothing to most ears. Sometimes small boys will pipe their carols

through the key-holes. The songs vary greatly in character, but

usually the religious tone prevails, as in this case:

As I sat on a sunny bank, a sunny bank, a sunny bank,

All on a Christmas morning,

Three ships came sailing by, sailing by, sailing by.

Who do you think was in the ships?

Who do you think was in the ships?

Christ and the Virgin Mary.

Both English and Welsh words are sung. Sometimes a group of young men

and women will be seen dancing about the waits to the measure of their

music, in the hours 'ayont the twal.' In one aspect the Welsh people

may be spoken of as a people whose lives are passed in the indulgence

of their love for music and dancing. The air of Wales seems always

full of music. In the Christmas season there is an unending succession

of concerts and of miscellaneous entertainments of which music forms a

part, while you cannot enter an inn where a few are gathered

together, without the imminent probability that one or more will break

forth in song. By this is not meant a general musical howl, such as is

apt to be evoked from a room full of men of any nationality when

somewhat under the influence of the rosy god, but good set songs, with

good Welsh or English words to them, executed with respect for their

work by the vocalists, and listened to with a like respect by the rest

of the company. When an Englishman is drunk he is belligerent; when a

Frenchman is drunk he is amorous; when an Italian is drunk he is

loquacious; when a Scotchman is drunk he is argumentative; when a

German is drunk he is sleepy; when an American is drunk he brags; and

when a Welshman is drunk he sings. Sometimes he dances; but he does

not do himself credit as a dancer under these circumstances; for when

I speak of dancing I do not refer to those wooden paces and

inflections which pass for dancing in society, and which are little

more than an amiable pretext for bringing in contact human elements

which are slow to mix when planted in chairs about a room: I refer to

the individual dancing of men who do not dance for the purpose of

touching women's hands, or indulging in small talk, but for the

purpose of dancing; and who apply themselves seriously and skilfully

to their work--to wit, the scientific performance of a jig.

I chanced to pass one evening, in the Christmas-time, at a country inn

in a little Carmarthenshire village remote from railways. Certain

wanderings through green lanes (and the lanes were still green,

although it was cold, mid-winter weather) had brought me to the place

at dusk, and, being weary, I had resolved to rest there for the night.

Some local festivity of the season had taken place during the day,

which had drawn into the village an unusual number of farmer-folk from

the immediate neighbourhood. After a simple dinner off a chop and a

half-pint of cwrw da, I strolled into what they called the smoke-room,

by way of distinguishing it from the tap-room adjoining. It was a

plain little apartment, with high-backed wooden settles nearly up to

the ceiling, which gave an old-fashioned air of comfort to the place.

Two or three farmers were sitting there drinking their beer and

smoking their pipes, and toasting their trouserless shins before the

blazing fire. Presently a Welsh harper with his harp entered from

out-doors, and, seating himself in a corner of the room, began to tune

his instrument. The room quickly filled up with men and women, and

though no drinks but beer and 'pop' were indulged in (save that some

of the women drank tea), Bacchus never saw a more genial company. Some

one sang an English song with words like these:

Thrice welcome, old Christmas, we greet thee again,

With laughter and innocent mirth in thy train;

Let joy fill the heart, and shine on the brow,

While we snatch a sweet kiss 'neath the mistletoe-bough--

The mistletoe-bough,

The mistletoe-bough,

We will snatch a sweet kiss 'neath the mistletoe-bough.

The words are certainly modern, and as certainly not of a high order

of literary merit, but they are extremely characteristic of life at

this season in Wales, where kissing under the mistletoe is a custom

still honoured by observance. There was dancing, too, in this inn

company--performed with stern and determined purpose to excel, by

individuals who could do a jig, and wished to do it well. The harper

played a wild lilting tune; a serious individual who looked like a

school-teacher took off his hat, bowed to the company, jumped into the

middle of the floor, and began to dance like a madman. It was a

strange sight. With a face whose grave earnestness relaxed no whit,

with firmly compressed lips and knitted brow, the serious person

shuffled and double-shuffled, and swung and teetered, and flailed the

floor with his rattling soles, till the perspiration poured in

rivulets down his solemn face. The company was greatly moved;

enthusiastic ejaculations in Welsh and English were heard; shouts of

approbation and encouragement arose; and still the serious person

danced and danced, ending at last with a wonderful pigeon-wing, and

taking his seat exhausted, amid a tremendous roar of applause.

Scenes like this are common throughout Wales at the Christmas-time;

and they contrast strangely with the austerities of religious

observance which are everywhere proceeding. But there is not so wide a

chasm between the two as would exist in some countries. The best

church-members frequently do not deem a little jollity of this sort a

hanging matter, and there are ministers who can do a double-shuffle

themselves if the worst comes to the worst. A worthy pastor in

Glamorganshire related to me, with a suspicious degree of relish, a

story about two ministers who were once riding through a certain

village of Wales on horseback. One was the Rev. Evan Harris, the other

a celebrated old preacher named Shenkin Harry. And, as they rode on,

Harris noticed his companion's legs twitching curiously on his horse's

sides. 'Why, what ails your leg?' he asked. 'Don't you hear the harp,'

was the reply, 'in the public-house yonder? It makes my old toes crazy

for a jig.' But the moral tone of Wales is certainly better, on the

whole, than that of most countries--better even than that of Great

Britain generally, I should say. There is, I know, a prevailing

impression quite to the contrary; but it is utterly absurd. It is an

impression which has grown, I imagine, out of English injustice to

Welshmen in former times, allied to English ignorance in those times

concerning this people. Until within the last hundred years, English

writers habitually wrote of Wales with contempt and even scurrility.

But no one can live in Wales and not form the opinion that the Welsh

are, in truth, an exceptionally moral people; and the nature of their

public entertainments throughout the Christmas-time enforces this

conclusion. Stendhal's declaration that, in true Biblical countries,

religion spoils one day out of seven, destroys the seventh part of

possible happiness, would find strong illustration in Wales. It is not

my purpose to argue whether the illustration would prove or disprove

Stendhal's assertion, though one might fairly ask whether religious

people are not, perhaps, as happy in going to church on Sunday as

irreligious people are in staying away.

II.

Let it not be supposed that there is any lack of amusement on

Christmas-day for people who are willing to be amused in a God-fearing

manner. Although you cannot go to the theatre or the circus, you can

have a wide liberty of choice among oratorios, concerts, examinations,

exhibitions, eisteddfodau, and other odd diversions. Concerts

especially thrive. The halls in which they are held are decorated with

evergreens, and the familiar custom is in Wales habitually and

commonly associated with the ancient Druids, who viewed the green

twigs as the symbols of perennial life. Thus a peculiar poetic grace

rests with a custom beautiful in itself, and capable in any land of

being poetized by any one poetically inclined. Many of those unique

gatherings called eisteddfodau are held in different parts of the

principality, when poetry, music, and essays, in Welsh and in English,

are put forth by the strivers in these Olympian games of intellect and

culture, after the prizes which in Hellas would have given them crowns

of olive-leaves instead of gold-coins of the realm. When Pindar and

Sophocles handed in poems, and Herodotus competed among the essayists,

and Phidias and Praxiteles among the cutters of stone, there was no

Christmas,--but it is claimed there were eisteddfodau, here in Wales;

ay, and before that; for has not Herodotus spoken of the British bards

who held them?

III.

In the family circle, the rules which regulate the Sabbath in

Wales--which are almost as repressive as those of bonnie Scotland,

where, by the way, Christmas-day is scarcely observed at all--are

relaxed, and the aspect of the home is as bright as can be. The rooms

are elaborately decorated with flowers and evergreens, holly and ivy,

ferns and rare plants. In Glamorganshire, and other of the southern

counties looking on the sea, roses and hawthorn-sprays may be

sometimes seen in full bloom out-of-doors at Christmas. The decoration

of churches is also elaborate beyond anything I have elsewhere seen.

It is a sight to behold, the preparations for and the work of

decorating a vast pile of ecclesiastical buildings like Llandaff

Cathedral--the huge quantities of evergreens and holly, flowers,

cedars, etc., which are day by day accumulated by the ladies who have

the business in charge; and the slow, continual growth of forms of

grace--arches, crosses, wreaths, festoons; green coverings to font,

altar, pulpit, choir-stalls, pillars, reredos, and rood-screen; panels

faced with scarlet cloth bearing sacred devices worked in evergreen;

the very window-sills glowing with banks of colour--until all the wide

spaces in chancel, nave, and transepts, are adorned.

IV.

Of common prevalence formerly, and still observed in numerous

parishes, is the custom called the Plygain, or watching for the dawn.

This consists in proceeding to the church at three o'clock on

Christmas morning, and uniting in a service which is held by the light

of small green candles made for the purpose. Sometimes this ceremony

is observed at home, the people in a farm-house holding a

jollification on the Christmas eve, and sitting up all night to greet

the dawn. If the east wind blew on the Christmas eve the circumstance

was deemed propitious in this connection. This wind was called 'gwynt

traed y meirw,' (the wind blowing over the feet of the corpses,)

because it blew towards the foot of the graves in the churchyards. It

was also believed that the dumb animals paid their tribute of respect

to this night; the bees would hum loudly in their hives at midnight,

and the cattle in the cow-houses would bend their knees as in

adoration.[131]

A Christmas-eve custom among Welsh colliers is to carry from house to

house a board stuck over with lighted candles, or to wheel a

handbarrow containing a bed of clay in which the candles are stuck.

This is called 'the Star,' sometimes 'the Star of Bethlehem,' and when

stopping before a house the men kneel about it and sing a carol. A

like custom exists in Belgium, among children. The purpose is to

solicit a Rhodd Nadolig, or Christmas gift.

FOOTNOTE:

[131] 'Cymru Fu,' 403.

V.

The British Boxing-day is well known, both as to its customs and its

origin. The Christmas-box, or thrift-box, is still to be seen in

barber shops in Wales, fastened to the wall, or standing conveniently

under the looking-glass among the pots and brushes. At one time the

custom became such a nuisance throughout Britain that an outcry was

raised about it. It got to that pass that the butcher and baker would

send their apprentices around among their customers to levy

contributions. The English Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs, in

1837, sent a circular to the different embassies requesting their

excellencies and charges d'affaires to discontinue the customary

Christmas-boxes to the 'messengers of the Foreign Department, domestic

servants of Viscount Palmerston, foreign postmen, etc.' The nuisance

is hardly less prevalent now. The faithful postman in Wales not only

expects to be remembered at Christmas, but he expects to be given a

precise sum, and if he does not get it he is capable of asking for it.

In one case, a postman accustomed to receive five shillings at a

certain office, on asking for his 'box,' was told the usual donor was

absent in London, whereupon he requested the clerk to write up to him

in London immediately on the subject. These things strike a stranger

as very singular, among a people usually so self-respecting. Warnings

are from time to time issued on this subject by those in authority,

but the custom is likely to survive so long as it is not ranked

outright with beggary. Like the Christmas-tree, it is a graceful thing

among the children, or among friends or household servants, if

spontaneous; but as a tax, it is an odious perversion.[132]

FOOTNOTE:

[132] Among those who last Christmas applied at my house for 'his box,

sir, if you please' (as my maid put it), quite as a matter of course,

were the postman, the leader of the waits, the boy who brings the

daily newspapers, the bookseller's boy, the chimney-sweep, the

dustman, the grocer's man, etc., etc., no one of whom I had ever set

eyes on. The equal of this I never encountered, except in Paris, on

the _jour de l'an_.

VI.

The pagan origin of most of our Christmas customs is undoubted. Even

the cheery Christmas-tree is a symbol of heathen rites in times long

antedating Christ. The early Christian fathers, in adopting the

popular usages of their predecessors, and bending them to the service

of Christianity, made wondrous little change in them, beyond the

substitution of new motives and names for the old festivals peculiar

to several seasons of the year. The British Druids' feast of Alban

Arthur, celebrating the new birth of the sun, occurred at our

Christmas time, and is still celebrated at Pontypridd, Glamorganshire,

every year. It begins on the 22nd of December, and lasts three days,

during which period the sun is supposed to fight with Avagddu, the

spirit of darkness, the great luminary having descended into hell for

that purpose. On the third day he rose, and the bards struck their

harps, rejoicing that the sun had again been found. The Pontypridd

ceremonies are similar to those of Midsummer-day, already mentioned.

