THE DECLINE AND FALL OF THE GODS
If there be love of fame in celestial minds, those gods might count
themselves fortunate who shared in the transformation of Arthur. Their
divinity had fallen from them, but in their new rôles, as heroes of
romance, they entered upon vivid reincarnations. The names of Arthur’s
Knights might almost be described as “household words”, while the gods
who had no portion in the Table Round are known only to those who busy
themselves with antiquarian lore. It is true that a few folk-tales still
survive in the remoter parts of Wales, in which the names of such
ancient British deities as Gwydion, Gwyn, Arianrod, and Dylan appear,
but it is in such a chaos of jumbled and distorted legend that one finds
it hard to pick out even the slenderest thread of story. They have none
of the definite coherence of the contemporary Gaelic folk-tales quoted
in a previous chapter as still preserving the myths about Goibniu, Lugh,
Cian, Manannán, Ethniu, and Balor. Indeed, they have reached such a
stage of disintegration that they can hardly now survive another
generation.[522]
There have been, however, other paths by which the fame of a god might
descend to a posterity which would no longer credit his divinity. The
rolls of early British history were open to welcome any number of
mythical personages, provided that their legends were attractive.
Geoffrey of Monmouth’s famous _Historia Britonum_ is, under its grave
pretence of exact history, as mythological as the Morte Darthur, or even
the Mabinogion. The annals of early British saintship were not less
accommodating. A god whose tradition was too potent to be ignored or
extinguished was canonized, as a matter of course, by clerics who held
as an axiom that “the toleration of the cromlech facilitated the
reception of the Gospel.[523]” Only the most irreconcilable escaped
them—such a one as Gwyn son of Nudd, who, found almost useless by
Geoffrey and intractable by the monkish writers, remains the last
survivor of the old gods—dwindled to the proportions of a fairy, but
unsubdued.
This part of resistance is perhaps the most dignified; for deities can
be sadly changed by the caprices of their euhemerizers. Dôn, whom we
knew as the mother of the heaven gods, seems strangely described as a
_king_ of Lochlin and Dublin, who led the Irish into north Wales in A.D.
267.[524] More recognizable is _his_ son Gwydion, who introduced the
knowledge of letters into the country of his adoption. The dynasty of
“King” Dôn, according to a manuscript in the collection of Mr. Edward
Williams—better known under his bardic name of Iolo Morganwg—held north
Wales for a hundred and twenty-nine years, when the North British king,
Cunedda, invaded the country, defeated the Irish in a great battle, and
drove them across sea to the Isle of Man. This battle is historical,
and, putting Dôn and Gwydion out of the question, probably represented
the last stand of the Gael, in the extreme west of Britain, against the
second and stronger wave of Celtic invasion. In the same collection of
_Iolo Manuscripts_ is found a curious, and even comic, euhemeristic
version of the strange myth of the Bone Prison of Oeth and Anoeth which
Manawyddan son of Llyr, built in Gower. The new reading makes that
ghastly abode a real building, constructed out of the bones of the
“Caesarians” (Romans) killed in battle with the Cymri. It consisted of
numerous chambers, some of large bones and some of small, some above
ground and some under. Prisoners of war were placed in the more
comfortable cells, the underground dungeons being kept for traitors to
their country. Several times the “Caesarians” demolished the prison,
but, each time, the Cymri rebuilt it stronger than before. At last,
however, the bones decayed, and, being spread upon the ground, made an
excellent manure! “From that time forth” the people of the neighbourhood
“had astonishing crops of wheat and barley and of every other grain for
many years”.[525]
It is not, however, in these, so to speak, unauthorized narratives that
we can best refind our British deities, but in the compact, coherent,
and at times almost convincing _Historia Britonum_ of Geoffrey of
Monmouth, published in the first half of the twelfth century, and for
hundreds of years gravely quoted as the leading authority on the early
history of our islands. The modern critical spirit has, of course,
relegated it to the region of fable. We can no longer accept the
pleasant tradition of the descent of the Britons from the survivors of
Troy, led westward in search of a new home by Brutus, the great-grandson
of the pious Æneas. Nor indeed does any portion of the “History”, from
Æneas to Athelstan, quite persuade the latter-day reader. Its kings
succeed one another in plausible sequence, but they themselves are too
obviously the heroes of popular legend.
