TRIUMPHS OF THE WATER-WORLD
Une des légendes les plus répandues en Bretagne est celle d'une
prétendue ville d'Is, qui, à une époque inconnue, aurait été
engloutie par la mer. On montre, à divers endroits de la côte,
l'emplacement de cette cité fabuleuse, et les pécheurs vous en
font d'étranges récits. Les jours de tempête, assurent-ils,
on voit, dans les creux des vagues, le sommet des flèches de
ses églises; les jours de calme, on entend monter de l'abîme
le son de ses cloches, modulant l'hymne du jour.--Renan.
More than once in the last chapter was the subject of submersions
and cataclysms brought before the reader, and it may be convenient
to enumerate here the most remarkable cases, and to add one or two
to their number, as well as to dwell at somewhat greater length on
some instances which may be said to have found their way into Welsh
literature. He has already been told of the outburst of the Glasfryn
Lake (p. 367) and Ffynnon Gywer (p. 376), of Llyn Llech Owen (p. 379)
and the Crymlyn (p. 191), also of the drowning of Cantre'r Gwaelod
(p. 383); not to mention that one of my informants had something
to say (p. 219) of the submergence of Caer Arianrhod, a rock now
visible only at low water between Celynnog Fawr and Dinas Dinlle,
on the coast of Arfon. But, to put it briefly, it is an ancient
belief in the Principality that its lakes generally have swallowed
up habitations of men, as in the case of Llyn Syfadon (p. 73) and
the Pool of Corwrion (p. 57). To these I now proceed to add other
instances, to wit those of Bala Lake, Kenfig Pool, Llynclys, and
Helig ab Glannog's territory including Traeth Lafan.
Perhaps it is best to begin with historical events, namely those
implied in the encroachment of the sea and the sand on the coast of
Glamorganshire, from the Mumbles, in Gower, to the mouth of the Ogmore,
below Bridgend. It is believed that formerly the shores of Swansea Bay
were from three to five miles further out than the present strand,
and the oyster dredgers point to that part of the bay which they
call the Green Grounds, while trawlers, hovering over these sunken
meadows of the Grove Island, declare that they can sometimes see the
foundations of the ancient homesteads overwhelmed by a terrific storm
which raged some three centuries ago. The old people sometimes talk
of an extensive forest called Coed Arian, 'Silver Wood,' stretching
from the foreshore of the Mumbles to Kenfig Burrows, and there is
a tradition of a long-lost bridle path used by many generations
of Mansels, Mowbrays, and Talbots, from Penrice Castle to Margam
Abbey. All this is said to be corroborated by the fishing up every
now and then in Swansea Bay of stags' antlers, elks' horns, those
of the wild ox, and wild boars' tusks, together with the remains of
other ancient tenants of the submerged forest. Various references
in the registers of Swansea and Aberavon mark successive stages in
the advance of the desolation from the latter part of the fifteenth
century down. Among others a great sandstorm is mentioned, which
overwhelmed the borough of Cynffig or Kenfig, and encroached on the
coast generally: the series of catastrophes seems to have culminated
in an inundation caused by a terrible tidal wave in the early part
of the year 1607 [1].
To return to Kenfig, what remains of that old town is near the sea,
and it is on all sides surrounded by hillocks of finely powdered sand
and flanked by ridges of the same fringing the coast. The ruins of
several old buildings half buried in the sand peep out of the ground,
and in the immediate neighbourhood is Kenfig Pool, which is said to
have a circumference of nearly two miles. When the pool formed itself
I have not been able to discover: from such accounts as have come in
my way I should gather that it is older than the growing spread of
the sand, but the island now to be seen in it is artificial and of
modern make [2]. The story relating to the lake is given as follows
in the volume of the Iolo Manuscripts, p. 194, and the original,
from which I translate, is crisp, compressed, and, as I fancy, in
Iolo's own words:--
'A plebeian was in love with Earl Clare's daughter: she would not
have him as he was not wealthy. He took to the highway, and watched
the agent of the lord of the dominion coming towards the castle
from collecting his lord's money. He killed him, took the money,
and produced the coin, and the lady married him. A splendid banquet
was held: the best men of the country were invited, and they made as
merry as possible. On the second night the marriage was consummated,
and when happiest one heard a voice: all ear one listened and caught
the words, "Vengeance comes, vengeance comes, vengeance comes,"
three times. One asked, "When?" "In the ninth generation (âch),"
said the voice. "No reason for us to fear," said the married pair;
"we shall be under the mould long before." They lived on, however,
and a goresgynnyd, that is to say, a descendant of the sixth direct
generation, was born to them, also to the murdered man a goresgynnyd,
who, seeing that the time fixed was come, visited Kenfig. This was a
discreet youth of gentle manners, and he looked at the city and its
splendour, and noted that nobody owned a furrow or a chamber there
except the offspring of the murderer: he and his wife were still
living. At cockcrow he heard a cry, "Vengeance is come, is come,
is come." It is asked, "On whom?" and answered, "On him who murdered
my father of the ninth âch." He rises in terror: he goes towards the
city; but there is nothing to see save a large lake with three chimney
tops above the surface emitting smoke that formed a stinking.... [3]
On the face of the waters the gloves of the murdered man float to the
young man's feet: he picks them up, and sees on them the murdered man's
name and arms; and he hears at dawn of day the sound of praise to God
rendered by myriads joining in heavenly music. And so the story ends.'
On this coast is another piece of water in point, namely Crymlyn, or
'Crumlin Pool,' now locally called the Bog. It appears also to have
been sometimes called Pwll Cynan, after the name of a son of Rhys ab
Tewdwr, who, in his flight after his father's defeat on Hirwaen Wrgan,
was drowned in its waters [4]. It lies on Lord Jersey's estate, at a
distance of about one mile east of the mouth of the Tawe, and about a
quarter of a mile from high-water mark, from which it is separated by
a strip of ground known in the neighbourhood as Crymlyn Burrows. The
name Crymlyn means Crooked Lake, which, I am told, describes the shape
of this piece of water. When the bog becomes a pool it encloses an
island consisting of a little rocky hillock showing no trace of piles,
or walling, or any other handiwork of man [5]. The story about this
pool also is that it covers a town buried beneath its waters. Mr. Wirt
Sikes' reference to it has already been mentioned, and I have it
on the evidence of a native of the immediate neighbourhood, that he
has often heard his father and grandfather talk about the submerged
town. Add to this that Cadrawd, to whom I have had already (pp. 23,
376) to acknowledge my indebtedness, speaks in the columns of the
South Wales Daily News for February 15, 1899, of Crymlyn as follows:--
'It was said by the old people that on the site of this bog once
stood the old town of Swansea, and that in clear and calm weather the
chimneys and even the church steeple could be seen at the bottom of the
lake, and in the loneliness of the night the bells were often heard
ringing in the lake. It was also said that should any person happen
to stand with his face towards the lake when the wind is blowing
across the lake, and if any of the spray of that water should touch
his clothes, it would be only with the greatest difficulty he could
save himself from being attracted or sucked into the water. The lake
was at one time much larger than at present. The efforts made to
drain it have drawn a good deal of the water from it, but only to
convert it into a bog, which no one can venture to cross except in
exceptionally dry seasons or hard frost.'
On this I wish to remark in passing, that, while common sense would
lead one to suppose that the wind blowing across the water would
help the man facing it to get away whenever he chose, the reasoning
here is of another order, one characteristic in fact of the ways and
means of sympathetic magic. For specimens in point the reader may
be conveniently referred to page 360, where he may compare the words
quoted from Mr. Hartland, especially as to the use there mentioned of
stones or pellets thrown from one's hands. In the case of Crymlyn,
the wind blowing off the face of the water into the onlooker's face
and carrying with it some of the water in the form of spray which wets
his clothes, howsoever little, was evidently regarded as establishing a
link of connexion between him and the body of the water--or shall I say
rather, between him and the divinity of the water?--and that this link
was believed to be so strong that it required the man's utmost effort
to break it and escape being drawn in and drowned like Cynan. The
statement, supremely silly as it reads, is no modern invention; for one
finds that Nennius--or somebody else--reasoned in precisely the same
way, except that for a single onlooker he substitutes a whole army
of men and horses, and that he points the antithesis by distinctly
stating, that if they kept their backs turned to the fascinating
flood they would be out of danger. The conditions which he had in
view were, doubtless, that the men should face the water and have
their clothing more or less wetted by the spray from it. The passage
(§ 69) to which I refer is in the Mirabilia, and Geoffrey of Monmouth
is found to repeat it in a somewhat better style of Latin (ix. 7):
the following is the Nennian version:--
Aliud miraculum est, id est Oper Linn Liguan. Ostium fluminis illius
fluit in Sabrina et quando Sabrina inundatur ad sissam, et mare
inundatur similiter in ostio supra dicti fluminis et in stagno ostii
recipitur in modum voraginis et mare non vadit sursum et est litus
juxta flumen et quamdiu Sabrina inundatur ad sissam, istud litus non
tegitur et quando recedit mare et Sabrina, tunc Stagnum Liuan eructat
omne quod devoravit de mari et litus istud tegitur et instar montis in
una unda eructat et rumpit. Et si fuerit exercitus totius regionis,
in qua est, et direxerit faciem contra undam, et exercitum trahit
unda per vim humore repletis vestibus et equi similiter trahuntur. Si
autem exercitus terga versus fuerit contra eam, non nocet ei unda.
'There is another wonder, to wit Aber Llyn Lliwan. The water from the
mouth of that river flows into the Severn, and when the Severn is in
flood up to its banks, and when the sea is also in flood at the mouth
of the above-named river and is sucked in like a whirlpool into the
pool of the Aber, the sea does not go on rising: it leaves a margin
of beach by the side of the river, and all the time the Severn is in
flood up to its bank, that beach is not covered. And when the sea and
the Severn ebb, then Llyn Lliwan brings up all it had swallowed from
the sea, and that beach is covered while Llyn Lliwan discharges its
contents in one mountain-like wave and vomits forth. Now if the army
of the whole district in which this wonder is, were to be present with
the men facing the wave, the force of it would, once their clothes are
drenched by the spray, draw them in, and their horses would likewise
be drawn. But if the men should have their backs turned towards the
water, the wave would not harm them [6].'