The Arch-Druid presides in the folds of the serpent circle--when he

can get there, that is, for he is old, past eighty, and the Druidic

hill is apt to be slippery with snow and ice at this time of the year.

He prays to the pagan god, and perhaps chants a poem in Welsh.[133]

The Druidic fires of the winter solstice feast were continued in

customs like that which survived in Herefordshire until recent years,

when on old Christmas-eve thirteen fires were lighted in a cornfield,

twelve of them being in a circle round a central one which burned

higher than the rest. The circle fires were called the Twelve

Apostles, and the central one the Virgin Mary. In a shed near by was a

cow with a plum-cake between or upon her horns, into whose face a pail

of cider was dashed, with a rhyming address, and the cow tossing her

horns from her unexpected baptism naturally threw the plum-cake down.

If it fell forward, good harvests were predicted; if backward, the

omen was evil. A feast among the peasants followed. In the Plygain in

like manner survives the Druidic custom of going to the sacred groves

before dawn on this morning, to greet the rising of the new-born sun

after his struggle with the evil principle.

FOOTNOTE:

[133] I give a free translation of this effort as delivered on Sunday,

December 24th, 1876 (which proved a mild day), and which I find

reported in the 'Western Mail' of the 26th as follows: 'The day of the

winter solstice has dawned upon us; little is the smile and the halo

of Hea. The depth of winter has been reached, but the muse of Wales is

budding still. Cold is the snow on the mountains; naked are the trees,

and the meadows are bare; but while nature is withering the muse of

Wales is budding. When the earth is decked in mourning, and the birds

are silent, the muse of Wales, with its harp, is heard in the gorsedd

of the holy hill. On the stone ark, within the circle of the caldron

of Ceridwen, are throned the sons of Awen; though through their hair

the frozen mist is wafted, their bosoms are sympathetic and they

rejoice. Peace, love, and truth, encircle our throne; throne without a

beginning and without ending, adorned with uchelwydd (mistletoe),

symbol of perennial life. The throne of the British Bard--which

remains a throne while other thrones decay into dust around it: an

everlasting throne! The great wheel of ages revolves and brings around

our festivities; repeating our joys it does perpetually. Muse, awake;

awake, ye harps; let not any part of the year be forgotten wherein to

crown usage (defod), morals (moes), and virtue. The Saviour Hea is

about to be born of the winter solstice. He will rise higher still and

higher shiningly, and we will have again a new year. Haste hail, haste

falling snow, hasten rough storms of winter--hasten away that we may

see the happy evidences of the new year.'

CHAPTER V.

Courtship and Marriage--Planting Weeds and Rue on the Graves

of Old Bachelors--Special Significance of Flowers in

connection with Virginity--The Welsh Venus--Bundling, or

Courting Abed--Kissing Schools--Rhamanta--Lovers'

Superstitions--The Maid's Trick--Dreaming on a Mutton

Bone--Wheat and Shovel--Garters in a Lovers' Knot--Egg-Shell

Cake--Sowing Leeks--Twca and Sheath.

I.

Welsh courtship is a thorough-going business, early entered upon by

the boys and girls of the Principality; and consequently most Welsh

women marry young. The ancient laws of Howell the Good (died 948)

expressly provided that a woman should be considered marriageable from

fourteen upwards, and should be entitled to maintenance from that age

until the end of her fortieth year; 'that is to say, from fourteen to

forty she ought to be considered in her youth.' By every sort of moral

suasion it is deemed right in Wales to encourage matrimony, and no

where are old bachelors viewed with less forbearance. There used to be

a custom--I know not whether it be extinct now--of expressing the

popular disapprobation for celibacy by planting on the graves of old

bachelors that ill-scented plant, the rue, and sometimes thistles,

nettles, henbane, and other unlovely weeds. The practice was even

extended, most illiberally and unjustly, to the graves of old maids,

who certainly needed no such insult added to their injury. Probably

the custom was never very general, but grew out of similar--but

other-meaning--customs which are still prevalent, and which are very

beautiful. I refer to the planting of graves with significant flowers

in token of the virtues of the dead. Thus where the red rose is

planted on a grave, its tenant is indicated as having been in life a

person of peculiar benevolence of character. The flower specially

planted on the grave of a young virgin is the white rose. There is

also an old custom, at the funeral of a young unmarried person, of

strewing the way to the grave with evergreens and sweet-scented

flowers, and the common saying in connection therewith is that the

dead one is going to his or her marriage-bed. Sad extremely, and

touchingly beautiful, are these customs; but wherever such exist,

there are sure to be ill-conditioned persons who will vent spiteful

feelings by similar means. Hence the occasional affront to the remains

of antiquated single folk, who had been perhaps of a temperament which

rendered them unpopular.

The Welsh being generally of an affectionate disposition, courtship,

as I have said, is a thorough-going business. To any but a people of

the strongest moral and religious tendencies, some of their customs

would prove dangerous in the extreme; but no people so link love and

religion. More of their courting is done while going home from church

than at any other time whatever; and the Welsh Venus is a holy saint,

and not at all a wicked Pagan character like her classic prototype.

'Holy Dwynwen, goddess of love, daughter of Brychan,' had a church

dedicated to her in Anglesea in 590; and for ages her shrine was

resorted to by desponding swains and lovesick maidens. Her

name--_Dwyn_, to carry off, and _wen_, white--signifies the bearer off

of the palm of fairness; and, ruling the court of love while living,

when dead

A thousand bleeding hearts her power invoked.

Throughout the poetry of the Cymric bards you constantly see the

severest moral precepts, and the purest pictures of virtuous felicity,

mingling in singularly perfect fusion with the most amorous strains.

Among the 'Choice Things' of Geraint, the famous Blue Bard, were:

A song of ardent love for the lip of a fair maid;

A softly sweet glance of the eye, and love without wantonness;

A secluded walking-place to caress one that is fair and slender;

To reside by the margin of a brook in a tranquil dell of dry soil;

A house small and warm, fronting the bright sunshine.

With these, versifications of all the virtues and moralities. 'In the

whole range of Kymric poetry,' says the learned Thomas Stephens,[134]

'there is not, I venture to assert, a line of impiety.'

FOOTNOTE:

[134] Vide 'Lit. of the Kymry.'

II.

The Welsh custom of Bundling, or courting abed, needs no description.

The Welsh words sopen and sypio mean a bundle and to bundle, and they

mean a squeezed-up mass, and to squeeze together; but there is a

further meaning, equivalent to our word baggage, as applied to a

strumpet.[135] The custom of bundling is still practised in certain

rural neighbourhoods of Wales. To discuss its moral character is not

my province in these pages; but I may properly record the fact that

its practice is not confined to the irreligious classes. It is also

pertinent here to recall the circumstance that among these people

anciently, courtship was guarded by the sternest laws, so that any

other issue to courtship than marriage was practically impossible. If

a maiden forgot her duty to herself, her parents, and her training,

when the evil result became known she was to be thrown over a

precipice; the young man who had abused the parents' confidence was

also to be destroyed. Murder itself was punished less severely.

Customs of promiscuous sleeping arose in the earliest times, out of

the necessities of existence in those primitive days, when a whole

household lay down together on a common bed of rushes strewn on the

floor of the room. In cold weather they lay close together for greater

warmth, with their usual clothing on. Caesar's misconception that the

ancient Britons were polyandrous polygamists evidently had here its

source.

It is only by breathing the very atmosphere of an existence whose

primitive influences we may thus ourselves feel, that we can get a

just conception of the underlying forces which govern a custom like

this. Of course it is sternly condemned by every advanced moralist,

even in the neighbourhoods where it prevails. An instance came to my

knowledge but a short time ago, (in 1877,) where the vicar of a

certain parish (Mydrim, Carmarthenshire) exercised himself with great

zeal to secure its abolition. Unfortunately, in this instance, the

good man was not content with abolishing bundling, he wanted to

abolish more innocent forms of courting; and worst of all, he turned

his ethical batteries chiefly upon the lads and lasses of the

dissenting congregation. Of course, it was not the vicar's fault that

the bundlers were among the meeting-house worshippers, and not among

the established church-goers, but nevertheless it injured the

impartiality of his championship in the estimation of 'the Methodys.'

I am not sure the bundling might not have ceased, in deference to his

opinions, notwithstanding, if he had not, in the excess of his zeal,

complained of the young men for seeing the girls home after meeting,

and casually stretching the walk beyond what was necessary. Such

intermeddling as this taxed the patience of the courting community to

its extreme limit, and it assumed a rebellious front. The vicar, quite

undaunted, pursued the war with vigour; he smote the enemy hip and

thigh. He returned to the charge with the assertion that these young

people had 'schools for the art of kissing,' a metaphorical

expression, I suppose; and that they indulged in flirtation. This was

really too much. Bundling might or might not be an exclusively

dissenting practice, but the most unreasonable of vicars must know

that kissing and flirtation were as universal as the parish itself;

and so there was scoffing and flouting of the vicar, and, as rebounds

are proverbially extreme, I fear there is now more bundling in Mydrim

than ever.

FOOTNOTE:

[135] The Rev. Dr. Thomas, late President of Pontypool College, whose

acquaintance with Welsh customs is very extensive, (and to whose

erudition I have been frequently indebted during the progress of these

pages through the press,) tells me he never heard the word sopen or

sypio, synonymous with bundling, used for the old custom, but only

'caru yn y gwelu,' (courting abed.)

III.

The customs of Rhamanta, or romantic divination, by which lovers and

sweethearts seek to pierce the future, are many and curious, in all

parts of Wales. Besides such familiar forms of this widely popular

practice as sleeping on a bit of wedding-cake, etc., several unique

examples may be mentioned. One known as the Maid's Trick is thus

performed; and none must attempt it but true maids, or they will get

themselves into trouble with the fairies: On Christmas eve, or on one

of the Three Spirit Nights, after the old folks are abed, the curious

maiden puts a good stock of coal on the fire, lays a clean cloth on

the table, and spreads thereon such store of eatables and drinkables

as her larder will afford. Toasted cheese is considered an appropriate

luxury for this occasion. Having prepared the feast, the maiden then

takes off all her clothing, piece by piece, standing before the fire

the while, and her last and closest garment she washes in a pail of

clear spring water, on the hearth, and spreads it to dry across a

chair-back turned to the fire. She then goes off to bed, and listens

for her future husband, whose apparition is confidently expected to

come and eat the supper. In case she hears him, she is allowed to peep

into the room, should there be a convenient crack or key-hole for that

purpose; and it is said there be unhappy maids who have believed

themselves doomed to marry a monster, from having seen through a

cranny the horrible spectacle of a black-furred creature with fiery

eyes, its tail lashing its sides, its whiskers dripping gravy, gorging

itself with the supper. But if her lover come, she will be his bride

that same year.

In Pembrokeshire a shoulder of mutton, with nine holes bored in the

blade bone, is put under the pillow to dream on. At the same time the

shoes of the experimenting damsel are placed at the foot of the bed in

the shape of a letter T, and an incantation is said over them, in

which it is trusted by the damsel that she may see her lover in his

every-day clothes.

In Glamorganshire a form of rhamanta still exists which is common in

many lands. A shovel being placed against the fire, on it a boy and a

girl put each a grain of wheat, side by side. Presently these edge

towards each other; they bob and curtsey, or seem to, as they hop

about. They swell and grow hot, and finally pop off the shovel. If

both grains go off together, it is a sign the young pair will jump

together into matrimony; but if they take different directions, or go

off at different times, the omen is unhappy. In Glamorganshire also

this is done: A man gets possession of a girl's garters, and weaves

them into a true lover's knot, saying over them some words of hope and

love in Welsh. This he puts under his shirt, next his heart, till he

goes to bed, when he places it under the bolster. If the test be

successful the vision of his future wife appears to him in the night.

IV.

A curious rhamanta among farm-women is thus described by a learned

Welsh writer:[136] The maiden would get hold of a pullet's first egg,

cut it through the middle, fill one half-shell with wheaten flour and

the other with salt, and make a cake out of the egg, the flour, and

the salt. One half of this she would eat; the other half was put in

the foot of her left stocking under her pillow that night; and after

offering up a suitable prayer, she would go to sleep. What with her

romantic thoughts, and her thirst after eating this salty cake, it was

not perhaps surprising that the future husband should be seen, in a

vision of the night, to come to the bedside bearing a vessel of water

or other beverage for the thirsty maid. Another custom was to go into

the garden at midnight, in the season when 'black seed' was sown, and

sow leeks, with two garden rakes. One rake was left on the ground

while the young woman worked away with the other, humming to herself

the while,

Y sawl sydd i gydfydio,

Doed i gydgribinio!

