WELSH CAVE LEGENDS
Ekei mentoi mian einai nêson, en hê ton Kronon katheirchthai
phrouroumenon hypo tou Briareô katheudonta; desmon gar autô
ton hypnon memêchanêsthai, pollous de peri auton einai daimonas
opadous kai therapontas.--Plutarch.
In previous chapters sundry allusions have been made to treasure
caves besides that of Marchlyn Mawr, which has been given at length
on pp. 234-7 above. Here follow some more, illustrative of this
kind of folklore prevalent in Wales: they are difficult to classify,
but most of them mention treasure with or without sleeping warriors
guarding it. The others are so miscellaneous as to baffle any attempt
to characterize them generally and briefly. Take for instance a
cave in the part of Rhiwarth rock nearest to Cwm Llanhafan, in the
neighbourhood of Llangynog in Montgomeryshire. Into that, according to
Cyndelw in the Brython for 1860, p. 57, some men penetrated as far as
the pound of candles lasted, with which they had provided themselves;
but it appears to be tenanted by a hag who is always busily washing
clothes in a brass pan.
Or take the following, from J. H. Roberts' essay, as given in Welsh in
Edwards' Cymru for 1897, p. 190: it reminds one of an ordinary fairy
tale, but it is not quite like any other which I happen to know:--In
the western end of the Arennig Fawr there is a cave: in fact there
are several caves there, and some of them are very large too; but
there is one to which the finger of tradition points as an ancient
abode of the Tylwyth Teg. About two generations ago, the shepherds
of that country used to be enchanted by one of them called Mary,
who was remarkable for her beauty. Many an effort was made to catch
her or to meet her face to face, but without success, as she was
too quick on her feet. She used to show herself day after day, and
she might be seen, with her little harp, climbing the bare slopes of
the mountain. In misty weather when the days were longest in summer,
the music she made used to be wafted by the breeze to the ears of the
love-sick shepherds. Many a time had the boys of the Filltir Gerrig
heard sweet singing when passing the cave in the full light of day,
but they were subject to some spell, so that they never ventured to
enter. But the shepherd of Boch y Rhaiadr had a better view of the
fairies one Allhallows night (ryw noson Calangaeaf) when returning home
from a merry-making at Amnod. On the sward in front of the cave what
should he see but scores of the Tylwyth Teg singing and dancing! He
never saw another assembly in his life so fair, and great was the
trouble he had to resist being drawn into their circles.
Let us now come to the treasure caves, and begin with Ogof Arthur,
'Arthur's Cave,' in the southern side of Mynyd y Cnwc [49] in the
parish of Llangwyfan, on the south-western coast of Anglesey. The
foot of Mynyd y Cnwc is washed by the sea, and the mouth of the cave
is closed by its waters at high tide, but the cave, which is spacious,
has a vent-hole in the side of the mountain [50]. So it is at any rate
reported in the Brython for 1859, p. 138, by a writer who explored the
place, though not to the end of the mile which it is said to measure
in length. He mentions a local tradition, that it contains various
treasures, and that it temporarily afforded Arthur shelter in the
course of his wars with the Gwydelod or Goidels. But he describes also
a cromlech on the top of Mynyd y Cnwc, around which there was a circle
of stones, while within the latter there lies buried, it is believed,
an iron chest full of ancient gold. Various attempts are said to have
been made by the more greedy of the neighbouring inhabitants to dig it
up, but they have always been frightened away by portents. Here then
the guardians of the treasure are creatures of a supernatural kind,
as in many other instances, and especially that of Dinas Emrys to be
mentioned presently.
Next comes the first of a group of cave legends involving treasure
entrusted to the keeping of armed warriors. It is taken from Elijah
Waring's Recollections and Anecdotes of Edward Williams, Iolo Morgannwg
(London, 1850), pp. 95-8, where it is headed 'A popular Tale in
Glamorgan, by Iolo Morgannwg'; a version of it in Welsh will be found
in the Brython for 1858, p. 162, but Waring's version is in several
respects better, and I give it in his words:--'A Welshman walking over
London Bridge, with a neat hazel staff in his hand, was accosted by an
Englishman, who asked him whence he came. "I am from my own country,"
answered the Welshman, in a churlish tone. "Do not take it amiss, my
friend," said the Englishman; "if you will only answer my questions,
and take my advice, it will be of greater benefit to you than you
imagine. That stick in your hand grew on a spot under which are hid
vast treasures of gold and silver; and if you remember the place, and
can conduct me to it, I will put you in possession of those treasures."
'The Welshman soon understood that the stranger was what he called a
cunning man, or conjurer, and for some time hesitated, not willing to
go with him among devils, from whom this magician must have derived
his knowledge; but he was at length persuaded to accompany him into
Wales; and going to Craig-y-Dinas [Rock of the Fortress], the Welshman
pointed out the spot whence he had cut the stick. It was from the
stock or root of a large old hazel: this they dug up, and under it
found a broad flat stone. This was found to close up the entrance into
a very large cavern, down into which they both went. In the middle
of the passage hung a bell, and the conjurer earnestly cautioned the
Welshman not to touch it. They reached the lower part of the cave,
which was very wide, and there saw many thousands of warriors lying
down fast asleep in a large circle, their heads outwards, every one
clad in bright armour, with their swords, shields, and other weapons
lying by them, ready to be laid hold on in an instant, whenever the
bell should ring and awake them. All the arms were so highly polished
and bright, that they illumined the cavern, as with the light of ten
thousand flames of fire. They saw amongst the warriors one greatly
distinguished from the rest by his arms, shield, battle-axe, and a
crown of gold set with the most precious stones, lying by his side.
'In the midst of this circle of warriors they saw two very large heaps,
one of gold, the other of silver. The magician told the Welshman that
he might take as much as he could carry away of either the one or the
other, but that he was not to take from both the heaps. The Welshman
loaded himself with gold: the conjurer took none, saying that he did
not want it, that gold was of no use but to those who wanted knowledge,
and that his contempt of gold had enabled him to acquire that superior
knowledge and wisdom which he possessed. In their way out he cautioned
the Welshman again not to touch the bell, but if unfortunately he
should do so, it might be of the most fatal consequence to him, as one
or more of the warriors would awake, lift up his head, and ask if it
was day. "Should this happen," said the cunning man, "you must, without
hesitation, answer No, sleep thou on; on hearing which he will again
lay down his head and sleep." In their way up, however, the Welshman,
overloaded with gold, was not able to pass the bell without touching
it--it rang--one of the warriors raised up his head, and asked, "Is it
day?" "No," answered the Welshman promptly, "it is not, sleep thou on;"
so they got out of the cave, laid down the stone over its entrance,
and replaced the hazel tree. The cunning man, before he parted from
his companion, advised him to be economical in the use of his treasure;
observing that he had, with prudence, enough for life: but that if by
unforeseen accidents he should be again reduced to poverty, he might
repair to the cave for more; repeating the caution, not to touch
the bell if possible, but if he should, to give the proper answer,
that it was not day, as promptly as possible. He also told him that
the distinguished person they had seen was Arthur, and the others his
warriors; and they lay there asleep with their arms ready at hand,
for the dawn of that day when the Black Eagle and the Golden Eagle
should go to war, the loud clamour of which would make the earth
tremble so much, that the bell would ring loudly, and the warriors
awake, take up their arms, and destroy all the enemies of the Cymry,
who afterwards should repossess the Island of Britain, re-establish
their own king and government at Caerlleon, and be governed with
justice, and blessed with peace so long as the world endures.