One story about the formation of Bala Lake, or Llyn Tegid [7] as
it is called in Welsh, has been given at p. 376: here is another
which I translate from a version in Hugh Humphreys' Llyfr Gwybodaeth
Gyffredinol (Carnarvon), second series, vol. i, no. 2, p. 1. I may
premise that the contributor, whose name is not given, betrays a
sort of literary ambition which has led him to relate the story in a
confused fashion; and among other things he uses the word edifeirwch,
'repentance,' throughout, instead of dial, 'vengeance.' With that
correction it runs somewhat as follows:--Tradition relates that Bala
Lake is but the watery tomb of the palaces of iniquity; and that some
old boatmen can on quiet moonlight nights in harvest see towers in
ruins at the bottom of its waters, and also hear at times a feeble
voice saying, Dial a daw, dial a daw, 'Vengeance will come'; and
another voice inquiring, Pa bryd y daw, 'When will it come?' Then
the first voice answers, Yn y dryded genhedlaeth, 'In the third
generation.' Those voices were but a recollection over oblivion,
for in one of those palaces lived in days of yore an oppressive and
cruel prince, corresponding to the well-known description of one of
whom it is said, 'Whom he would he slew; and whom he would he kept
alive.' The oppression and cruelty practised by him on the poor farmers
were notorious far and near. This prince, while enjoying the morning
breezes of summer in his garden, used frequently to hear a voice
saying, 'Vengeance will come.' But he always laughed the threat away
with reckless contempt. One night a poor harper from the neighbouring
hills was ordered to come to the prince's palace. On his way the harper
was told that there was great rejoicing at the palace at the birth of
the first child of the prince's son. When he had reached the palace
the harper was astonished at the number of the guests, including
among them noble lords, princes, and princesses: never before had
he seen such splendour at any feast. When he had begun playing the
gentlemen and ladies dancing presented a superb appearance. So the
mirth and wine abounded, nor did he love playing for them any more
than they loved dancing to the music of his harp. But about midnight,
when there was an interval in the dancing, and the old harper had
been left alone in a corner, he suddenly heard a voice singing in a
sort of a whisper in his ear, 'Vengeance, vengeance!' He turned at
once, and saw a little bird hovering above him and beckoning him,
as it were, to follow him. He followed the bird as fast as he could,
but after getting outside the palace he began to hesitate. But the
bird continued to invite him on, and to sing in a plaintive and
mournful voice the word 'Vengeance, vengeance!' The old harper
was afraid of refusing to follow, and so they went on over bogs
and through thickets, whilst the bird was all the time hovering in
front of him and leading him along the easiest and safest paths. But
if he stopped for a moment the same mournful note of 'Vengeance,
vengeance!' would be sung to him in a more and more plaintive and
heartbreaking fashion. They had by this time reached the top of the
hill, a considerable distance from the palace. As the old harper felt
rather fatigued and weary, he ventured once more to stop and rest,
but he heard the bird's warning voice no more. He listened, but he
heard nothing save the murmuring of the little burn hard by. He now
began to think how foolish he had been to allow himself to be led away
from the feast at the palace: he turned back in order to be there in
time for the next dance. As he wandered on the hill he lost his way,
and found himself forced to await the break of day. In the morning,
as he turned his eyes in the direction of the palace, he could see
no trace of it: the whole tract below was one calm, large lake,
with his harp floating on the face of the waters.
Next comes the story of Llynclys Pool in the neighbourhood of
Oswestry. That piece of water is said to be of extraordinary depth, and
its name means the 'swallowed court.' The village of Llynclys is called
after it, and the legend concerning the pool is preserved in verses
printed among the compositions of the local poet, John F. M. Dovaston,
who published his works in 1825. The first stanza runs thus:--
Clerk Willin he sat at king Alaric's board,
And a cunning clerk was he;
For he'd lived in the land of Oxenford
With the sons of Grammarie.
How much exactly of the poem comes from Dovaston's own muse, and
how much comes from the legend, I cannot tell. Take for instance the
king's name, this I should say is not derived from the story; but as
to the name of the clerk, that possibly is, for the poet bases it on
Croes-Willin, the Welsh form of which has been given me as Croes-Wylan,
that is Wylan's Cross, the name of the base of what is supposed to have
been an old cross, a little way out of Oswestry on the north side;
and I have been told that there is a farm in the same neighbourhood
called Tre' Wylan, 'Wylan's Stead.' To return to the legend, Alaric's
queen was endowed with youth and beauty, but the king was not happy;
and when he had lived with her nine years he told Clerk Willin how he
first met her when he was hunting 'fair Blodwell's rocks among.' He
married her on the condition that she should be allowed to leave him
one night in every seven, and this she did without his once knowing
whither she went on the night of her absence. Clerk Willin promised
to restore peace to the king if he would resign the queen to him,
and a tithe annually of his cattle and of the wine in his cellar to
him and the monks of the White Minster. The king consented, and the
wily clerk hurried away with his book late at night to the rocks by
the Giant's Grave, where there was an ogo' or cave which was supposed
to lead down to Faery. While the queen was inside the cave, he began
his spells and made it irrevocable that she should be his, and that
his fare should be what fed on the king's meadow and what flowed in
his cellar. When the clerk's potent spells forced the queen to meet
him to consummate his bargain with the king, what should he behold
but a grim ogress, who told him that their spells had clashed. She
explained to him how she had been the king's wife for thirty years,
and how the king began to be tired of her wrinkles and old age. Then,
on condition of returning to the Ogo to be an ogress one night in
seven, she was given youth and beauty again, with which she attracted
the king anew. In fact, she had promised him happiness
Till within his hall the flag-reeds tall
And the long green rushes grow.
The ogress continued in words which made the clerk see how completely
he had been caught in his own net:
Then take thy bride to thy cloistered bed,
As by oath and spell decreed,
And nought be thy fare but the pike and the dare,
And the water in which they feed.
The clerk had succeeded in restoring peace at the king's banqueting
board, but it was the peace of the dead;
For down went the king, and his palace and all,
And the waters now o'er it flow,
And already in his hall do the flag-reeds tall
And the long green rushes grow.
But the visitor will, Dovaston says, find Willin's peace relieved by
the stories which the villagers have to tell of that wily clerk, of
Croes-Willin, and of 'the cave called the Grim Ogo'; not to mention
that when the lake is clear, they will show you the towers of the
palace below, the Llynclys, which the Brython of ages gone by believed
to be there.
We now come to a different story about this pool, namely, one which
has been preserved in Latin by the historian Humfrey Lhuyd, or Humphrey
Llwyd, to the following effect:--
'After the description of Gwynedh, let vs now come to Powys,
the seconde kyngedome of VVales, which in the time of German
Altisiodorensis [St. Germanus of Auxerre], which preached sometime
there, agaynst Pelagius Heresie: was of power, as is gathered out of
his life. The kynge wherof, as is there read, bycause he refused to
heare that good man: by the secret and terrible iudgement of God,
with his Palace, and all his householde: was swallowed vp into the
bowels of the Earth, in that place, whereas, not farre from Oswastry,
is now a standyng water, of an vnknowne depth, called Lhunclys, that
is to say: the deuouryng of the Palace. And there are many Churches
founde in the same Province, dedicated to the name of German [8].'
I have not succeeded in finding the story in any of the lives of
St. Germanus, but Nennius, § 32, mentions a certain Benli, whom he
describes as rex iniquus atque tyrannus valde, who, after refusing
to admit St. Germanus and his following into his city, was destroyed
with all his courtiers, not by water, however, but by fire from
heaven. But the name Benli, in modern Welsh spelling Benlli [9],
points to the Moel Famau range of mountains, one of which is known
as Moel Fenlli, between Ruthin and Mold, rather than to any place
near Oswestry. In any case there is no reason to suppose that this
story with its Christian and ethical motive is anything like so old
as the substratum of Dovaston's verses.
The only version known to me in the Welsh language of the Llynclys
legend is to be found printed in the Brython for 1863, p. 338, and
it may be summarized as follows:--The Llynclys family were notorious
for their riotous living, and at their feasts a voice used to be
heard proclaiming, 'Vengeance is coming, coming,' but nobody took
it much to heart. However, one day a reckless maid asked the voice,
'When?' The prompt reply was to the effect that it was in the sixth
generation: the voice was heard no more. So one night, when the sixth
heir in descent from the time of the warning last heard was giving
a great drinking feast, and music had been vigorously contributing
to the entertainment of host and guest, the harper went outside for
a breath of air; but when he turned to come back, lo and behold! the
whole court had disappeared. Its place was occupied by a quiet piece
of water, on whose waves he saw his harp floating, nothing more.
Here must, lastly, be added one more legend of submergence, namely,
that supposed to have taken place some time or other on the north
coast of Carnarvonshire. In the Brython for 1863, pp. 393-4, we
have what purports to be a quotation from Owen Jones' Aberconwy
a'i Chyffiniau, 'Conway and its Environs,' a work which I have not
been able to find. Here one reads of a tract of country supposed
to have once extended from the Gogarth [10], 'the Great Orme,' to
Bangor, and from Llanfair Fechan to Ynys Seiriol, 'Priestholme or
Puffin Island,' and of its belonging to a wicked prince named Helig
ab Glannawc or Glannog [11], from whom it was called Tyno Helig,
'Helig's Hollow.' Tradition, the writer says, fixes the spot where
the court stood about halfway between Penmaen Mawr and Pen y Gogarth,
'the Great Orme's Head,' over against Trwyn yr Wylfa; and the story
relates that here a calamity had been foretold four generations before
it came, namely as the vengeance of Heaven on Helig ab Glannog for his
nefarious impiety. As that ancient prince rode through his fertile
heritage one day at the approach of night, he heard the voice of an
invisible follower warning him that 'Vengeance is coming, coming.' The
wicked old prince once asked excitedly, 'When?' The answer was,
'In the time of thy grandchildren, great-grandchildren, and their
children.' Peradventure Helig calmed himself with the thought, that,
if such a thing came, it would not happen in his lifetime. But on the
occasion of a great feast held at the court, and when the family down
to the fifth generation were present taking part in the festivities,
one of the servants noticed, when visiting the mead cellar to draw
more drink, that water was forcing its way in. He had only time to
warn the harper of the danger he was in, when all the others, in the
midst of their intoxication, were overwhelmed by the flood.
