CHAPTER XII

RACE IN FOLKLORE AND MYTH

The method of philological mythology is thus discredited by the

disputes of its adherents. The system may be called orthodox,

but it is an orthodoxy which alters with every new scholar

who enters the sacred enclosure.--Andrew Lang.

It has been well said, that while it is not science to know the

contents of myths, it is science to know why the human race has

produced them. It is not my intention to trace minutely the history

of that science, but I may hazard the remark, that she could not

be said to have reached years of discretion till she began to

compare one thing with another; and even when mythology had become

comparative mythology, her horizon remained till within recent years

comparatively narrow. In other words, the comparisons were wont to

be very circumscribed: you might, one was told, compare the myths of

Greeks and Teutons and Hindus, because those nations were considered

to be of the same stock; but even within that range comparisons were

scarcely contemplated, except in the case of myths enshrined in the

most classical literatures of those nations. This kind of mythology

was eclectic rather than comparative, and it was apt to regard myths

as a mere disease of language. By-and-by, however, the student showed

a preference for a larger field and a wider range; and in so doing he

was, whether consciously or unconsciously, beginning to keep step with

a larger movement extending to the march of all the kindred sciences,

and especially that of language.

At one time the student of language was satisfied with mummified

speech, wrapped up, as it were, in the musty coils of the records

of the past: in fact, he often became a mere researcher of the dead

letter of language, instead of a careful observer of the breath

of life animating her frame. So long as that remained the case,

glottology deserved the whole irony of Voltaire's well-known account

of etymology as being in fact, 'une science où les voyelles ne font

rien, et les consonnes fort peu de chose.' In the course, however, of

recent years a great change has come over the scene: not only have the

laws of the Aryan consonants gained greatly in precision, but those

of the Aryan vowels have at last been discovered to a considerable

extent. The result for me and others who learnt that the Aryan

peasant of idyllic habits harped eternally on the three notes of a,

i, u, is that we have to unlearn this and a great deal more: in fact,

the vowels prove to be far more troublesome than the consonants. But

difficult as these lessons are, the glottologist must learn them,

unless he is content to remain with the stragglers who happen to be

unable to move on. Now the change to which I allude, in connexion

with the study of language, has been inseparably accompanied with the

paying of increased attention to actual speech, with a more careful

scrutiny of dialects, even obscure dialects such as the literary man

is wont to regard with scorn.

Similarly the student of mythology now seeks the wherewithal of

his comparisons from the mouth of the traveller and the missionary,

wherever they may roam; not from the Rig-Veda or the Iliad alone,

but from the rude stories of the peasant, and the wild fancies of

the savage from Tierra del Fuego to Greenland's icy mountains. The

parallel may be drawn still closer. Just as the glottologist,

fearing lest the written letter may have slurred over or hidden

away important peculiarities of ancient speech, resorts for a

corrective to the actuality of modern Aryan, so the mythologist,

apt to suspect the testimony of the highly respectable bards of the

Rig-Veda, may on occasion give ear to the fresh evidence of a savage,

however inconsequent it may sound. The movements to which I allude

in glottology and mythology began so recently that their history has

not yet been written. Suffice it to say that in glottology, or the

science of language, the names most intimately connected with the new

departure are those of Ascoli, J. Schmidt, and Fick, those of Leskien,

Brugmann, Osthoff, and De Saussure; while of the names of the teachers

of the anthropological method of studying myths, several are by this

time household words in this country. But, so far as I know, the first

to give a systematic exposition of the subject was Professor Tylor,

in his work on Primitive Culture, published first in 1871.

Such has been the intimate connexion between mythology and glottology

that I may be pardoned for going back again to the latter. It

is applicable in its method to all languages, but, as a matter

of fact, it came into being in the domain of Aryan philology, so

that it has been all along principally the science of comparing the

Aryan languages with one another. It began with Sir William Jones'

discovery of the kinship of Sanskrit with Greek and Latin, and for

a long time it took the lead of the more closely related sciences:

this proved partly beneficial and partly the reverse. In the case of

ethnology, for instance, the influence of glottology has probably

done more harm than good, since it has opened up a wide field for

confounding race with language. In the case of mythology the same

influence has been partly helpful, and it has partly fallen short of

being such. Where names could be analysed with certainty, and where

they could be equated, leaving little room for doubt, as in the case

of that of the Greek Zeus, the Norse Týr, and the Sanskrit Dyaus,

the science of language rendered a veritable help to mythology; but

where the students of language, all pointing in different directions,

claimed each to hold in his hand the one safety-lamp, beyond the

range of which the mythologist durst not take a single step except at

the imminent risk of breaking his neck, the help may be pronounced,

to say the least of it, as somewhat doubtful. The anthropological

method of studying myths put an end to the unequal relation between

the students of the two sciences, and it is now pretty well agreed

that the proper relationship between them is that of mutual aid. This

will doubtless prove the solution of the whole matter, but it would be

premature to say that the period of strained relations is quite over,

since the mythologist has so recently made good his escape from the

embarrassing attentions of the students of language, that he has not

yet quite got out of his ears the bewildering notes of the chorus of

discordant cries of 'Dawn,' 'Sun,' and 'Storm-cloud.'

Now that I have touched on the friendly relations which ought to exist

between the science of language and the science of myth, I may perhaps

be allowed to notice a point or two where it is possible or desirable

for the one to render service to the other. The student of language

naturally wants the help of the student of myth, ritual, and religion

on matters which most immediately concern his own department of study;

and I may perhaps be excused for taking my stand on Celtic ground, and

calling attention to some of my own difficulties. Here is one of them:

when one would say in English 'It rains' or 'It freezes,' I should have

to say in my own language, Y mae hi'n bwrw glaw and Y mae hi'n rhewi,

which literally means 'She is casting rain' and 'She is freezing.' Nor

is this sort of locution confined to weather topics, for when you

would say 'He is badly off' or 'He is hard up,' a Welshman might say,

Y mae hi'n drwg arno or Y mae hi'n galed arno, that is literally,

'She is evil on him' or 'She is hard on him.' And the same feminine

pronoun fixes itself in other locutions in the language. Now I wish

to invoke the student of myth, ritual, and religion to help in the

identification of this ubiquitous 'she' of the Welsh. Whenever it is

mentioned to Englishmen, it merely calls to their minds the Highland

'she' of English and Scotch caricature, as for instance when Sir Walter

Scott makes Donald appeal in the following strain to Lord Menteith's

man, Anderson, who had learnt manners in France: 'What the deil, man,

can she no drink after her ain master without washing the cup and

spilling the ale, and be tamned to her!' The Highlander denies the

charge which our caricature tries to fasten on him; but even granting

that it was once to some extent justified, it is easy to explain it

by a reference to Gaelic, where the pronouns se and sibh, for 'he'

and 'you' respectively, approach in pronunciation the sound of the

English pronoun 'she.' This may have led to confusion in the mouths

of Highlanders who had but very imperfectly mastered English. In any

case, it is far too superficial to be quoted as a parallel to the hi,

'she,' in question in Welsh. A cautious Celtist, if such there be,

might warn us, before proceeding further with the search, to make sure

that the whole phenomenon is not a mere accident of Welsh phonetics,

and that it is not a case of two pronouns, one meaning 'she' and

the other 'it,' being confounded as the result merely of phonetic

decay. The answer to that is, that the language knows nothing of any

neuter pronoun which could assume the form of the hi which occupies us;

and further, that in locutions where the legitimate representative of

the neuter might be expected, the pronoun used is a different one,

ef, e, meaning both 'he' and 'it,' as in ï-e for ï-ef, 'it is he,

she, it or they,' nag-e, 'not he, she, it or they,' ef a allai or

fe allai, 'perhaps, peradventure, peut-être, il est possible.' The

French sentence suggests the analogous question, what was the original

force of denotation of the 'il' in such sentences as 'il fait beau,'

'il pleut,' and 'il neige'? In such cases it now denotes nobody in

particular, but has it always been one of his names? French historical

grammar may be able, unaided, to dispose of the attenuated fortunes of

M. Il, but we have to look for help to the student of myth and allied

subjects to enable us to identify the great 'she' persistently eluding

our search in the syntax of the Welsh language. Only two feminine names

suggest themselves to me as in any way appropriate: one is tynghed,

'fate or fortune,' and the other is Dôn, mother of some of the most

nebulous personages in Celtic literature.

There is, however, no evidence to show that either of them is

really the 'she' of whom we are in quest; but I have something to

say about both as illustrating the other side of the theme, how

the study of language may help mythology. This I have so far only

illustrated by a reference to the equation of Zeus with Dyaus and

their congeners. Within the range of Celtic legend the case is similar

with Dôn, who figures on Welsh ground, as I have hinted, as mother

of certain heroes of the oldest chapters of the Mabinogion. For it

is from her that Gwydion, the bard and arch-magician, and Gofannon

the smith his brother, are called sons of Dôn; and so in the case of

Arianrhod, daughter of Dôn, mother of Llew, and owner of the sea-laved

castle of Caer Arianrhod, not far distant from the prehistoric mound

of Dinas Dinlle, near the western mouth of the Menai Straits, as

already mentioned in another chapter, p. 208 above. In Irish legend,

we detect Dôn under the Irish form of her name, Danu or Donu, genitive

Danann or Donann, and she is almost singular there in always being

styled a divinity. From her the great mythical personages of Irish

legend are called Tuatha Dé Danann, or 'the Goddess Danu's Tribes,'

and sometimes Fir Déa, or 'the Men of the Divinity.' The last stage

in the Welsh history of Dôn consists of her translation to the skies,

where the constellation of Cassiopeia is supposed to constitute Llys

Dôn or Dôn's Court, as the Corona Borealis is identified with Caer

Arianrhod or 'the Castle of Dôn's Daughter'; but, as was perhaps

fitting, the dimensions of both are reduced to comparative littleness

by Caer Gwydion, 'the Magician Gwydion's Battlements,' spread over the

radiant expanse of the whole Milky Way [239]. Now the identification

of this ancient goddess Danu or Dôn as that in whom the oldest legends

of the Irish Goidels and the Welsh Goidels converge, has been the

work not so much of mythology as of the science of language; for it

was the latter that showed how to call back a little colouring into

the vanishing lineaments of this faded ancestral divinity [240].

For my next illustration, namely tynghed, 'fate,' I would cite a

passage from the opening of one of the most Celtic of Welsh stories,

that of Kulhwch and Olwen. Kulhwch's father, after being for some

time a widower, marries again, and conceals from his second wife

the fact that he has a son. She finds it out and lets her husband

know it; so he sends for his son Kulhwch, and the following is the

account of the son's interview with his stepmother, as given in Lady

Charlotte Guest's translation, ii. 252:--'His stepmother said unto him,

"It were well for thee to have a wife, and I have a daughter who is

sought of every man of renown in the world." "I am not of an age to

wed," answered the youth. Then said she unto him, "I declare to thee,

that it is thy destiny not to be suited with a wife until thou obtain

Olwen, the daughter of Yspadaden Penkawr." And the youth blushed,

and the love of the maiden diffused itself through all his frame,

although he had never seen her. And his father inquired of him, "What

has come over thee, my son, and what aileth thee?" "My stepmother

has declared to me, that I shall never have a wife until I obtain

Olwen, the daughter of Yspadaden Penkawr." "That will be easy for

thee," answered his father. "Arthur is thy cousin. Go, therefore,

unto Arthur to cut thy hair, and ask this of him as a boon."'