Or in English:

He that would a life partner be,

Let him also rake with me.

There was a certain young Welshwoman who, about eighty years ago,

performed this rhamanta, when who should come into the garden but her

master! The lass ran to the house in great fright, and asked her

mistress, 'Why have you sent master out into the garden to me?' 'Wel,

wel,' replied the good dame, in much heaviness of heart, 'make much of

my little children!' The mistress died shortly after, and the husband

eventually married the servant.

The sterner sex have a form of rhamanta in which the knife plays a

part. This is to enter the churchyard at midnight, carrying a twca,

which is a sort of knife made out of an old razor, with a handle of

sheep or goat-horn, and encircle the church edifice seven times,

holding the twca at arm's length, and saying, 'Dyma'r twca, p'le mae'r

wain?' (Here's the twca--where's the sheath?)

FOOTNOTE:

[136] Cynddelw, 'Manion Hynafiaethol,' 53.

CHAPTER VI.

Wedding Customs--The Bidding--Forms of Cymmhorth--The

Gwahoddwr--Horse-Weddings--Stealing a Bride--Obstructions to

the Bridal Party--The Gwyntyn--Chaining--Evergreen

Arches--Strewing Flowers--Throwing Rice and Shoes--Rosemary

in the Garden--Names after Marriage--The Coolstrin--The

Ceffyl Pren.

I.

Wales retains several ancient customs in connection with weddings,

which are elsewhere extinct. No one who has ever paid any attention to

Wales and its ways can have failed to hear of that most celebrated

rite the Bidding, which is, however, one of several picturesque

survivals less well known to the outer world. The Bidding wedding must

be spoken of as an existing custom, although it be confined to rural

neighbourhoods in South Wales, and to obscure and humble folk. Those

who strive to prove that all such customs are obsolete everywhere--a

thankless and even ungraceful task, it seems to me--will not admit

that the Bidding has been known since 1870. I have evidence, however,

that in Pembroke, Cardigan, and Carmarthen shires, the custom did not

cease on the date named, and there is every probability that it

prevails to-day. Nothing could be of smaller importance, it is true,

than the precise date on which a given custom recently ceased, since

any one may revive it next year who chooses to do so.

The Bidding is an invitation sent by a couple who are about to be

married, soliciting the presence and donations of the neighbours on

their behalf. The presents may be either sums of money or

necessaries. Gifts of bread, butter, cheese, tea, sugar, and the like,

are common, and sometimes articles of farming stock and household

furniture. All gifts of money are recognized by a sort of promissory

note, i.e., by setting down the name and residence of the donor, with

the amount given; and when a like occasion arises on the part of the

giver, the debt is religiously paid. The obligation is an absolute

one, and its legality has actually been recognized by the Court of

Great Sessions at Cardiff. The gift is even claimable under other

circumstances than the donor's getting married. Another sort of

contribution is the eatables and drinkables which are set before the

guests; these are only repayable when required on a like occasion.

The method of bidding the guests was until lately through a personage

called the gwahoddwr (inviter or bidder) who tramped about the country

some days beforehand, proclaiming the particulars to everybody he met.

He usually recited a doggerel set of rhymes before and after the

special invitation--a composition of his own, or understood to be

such, for rhyme-making was a part of the talent of a popular bidder.

Frequently no little humour was displayed in the bidding song. But

since the printing press became the cheap and ready servant of the

humblest classes, the occupation of the bidder has gradually fallen to

decay; a printed circular serves in his place. At the shop of a

printer in Carmarthen I procured a copy of the following bidding

circular, which may be a real document, or a fictitious one:

CARMARTHENSHIRE, JULY 4TH, 1862.

As we intend to enter the Matrimonial State, on Wednesday,

the 30th of July instant, we purpose to make a BIDDING on

the occasion, the same day, at the Young Man's Father's

House, called TY'R BWCI, in the Parish of Llanfair ar y

Bryn, when and where the favour of your good and agreeable

company is respectfully solicited, and whatever donation you

may be pleased to confer on us then will be thankfully

received, warmly acknowledged, and cheerfully repaid

whenever called for on a similar occasion.

By your most obedient Servants,

OWEN GWYN,

ELEN MORGAN.

The Young Man, his Father and Mother (Llewelyn and Margaret

Gwyn, of Ty'r Bwci), his Brother (Evan Gwyn, Maes y Blodau),

his Sisters (Gwladys and Hannah), and his Aunt (Mary Bowen,

Llwyn y Fedwen, Llannon), desire that all gifts of the above

nature due to them be returned to the Young Man on the above

day, and will be thankful for all additional favours

granted.

The Young Woman, her Father (Rhys Morgan, Castell y Moch),

and her Brothers and Sister (Howel, Gruffydd, and Gwenllian

Morgan), desire that all gifts of the above nature due to

them be returned to the Young Woman on the above day, and

will be thankful for all additional favours conferred on

her.

The Young Man's company will meet in the Morning at Ty'r

Bwci; and the Young Woman's at Pant y Clacwydd, near the

Village of Llansadwrn.

The Bidding is sometimes held on the day of the wedding, and sometimes

on the day and night before it; the custom varies in different

districts, as all these customs do. When the latter is the case, the

night is an occasion of great merrymaking, with much consumption of

cwrw da, and dancing to the music of the harp, for poor indeed would

be the Welsh community that could not muster up a harper. This

festival is called Nos Blaen, or preceding night, and is a further

source of income to the couple, from the sale of cakes and cwrw. 'Base

is the slave who pays' is a phrase emphatically reversed at a Welsh

wedding.

[Illustration: THE OLD-TIME GWAHODDWR.]

The Bidding is but one form of a feature of Welsh life which

extensively prevails, known by the term Cymmhorth. The Bidding is a

Priodas Cymmhorth; the Cyfarfod Cymmhorth, or Assistance Meeting, is

much the same thing, minus the wedding feature. The customs of the

latter festival are, however, often of a sort distinctly tending

toward matrimonial results as an eventuality. A number of farmer girls

of the humbler sort will gather at a stated time and place to give a

day's work to one needing assistance, and after a day spent in such

toil as may be required, the festival winds up with jollity in the

evening. The day is signalized on the part of those youths of the

neighbourhood who are interested in the girls, by tokens of that

interest in the shape of gifts. The lass who receives a gift

accompanied by a twig of birch is thereby assured of her lover's

constancy. To her whom the young man would inform of his change of

heart, a sprig of hazel is given. An earlier feature of this ceremony

was the Merry Andrew, who presented the gifts in the name of the

lover. This personage was disguised fantastically, and would lead the

young woman he selected into another room, where he would deliver the

gift and whisper the giver's name.

The antiquity of the Bidding as a local custom is undoubted. The

old-time gwahoddwr was a person of much importance, skilled in

pedigrees and family traditions, and himself of good family. A

chieftain would assume the character in behalf of his vassal, and

hostile clans respected his person as he went about from castle to

castle, from hall to hall. He bore a garlanded staff as the emblem of

his office, and on entering a dwelling would strike his staff upon the

floor to command the attention of the group before him, and then begin

his address.

II.

The Horse-Wedding is of more ancient origin than the Bidding, and is

still a living custom in some parts of Wales, especially

Carmarthenshire and western Glamorganshire. It was in other days

common throughout South Wales, and was scolded about by old Malkin

(generally very cordial in his praise of Welsh customs) in these spicy

terms: 'Ill may it befal the traveller, who has the misfortune of

meeting a Welsh wedding on the road. He would be inclined to suppose

that he had fallen in with a company of lunatics, escaped from their

confinement. It is the custom of the whole party who are invited, both

men and women, to ride full speed to the church porch, and the person

who arrives there first has some privilege or distinction at the

marriage feast. To this important object all inferior considerations

give way; whether the safety of his majesty's subjects, who are not

going to be married, or their own, incessantly endangered by

boisterous, unskilful and contentious jockeyship.'[137] Glamorganshire

is here spoken of. The custom varies somewhat in different localities,

but it preserves the main feature, to force the bride away from her

friends, who then gallop after her to church, arriving _toujours trop

tard_, of course, like the carabineers in 'Les Brigands.'

There have been cases, however, when the bride was caught by a member

of the pursuing party, and borne away--an incident which occurred in

the knowledge of an acquaintance, who related it to me. As may readily

be inferred, the bride in this case was not unwilling to be caught; in

fact she was averse to marrying the man who was taking her to church,

and who was her parent's choice, not her own. The lover who had her

heart caught up with her by dint of good hard riding, and whisked her

on his horse within sight of the church-door, to the intense

astonishment of the bridegroom, who gazed at them open-mouthed as they

galloped away. He thought at first it was a joke, but as the lovers

disappeared in the distance the truth dawned upon him: a Welsh custom

had served something like its original purpose.

But usually, the whole performance is a vehicle for fun of the most

good-natured and innocent sort. It begins by the arrival of the

neighbours on horseback at the residence of the expectant bridegroom.

An eye-witness to a certain wedding gathering in Glamorganshire a few

years ago states that the horsemen exceeded one hundred in number.

From among them a deputation was chosen to go (still on horseback) to

the bride's residence to make formal demand for her. Her door was

barred inside, and the demand was made in rhyme, and replied to in the

same form from within. It often happens that a brisk contest of wits

signalizes this proceeding, for if the voice of any one within is

recognized by one of those outside, his personal peculiarities are

made the subject of satirical verses. A voice inside being recognized

as that of a man who was charged with sheep-stealing, this rhyme was

promptly shouted at him:

Gwrando, leidr hoyw'r ddafad,

Ai ti sydd yma heddyw'n geidwad?

Ai dyna y rheswm cloi y drysau,

Rhag dwyn y wreigan liw dydd goleu?

(Ah, sheep-stealer, art thou a guardian of the fair one? If

the doors were not locked thou wouldst steal the bride in

broad daylight.)

The doors are opened in the end, of course, and after refreshments the

wedding party gallops off to church. The bride is stolen away and

borne off to a distance on her captor's horse, but only in sport; her

captor brings her back to the church, where she is quietly married to

the proper person. Sometimes the precaution is taken of celebrating

the marriage privately at an early hour, and the racing takes place

afterward.

Obstructions are raised by the bride's friends, to prevent the

bridegroom's party from coming to her house, and these difficulties

must be overcome ere the bride can be approached. Sometimes a mock

battle on the road is a feature of the racing to church. The

obstructions placed in the road in former days included the Gwyntyn, a

sort of game of skill which seems to have been used by most nations in

Europe, called in English the quintain. It was an upright post, upon

which a cross-piece turned freely, at one end of which hung a

sand-bag, the other end presenting a flat side. At this the rider

tilted with his lance, his aim being to pass without being hit in the

rear by the sand-bag. Other obstructions in use are ropes of straw and

the like.

There is a Welsh custom called Chaining, which probably arose out of

the horse-wedding, and still prevails. In the village of Sketty,

Glamorganshire, in August, 1877, I saw a chaining, on the occasion of

a marriage between an old lady of eighty and a man of fifty. The

affair had made so much talk, owing to the age of the bride, that the

whole village was in the streets. While the wedding ceremony was in

progress, a chain was stretched across the street, forming a barrier

which the wedding party could not pass till the chainers were

'tipped.' The driver of the carriage containing the newly wedded pair

was an Englishman, and ignorant of the custom, at which he was

naturally indignant. His angry efforts to drive through the barrier

made great sport for the Welshmen.

The origin of the Welsh horse-wedding may be traced to the Romans, if

no further back, and may thus be connected with the rape of the

Sabines. That the Romans had an exactly similar custom is attested by

Apuleius, and it is said to have been established by Romulus in memory

of the Sabine virgins. It is not improbable that the Romans may have

left the custom behind them when they quitted this territory in the

fifth century, after nearly three hundred years' rule.

FOOTNOTE:

[137] Malkin's 'South Wales,' 67.

III.