A large part of Geoffrey’s chronicle—two books[526] out of twelve—is, of
course, devoted to Arthur. In it he tells the story of that paladin’s
conquests, not only in his own country, against the Saxons, the Irish,
the Scots, and the Picts, but over all western Europe. We see the
British champion, after annexing Ireland, Iceland, Gothland, and the
Orkneys, following up these minor victories by subduing Norway, Dacia
(by which Denmark seems to have been meant), Aquitaine, and Gaul. After
such triumphs there was clearly nothing left for him but the overthrow
of the Roman empire; and this he had practically achieved when the
rebellion of Mordred brought him home to his death, or rather (for even
Geoffrey does not quite lose hold of the belief in the undying Arthur)
to be carried to the island of Avallon to be healed of his wounds, the
crown of Britain falling to “his kinsman Constantine, the son of Cador,
Duke of Cornwall, in the five hundred and forty-second year of our
Lord’s incarnation”.[527] Upon the more personal incidents connected
with Arthur, Geoffrey openly professes to keep silence, possibly
regarding them as not falling within the province of his history, but we
are told shortly how Mordred took advantage of Arthur’s absence on the
Continent to seize the throne, marry Guanhamara (Guinevere), and ally
himself with the Saxons, only to be defeated at that fatal battle called
by Geoffrey “Cambula”, in which Mordred, Arthur, and Walgan—the “Sir
Gawain” of Malory and the Gwalchmei of the earlier legends—all met their
dooms.
We find the gods of the older generation standing in the same position
with regard to Arthur in Geoffrey’s “History” as they do in the later
Welsh triads and tales. Though rulers, they are yet his vassals. In
“three brothers of royal blood”, called Lot, Urian, and Augusel, who are
represented as having been chiefs in the north, we may discern Lludd,
Urien, and Arawn. To these three Arthur restored “the rights of their
ancestors”, handing over the semi-sovereignty of Scotland to Augusel,
giving Urian the government of Murief (Moray), and re-establishing Lot
“in the consulship of Loudonesia (Lothian), and the other provinces
belonging to him”.[528] Two other rulers subject to him are Gunvasius,
King of the Orkneys, and Malvasius, King of Iceland,[529] in whom we
recognize Gwyn, under Latinized forms of his Welsh name Gwynwas and his
Cornish name Melwas. But it is characteristic of Geoffrey of Monmouth’s
loose hold upon his materials that, not content with having connected
several of these gods with Arthur’s period, he further endows them with
reigns of their own. “Urien” was Arthur’s vassal, but “Urianus” was
himself King of Britain centuries before Arthur was born.[530] Lud (that
is, Lludd) succeeded his father Beli.[531] We hear nothing of his silver
hand, but we learn that he was “famous for the building of cities, and
for rebuilding the walls of Trinovantum[532], which he also surrounded
with innumerable towers ... and though he had many other cities, yet he
loved this above them all, and resided in it the greater part of the
year; for which reason it was afterwards called Kaerlud, and by the
corruption of the word, Caerlondon; and again by change of languages, in
process of time, London; as also by foreigners who arrived here, and
reduced this country under their subjection, it was called Londres. At
last, when he was dead, his body was buried by the gate which to this
time is called in the British tongue after his name Parthlud, and in the
Saxon, Ludesgata.” He was succeeded by his brother, Cassibellawn
(Cassivelaunus), during whose reign Julius Caesar first invaded Britain.
Lludd, however, is not entirely dependent upon Geoffrey of Monmouth for
his reputation as a king of Britain. One of the old Welsh romances,[533]
translated by Lady Charlotte Guest in her Mabinogion, relates the
rebuilding of London by Lludd in almost the same words as Geoffrey. The
story which these pseudo-historical details introduce is, however, an
obviously mythological one. It tells us how, in the days of Lludd,
Britain was oppressed by three plagues. The first was the arrival of a
strange race of sorcerers called the “Coranians”,[534] who had three
qualities which made them unpopular; they paid their way in “fairy
money”, which, though apparently real, returned afterwards—like the
shields, horses, and hounds made by Gwydion son of Dôn, to deceive
Pryderi—into the fungus out of which it had been charmed by magic; they
could hear everything that was said over the whole of Britain, in
however low a tone, provided only that the wind met it; and they could
not be injured by any weapon. The second was “a shriek that came on
every May eve, over every hearth in the Island of Britain, and went
through people’s hearts and so scared them that the men lost their hue
and their strength, and the women their children, and the young men and
the maidens their senses, and all the animals and trees and the earth
and the waters were left barren”. The third was a disappearance of the
food hoarded in the king’s palace, which was so complete that a year’s
provisions vanished in a single night, and so mysterious that no one
could ever find out its cause.