The physical theory of love for an unknown lady at the first mention

of her name, and the allusion to the Celtic tonsure, will have

doubtless caught the reader's attention, but I only wish to speak

of the words which the translator has rendered, 'I declare to thee,

that it is thy destiny not to be suited with a wife until thou obtain

Olwen.' More closely rendered, the original might be translated thus:

'I swear thee a destiny that thy side touch not a wife till thou

obtain Olwen.' The word in the Welsh for destiny is tynghet (for an

earlier tuncet), and the corresponding Irish word is attested as

tocad. Both these words have a tendency, like 'fate,' to be used

mostly in peiorem partem. Formerly, however, they might be freely

used in an auspicious sense likewise, as for instance in the woman's

name Tunccetace, on an early inscribed stone in Pembrokeshire. If her

name had been rendered into Latin she would have probably been called

Fortunata, as a namesake of good fortune. I render the Welsh mi a

tynghaf dynghet itt [241] into English, 'I swear thee a destiny';

but, more literally still, one might possibly render it 'I swear

thee a swearing,' that is, 'I swear thee an oath,' meaning 'I swear

for thee an oath which will bind thee.' The stepmother, it is true,

is not represented going through the form of words, for what she said

appears to have been a regular formula, just like that of putting a

person in Medieval Irish story under gessa or bonds of magic; but an

oath or form of imprecation was once doubtless a dark reality behind

this formula. In the southern part of my native county of Cardigan,

the phrase in question has been in use within the last thirty years,

and the practice which it denotes is still so well known as to be

the subject of local stories. A friend of mine, who is not yet fifty,

vividly remembers listening to an uncle of his relating how narrowly he

once escaped having the oath forced on him. He was in the hilly portion

of the parish of Llanwenog, coming home across country in the dead of a

midsummer's night, when leaping over a fence he unexpectedly came down

close to a man actively engaged in sheep-stealing. The uncle instantly

took to his heels, while the thief pursued him with a knife. If the

thief had caught him, it is understood that he would have held his

knife at his throat and forced on him an oath of secrecy. I have not

been able to ascertain the wording of the oath, but all I can learn

goes to show that it was dreaded only less than death itself. In

fact, there are stories current of men who failed to recover from the

effects of the oath, but lingered and died in a comparatively short

time. Since I got the foregoing story I have made inquiries of others

in South Cardiganshire, and especially of a medical friend of mine,

who speaks chiefly as to his native parish of Llangynllo. I found

that the idea is perfectly familiar to him and my other informants;

but, strange to say, from nobody could I gather that the illness is

considered to result necessarily from the violent administration of the

tynghed to the victim, or from the latter's disregarding the secrecy

of it by disclosing to his friends the name of the criminal. In fact,

I cannot discover that any such secrecy is emphasized so long as the

criminal is not publicly brought before a court of justice. Rather is

it that the tynghed effects blindly the ruin of the sworn man's health,

regardless of his conduct. At any rate, that is the interpretation

which I am forced to put on what I have been told.

The phrase tyngu tynghed [242], intelligible still in Wales, recalls

another instance of the importance of the spoken word, to wit,

the Latin fatum. Nay, it seems to suggest that the latter might

have perhaps originally been part of some such a formula as alicui

fatum fari, 'to say one a saying,' in the pregnant sense of applying

to him words of power. This is all the more to the point, as it is

well known how closely Latin and Celtic are related to one another,

and how every advance in the study of those languages goes to add

emphasis to their kinship. From the kinship of the languages one may

expect, to a certain extent, a similarity of rites and customs, and

one has not to go further for this than the very story which I have

cited. When Kulhwch's father first married, he is said to have sought

a gwreic kynmwyt ac ef [243], which means 'a wife of the same food

with him.' Thus the wedded wife was she, probably, who ate with her

husband, and we are reminded of the food ceremony which constituted

the aristocratic marriage in ancient Rome: it was called confarreatio,

and in the course of it an offering of cake, called farreum libum,

used to be made to Jupiter. A great French student of antiquity,

M. Fustel de Coulanges, describes the ceremony thus [244]:--'Les

deux époux, comme en Grèce, font un sacrifice, versent la libation,

prononcent quelques prières, et mangent ensemble un gâteau de fleur

de farine (panis farreus).' Lastly, my attention has been directed

to the place given to bread in the stories of Llyn y Fan Fach and

Llyn Elfarch. For on turning back to pp. 3-6, 17-8, 28, the reader

will find too much made of the bread to allow us to suppose that it

had no meaning in the courtship. The young farmer having fallen in

love at first sight with the lake maiden, it looks as if he wished,

by inducing her to share the bread he was eating, to go forthwith

through a form of marriage by a kind of confarreation that committed

her to a contract to be his wife without any tedious delay.

To return to the Latin fatum, I would point out that the Romans had

a plurality of fata; but how far they were suggested by the Greek

moirai is not quite clear: nor is it known that the ancient Welsh had

more than one tynghed. In the case, however, of old Norse literature,

we come across the Fate there as one bearing a name which is perhaps

cognate with the Welsh tynghed. I allude to a female figure, called

Þokk, who appears in the touching myth of Balder's death. When Balder

had fallen at the hands of Loki and Hödr, his mother Frigg asked who

would like to earn her good will by going as her messenger to treat

with Hell for the release of Balder. Hermódr the Swift, another

of the sons of Woden, undertook to set out on that journey on his

father's charger Sleipnir. For nine dreary nights he pursued his

perilous course without interruption, through glens dark and deep,

till he came to the river called Yell, when he was questioned as to

his errand by the maid in charge of the Yell bridge. On and on he rode

afterwards till he came to the fence of Hell's abode, which his horse

cleared at full speed. Hermódr entered the hall, and there found his

brother Balder seated in the place of honour. He abode with him that

night, and in the morning he asked Hell to let Balder ride home with

him to the Anses. He urged Hell to consider the grief which everybody

and everything felt for Balder. She replied that she would put that to

the test by letting Balder go if everything animate and inanimate would

weep for him; but he would be detained if anybody or anything declined

to do so. Hermódr made his way back alone to the Anses, and announced

to Frigg the answer which Hell had given to her request. Messengers

were sent forth without delay to bid all the world beweep Woden's son

out of the power of Hell. This was done accordingly by all, by men and

animals, by earth and stones, by trees and all metals, 'as you have

doubtless seen these things weep,' says the writer of the Prose Edda,

'when they pass from frost to warmth.' When the messengers, however,

were on their way home, after discharging their duty, they chanced

on a cave where dwelt a giantess called Þokk, whom they ordered to

join in the weeping for Balder; but she only answered:--

Þokk will weep dry tears

At Balder's bale-fire.

What is the son of man, quick or dead, to me!

Let Hell keep what she holds [245].

In this ogress Þokk, deaf to the appeals of the tenderer feelings,

we seem to have the counterpart of our Celtic tocad and tynghed;

and the latter's name as a part of the formula in the Welsh story,

while giving us the key of the myth, shows how the early Aryan knew of

nothing more binding than the magic force of an oath. On the one hand,

this conception of destiny carries with it the marks of its humble

origin, and one readily agrees with Cicero's words, De Divinatione,

ii. 7, when he says, anile sane et plenum superstitionis fati nomen

ipsum. On the other hand, it rises to the grim dignity of a name

for the dark, inexorable power which the whole universe is conceived

to obey, a power before which the great and resplendent Zeus of the

Aryan race is a mere puppet.

Perhaps I have dwelt only too long on the policy of 'give and take'

which ought to obtain between mythology and glottology. Unfortunately,

one can add without fear of contradiction, that, even when that

policy is carried out to the utmost, both sciences will still have

difficulties more than enough. In the case of mythology these

difficulties spring chiefly from two distinct sources, from the

blending of history with myth, and from the mixing of one race with

another. Let us now consider the latter: the difficulties from this

source are many and great, but every fresh acquisition of knowledge

tending to make our ideas of ethnology more accurate, gives us a

better leverage for placing the myths of mixed peoples in their

proper places as regards the races composing those peoples. Still,

we have far fewer propositions to lay down than questions to ask:

thus to go no further afield than the well-known stories attaching to

the name of Heracles, how many of them are Aryan, how many Semitic,

and how many Aryan and Semitic at one and the same time? That is

the sort of question which besets the student of Celtic mythology at

every step; for the Celtic nations of the present day are the mixed

descendants of Aryan invaders and the native populations which those

Aryan invaders found in possession. So the question thrusts itself

on the student, to which of these races a particular myth, rite, or

custom is to be regarded as originally belonging. Take, for instance,

Brân's colossal figure, to which attention has already been called,

pp. 552-3 above. Brân was too large to enter a house or go on board

a ship: is he to be regarded as the outcome of Celtic imagination,

or of that of a people that preceded the Celts in Celtic lands? The

comparison with the Gaulish Tricephal would seem to point in the

direction of the southern seaboard of the Baltic (p. 553): what then?

The same kind of question arises in reference to the Irish hero

Cúchulainn: take, for instance, the stock description of Cúchulainn

in a rage. Thus when angered he underwent strange distortions: the

calves of his legs came round to where his shins should have been; his

mouth enlarged itself so that it showed his liver and lungs swinging

in his throat; one of his eyes became as small as a needle's, or else

it sank back into his head further than a crane could have reached,

while the other protruded itself to a corresponding length; every

hair on his body became as sharp as a thorn, and held on its point a

drop of blood or a spark of fire. It would be dangerous then to stop

him from fighting, and even when he had fought enough, he required

for his cooling to be plunged into three baths of cold water; the

first into which he went would instantly boil over, the second would

be too hot for anybody else to bear, and the third only would be of

congenial warmth. I do not ask whether that strange picture betrays

a touch of the solar brush, but I should be very glad to know whether

it can be regarded as an Aryan creation or not.

It is much the same with matters other than mythological: take,

for instance, the bedlamite custom of the couvade [246], which is

presented to us in Irish literature in the singular form of a cess,

'suffering or indisposition,' simultaneously attacking the braves of

ancient Ulster. We are briefly informed in the Book of the Dun Cow,

fo. 60a, that the women and boys of Ulster were free from it. So was

any Ultonian, we are told, who happened to be outside the boundaries

of his country, and so were Cúchulainn and his father, even when

in Ulster. Any one who was rash enough to attack an Ultonian warrior

during this his period of helplessness could not, it is further stated,

expect to live afterwards either prosperously or long. The question for

us, however, is this: was the couvade introduced by the Aryan invaders

of Ireland, or are we rather to trace it to an earlier race? I should

be, I must confess, inclined to the latter view, especially as the

couvade was known among the Iberians of old, and among the ancient

Corsicans [247]. It may, of course, have been both Aryan and Iberian,

but it will all the same serve as a specimen of the sort of question

which one has to try to answer.

Another instance, the race origin of which one would like to ascertain,

offers itself in the curious belief, that, when a child is born, it is

one of the ancestors of the family come back to live again. Traces of

this occur in Irish literature, namely, in one of the stories about

Cúchulainn. There we read to the following effect:--The Ultonians

took counsel on account of Cúchulainn, because their wives and girls

loved him greatly; for Cúchulainn had no consort at that time. This

was their counsel, namely, that they should seek for Cúchulainn a

consort pleasing to him to woo. For it was evident to them that a man

who has the consort of his companionship with him would be so much

the less likely to attempt the ruin of their girls and to receive

the affection of their wives. Then, moreover, they were anxious

and afraid lest the death of Cúchulainn should take place early,

so they were desirous for that reason to give him a wife in order

that he might leave an heir; for they knew that it was from himself

that his rebirth (athgein) would be. That is what one reads in the

eleventh-century copy of the ancient manuscript of the Book of the

Dun Cow, fo. 121b; and this atavistic belief, which was touched upon

in connexion with the transformations discussed in the last chapter,

I need scarcely say, is well known elsewhere to the anthropologist,

as one will find on consulting the opening pages of Dr. Tylor's second

volume on Primitive Culture. He there mentions the idea as familiar

to American Indians, to various African peoples, to the Maoris and

the aborigines of Australia, to Cheremiss Tartars and Lapps. Among

such nations the words of Don Diègue to his victorious son, the Cid,

could hardly fail to be construed in a sort of literal sense when

he exclaims:--

............ ton illustre audace

Fait bien revivre en toi les héros de ma race.