'The time came when the Welshman's treasure was all spent: he went to
the cave, and as before overloaded himself. In his way out he touched
the bell: it rang: a warrior lifted up his head, asking if it was day,
but the Welshman, who had covetously overloaded himself, being quite
out of breath with labouring under his burden, and withal struck
with terror, was not able to give the necessary answer; whereupon
some of the warriors got up, took the gold away from him, and beat
him dreadfully. They afterwards threw him out, and drew the stone
after them over the mouth of the cave. The Welshman never recovered
the effects of that beating, but remained almost a cripple as long as
he lived, and very poor. He often returned with some of his friends
to Craig-y-Dinas; but they could never afterwards find the spot,
though they dug over, seemingly, every inch of the hill.'
This story of Iolo's closes with a moral, which I omit in order to
make room for what he says in a note to the effect, that there are two
hills in Glamorganshire called Craig-y-Dinas--nowadays the more usual
pronunciation in South Wales is Craig y Dinas--one in the parish of
Llantrissant and the other in Ystrad Dyfodwg. There was also a hill
so called, Iolo says, in the Vale of Towy, not far from Carmarthen. He
adds that in Glamorgan the tale is related of the Carmarthenshire hill,
while in Carmarthenshire the hill is said to be in Glamorgan. According
to Iolo's son, Taliesin Williams [51] or Taliesin ab Iolo, the Craig y
Dinas with which the Cave of Arthur (or Owen Lawgoch) is associated is
the one on the borders of Glamorgan and Brecknockshire. That is also
the opinion of my friend Mr. Reynolds, who describes this craig and
dinas as a very bold rocky eminence at the top of the Neath Valley,
near Pont Ned Fechan. He adds that in this tale as related to his
mother 'in her very young days' by a very old woman, known as Mari
Shencin y Clochyd 'Jenkin the Sexton's Mary,' the place of Arthur
was taken by Owen Lawgoch, 'Owen of the Red Hand,' of whom more anon.
The next Arthurian story is not strictly in point, for it makes no
allusion to treasure; but as it is otherwise so similar to Iolo's
tale I cannot well avoid introducing it here. It is included in the
composite story of Bwca 'r Trwyn, 'the Bogie of the Nose,' written
out for me in Gwentian Welsh by Mr. Craigfryn Hughes. The cave portion
relates how a Monmouthshire farmer, whose house was grievously troubled
by the bogie, set out one morning to call on a wizard who lived near
Caerleon, and how he on his way came up with a very strange and odd
man who wore a three-cornered hat. They fell into conversation, and
the strange man asked the farmer if he should like to see something of
a wonder. He answered he would. 'Come with me then,' said the wearer
of the cocked hat, 'and you shall see what nobody else alive to-day
has seen.' When they had reached the middle of a wood this spiritual
guide sprang from horseback and kicked a big stone near the road. It
instantly moved aside to disclose the mouth of a large cave; and now
said he to the farmer, 'Dismount and bring your horse in here: tie him
up alongside of mine, and follow me so that you may see something which
the eyes of man have not beheld for centuries.' The farmer, having
done as he was ordered, followed his guide for a long distance: they
came at length to the top of a flight of stairs, where two huge bells
were hanging. 'Now mind,' said the warning voice of the strange guide,
'not to touch either of those bells.' At the bottom of the stairs there
was a vast chamber with hundreds of men lying at full length on the
floor, each with his head reposing on the stock of his gun. 'Have you
any notion who these men are?' 'No,' replied the farmer, 'I have not,
nor have I any idea what they want in such a place as this.' 'Well,'
said the guide, 'these are Arthur's thousand soldiers reposing and
sleeping till the Kymry have need of them. Now let us get out as fast
as our feet can carry us.' When they reached the top of the stairs,
the farmer somehow struck his elbow against one of the bells so that
it rang, and in the twinkling of an eye all the sleeping host rose to
their feet shouting together, 'Are the Kymry in straits?' 'Not yet:
sleep you on,' replied the wearer of the cocked hat, whereupon they
all dropped down on their guns to resume their slumbers at once. 'These
are the valiant men,' he went on to say, 'who are to turn the scale in
favour of the Kymry when the time comes for them to cast the Saxon yoke
off their necks and to recover possession of their country.' When the
two had returned to their horses at the mouth of the cave, his guide
said to the farmer, 'Now go in peace, and let me warn you on the pain
of death not to utter a syllable about what you have seen for the
space of a year and a day: if you do, woe awaits you.' After he had
moved the stone back to its place the farmer lost sight of him. When
the year had lapsed the farmer happened to pass again that way, but,
though he made a long and careful search, he failed completely to
find the stone at the mouth of the cave.
To return to Iolo's yarn, one may say that there are traces of his
story as at one time current in Merionethshire, but with the variation
that the Welshman met the wizard not on London Bridge but at a fair
at Bala, and that the cave was somewhere in Merioneth: the hero was
Arthur, and the cave was known as Ogof Arthur. Whether any such cave is
still known I cannot tell; but a third and interestingly told version
is given in the Brython for 1858, p. 179, by the late Gwynionyd, who
gives the story as the popular belief in his native parish of Troed
yr Aur, halfway between Newcastle Emlyn and Aber Porth, in South
Cardiganshire. In this last version the hero is not Arthur, but the
later man as follows:--Not the least of the wonders of imagination
wont to exercise the minds of the old people was the story of Owen
Lawgoch. One sometimes hears sung in our fairs the words:--
Yr Owain hwn yw Harri 'r Nawfed
Syd yn trigo 'ngwlad estronied, &c.
This Owen is Henry the Ninth,
Who tarries in a foreign land, &c.
But this Owen Lawgoch, the national deliverer of our ancient
race of Brythons, did not, according to the Troed yr Aur people,
tarry in a foreign land, but somewhere in Wales, not far from Offa's
Dyke. They used to say that one Dafyd Meirig of Bettws Bledrws, having
quarrelled with his father, left for Lloegr [52], 'England.' When he
had got a considerable distance from home, he struck a bargain with a
cattle dealer to drive a herd of his beasts to London. Somewhere at
the corner of a vast moor Dafyd cut a very remarkable hazel stick;
for a good staff is as essential to the vocation of a good drover as
teeth are to a dog. So while his comrades had had their sticks broken
before reaching London, Dafyd's remained as it was, and whilst they
were conversing together on London Bridge a stranger accosted Dafyd,
wishing to know where he had obtained that wonderful stick. He replied
that it was in Wales he had had it, and on the stranger's assuring
him that there were wondrous things beneath the tree on which it had
grown, they both set out for Wales. When they reached the spot and dug
a little they found that there was a great hollow place beneath. As
night was spreading out her sable mantle, and as they were getting
deeper, what should they find but stairs easy to step and great
lamps illumining the vast chamber! They descended slowly, with mixed
emotions of dread and invincible desire to see the place. When they
reached the bottom of the stairs, they found themselves near a large
table, at one end of which they beheld sitting a tall man of about
seven foot. He occupied an old-fashioned chair and rested his head on
his left hand, while the other hand, all red, lay on the table and
grasped a great sword. He was withal enjoying a wondrously serene
sleep; and at his feet on the floor lay a big dog. After casting
a glance at them, the wizard said to Dafyd: 'This is Owen Lawgoch,
who is to sleep on till a special time, when he will wake and reign
over the Brythons. That weapon in his hand is one of the swords of
the ancient kings of Prydain. No battle was ever lost in which that
sword was used.' Then they moved slowly on, gazing at the wonders
of that subterranean chamber; and they beheld everywhere the arms
of ages long past, and on the table thousands of gold pieces bearing
the images of the different kings of Prydain. They got to understand
that it was permitted them to take a handful of each, but not to
put any in their purses. They both visited the cave several times,
but at last Dafyd put in his purse a little of the gold bearing the
image of one of the bravest of Owen's ancestors. But after coming out
again they were never able any more to find Owen's subterranean palace.