By the advice of his nobles, Lludd went to France to obtain the help of
its king, his brother Llevelys, who was “a man great of counsel and
wisdom”. In order to be able to consult with his brother without being
overheard by the Coranians, Llevelys caused a long tube of brass to be
made, through which they talked to one another. The sorcerer tribe,
however, got to know of it, and, though they could not hear what was
being said inside the speaking-tube, they sent a demon into it, who
whispered insulting messages up and down it, as though from one brother
to the other. But Lludd and Llevelys knew one another too well to be
deceived by this, and they drove the demon out of the tube by flooding
it with wine. Then Llevelys told Lludd to take certain insects, which he
would give him, and pound them in water. When the water was sufficiently
permeated with their essence, he was to call both his own people and the
Coranians together, as though for a conference, and, in the midst of the
meeting, to cast it over all of them alike. The water, though harmless
to his own people, would nevertheless prove a deadly poison to the
Coranians.
As for the shriek, Llevelys explained it to be raised by a dragon. This
monster was the Red Dragon of Britain, and it raised the shriek because
it was being attacked by the White Dragon of the Saxons, which was
trying to overcome and destroy it. The French king told his brother to
measure the length and breadth of Britain, and, when he had found the
exact centre of the island, to cause a pit to be dug there. In this pit
was to be placed a vessel containing the best mead that could be made,
with a covering of satin over it to hide it. Lludd was then to watch
from some safe place. The dragons would appear and fight in the air
until they were exhausted, then they would fall together on to the top
of the satin cloth, and so draw it down with them into the vessel full
of mead. Naturally they would drink the mead, and, equally naturally,
they would then sleep. As soon as Lludd was sure that they were
helpless, he was to go to the pit, wrap the satin cloth round both of
them, and bury them together in a stone coffin in the strongest place in
Britain. If this were safely done, there would be no more heard of the
shriek.
And the disappearance of the food was caused by “a mighty man of magic”,
who put everyone to sleep by charms before he removed the king’s
provisions. Lludd was to watch for him, sitting by the side of a
cauldron full of cold water. As often as he felt the approach of
drowsiness, he was to plunge into the cauldron. Thus he would be able to
keep awake and frustrate the thief.
So Lludd came back to Britain. He pounded the insects in the water, and
then summoned both the men of Britain and the Coranians to a meeting. In
the midst of it, he sprinkled the water over everyone alike. The natives
took no harm from this mythological “beetle powder”, but the Coranians
died.
Lludd was then ready to deal with the dragons. His careful measurements
proved that the centre of the island of Britain was at Oxford, and there
he caused the pit to be dug, with the vessel of mead in it, hidden by
the satin covering. Having made everything ready, he watched, and soon
saw the dragons appear. For a long time they fought desperately in the
air; then they fell down together on to the satin cloth, and, drawing it
after them, subsided into the mead. Lludd waited till they were quite
silent, and then pulled them out, folded them carefully in the wrapping,
and took them to the district of Snowdon, where he buried them in the
strong fortress whose remains, near Beddgelert, are still called “Dinas
Emrys”. After this the terrible shriek was not heard again until Merlin
had them dug up, five hundred years later, when they recommenced
fighting, and the red dragon drove the white one out of Britain.
Last of all, Lludd prepared a great banquet in his hall, and watched
over it, armed, with the cauldron of water near him. In the middle of
the night, he heard soft, drowsy music, such as nearly put him to sleep;
but he kept awake by repeatedly dipping himself in the cold water. Just
before dawn a huge man, clad in armour, came into the hall, carrying a
basket, which he began to load with the viands on the table. Like the
bag in which Pwyll captured Gwawl, its holding capacity seemed endless.
However, the man filled it at last, and was carrying it out, when Lludd
stopped him. They fought, and Lludd conquered the man of magic, and made
him his vassal. Thus the “Three Plagues of Britain” came to an end.