Let us return to Cúchulainn, and note the statement, that he and his

father, Sualdaim, were exempt from the couvade, which marks them out

as not of the same race as the Ultonians, that is to say, as the

Fír Ulaid, or 'True Ultonians'--presumably ancient inhabitants of

Ulster. Furthermore, we have an indication whence his family had come,

for Cúchulainn's first name was Setanta Beg, 'the Little Setantian,'

which points to the coast of what is now Lancashire, as already

indicated at p. 385 above. Another thing which marks Cúchulainn as

of a different racial origin from the other Ultonians is the belief

of the latter, that his rebirth must be from himself. The meaning of

this remarkable statement is that there were two social systems face

to face in Ulster at the time represented by the Cúchulainn story, and

that one of them recognized fatherhood, while the other did not. Thus

for Cúchulainn's rebirth to be from himself, he must be the father

of a child from whom should descend a man who would be a rebirth or

avatar of Cúchulainn. The other system implied was one which reckoned

descent by birth alone [248]; and the Cúchulainn story gives one the

impression that it contemplated this system as the predominant one,

while the Cúchulainn family, with its reckoning of fatherhood, comes

in as an exception. At all events, that is how I now understand a

passage, the full significance of which had till recently escaped me.

Allusion has already been made to the story of Cúchulainn being

himself a rebirth, namely, of Lug, and the story deserves still

further consideration in its bearing on the question of race,

to which the reader's attention has been called. It is needless,

however, to say that there are extant fragments of more stories than

one as to Cúchulainn's origin. Sometimes, as in the Book of Leinster,

fo. 119a, he is called gein Loga, or Lug's offspring, and in the epic

tale of the Táin Bó Cuailnge, Lug as his father comes from the Síd or

Faery to take Cúchulainn's place in the field, when the latter was

worn out with sleeplessness and toil. Lug sings over him éli Loga,

or 'Lug's enchantment,' and Cúchulainn gets the requisite rest and

sleep [249]: this we read in the Book of the Dun Cow, fo. 78a. In

another version of the story, Cúchulainn is an incarnation of Lug:

the narrative relates how a foster-son was accepted by Dechtere,

sister to Conchobar MacNessa, king of Ulster. But her foster-son died

young, to the great grief of Dechtere; and her lamentations for him

on the day of his funeral having made her thirsty, she inadvertently

swallowed with her drink a diminutive creature which sprang into her

mouth. That night she had a dream, in which a man informed her that

she was pregnant, that it was he who was in her womb, that he had been

her foster-son, and that he was Lug; also that when his birth should

take place, the name was to be Setanta. After an incident which I can

only regard as a clumsy attempt to combine the more primitive legend

with the story which makes him son of Sualdaim, she gives birth to the

boy, and he is duly called Setanta [250]: that was Cúchulainn's first

name. Now compare this with what Dr. Tylor mentions in the case of

the Lapps, namely, that 'the future mother was told in a dream what

name to give her child, this message being usually given her by the

very spirit of the deceased ancestor, who was about to be incarnate

in her [251].' If the mother got no such intimation in a dream, the

relatives of the child had to have recourse to magic and the aid of

the wise man, to discover the name to be given to the child.

Here let it suffice to say, that the similarity is so close between

the Irish and the Lapp idea, and so unlike anything known to have

been Aryan, that it is well worth bearing in mind. The belief in

rebirth generally seems to fit as a part of the larger belief in the

transmigration of souls which is associated with the teachings of the

ancient druids, a class of shamans or medicine-men who were probably,

as already hinted, not of Celtic or Aryan origin; and probably the

beliefs here in question were those of some non-Aryan people of these

islands, rather than of any Aryans who settled in them. This view need

hardly be regarded as incompatible with the fact, that Lug's name,

genitive Loga, would seem to have meant light, and that Lug was a

sun-god, very possibly a Celtic sun-god: or more correctly speaking,

that there was a series of Lugs, so to say, or sun-gods, called in

ancient Spain, Switzerland, and on the banks of the Rhine, Lugoves

[252]. For one is sorely tempted to treat this much as a rescue from

the wreckage of the solar myth theory, as against those who, having

regard mainly to Lug's professional skill and craft as described in

Irish story, make of him a kind of Hermes or Mercury. In other words,

we have either to regard a Celtic Lug as having become the centre of

certain non-Celtic legends, or else to suppose neither Lug nor his

name to be of Aryan origin at all. It is hard to say which is the

sounder view to take.

The next question which I wish to suggest is as to the ethnology

of the fairies; but before coming to that, one has to ask how the

fairies have been evolved. The idea of fairies, such as Welshmen have

been familiar with from their childhood, clearly involves elements of

two distinct origins. Some of those elements come undoubtedly from

the workshop of the imagination, as, for example, the stock notion

that their food and drink are brought to the fairies by the mere

force of wishing, and without the ministration of servants; or the

notion, especially prevalent in Arfon, that the fairies dwell in a

country beneath the lakes of Snowdon; not to mention the more general

connexion of a certain class of fairies with the world of waters,

as indicated in chapter vii. Add to this that the dead ancestor has

also probably contributed to our bundle of notions about them; but

that contains also an element of fact or something which may at any

rate be conceived as historical. Under this head I should place the

following articles of faith concerning them: the sallowness of their

skins and the smallness of their stature, their dwelling underground,

their dislike of iron, and the comparative poverty of their homes in

the matter of useful articles of furniture, their deep-rooted objection

to the green sward being broken up by the plough, the success of the

fairy wife in attending to the domestic animals and to the dairy, the

limited range generally of the fairies' ability to count; and lastly,

one may perhaps mention their using a language of their own (p. 279),

which would imply a time when the little people understood no other,

and explain why they should be represented doing their marketing

without uttering a syllable to anybody (p. 161).

The attribution of these and similar characteristics to the fairies

can scarcely be all mere feats of fancy and imagination: rather do they

seem to be the result of our ancestors projecting on an imaginary world

a primitive civilization through which tradition represented their

own race as having passed, or, more probably, a civilization in which

they saw, or thought they saw, another race actually living. Let us

recur for examples also to the two lake legends which have just been

mentioned (p. 650): in both of them a distinction is drawn between

the lake fairy's notion of bread and that of the men and women of the

country. To the fairy the latter's bread appeared crimped or overbaked:

possibly the backward civilization, to which she was supposed to

belong, was content to support itself on some kind of unleavened bread,

if not rather on a fare which included nothing deserving to be called

bread at all. Witness Giraldus Cambrensis' story of Eliodorus, in which

bread is conspicuous by its absence, the nearest approach to it being

something of the consistency of porridge: see p. 270 above. Then take

another order of ideas: the young man in both lake legends lives with

his mother (pp. 3, 27): there is no father to advise or protect him:

he is in this respect on a level with Undine, who is the protegee of

her tiresome uncle, Kühleborn. Seemingly, he belongs to a primitive

society where matriarchal ideas rule, and where paternity is not

reckoned [253]. This we are at liberty at all events to suppose to

have been the original, before the narrator had painted the mother

a widow, and given the picture other touches of his later brush.

To speak, however, of paternity as merely not reckoned is by no means

to go far enough; so here we have to return to take another look at

the imaginary aspect of the fairies, to which a cursory allusion has

just been made. The reader will possibly recall the sturdy smith of

Ystrad Meurig, who would not reduce the notions which he had formed of

the fairies when he was a child to conformity with those of a later

generation around him. In any case, he will remember the smith's

statement that the fairies were all women: see p. 245. The idea was

already familiar to me as a Welshman, though I cannot recollect how

I got it. But the smith's words brought to my mind at once the story

of Condla Rúad or the Red, one of the fairy tales first recorded in

Irish literature (p. 291). There the damsel who takes Condla away in

her boat of glass to the realm of the Everliving sings the praises of

that delectable country, and uses, among others, the following words,

which occur in the Book of the Dun Cow, fo. 120:--

Ni fil cenel and nammá acht mná ocus ingena [254].

There is no race there but women and maidens alone.

Now what people could have come by the idea of a race of women

only? Surely no people who considered that they themselves had fathers:

it must have been some community so low in the scale of civilization

as never to have had any notion whatsoever of paternity: it is their

ignorance that would alone render possible the notion of a race all

women. That this was a matter of belief in the past of many nations,

is proved by the occurrence of widely known legends about virgin

mothers [255]; not to mention that it has been lately established,

that there are savages who to this day occupy the low place here

indicated in the scale of civilization. Witness the evidence of Spencer

and Gillen in their recently published work on The Native Tribes of

Central Australia, and also what Frazer, author of The Golden Bough,

says of a passage in point, in the former, as follows:--

'Thus, in the opinion of these savages, every conception is what we

are wont to call an immaculate conception, being brought about by the

entrance into the mother of a spirit apart from any contact with the

other sex. Students of folklore have long been familiar with notions

of this sort occurring in the stories of the birth of miraculous

personages, but this is the first case on record of a tribe who

believe in immaculate conception as the sole cause of the birth of

every human being who comes into the world. A people so ignorant of

the most elementary of natural processes may well rank at the very

bottom of the savage scale [256].'

Nevertheless, it is to some population in that low position, in the

remote prehistory of this country, that one is to trace the belief

that the fairies were all women. It is to be regarded as a position

distinctly lower than that of the Ultonians in the time of Cúchulainn;

for the couvade seems to me to argue a notion of paternity--perhaps,

in their case, as clear a notion of paternity as was possible for a

community which was not quite out of the promiscuous stage of society.

The neo-Celtic nations of these islands consist, speaking roughly,

of a mixture of the invading Celts with the earlier inhabitants whom

the Celts found in possession. These two or more groups of peoples may

have been in very different stages of civilization when they first came

in contact with one another. They agreed doubtless in many things,

and perhaps, among others, in cherishing an inherited reluctance to

disclose their names, but the Celts as Aryans were never without the

decimal system of counting. Like the French, the Celtic nations of

the present day show a tendency, more or less marked, to go further

and count by scores instead of by tens. But the Welsh are alone among

them in having, in certain instances, gone back from counting by tens

to counting by fives, which they do when they count between 10 and

20: for 16, 17, 18, and 19 are in Welsh 1 on 15, 2 on 15, 3 on 15,

and 4 on 15 respectively; and similarly with 13 and 14 [257]. We have

seen how the lake fairy reckoned by fives (pp. 8, 418) all the live

stock she was to have as her dowry; and one otherwise notices that

the fairies deal invariably in the simplest of numbers. Thus if you

wish, for example, to find a person who has been led away by them,

ten to one you have to go 'this day next year' to the spot where he

disappeared. Except in the case of the alluring light of the full

moon, it is out of the question to reckon months or weeks, though

it is needless to say that to reckon the year correctly would have

been in point of fact far more difficult; but nothing sounds simpler

than 'this day next year.' In that simple arithmetic of the fairies,

then, we seem to have a trace of a non-Aryan race, that is to say,

probably of some early inhabitants of these islands.

Unfortunately, the language of those inhabitants has died out, so

that we cannot appeal to its numerals directly; and the next best

course to adopt is to take as a sort of substitute for their language

that of possible kinsmen of a pre-Celtic race in this country. Now the

students of ethnology, especially those devoted to the investigation of

skulls and skins, tell us that we have among us, notably in Wales and

Ireland, living representatives of a dark-haired, long-skulled race of

the same description as one of the types which occur, as they allege,

among the Basque populations of the Pyrenees. We turn accordingly to

Basque, and what do we find? Why, that the first five numerals in that

language are bat, bi, iru, lau, bost, all of which appear to be native;

but when we come to the sixth numeral we have sei, which looks like an

Aryan word borrowed from Latin, Gaulish, or some related tongue. The

case is much the same with 'seven,' for that is in Basque zazpi,

which is also probably an Aryan loan-word. Basque has native words,

zortzi and bederatzi, for eight and nine, but they are longer than

the first five, and appear to be of a later formation affecting, in

common with sei and zazpi, the termination i. I submit, therefore,

that here we have evidence of the former existence of a people in the

West of Europe who at one time only counted as far as five. Some of

the early peoples of the British Isles may have been on the same level,

so that our notions about the fairies have probably been derived, to a

greater or less extent, from ideas formed by the Celts concerning those

non-Celtic, non-Aryan natives of whose country they took possession.