Those are, says Gwynionyd, the ideas cherished by the old people
of Troed yr Aur in Keredigion, and the editor adds a note that the
same sort of story is current among the peasantry of Cumberland, and
perhaps of other parts of Britain. This remark will at once recall to
the reader's mind the well-known verses [53] of the Scottish poet,
Leyden, as to Arthur asleep in a cave in the Eildon Hills in the
neighbourhood of Melrose Abbey. But he will naturally ask why London
Bridge is introduced into this and Iolo's story, and in answer I have
to say, firstly, that London Bridge formerly loomed very large in the
popular imagination as one of the chief wonders of London, itself the
most wonderful city in the world. Such at any rate was the notion
cherished as to London and London Bridge by the country people of
Wales, even within my own memory. Secondly, the fashion of selecting
London Bridge as the opening scene of a treasure legend had been set,
perhaps, by a widely spread English story to the following effect:--A
certain pedlar of Swaffham in Norfolk had a dream, that if he went and
stood on London Bridge he would have very joyful news; as the dream was
doubled and trebled he decided to go. So he stood on the bridge two
or three days, when at last a shopkeeper, observing that he loitered
there so long, neither offering anything for sale nor asking for alms,
inquired of him as to his business. The pedlar told him his errand,
and was heartily laughed at by the shopkeeper, who said that he had
dreamt that night that he was at a place called Swaffham in Norfolk,
and that if he only dug under a great oak tree in an orchard behind
a pedlar's house there, he would find a vast treasure; but the place
was utterly unknown to him, and he was not such a fool as to follow
a silly dream. No, he was wiser than that; so he advised the pedlar
to go home to mind his business. The pedlar very quietly took in
the words as to the dream, and hastened home to Swaffham, where he
found the treasure in his own orchard. The rest of the story need
not be related here, as it is quite different from the Welsh ones,
which the reader has just had brought under his notice [54].
To return to Owen Lawgoch, for we have by no means done with him:
on the farm of Cil yr Ychen there stands a remarkable limestone
hill called y Dinas, 'the Fortress,' hardly a mile to the north of
the village of Llandybïe, in Carmarthenshire. This dinas and the
lime-kilns that are gradually consuming it are to be seen on the
right from the railway as you go from Llandeilo to Llandybïe. It
is a steep high rock which forms a very good natural fortification,
and in the level area on the top is the mouth of a very long cavern,
known as Ogo'r Dinas, 'the Dinas Cave.' The entrance into it is small
and low, but it gradually widens out, becoming in one place lofty and
roomy with several smaller branch caves leading out of it; and it is
believed that some of them connect Ogo'r Dinas with smaller caves at
Pant y Llyn, 'the Lake Hollow,' where, as the name indicates, there is
a small lake a little higher up: both Ogo'r Dinas and Pant y Llyn are
within a mile of the village of Llandybïe [55]. Now I am informed,
in a letter written in 1893 by one native, that the local legend
about Ogo'r Dinas is that Owen Lawgoch and his men are lying asleep
in it, while another native, Mr. Fisher, writing in the same year,
but on the authority of somewhat later hearsay, expresses himself as
follows:--'I remember hearing two traditions respecting Ogo'r Dinas:
(1) that King Arthur and his warriors lie sleeping in it with their
right hands clasping the hilts of their drawn swords ready to encounter
anyone who may venture to disturb their repose--is there not a dinas
somewhere in Carnarvonshire with a similar legend? (2) That Owen
Lawgoch lived in it some time or other: that is all that I remember
having heard about him in connection with this ogof.' Mr. Fisher
proceeds, moreover, to state that it is said of an ogof at Pant y Llyn,
that Owen Lawgoch and his men on a certain occasion took refuge in it,
where they were shut up and starved to death. He adds that, however
this may be, it is a fact that in the year 1813 ten or more human
skeletons of unusual stature were discovered in an ogof there [56].
To this I may append a reference to the Geninen for 1896, p. 84,
where Mr. Lleufer Thomas, who is also a native of the district,
alludes to the local belief that Owen Lawgoch and his men are asleep,
as already mentioned, in the cave of Pant y Llyn, and that they are
to go on sleeping there till a trumpet blast and the clash of arms
on Rhiw Goch rouse them to sally forth to combat the Saxons and to
conquer, as set forth by Howells: see p. 381 above. It is needless
to say that there is no reason, as will be seen presently, to suppose
Owen Lawgoch to have ever been near any of the caves to which allusion
has here been made; but that does not appreciably detract from the
fascination of the legend which has gathered round his personality;
and in passing I may be allowed to express my surprise that in such
stories as these the earlier Owen has not been eclipsed by Owen
Glyndwr: there must be some historical reason why that has not taken
place. Can it be that a habit of caution made Welshmen speak of Owen
Lawgoch when the other Owen was really meant?
The passage I have cited from Mr. Fisher's letter raises the question
of a dinas in Carnarvonshire, which that of his native parish
recalled to his mind; and this is to be considered next. Doubtless he
meant Dinas Emrys formerly called Din Emreis [57], 'the Fortress of
Ambrosius,' situated near Bedgelert, and known in the neighbourhood
simply as y Dinas, 'the Fort.' It is celebrated in the Vortigern legend
as the place where the dragons had been hidden, that frustrated the
building of that king's castle; and the spot is described in Lewis'
Topographical Dictionary of Wales, in the article on Bethgelart
(Bed-Celert), as an isolated rocky eminence with an extensive top area,
which is defended by walls of loose stones, and accessible only on
one side. He adds that the entrance appears to have been guarded by
two towers, and that within the enclosed area are the foundations of
circular buildings of loose stones forming walls of about five feet
in thickness. Concerning that Dinas we read in the Brython for 1861,
p. 329, a legend to the following effect:--Now after the departure
of Vortigern, Myrdin, or Merlin as he is called in English, remained
himself in the Dinas for a long time, until, in fact, he went away
with Emrys Ben-aur, 'Ambrosius the Gold-headed'--evidently Aurelius
Ambrosius is meant. When he was about to set out with the latter, he
put all his treasure and wealth into a crochan aur, 'a gold cauldron,'
and hid it in a cave in the Dinas, and on the mouth of the cave he
rolled a huge stone, which he covered up with earth and sods, so that
it was impossible for any one to find it. He intended this wealth
to be the property of some special person in a future generation,
and it is said that the heir to it is to be a youth with yellow hair
and blue eyes. When that one comes near to the Dinas a bell will
ring to invite him to the cave, which will open of itself as soon
as his foot touches it. Now the fact that some such legend was once
currently believed about Bedgelert and Nanhwynain is proved by the
curious stories as to various attempts made to find the treasure,
and the thunderstorms and portents which used to vanquish the local
greed for gold. For several instances in point see the Brython,
pp. 329-30; and for others, showing how hidden treasure is carefully
reserved for the right sort of heir, see p. 148 above. To prove how
widely this idea prevailed in Carnarvonshire, I may add a short story
which Mrs. Williams-Ellis of Glasfryn got from the engineer who told
her of the sacred eel of Llangybi (p. 366):--There was on Pentyrch,
the hill above Llangybi, he said, a large stone so heavy and fixed so
fast in the ground that no horses, no men could move it: it had often
been tried. One day, however, a little girl happened to be playing by
the stone, and at the touch of her little hand the stone moved. A hoard
of coins was found under it, and that at a time when the little girl's
parents happened to be in dire need of it. Search had long been made
by undeserving men for treasure supposed to be hidden at that spot; but
it was always unsuccessful until the right person touched the stone to
move. The failure of the wrong person to secure the treasure, even when
discovered, is illustrated by a story given by Mr. Derfel Hughes in
his Antiquities of Llandegai and Llanllechid, pp. 35-6, to the effect
that a servant man, somewhere up among the mountains near Ogwen Lake,