Among the wealthier classes of Wales, certain joyous and genial

wedding customs prevail, such as are common in most parts of the

British isles, but which do not reappear in the new world across the

Atlantic,--a fact by which American life is a heavy loser, in my

opinion. When the Rector of Merthyr's daughter (to use the form of

speech common) was married, a few months since, the tenants of the

estate erected arches of evergreens over the roads, and adorned their

houses with garlands, and for two or three days the estate was a scene

of festivity, ending with the distribution of meat to the poor of the

parish. Such festivities and such decorations are common on the

estates of the country gentry not only, but in the towns as well. At

Tenby, when the High Sheriff's son was married to the Rector of

Tenby's daughter, in 1877, garlands of flowers were hung across the

High Street, bearing pleasant mottoes, while flags and banners

fluttered from house-tops in all directions. Children strewed flowers

in the bride's path as she came out of church, while the bells in the

steeple chimed a merry peal, and a park of miniature artillery boomed

from the pier-head. This custom of children strewing flowers in the

path of the new-made bride is common; so also is that of throwing

showers of rice after the wedded pair, by way of expressing good

wishes--a pleasanter thing to be thrown under these circumstances than

the old shoes of tradition. However, since fashion has taken up the

custom of rice-throwing and shoe-throwing, the shoes have become satin

slippers.

As far back as the 16th century, throwing an old shoe after any one

going on an important errand was deemed lucky in Wales. It is thought

that in the case of a bride, the custom is derived from the old Jewish

law of exchange, when a shoe was given in token that the parents for

ever surrendered all dominion over their daughter. But a precisely

similar custom prevails in China, where it is usual for the bride to

present her husband with a pair of shoes, by way of signifying that

for the future she places herself under his control. 'These are

carefully preserved in the family and are never given away, like other

worn-out articles, it being deemed, that to part with them portends an

early separation between husband and wife.'[138] The custom of

rice-throwing is also Chinese, the rice being viewed as a sign of

abundance. In Sicily, as in some parts of England, wheat is thrown on

the bride's head; in Russia, a handful of hops; in the north of

England a plateful of shortcake;[139] in Yorkshire, bits of the

bride-cake. All these customs, while popularly done 'for luck,' are

apparently symbolical of the obedience and the fruitfulness of the

newly-wedded wife. And as in Scandinavia the bride tries to get her

husband to pick up her handkerchief as an omen of his obeying instead

of compelling obedience, so in China the bride tries to sit on a part

of her husband's dress. The vulgar story and adage, 'Bandbox now,

bandbox always,' expresses the superstition succinctly.

There is a saying current on the Welsh border, that when rosemary

flourishes in the garden of a married pair, the lady 'rules the

roast,' as the phrase is--though if there is anything a woman should

rule, one would think the 'roast' is that thing. 'That be rosemary,

sir,' said an old gardener in Herefordshire, pointing to where the

plant grew; 'they say it grows but where the missus is master, and it

do grow here like wildfire.' The idea of feminine obedience to

masculine will, merely because it is masculine, is in itself looked

upon as a superstition by all cultivated people in these days, I

suppose. Sex aside, if the truth were known, it would be found that

the stronger is the ruler, in all lands, under all customs, be the

outward show of the ruling more or less; and it is not always where

the public sees it most clearly, or fancies it does, that the rule of

the dame is sternest. The strength here employed is not virile

strength; there is nothing necessarily masculine about it. The

severest mistress of her lord I ever knew was a feeble little woman

with hands like a baby's, and a face of wax, with no more will-power

apparently than a week-old kitten, but whose lightest whim lay on her

lord like iron, and was obeyed as faithfully as if it were backed by a

cat-o'-nine-tails and a six-shooter.

To return for a moment to our Welsh wedding customs among the

wealthier classes. When the couple return from their bridal tour, the

fun often begins all over again. Thus at Lampeter, on the edge of

Cardiganshire, last September, when Mr. and Mrs. Jones of Glandennis

(Jones of Glandennis, Roberts of the Dingle, Williams of Pwlldu,--such

cognomens take the place in Wales of the distinctive names which

separate Englishmen one from another, and from Jones of Nevada),--when

Jones of Glandennis brought home his bride, the whole neighbourhood

was agog to greet them. Thousands of people gathered in a field near

the station, and passed their time in athletic sports till the train

arrived, when they woke the echoes with their cheers. The Joneses

entered their carriage, the horses were unharnessed, and a long

procession of tenantry, headed by a brass band, dragged the carriage

all the way to Glandennis, two miles off, some bearing torches by the

side of the carriage. Arches of evergreens were everywhere; and when

they got to the house, nothing would do but Mrs. Jones must appear at

a window and make a little speech of thanks to the crowd; which she

did accordingly--a thing in itself shocking to superstitious ideas of

chivalry, but in strictest accord with the true chivalric spirit

toward woman. Then fireworks blazed up the sky, and bonfires were

lighted on the tops of all the adjoining hills. Lampeter town was

illuminated, and nobody went to bed till the small hours.

After marriage, Welshwomen still in some cases retain their maiden

names, a custom formerly universal among them. The wife of John

Thomas, though the mother of a houseful of children, may be habitually

known among her neighbours as Betty Williams. In other cases, she not

only assumes her husband's name, but the name of his calling as well;

if he is Dick Shon the tailor, she is simply Mrs. Dick Shon the

tailor.

FOOTNOTES:

[138] Dennys, 'Folk-Lore of China,' 18.

[139] Henderson, 'Notes on Folk-Lore,' 22.

IV.

A custom called the Coolstrin is now apparently obsolete, unless in

occasional rural communities remote from railroads. It resembles the

old custom once known in certain parts of England, called the skimitry

or skimmington, in which a man whose wife had struck him was forced to

ride behind a woman, with his face to the horse's tail, while a band

of pans and cow-horns made music for them. The Welsh custom is,

however, more elaborate, and more comical, while it is less severe on

the man. A husband who is suspected of having a termagant wife, is

made the subject of espionage. If it be found that he drinks his mug

of ale standing, with his eye twinkling toward the door, the

circumstance is considered most suspicious. Efforts are accordingly

made to induce the henpecked man to stay and be merry, and if he can

be made drunk a great point is gained, as then a squad of volunteers

take him inside his own door and critically observe his reception. A

moral point involved appears to be that a henpecked husband is a

disgrace to manhood in general; and the purpose of the coolstrin is to

reform it altogether. However, although it may even be proved that a

woman is in the habit of cuffing her husband, the case does not come

under the jurisdiction of the coolstrin court until she has 'drawn

blood on him.' Then the court is convened. It is composed, no doubt,

of any rakehelly youngsters, married or single, who are ripe for

sport. One of them is chosen for judge; a special point is that he

must be a married man who is not afraid of his wife; and he is

invested with robe and gown, that is to say, the collar-bone of a

horse is set on his head, around the crown of a slouch hat, and a

bed-quilt is made fast to his shoulders. He marches through the

streets, with a youth behind him bearing his bed-quilt train, and

mounts a chosen wall for a judge's bench. Officers with long white

wands range themselves solemnly on either side of him; men are chosen

as advocates; and a posse of rustics with pitchforks keeps order. The

court is opened by a crier who calls on all good men who as yet wear

their own clos,[140] to attend the court. The case is argued by the

advocates; witnesses are examined to prove, first, that the man is

henpecked, second, that his wife has struck him and drawn blood with

the blow. In one case it was proved that the wife had knocked her

beery lord down, and that his nose, striking a stool, had bled. The

wife's advocate nearly gravelled the judge, by holding that blood

drawn by a stool could not be said to have been drawn by the woman.

The judge got over this by deciding that if the woman had taken the

stool by one of its three legs, and hit the man, drawing blood, the

blood would be clearly chargeable to her. 'And where is the

difference,' asked he, triumphantly, 'between knocking the stool

against him, and knocking him against the stool?' The woman was found

guilty. 'For,' said the prosecuting attorney indignantly, 'if a man

shan't drink a blue of beer with a neighbour or so, to what won't it

come?' Her condemnation followed; to be ridden on the Ceffyl Pren. A

derisive procession was formed, and two fellows were rigged up to

personate the husband and wife. The male bore a broom, and the female

brandished a ladle, and the two were paraded through the town. A band

of 'musicians' marched before them, beating frying-pans with marrow

bones, banging gridirons and kettles with pokers, tongs and shovels,

and two playing on a fife and drum. These were followed by two

standard bearers, one bearing a petticoat on top of a pole, the other

a pair of breeches in the same manner. Other orts and ends of rabble

made up the procession, which with antic and grimace marched about the

village and neighbourhood. The orgie ended by the planting in front of

the culprit's house of the pole and petticoat, and the pelting of it

with addled eggs, stones, and mud, till it fell to the ground. The

noble bifurcated emblem of manhood, the clos, was then elevated

proudly aloft, and the woman's punishment was deemed complete.

This is the story of a rural village in Glamorganshire. The custom

was known in other counties, and varied in its details. In

Breconshire, the virago was punished through the ceffyl pren merely by

the moral influence of parading it before her cottage. Quarrelsome

wives were said to stand in great and constant dread of its possible

appearance before their doors. In Cardiganshire, on the contrary, the

custom termed the coolstrin is _vice versa_, and it is only husbands

who ill-use their wives who are amenable to its discipline.

FOOTNOTE:

[140] Breeches.

CHAPTER VII.

Death and Burial--The Gwylnos--Beer-drinking at Welsh

Funerals--Food and Drink over the Coffin--Sponge Cakes at

Modern Funerals--The Sin-eater--Welsh Denial that this

Custom ever existed--The Testimony concerning

it--Superstitions regarding Salt--Plate of Salt on Corpse's

Breast--The Scapegoat--The St. Tegla Cock and Hen--Welsh

Funeral Processions--Praying at Cross-roads--Superstition

regarding Criminals' Graves--Hanging and Welsh

Prejudice--The Grassless Grave--Parson's Penny, or

Offrwm--Old Shoes to the Clerk--Arian y Rhaw, or Spade

Money--Burials without Coffin--The Sul Coffa--Planting and

Strewing Graves with Flowers.

I.

With the growth of modern refinement the people of every land have

become constantly more decorous in their grief. The effort of the

primitive and untutored mind to utter its sorrow in loud and wild

lamentations, and of friends and neighbours to divert the mind of the

sufferer from his bereavement, gave rise to many funeral customs of

which we still find traces in Wales. Pennant, while travelling in

North Wales, noted, with regard to one Thomas Myddleton, a fact which

he held 'to prove that the custom of the Irish howl, or Scotch

Coranich, was in use among us (the Welsh); for we are told he was

buried "cum magno dolore et clamore cognatorum et propinquorum

omnium."' No such custom now exists; but there is a very impressive

rite, of a corresponding character, but religious, called the Gwylnos.

It is a meeting held in the room where the corpse is lying, on the

night before the funeral. The Irish cry, 'Why did ye die?' is replaced

by pious appeals to Heaven, in which great and strong emotion is

expressed, the deceased referred to in stirring sentences, and his

death made a theme for warnings on the brevity of earth-life and the

importance of the future life of the soul.

On the day of the funeral, however, the customs are not always in

keeping with modern notions of the praiseworthy. Indulgence in

beer-drinking at funerals is still a Welsh practice, and its antiquity

is indicated by a proverb: 'Claddu y marw, ac at y cwrw'--(To bury the

dead, and to the beer.)[141] The collection of Welsh writings called

'Cymru Fu' refers to the custom thus, (to translate:) 'Before the

funeral procession started for the church, the nearest friends and

relatives would congregate around the corpse to wail and weep their

loss; while the rest of the company would be in an adjoining room

drinking warm beer (cwrw brwd) and smoking their pipes; and the women

in still another room drinking tea together.'[142] The writer here

speaks of the custom in the past tense, but apparently rather as a

literary fashion than to indicate a fact; at any rate, the custom is

not extinct. Occasionally it leads to appearances in the police-court

on the part of injudicious mourners.[143] After taking the coffin out

of the house and placing it on a bier near the door, it was formerly

customary for one of the relatives of the deceased to distribute bread

and cheese to the poor, taking care to hand it to each one over the

coffin. These poor people were usually those who had, in expectation

of this gift, been busily engaged in gathering flowers and herbs with

which to grace the coffin. Sometimes this dole was supplemented by the

gift of a loaf of bread or a cheese with a piece of money placed

inside it. After that a cup of drink was presented, and the receiver

was required to drink a little of it immediately.[144] Alluding to

this subject the Rev. E. L. Barnwell[145] says: 'Although this custom

is no longer in fashion, yet it is to some extent represented by the

practice, especially in funerals of a higher class, to hand to those

who are invited to attend the funeral, oblong sponge cakes sealed up

in paper, which each one puts into his or her pocket, but the

providing and distribution of these cakes are now often part of the

undertaker's duty.'