These inundation legends have many points of similarity among
themselves: thus in those of Llynclys, Syfadon, Llyn Tegid, and Tyno
Helig, though they have a ring of austerity about them, the harper
is a favoured man, who always escapes when the banqueters are all
involved in the catastrophe. The story, moreover, usually treats the
submerged habitations as having sunk intact, so that the ancient spires
and church towers may still at times be seen: nay the chimes of their
bells may be heard by those who have ears for such music. In some cases
there may have been, underlying the legend, a trace of fact such as
has been indicated to me by Mr. Owen M. Edwards, of Lincoln College,
in regard to Bala Lake. When the surface of that water, he says,
is covered with broken ice, and a south-westerly wind is blowing,
the mass of fragments is driven towards the north-eastern end near the
town of Bala; and he has observed that the friction produces a somewhat
metallic noise which a quick imagination may convert into something
like a distant ringing of bells. Perhaps the most remarkable instance
remains to be mentioned: I refer to Cantre'r Gwaelod, as the submerged
country of Gwydno Garanhir is termed, see p. 382 above. To one portion
of his fabled realm the nearest actual centres of population are
Aberdovey and Borth on either side of the estuary of the Dovey. As
bursar of Jesus College I had business in 1892 in the Golden Valley
of Herefordshire, and I stayed a day or two at Dorstone enjoying
the hospitality of the rectory, and learning interesting facts from
the rector, Mr. Prosser Powell, and from Mrs. Powell in particular,
as to the folklore of the parish, which is still in several respects
very Welsh. Mrs. Powell, however, did not confine herself to Dorstone
or the Dore Valley, for she told me as follows:--'I was at Aberdovey
in 1852, and I distinctly remember that my childish imagination was
much excited by the legend of the city beneath the sea, and the bells
which I was told might be heard at night. I used to lie awake trying,
but in vain, to catch the echoes of the chime. I was only seven years
old, and cannot remember who told me the story, though I have never
forgotten it.' Mrs. Powell added that she has since heard it said, that
at a certain stage of the tide at the mouth of the Dovey, the way in
which the waves move the pebbles makes them produce a sort of jingling
noise which has been fancied to be the echo of distant bells ringing.
These clues appeared too good to be dropped at once, and the result
of further inquiries led Mrs. Powell afterwards to refer me to The
Monthly Packet for the year 1859, where I found an article headed
'Aberdovey Legends,' and signed M. B., the initials, Mrs. Powell
thought, of Miss Bramston of Winchester. The writer gives a sketch
of the story of the country overflowed by the neighbouring portion
of Cardigan Bay, mentioning, p. 645, that once on a time there were
great cities on the banks of the Dovey and the Disynni. 'Cities with
marble wharfs,' she says, 'busy factories, and churches whose towers
resounded with beautiful peals and chimes of bells.' She goes on to say
that 'Mausna is the name of the city on the Dovey; its eastern suburb
was at the sand-bank now called Borth, its western stretched far out
into the sea.' What the name Mausna may be I have no idea, unless it
is the result of some confusion with that of the great turbary behind
Borth, namely Mochno, or Cors Fochno, 'Bog of Mochno.' The name Borth
stands for Y Borth, 'the Harbour,' which, more adequately described,
was once Porth Wydno, 'Gwydno's Harbour.' The writer, however, goes
on with the story of the wicked prince, who left open the sluices of
the sea-wall protecting his country and its capital: we read on as
follows:--'But though the sea will not give back that fair city to
light and air, it is keeping it as a trust but for a time, and even
now sometimes, though very rarely, eyes gazing down through the green
waters can see not only the fluted glistering sand dotted here and
there with shells and tufts of waving sea-weed, but the wide streets
and costly buildings of that now silent city. Yet not always silent,
for now and then will come chimes and peals of bells, sometimes near,
sometimes distant, sounding low and sweet like a call to prayer, or as
rejoicing for a victory. Even by day these tones arise, but more often
they are heard in the long twilight evenings, or by night. English
ears have sometimes heard these sounds even before they knew the tale,
and fancied that they must come from some church among the hills, or
on the other side of the water, but no such church is there to give
the call; the sound and its connexion is so pleasant, that one does
not care to break the spell by seeking for the origin of the legend,
as in the idler tales with which that neighbourhood abounds.'
The dream about 'the wide streets and costly buildings of that now
silent city' seems to have its counterpart on the western coast of
Erin--somewhere, let us say, off the cliffs of Moher [12], in County
Clare--witness Gerald Griffin's lines, to which a passing allusion
has already been made, p. 205:--
A story I heard on the cliffs of the West,
That oft, through the breakers dividing,
A city is seen on the ocean's wild breast,
In turreted majesty riding.
But brief is the glimpse of that phantom so bright:
Soon close the white waters to screen it.
The allusion to the submarine chimes would make it unpardonable to
pass by unnoticed the well-known Welsh air called Clychau Aberdyfi,
'The Bells of Aberdovey,' which I have always suspected of taking its
name from fairy bells [13]. This popular tune is of unknown origin,
and the words to which it is usually sung make the bells say un,
dau, tri, pedwar, pump, chwech, 'one, two, three, four, five, six';
and I have heard a charming Welsh vocalist putting on saith, 'seven,'
in her rendering of the song. This is not to be wondered at, as her
instincts must have rebelled against such a commonplace number as six
in a song redolent of old-world sentiment. But our fairy bells ought
to have stopped at five: this would seem to have been forgotten when
the melody and the present words were wedded together. At any rate
our stories seem to suggest that fairy counting did not go beyond the
fingering of one hand. The only Welsh fairy represented counting is
made to do it all by fives: she counts un, dau, tri, pedwar, pump; un,
dau, tri, pedwar, pump, as hard as her tongue can go. For on the number
of times she can repeat the five numerals at a single breath depends
the number of the live stock of each kind, which are to form her dowry:
see p. 8 above, and as to music in fairy tales, see pp. 202, 206, 292.
Now that a number of our inundation stories have been passed in
review in this and the previous chapter, some room may be given to
the question of their original form. They separate themselves, as
it will have been seen, into at least two groups: (1) those in which
the cause of the catastrophe is ethical, the punishment of the wicked
and dissolute; and (2) those in which no very distinct suggestion of
the kind is made. It is needless to say that everything points to the
comparative lateness of the fully developed ethical motive; and we are
not forced to rest content with this theoretical distinction, for in
more than one of the instances we have the two kinds of story. In
the case of Llyn Tegid, the less known and presumably the older
story connects the formation of the lake with the neglect to keep
the stone door of the well shut, while the more popular story makes
the catastrophe a punishment for wicked and riotous living: compare
pp. 377, 408, above. So with the older story of Cantre'r Gwaelod,
on which we found the later one of the tipsy Seithennin as it were
grafted, p. 395. The keeping of the well shut in the former case, as
also in that of Ffynnon Gywer, was a precaution, but the neglect of
it was not the cause of the ensuing misfortune. Even if we had stories
like the Irish ones, which make the sacred well burst forth in pursuit
of the intruder who has gazed into its depths, it would by no means
be of a piece with the punishment of riotous and lawless living. Our
comparison should rather be with the story of the Curse of Pantannas,
where a man incurred the wrath of the fairies by ploughing up ground
which they wished to retain as a green sward; but the threatened
vengeance for that act of culture did not come to pass for a century,
till the time of one, in fact, who is not charged with having done
anything to deserve it. The ethics of that legend are, it is clear,
not easy to discover, and in our inundation stories one may trace
stages of development from a similarly low level. The case may be
represented thus: a divinity is offended by a man, and for some reason
or other the former wreaks his vengeance, not on the offender, but on
his descendants. This minimum granted, it is easy to see, that in time
the popular conscience would fail to rest satisfied with the cruel
idea of a jealous divinity visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon
the children. One may accordingly distinguish the following stages:--
1. The legend lays it down as a fact that the father was very wicked.
2. It makes his descendants also wicked like him.
3. It represents the same punishment overtaking father and sons,
ancestor and descendants.
4. The simplest way to secure this kind of equal justice was, no doubt,
to let the offending ancestors live on to see their descendants of the
generation for whose time the vengeance had been fixed, and to let them
be swept away with them in one and the same cataclysm, as in the Welsh
versions of the Syfadon and Kenfig legends, possibly also in those
of Llyn Tegid and Tyno Helig, which are not explicit on this point.
Let us for a moment examine the indications of the time to which the
vengeance is put off. In the case of the landed families of ancient
Wales, every member of them had his position and liabilities settled
by his pedigree, which had to be exactly recorded down to the eighth
generation or eighth lifetime in Gwyned, and to the seventh in Gwent
and Dyfed. Those generations were reckoned the limits of recognized
family relationship according to the Welsh Laws, and to keep any
practical reckoning of the kind, extending always back some two
centuries, must have employed a class of professional men [14]. In
any case the ninth generation, called in Welsh y nawfed âch, which
is a term in use all over the Principality at the present day, is
treated as lying outside all recognized kinship. Thus if AB wishes to
say that he is no relation to CD, he will say that he is not related
o fewn y nawfed âch, 'within the ninth degree,' or hyd y nawfed âch,
'up to the ninth degree,' it being understood that in the ninth degree
and beyond it no relationship is reckoned. Folklore stories, however,
seem to suggest another interpretation of the word âch, and fewer
generations in the direct line as indicated in the following table. For
the sake of simplicity the founder of the family is here assumed to
have at least two sons, A and B, and each succeeding generation to
consist of one son only; and lastly the women are omitted altogether:--
Tâd I (Father)
1
Brother A : II : B Mâb (Son)
2 : : 2
i Cousin Aa : III : Ba Wyr (Grandson)
3 : : 3
ii Cousin Ab : IV : Bb Gorwyr (Great-Grandson)
4 : : 4
iii Cousin Ac : V : Bc Esgynnyd (G.G.Grandson)
5 : : 5
iv Cousin Ad : VI : Bd Goresgynnyd (G.G.G.Grandson).