chanced to come across the mouth of a cave with abundance of vessels
of brass (pres) of every shape and description within it. He went
at once and seized one of them, but, alas! it was too heavy for him
to stir it. So he resolved to go away and return early on the morrow
with a friend to help him; but before going he closed the mouth of the
cave with stones and sods so as to leave it safe. While thus engaged
he remembered having heard how others had like him found caves and
failed to refind them. He could procure nothing readily that would
satisfy him as a mark, so it occurred to him to dot his path with
the chippings of his stick, which he whittled all the way as he went
back until he came to a familiar track: the chips were to guide him
back to the cave. So when the morning came he and his friend set out,
but when they reached the point where the chips should begin, not one
was to be seen: the Tylwyth Teg had picked up every one of them. So
that discovery of articles of brass--more probably bronze--was in
vain. But, says the writer, it is not fated to be always in vain,
for there is a tradition in the valley that it is a Gwydel, 'Goidel,
Irishman,' who is to have these treasures, and that it will happen in
this wise:--A Gwydel will come to the neighbourhood to be a shepherd,
and one day when he goes up the mountain to see to the sheep, just
when it pleases the fates a black sheep with a speckled head will
run before him and make straight for the cave: the sheep will go
in, with the Gwydel in pursuit trying to catch him. When the Gwydel
enters he sees the treasures, looks at them with surprise, and takes
possession of them; and thus, in some generation to come, the Gwydyl
will have their own restored to them. That is the tradition which
Derfel Hughes found in the vale of the Ogwen, and he draws from it
the inference which it seems to warrant, in words to the following
effect:--Perhaps this shows us that the Gwydyl had some time or other
something to do with these parts, and that we are not to regard as
stories without foundations all that is said of that nation; and
the sayings of old people to this day show that there is always some
spite between our nation and the Gwydyl. Thus, for instance, he goes
on to say, if a man proves changeable, he is said to have become a
Gwydel (Y mae wedi troi'n Wydel), or if one is very shameless and
cheeky he is called a Gwydel and told to hold his tongue (Taw yr hen
Wydel); and a number of such locutions used by our people proves,
he thinks, the former prevalence of much contention between the two
sister-nations. Expressions of the kind mentioned by Mr. Hughes are
well known in all parts of the Principality, and it is difficult to
account for them except on the supposition that Goidels and Brythons
lived for a long time face to face, so to say, with one another over
large areas in the west of our island.
The next story to be mentioned belongs to the same Snowdonian
neighbourhood, and brings us back to Arthur and his Men. For a writer
who has already been quoted from the Brython for 1861, p. 331,
makes Arthur and his following set out from Dinas Emrys and cross
Hafod y Borth mountain for a place above the upper reach of Cwmllan,
called Tregalan, where they found their antagonists. From Tregalan
the latter were pushed up the bwlch or pass, towards Cwm Dyli; but
when the vanguard of the army with Arthur leading had reached the top
of the pass, the enemy discharged a shower of arrows at them. There
Arthur fell, and his body was buried in the pass so that no enemy
might march that way so long as Arthur's dust rested there. That,
he says, is the story, and there to this day remains in the pass, he
asserts, the heap of stones called Carned Arthur, 'Arthur's Cairn':
the pass is called Bwlch y Saethau, 'the Pass of the Arrows.' Then
Ogof Llanciau Eryri is the subject of the following story given at
p. 371 of the same volume:--After Arthur's death on Bwlch y Saethau,
his men ascended to the ridge of the Lliwed and descended thence into
a vast cave called Ogof Llanciau Eryri, 'the young Men of Snowdonia's
Cave,' which is in the precipitous cliff on the left-hand side near
the top of Llyn Llydaw. This is in Cwm Dyli, and there in that cave
those warriors are said to be still, sleeping in their armour and
awaiting the second coming of Arthur to restore the crown of Britain
to the Kymry. For the saying is:--
Llancia' 'Ryri a'u gwyn gyll a'i hennill hi.
Snowdonia's youths with their white hazels will win it.
As the local shepherds were one day long ago collecting their sheep
on the Lliwed, one sheep fell down to a shelf in this precipice,
and when the Cwm Dyli shepherd made his way to the spot he perceived
that the ledge of rock on which he stood led to the hidden cave of
Llanciau Eryri. There was light within: he looked in and beheld a
host of warriors without number all asleep, resting on their arms and
ready equipped for battle. Seeing that they were all asleep, he felt
a strong desire to explore the whole place; but as he was squeezing
in he struck his head against the bell hanging in the entrance. It
rang so that every corner of the immense cave rang again, and all
the warriors woke uttering a terrible shout, which so frightened the
shepherd that he never more enjoyed a day's health; nor has anybody
since dared as much as to approach the mouth of the cave.
Thus far the Brython, and I have only to remark that this legend is
somewhat remarkable for the fact of its representing the Youths of
Eryri sleeping away in their cave without Arthur among them. In fact,
that hero is described as buried not very far off beneath a carned
or cairn on Bwlch y Saethau. As to the exact situation of that cairn,
I may say that my attention was drawn some time ago to the following
lines by Mr. William Owen, better known as Glaslyn, a living bard
bred and born in the district:--
Gerllaw Carned Arthur ar ysgwyd y Wydfa
Y gorwed gwedillion y cawr enwog Ricca.
Near Arthur's Cairn on the shoulder of Snowdon
Lie the remains of the famous giant Ricca.
These words recall an older couplet in a poem by Rhys Goch Eryri,
who is said to have died in the year 1420. He was a native of the
parish of Bedgelert, and his words in point run thus:--
Ar y drum oer dramawr, On the ridge cold and vast,
Yno gorwed Ricca Gawr. There the Giant Ricca lies.
From this it is clear that Rhys Goch meant that the cairn on the top of
Snowdon covered the remains of the giant whose name has been variously
written Ricca, Ritta, and Rhita. So I was impelled to ascertain from
Glaslyn whether I had correctly understood his lines, and he has been
good enough to help me out of some of my difficulties, as I do not know
Snowdon by heart, especially the Nanhwynain and Bedgelert side of the
mountain:--The cairn on the summit of Snowdon was the Giant's before
it was demolished and made into a sort of tower which existed before
the hotel was made. Glaslyn has not heard it called after Ricca's
name, but he states that old people used to call it Carned y Cawr,
'the Giant's Cairn.' In 1850 Carned Arthur, 'Arthur's Cairn,' was to
be seen on the top of Bwlch y Saethau, but he does not know whether
it is still so, as he has not been up there since the building of the
hotel. Bwlch y Saethau is a lofty shoulder of Snowdon extending in the
direction of Nanhwynain, and the distance from the top of Snowdon to
it is not great; it would take you half an hour or perhaps a little
more to walk from the one carned to the other. It is possible to
trace Arthur's march from Dinas Emrys up the slopes of Hafod y Borth,
over the shoulder of the Aran and Braich yr Oen to Tregalan--or Cwm
Tregalan, as it is now called--but from Tregalan he would have to
climb in a north-easterly direction in order to reach Bwlch y Saethau,
where he is related to have fallen and to have been interred beneath
a cairn. This may be regarded as an ordinary or commonplace account
of his death. But the scene suggests a far more romantic picture;
for down below was Llyn Llydaw with its sequestered isle, connected
then by means only of a primitive canoe with a shore occupied by men
engaged in working the ore of Eryri. Nay with the eyes of Malory we
seem to watch Bedivere making, with Excalibur in his hands, his three
reluctant journeys to the lake ere he yielded it to the arm emerging
from the deep. We fancy we behold how 'euyn fast by the banke houed
a lytyl barge wyth many fayr ladyes in hit,' which was to carry
the wounded Arthur away to the accompaniment of mourning and loud
lamentation; but the legend of the Marchlyn bids us modify Malory's
language as to the barge containing many ladies all wearing black
hoods, and take our last look at the warrior departing rather in a
coracle with three wondrously fair women attending to his wounds [58].