[Illustration: GIVING FOOD OVER THE COFFIN. (_From an old drawing._)]

FOOTNOTES:

[141] So the Spanish say, 'The dead to the bier, the living to good

cheer.'

[142] 'Cymru Fu,' 91.

[143] 'Two Llancaiach men named Servis and Humphrey were arrested for

fighting. They had _been to a funeral_, had done the customary honours

by the remains of the departed brother or sister who had suffered,

died, and was "chested," and then, after drowning their grief in the

"cwrw," finished up in the police-court with a _finale_ involving the

payment of 5_s._ and costs, and 8_s._ 8_d._ damage, or in default

twenty-one days' hard labour.'--'Western Mail,' Jan. 31, 1877.

[144] Pennant, quoted by Roberts, 'Camb. Pop. Ant.,' 175.

[145] 'Arch. Camb.' 4th Se., iii., 332.

II.

What connection there may be between these customs and the strange and

striking rite of the Sin-eater, is a question worthy of careful

consideration. It has been the habit of writers with family ties in

Wales, whether calling themselves Welshmen or Englishmen, to associate

these and like customs with the well-known character for hospitality

which the Cymry have for ages maintained. Thus Malkin writes: 'The

hospitality of the country is not less remarkable on melancholy than

on joyful occasions. The invitations to a funeral are very general and

extensive; and the refreshments are not light, and taken standing, but

substantial and prolonged. Any deficiency in the supply of ale would

be as severely censured on this occasion, as at a festival.'[146] Some

have thought that the bread-eating and beer-drinking are survivals of

the sin-eating custom described by Aubrey, and repeated from him by

others. But well-informed Welshmen have denied that any such custom

as that of the Sin-eater ever existed in Wales at any time, or in the

border shires; and it must not be asserted that they are wrong unless

we have convincing proof to support the assertion. The existing

evidence in support of the belief that there were once Sin-eaters in

Wales I have carefully collated and (excluding hearsay and second-hand

accounts), it is here produced. The first reference to the Sin-eater

anywhere to be found is in the Lansdowne MSS. in the British Museum,

in the handwriting of John Aubrey, the author. It runs thus: 'In the

county of Hereford was an old custom at funerals to hire poor people,

who were to take upon them the sins of the party deceased. One of them

(he was a long, lean, ugly, lamentable poor rascal), I remember, lived

in a cottage on Rosse highway. The manner was that when the corpse was

brought out of the house, and laid on the bier, a loaf of bread was

brought out, and delivered to the Sin-eater, over the corpse, as also

a mazard bowl of maple, full of beer (which he was to drink up), and

sixpence in money, in consideration whereof he took upon him, _ipso

facto_, all the sins of the defunct, and freed him or her from walking

after they were dead.' Aubrey adds, 'and this custom though rarely

used in our days, yet by some people was observed in the strictest

time of the Presbyterian Government; as at Dynder (_nolens volens_ the

parson of the parish), the kindred of a woman, deceased there, had

this ceremony punctually performed, according to her will: and also,

the like was done at the city of Hereford, in those times, where a

woman kept many years before her death a mazard bowl for the

Sin-eater; and the like in other places in this country; as also in

Brecon, e.g., at Llangors, where Mr. Gwin, the minister, about 1640,

could not hinder the performance of this custom. I believe,' says

Aubrey, 'this custom was heretofore used all over Wales.' He states

further, 'A.D. 1686: This custom is used to this day in North Wales.'

Upon this, Bishop White Kennet made this comment: 'It seems a

remainder of this custom which lately obtained at Amersden, in the

county of Oxford; where, at the burial of every corpse, one cake and

one flaggon of ale, just after the interment, were brought to the

minister in the church porch.'[147]

No other writer of Aubrey's time, either English or Welsh, appears to

have made any reference to the Sin-eater in Wales; and equal silence

prevails throughout the writings of all previous centuries. Since

Aubrey, many references to it have been made, but never, so far as I

can discover, by any writer in the Welsh language--a singular omission

if there ever was such a custom, for concerning every other

superstitious practice commonly ascribed to Wales the Welsh have

written freely.

In August, 1852, the Cambrian Archaeological Association held its sixth

annual meeting at Ludlow, under the Presidency of Hon. R. H. Clive,

M.P. At this meeting Mr. Matthew Moggridge, of Swansea, made some

observations on the custom of the Sin-eater, when he added details not

contained in Aubrey's account given above. He said: 'When a person

died, his friends sent for the Sin-eater of the district, who on his

arrival placed a plate of salt on the breast of the defunct, and upon

the salt a piece of bread. He then muttered an incantation over the

bread, which he finally ate, thereby eating up all the sins of the

deceased. This done he received his fee of 2_s._ 6_d._ and vanished as

quickly as possible from the general gaze; for, as it was believed

that he really appropriated to his own use and behoof the sins of all

those over whom he performed the above ceremony, he was utterly

detested in the neighbourhood--regarded as a mere Pariah--as one

irredeemably lost.' The speaker then mentioned the parish of Llandebie

where the above practice 'was said to have prevailed to a recent

period.' He spoke of the survival of the plate and salt custom near

Swansea, and indeed generally, within twenty years, (i.e. since 1830)

and added: 'In a parish near Chepstow it was usual to make the figure

of a cross on the salt, and cutting an apple or an orange into

quarters, to put one piece at each termination of the lines.' Mr.

Allen, of Pembrokeshire, testified that the plate and salt were known

in that county, where also a lighted candle was stuck in the salt; the

popular notion was that it kept away the evil spirit. Mr. E. A.

Freeman, (the historian) asked if Sin-eater was the term used in the

district where the custom prevailed, and Mr. Moggridge said it was.

Such is the testimony. I venture no opinion upon it further than may

be conveyed in the remark that I cannot find any direct corroboration

of it, as regards the Sin-eater, and I have searched diligently for

it. The subject has engaged my attention from the first moment I set

foot on Cambrian soil, and I have not only seen no reference to it in

Welsh writings, but I have never met any unlettered Welshman who had

ever heard of it. All this proves nothing, perhaps; but it weighs

something.[148]

FOOTNOTES:

[146] 'South Wales,' 68.

[147] Vide Hone's 'Year Book,' 1832, p. 858.

[148] Mr. Eugene Schuyler's mention of a corresponding character in

Turkistan is interesting: 'One poor old man, however, I noticed, who

seemed constantly engaged in prayer. On calling attention to him I was

told that he was an iskatchi, a person who gets his living by taking

on himself the sins of the dead, and thenceforth devoting himself to

prayer for their souls. He corresponds to the Sin-eater of the Welsh

border.'--'Turkistan,' ii., 28.

III.

Of superstitions regarding salt, there are many in Wales. I have even

encountered the special custom of placing a plate of salt on the

breast of the corpse. In the case of an old woman from Cardiganshire,

who was buried at Cardiff, and who was thus decked by her relatives, I

was told the purpose of the plate of salt was to 'prevent swelling.'

There is an Irish custom of placing a plate of snuff on the body of a

corpse; hence the saying, addressed to an enemy, 'I'll get a pinch off

your belly yet.' The Irish also employ the plate of salt in the same

manner. In view of the universal prevalence of superstitions regarding

salt, too much weight should not be placed on this detail, in

connection with the accounts of the Sin-eater. Such superstitions are

of extreme antiquity, and they still survive even among the most

cultivated classes. Salt falling toward a person was of old considered

a most unlucky omen, the evil of which could only be averted by

throwing a little of the fallen salt over the shoulder. My own wife

observes this heathen rite to this day, and so, I fancy, do most men's

wives--jocularly, no doubt, but with a sort of feeling that 'if there

_is_ anything in it,' &c. Salt was the ancient symbol of friendship,

being deemed incorruptible. In the Isle of Man no important business

was ventured on without salt in the pocket; marrying, moving, even the

receiving of alms, must be sanctified by an exchange of salt between

the parties. An influential legend is noted among the Manx

inhabitants, of the dissolution of an enchanted palace on that island,

through the spilling of salt on the ground. In Da Vinci's picture of

the Lord's Supper, Judas Iscariot is represented as overturning the

salt--an omen of the coming betrayal of Christ by that personage. In

Russia, should a friend pass you the salt without smiling, a quarrel

will follow. The Scotch put salt in a cow's first milk after calving.

Even the Chinese throw salt into water from which a person has been

rescued from drowning. All these practices point either to lustration

or propitiation.

IV.

It has been suggested that the custom of the Sin-eater is in imitation

of the Biblical scapegoat. 'And Aaron shall lay both his hands upon

the head of the live goat, and confess over him all the iniquities of

the children of Israel, and all their transgressions in all their

sins, putting them upon the head of the goat, and shall send him away

by the hand of a fit man into the wilderness. And the goat shall bear

upon him all their iniquities unto a land not inhabited: and he shall

let go the goat in the wilderness.'[149] This brings up the subject of

charms and magic, and is illustrated in Wales, if not by the

Sin-eater, by the cock and hen of St. Tegla's Well. This well is about

half-way between Wrexham and Ruthin, in the parish of Llandegla, and

has been considered efficacious in curing epilepsy. One of the common

names of that complaint in Welsh is Clwyf y Tegla, (Tegla's disease).

Relief is obtained by bathing in the well, and performing a

superstitious ceremony in this manner: The patient repairs to the well

after sunset, and washes himself in it; then, having made an offering

by throwing into the water fourpence, he walks round it three times,

and thrice recites the Lord's Prayer. If of the male sex, he offers a

cock; if a woman, a hen. The bird is carried in a basket, first round

the well, then round the church, and the rite of repeating the Pater

Noster again performed. After all this, he enters the church, creeps

under the altar, and making the Bible his pillow and the communion

cloth his coverlet, remains there until the break of day. In the

morning, having made a further offering of sixpence, he leaves the

cock (or hen, as the case may be) and departs. 'Should the bird die,

it is supposed that the disease has been transferred to it, and the

man or woman consequently cured.'[150] The custom is associated with

the ancient Druids as well as with the Jews, and its resemblance to

the scapegoat is suggestive.

FOOTNOTES:

[149] Levit. xvi., 21, 22.

[150] Ab Ithel, 'Arch. Camb.' 1st Se., i., 184.

V.

The funeral procession, in rural districts where hearses are unknown,

wends its way graveward on foot, with the corpse borne by the nearest

relatives of the deceased, a custom probably introduced in Wales

during their residence here by the Romans. The coffin of Metellus, the

conqueror of Macedon, was borne by his four sons. The coffins of Roman

citizens held in high esteem by the Republic, were borne by justices

and senators, while those of the enemies of the people were borne by

slaves and hired servants. As the Welsh procession winds its way along

the green lanes, psalms and hymns are sung continually, except on

coming to cross-roads. Here the bier is set down, and all kneel and

repeat the Lord's Prayer. The origin of this custom, as given by the

Welsh, is to be found in the former practice of burying criminals at

cross-roads. It was believed that the spirits of these criminals did

not go far away from the place where their bodies lay, and the

repeating of the Lord's Prayer was supposed to destroy and do away

with any evil influence these spirits might have on the soul of the

dear departed.[151]

The Welsh retain much of the superstitious feeling regarding the

graves of criminals and suicides. There is indeed a strong prejudice

against hanging, on account of the troublesome spirits thus let loose.

The well-known leniency of a 'Cardigan jury' may be connected with

this prejudice, though it is usually associated with a patriotic

feeling. 'What! would you have hur hang hur own countryman?' is the

famous response of a Cardigan juror, who was asked why he and his

brethren acquitted a murderer. The tale may be only a legend; the fact

it illustrates is patent. It is related that in a dispute between two

Cardigan farmers, some fifty years ago, one of them killed the other.

The jury, believing the killing was unintentional, acquitted the

homicide; but 'whether the man was guilty or not, his neighbours and

the people who lived in the district, and who knew the spot where the

farmer was killed, threw a stone upon it whenever they passed,

probably to show their abhorrence of the deed that had been

perpetrated in that place. By this means a large heap of stones, which

was allowed to remain for many years, arose.'[152] They were then

removed to repair the turnpike. This custom is apparently Jewish.