In reckoning the relationships between the collateral members of
the family, one counts not generations or begettings, not removes or
degrees, but ancestry or the number of ancestors, so that the father
or founder of the family only counts once. Thus his descendants Ad and
Bd in the sixth generation or lifetime, are fourth cousins separated
from one another by nine ancestors: that is, they are related in the
ninth âch. In other words, Ad has five ancestors and Bd has also five,
but as they have one ancestor in common, the father of the family,
they are not separated by 5 + 5 ancestors, but by 5 + 5 - 1, that is
by 9. Similarly, one being always subtracted, the third cousins Ac
and Bc are related in the seventh âch, and the second cousin in the
fifth âch: so with the others in odd numbers downwards, and also with
the relatives reckoned upwards to the seventh or eighth generation,
which would mean collaterals separated by eleven or thirteen ancestors
respectively. This reckoning, which is purely conjectural, is based
chiefly on the Kenfig story, which foretold the vengeance to come
in the ninth âch and otherwise in the time of the goresgynnyd, that
is to say in the sixth lifetime. This works out all right if only
by the ninth âch we understand the generation or lifetime when the
collaterals are separated by nine ancestors, for that is no other
than the sixth from the founder of the family. The Welsh version
of the Llynclys legend fixes on the same generation, as it says yn
oes wyrion, gorwyrion, esgynnyd a goresgynnyd, 'in the lifetime of
grandsons, great-grandsons, ascensors, and their children,' for these
last's time is the sixth generation. In the case of the Syfadon legend
the time of the vengeance is the ninth cenhedlaeth or generation,
which must be regarded as probably a careless way of indicating the
generation when the collaterals are separated by nine ancestors, that
is to say the sixth from the father of the family. It can hardly have
the other meaning, as the sinning ancestors are represented as then
still living. The case of the Tyno Helig legend is different, as we
have the time announced to the offending ancestor described as amser
dy wyrion, dy orwyrion, a dy esgynydion, 'the time of thy grandsons,
thy great-grandsons, and thy ascensors,' which would be only the
fifth generation with collaterals separated only by seven ancestors,
and not nine. But the probability is that goresgynydion has been here
accidentally omitted, and that the generation indicated originally
was the same as in the others. This, however, will not explain
the Bala legend, which fixes the time for the third generation,
namely, immediately after the birth of the offending prince's
first grandson. If, however, as I am inclined to suppose, the sixth
generation with collaterals severed by nine ancestors was the normal
term in these stories, it is easy to understand that the story-teller
might wish to substitute a generation nearer to the original offender,
especially if he was himself to be regarded as surviving to share in
the threatened punishment: his living to see the birth of his first
grandson postulated no extraordinary longevity.
The question why fairy vengeance is so often represented deferred
for a long time can no longer be put off. Here three or four answers
suggest themselves:--
1. The story of the Curse of Pantannas relates how the offender was
not the person punished, but one of his descendants a hundred or more
years after his time, while the offender is represented escaping the
fairies' vengeance because he entreated them very hard to let him
go unpunished. All this seems to me but a sort of protest against
the inexorable character of the little people, a protest, moreover,
which was probably invented comparatively late.
2. The next answer is the very antithesis of the Pantannas one; for
it is, that the fairies delay in order to involve all the more men
and women in the vengeance wreaked by them: I confess that I see no
reason to entertain so sinister an idea.
3. A better answer, perhaps, is that the fairies were not always in
a position to harm him who offended them. This may well have been
the belief as regards any one who had at his command the dreaded
potency of magic. Take for instance the Irish story of a king of
Erin called Eochaid Airem, who, with the aid of his magician or
druid Dalán, defied the fairies, and dug into the heart of their
underground station, until, in fact, he got possession of his queen,
who had been carried thither by a fairy chief named Mider. Eochaid,
assisted by his druid and the powerful Ogams which the latter wrote
on rods of yew, was too formidable for the fairies, and their wrath
was not executed till the time of Eochaid's unoffending grandson,
Conaire Mór, who fell a victim to it, as related in the epic story of
Bruden Dáderga, so called from the palace where Conaire was slain [15].
4. Lastly, it may be said that the fairies being supposed deathless,
there would be no reason why they should hurry; and even in case the
delay meant a century or two, that makes no perceptible approach to
the extravagant scale of time common enough in our fairy tales, when,
for instance, they make a man who has whiled ages away in fairyland,
deem it only so many minutes [16].
Whatever the causes may have been which gave our stories their
form in regard of the delay in the fairy revenge, it is clear that
Welsh folklore could not allow this delay to extend beyond the sixth
generation with its cousinship of nine ancestries, if, as I gather,
it counted kinship no further. Had one projected it on the seventh or
the eighth generation, both of which are contemplated in the Laws, it
would not be folklore. It would more likely be the lore of the landed
gentry and of the powerful families whose pedigrees and ramifications
of kinship were minutely known to the professional men on whom it
was incumbent to keep themselves, and those on whom they depended,
well informed in such matters.
It remains for me to consider the non-ethical motive of the other
stories, such as those which ascribe negligence and the consequent
inundation to the woman who has the charge of the door or lid of the
threatening well. Her negligence is not the cause of the catastrophe,
but it leaves the way open for it. What then can have been regarded
the cause? One may gather something to the point from the Irish story
where the divinity of the well is offended because a woman has gazed
into its depths, and here probably, as already suggested (p. 392),
we come across an ancient tabu directed against women, which may have
applied only to certain wells of peculiarly sacred character. It
serves, however, to suggest that the divinities of the water-world
were not disinclined to seize every opportunity of extending their
domain on the earth's surface; and I am persuaded that this was
once a universal creed of some race or other in possession of these
islands. Besides the Irish legends already mentioned (pp. 382, 384)
of the formation of Lough Neagh, Lough Ree, and others, witness the
legendary annals of early Ireland, which, by the side of battles, the
clearing of forests, and the construction of causeways, mention the
bursting forth of lakes and rivers; that is to say, the formation or
the coming into existence, or else the serious expansion, of certain of
the actual waters of the country. For the present purpose the details
given by The Four Masters are sufficient, and I have hurriedly counted
their instances as follows:--
Anno Mundi 2532, number of the lakes formed, 2.
,, ,, 2533, ,, ,, ,, lakes ,, 1.
,, ,, 2535, ,, ,, ,, lakes ,, 2.
,, ,, 2545, ,, ,, ,, lakes ,, 1.
,, ,, 2546, ,, ,, ,, lakes ,, 1.
,, ,, 2859, ,, ,, ,, lakes ,, 2.
,, ,, 2860, ,, ,, ,, lakes ,, 2.
,, ,, 3503, ,, ,, ,, rivers ,, 21.
,, ,, 3506, ,, ,, ,, lakes ,, 9.
,, ,, 3510, ,, ,, ,, rivers ,, 5.
,, ,, 3520, ,, ,, ,, rivers ,, 9.
,, ,, 3581, ,, ,, ,, lakes ,, 9.
,, ,, 3656, ,, ,, ,, rivers ,, 3.
,, ,, 3751, ,, ,, ,, lakes ,, 1.
,, ,, 3751, ,, ,, ,, rivers ,, 3.
,, ,, 3790, ,, ,, ,, lakes ,, 4.
,, ,, 4169, ,, ,, ,, rivers ,, 5.
,, ,, 4694, ,, ,, ,, lakes ,, 1.
This makes an aggregate of thirty-five lakes and forty-six rivers,
that is to say a total of eighty-one eruptions. But I ought, perhaps,
to explain that under the head of lakes I have included not only
separate pieces of water, but also six inlets of the sea, such as
Strangford Lough and the like. Still more to the point is it to mention
that of the lakes two are said to have burst forth at the digging
of graves. Thus, A.M. 2535, The Four Masters have the following:
'Laighlinne, son of Parthalon, died in this year. When his grave
was dug, Loch Laighlinne sprang forth in Ui Mac Uais, and from him
it is named [17].' O'Donovan, the editor and translator of The Four
Masters, supposes it to be somewhere to the south-west of Tara, in
Meath. Similarly, A.M. 4694, they say of a certain Melghe Molbthach,
'When his grave was digging, Loch Melghe burst forth over the land in
Cairbre, so that it was named from him.' This is said to be now called
Lough Melvin, on the confines of the counties of Donegal, Leitrim,
and Fermanagh. These two instances are mentioned by The Four Masters;
and here is one given by Stokes in the Rennes Dindsenchas: see the
Revue Celtique, xv. 428-9. It has to do with Loch Garman, as Wexford
Harbour was called in Irish, and it runs thus: 'Loch Garman, whence
is it? Easy to say. Garman Glas, son of Dega, was buried there, and
when his grave was dug then the lake burst throughout the land. Whence
Loch Garman.' It matters not here that there are alternative accounts
of the name.
The meaning of all this seems to be that cutting the green sward or
disturbing the earth beneath was believed in certain cases to give
offence to some underground divinity or other connected with the world
of waters. That divinity avenged the annoyance or offence given him by
causing water to burst forth and form a lake forthwith. The nearness
of such divinities to the surface seems not a little remarkable, and
it is shown not only in the folklore which has been preserved for
us by The Four Masters, but also by the usual kind of story about
a neglected well door. These remarks suggest the question whether
it was not one of the notions which determined surface burials,
that is, burials in which no cutting of the ground took place,
the cists or chambers and the bodies placed in them being covered
over by the heaping on of earth or stones brought from a more or
less convenient distance. It might perhaps be said that all this
only implied individuals of a character to desecrate the ground and
call forth the displeasure of the divinities concerned; and for that
suggestion folklore parallels, it is true, could be adduced. But it is
hardly adequate: the facts seem to indicate a more general objection
on the part of the powers in point; and they remind one rather of the
clause said to be inserted in mining leases in China with the object,
if one may trust the newspapers, of preventing shafts from being sunk
below a certain depth, for fear of offending the susceptibilities of
the demons or dragons ruling underground.