Lludd, in changing from god to king, seems to have lost most of his old
mythological attributes. Even his daughter Creudylad is taken from him
and given to another of the ancient British deities. Why Lludd, the
sky-god, should have been confounded with Llyr, the sea-god, is not very
apparent, but it is certain that “Creudylad” of the early Welsh legends
and poems is the same as Geoffrey’s “Cordeilla” and Shakespeare’s
“Cordelia”. The great dramatist was ultimately indebted to the Celtic
mythology for the groundwork of the legend which he wove into the tragic
story of _King Lear_. “Leir”, as Geoffrey calls him,[535] was the son of
Bladud, who built Caer Badus (Bath), and perished, like Icarus, as the
result of an accident with a flying-machine of his own invention. Having
no sons, but three daughters, Gonorilla, Regan, and Cordeilla, he
thought in his old age of dividing his kingdom among them. But, first of
all, he decided to make trial of their affection for him, with the idea
of giving the best portions of his realm to the most worthy. Gonorilla,
the eldest, replied to his question of how much she loved him, “that she
called heaven to witness, she loved him more than her own soul”. Regan
answered “with an oath, ‘that she could not otherwise express her
thoughts, but that she loved him above all creatures’”. But when it came
to Cordeilla’s turn, the youngest daughter, disgusted with her sisters’
hypocrisy, spoke after a quite different fashion. “‘My father,’ said
she, ‘is there any daughter that can love her father more than duty
requires? In my opinion, whoever pretends to it, must disguise her real
sentiments under the veil of flattery. I have always loved you as a
father, nor do I yet depart from my purposed duty; and if you insist to
have something more extorted from me, hear now the greatness of my
affection, which I always bear you, and take this for a short answer to
all your questions; look how much you have, so much is your value, and
so much do I love you.’” Her enraged father immediately bestowed his
kingdom upon his two other daughters, marrying them to the two highest
of his nobility, Gonorilla to Maglaunus, Duke of Albania[536], and Regan
to Henuinus, Duke of Cornwall. To Cordeilla he not only refused a share
in his realm, but even a dowry. Aganippus, King of the Franks, married
her, however, for her beauty alone.
Once in possession, Leir’s two sons-in-law rebelled against him, and
deprived him of all regal authority. The sole recompense for his lost
power was an agreement by Maglaunus to allow him maintenance, with a
body-guard of sixty soldiers. But, after two years, the Duke of Albania,
at his wife Gonorilla’s instigation, reduced them to thirty. Resenting
this, Leir left Maglaunus, and went to Henuinus, the husband of Regan.
The Duke of Cornwall at first received him honourably, but, before a
year was out, compelled him to discharge all his attendants except five.
This sent him back in a rage to his eldest daughter, who, this time,
swore that he should not stay with her, unless he would be satisfied
with one serving-man only. In despair, Leir resolved to throw himself
upon the mercy of Cordeilla, and, full of contrition for the way he had
treated her, and of misgivings as to how he might be received, took ship
for Gaul.
Arriving at Karitia[537], he sent a messenger to his daughter, telling
her of his plight and asking for her help. Cordeilla sent him money,
robes, and a retinue of forty men, and, as soon as he was fully equipped
with the state suitable to a king, he was received in pomp by Aganippus
and his ministers, who gave the government of Gaul into his hands until
his own kingdom could be restored to him. This the king of the Franks
did by raising an army and invading Britain. Maglaunus and Henuinus were
routed, and Leir replaced on the throne, after which he lived three
years. Cordeilla, succeeding to the government of Britain, “buried her
father in a certain vault, which she ordered to be made for him under
the River Sore, in Leicester (”Llyr-cestre“), and which had been built
originally under the ground to the honour of the god Janus. And here all
the workmen of the city, upon the anniversary solemnity of that
festival, used to begin their yearly labours.”