As regards my appeal to the authority of craniology, I have to confess

that it is made with a certain amount of reservation, since the case

is far less simple than it looks at first sight. Thus, in August,

1891, the Cambrian Archæological Association, including among them

Professor Sayce, visited the south-west of Ireland. During our pleasant

excursions in Kerry, the question of race was one of our constant

topics; and Professor Sayce was reminded by what he saw in Ireland

of his visit to North Africa, especially the hilly regions of the

country inhabited by the Berbers. Among other things, he used to say

that if a number of Berbers from the mountains were to be brought to

an Irish village and clad as Irishmen, he felt positive that he should

not be able to tell them from the Irishmen themselves, such as we saw

on our rambles in Kerry. This struck me as all the more remarkable,

since his reference was to fairly tall, blue-eyed men whose hair could

not be called black. On the other hand, owing perhaps to ignorance

and careless ways of looking at things around me, I am a little

sceptical as to the swarthy long-skulls: they did not seem to meet

us at every turn in Ireland; and as for Wales, which I know as well

as most people do, I cannot in my ignorance of craniology say with

any confidence that I have ever noticed vast numbers of that type. I

should like, however, to see the heads of some of the singers whom

I have noticed at our Eistedfodau at Cardiff, Aberdare, and Swansea,

placed under the hands of an experienced skull-man. For I have long

suspected that we cannot regard as of Aryan origin the vocal talent

so general in Wales, and so conspicuous in our choirs of working

people as to astonish all the great musicians who have visited our

national festival. Beyond all doubt, race has not a little to do with

the artistic feelings: a short-skull may be as unmusical, for example,

as I am; but has anybody in this country ever known a narrow long-skull

to be the reverse of unmusical? or has any one ever considered how few

clergymen of the tall, fair-haired, blue-eyed type have been converted

to the ritualistic and æsthetic movement in the Church of England?

As it seems to me that the bulk of the Welsh people would have to be

described as short-skulls, it would be very gratifying to see those

who are wont to refer freely to the dark-complexioned long-skulls

of Wales catch a respectable number of specimens. I trust there are

plenty to be found; and of course I do not care how they are taken,

whether it be by an instantaneous process of photography or in the

meshes of some anthropometric sportsman, like Dr. Beddoe. Let them

be secured anyhow, so that one may rest assured that the type is

still numerically safe, and be able to judge with one's own eyes how

heads long and swarthy look on the shoulders of living Welshmen. We

might then be in a position also to compare with them the prevalent

description of fairy changelings; for when the fairies steal nice,

blond babies, they usually place in their stead their own aged-looking

brats with short legs, sallow skins, and squeaky voices. Unfortunately

for me, all the adult changelings of whom I happen to have heard any

account had died some years before I began to turn my attention to

the population of Faery, with the exception, perhaps, of one whose

name I obtained under the seal of secrecy. It was that of the wife of

a farmer living near Nefyn, in West Carnarvonshire. It was whispered

that she was a changeling, so I am inclined to regard her as no other

than one of the representatives of the same aboriginal stock to which

one might conjecture some of her neighbours also to belong; she ought

to be an extreme specimen of the type. It is to be hoped that the

photographer and his anthropometric brother have found her out in

time and in good humour; but it is now many years since I heard of her.

To return again to the fairies, some of them are described as

more comely and good-looking than the rest (pp. 83, 250), but

the fairy women are always pictured as fascinating, though their

offspring as changelings are as uniformly presented in the light

of repulsive urchins; but whole groups of the fairy population are

sometimes described as being as ugly of face as they were thievish

in disposition--those, for instance, of Llanfabon, in Glamorganshire

(p. 262). There is one district, however, which is an exception to the

tenor of fairy physiognomy: it is that of the Pennant neighbourhood, in

Carnarvonshire, together with the hills and valleys, roughly speaking,

from Cwm Strallyn to Llwytmor and from Drws y Coed to Dolbenmaen. The

fairies of that tract are said to have been taller than the others,

and characterized by light or even flaxen hair, together with eyes of

clear blue: see pp. 89, 93-7, 105-8. Nor is that all, for we are told

that they would not let a person of dark complexion come near them

(p. 96). The other fairies, when kidnapping, it is true, preferred

the blond infants of other people to their own swarthy brats, which,

perhaps, means that it was a policy of their people to recruit itself

with men of the superior physique of the more powerful population

around them. The supposed fairy ancestress of the people of the Pennant

Valley bears, in the stories in point, such names as Penelope, Bella,

Pelisha, and Sibi, while her descendants are still taunted with their

descent--a quarrel which, within living memory, used to be fought

out with fists at the fairs at Penmorfa and elsewhere. This seems to

indicate a comparatively late settlement [258] in the district of a

family or group of families from without, and an origin, therefore,

somewhat similar to that of the Simychiaid and Cowperiaid (p. 67) of a

more eastern portion of the same county, rather than anything deserving

to be considered with the rest of the annals of Faery. Passing by

this oasis, then, such snap-shot photographs as I have been able

to take, so to speak, of fairyland cleared of the glamour resting

on its landscape, seem to disclose to the eye a swarthy population

of short stumpy men occupying the most inaccessible districts of

our country. They appear to have cared more for soap than clothing

[259], and they lived on milk taken once a day, when they could

get it. They probably fished and hunted, and kept domestic animals,

including, perhaps, the pig; but they depended largely on what they

could steal at night or in misty weather. Their thieving, however,

was not resented, as their visits were believed to bring luck and

prosperity (p. 251). Their communities formed as it were islands,

owing to the country round about them having been wrested from them

by later comers of a more warlike disposition and provided with better

weapons. But the existence of the scattered groups of the fairies was

in no danger of coming to a violent end: they were safe in consequence

of the superstitious beliefs of their stronger neighbours, who probably

regarded them as formidable magicians, powerful, among other things,

to cause or to cure disease as they pleased. Such, without venturing

to refresh my memory by perusing what has been written about dwarf

races in other parts of the world, are the impressions made on my mind

in the course of analysing and sifting the folklore materials crowded

into this volume. That applies, of course, in so far only as regards

the fairies in their character of a real people as distinguished from

them as creatures of the imagination. But, as I have no wish to earn

the displeasure of my literary friends, let me hasten to say that I

acknowledge the latter, the creatures of the imagination, to be the

true fairies, the admiration of one's childhood and the despair of

one's later years: the other folk--the aborigines whom I have been

trying to depict--form only a sort of substratum, a kind of background

to the fairy picture, which I should be the last man to wish to mar.

It is needless to say that we have no trace of any fairies approaching

the minute dimensions of Shakespeare's Queen Mab; for, after all,

our fairies are mostly represented as not extravagantly unlike other

people in personal appearance--not so unlike, in fact, that other folk

might not be mistaken for them now and then as late as the latter

part of the fifteenth century. Witness the following passage from

Sir John Wynne's History of the Gwydir Family, p. 74:--

'Haveing purchased this lease, he removed his dwelling to the castle

of Dolwydelan, which at that time was in part thereof habitable,

where one Howell ap Jevan ap Rys Gethin, in the beginning of Edward

the Fourth his raigne, captaine of the countrey and an outlaw, had

dwelt. Against this man David ap Jenkin rose, and contended with him

for the sovreignety of the countrey; and being superiour to him,

in the end he drew a draught for him, and took him in his bed at

Penanmen with his concubine, performing by craft, what he could

not by force, and brought him to Conway Castle. Thus, after many

bickerings betweene Howell and David ap Jenkin, he being too weake,

was faigne to flie the countrey, and to goe to Ireland, where he was

a yeare or thereabouts. In the end he returned in the summer time,

haveing himselfe, and all his followers clad in greene, who, being

come into the countrey, he dispersed here and there among his friends,

lurking by day, and walkeing in the night for feare of his adversaries;

and such of the countrey as happened to have a sight of him and his

followers, said they were the fairies, and soe ran away.'

But what has doubtless helped, above all other things, to perpetuate

the belief in the existence of fairies may be said to be the popular

association with them of the circles in the grass, commonly known

in English as fairy rings. This phenomenon must have answered

for ages the purpose for our ancestors, practically speaking, of

ocular demonstration, as it still does no doubt in many a rustic

neighbourhood.

The most common name for the fairies in Welsh is y Tylwyth Teg,

'the Fair or Beautiful Family'; but in South Cardiganshire we have

found them called Plant Rhys Dwfn, 'the Children of Rhys the Deep'

(pp. 151, 158), while in Gwent and Morgannwg they are more usually

known as Bendith y Mamau, 'the Blessing of the Mothers' (p. 174). Our

fourteenth century poet, D. ab Gwilym, uses the first-mentioned term,

Tylwyth Teg, in poem xxxix, and our prose literature has a word corr,

cor in the sense of a dwarf, and corres for a she dwarf. The old

Cornish had also cor, which in Breton is written korr [260], with a

feminine korrez, and among the other derivatives one finds korrik,

'a dwarf, a fairy, a wee little sorcerer,' and korrigez or korrigan,

'a she dwarf, a fairy woman, a diminutive sorceress.' The use of

these words in Breton recalls the case of the cor, called Rhudlwm

or else Eidilig, teaching his magic to Coll, son of Collfrewi:

see pp. 326, 503, 505. Then we have uncanny dwarfs in the romances,

such, for example, as the rude cor in the service of Edern ab Nud,

as described in French in Chrétien's romance of Erec et Enide and in

Welsh in that of Gereint vab Erbin, also the cor and corres who figure

in the story of Peredur. The latter had belonged to that hero's father

and mother till the break-up of the family, when the dwarfs went to

Arthur's Court, where they lived a whole year without speaking to

anybody. When, however, Peredur made his rustic appearance there,

they hailed him loudly as the chief of warriors and the flower of

knighthood, which brought on them the wrath of Cai, on whom they were

eventually avenged by Peredur. In the case [261] of both Edern and

Peredur we find the dwarfs loyally interested in the fortunes of their

masters and their masters' friends. With them also the shape-shifting

Menw, though not found placed in the same unfavourable light, is

probably to be ranged, as one may gather from his name and his rôle

of wizard scout for Arthur's men (p. 510). In the like attachment on

the part of the fairies, which was at times liable to develop into

devotedness of an embarrassing nature (p. 250), we seem to have one of

the germs of the idea of a household fairy or banshee, as illustrated

by the case of the ugly wee woman in the Pantannas legend (p. 188);

and it seems natural to regard the interested voices in the Kenfig

legend, and other stories of the same kind (p. 452), as instances of

amalgamating the idea of a fairy with that of an ancestral person.