It is interesting to note the fact, that Celtic folklore connects the
underground divinities intimately with water; for one may briefly
say that they have access wherever water can take them. With this
qualification the belief may be said to have lingered lately in Wales,
for instance, in connexion with Llyn Barfog, near Aberdovey. 'It is
believed to be very perilous,' Mr. Pughe says, p. 142 above, 'to let
the waters out of the lake'; and not long before he wrote, in 1853,
an aged inhabitant of the district informed him 'that she recollected
this being done during a period of long drought, in order to procure
motive power for Llyn Pair Mill, and that long-continued heavy rains
followed.' Then we have the story related to Mr. Reynolds as to Llyn
y Fan Fach, how there emerged from the water a huge hairy fellow of
hideous aspect, who stormed at the disturbers of his peace, and uttered
the threat that unless they left him alone in his own place he would
drown a whole town. Thus the power of the water spirit is represented
as equal to producing excessive wet weather and destructive floods. He
is in all probability not to be dissociated from the afanc in the
Conwy story which has already been given (pp. 130-3). Now the local
belief is that the reason why the afanc had to be dragged out of the
river was that he caused floods in the river and made it impossible
for people to cross on their way to market at Llanrwst. Some such
a local legend has been generalized into a sort of universal flood
story in the late Triad, iii. 97, as follows:--'Three masterpieces of
the Isle of Prydain: the Ship of Nefyd Naf Neifion, that carried in
her male and female of every kind when the Lake of Llïon burst; and
Hu the Mighty's Ychen Bannog dragging the afanc of the lake to land,
so that the lake burst no more; and the Stones of Gwydon Ganhebon,
on which one read all the arts and sciences of the world.' A story
similar to the Conwy one, but no longer to be got so complete, as
far as I know, seems to have been current in various parts of the
Principality, especially around Llyn Syfadon and on the banks of the
Anglesey pool called Llyn yr Wyth Eidion, 'the Pool of the Eight Oxen,'
for so many is Hu represented here as requiring in dealing with the
Anglesey afanc. According to Mr. Pughe of Aberdovey, the same feat
was performed at Llyn Barfog, not, however, by Hu and his oxen,
but by Arthur and his horse. To be more exact the task may be here
considered as done by Arthur superseding Hu: see p. 142 above. That,
however, is of no consequence here, and I return to the afanc: the Fan
Fach legend told to Mr. Reynolds makes the lake ruler huge and hairy,
hideous and rough-spoken, but he expresses himself in human speech,
in fact in two lines of doggerel: see p. 19 above. On the other hand,
the Llyn Cwm Llwch story, which puts the same doggerel, p. 21, into
the mouth of the threatening figure in red who sits in a chair on
the face of that lake, suggests nothing abnormal about his personal
appearance. Then as to the Conwy afanc, he is very heavy, it is true,
but he also speaks the language of the country. He is lured, be it
noticed, out of his home in the lake by the attractions of a young
woman, who lets him rest his head in her lap and fall asleep. When
he wakes to find himself in chains he takes a cruel revenge on
her. But with infinite toil and labour he is dragged beyond the
Conwy watershed into one of the highest tarns on Snowdon; for there
is here no question of killing him, but only of removing him where
he cannot harm the people of the Conwy Valley. It is true that the
story of Peredur represents that knight cutting an afanc's head off,
but so much the worse for the compiler of that romance, as we have
doubtless in the afanc some kind of a deathless being. However, the
description which the Peredur story gives [18] of him is interesting:
he lives in a cave at the door of which is a stone pillar: he sees
everybody that comes without anybody seeing him; and from behind the
pillar he kills all comers with a poisoned spear.
Hitherto we have the afanc described mostly from a hostile point of
view: let us change our position, which some of the stories already
given enable us to do. Take for instance the first of the whole
series, where it describes, p. 7, the Fan Fach youth's despair when
the lake damsel, whose love he had gained, suddenly dived to fetch
her father and her sister. There emerged, it says, out of the lake
two most beautiful ladies, accompanied by a hoary-headed man of noble
mien and extraordinary stature, but having otherwise all the force and
strength of youth. This hoary-headed man of noble mien owned herds of
cattle and flocks of sheep, a number of which were allowed to come
out of the lake to form his daughter's dowry, as the narrative goes
on to show. In the story of Llyn Du'r Ardu, p. 32, he has a consort
who appears with him to join in giving the parental sanction to the
marriage which their daughter was about to make with the Snowdon
shepherd. In neither of these stories has this extraordinary figure
any name given him, and it appears prima facie probable that the term
afanc is rather one of abuse in harmony with the unlovely description
of him supplied by the other stories. But neither in them does the
term yr afanc suit the monster meant, for there can be no doubt that
in the word afanc we have the etymological equivalent of the Irish
word abacc, 'a dwarf'; and till further light is shed on these words
one may assume that at one time afanc also meant a dwarf or pigmy
in Welsh. In modern Welsh it has been regarded as meaning a beaver,
but as that was too small an animal to suit the popular stories, the
word has been also gravely treated as meaning a crocodile [19]: this
is in the teeth of the unanimous treatment of him as anthropomorphic
in the legends in point. If one is to abide by the meaning dwarf or
pigmy, one is bound to regard afanc as one of the terms originally
applied to the fairies in their more unlovely aspects: compare the
use of crimbil, p. 263. Here may also be mentioned pegor, 'a dwarf
or pigmy,' which occurs in the Book of Taliessin, poem vii. (p. 135):--
Gog6n py pegor I know what (sort of) pigmy
yssyd ydan vor. There is beneath the sea.
Gogwn eu heissor I know their kind,
pa6b yny oscord. Each in his troop.
Also the following lines in the twelfth-century manuscript of the
Black Book of Carmarthen: see Evans' autotype facsimile, fo. 9b:--
Ar gnyuer pegor And every dwarf
y ssit y dan mor. There is beneath the sea,
Ar gnyuer edeinauc And every winged thing
aoruc kyuoethauc. The Mighty One hath made,
Ac vei. vei. paup. And were there to each
tri trychant tauaud Thrice three hundred tongues--
Nyellynt ve traethaud. They could not relate
kyuoetheu [y] trindaud The powers of the Trinity.
I should rather suppose, then, that the pigmies in the water-world
were believed to consist of many grades or classes, and to be
innumerable like the Luchorpáin of Irish legend, which were likewise
regarded as diminutive. With the Luchorpáin were also associated [20]
Fomori or Fomoraig (modern Irish spelling Fomhoraigh), and Goborchinn,
'Horse-heads.' The etymology of the word Fomori has been indicated at
p. 286 above, but Irish legendary history has long associated it with
muir, 'sea,' genitive mara, Welsh mor, and it has gone so far as to
see in them, as there suggested, not submarine but transmarine enemies
and invaders of Ireland. So the singular fomor, now written fomhor,
is treated in O'Reilly's Irish Dictionary as meaning 'a pirate, a
sea robber, a giant,' while in Highland Gaelic, where it is written
fomhair or famhair, it is regularly used as the word for giant. The
Manx Gaelic corresponding to Irish fomor and its derivative fomorach,
is foawr, 'a giant,' and foawragh, 'gigantic,' but also 'a pirate.' I
remember hearing, however, years ago, a mention made of the Fomhoraigh,
which, without conveying any definite allusion to their stature,
associated them with subterranean places:--An undergraduate from
the neighbourhood of Killorglin, in Kerry, happened to relate in
my hearing, how, when he was exploring some underground ráths near
his home, he was warned by his father's workmen to beware of the
Fomhoraigh. But on the borders of the counties of Mayo and Sligo
I have found the word used as in the Scottish Highlands, namely,
in the sense of giants, while Dr. Douglas Hyde and others inform me
that the Giant's Causeway is called in Irish Clochán na bh-Fomhorach.
The Goborchinns or Horse-heads have also an interest, not only in
connexion with the Fomori, as when we read of a king of the latter
called Eocha Eachcheann [21], or Eochy Horse-head, but also as a link
between the Welsh afanc and the Highland water-horse, of whom Campbell
has a good deal to say in his Popular Tales of the West Highlands. See
more especially iv. 337, where he remarks among other things, that
'the water-horse assumes many shapes; he often appears as a man,'
he adds, 'and sometimes as a large bird.' A page or two earlier
he gives a story which illustrates the statement, at the same time
that it vividly reminds one of that part of the Conwy legend which
(p. 130) represents the afanc resting his head on the lap of the
damsel forming one of the dramatis personæ. Here follows Campbell's
own story, omitting all about a marvellous bull, however, that was
in the end to checkmate the water-horse:--
'A long time after these things a servant girl went with the farmer's
herd of cattle to graze them at the side of a loch, and she sat
herself down near the bank. There, in a little while, what should
she see walking towards her but a man, who asked her to fasg his hair
[Welsh lleua]. She said she was willing enough to do him that service,
and so he laid his head on her knee, and she began to array his locks,
as Neapolitan damsels also do by their swains. But soon she got a great
fright, for growing amongst the man's hair, she found a great quantity
of liobhagach an locha, a certain slimy green weed [22] that abounds
in such lochs, fresh, salt, and brackish. The girl knew that if she
screamed there was an end of her, so she kept her terror to herself,
and worked away till the man fell asleep as he was with his head
on her knee. Then she untied her apron strings, and slid the apron
quietly on to the ground with its burden upon it, and then she took
her feet home as fast as it was in her heart [23]. Now when she was
getting near the houses, she gave a glance behind her, and there she
saw her caraid (friend) coming after her in the likeness of a horse.'