Exactly what myth is retold in this history of Leir and his three
daughters we are hardly likely ever to discover. But its mythological
nature is clear enough in the light of the description of the
underground temple dedicated to Llyr, at once the god of the subaqueous,
and therefore subterranean, world and a British Dis Pater, connected
with the origin of things, like the Roman god Janus, with whom he was
apparently identified.[538]
Ten kings or so after this (for any more exact way of measuring the
flight of time is absent from Geoffrey’s _History_) we recognize two
other British gods upon the scene. Brennius (that is, Brân) disputes the
kingdom with his brother Belinus. Clearly this is a version of the
ancient myth of the twin brothers, Darkness and Light, which we have
seen expressed in so many ways in Celtic mythology. Brân, the god of
death and the underworld, is opposed to Belinus, god of the sun and
health. In the original, lost myth, probably they alternately conquered
and were conquered—a symbol of the alternation of night and day and of
winter and summer. In Geoffrey’s _History_[539], they divided Britain,
Belinus taking “the crown of the island with the dominions of Loegria,
Kambria, and Cornwall, because, according to the Trojan constitution,
the right of inheritance would come to him as the elder”, while
Brennius, as the younger, had “Northumberland, which extended from the
River Humber to Caithness”. But flatterers persuaded Brennius to ally
himself with the King of the Norwegians, and attack Belinus. A battle
was fought, in which Belinus was conqueror, and Brennius escaped to
Gaul, where he married the daughter of the Duke of the Allobroges, and
on that ruler’s death was declared successor to the throne. Thus firmly
established with an army, he invaded Britain again. Belinus marched with
the whole strength of the kingdom to meet him, and the armies were
already drawn out opposite to one another in battle array when Conwenna,
the mother of the two kings, succeeded in reconciling them. Not having
one another to fight with, the brothers now agreed upon a joint
expedition with their armies into Gaul. The Britons and the Allobroges
conquered all the other kings of the Franks, and then entered Italy,
destroying villages and cities as they marched to Rome. Gabius and
Porsena, the Roman consuls, bought them off with large presents of gold
and silver and the promise of a yearly tribute, whereupon Brennius and
Belinus withdrew their army into Germany and began to devastate it. But
the Romans, now no longer taken by surprise and unprepared, came to the
help of the Germans. This brought Brennius and Belinus back to Rome,
which, after a long siege, they succeeded in taking. Brennius remained
in Italy, “where he exercised unheard-of tyranny over the people”; and
one may take the whole of this veracious history to be due to a
patriotic desire to make out the Brennus of “Vae Victis” fame—who
actually did sack Rome, in B.C. 390—a Briton. Belinus, the other
brother, returned to England. “He made a gate of wonderful structure in
Trinovantum, upon the bank of the Thames, which the citizens call after
his name Billingsgate to this day. Over it he built a prodigiously large
tower, and under it a haven or quay for ships.... At last, when he had
finished his days, his body was burned, and the ashes put up in a golden
urn, which they placed at Trinovantum, with wonderful art, on the top of
the tower above mentioned.” He was succeeded by Gurgiunt Brabtruc,[540]
who, as he was returning by way of the Orkneys from a raid on the Danes,
met the ships of Partholon and his people as they came from Spain to
settle in Ireland.[541]
Llyr and his children, large as they bulk in mythical history, were
hardly less illustrious as saints. The family of Llyr Llediath is always
described by the early Welsh hagiologists as the first of the “Three
chief Holy Families of the Isle of Britain”. The glory of Llyr himself,
however, is but a reflected one; for it was his son Brân “the Blesséd”
who actually introduced Christianity into Britain. Legend tells us that
he was taken captive to Rome with his son Caradawc (who was identified
for the purpose with the historical Caratacus), and the rest of his
family, and remained there seven years, during which time he became
converted to the Gospel, and spread it enthusiastically on his return.
Neither his son Caradawc nor his half-brother Manawyddan exactly
followed in his footsteps, but their descendants did. Caradawc’s sons
were all saintly, while his daughter Eigen, who married a chief called
Sarrlog, lord of Caer Sarrlog (Old Sarum), was the first female saint in
Britain. Manawyddan’s side of the family was less adaptable. His son and
his grandson were both pagans, but his great-grandson obtained Christian
fame as St. Dyfan, who was sent as a bishop to Wales by Pope
Eleutherius, and was martyred at Merthyr Dyvan. After this, the saintly
line of Llyr increases and flourishes. Singularly inappropriate persons
are found in it—Mabon, the Gallo-British Apollo, as well as Geraint and
others of King Arthur’s court.[542]
It is so quaint a conceit that Christianity should have been, like
all other things, the gift of the Celtic Hades, that it seems almost
a pity to cast doubt on it. The witness of the classical historians
sums up, however, dead in its disfavour. Tacitus carefully
enumerates the family of Caratacus, and describes how he and his
wife, daughter, and brother were separately interviewed by the
Emperor Claudius, but makes no mention at all of the chieftain’s
supposed father Brân. Moreover, Dio Cassius gives the name of
Caratacus’s father as Cunobelinus—Shakespeare’s “Cymbeline”—who, he
adds, had died before the Romans first invaded Britain. The evidence
is wholly against Brân as a Christian pioneer. He remains the grim
old god of war and death, “blesséd” only to his pagan votaries, and
especially to the bards, who probably first called him _Bendigeid
Vran_, and whose stubborn adherence must have been the cause of the
not less stubborn efforts of their enemies, the Christian clerics,
to bring him over to their own side by canonization.[543]
They had an easier task with Brân’s sister, Branwen of the “Fair Bosom”.