Some further notes on Snowdon, together with a curious account of
the Cave of Llanciau Eryri, have been kindly placed at my disposal by
Mr. Ellis Pierce (Elis [59] o'r Nant) of Dolwydelan:--In the uppermost
part of the hollow called Cwmllan is Tregalan, and in the middle of
Cwm Tregalan is a green hill, or rather an eminence which hardly forms
a hill, but what is commonly called a boncyn [60] in Carnarvonshire,
and between that green boncyn and the Clogwyn Du, 'Black Precipice,' is
a bog, the depth of which no one has ever succeeded in ascertaining,
and a town--inferred perhaps from tre in Tregalan--is fabled to
have been swallowed up there. Another of my informants speaks of
several hillocks or boncyns as forming one side of this little cwm;
but he has heard from geologists, that these green mounds represent
moraines deposited there in the glacial period. From the bottom of the
Clogwyn Du it is about a mile to Bwlch y Saethau. Then as to the cave
of Llanciau Eryri, which nobody can now find, the slope down to it
begins from the top of the Lliwed, but ordinarily speaking one could
not descend to where it is supposed to have been without the help
of ropes, which seems incompatible with the story of the Cwm Dyli
shepherd following a sheep until he was at the mouth of the cave;
not to mention the difficulty which the descent would have offered
to Arthur's men when they entered it. Then Elis o'r Nant's story
represents it shutting after them, and only opening to the shepherd
in consequence of his having trodden on a particular sod or spot. He
then slid down unintentionally and touched the bell that was hanging
there, so that it rang and instantly woke the sleeping warriors. No
sooner had that happened than those men of Arthur's took up their
guns--never mind the anachronism--and the shepherd made his way out
more dead than alive; and the frightened fellow never recovered from
the shock to the day of his death. When these warriors take up their
guns they fire away, we are told, without mercy from where each man
stands: they are not to advance a single step till Arthur comes to
call them back to the world.
To swell the irrelevancies under which this chapter labours already,
and to avoid severing cognate questions too rudely, I wish to add
that Elis o'r Nant makes the name of the giant buried on the top of
Snowdon into Rhitta or Rhita instead of Ricca. That is also the form
of the name with which Mrs. Rhys was familiar throughout her childhood
on the Llanberis side of the mountain. She often heard of Rhita [61]
Gawr having been buried on the top of Snowdon, and of other warriors
on other parts of Snowdon such as Moel Gynghorion and the Gist on
that moel. But Elis o'r Nant goes further, and adds that from Rhita
the mountain was called Wydfa Rhita, more correctly Gwydfa Rita,
'Rhita's Gwydfa.' Fearing this might be merely an inference, I have
tried to cross-examine him so far as that is possible by letter. He
replies that his father was bred and born in the little glen called
Ewybrnant [62], between Bettws y Coed and Pen Machno, and that his
grandfather also lived there, where he appears to have owned land not
far from the home of the celebrated Bishop Morgan. Now Elis' father
often talked, he says, in his hearing of 'Gwydfa Rhita.' Wishing to
have some more definite evidence, I wrote again, and he informs me
that his father was very fond of talking about his father, Elis o'r
Nant's grandfather, who appears to have been a character and a great
supporter of Sir Robert Williams, especially in a keenly contested
political election in 1796, when the latter was opposed by the then
head of the Penrhyn family. Sometimes the old man from Ewybrnant
would set out in his clocs, 'clogs or wooden shoes,' to visit Sir
Robert Williams, who lived at Plas y Nant, near Bedgelert. On starting
he would say to his family, Mi a'i hyibio troed Gwydfa Rhita ag mi
do'n ol rwbrud cin nos, or sometimes foru. That is, 'I'll go round
the foot of Rhita's Gwydfa and come back some time before night':
sometimes he would say 'to-morrow.' Elis also states that his father
used to relate how Rhita's Gwydfa was built, namely by the simple
process of each of his soldiers taking a stone to place on Rhita's
tomb. However the story as to Rhita Gawr being buried on the top of
Snowdon came into existence, there can be no doubt that it was current
in comparatively recent times, and that the Welsh name of y Wydfa,
derived from it, refers to the mountain as distinguished from the
district in which it is situated. In Welsh this latter is Eryri,
the habitat, as it were, of the eryr, 'eagle,' a bird formerly at
home there as many local names go to prove, such as Carreg yr Eryr
[63], 'the Stone of the Eagle,' mentioned in the boundaries of the
lands on Snowdon granted to the Abbey of Aberconwy in Llewelyn's
charter, where also Snowdon mountain is called Wedua vawr, 'the Great
Gwydfa.' Now, as already suggested, the word gwydfa takes us back to
Rhita's Carned or Cairn, as it signified a monument, a tomb or barrow:
Dr. Davies gives it in his Welsh-Latin Dictionary as Locus Sepulturæ,
Mausoleum. This meaning of the word may be illustrated by a reference
in passing to the mention in Brut y Tywysogion of the burial of Madog
ab Maredyd. For under the year 1159 we are told that he was interred
at Meifod, as it was there his tomb or the vault of his family,
the one intended also for him (y 6ydua [64]), happened to be.
Against the evidence just given, that tradition places Rhita's grave
on the top of Snowdon, a passing mention by Derfel Hughes (p. 52)
is of no avail, though to the effect that it is on the top of the
neighbouring mountain called Carned Lywelyn, 'Llewelyn's Cairn,'
that Rhita's Cairn was raised. He deserves more attention, however,
when he places Carned Drystan, 'Tristan or Tristram's Cairn,' on
a spur of that mountain, to wit, towards the east above Ffynnon y
Llyffaint [65]. For it is worthy of note that the name of Drystan,
associated with Arthur in the later romances, should figure with that
of Arthur in the topography of the same Snowdon district.
Before leaving Snowdon I may mention a cave near a small stream not
far from Llyn Gwynain, about a mile and a half above Dinas Emrys. In
the Llwyd letter (printed in the Cambrian Journal for 1859, pp. 142,
209), on which I have already drawn, it is called Ogo'r Gwr Blew, 'the
Hairy Man's Cave'; and the story relates how the Gwr Blew who lived in
it was fatally wounded by a woman who happened to be at home, alone,
in one of the nearest farm houses when the Gwr Blew came to plunder
it. Its sole interest here is that a later version [66] identifies the
Hairy Man with Owen Lawgoch, after modifying the former's designation
y Gwr Blew, which literally meant 'the Hair Man,' into y Gwr Blewog,
'the Hairy Man.' This doubtful instance of the presence of Owen
Lawgoch in the folklore of North Wales seems to stand alone.