At all events, we have obtained something to put by the side of the

instances already noticed of the fairy girl who gives, against her will

at first, her services in the dairy of her captor (pp. 45, 87); of the

other fairy who acts as a nurse for a family in the Pennant Valley,

till she is asked to dress better (p. 109); and of Bwca'r Trwyn who

works willingly and well, both at the house and in the field, till

he has tricks played on him (pp. 593-6). To make this brief survey

complete, one has to mention the fairies who used to help Eilian

with her spinning (pp. 211-3), and not to omit those who were found

to come to the rescue of a woman in despair and to assist her on the

condition of getting her baby. The motive here is probably not to be

confounded with that of the fairies who stealthily exchanged babies:

the explanation seems in this case to be that the fairies, or some of

the fairies, were once regarded as cannibals, which is countenanced by

such a story as that of Canrig Bwt, 'Canrig the Stumpy.' At Llanberis

the latter is said to have lived beneath the huge stone called y

Gromlech, 'the Dolmen,' opposite Cwmglas and near the high-road to

the Pass. When the man destined to dispatch her came, she was just

finishing her dinner off a baby's flesh. There are traces of a similar

story in another district, for a writer who published in the year 1802

uses the following words:--'There was lately near Cerrig y Drudion,

in Merionethshire, a subterraneous room composed of large stones,

which was called Carchar Cynric Rwth, i. e. "The Prison of Cynric

Rwth," which has been taken notice of by travellers.' Cynric Rwth

may be rendered 'Cynric the Greedy or Broad-mouthed.' A somewhat

similar ogress is located by another story on the high ground at

Bwlch y Rhiw Felen, on the way from Llangollen to Llandegla, and she

is represented by the local tradition as contemporary with Arthur

[262]. I am inclined to think the Cwmglas cromlech natural rather than

artificial; but I am, however, struck by the fact that the fairies are

not unfrequently located on or near ancient sites, such as seem to

be Corwrion (pp. 57, 526), the margin of Llyn Irdyn (pp. 148, 563),

Bryn y Pibion (pp. 212-4), Dinllaen (p. 227), Carn Bodüan (p. 227),

on which there are, I am told, walls and hut foundations similar to

those which I have recently seen on Carn Fadrun in the same district,

Moedin camp (p. 245), and, perhaps, Ynys Geinon Rock and the immediate

vicinity of Craig y Nos, neither of which, however, have I ever visited

(p. 254). Local acquaintance with each fairy centre would very possibly

enable one to produce a list that would be suggestive.

In passing one may point out that the uncanny dwarf of Celtic story

would seem to have served, in one way or another, as a model for

other dwarfs in the French romances and the literatures of other

nations that came under the influence of those romances, such as that

of the English. But the subject is too large to be dealt with here;

so I return to the word cor, in order to recall to the reader's mind

the allusion made, at p. 196, to a certain people called Coranneit or

Coranyeit, pronounced in later Welsh Corániaid, 'Corannians.' They come

in the Adventure of Llûd and Llevelys, and there they have ascribed

to them one of the characteristics of consummate magicians, namely,

the power of hearing any word that comes in contact with the wind;

so it was, we are told, impossible to harm them. Llûd, however, was

advised to circumvent them in the following manner:--he was to bruise

certain insects in water and sprinkle the water on the Corannians and

his own people indiscriminately, after calling them together under

the pretence of making peace between them; for the sprinkling would

do no harm to his own subjects, while it would kill the others. This

unholy water proved effective, and the Corannians all perished. Now

the magic power ascribed to them, and the method of disposing of them,

combine to lend them a fabulous aspect, while their name, inseparable

as it seems from cor, 'a dwarf,' warrants us in treating them as

fairies, and in regarding their strange characteristics as induced

on a real people. If we take this view, that Coraniaid was the name

of a real people, we are at liberty to regard it as possible, that

their name suggested to the Celts the word cor for a dwarf, rather

than that cor has suggested the name of the Corannians. In either

case, I may mention that Welsh writers have sometimes thought--and

they are probably right--that we have a closely related word in the

name of Ptolemy's Coritani or Coritavi. He represents the people so

called as dwelling, roughly speaking, between the Trent and Norfolk,

and possessed of the two towns of Lindum, 'Lincoln,' and Ratæ (p. 547),

supposed to have been Leicester. There we should have accordingly to

suppose the old race to have survived so long and in such numbers,

that the Celtic lords of southern Britain called the people of that

area by a name meaning dwarfs. There also they may be conjectured

to have had quiet from invaders from the Continent, because of the

inaccessible nature of the fens, and the lack of inviting harbours

on the coast from the country of the Iceni up to the neighbourhood

of the Humber. How far their territory extended inland from the

fens and the sea one cannot say, but it possibly took in one-half

of what is now Northamptonshire, with the place called Pytchley,

from an older Pihtes Léa, meaning the Meadow of the Pict, or else

of a man named Pict. In any case it included Croyland in the fens

between Peterborough and the Wash. It was there, towards the end of

the seventh century, that St. Guthlac built his cell on the side of an

ancient mound or tumulus, and it was there he was assailed by demons

who spoke Bryttisc or Brythonic, a language which the saint knew, as

he had been an exile among Brythons. For this he had probably not to

travel far; and it is remarkable that his father's cognomen or surname

was Penwall, which we may regard as approximately the Brythonic for

'Wall's End.' That is to say, he was 'So-and-so of the Wall's End,'

and had got to be known by the latter designation instead of his own

nomen, which is not recorded, for the reason, possibly, that it was

so Brythonic as not to admit of being readily reduced into an Anglian

or Latin form. It is not quite certain that he belonged to the royal

race of Mercia, whose genealogy, however, boasts such un-English names

as Pybba, Penda, and Peada; but the life [263] states, with no little

emphasis, that he was a man whose pedigree included the most noble

names of illustrious kings from the ancient stock of Icel: that is,

he was one of the Iclingas or Icklings [264]. Here one is tempted

to perpetrate a little glottologic alchemy by changing l into n,

and to suppose Iclingas the form taken in English by the name of

the ancient people of the Iceni. In any case, nothing could be more

reasonable to suppose than that some representatives of the royal

race of Prasutagus and Boudicca, escaping the sword of the Roman,

found refuge among the Coritanians at the time of the final defeat

of their own people: it is even possible that they were already the

ruling family there. At all events several indications converge to

show that communities speaking Brythonic were not far off, to wit,

the p names in the Mercian genealogy, Guthlac's father's surname,

Guthlac's exile among Brythons, and the attack on him at Croyland by

Brythonic speaking foes. Portions of the Coritanian territory were

eminently fitted by nature to serve as a refuge for a broken people

with a belated language: witness as late as the eleventh century the

stand made in the Isle of Ely by Hereward against the Norman conqueror

and his mail-clad knights [265].

Among the speakers of Goidelic in Ireland and the Highlands of Scotland

the fairies take their designation chiefly from a word síd or síth

(genitive síde or sída), which one may possibly consider as of a common

origin with the Latin word sedes, and as originally meaning a seat or

settlement, but it sooner or later came to signify simply an abode

of the fairies, whence they were called in Medieval Irish aes síde,

'fairy folk,' fer síde, 'a fairy man,' and ben síde, 'a fairy woman

or banshee.' By the side of síd, an adjective síde, 'of or belonging

to the síd,' appears to have been formed, so that they are found also

called simply síde, as in Fiacc's Hymn, where we are told that before

the advent of St. Patrick the pagan tribes of Erin used to worship

síde or fairies [266]. Borrowed from this, or suggested by it [267],

we have in Welsh Caer Sidi, 'the Fortress of the Fairies,' which is

mentioned twice in the Book of Taliessin [268]. It first occurs at

the end of poem xiv, where we have the following lines, which recall

Irish descriptions of Tír na nÓg or the Land of the Young:--

Ys kyweir vyg kadeir ygkaer sidi.

Nys pla6d heint a heneint a uo yndi.

Ys gwyr mana6yt a phryderi.

Teir oryan y am tan agan recdi.

Ac am y banneu ffrydyeu g6eilgi.

Ar ffynnha6n ffr6ythla6n yssyd oduchti.

Ys whegach nor g6in g6yn yllyn yndi.

Perfect is my seat in the fort of Sidi,

Nor pest nor age plagues him who dwells therein:

Manawydan and Pryderi know it.

Three organs play before it about a fire.

Around its corners Ocean's currents flow,

And above it is the fertile fountain,

And sweeter than white wine is the drink therein.

The wine is elsewhere mentioned, but the arrangement of the organs

around a fire requires explanation, which I cannot give. The fortress

is on an island, and in poem xxx of the Book of Taliessin we read

of Arthur and his men sailing thither in his ship Prydwen: the poem

is usually called the 'Spoils of Annwn,' and the lines in point

run thus:--

Bu kyweir karchar g6eir ygkaer sidi.

Tr6y ebostol p6yll aphryderi.

Neb kyn noc ef nyt aeth idi.

Yr gad6yn tromlas kywirwas ae ketwi.

Arac preideu ann6fyn tost yt geni.

Ac yt ura6t paraha6t ynbard wedi.

Tri lloneit prytwen yd aetham ni idi.

Nam seith ny dyrreith o gaer sidi.

Perfect was the prison of Gwair in Caer Sidi,

Thanks to Pwyll and Pryderi's emissary.

Before him no one entered into it,

To the heavy, dark chain held by a faithful youth;

And before the spoils of Annwn sorely he sang,

And thenceforth remains he till doom a bard.

Three freights of Prydwen went we thither,

But only seven returned from Caer Sidi.

The incidents in these lines are mostly unintelligible to me, but the

incarceration of Gweir or Gwair, together with other imprisonments,

including that of Arthur in Caer Oeth and Anoeth (p. 619), are

mentioned also in the Triads: see i. 50, ii. 7, 49, iii. 61. It is not

improbable that the legend about Gwair located his prison on Lundy,

as the Welsh name of that island appears to have been Ynys Wair,

'Gwair's Isle.' Pwyll and Pryderi did not belong to Annwn, nor did

Pryderi's friend Manawydan; but the Mabinogi of Pwyll relates how

for a whole year Pwyll exchanged crown and kingdom with Arawn king

of Annwn, from whom he obtained the first breed of domestic pigs for

his own people (pp. 69, 525).

In the lowlands of Scotland, together with the Orkneys and Shetlands,

the Picts have to a certain extent taken the place of our fairies,

and they are colloquially called Pechts. Now judging from the

remains there ascribed to the Pechts, their habitations were either

wholly underground or else so covered over with stones and earth and

grass as to look like natural hillocks and to avoid attracting the

attention of strangers. This was helped by making the entrance very

low and as inconspicuous as possible. But one of the most remarkable

things about these síds is that the cells within them are frequently

so small as to prove beyond doubt, that those who inhabited them

were of a remarkably short stature, though it is demonstrated by the

weight of the stones used, that the builders were not at all lacking

in bodily strength [269]. Here we have, accordingly, a small people

like our own fairies. In Ireland one of the most famous kings of

the fairies was called Mider of Brí Léith, where he resided in a síd

or mound in the neighbourhood of Ardagh, in the county of Longford;

and thither Irish legend represents him carrying away Étain, queen of

Eochaid Airem, king of Ireland during a part of Conchobar MacNessa's

time. Now Eochaid was for a whole year unable to find where she was,

but his druid, Dalán, wrote Ogams and at last found it out. Eochaid

then marched to Brí Léith, and began to demolish Mider's síd, whereupon

Mider was eventually so frightened that he sent forth the queen to

her husband, who then went his way, leaving the mound folk to digest

their wrath. For it is characteristic of them that they did not fight,

but chose to bide their time for revenge. In this instance it did not

arrive till long after Eochaid's day [270]. I may add that Étain was

herself one of the síde or fairies; and one of Mider's reasons for

taking her away was, that she had been his wife in a previous stage

of existence. Now it is true that the fairy Mider is described as

resembling the other heroes of Irish story, in having golden yellow

hair and bright blue eyes [271], but he differs completely from them in

being no warrior but a great wizard; and though he is not said to have

been of small stature, the dwarfs were not far off. For in describing

the poet Atherne, who was notorious for his stinginess (p. 635), the

story-teller emphasizes his words by representing him taking from Mider

three of his dwarfs and stationing them around his own house, in order

that their truculent looks and rude words might drive away anybody who

came to seek hospitality or to present an unwelcome request [272],

a rôle which recalls that of Edern ab Nud's dwarf already mentioned

(p. 672). Here the Irish word used is corr, which is probably to

be identified with the Brythonic cor, 'a dwarf,' though the better

known meaning of corr in Irish is 'crane or heron.' From the former

also is hardly to be severed the Irish corrguinigh, 'sorcerers,' and

corrguinacht [273], or the process of cursing to which the corrguinigh

resorted, as, for instance, when Néde called forth the fatal blisters

on Caier's face (p. 632). The rôle would seem exactly to suit the

little people, who were consummate magicians.