Hangings are almost unknown in Wales, whether from the extra morality

of the people, or the prejudice above noted.

FOOTNOTES:

[151] 'Cymru Fu,' 92.

[152] 'Bye-gones,' March 22, 1876.

VI.

The legend of the Grassless Grave is a well-known Montgomeryshire

tale, concerning a certain spot of earth in the graveyard of

Montgomery Castle, upon which the verdure is less luxuriant than in

other portions of the yard. One dark November night, many years ago,

a man named John Newton, who had been at Welshpool fair, set out for

home. Soon after, he was brought back to Welshpool in the custody of

two men, who charged him with highway robbery, a crime then punishable

with death. He was tried, and executed, in spite of his protestations;

and in his last speech, admitting he had committed a former crime, but

protesting he was innocent of this, he said: 'I have offered a prayer

to Heaven, and believe it has been heard and accepted. And in meek

dependence on a merciful God, whom I have offended, but who, through

the atonement of His blessed Son, has, I trust, pardoned my offence, I

venture to assert that as I am innocent of the crime for which I

suffer, the grass, for one generation at least, will not cover my

grave.' For thirty years thereafter, the grave was grassless; a bare

spot in the shape of a coffin marked, amidst the surrounding

luxuriance, the place where lay the penitent criminal, unjustly

executed. Then a sacrilegious hand planted the spot with turf; but it

withered as if blasted by lightning; and the grave is still

grassless--certainly an unnecessary extension of the time set by the

defunct for its testimony to his innocence.

VII.

A curious surviving custom at Welsh funerals is the Offrwm, or

parson's penny. After having read the burial service in the church,

the parson stands behind a table while a psalm is being sung, and to

him go the mourners, one and all, and deposit a piece of money on the

table. The parson counts it, states the amount, and pockets it. If the

mourner depositing his offrwm be wealthy, he will give perhaps a

guinea; if a farmer or tradesman, his gift will be a crown; and if

poor, he will lay down his sixpence. 'Each one that intended making an

offering of silver, would go up to the altar in his turn, and after

each one had contributed there would be a respite, after which those

who gave copper as their offering went forward and did likewise; but

no coppers were offered at any respectable funeral. These offerings

often reached the sum of ten and even twenty pounds in the year.' Thus

the Welsh work, 'Cymru Fu,' speaking as usual in the past tense; but

the custom is a present-day one. The Welsh believe that this custom

was originally intended to compensate the clergyman for praying for

the soul of the departed. It has now ceased to mean anything more than

a tribute of respect to the deceased, or a token of esteem towards the

officiating clergyman.

In the parish of Defynog, Breconshire, there was a custom (up to 1843,

when it seems to have ceased through the angry action of a lawless

widower,) of giving to the parish clerk the best pair of shoes and

stockings left behind by the defunct.[153]

A still more curious form of the offrwm, which also survives in many

rural neighbourhoods, is called the Arian y Rhaw, or spade money. At

the grave, the gravedigger rubs the soil off his spade, extends it for

donations, and receives a piece of silver from each one in turn, which

he also pockets. In Merionethshire the money is received at the grave

in a bowl, instead of on the spade, and the gift is simply called the

offrwm. 'I well recollect, when a lad,' says an entertaining

correspondent,[154] 'at Llanrhaiadr-yn-Mochnant, seeing the clerk or

sexton cleaning his spade with the palm of his hand, and blowing the

remaining dust, so that the instrument of his calling should be clean

and presentable, and then, with due and clerk-like gravity, presenting

his polished spade, first to the "cyfneseifiaid" (next-of-kin), and

then to the mourners one by one, giving all an opportunity of showing

their respect to the dead, by giving the clerk the accustomed offrwm.

At times the old clerk, "yr hen glochydd," when collecting the offrwm,

rather than go around the grave to the people, to the no small

annoyance of the friends, would reach his spade over the grave. At the

particular time referred to, the clerk, having nearly had all the

offrwm, saw that facetious wag and practical joker, Mr. B., extending

his offering towards him from the opposite side of the grave. The

clerk, as was his wont, extended the spade over the grave towards the

offered gift. The opportunity for fun was not to be lost, and whilst

placing his offrwm on the spade, Mr. B. pressed on one corner, and the

spade turned in the hands of the unwitting clerk, emptying the whole

offering into the grave, to the no small surprise of the clerk, who

never forgot the lesson, and the great amusement of the standers-by.'

It is noted in this connection that the sexton's spade 'was a terror

to the superstitious, for if the gravedigger would but shake his spade

at anyone, it was a matter of but short time ere the sexton would be

called upon to dig the grave of that person who had come under the

evil influence of the spade. "Has the sexton shook his spade at you?"

was a question often put to a person in bad health.'

FOOTNOTES:

[153] 'Arch. Camb.,' 2nd Se., iv., 326.

[154] 'Bye-gones,' Oct. 17, 1877.

VIII.

Until a recent date, burials without a coffin were common in some

parts of Wales. Old people in Montgomeryshire not many years ago,

could remember such burials, in what was called the cadach deupen, or

cloth with two heads. Old Richard Griffith, of Trefeglwys, who died

many years ago, recollected a burial in this fashion there, when the

cloth gave way and was rent; whereupon the clergyman prohibited any

further burials in that churchyard without a coffin. That was the last

burial of the kind which took place in Montgomeryshire.[155]

In the middle ages there was a Welsh custom of burying the dead in the

garment of a monk, as a protection against evil spirits. This was

popular among the wealthy, and was a goodly source of priestly

revenue.

FOOTNOTE:

[155] 'Bye-gones,' Nov. 22, 1876.

IX.

Sul Coffa is an old Welsh custom of honouring the dead on the Sunday

following the funeral, and for several succeeding Sundays, until the

violence of grief has abated. In the Journal of Thomas Dinelly,

Esquire, an Englishman who travelled through Wales and Ireland in the

reign of Charles II.,[156] this passage occurs, after description of

the wake, the keening, etc.: 'This done y{e} Irish bury their dead,

and if it be in or neer y{e} burying place of that family, the

servants and followers hugg kiss howle and weep over the skulls that

are there digg'd up and once a week for a quarter of an year after

come two or three and pay more noyse at the place.' The similarity in

spirit between this and the Welsh Sul Coffa is as striking as the

difference in practice. The Welsh walk quietly and gravely to the

solemn mound beneath which rest the remains of the loved, and there

kneeling in silence for five or ten minutes, pray or appear to pray.

The Sul Coffa of Ivan the Harper is a well-known anecdote. Ivan the

Harper was a noted character in his day, who desired that his coffa

should be thus: 'I should like,' said he, on his death-bed, 'to have

my coffa; but not in the old style. Instead of the old custom ask

Williams of Merllyn and Richard the Harper to attend the church at

Llanfwrog, and give these, my disciples, my two harps, and after the

service is over, let them walk to my grave; let Williams sit at the

head and Richard at the feet, of my grave, and let them play seven

Welsh airs, beginning with Dafydd y Garreg Wen,' (David of the White

Stone) 'and ending with, Toriad y Dydd,' (the Dawn.) 'The former is in

a flat key, like death, and the latter is as sober as the day of

judgment.' This request was religiously obeyed by the mourners on the

ensuing Sul Coffa.

FOOTNOTE:

[156] Quoted in the Proceedings of the Kilkenny Arch. Soc., 1858.

X.

Reference has been made, in the chapter on courtship and marriage, to

the Welsh practice of planting graves with flowers. There are graves

in Glamorganshire which have been kept blooming with flowers for

nearly a century without interruption, through the loving care of

descendants of the departed. By a most graceful custom which also

prevailed until recently, each mourner at a funeral carried in his

hand a sprig of rosemary, which he threw into the grave. The Pagan

practice of throwing a sprig of cypress into the grave has been

thought to symbolize the annihilation of the body, as these sprigs

would not grow if set in the earth: whereas the rosemary was to

signify the resurrection or up-springing of the body from the grave.

The existing custom of throwing flowers and immortelles into the grave

is derivable from the ancient practice. But the Welsh carry the

association of graves and floral life to the most lavish extreme, as

has already been pointed out. Shakspeare has alluded to this in

'Cymbeline,' the scene of which tragedy is principally in

Pembrokeshire, at and about Milford Haven:

_Arv._ With fairest flowers,

Whilst summer lasts, and I live here, Fidele,

I'll sweeten thy sad grave: Thou shalt not lack

The flower, that's like thy face, pale primrose; nor

The azur'd harebell, like thy veins; no, nor

The leaf of eglantine, whom not to slander,

Outsweeten'd not thy breath.[157]

[Music: DAFYDD Y GARREG WEN.]

FOOTNOTE:

[157] 'Cymbeline,' Act IV., Sc. 2.

BOOK IV.

BELLS, WELLS, STONES, AND DRAGONS.

Gorgons, and hydras, and chimeras dire.

MILTON: _Paradise Lost_.

Then up there raise ane wee wee man

Franethe the moss-gray stane;

His face was wan like the collifloure,

For he nouthir had blude nor bane.

HOGG: _The Witch of Fife_.

... where he stood,

Of auncient time there was a springing well,

From which fast trickled forth a silver flood,

Full of great vertues, and for med'cine good: ...

For unto life the dead it could restore.

SPENSER: _Faerie Queene_.

CHAPTER I.

Base of the Primeval Mythology--Bells and their Ghosts--The

Bell that committed Murder and was damned for it--The Occult

Powers of Bells--Their Work as Detectives, Doctors,

etc.--Legend of the Bell of Rhayader--St. Illtyd's Wonderful

Bell--The Golden Bell of Llandaff.

I.

The human mind in its infancy turns instinctively to fetichism. The

mind of primeval man resembled that of a child. Children have to learn

by experience that the fire which burns them is not instigated by

malice.[158] In his primitive condition, man personified everything

in nature. Animate and inanimate objects were alike endowed with

feelings, passions, emotions, moral qualities. On this basis rests the

primeval mythology.

The numerous superstitions associated with bells, wells and stones in

Wales, excite constant inquiries as regards their origin in fetichism,

in paganism, in solar worship, or in church observances. That bells,

especially, should suggest the supernatural to the vulgar mind is not

strange. The occult powers of bells have place in the popular belief

of many lands. The Flemish child who wonders how the voices got into

the bells is paralleled by the Welsh lad who hears the bells of

Aberdovey talking in metrical words to a musical chime. The ghosts of

bells are believed to haunt the earth in many parts of Wales. Allusion

has been made to those castle bells which are heard ringing from the

submerged towers in Crumlyn lake. Like fancies are associated with

many Welsh lakes. In Langorse Pool, Breconshire, an ancient city is

said to lie buried, from whose cathedral bells on a calm day may be

heard a faint and muffled chime, pealing solemnly far down in the

sepial depths. A legend of Trefethin relates that in the church of St.

Cadoc, at that place, was a bell of wondrous powers, a gift from

Llewellyn ap Iorwerth, Lord of Caerleon. A little child who had

climbed to the belfry was struck by the bell and killed, not through

the wickedness of the bell itself, but through a spell which had been

put upon the unfortunate instrument by an evil spirit. But though

innocent of murderous intent, the wretched bell became forfeit to the

demons on account of its fatal deed. They seized it and bore it down

through the earth to the shadow-realm of annwn. And ever since that

day, when a child is accidentally slain at Trefethin, the bell of St.

Cadoc is heard tolling mournfully underneath the ground where it

disappeared ages ago.

FOOTNOTE:

[158] A Mississippi negro-boy who was brought by a friend of mine from

his southern home to a northern city, and who had never seen snow,

found the ground one morning covered with what he supposed to be salt,

and going out to get some, returned complaining that it 'bit his

fingers.'

II.