The equine form belongs also more or less constantly to the kelpie
of the Lowlands of Scotland and of the Isle of Man, where we have
him in the glashtyn, whose amorous propensities are represented as
more repulsive than what appears in Welsh or Irish legend: see p. 289
above, and the Lioar Manninagh for 1897, p. 139. Perhaps in Man and
the Highlands the horsy nature of this being has been reinforced
by the influence of the Norse Nykr, a Northern Proteus or old Nick,
who takes many forms, but with a decided preference for that of 'a
gray water-horse': see Vigfusson's Icelandic-English Dictionary. But
the idea of associating the equine form with the water divinity is by
no means confined to the Irish and the Northern nations: witness the
Greek legend of the horse being of Poseidon's own creation, and the
beast whose form he sometimes assumed.
It is in this sort of a notion of a water-horse one is probably to
look for the key to the riddle of such conceptions as that of March
ab Meirchion, the king with horse's ears, and the corresponding Irish
figure of Labraid Lorc [24]. In both of these the brute peculiarities
are reduced almost to a minimum: both are human in form save their ears
alone. The name Labraid Lorc is distinct enough from the Welsh March,
but under this latter name one detects traces of him with the horse's
ears in Wales, Cornwall, and Brittany [25]. We have also probably
the same name in the Morc of Irish legend: at any rate Morc, Marc,
or Margg, seems to be the same name as the Welsh March, which is
no other word than march, 'a steed or charger.' Now the Irish Morc
is not stated to have had horse's ears, but he and another called
Conaing are represented in the legendary history of early Erin as
the naval leaders of the Fomori, a sort of position which would seem
to fit the Brythonic March also were he to be treated in earnest as
an historical character. But short of that another treatment may be
suspected of having been actually dealt out to him, namely, that of
resolving the water-horse into a horse and his master. Of this we seem
to have two instances in the course of the story of the formation of
Lough Neagh in the Book of the Dun Cow, fo. 39-41:--
There was once a good king named Maired reigning over Munster, and he
had two sons, Eochaid and Rib. He married a wife named Ebliu (genitive
Eblinde), who fell in love with her stepson, Eochaid. The two brothers
make up their minds to leave their father and to take Ebliu with
them, together with all that was theirs, including in all a thousand
men. They proceed northwards, but their druids persuade them that they
cannot settle down in the same district, so Rib goes westwards to a
plain known as Tír Cluchi Midir acus Maic Óic, 'the Play-ground of
Mider and the Mac Óc,' so called after the two great fairy chiefs of
Ireland. Mider visits Rib's camp and kills their horses, then he gives
them a big horse of his own ready harnessed with a pack-saddle. They
had to put all their baggage on the big horse's back and go away,
but after a while the nag lay down and a well of water formed there,
which eventually burst forth, drowning them all: this is Loch Ri,
'Rib's Loch, or Lough Ree,' on the Shannon. Eochaid, the other brother,
went with his party to the banks of the Boyne near the Brug, where
the fairy chief Mac Óc or Mac ind Óc had his residence: he destroyed
Eochaid's horses the first night, and the next day he threatened to
destroy the men themselves unless they went away. Thereupon Eochaid
said that they could not travel without horses, so the Mac Óc gave
them a big horse, on whose back they placed all they had. The Mac
Óc warned them not to unload the nag on the way, and not to let him
halt lest he should be their death. However, when they had reached the
middle of Ulster, they thoughtlessly took all their property off the
horse's back, and nobody bethought him of turning the animal's head
back in the direction from which they had come: so he also made a well
[26]. Over that well Eochaid had a house built, and a lid put on the
well, which he set a woman to guard. In the sequel she neglected it,
and the well burst forth and formed Lough Neagh, as already mentioned,
p. 382 above. What became of the big horses in these stories one is not
told, but most likely they were originally represented as vanishing
in a spring of water where each of them stood. Compare the account
of Undine at her unfaithful husband's funeral. In the procession
she mysteriously appeared as a snow-white figure deeply veiled, but
when one rose from kneeling at the grave, where she had knelt nought
was to be seen save a little silver spring of limpid water bubbling
out of the turf and trickling on to surround the new grave:--Da man
sich aber wieder erhob, war die weisse Fremde verschwunden; an der
Stelle, wo sie geknieet hatte, quoll ein silberhelles Brünnlein aus
dem Rasen; das rieselte und rieselte fort, bis es den Grabhügel des
Ritters fast ganz umzogen hatte; dann rann es fürder und ergoss sich
in einen Weiher, der zur Seite des Gottesackers lag.
The late and grotesque story of the Gilla Decair may be mentioned next:
he was one of the Fomorach, and had a wonderful kind of horse on whose
back most of Finn's chief warriors were induced to mount. Then the
Gilla Decair and his horse hurried towards Corkaguiny, in Kerry, and
took to the sea, for he and his horse travelled equally well on sea
and land. Thus Finn's men, unable to dismount, were carried prisoners
to an island not named, on which Dermot in quest of them afterwards
landed, and from which, after great perils, he made his way to Tír
fo Thuinn, 'Terra sub Unda,' and brought his friends back to Erin
[27]. Now the number of Finn's men taken away by force by the Gilla
Decair was fifteen, fourteen on the back of his horse and one clutching
to the animal's tail, and the Welsh Triads, i. 93 = ii. 11, seem to
re-echo some similar story, but they give the number of persons not as
fifteen but just one half, and describe the horse as Du (y) Moroed,
'the Black of (the) Seas,' steed of Elidyr Mwynfawr, that carried
seven human beings and a half from Pen Llech Elidyr in the North to
Pen Llech Elidyr in Môn, 'Anglesey.' It is explained that Du carried
seven on his back, and that one who swam with his hands on that horse's
crupper was reckoned the half man in this case. Du Moroed is in the
story of Kulhwch and Olwen called Du March Moro, 'Black the Steed of
Moro,' the horse ridden in the hunt of Twrch Trwyth by Gwyn ab Nud,
king of the other world; and he appears as a knight with his name
unmistakably rendered into Brun de Morois in the romance of Durmart
le Galois, who carries away Arthur's queen on his horse to his castle
in Morois [28]. Lastly, here also might be mentioned the incident in
the story of Peredur or Perceval, which relates how to that knight,
when he was in the middle of a forest much distressed for the want
of a horse, a lady brought a fine steed as black as a blackberry. He
mounted and he found his beast marvellously swift, but on his making
straight for a vast river the knight made the sign of the cross,
whereupon he was left on the ground, and his horse plunged into the
water, which his touch seemed to set ablaze. The horse is interpreted
to have been the devil [29], and this is a fair specimen of the way
in which Celtic paganism is treated by the Grail writers when they
feel in the humour to assume an edifying attitude.
If one is right in setting Môn, 'Anglesey,' over against the anonymous
isle to which the Gilla Decair hurries Finn's men away, Anglesey would
have to be treated as having once been considered one of the Islands
of the Dead and the home of Other-world inhabitants. We have a trace
of this in a couplet in a poem by the medieval poet, Dafyd ab Gwilym,
who makes Blodeuwed the Owl give a bit of her history as follows:--
Merch i arglwyd, ail Meirchion,
Wyf i, myn Dewi! o Fon [30].
Daughter to a lord, son of Meirchion,
Am I, by St. David! from Mona.
This, it will be seen, connects March ab Meirchion, as it were 'Steed
son of Steeding,' with the Isle of Anglesey. Add to this that the
Irish for Anglesey or Mona was Móin Conaing, 'Conaing's Swamp,' so
called apparently after Conaing associated with Morc, a name which
is practically March in Welsh. Both were leaders of the Fomori in
Irish tales: see my Arthurian Legend, p. 356.
On the great place given to islands in Celtic legend and myth it
is needless here to expatiate: witness Brittia, to which Procopius
describes the souls of the departed being shipped from the shores of
the Continent, the Isle of Avallon in the Romances, that of Gwales
in the Mabinogion, Ynys Enlli or Bardsey, in which Merlin and his
retinue enter the Glass House [31], and the island of which we read
in the pages of Plutarch, that it contains Cronus held in the bonds
of perennial sleep [32].
Let us return to the more anthropomorphic figure of the afanc,
and take as his more favoured representative the virile personage
described emerging from the Fan Fach Lake to give his sanction to
the marriage of his daughter with the Mydfai shepherd. It is probable
that a divinity of the same order belonged to every other lake of any
considerable dimensions in the country. But it will be remembered that
in the case of the story of Llyn Du'r Ardu two parents appeared with
the lake maiden--her father and her mother--and we may suppose that
they were divinities of the water-world. The same thing also may be
inferred from the late Triad, iii. 13, which speaks of the bursting
of the lake of Llïon, causing all the lands to be inundated so that
all the human race was drowned except Dwyfan and Dwyfach, who escaped
in a mastless ship: it was from them that the island of Prydain was
repeopled. A similar Triad, iii. 97, but evidently of a different
origin, has already been mentioned as speaking of the Ship of Nefyd
Naf Neifion, that carried in it a male and female of every kind when
the lake of Llïon burst. This later Triad evidently supplies what
had been forgotten in the previous one, namely, a pair of each kind
of animal life, and not of mankind alone. But from the names Dwyfan
and Dwyfach I infer that the writer of Triad iii. 13 has developed
his universal deluge on the basis of the scriptural account of it,
for those names belonged in all probability to wells and rivers:
in other terms, they were the names of water divinities. At any rate
there seems to be some evidence that two springs, whose waters flow
into Bala Lake, were at one time called Dwyfan and Dwyfach, these names
being borne both by the springs themselves and the rivers flowing from
them. The Dwyfan and the Dwyfach were regarded as uniting in the lake,
while the water on its issuing from the lake is called Dyfrdwy. Now
Dyfrdwy stands for an older Dyfr-dwyf, which in Old Welsh was Dubr
duiu, 'the water of the divinity.' One of the names of that divinity
was Donwy, standing for an early form Danuvios or Danuvia, according
as it was masculine or feminine. In either case it was practically
the same name as that of the Danube or Danuvios, derived from a word
which is represented in Irish by the adjective dána, 'audax, fortis,
intrepidus.' The Dee has in Welsh poetry still another name, Aerfen,
which seems to mean a martial goddess or the spirit of the battlefield,
which is corroborated and explained by Giraldus [33], who represents
the river as the accredited arbiter of the fortunes of the wars in
its country between the Welsh and the English. The name Dyfrdonwy
occurs in a poem by Llywarch Brydyd y Moch, a poet who flourished
towards the end of the twelfth century, as follows [34]:--
Nid kywiw [35] a llwfyr dwfyr dyfyrdonwy
Kereist oth uebyd gwryd garwy.