Let me for a moment leave the little people, in order to call attention

to another side of this question of race. It has recently been shown

[274] by Professor J. Morris Jones, of the University College of North

Wales, that the non-Aryan traits of the syntax of our insular Celtic

point unmistakably to that of old Egyptian and Berber, together with

kindred idioms belonging to the southern shore of the Mediterranean

Sea. He has thereby reduced to articulate speech, so to say, the

physiognomical convictions of Professor Sayce (p. 665), to which

the reader's attention has been called. To the linguistic argument

he appends a statement cited from a French authority and bearing on

the question of descent by birth, to the effect, that when among the

Berbers the king dies or is deposed, as happens often enough, it is

not his son that is called to succeed, but the son of his sister, as

in the case of the historical Picts of Scotland down to the twelfth

century or thereabouts. Here I would add, that my attention has been

called by Professor Sayce to old Egyptian monuments representing

the Libyan chiefs with their bodies tattooed, a habit which seems

not to be yet extinct among the Touaregs and Kabyles [275]. Lastly,

Mr. Nicholson has recently directed attention to the fact that some

princes of ancient Gaul are represented with their faces tattooed

on certain coins found in the west of France so far south as the

region once occupied by the ancient Pictones. We have a compendious

commentary on this in the occurrence of a word Chortonicum in a

High German manuscript written before the year 814: I allude to the

Wessobrunn Codex at Munich, in which, among a number of geographical

names connected with Gaul and other countries, that vocable is so

placed as to allow of our referring it to Poitou or to all Gaul as the

country once of the ancient Pictones. The great German philologist

Pott, who called attention to it, brought it at once into relation

with Cruithne, plural Cruithni, 'the Picts of Britain and Ireland,'

a word which has been explained at p. 281 above [276].

Now at last I come to the question, what pre-Celtic race or races

make themselves evident in the mass of things touched on in this

and the foregoing chapters? The answer must, I think, recognize at

least two. First comes the race of the mound folk, consisting of the

short swarthy people variously caricatured in our fairy tales. They

formed isolated fractions of a widely spread race possessed of

no political significance whatsoever; but, with the inconsistency

ever clinging to everything connected with the fairies, the weird

and uncanny folk emerging from its underground lairs seems to have

exercised on other races a sort of permanent spell of mysteriousness

amounting to adoration. In fact, Irish literature tells us that the

síde were worshipped (p. 678). Owing to his faculty of exaggeration,

combined with his inability to comprehend the little people, the Celt

was enabled to bequeath to the great literatures of Western Europe a

motley train of dwarfs and brownies, a whole world of wizardry and

magic. The real race of the little people forms the lowest stratum

which we can reach, to wit, at a level no higher, seemingly, than

that of the present-day natives of Central Australia. Thus some of

the birth stories of Cúchulainn and Étáin seem to have passed through

their hands, and they bear a striking resemblance to certain notions of

the Lapps (pp. 657-8). In fact, the nature of the habitations of our

little people, together with other points which might be mentioned,

would seem at first sight to betoken affinity with the Lapps; but

I am warned by experts [277] that there are serious craniological

difficulties in the way of any racial comparison with the Lapps,

and that one must look rather to the dwarf populations once widely

spread over our hemisphere, and still to be found here and there

in Europe, as, for example, in Sicily. To come nearer our British

Isles, the presence of such dwarfs has been established with regard

to Switzerland in neolithic times [278].

The other race may be called Picts, which is probably the earliest

of the names given it by the Celts; and their affinities appear

to be Libyan, possibly Iberian. It was a warlike stock, and stood

higher altogether than the mound inhabitants; for it had a notion of

paternity, though, on account of its promiscuity, it had to reckon

descent by birth (pp. 654-6). To it probably belonged all the great

family groups figuring in the Mabinogion and the corresponding class of

literature in Irish: this would include the Danann-Dôn group and the

Lir-Llyr group, together with the families represented by Pwyll and

Rhiannon, who were inseparable from the Llyr group in Welsh, just as

the Lir group was inseparable from the Tuatha Dé Danann in Irish legend

(pp. 548-9). The Picts made slaves and drudges of the mound-haunting

race, but how far any amalgamation may have taken place between them

it is impossible to say. Even without any amalgamation, however, the

little people, if employed as nurses to their Pictish lords' children,

could not help leaving their impress in time on the language of the

ruling nationality. But it may be that the treatment of the Picts, by

Scottish legend, as a kind of fairies really points to amalgamation,

though it is not impossible that archæology may be able to classify the

remains of the dwellings ascribed to the Pechts, that is, to assign

a certain class to the warlike Picts of history and another to the

dwarf race of the síds. A certain measure of amalgamation may also be

the meaning of the Irish tradition, that when the Milesian Irish came

and conquered, the defeated Tuatha Dé Danann gave up their life above

ground and retired inside the hills like the fairies. This account of

them may be as worthless as the story of the extermination of the Picts

of Scotland: both peoples doubtless lived on to amalgamate in time

with the conquering race; but it may mean that some of them retreated

before the Celts, and concealed themselves after the manner of the

little people--in underground dwellings in the less accessible parts

of the country. In any case, it may well be that they got their magic

and druidism from the dwellers of the síds. In the next place, it has

been pointed out (pp. 550-1) how the adjective hên, 'old, ancient,'

is applied in Welsh to several of the chief men of the Dôn group,

and by this one may probably understand that they were old not merely

to those who told the stories about them in Welsh, but to those who

put those stories together in Goidelic ages earlier. The geography

of the Mabinogion gives the prehistoric remains of Penmaen Mawr and

Tre'r Ceiri to the Dôn group; but by its name, Tre'r Ceiri should

be the 'Town of the Keiri,' a word probably referring to the Picts

(pp. 279-83): this, so far as it goes, makes the sons of Dôn belong

by race to the Picts. Lastly, it is the widely spread race of the

Picts, conquered by the Celts of the Celtican or Goidelic branch and

amalgamating with their conquerors in the course of time, that has

left its non-Aryan impress on the syntax of the Celtic languages of

the British Isles.

These, it is needless to say, are conjectures which I cannot establish;

but possibly somebody else may. For the present, however, they cannot

fail to suggest a moral, habitually ignored with a light heart by most

people--including the writer of these words--that men in his plight,

men engaged in studies which, owing to a rapid accumulation of fresh

facts or the blossoming of new theories, are in a shifting condition,

should abstain from producing books or anything longer than a magazine

article now and then. Even such minor productions should be understood

to be liable to be cast into a great bonfire lit once a year, say on

Halloween. This should help to clear the air of mistaken hypotheses,

whether of folklore and myth or of history and language, and also

serve to mark Nos Calangaeaf as the commencement of the ancient Celtic

year. The business of selecting the papers to be saved from the burning

might be delegated to an academy constituted, roughly speaking, on

the lines of Plato's aristocracy of intellect. Such academy, once

in the enjoyment of its existence, would also find plenty of work

in addition to the inquisitional business which I have suggested:

it should, for example, be invested with summary jurisdiction over

fond parents who venture to show any unreasonable anxiety to save

their mental progeny from the annual bonfire. The best of that class

of writers should be ordered by the academy to sing songs or indite

original verse. As for the rest, some of them might be told off to

gesticulate to the gallery, and some to administer the consolations

of platitude to stragglers tired of the march of science. There is a

mass of other useful work which would naturally devolve on an academy

of the kind here suggested. I should be happy, if space permitted,

to go through the particulars one by one, but let a single instance

suffice: the academy might relieve us of the painful necessity of

having seriously to consider any further the proposal that professors

found professing after sixty should be shot. This will serve to

indicate the kind of work which might advantageously be entrusted to

the august body which is here but roughly projected.

There are some branches of learning in the happy position of having

no occasion for such a body academical. Thus, if a man will have

it that the earth is flat, as flat in fact as some people do their

utmost to make it, 'he will most likely,' as the late Mr. Freeman

in the Saturday Review once put it, 'make few converts, and will be

forgotten after at most a passing laugh from scientific men.' If a

man insists that the sum of two and two is five, he will probably

find his way to a lunatic asylum, as the economy of society is, in

a manner, self-acting. So with regard to him who carries his craze

into the more material departments of such a science as chemistry: he

may be expected to blow out his own eyes, for the almighty molecule

executes its own vengeance. 'But,' to quote again from Mr. Freeman,

if that man's 'craze had been historical or philological'--and above

all if it had to do with the science of man or of myth--'he might

have put forth notions quite as absurd as the notion that the earth

is flat, and many people would not have been in the least able to

see that they were absurd. If any scholar had tried to confute him we

should have heard of "controversies" and "differences of opinion."' In

fact, the worst that happens to the false prophet who shines in any

such a science is, that he has usually only too many enthusiastic

followers. The machinery is, so to say, not automatic, and hence

it is that we want the help of an academy. But even supposing such

an academy established, no one need feel alarmed lest opportunities

enough could no longer be found for cultivating the example of those

of the early Christians who had the rare grace to suffer fools gladly.

Personally, however, I should be against doing anything in a hurry;

and, considering how little his fellows dare expect from the man

who is just waiting to be final and perfect before he commit himself

to type, the establishment of an academy invested with the summary

powers which have been briefly sketched might, perhaps, after all,

conveniently wait a while: my own feeling is that almost any time,

say in the latter half of the twentieth century, would do better

than this year or the next. In the meantime one must be content to

entrust the fortunes of our studies to the combined forces of science

and common sense. Judging by what they have achieved in recent years,

there is no reason to be uneasy with regard to the time to come, for

it is as true to-day as when it was first written, that the best of

the prophets of the Future is the Past.

ADDITIONS AND CORRECTIONS

P. 81. I learn that the plural of bodach glas was in Welsh bodachod

gleision, a term which Elis o'r Nant remembers his mother applying to a

kind of fairies dressed in blue and fond of leading people astray. She

used to relate how a haymaking party once passed a summer's night

at the cowhouse (beudy) of Bryn Bygelyd (also Bryn Mygelyd), and how

they saw in the dead of night a host of these dwarfs (corynnod) in blue

dancing and capering about the place. The beudy in question is not very

far from Dolwydelan, on the way to Capel Curig. A different picture

of the bodach is given in Jenkins' Bed Gelert, p. 82; and lastly

one may contrast the Highland Bodach Glas mentioned at p. 520 above,

not to mention still another kind, namely the one in Scott's Waverley.

P. 130. To Sarn yr Afanc add Llyn yr Afanc, near Llandinam (Beauties

of Wales, N. Wales, p. 841), and Bed yr Afanc, 'the Afanc's Grave,'

the name of some sort of a tumulus, I am told, on a knoll near the

Pembrokeshire stream of the Nevern. Mr. J. Thomas, of Bancau Bryn

Berian close by, has communicated to me certain echoes of a story

how an afanc was caught in a pool near the bridge of Bryn Berian,

and how it was taken up to be interred in what is now regarded as its

grave. A complete list of the afanc place-names in the Principality

might possibly prove instructive. As to the word afanc, what seems

to have happened is this: (1) from meaning simply a dwarf it came to

be associated with such water dwarfs as those mentioned at p. 432;

(2) the meaning being forgotten, the word was applied to any water

monster; and (3) where afanc occurs in place-names the Hu story has

been introduced to explain it, whether it fitted or not. This I should

fancy to be the case with the Bryn Berian barrow, and it would be

satisfactory to know whether it contains the remains of an ordinary

dwarf. Peredur's lake afanc may have been a dwarf; but whether that

was so or not, it is remarkable that the weapon which the afanc handled

was a llechwaew or flake-spear, that is, a missile tipped with stone.