There was anciently a belief that the sound of brass would break

enchantment, as well as cause it; and it is presumed that the original

purpose of the common custom of tolling the bell for the dead was to

drive away evil spirits. Originally, the bell was tolled not for the

dead, but for the dying; it was believed that evil spirits were

hovering about the sick chamber, waiting to pounce on the soul as soon

as it should get free from the body; and the bell was tolled for the

purpose of driving them away. Later, the bell was not tolled till

death had occurred, and this form of the custom survives here, as in

many lands. Before the Reformation there was kept in all Welsh

churches a handbell, which was taken by the sexton to the house where

a funeral was to be held, and rung at the head of the procession. When

the voices of the singers were silent at the end of a psalm, the bell

would take up the burden of complaint in measured and mournful tones,

and ring till another psalm was begun. It was at this period deemed

sacred. The custom survived long after the Reformation in many places,

as at Caerleon, the little Monmouthshire village which was a bustling

Roman city when London was a hamlet. The bell--called the bangu--was

still preserved in the parish of Llanfair Duffryn Clwyd half-a-dozen

years ago. I believe the custom of ringing a handbell before the

corpse on its way through the streets is still observed at Oxford,

when a university man is buried. The town marshal is the bellman for

this office. The custom is associated with the same superstitious

belief which is seen in the 'passing bell,' the notes of pure bronze

freeing the soul from the power of evil spirits.

III.

The Welsh were formerly strong in the belief that bells could perform

miracles, detect thieves, heal the sick, and the like. In many

instances they were possessed of locomotive powers, and would

transport themselves from place to place when they had occasion,

according to their own sweet will, and without human intervention. It

is even recorded that certain handbells required to be tied with the

double cord of an exorcism and a piece of twine, or they would get up

and walk off in the night.

Bells which presaged storms, as well as other disasters, have been

believed to exist in many parts of Wales. In Pembrokeshire the

unexpected tolling of a church bell in the night is held to be the

sure precursor of a calamity--a belief which may be paralleled in

London, where there are still people who believe such tolling on the

part of the great bell of St. Paul's portends disaster to the royal

family. In the Cromwellian wars, the sacrilegious followers of the

stern old castle-hater carried off a great bell from St. David's,

Pembrokeshire. They managed to get it on shipboard, but in passing

through Ramsey Sound the vessel was wrecked--a direct result, the

superstitious said, of profanely treating the bell. Ever since that

time, Pembroke people have been able to hear this sunken bell ring

from its watery grave when a storm is rising.

IV.

The legend of the Bell of Rhayader perpetuates a class of story which

reappears in other parts of Great Britain. It was in the twelfth

century that a certain contumacious knight was imprisoned in the

castle of Rhayader. His wife, being devoted to him, and a good

Catholic, besought the aid of the monks to get him out. They were

equal to the occasion, at least in so far as to provide for her

service a magical bell, which possessed the power of liberating from

confinement any prisoner who should set it up on the wall and ring it.

The wife succeeded in getting the bell secretly into her husband's

possession, and he set it up on the wall and rang it. But although he

had gathered his belongings together and was fully prepared to go, the

doors of his prison refused to open. The castellan mocked at the

magical bell, and kept the knight in durance vile. So therefore (for

of course the story could not be allowed to end here) the castle was

struck by lightning, and both it and the town were burned in one

night--excepting only the wall upon which the magic bell was hanging.

Nothing remains of the castle walls in this day.

V.

The bell of St. Illtyd was greatly venerated in the middle ages. A

legend concerning this wonderful bell relates that a certain king had

stolen it from the church, and borne it into England, tied about the

neck of one of his horses. For this deed the king was destroyed, but

repenting before his death, ordered the bell to be restored to its

place in Wales. Without waiting to be driven, the horse with the bell

about his neck set out for Wales, followed by a whole drove of horses,

drawn by the melodious sound of the bell. Wonderful to tell, the horse

was able to cross the river Severn and come into Wales, the great

collection of horses following. 'Then hastening along the shore, and

over the mountains, and through the woods, he came to the road which

went towards Glamorgan, all the horses hearing, and following the

sweet sound.' When they came to the banks of the river Taff, a

clergyman heard the sound of the bell, and went out to meet the horse,

and they together carried the bell to the gate of St. Illtyd's church.

There the horse bent down and loosed his precious burden from his

neck, 'and it fell on a stone, from which fall a part of it was

broken, which is to be seen until the present day, in memory of the

eminent miracle.'[159]

Some thirty years ago a bell was discovered at Llantwit Major, in

Glamorganshire, which was thought to be the identical bell of this

saint. The village named was the scene of his exploits, many of which

were miraculous to the point of Arabian Nights marvelousness. The

discovered bell was inscribed 'Sancte Iltute, ora pro nobis,' and

stood upon the gable of the quaint old town-hall. But though the bell

was unmistakably ancient, it bore intrinsic evidence of having been

cast long after the saint's death, when his name had become venerated.

He was one of King Arthur's soldiers, who afterwards renounced the

world, and founded several churches in Glamorganshire.

FOOTNOTE:

[159] 'Cambro-British Saints,' 492.

VI.

Among the many legends of Llandaff which still linger familiarly on

the lips of the people is that of the bell of St. Oudoceus, second

bishop of that see. In the ancient 'Book of Llandaff,' where are

preserved the records of that cathedral from the earliest days of

Christianity on this island, the legend is thus related: 'St.

Oudoceus, being thirsty after undergoing labour, and more accustomed

to drink water than any other liquor, came to a fountain in the vale

of Llandaff, not far from the church, that he might drink, where he

found women washing butter, after the manner of the country; and

sending to them his messengers and disciples, they requested that they

would accommodate them with a vessel, that their pastor might drink

therefrom; who, ironically, as mischievous girls, said, "We have no

cup besides that which we hold in our hands, namely, the butter." And

the man of blessed memory taking it, formed one in the shape of a

small bell, and he raised his hand so that he might drink therefrom,

and he drank. And it remained in that form, that is, a golden one, so

that it appeared to those who beheld it to consist altogether of the

purest gold, which, by divine power, is from that day reverently

preserved in the church of Llandaff in memory of the holy man, and it

is said that by touching it health is given to the diseased.'[160]

[Music: CLYCHAU ABERDYFI.

(The Bells of Aberdovey.)]

FOOTNOTE:

[160] 'Liber Landavensis,' 378.

CHAPTER II.

Mystic Wells--Their Good and Bad Dispositions--St.

Winifred's Well--The Legend of St. Winifred--Miracles--St.

Tecla's Well--St. Dwynwen's--Curing Love-sickness--St.

Cynfran's--St. Cynhafal's--Throwing Pins in

Wells--Warts--Barry Island and its Legends--Ffynon

Gwynwy--Propitiatory Gifts to Wells--The Dreadful Cursing

Well of St. Elian's--Wells Flowing with Milk--St.

Illtyd's--Taff's Well--Sanford's Well--Origins of

Superstitions of this Class.

I.

The waters of mystery which flow at Lourdes, in France, are paralleled

in numberless Welsh parishes. In every corner of Cambria may be found

wells which possess definite attributes, malicious or beneficent,

which they are popularly supposed to actively exert toward mankind. In

almost every instance, the name of the tutelary saint to whom the well

is consecrated is known to the peasantry, and generally they can tell

you something about him, or her. Unnumbered centuries have elapsed

since the saint lived; nay, generation upon generation has perished

since any complete knowledge of his life or character existed, save in

mouldering manuscripts left by monks, themselves long turned to dust;

yet the tradition of the saint as regards the well is there, a living

thing beside its waters. However lightly some forms of superstition

may at times be treated by the vulgar, they are seldom capable of

irreverent remark concerning the well. In many cases this respect

amounts to awe.

These wells are of varying power and disposition. Some are healing

wells; others are cursing wells; still others combine the power alike

to curse and to cure. Some are sovereign in their influence over all

the diseases from which men suffer, mental and moral as well as

physical; others can cure but one disease, or one specific class of

diseases; and others remedy all the misfortunes of the race, make the

poor rich, the unhappy happy, and the unlucky lucky. That these

various reputations arose in some wells from medicinal qualities found

by experience to dwell in the waters, is clear at a glance; but in

many cases the character of the patron saint gives character to the

well. In parishes dedicated to the Virgin Mary there will almost

inevitably be found a Ffynon Mair, (Well of Mary,) the waters of which

are supposed to be purer than the waters of other wells. Sometimes the

people will take the trouble to go a long distance for water from the

Ffynon Mair, though a good well may be nearer, in whose water chemical

analysis can find no difference. Formerly, and indeed until within a

few years past, no water would do for baptizing but that fetched from

the Ffynon Mair, though it were a mile or more from the church. That

the water flowed southward was in some cases held to be a secret of

its virtue. In other instances, wells which opened and flowed eastward

were thought to afford the purest water.

II.

Most renowned and most frequented of Welsh wells is St. Winifred's, at

Holywell. By the testimony of tradition it has been flowing for eleven

hundred and eighty years, or since the year 700, and during all this

time has been constantly visited by throngs of invalids; and that it

will continue to be so frequented for a thousand years to come is not

doubted, apparently, by the members of the Holywell Local Board, who

have just taken a lease of the well from the Duke of Westminster for

999 years more, at an annual rental of L1. The town of Holywell

probably owes not only name but existence to this well. Its miraculous

powers are extensively believed in by the Welsh, and by people from

all parts of Great Britain and the United States; but Drayton's

assertion that no dog could be drowned in its waters, on account of

their beneficent disposition, is not an article of the existing faith.

The most prodigious fact in connection with this wonderful fountain,

when its legendary origin is contemplated, is its size, its abounding

life, the great volume of its waters. A well which discharges

twenty-one tons of water per minute, which feeds an artificial lake

and runs a mill, and has cured unnumbered thousands of human beings of

their ills for hundreds of years, is surely one of the wonders of the

world, to which even mystic legend can only add one marvel more.

The legend of St. Winifred, or Gwenfrewi, as she is called in Welsh,

was related by the British monk Elerius in the year 660, or by Robert

of Salop in 1190, and is in the Cotton MSS. in the British Museum. It

is there written in characters considered to be of the middle of the

eleventh century. Winifred was the daughter of a valiant soldier in

North Wales; from her youth she loved a heavenly spouse, and refused

transitory men. One day Caradoc, a descendant of royal stock, came to

her house fatigued from hunting wild beasts, and asked Winifred for

drink. But seeing the beauty of the nymph he forgot his thirst in his

admiration, and at once besought her to treat him with the familiarity

of a sweetheart. Winifred refused, asserting that she was engaged to

be married to another. Caradoc became furious at this, and said,

'Leave off this foolish, frivolous, and trifling mode of speaking, and

consent to my wish.' Then he asked her to be his wife. Finding he

would not be denied, Winifred had recourse to a stratagem to escape

from him: she pretended to comply, but asked leave to first make a

becoming toilet. Caradoc agreed, on condition that she should make it

quickly. The girl went through her chamber with swift feet into the

valley, and was escaping, when Caradoc perceived the trick, and

mounting his horse spurred after her. He overtook her at the very door

of the monastery to which she was fleeing; before she could place her

foot within the threshold he struck off her head at one blow. St.

Beino coming quickly to the door saw bloody Caradoc standing with his

stained sword in his hand, and immediately cursed him as he stood, so

that the bloody man melted in his sight like wax before a fire. Beino

then took the virgin's head (which had been thrown inside the door by

the blow which severed it) and fitted it on the neck of the corpse.

Winifred thereupon revived, with no further harm than a small line on

her neck. But the floor upon which her bloody head had fallen, cracked

open, and a fountain sprang up like a torrent at the spot. 'And the

stones appear bloody at present as they did at first, and the moss

smells as frankincense, and it cures divers diseases.'[161] Thus far

the monastic legend. Some say that Caradoc's descendants were doomed

to bark like dogs.

Among the miracles related of Winifred's well by her monkish

biographer is one characterized as 'stupendous,' concerning three

bright stones which were seen in the middle of the ebullition of the

fountain, ascending and descending, 'up and down by turns, after the

manner of stones projected by a shooter.' They so continued to dance

for many years, but one day an unlucky woman was seized with a desire

to play with the stones. So she took hold of one; whereat they all

vanished, and the woman died. This miracle was supplemented by that of

a man who was rebuked for theft at the fountain; and on his denying

his guilt, the goat which he had stolen and eaten became his accuser

by uttering an audible bleating from his belly. But the miracles of

Winifred's well are for the most part records of wonderful cures from

disease and deformity. Withered and useless limbs were made whole and

useful; the dumb bathed in the water, came out, and asked for their

clothes; the blind washed and received their sight; lunatics 'troubled

by unclean spirits' were brought to the well in chains, 'tearing with

their teeth and speaking vain things,' but returned homeward in full

possession of their reason. Fevers, paralysis, epilepsy, stone, gout,

cancers, piles--these are but a few of the diseases cured by the

marvellous well, on the testimony of the ancient chronicler of the

Cotton MSS. 'Nor is it to be hidden in the silence of Lethean oblivion

that after the expulsion of the Franks from all North Wales' the

fountain flowed with a milky liquor for the space of three days. A

priest bottled some of it, and it 'was carried about and drunk in all

directions,' curing diseases in the same manner as the well itself.