With a coward Dyfrdonwy water ill agrees:
From thy boyhood hast thou loved Garwy's valour.
The prince praised was Llywelyn ab Iorwerth, whom the poet seems to
identify here with the Dee, and it looks as if the water of the Dee
formed some sort of a test which no coward could face: compare the case
of the discreet cauldron that would not boil meat for a coward [36].
The dwy, dwyf, duiu, of the river's Welsh name represent an early form
deva or deiva, whence the Romans called their station on its banks
Deva, possibly as a shortening of ad Devam; but that Deva should have
simply and directly meant the river is rendered probable by the fact
that Ptolemy elsewhere gives it as the name of the northern Dee, which
enters the sea near Aberdeen. From the same stem were formed the names
Dwyf-an and Dwyf-ach, which are treated in the Triads as masculine and
feminine respectively. In its course the Welsh Dee receives a river
Ceirw not far above Corwen, and that river flows through farms called
Ar-dwyfan and Hendre' Ar-dwyfan, and adjoining Ardwyfan is another
farm called Foty Ardwyfan, 'Shielings of Ardwyfan,' while Hendre'
Ardwyfan means the old stead or winter abode of Ardwyfan. Ardwyfan
itself would seem to mean 'On Dwyfan,' and Hendre' Ardwyfan, which
may be supposed the original homestead, stands near a burn which flows
into the Ceirw. That burn I should suppose to have been the Dwyfan, and
perhaps the name extended to the Ceirw itself; but Dwyfan is not now
known as the name of any stream in the neighbourhood. Elsewhere we have
two rivers called Dwyfor or Dwyfawr and Dwyfach, which unite a little
below the village of Llan Ystumdwy; and from there to the sea, the
stream is called Dwyfor, the mouth of which is between Criccieth and
Afon Wen, in Carnarvonshire. Ystumdwy, commonly corrupted into Stindwy,
seems to mean Ystum-dwy, 'the bend of the Dwy'; so that here also we
have Dwyfach and Dwy, as in the case of the Dee. Possibly Dwyfor was
previously called simply Dwy or even Dwyfan; but it is now explained
as Dwy-fawr, 'great Dwy,' which was most likely suggested by Dwyfach,
as this latter explains itself to the country people as Dwy-fach,
'little Dwy.' However, it is but right to say that in Llywelyn ab
Gruffyd's grant of lands to the monks of Aber Conwy they seem to be
called Dwyuech and Dwyuaur [37].
All these waters have in common the reputation of being liable to
sudden and dangerous floods, especially the Dwyfor, which drains Cwm
Strallyn and its lake lying behind the great rocky barrier on the left
as one goes from Tremadoc towards Aber Glaslyn Bridge. Still more so
is this the case with the Dee and Bala Lake, which is wont to rise at
times from seven to nine feet above its ordinary level. The inundation
which then invades the valley from Bala down presents a sight more
magnificent than comfortable to contemplate. In fact nothing could
have been more natural than for the story elaborated by the writer
of certain of the late Triads to have connected the most remarkable
inundations with the largest piece of water in the Principality,
and one liable to such sudden changes of level: in other words, that
one should treat Llyn Llïon as merely one of the names of Bala Lake,
now called in Welsh Llyn Tegid, and formerly sometimes Llyn Aerfen.
While touching at p. 286 on Gwaen Llifon with its Llyn Pencraig as one
of those claiming to be the Llyn Llïon of the Triads, it was hinted
that Llïon was but a thinner form of Llifon. Here one might mention
perhaps another Llifon, for which, however, no case could be made. I
allude to the name of the residence of the Wynns descended from Gilmin
Troeddu, namely, Glyn Llifon, which means the river Llifon's Glen;
but one could not feel surprised if the neighbouring Llyfni, draining
the lakes of Nantlle, should prove to have once been also known as
a Llifon, with the Nantlle waters conforming by being called Llyn
Llifon. But however that may be, one may say as to the flood caused
by the bursting of any such lake, that the notion of the universality
of the catastrophe was probably contributed by the author of Triad
iii. 13, from a non-Welsh source. He may have, however, not invented
the vessel in which he places Dwyfan and Dwyfach: at all events,
one version of the story of the Fan Fach represents the Lake Lady
arriving in a boat. As to the writer of the other Triad, iii. 97,
he says nothing about Dwyfan and his wife, but borrows Nefyd Naf
Neifion's ship to save all that were to be saved; and here one may
probably venture to identify Nefyd with Nemed [38], genitive Nemid,
a name borne in Irish legend by a rover who is represented as one
of the early colonizers of Erin. As to the rest, the name Neifion by
itself is used in Welsh for Neptune and the sea, as in the following
couplet of D. ab Gwilym's poem lv:--
Nofiad a wnaeth hen Neifion It is old Neptune that has swam
O Droia fawr draw i Fôn. From great Troy afar to Mona.
In the same way Môr Neifion, 'Sea of Neifion,' seems to have signified
the ocean, the high seas.
To return to the Triad about Dwyfan and Dwyfach, not only does it make
them from being water divinities into a man and woman, but there is
no certainty even that both were not feminine. In modern Welsh all
rivers are treated as feminine, and even Dyfrdwyf has usually to
submit, though the modern bard Tegid, analysing the word into Dwfr
Dwyf, 'Water of the Divinity or Divine Water,' where dwfr, 'water,'
could only be masculine, addressed Llyn Tegid thus, p. 78:
Drwyot, er dydiau'r Drywon,
Y rhwyf y Dyfrdwyf ei don.
Through thee, from the days of the Druids,
The Dwfr Dwyf impels his wave.
This question, however, of the gender of river names, or rather the sex
which personification ascribed them, is a most difficult one. If we
glance at Ptolemy's Geography written in the second century, we find
in his account of the British Isles that he names more than fifty of
our river mouths and estuaries, and that he divides their names almost
equally into masculine and feminine. The modern Welsh usage has, it is
seen, departed far from this, but not so far the folklore: the afanc is
a male, and we have a figure of the same sex appearing as the father of
the lake maiden in the Fan Fach story, and in that of Llyn Du'r Ardu;
the same, too, was the sex of the chief dweller of Llyn Cwm Llwch;
the same remark is applicable also to the greatest divinity of these
islands--the greatest, at any rate, so far as the scanty traces of his
cult enable one to become acquainted with him. As his name comes down
into legend it belongs here, as well as to the deities of antiquity,
just as much, in a sense, as the Dee. I refer to Nudons or Nodons,
the remains [39] of whose sanctuary were many years ago brought to
light on a pleasant hill in Lydney Park, on the western banks of the
Severn. In the mosaic floor of the god's temple there is a coloured
inscription showing the expense of that part of the work to have been
defrayed by the contributions (ex stipibus) of the faithful, and that
it was carried out by two men, of whom one appears to have been an
officer in command of a naval force guarding the coasts of the Severn
Sea. In the midst of the mosaic inscription is a round opening in the
floor of nine inches in diameter and surrounded by a broad band of red
enclosed in two of blue. This has given rise to various speculations,
and among others that it was intended for libations. The mosaics and
the lettering of the inscriptions seem to point to the third century as
the time when the sanctuary of Nudons was built under Roman auspices,
though the place was doubtless sacred to the god long before. In any
case it fell in exactly with the policy of the more astute of Roman
statesmen to encourage such a native cult as we find traces of in
Lydney Park.
One of the inscriptions began with D. M. Nodonti, 'to the great god
Nudons,' and a little bronze crescent intended for the diadem of
the god or of one of his priests gives a representation of him as
a crowned, beardless personage driving a chariot with four horses;
and on either side of him is a naked figure supposed to represent
the winds, and beyond them on each of the two sides is a triton with
the fore feet of a horse. The god holds the reins in his left hand,
and his right uplifted grasps what may be a sceptre or possibly a
whip, while the whole equipment of the god recalls in some measure
the Chariot of the Sun. Another piece of the bronze ornament shows
another triton with an anchor in one of his hands, and opposite him a
fisherman in the act of hooking a fine salmon. Other things, such as
oars and shell trumpets, together with mosaic representations of marine
animals in the floor of the temple, compel us to assimilate Nudons
more closely with Neptune than any other god of classical mythology.
The name of the god, as given in the inscriptions, varies between
Nudons and Nodens, the cases actually occurring being the dative
Nodonti, Nodenti, and Nudente, and the genitive Nodentis, so I should
regard o or u as optional in the first syllable, and o as preferable,
perhaps, to e in the second, for there is no room for reasonably
doubting that we have here to do with the same name as Irish Nuadu,
genitive Nuadat, conspicuous in the legendary history of Ireland. Now
the Nuadu who naturally occurs to one first, was Nuadu Argetlám or
Nuadu of the Silver Hand, from argat, 'silver, argentum,' and lám,
'hand.' Irish literature explains how he came to have a hand made of
silver, and we can identify with him on Welsh ground a Llud Llawereint;
for put back as it were into earlier Brythonic, this would be Ludo(ns)
Lam'-argentios: that is to say, a reversal takes place in the order of
the elements forming the epithet out of ereint (for older ergeint),
'silvern, argenteus,' and llaw, for earlier lama, 'hand.' Then comes
the alliterative instinct into play, forcing Nudo(ns) Lamargentio(s)
to become Ludo(ns) Lamargentio(s), whence the later form, Llud
Llawereint, derives regularly [40]. Thus we have in Welsh the name
Llûd, fashioned into that form under the influence of the epithet,
whereas elsewhere it is Nûd, which occurs as a man's name in the
pedigrees, while an intermediate form was probably Nudos or Nudo,
of which a genitive NVDI occurs in a post-Roman inscription found
near Yarrow Kirk in Selkirkshire. It is worthy of note that the
modification of Nudo into Ludo must have taken place comparatively
early--not improbably while the language was still Goidelic--as we
seem to have a survival of the name in that of Lydney itself.