Some of these cave stories, it will have been seen, reveal to us
a hero who is expected to return to interfere again in the affairs
of this world, and it is needless to say that Wales is by no means
alone in the enjoyment of imaginary prospects of this kind. The
same sort of poetic expectation has not been unknown, for instance,
in Ireland. In the summer of 1894, I spent some sunny days in the
neighbourhood of the Boyne, and one morning I resolved to see the
chief burial mounds dotting the banks of that interesting river;
but before leaving the hotel at Drogheda, my attention was attracted
by a book of railway advertisement of the kind which forcibly impels
one to ask two questions: why will not the railway companies leave
those people alone who do not want to travel, and why will they make
it so tedious for those who do? But on turning the leaves of that
booklet over I was inclined to a suaver mood, as I came on a paragraph
devoted to an ancient stronghold called the Grianan of Aileach, or
Greenan-Ely, in the highlands of Donegal. Here I read that a thousand
armed men sit resting there on their swords, and bound by magic sleep
till they are to be called forth to take their part in the struggle
for the restoration of Erin's freedom. At intervals they awake, it
is said, and looking up from their trance they ask in tones which
solemnly resound through the many chambers of the Grianan: 'Is the
time come?' A loud voice, that of the spiritual caretaker, is heard
to reply: 'The time is not yet.' They resume their former posture and
sink into their sleep again. That is the substance of the words I read,
and they called to my mind the legend of such heroes of the past as
Barbarossa, with his sleep interrupted only by his change of posture
once in seven years; of Dom Sebastian, for centuries expected from
Moslem lands to restore the glories of Portugal; of the Cid Rodrigo,
expected back to do likewise with the kingdom of Castile; and last,
but not least, of the O'Donoghue who sleeps beneath the Lakes of
Killarney, ready to emerge to right the wrongs of Erin. With my head
full of these and the like dreams of folklore, I was taken over the
scene of the Battle of the Boyne; and the car-driver, having vainly
tried to interest me in it, gave me up in despair as an uncultured
savage who felt no interest in the history of Ireland. However he
somewhat changed his mind when, on reaching the first ancient burial
mound, he saw me disappear underground, fearless of the Fomhoraigh;
and he began to wonder whether I should ever return to pay him his
fare. This in fact was the sheet anchor of all my hopes; for I thought
that in case I remained fast in a narrow passage, or lost my way in
the chambers of the prehistoric dead, the jarvey must fetch me out
again. So by the time I had visited three of these ancient places,
Dowth, Knowth, and New Grange, I had risen considerably in his
opinion; and he bethought him of stories older than the Battle of
the Boyne. So he told me on the way back several bits of something
less drearily historical. Among other things, he pointed in the
direction of a place called Ardee in the county of Louth, where,
he said, there is Garry Geerlaug's enchanted fort full of warriors
in magic sleep, with Garry Geerlaug himself in their midst. Once on
a time a herdsman is said to have strayed into their hall, he said,
and to have found the sleepers each with his sword and his spear
ready to hand. But as the intruder could not keep his hands off the
metal wealth of the place, the owners of the spears began to rouse
themselves, and the intruder had to flee for his life. But there that
armed host is awaiting the eventful call to arms, when they are to
sally forth to restore prosperity and glory to Ireland. That was his
story, and I became all attention as soon as I heard of Ardee, which
is in Irish Áth Fhir-dheadh, or the Ford of Fer-deadh, so called from
Fer-deadh, who fought a protracted duel with Cúchulainn in that ford,
where at the end, according to a well-known Irish story, he fell by
Cúchulainn's hand. I was still more exercised by the name of Garry
Geerlaug, as I recognized in Garry an Anglo-Irish pronunciation
of the Norse name Godhfreydhr, later Godhroedh, sometimes rendered
Godfrey and sometimes Godred, while in Man and in Scotland it has
become Gorry, which may be heard also in Ireland. I thought, further,
that I recognized the latter part of Garry Geerlaug's designation
as the Norse female name Geirlaug. There was no complete lack of
Garries in that part of Ireland in the tenth and eleventh centuries;
but I have not yet found any historian to identify for me the warrior
named or nicknamed Garry Geerlaug, who is to return blinking to this
world of ours when his nap is over. Leaving Ireland, I was told the
other day of a place called Tom na Hurich, near Inverness, where Finn
and his following are resting, each on his left elbow, enjoying a
broken sleep while waiting for the note to be sounded, which is to
call them forth. What they are then to do I have not been told: it
may be that they will proceed at once to solve the Crofter Question,
for there will doubtless be one.
It appears, to come back to Wales, that King Cadwaladr, who waged an
unsuccessful war with the Angles of Northumbria in the seventh century,
was long after his death expected to return to restore the Brythons
to power. At any rate so one is led in some sort of a hazy fashion to
believe in reading several of the poems in the manuscript known as
the Book of Taliessin. One finds, however, no trace of Cadwaladr in
our cave legends: the heroes of them are Arthur and Owen Lawgoch. Now
concerning Arthur one need at this point hardly speak, except to say
that the Welsh belief in the eventual return of Arthur was at one
time a powerful motive affecting the behaviour of the people of Wales,
as was felt, for instance, by English statesmen in the reign of Henry
II. But by our time the expected return of Arthur--rexque futurus--has
dissipated itself into a commonplace of folklore fitted only to point
an allegory, as when Elvet Lewis, one of the sweetest of living Welsh
poets, sings in a poem entitled Arthur gyda ni, 'Arthur with us':--
Mae Arthur Fawr yn cysgu, Great Arthur still is sleeping,
A'i dewrion syd o'i deutu, His warriors all around him,
A'u gafael ar y cled: With grip upon the steel:
Pan daw yn dyd yn Nghymru, When dawns the day on Cambry,
Daw Arthur Fawr i fynu Great Arthur forth will sally
Yn fyw--yn fyw o'i fed! Alive to work her weal!
Not so with regard to the hopes associated with the name of Owen
Lawgoch; for we have it on Gwynionyd's testimony, p. 464, that our old
baledwyr or ballad men used to sing about him at Welsh fairs: it is not
in the least improbable that they still do so here and there, unless
the horrors of the ghastly murder last reported in the newspapers
have been found to pay better. At any rate Mr. Fisher (p. 379) has
known old people in his native district in the Llychwr Valley who
could repeat stanzas or couplets from the ballads in question. He
traces these scraps to a booklet entitled Merlin's Prophecy [67],
together with a brief history of his life, taken from the Book of
Prognostication. This little book bears no date, but appears to
have been published in the early part of the nineteenth century. It
is partly in prose, dealing briefly with the history of Merlin the
Wild or Silvaticus, and the rest consists of two poems. The first
of these poems is entitled Dechreu Darogan Myrdin, 'the Beginning
of Merlin's Prognostication,' and is made up of forty-nine verses,
several of which speak of Owen as king conquering all his foes and
driving out the Saxons: then in the forty-seventh stanza comes the
couplet which says, that this Owen is Henry the Ninth, who is tarrying
in a foreign land. The other poem is of a more general character,
and is entitled the Second Song of Merlin's Prognostication, and
consists of twenty-six stanzas of four lines each like the previous
one; but the third stanza describes Arthur's bell at Caerlleon,
'Caerleon,' ringing with great vigour to herald the coming of Owen;
and the seventh stanza begins with the following couplet:--
Ceir gweled Owen Law-goch yn d'od i Frydain Fawr,
Ceir gweled newyn ceiniog yn nhref Gaerlleon-gawr.