P. 131. With the rôle of the girl in the afanc story compare that of

Tegau, wife of Caradog Freichfras, on whom a serpent fastens and can

only be allured away to seize on one of Tegau's breasts, of which

she loses the nipple when the beast is cut off. The defect being

replaced with gold, she is ever after known as Tegau Eur-fron, or

'Tegau of the golden Breast.' That is a version inferred of a story

which is discussed by M. Gaston Paris in an article, on Caradoc et

le Serpent, elicited by a paper published (in the November number of

Modern Language Notes for 1898) by Miss C. A. Harper, of Bryn Mawr

College, U.S.: see the Romania, xxviii. 214-31. One of Miss Harper's

parallels, mentioned by M. Paris at p. 220, comes from Campbell:

it is concerning a prince who receives from his stepmother a magic

shirt which converts itself into a serpent coiled round his neck,

and of which he is rid by the help of a woman acting in much the

same way as Tegau. We have an echo of this in the pedigrees in the

Jesus College MS. 20: see the Cymmrodor, viii. 88, where one reads

of G6ga6n keneu menrud a vu neidyr vl6ydyn am y von6gyl, 'Gwgon the

whelp of Menrud (?) who was a year with a snake round his neck'--his

pedigree is also given. In M. Paris' suggested reconstruction of

the story (p. 228) from the different versions, he represents the

maiden who is to induce the serpent to leave the man on whom it has

fastened, as standing in a vessel filled with milk, while the man

stands in a vessel filled with vinegar. The heroine exposes herself

to the reptile, which relinquishes his present victim to seize on

one of the woman's breasts. Now the appropriateness of the milk is

explained by the belief that snakes are inordinately fond of milk,

and that belief has, I presume, a foundation in fact: at any rate I am

reminded of its introduction into the plot of more than one English

story, such as Stanley Weyman's book From the Memoirs of a Minister

of France (London, 1895), p. 445, and A. Conan Doyle's Adventures

of Sherlock Holmes (London, 1893), pp. 199-209. In Wales, however,

it is to a woman's milk that one's interest attaches: I submit two

references which will explain what I mean. The first of them is to

Owen's Welsh Folk-Lore, p. 349, where he says that 'traditions of

flying snakes were once common in all parts of Wales,' and adds as

follows:--'The traditional origin of these imaginary creatures was

that they were snakes, which by having drunk the milk of a woman,

and by having eaten of bread consecrated for the Holy Communion,

became transformed into winged serpents or dragons.' The other is

to the Brython for 1861, p. 190, where one reads in Welsh to the

following effect:--'If a snake chances to have an opportunity to

drink of a woman's milk it is certain to become a gwiber. When a

woman happens to be far from her child, and her breasts are full and

beginning to give her pain, she sometimes milks them on the ground in

order to ease them. To this the peasantry in parts of Cardiganshire

have a strong objection, lest a snake should come there and drink the

milk, and so become a gwiber.' The word gwiber is used in the Welsh

Bible for a viper, but the editor of the Brython explains, that in

our folklore it means a huge kind of snake or dragon that has grown

wings and has its body cased in hard scales: for a noted instance

in point he refers the reader to the first number of the Brython,

p. 3. It is believed still all over Wales that snakes may, under

favourable circumstances, develop wings: in fact, an Anglesey man

strongly wished, to my knowledge, to offer to the recent Welsh Land

Commission, as evidence of the wild and neglected state of a certain

farm, that the gorse had grown so high and the snakes so thriven in

it that he had actually seen one of the latter flying right across

a wide road which separated two such gorse forests as he described:

surprised and hurt to find that this was not accepted, he inferred

that the Commissioners knew next to nothing about their business.

Pp. 148, 170. With 'the spell of security' by catching hold of grass

may perhaps be compared a habit which boys in Cardiganshire have of

suddenly picking up a blade of grass when they want a truce or stoppage

in a sort of game of tig or touchwood. The grass gives the one who

avails himself of it immunity for a time from attack or pursuit,

so as to allow him to begin the game again just where it was left off.

P. 228. Bodermud would probably be more correctly written Bodermyd,

and analysed possibly into Bod-Dermyd, involving the name which

appears in Irish as Diarmait and Dermot.

P. 230. Since this was printed I have been assured by Mr. Thomas

Prichard of Llwydiarth Esgob, in Anglesey, that the dolur byr is

more commonly called clwy' byr, and that it is the disease known in

English as 'black quarter.'

Pp. 259, 268. I am assured on the part of several literary natives of

Glamorgan that they do not know dâr for daear, 'ground, earth.' Such

negative evidence, though proving the literary form daear to prevail

now, is not to be opposed to the positive statement, sent by Mr. Hughes

(p. 173) to me, as to the persistence in his neighbourhood of dâr and

clâr (for claear, 'lukewarm'), to which one may add, as unlikely to

be challenged by anybody, the case of harn for haearn, 'iron.' The

intermediate forms have to be represented as daer, claer, and haern,

which explain exactly the gaem of the Book of St. Chad, for which

modern literary Welsh has gaeaf, 'winter': see the preface to the

Book of Llan Dâv, p. xlv.

P. 290. It ought to have been pointed out that the fairies, whose

food and drink it is death to share, represent the dead.

P. 291. For Conla read Connla or Condla: the later form is Colla. The

Condla in question is called Condla Rúad in the story, but the heading

to it has Ectra Condla Chaim, 'the Adventure of C. the Dear One.'

P. 294. I am now inclined to think that butch was produced out of

the northern pronunciation of witch by regarding its w as a mutation

consonant and replacing it, as in some other instances, by b as

the radical.

P. 308. With the Manx use of rowan on May-day compare a passage to

the following effect concerning Wales--I translate it from the faulty

Welsh in which it is quoted by one of the competitors for the folklore

prize at the Liverpool Eistedfod, 1900: he gave no indication of its

provenance:--Another bad papistic habit which prevails among some

Welsh people is that of placing some of the wood of the rowan tree

(coed cerdin or criafol) in their corn lands (llafyrieu) and their

fields on May-eve (Nos Glamau) with the idea that such a custom brings

a blessing on their fields, a proceeding which would better become

atheists and pagans than Christians.

P. 325. In the comparison with the brownie the fairy nurse in the

Pennant Valley has been overlooked: see p. 109.

P. 331, line 1. For I. 42-3 read ii. 42-3.

Pp. 377, 395. With the story of Ffynnon Gywer and the other fairy

wells, also with the wells which have been more especially called

sacred in this volume, compare the following paragraph from Martin's

Description of the Western Islands of Scotland (London, 1703),

pp. 229-30: it is concerning Gigay, now more commonly written Gigha,

the name of an island near the west coast of Kintyre:--'There is

a well in the north end of this isle called Toubir-more, i. e. a

great well, because of its effects, for which it is famous among the

islanders; who together with the inhabitants use it as a Catholicon for

diseases. It's covered with stone and clay, because the natives fancy

that the stream that flows from it might overflow the isle; and it is

always opened by a Diroch, i. e. an inmate, else they think it would

not exert its vertues. They ascribe one very extraordinary effect to

it, and 'tis this; that when any foreign boats are wind-bound here

(which often happens) the master of the boat ordinarily gives the

native that lets the water run a piece of money, and they say that

immediately afterwards the wind changes in favour of those that are

thus detain'd by contrary winds. Every stranger that goes to drink

of the water of this well, is accustomed to leave on its stone cover

a piece of money, a needle, pin, or one of the prettiest variegated

stones they can find.' Last September I visited Gigha and saw a well

there which is supposed to be the one to which Martin refers. It is

very insignificant and known now by a name pronounced Tobar a veac,

possibly for an older Mo-Bheac: in Scotch Gaelic Bëac, written

Beathag, is equated with the name Sophia. The only tradition now

current about the well is that emptying it used to prove the means

of raising a wind or even of producing great storms, and this appears

to have been told Pennant: see his Tour in Scotland and Voyage to the

Hebrides, MDCCLXXII (Chester, 1774), p. 226:--'Visit the few wonders

of the isle: the first is a little well of a most miraculous quality,

for in old times, if ever the chieftain lay here wind-bound, he had

nothing more to do than cause the well to be cleared, and instantly

a favorable gale arose. But miracles are now ceased.'

P. 378. A similar rhyme is current in the neighbourhood of Dolgelley,

as Miss Lucy Griffith informs me, as follows:--

Dolgelle dol a gollir,

Daear a'i llwnc, dw'r 'n 'i lle.

Dolgelley, a dale to be lost;

Earth will swallow it, and water take its place.

P. 394. With regard to wells killing women visiting them, I may

mention a story, told me the other day by Professor Mahaffy after a

friend whose name he gave, concerning the inhabitants of one of the

small islands on the coast of Mayo--I understood him to say off the

Mullet. It was this: all the men and boys, having gone fishing, were

prevented by rough weather from returning as soon as they intended,

and the women left alone suffered greatly from want of water, as

not one of them would venture to go to the well. By-and-by, however,

one of them gave birth to a boy, whereupon another of them carried

the baby to the well, and ventured to draw water.

P. 418. As to Clychau Aberdyfi I am now convinced that the chwech and

saith are entirely due to the published versions, the editors of which

seem to have agreed that they will have as much as possible for their

money, so to say. I find that Mrs. Rhys learnt in her childhood to

end the words with pump, and that she cannot now be brought to sing

the melody in any other way: I have similar testimony from a musical

lady from the neighbourhood of Wrexham; and, doubtless, more evidence

of the same sort could be got.

P. 443. For Llywelyn ab Gruffyd read Llywelyn ab Iorwerth.

Pp. 450-1. Some additional light on the doggerel dialogue will be

found thrown by the following story, which I find cited in Welsh by

one of the Liverpool Eistedfod competitors:--There is in the parish

of Yspytty Ifan, in Carnarvonshire, a farm called Trwyn Swch, where

eighty years ago lived a man and his wife, who were both young, and had

twins born to them. Now the mother went one day to milk, leaving the

twins alone in the cradle--the husband was not at home--and who should

enter the house but one of the Tylwyth Teg! He took the twins away

and left two of his own breed in the cradle in their stead. Thereupon

the mother returned home and saw what had come to pass; she then in

her excitement snatched the Tylwyth Teg twins and took them to the

bridge that crosses the huge gorge of the river Conwy not very far

from the house, and she cast them into the whirlpool below. By this

time the Tylwyth Teg had come on the spot, some trying to save the

children, and some making for the woman. 'Seize the old hag!' (Crap

ar yr hen wrach!) said one of the chiefs of the Tylwyth Teg. 'Too

late!' cried the woman on the edge of the bank; and many of them ran

after her to the house. As they ran three or four of them lost their

pipes in the field. They are pipes ingeniously made of the blue stone

(carreg las) of the gully. They measure three or four inches long,

and from time to time several of them have been found near the cave

of Trwyn Swch.--This is the first indication which I have discovered,

that the fairies are addicted to smoking.

P. 506. A Rhiw Gyferthwch (printed Rywgyverthwch) occurs in the Record

of Carnarvon, p. 200; but it seems to have been in Merionethshire,

and far enough from Arfon.

P. 521. In the article already cited from the Romania, M. Paris finds

Twrch Trwyth in the boar Tortain of a French romance: see xxviii. 217,

where he mentions a legend concerning the strange pedigree of that

beast. The subject requires to be further studied.