FOOTNOTE:

[161] 'Cambro-British Saints,' 519.

III.

Only second in fame to Winifred's, among the Welsh themselves, is St.

Tecla's well, or Ffynon Tegla, in Denbighshire. It springs out of a

bog called Gwern Degla, about two hundred yards from the parish church

of Llandegla. Some account of the peculiar superstitious ceremony

connected with this well has already been given, in the chapter

treating of the sin-eater. It is there suggested that the cock to

which the fits are transferred by the patient at the well is a

substitute for the scapegoat of the Jews. The parish clerk of

Llandegla in 1855 said that an old man of his acquaintance 'remembered

quite well seeing the birds staggering about from the effects of the

fits' which had been transferred to them.

IV.

Of great celebrity in other days was St. Dwynwen's well, in the parish

of Llandwyn, Anglesea. This saint being patron saint of lovers, her

well possessed the property of curing love-sickness. It was visited by

great numbers, of both sexes, in the fourteenth century, when the

popular faith in its waters seems to have been at its strongest. It is

still frequented by young women of that part of the country when

suffering from the woes inflicted by Dan Cupid. That the well itself

has been for many years covered over with sand does not prevent the

faithful from displaying their devotion; they seek their cure from

'the water next to the well.' Ffynon Dwynwen, or Fountain of Venus,

was also a name given to the sea, according to the Iolo MSS.; and in

the legend of Seithenhin the Drunkard, in the 'Black Book of

Carmarthen,' this stanza occurs:

Accursed be the damsel,

Who, after the wailing,

Let loose the Fountain of Venus, the raging deep.[162]

The story of Aphrodite, born from the foam of the sea, need only be

alluded to here.

FOOTNOTE:

[162] 'Black Book of Carmarthen,' xxxviii. (An ancient MS. in the

Hengwrt collection, which belonged of old to the priory of Black

Canons at Carmarthen, and at the dissolution of the religious houses

in Wales, when their libraries were dispersed, was given by the

treasurer of St. David's Church to Sir John Price, one of Henry

VIII.'s commissioners.)

V.

Several wells appear to have been devoted to the cure of the lower

animals' diseases. Such was the well of Cynfran, where this

ejaculation was made use of: 'Rhad Duw a Chynfran lwydd ar y

da!'--(the grace of God and the blessed Cynfran on the cattle.) This

Cynfran was one of the many sons of the patriarch Brychan, and his

well is near Abergeleu. Pennant speaks also of a well near Abergeleu,

which he calls St. George's well, and says that there the British Mars

had his offering of horses; 'for the rich were wont to offer one, to

secure his blessing on all the rest. He was the tutelar saint of those

animals.'

VI.

St. Cynhafal's well, on a hillside in Llangynhafal parish,

Denbighshire, is one of those curing wells in which pins are thrown.

Its specialty is warts. To exorcise your wart you stick a pin in it

and then throw the pin into this well; the wart soon vanishes. The

wart is a form of human trouble which appears to have been at all

times and in all countries a special subject of charms, both in

connection with wells and with pins. Where a well of the requisite

virtue is not conveniently near, the favourite form of charm for

wart-curing is in connection with the wasting away of some selected

object. Having first been pricked into the wart, the pin is then

thrust into the selected object--in Gloucestershire it is a snail--and

then the object is buried or impaled on a blackthorn in a hedge, and

as it perishes the wart will disappear. The scapegoat principle of

the sin-eater also appears in connection with charming away warts, as

where a 'vagrom man' counts your warts, marks their number in his hat,

and goes away, taking the warts with him into the next county--for a

trifling consideration.[163]

FOOTNOTE:

[163] A popular belief among boys in some parts of the United States

is that warts can be rubbed off upon a toad impaled with a sharp

stick; as the toad dies the warts will go. _Per contra_, this cruel

faith is offset by a theory that toads if ill-treated can spit upon

their aggressors' hands and thus cause warts.

VII.

On Barry Island, near Cardiff, is the famous well of St. Barruc, or

Barri, which was still frequented by the credulous up to May, 1879, at

which time the island was closed against visitors by its owner, Lord

Windsor, and converted into a rabbit warren. Tradition directs that on

Holy Thursday he who is troubled with any disease of the eyes shall go

to this well, and having thoroughly washed his eyes in its water,

shall drop a pin in it. The innkeeper there formerly found great

numbers of pins--a pint, in one instance--when cleaning out the well.

It had long been utterly neglected by the sole resident of the island,

whose house was a long distance from the well, at a point nearer the

main land; but pins were still discovered there from time to time.

There was in old days a chapel on this island; no vestige of it

remains. Tradition says that St. Barruc was buried there, and the now

barren and deserted islet appears to have been anciently a popular

place among the saints. St. Cadoc had one of his residences

there.[164] He was one day sitting on a hill-top in that island when

he saw the two saints Barruc and Gwalches drawing near in a boat, and

as he looked the boat was overturned by the wind. Both saints were

drowned, and Cadoc's manual book, which they had in the boat with

them, was lost in the sea. But when Cadoc proceeded to order his

dinner, a salmon was brought to him which being cut open was found to

have the missing manual book in its belly in an unimpaired condition.

Concerning another saint whose name was Barri, a wonderful story is

told that one day being on a visit to St. David he borrowed the

latter's horse and rode across the sea from Pembrokeshire to the Irish

coast. Many have supposed this Barri to be the same person as Barruc,

but they were two men.

This romantic island was anciently celebrated for certain ghastly

noises which were heard in it--sounds resembling the clanking of

chains, hammering of iron, and blowing of bellows--and which were

supposed to be made by the fiends whom Merlin had set to work to frame

the wall of brass to surround Carmarthen. So the noises and eruptions

of Etna and Stromboli were in ancient times ascribed to Typhon or

Vulcan. But in the case of Barry I have been unable, by any assistance

from imagination, to detect these mystic sounds in our day. Camden, in

his 'Britannica,' makes a like remark, but says the tradition was

universally prevalent. The judicious Malkin, however, thinks it

requires but a moderate stretch of fancy to create this cyclopean

imagery, when the sea at high tides is often in possession of cavities

under the very feet of the stranger, and its voice is at once modified

and magnified by confinement and repercussion.[165]

FOOTNOTES:

[164] 'Cambro-British Saints,' 336.

[165] Malkin's 'South Wales,' 132.

VIII.

Another well whose specialty is warts is a small spring called Ffynon

Gwynwy, near Llangelynin church, Carnarvonshire. The pins used here

must be crooked in order to be efficacious. It is said that fifty

years ago the bottom of this little well was covered with pins; and

that everybody was careful not to touch them, fearing that the warts

deposited with the pins would grow upon their own hands if they did

so.[166] At present the well is overgrown with weeds, like that on

Barry Island.

FOOTNOTE:

[166] 'Arch. Camb.,' 3rd Se., xiii., 61.

IX.

The use of pins for purposes of enchantment is one of the most curious

features of popular superstition. Trivial as it appears to superficial

observation, it can be associated with a vast number of mystic rites

and ceremonials, and with times the most ancient. There is no doubt

that before the invention of pins in this country small pieces of

money were thrown into the well instead; indeed it was asserted by a

writer in the 'Archaeologia Cambrensis' in 1856 that money was still

thrown into St. Tecla's well, by persons desirous of recovering from

fits. That the same practice prevailed among the Romans is shown by

Pliny, who speaks of the sacred spring of the Clitumnus, so pure and

clear that you may count the pieces of money that have been thrown

into it, and the shining pebbles at the bottom. And in connection with

the Welsh well of St. Elian there was formerly a box into which the

sick dropped money as they nowadays drop a pin into that well. This

box was called cyff-elian, and was in the form of a trunk studded with

nails, with an aperture in the top through which the money was

dropped. It is said to have got so full of coins that the parishioners

opened it, and with the contents purchased three farms. The

presentation of pins to the well, though now a meaningless rite on the

part of those who practice it, was originally intended as a

propitiatory offering to the evil spirit of the well. In some

instances the heathen faith is virtually restored, and the well

endowed with supernatural powers irrespective of the dedication of its

waters to a Christian saint. Indeed in the majority of cases where

these wells are now resorted to by the peasantry for any other than

curative purposes, the fetichistic impulse is much more conspicuous

than any influence associated with religious teaching.

X.

St. Elian's is accounted the most dreadful well in Wales. It is in the

parish of Llanelian, Denbighshire. It is at the head of the cursing

wells, of which there are but few in the Principality, and holds still

a strong influence over the ignorant mind. The popular belief is that

you can 'put' your enemy 'into' this well, i.e., render him subject to

its evil influence, so that he will pine away and perhaps die unless

the curse be removed. The degree and nature of the curse can be

modified as the 'offerer' desires, so that the obnoxious person will

suffer aches and pains in his body, or troubles in his pocket--the

slings and arrows of outrageous fortune. The minister of the well

appears to be some heartless wretch residing in the neighbourhood,

whose services are enlisted for a small fee. The name of the person to

be 'put into' the well is registered in a book kept by the wretch

aforesaid, and a pin is cast into the well in his name, together with

a pebble inscribed with its initials. The person so cursed soon hears

of it, and the fact preys on his mind; he imagines for himself every

conceivable ill, and if gifted with a lively faith soon finds himself

reduced to a condition where he cannot rest till he has secured the

removal of the curse. This is effected by a reversal of the above

ceremonies--erasing the name, taking out the pebble, and otherwise

appeasing the spirit of the well. It is asserted that death has in

many instances resulted from the curse of this wickedly malicious

well.[167]

FOOTNOTE:

[167] 'Camb. Pop. Ant.,' 247. See also 'Arch. Camb.,' 1st Se., i. 46.

XI.

Occasionally the cursing powers of a well were synonymous with curing

powers. Thus a well much resorted to near Penrhos, was able to curse a

cancer, i.e., cure it. The sufferer washed in the water, uttering

curses upon the disease, and also dropping pins around the well. This

well has been drained by the unsympathizing farmer on whose land it

was, on account of the serious damage done to his crops by

trespassers.

XII.

Wells from which milk has flowed have been known in several places.

That Winifred's well indulged in this eccentricity on one occasion has

been noted. The well of St. Illtyd is celebrated for the like

performance. This well is in Glamorganshire, in the land called Gower,

near Swansea. It was about the nativity of John the Baptist, on the

fifth day of the week, in a year not specified, but certainly very

remote, that for three hours there flowed from this well a copious

stream of milk instead of water. That it was really milk we are not

left in any possible doubt, for 'many who were present testified that

while they were looking at the milky stream carefully and with

astonishment, they also saw among the gravel curds lying about in

every direction, and all around the edge of the well a certain fatty

substance floating about, such as is collected from milk, so that

butter can be made from it.'[168]

The origin of this well is a pleasing miracle, and recalls the story

of Canute; but while Canute's effort to command the sea was a failure

in the eleventh century, that of St. Illtyd five hundred years earlier

was a brilliant success. It appears that the saint was very pleasantly

established on an estate consisting of a field surrounded on all sides

by plains, with an intermediate grove, but was much afflicted by the

frequent overflowings of the sea upon his land. In vain he built and

rebuilt a very large embankment of mud mixed with stones, the rushing

waves burst through again and again. At last the saint's patience was

worn out, and he said, 'I will not live here any longer; I much wished

it, but troubled with this marine molestation, it is not in my power.

It destroys my buildings, it flows to the oratory which we built with

great labour.' However, the place was so convenient he was loth to

leave it, and he prayed for assistance. On the night before his

intended departure an angel came to him and bade him remain, and gave

him instructions for driving back the sea. Early in the morning Illtyd

went to the fluctuating sea and drove it back; it receded before him

'as if it were a sensible animal,' and left the shore dry. Then Illtyd

struck the shore with his staff, 'and thereupon flowed a very clear

fountain, which is also beneficial for curing diseases, and which

continues to flow without a falling off; and what is more wonderful,

although it is near the sea, the water emitted is pure.'[169]

FOOTNOTES:

[168] 'Arch. Camb.,' 1st Se., iii., 264.

[169] 'Cambro-British Saints,' 478.

XIII.