Owen Lawgoch one shall to Britain coming see,
And dearth of pennies find at Chester on the Dee.
It closes with the date in verse at the end, to wit, 1668, which
takes us back to very troublous times: 1668 was the year of the
Triple Alliance of England, Sweden, and Holland against Louis XIV;
and it was not long after the Plague had raged, and London had had its
Great Fire. So it is a matter of no great surprise if some people in
Wales had a notion that the power of England was fast nearing its end,
and that the baledwyr thought it opportune to refurbish and adapt some
of Merlin's prophecies as likely to be acceptable to the peasantry of
South Wales. At all events we have no reason to suppose that the two
poems which have here been described from Mr. Fisher's data represented
either the gentry of Wales, whose ordinary speech was probably for
the most part English, or the bardic fraternity, who would have looked
with contempt at the language and style of the Prognostication. For,
apart from careless printing, this kind of literature can lay no claim
to merit in point of diction or of metre. Such productions represent
probably the baledwyr and the simple country people, such as still
listen in rapt attention to them doing at Welsh fairs and markets
what they are pleased to regard as singing. All this fits in well
enough with the folklore of the caves, such as the foregoing stories
represent it. Here I may add that I am informed by Mr. Craigfryn
Hughes of a tradition that Arthur and his men are biding their time
near Caerleon on the Usk, to wit, in a cave resembling generally those
described in the foregoing legends. He also mentions a tradition as
to Owen Glyndwr--so he calls him, though it is unmistakably the Owen
of the baledwyr who have been referred to by Mr. Fisher--that he and
his men are similarly slumbering in a cave in Craig Gwrtheyrn, in
Carmarthenshire. That is a spot in the neighbourhood of Llandyssil,
consisting of an elevated field terminating on one side in a sharp
declivity, with the foot of the rock laved by the stream of the
Teifi. Craig Gwrtheyrn means Vortigern's Rock, and it is one of the
sites with which legend associates the name of that disreputable old
king. I am not aware that it shows any traces of ancient works, but
it looks at a distance an ideal site for an old fortification. An
earlier prophecy about Owen Lawgoch than any of these occurs, as
kindly pointed out to me by Mr. Gwenogvryn Evans, in the Peniarth
MS. 94 (= Hengwrt MS. 412, p. 23), and points back possibly to the
last quarter of the fourteenth century. See also one quoted by him,
from the Mostyn MS. 133, in his Report on MSS. in the Welsh Language,
i. 106. Probably many more such prophecies might be discovered if
anybody undertook to make a systematic search for them.
But who was Owen Lawgoch, if there ever was such a man? Such a man
there was undoubtedly; for we read in one of the documents printed in
the miscellaneous volume commonly known as the Record of Carnarvon,
that at a court held at Conway in the forty-fourth year of Edward III
a certain Gruffyd Says was adjudged to forfeit all the lands which
he held in Anglesey to the Prince of Wales--who was at that time
no other than Edward the Black Prince--for the reason that the said
Gruffyd had been an adherent of Owen: adherens fuisset Owino Lawegogh
(or Lawgogh) inimico et proditori predicti domini Principis et de
consilio predicti Owyni ad mouendam guerram in Wallia contra predictum
dominum Principem [68]. How long previously it had been attempted to
begin a war on behalf of this Owen Lawgoch one cannot say, but it so
happens that at this time there was a captain called Yeuwains, Yewains,
or Yvain de Gales or Galles, 'Owen of Wales,' fighting on the French
side against the English in Edward's Continental wars. Froissart in
his Chronicles has a great deal to say of him, for he distinguished
himself greatly on various critical occasions. From the historian's
narrative one finds that Owen had escaped when a boy to the court
of Philip VI of France, who received him with great favour and had
him educated with his own nephews. Froissart's account of him is,
that the king of England, Edward III, had slain his father and given
his lordship and principality to his own son as Prince of Wales;
and Froissart gives Owen's father's name as Aymon, which should mean
Edmond, unless the name intended may have been rather Einion. However
that may have been, Owen was engaged in the Battle of Poitiers in
1356, and when peace was made he went to serve in Lombardy; but when
war between England and France broke out again in 1369, he returned
to France. He sometimes fought on sea and sometimes on land, but
he was always entrusted by the French king, who was now Charles V,
with important commands [69]. Thus in 1372 he was placed at the head
of a flotilla with 3,000 men, and ordered to operate against the
English: he made a descent on the Isle of Guernsey [70], and while
there besieging the castle of Cornet, he was charged by the king of
France to sail to Spain to invite the king of Castile to send his
fleet again to help in the attack on La Rochelle. Whilst staying
at Santander the earl of Pembroke was brought thither, having been
taken prisoner in the course of the destruction of the English fleet
before La Rochelle. Owen, on seeing the earl of Pembroke, asks him
with bitterness if he is come there to do him homage for his land,
of which he had taken possession in Wales. He threatens to avenge
himself on him as soon as he can, and also on the earl of Hereford
and Edward Spencer, for it was by the fathers of these three men,
he said, his own father had been betrayed to death. Edward III died
in 1377, and the Black Prince had died shortly before. Owen survived
them both, and was actively engaged in the siege of Mortagne sur Mer
in Poitou, when he was assassinated by one Lamb, who had insinuated
himself into his service and confidence, partly by pretending to
bring him news about his native land and telling him that all Wales
was longing to have him back to be the lord of his country--et lui
fist acroire que toute li terre de Gales le desiroient mout à ravoir à
seigneur. So Owen fell in the year 1378, and was buried at the church
of Saint-Léger [71] while Lamb returned to the English to receive
his stipulated pay. When this happened Owen's namesake, Owen Glyndwr,
was nearly thirty years of age. The latter was eventually to assert
with varying fortune on several fields of battle in this country the
claims of his elder kinsman, who, by virtue of his memory in France,
would seem to have rendered it easy for the later Owen to enter into
friendly relations with the French court of his day [72].
Now as to Yvain de Galles, the Rev. Thomas Price (Carnhuanawc)
in his Hanes Cymru, 'History of Wales,' devotes a couple of pages,
735-7, to Froissart's account of him, and he points out that Angharad
Llwyd, in her edition of Sir John Wynne's History of the Gwydir Family
[73], had found Owen Lawgoch to have been Owen ab Thomas ab Rhodri,
brother to Llewelyn, the last native prince of Wales. One of the names,
however, among other things, forms a difficulty: why did Froissart
call Yvain's father Aymon? So it is clear that a more searching study
of Welsh pedigrees and other documents, including those at the Record
Office [74], has to be made before Owen can be satisfactorily placed
in point of succession. For that he was in the right line to succeed
the native princes of Wales is suggested both by the eagerness with
which all Wales was represented as looking to his return to be the lord
of the country, and by the opening words of Froissart in describing
what he had been robbed of by Edward III, as being both lordship and
principality--la signourie et princeté. Be that as it may, there is,
it seems to me, little doubt that Yvain de Galles was no other than
the Owen Lawgoch, whose adherent Gruffyd Says was deprived of his land
and property in the latter part of Edward's reign. In the next place,
there is hardly room for doubt that the Owen Lawgoch here referred
to was the same man whom the baledwyr in their jumble of prophecies
intended to be Henry the Ninth, that is to say the Welsh successor
to the last Tudor king, Henry VIII, and that he was at the same time
the hero of the cave legends of divers parts of the Principality,
especially South Wales, as already indicated.