It is very possible that we have Ludo, Llud, also in Porthlud; which
Geoffrey of Monmouth gives, iii. 20, as the Welsh for Ludesgata or
Ludgate, in London, which gate, according to him, was called after
an ancient king of Britain named Lud. He seems to have been using
an ancient tradition, and there would be nothing improbable in the
conjecture that Geoffrey's Lud was our Llud, and that the great water
divinity of that name had another sanctuary on the hill by the Thames,
somewhere near the present site of St. Paul's Cathedral, and occupying
a post as it were prophetic of Britain's rule of the water-ways in
later times.
Perhaps as one seems to find traces of Nudons from the estuary of the
Thames to that of the Severn and thence to Ireland, one may conclude
that the god was one of the divinities worshipped by the Goidels. With
regard to the Brythonic Celts, there is nothing to suggest that he
belonged also to them except in the sense of his having been probably
adopted by them from the Goidels. It might be further suggested
that the Goidels themselves had in the first instance adopted him
from the pre-Celtic natives, but in that case a goddess would have
been rather more probable [41]. In fact in the case of the Severn
we seem to have a trace of such a goddess in the Sabrina, Old Welsh
Habren, now Hafren, so called after a princess whom Geoffrey, ii. 5,
represents drowned in the river: she may have been the pre-Celtic
goddess of the Severn, and the name corresponding to Welsh Hafren
occurs in Ireland in the form of Sabrann, an old name of the river
Lee that flows through Cork. Similarly one now reads sometimes of
Father Thames after the fashion of classic phraseology, and in the
Celtic period Nudons may have been closely identified with that river,
but the ancient name Tamesa or Tamesis [42] was decidedly feminine,
and it was, most likely, that of the river divinity from times when
the pre-Celtic natives held exclusive possession of these islands. On
the whole it appears safer to regard Nudons as belonging to a race
that had developed on a larger scale the idea of a patriarchal or
kingly ruler holding sway over a comparatively wide area. So Nudons
may here be treated as ruled out of the discussion as to the origin
of the fairies, to which a few paragraphs are now to be devoted.
Speaking of the rank and file of the fairies in rather a promiscuous
fashion, one may say that we have found manifold proof of their close
connexion with the water-world. Not only have we found them supposed
to haunt places bordering on rivers, to live beneath the lakes,
or to inhabit certain green isles capable of playing hide-and-seek
with the ancient mariner, and perhaps not so very ancient either;
but other considerations have been suggested as also pointing
unmistakably to the same conclusion. Take for instance the indirect
evidence afforded by the method of proceeding to recover an infant
stolen by the fairies. One account runs thus: The mother who had lost
her baby was to go with a wizard and carry with her to a river the
child left her in exchange. The wizard would say, Crap ar y wrach,
'Grip the hag,' and the woman would reply, Rhy hwyr, gyfraglach,
'Too late, you urchin [43].' Before she uttered those words she had
dropped the urchin into the river, and she would then return to her
house. By that time the kidnapped child would be found to have come
back home [44]. The words here used have not been quite forgotten
in Carnarvonshire, but no distinct meaning seems to be attached to
them now; at any rate I have failed to find anybody who could explain
them. I should however guess that the wizard addressed his words to
the fairy urchin with the intention, presumably, that the fairies in
the river should at the same time hear and note what was about to be
done. Another, and a somewhat more intelligible version, is given in
the Gwyliedyd for 1837, p. 185, by a contributor who publishes it from
a manuscript which Lewis Morris began to write in 1724 and finished
apparently in 1729. He was a native of Anglesey, and it is probably
to that county the story belongs, which he gives to illustrate one
of the phonological aspects of certain kinds of Welsh. That account
differs from the one just cited in that it introduces no wizard,
but postulates two fairy urchins between whom the dialogue occurs,
which is not unusual in our changeling stories: see p. 62. After this
explanation I translate Morris' words thus:--
'But to return to the question of the words approaching to the
nature of the thing intended, there is an old story current among us
concerning a woman whose children had been exchanged by the Tylwyth
Teg. Whether it is truth or falsehood does not much matter, yet it
shows what the men of that age thought concerning the sound of words,
and how they fancied that the language of those sprites was of a
ghastly and lumpy kind. The story is as follows:--The woman whose two
children had been exchanged, chanced to overhear the two fairy heirs,
whom she got instead of them, reasoning with one another beyond what
became their age and persons. So she picked up the two sham children,
one under each arm, in order to go and throw them from a bridge into a
river, that they might be drowned as she fancied. But hardly had the
one in his fall reached the bottom when he cried out to his comrade
in the following words:--
Grippiach greppiach Grippiach Greppiach,
Dal d'afel yn y wrach, Keep thy hold on the hag.
Hi aeth yn rhowyr 'faglach-- It got too late, thou urchin--
Mi eis i ir mwthlach [45].' I fell into the....
In spite of the obscurity of these words, it is quite clear that it
was thought the most natural thing in the world to return the fairies
to the river, and no sooner were they dropped there than the right
infants were found to have been sent home.
The same thing may be learned also from the story of the Curse of
Pantannas, pp. 187-8 above; for when the time of the fairies' revenge
is approaching, the merry party gathered together at Pantannas are
frightened by a piercing voice rising from a black and cauldron-like
pool in the river; and after a while they hear it a second time
rising above the noise of the river as it cascades over the shoulder
of a neighbouring rock. Shortly afterwards an ugly, diminutive woman
appears on the table near the window, and had it not been for the
rudeness of one of those present she would have disclosed the future
to them, but, as it was, she said very little in a vague way and
went away offended; but as long as she was there the voice from the
river was silent. Here we have the Welsh counterpart of the ben síde,
pronounced banshee in Anglo-Irish, and meaning a fairy woman who is
supposed to appear to certain Irish families before deaths or other
misfortunes about to befall them. It is doubtless to some such fairy
persons the voices belong, which threaten vengeance on the heir of
Pantannas and on the wicked prince and his descendants previous to
the cataclysm which brings a lake into the place of a doomed city:
witness such cases as those of Llynclys, Syfadon, and Kenfig.
The last mentioned deserves some further scrutiny; and I take this
opportunity of referring the reader back to pp. 403-4, in order to
direct his attention to the fact that the voice so closely identifies
itself with the wronged family that it speaks in the first person, as
it cries, 'Vengeance is come on him who murdered my father of the ninth
generation!' Now it is worthy of remark that the same personifying is
also characteristic of the Cyhiraeth [46]. This spectral female used
to be oftener heard than seen; but her blood-freezing shriek was as a
rule to be heard when she came to a cross-road or to water, in which
she splashed with her hands. At the same time she would make the most
doleful noise and exclaim, in case the frightened hearer happened
to be a wife, Fy ngwr, fy ngwr! 'my husband, my husband!' If it was
the man the exclamation would be, Fy ngwraig, fy ngwraig! 'my wife,
my wife!' Or in either case it might be, Fy mhlentyn, fy mhlentyn,
fy mhlentyn bach! 'my child, my child, my little child!' These cries
meant the approaching death of the hearer's husband, wife, or child, as
the case might be; but if the scream was inarticulate it was reckoned
probable that the hearer himself was the person foremourned. Sometimes
she was supposed to come, like the Irish banshee, in a dark mist to
the window of a person who has been long ailing, and to flap her wings
against the glass, while repeating aloud his or her name, which was
believed to mean that the patient must die [47]. The picture usually
given of the Cyhiraeth is of the most repellent kind: tangled hair,
long black teeth, wretched, skinny, shrivelled arms of unwonted length
out of all proportion to the body. Nevertheless it is, in my opinion,
but another aspect of the banshee-like female who intervenes in the
story of the Curse of Pantannas. One might perhaps treat both as
survivals of a belief in a sort of personification of, or divinity
identified with, a family or tribe, but for the fact that such language
is emptied of most of its meaning by the abstractions which it would
connect with a primitive state of society. So it is preferable, as
coming probably near the truth, to say that what we have here is a
trace of an ancestress. Such an idea of an ancestress as against that
of an ancestor is abundantly countenanced by dim figures like that
of the Dôn of the Mabinogion, and of her counterpart, after whom the
Tribes of the goddess Donu or Danu [48] are known as Tuatha Dé Danann
in Irish literature. But the one who most provokes comparison is the
Old Woman of Beare, already mentioned, pp. 393-4: she figures largely
in Irish folklore as a hag surviving to see her descendants reckoned
by tribes and peoples. It may be only an accident that a poetically
wrought legend pictures her not so much interested in the fortunes of
her progeny as engaged in bewailing the unattractive appearance of
her thin arms and shrivelled hands, together with the general wreck
of the beauty which had been hers some time or other centuries before.
However, the evidence of folklore is not of a kind to warrant our
building any heavy superstructure of theory on the supposition,
that the foundations are firmly held together by a powerful sense of
consistency or homogeneity. So I should hesitate to do anything so
rash as to pronounce the fairies to be all of one and the same origin:
they may well be of several. For instance, there may be those that
have grown out of traditions about an aboriginal pre-Celtic race,
and some may be the representatives of the ghosts of departed men
and women, regarded as one's ancestors; but there can hardly be any
doubt that others, and those possibly not the least interesting,
have originated in the demons and divinities--not all of ancestral
origin--with which the weird fancy of our remote forefathers peopled
lakes and streams, bays and creeks and estuaries. Perhaps it is not
too much to hope that the reader is convinced that in the course of
this chapter some interesting specimens have, so to say, been caught
in their native element, or else in the enjoyment of an amphibious
life of mirth and frolic, largely spent hard by sequestered lakes,
near placid rivers or babbling brooks.