P. 535. A less probable explanation of Latio would be to suppose orti

understood. This has been suggested to me by Mr. Nicholson's treatment

of the Llanaelhaiarn inscription as Ali ortus Elmetiaco hic iacet,

where I should regard Ali as standing for an earlier nominative

Alec-s, and intended as the Celtic equivalent for Cephas or Peter:

Ali would be the word which is in Med. Irish ail, genitive ailech,

'a rock or stone.'

P. 545. We have the Maethwy of Gilvaethwy possibly still further

reduced to Aethwy in Porth Aethwy, 'the Village of Menai Bridge,'

in spite of its occurring in the Record of Carnarvon, p. 77,

as Porthaytho.

P. 548. To the reference to the Cymmrodor, ix. 170, as to Beli being

called son of Anna, add the Welsh Elucidarium, p. 127, with its belim

vab anna, and The Cambro-British Saints, p. 82, where we have Anna

... genuit Beli.

P. 560. Two answers to the query as to the Llech Las are now to be

found in the Scottish Antiquary, xv. 41-3.

P. 566. Caer Gai is called also Caer Gynyr, after Cai's father Cynyr,

to wit in a poem by William Lleyn, who died in 1587. This I owe to

Professor J. Morris Jones, who has copied it from a collection of

that poet's works in the possession of Myrdin Fard, fo. 119.

P. 569. Here it would, perhaps, not be irrelevant to mention Caer

Dwrgynt, given s. v. Dwr in Morris' Celtic Remains, as a name of

Caergybi, or Holyhead. His authority is given in parenthesis thus:

(Th. Williams, Catal.). I should be disposed to think the name based

on some such an earlier form as Kair D6bgint, 'the Fortress of the

Danes,' who were called in old Welsh Dub-gint (Annales Cambriæ,

A. D. 866, in the Cymmrodor, ix. 165), that is to say 'Gentes Nigræ

or Black Pagans,' and more simply Gint or Gynt, 'Gentes or Heathens.'

Pp. 579-80. The word banna6c, whence the later bannog, seems to be

the origin of the name bonoec given to the famous horn in the Lai du

Corn, from which M. Paris in his Romania article, xxviii. 229, cites

Cest cor qui bonoec a non, 'this horn which is called bonoec.' The

Welsh name would have to be Corn (yr) ych banna6c, 'the horn of (the)

bannog ox,' with or without the article.

P. 580, note 1. One of the Liverpool Eistedfod competitors cites

W. O. Pughe to the following effect in Welsh:--Llyn dau Ychain,

'the Lake of Two Oxen,' is on Hiraethog Mountain; and near it is the

footmark of one of them in a stone or rock (carreg), where he rested

when seeking his partner, as the local legend has it. Another cites a

still wilder story, to the effect that there was once a wonderful cow

called Y Fuwch Fraith, 'the Parti-coloured Cow.' 'To that cow there

came a witch to get milk, just after the cow had supplied the whole

neighbourhood. So the witch could not get any milk, and to avenge her

disappointment she made the cow mad. The result was that the cow ran

wild over the mountains, inflicting immense harm on the country; but

at last she was killed by Hu near Hiraethog, in the county of Denbigh.'

P. 592. With trwtan, Trwtyn-Tratyn, and Trit-a-trot should doubtless

be compared the English use of trot as applied contemptuously to a

woman, as when Grumio, in Shakespeare's Taming of the Shrew, Act i,

sc. 2, speaks of 'an old trot with ne'er a tooth in her head': the

word was similarly used by Thomas Heywood and others.

P. 649. With regard to note 1, I find that Professor Zimmer is of

opinion--in fact he is quite positive--that tyngu and tynghed are

in no way related: see the Göttingische gelehrte Anzeigen for 1900

(No. 5), pp. 371-2.

P. 673. I am tempted to rank with the man-eating fairies the Atecotti,

who are known to have been cannibals, and whose name seems to mean

the ancient race. Should this prove tenable, one would have to admit

that the little people, or at any rate peoples with an admixture

of the blood of that race, could be trained to fight. Further, one

would probably have to class with them also such non-cannibal tribes

as those of the Fir Bolg and the Galiúin of Irish story. Information

about both will be found in my Hibbert Lectures, in reading which,

however, the mythological speculations should be brushed aside. Lastly,

I anticipate that most of the peoples figuring in the oldest class

of Irish story will prove to have belonged either (1) to the dwarf

race, or (2) to the Picts; and that careful reading will multiply

the means of distinguishing between them. Looking comprehensively

at the question of the early races of the British Isles, the reader

should weigh again the concluding words of Professor Haddon's theory,

quoted on p. 684 above.

NOTES

[1] For most of my information on this subject I have to thank

Mr. David Davies, editor of the South Wales Daily Post, published

at Swansea.

[2] I am indebted for this information to Mr. J. Herbert James of

Vaynor, who visited Kenfig lately and has called my attention to an

article headed 'The Borough of Kenfig,' in the Archæologia Cambrensis

for 1898: see more especially the maps at pp. 138-42.

[3] Here the Welsh has a word edafwr, the exact meaning of which

escapes me, and I gather from the remarks of local etymologers that

no such word is now in use in Glamorgan.

[4] See the Book of Aberpergwm, printed as Brut y Tywysogion, in the

Myvyrian Archaiology, ii. 524; also Morgan's Antiquarian Survey of East

Gower, p. 66, where the incident is given from 'Brut y Tywysogion,

A. D. 1088.' It is, however, not in what usually passes by the name

of Brut y Tywysogion, but comes, as the author kindly informs me,

from a volume entitled 'Brut y Tywysogion, the Gwentian Chronicle of

Caradoc of Llancarvan, with a translation by the late Aneurin Owen,

and printed for the Cambrian Archæological Association, 1863': see

pp. 70-1.

[5] For this also I have to thank Mr. Herbert James, who recently

inspected the spot with Mr. Glascodine of Swansea.

[6] I do not know whether anybody has identified the spot which the

writer had in view, or whether the coast of the Severn still offers

any feature which corresponds in any way to the description.

[7] Supposed to be so called after a certain Tegid Foel, or 'Tegid

the Bald,' of Penllyn: the name Tegid is the phonetic spelling of

what might be expected in writing as Tegyd--it is the Latin Tacitus

borrowed, and comes with other Latin names in Pedigree I. of the

Cuneda dynasty; see the Cymmrodor, xi. 170. In point of spelling one

may compare Idris for what might be expected written Idrys, of the

same pronunciation, for an earlier Iudrys or Iudris.

[8] The translation was made by Thomas Twyne, and published in 1573

under the title of The Breuiary of Britayne, where the passage here

given occurs, on fol. 69b. The original was entitled Commentarioli

Britannicæ Descriptionis Fragmentum, published at Cologne in 1572. The

original of our passage, fol. 57a, has Guynedhia and Llunclis. The stem

llwnc of llyncaf, 'I swallow,' answers, according to Welsh idiom, to

the use of what would be in English or Latin a participle. Similarly,

when a compound is not used, the verbal noun (in the genitive) is

used: thus 'a feigned illness,' in Welsh 'a made illness,' is saldra

gwneyd, literally 'an indisposition or illness of making.' So 'the

deuouryng of the Palace' is incorrect, and based on Llwyd's vorago

Palatij instead of Palatium voratum.

[9] For other occurrences of the name, see the Black Book, fol. 35a,

52a, and Morris' Celtic Remains, where, s. v. Benlli, the Welsh name

of Bardsey, to wit, Ynys Enlli, is treated by somebody, doubtless

rightly, as a shortening of Ynys Fenlli.

[10] The meaning of this name is not certain, but it seems to equate

with the Irish Fochard, anglicized Faughard, in County Louth: see

O'Donovan's Four Masters, A. D. 1595; also the Book of the Dun Cow,

where it is Focherd, genitive Focherda, dative Focheird, fo. 70b,

73b, 75a, 75b, 76a, 77a.

[11] This is sometimes given as Glannach, which looks like the Goidelic

form of the name: witness Giraldus' Enislannach in his Itin. Kambriæ,

ii. 7 (p. 131).

[12] See Choice Notes, p. 92, and Gerald Griffin's Poetical and

Dramatic Works, p. 106.

[13] Failing to see this, various writers have tried to claim the

honour of owning the bells for Aberteifi, 'Cardigan,' or for Abertawe,

'Swansea'; but no arguments worthy of consideration have been urged

on behalf of either place: see Cyfaill yr Aelwyd for 1892, p. 184.

[14] For some of the data as to the reckoning of the pedigrees

and branching of a family, see the first volume of Aneurin Owen's

Ancient Laws--Gwyned, III. i. 12-5 (pp. 222-7); Dyfed, II. i. 17-29

(pp. 408-11); Gwent, II. viii. 1-7 (pp. 700-3); also The Welsh People,

pp. 230-1.

[15] See the Book of the Dun Cow, fol. 99a & seq.

[16] For instances, the reader may turn back to pp. 154 or 191,

but there are plenty more in the foregoing chapters; and he may also

consult Howells' Cambrian Superstitions, pp. 123-8, 141-2, 146. In one

case, p. 123, he gives an instance of the contrary kind of imagination:

the shepherd who joined a fairy party on Frenni Fach was convinced,

when his senses and his memory returned, that, 'although he thought he

had been absent so many years, he had been only so many minutes.' The

story has the ordinary setting; but can it be of popular origin? The

Frenni Fach is a part of the mountain known as the Frenni Fawr,

in the north-east of Pembrokeshire; the names mean respectively the

Little Breni, and the Great Breni. The obsolete word breni meant,

in Old Welsh, the prow of a ship; local habit tends, however, to the

solecism of Brenin Fawr, with brenin, 'king,' qualified by an adjective

mutated feminine; but people at a distance who call it Frenni Fawr,

pronounce the former vocable with nn. Lastly, Y Vrevi Va6r occurs in

Maxen's Dream in the Red Book (Oxford Mab. p. 89); but in the White

Book (in the Peniarth collection), col. 187, the proper name is written

Freni: for this information I have to thank Mr. Gwenogvryn Evans.

[17] It is right to say that another account is given in the Rennes

Dindsenchas, published by Stokes in the Revue Celtique, xvi. 164,

namely, that Laiglinne with fifty warriors 'came to the well of

Dera son of Scera. A wave burst over them and drowned Laiglinne with

his fifty warriors, and thereof a lake was made. Hence we say Loch

Laiglinni, Laiglinne's Lake.'

[18] The Oxford Mabinogion, p. 224, and Guest's, i. 343.

[19] See Afanc in the Geiriadur of Silvan Evans, who cites instances

in point.

[20] See the Revue Celtique, i. 257, and my Hibbert Lectures, pp. 92-3.

[21] The Four Masters, A.M. 3520.

[22] In another version Campbell had found it to be sand and

nothing else.

[23] As to this incident of a girl and a supernatural, Campbell says

that he had heard it in the Isle of Man also, and elsewhere.

[24] See the Revue Celtique, ii. 197. He was also called Labraid

Longsech, and Labraid Longsech Lorc. The explanation of Labraid

Lorc is possibly that it was originally Labraid Morc, and that the

fondness for alliteration brought it into line as Labraid Lorc:

compare Llûd Llaweraint in Welsh for Nûd Llaweraint. This is not

disproved by the fact that Labraid Lorc's grandfather is said to have

been called Loegaire Lorc: Loegaire Lorc and Labraid Lorc are rather

to be regarded perhaps as duplicates of the same original.

[25] See my Arthurian Legend, p. 70; also Hibbert Lectures, p. 590.

[26] The original has in these passages respectively siblais a fual

corbo thipra, 'minxit urinam suam so that it was a spring'; ar na

siblad a fúal ar na bad fochond báis doib, 'ne mingat urinam suam

lest it should be the cause of death to them'; and silis, 'minxit,'

fo. 39b. For a translation of the whole story see Dr. O'Grady's Silva

Gadelica, pp. 265-9; also Joyce's Old Celtic Romances, pp. 97-105.