Now without being able to say why Owen and his analogues should become
the heroes of cave legends contemplating a second advent, it is easy
to point to circumstances which facilitated their doing so. It is
useless to try to discuss the question of Arthur's disappearance;
but take Garry Geerlaug, for instance, a roving Norseman, as we may
suppose from his name, who may have suddenly disappeared with his
followers, never more to be heard of in the east of Ireland. In the
absence of certain news of his death, it was all the easier to imagine
that he was dozing quietly away in an enchanted fortress. Then as
to King Cadwaladr, who was also, perhaps, to have returned to this
world, so little is known concerning his end that historians have
no certainty to this day when or where he died. So much the readier
therefore would the story gain currency that he was somewhere biding
his time to come back to retrieve his lost fortunes. Lastly, there is
Owen Lawgoch, the magic of whose name has only been dissipated in our
own day: he died in France in the course of a protracted war with the
kings of England. It is not likely, then, that the peasantry of Wales
could have heard anything definite about his fate. So here also the
circumstances were favourable to the cave legend and the dream that
he was, whether at home or abroad, only biding his time. Moreover,
in all these cases the hope-inspiring delusion gained currency among a
discontented people, probably, who felt the sore need of a deliverer to
save them from oppression or other grievous hardships of their destiny.
The question can no longer be prevented from presenting itself as to
the origin of this idea of a second advent of a hero of the past;
but in that form it is too large for discussion here, and it would
involve a review, for instance, of one of the cardinal beliefs of the
Latter-day Saints as to the coming of Christ to reign on earth, and
other doctrines supposed to be derived from the New Testament. On the
other hand, there is no logical necessity why the expected deliverer
should have been in the world before: witness the Jews, who are looking
forward not to the return but to the birth and first coming of their
Messiah. So the question here may be confined more or less strictly to
its cave-legend form; and though I cannot answer it, some advance in
the direction whence the answer should come may perhaps be made. In
the first place, one will have noticed that Arthur and Owen Lawgoch
come more or less in one another's way; and the presumption is that
Owen Lawgoch has been to a certain extent ousting Arthur, who may be
regarded as having the prior claim, not to mention that in the case
of the Gwr Blew cave, p. 481, Owen is made by an apparently recent
version of the story to evict from his lair a commonplace robber
of no special interest. In other words, the Owen Lawgoch legend is,
so to say, detected spreading itself [75]. That is very possibly just
what had happened at a remoter period in the case of the Arthur legend
itself. In other words, Arthur has taken the place of some ancient
divinity, such as that dimly brought within our ken by Plutarch in the
words placed at the head of this chapter. He reproduces the report of
a certain Demetrius, sent by the emperor of Rome to reconnoitre and
inspect the coasts of Britain. It was to the effect that around Britain
lay many uninhabited islands, some of which are named after deities
and some after heroes; and of the islands inhabited, he visited the
one nearest to the uninhabited ones. Of this the dwellers were few,
but the people of Britain treated them as sacrosanct and inviolable in
their persons. Among other things, they related to him how terrible
storms, diseases, and portents happened on the occasion of any one
of the mighty leaving this life. He adds:--'Moreover there is, they
said, an island in which Cronus is imprisoned, with Briareus keeping
guard over him as he sleeps; for, as they put it, sleep is the bond
forged for Cronus. They add that around him are many divinities,
his henchmen and attendants [76].'
What divinity, Celtic or pre-Celtic, this may have been who recalled
Cronus or Saturn to the mind of the Roman officer, it is impossible
to say. It is to be noticed that he sleeps and that his henchmen
are with him, but no allusion is made to treasure. No more is there,
however, in Mr. Fisher's version of the story of Ogo'r Dinas, which,
according to him, says that Arthur and his warriors there lie sleeping
with their right hands clasping the hilts of their drawn swords, ready
to encounter any one who may venture to disturb their repose. On the
other hand, legends about cave treasure are probably very ancient, and
in some at least of our stories the safe keeping of such treasure must
be regarded as the original object of the presence of the armed host.
The permission supposed to be allowed an intruder to take away a
reasonable quantity of the cave gold, I should look at in the light
of a sort of protest on the part of the story-teller against the
niggardliness of the cave powers. I cannot help suspecting in the same
way that the presence of a host of armed warriors to guard some piles
of gold and silver for unnumbered ages must have struck the fancy
of the story-tellers as disproportionate, and that this began long
ago to cause a modification in the form of the legends. That is to
say, the treasure sank into a mere accessory of the presence of the
armed men, who are not guarding any such thing so much as waiting for
the destined hour when they are to sally forth to make lost causes
win. Originally the armed warriors were in some instances presumably
the henchmen of a sleeping divinity, as in the story told to Demetrius;
but perhaps oftener they were the guardians of treasure, just as much
as the invisible agencies are, which bring on thunder and lightning
and portents when any one begins to dig at Dinas Emrys or other spots
where ancient treasure lies hidden. There is, it must be admitted,
no objection to regarding the attendants of a divinity as at the
same time the guardians of his treasure. In none, however, of these
cave stories probably may we suppose the principal figure to have
originally been that of the hero expected to return among men: he,
when found in them, is presumably to be regarded as a comparatively
late interloper. But it is, as already hinted, not to be understood
that the notion of a returning hero is itself a late one. Quite the
contrary; and the question then to be answered is, Where was that kind
of hero supposed to pass his time till his return? There is only one
answer to which Welsh folklore points, and that is, In fairyland. This
is also the teaching of the ancient legend about Arthur, who goes away
to the Isle of Avallon to be healed of his wounds by the fairy maiden
Morgen; and, according to an anonymous poet [77], it is in her charms
that one should look for the reason why Arthur tarries so long:--
Immodice læsus Arthurus tendit ad aulam
Regis Avallonis, ubi virgo regia, vulnus
Illius tractans, sanati membra reservat
Ipsa sibi: vivuntque simul, si credere fas est.
Avallon's court see suffering Arthur reach:
His wounds are healed, a royal maid the leech;
His pains assuaged, he now with her must dwell,
If we hold true what ancient legends tell.
Here may be cited by way of comparison Walter Mapes' statement as to
the Trinio, concerning whom he was quoted in the first chapter, p. 72
above. He says, that as Trinio was never seen after the losing battle,
in which he and his friends had engaged with a neighbouring chieftain,
it was believed in the district around Llyn Syfadon, that Trinio's
fairy mother had rescued him from the enemy and taken him away with her
to her home in the lake. In the case of Arthur it is, as we have seen,
a fairy also or a lake lady that intervenes; and there cannot be much
room for doubt, that the story representing him going to fairyland
to be healed is far older than any which pictures him sleeping in a
cave with his warriors and his gold all around him. As for the gold,
however, it is abundantly represented as nowhere more common than
in the home of the fairies: so this metal treated as a test cannot
greatly help us in essaying the distinction here suggested. With regard
to Owen Lawgoch, however, one is not forced to suppose that he was
ever believed to have sojourned in Faery: the legendary precedent of
Arthur as a cave sleeper would probably suffice to open the door for
him to enter the recesses of Craig y Dinas, as soon as the country
folk began to grow weary of waiting for his return. In other words,
most of our cave legends have combined together two sets of popular
belief originally distinct, the one referring to a hero gone to the
world of the fairies and expected some day to return, and the other to
a hero or god enjoying an enchanted sleep with his retinue all around
him. In some of our legends, however, such as that of Llanciau Eryri,
the process of combining the two sets of story has been left to this
day incomplete.