Goddesses, indeed, seem to have stood the process better than
gods—witness “Saint” Brigit, the “Mary of the Gael”. The British
Aphrodité became, under the name of Brynwyn, or Dwynwen, a patron saint
of lovers. As late as the fourteenth century, her shrine at Llandwynwyn,
in Anglesey, was the favourite resort of the disappointed of both sexes,
who came to pray to her image for either success or forgetfulness. To
make the result the more certain, the monks of the church sold Lethean
draughts from her sacred well. The legend told of her is that, having
vowed herself to perpetual celibacy, she fell in love with a young chief
called Maelon. One night, as she was praying for guidance in her
difficulty, she had a vision in which she was offered a goblet of
delicious liquor as a draught of oblivion, and she also saw the same
sweet medicine given to Maelon, whom it at once froze into a block of
ice. She was then, for her faith, offered the granting of three boons.
The first she chose was that Maelon might be allowed to resume his
natural form and temperature; the second, that she should no longer
desire to be married; and the third, that her intercessions might be
granted for all true-hearted lovers, so that they should either wed the
objects of their affection or be cured of their passion.[544] From this
cause came the virtues of her shrine and fountain. But the modern
generation no longer flocks there, and the efficacious well is choked
with sand. None the less, she whom the Welsh bards called the “Saint of
Love”[545] still has her occasional votaries. Country girls of the
neighbourhood seek her help when all else fails. The water nearest to
the church is thought to be the best substitute for the now dry and
ruined original well.[546]
A striking contrast to this easy victory over paganism is the stubborn
resistance to Christian adoption of Gwyn son of Nudd. It is true that he
was once enrolled by some monk in the train of the “Blesséd Brân”,[547]
but it was done in so half-hearted a way that, even now, one can discern
that the writer felt almost ashamed of himself. His fame as at least a
powerful fairy was too vital to be thus tampered with. Even Spenser,
though, in his _Faerie Queene_, he calls him “the good Sir Guyon ... in
whom great rule of Temp’raunce goodly doth appeare”,[548] does not
attempt to conceal his real nature. It is no man, but
“an Elfin born, of noble state
And mickle worship in his native land”,[549]
who sets forth the beauties of that virtue for which the original Celtic
paradise, with its unfailing ale and rivers of mead and wine, would
hardly seem to have been the best possible school. Save for Spenser, all
authorities agree in making Gwyn the determined opponent of things
Christian. A curious and picturesque legend[550] is told of him in
connection with St. Collen, who was himself the great-grandson of Brân’s
son, Caradawc. The saint, desirous of still further retirement from the
world, had made himself a cell beneath a rock near Glastonbury Tor, in
Gwyn’s own “island of Avilion”. It was close to a road, and one day he
heard two men pass by talking about Gwyn son of Nudd, and declaring him
to be King of Annwn and the fairies. St. Collen put his head out of the
cell, and told them to hold their tongues, and that Gwyn and his fairies
were only demons. The two men retorted by warning the saint that he
would soon have to meet the dark ruler face to face. They passed on, and
not long afterwards St. Collen heard someone knocking at his door. On
asking who was there, he got the answer: “I am here, the messenger of
Gwyn ap Nudd, King of Hades, to bid thee come by the middle of the day
to speak with him on the top of the hill.” The saint did not go; and the
messenger came a second time with the same message. On the third visit,
he added a threat that, if St. Collen did not come now, it would be the
worse for him. So, a little disquieted, he went, but not unarmed. He
consecrated some water, and took it with him.
On other days the top of Glastonbury Tor had always been bare, but on
this occasion the saint found it crowned by a splendid castle. Men and
maidens, beautifully dressed, were going in and out. A page received him
and told him that the king was waiting for him to be his guest at
dinner. St. Collen found Gwyn sitting on a golden chair in front of a
table covered with the rarest dainties and wines. He invited him to
share them, adding that if there was anything he especially liked, it
should be brought to him with all honour. “I do not eat the leaves of
trees,” replied the saint, who knew what fairy meats and drinks were
made of. Not taken aback by this discourteous answer, the King of Annwn
genially asked the saint if he did not admire his servants’ livery,
which was a motley costume, red on one side and blue on the other.
“Their dress is good enough for its kind,” said St. Collen. “What kind
is that?” asked Gwyn. “The red shows which side is being scorched, and
the blue shows which side is being frozen,” replied the saint, and,
splashing his holy water all round him, he saw castle, serving-men, and
king vanish, leaving him alone on the bare, windy hill-top.
Gwyn, last of the gods of Annwn, has evidently by this time taken over
the functions of all the others. He has the hounds which Arawn once
had—the _Cwn Annwn_, “dogs of hell”, with the white bodies and the red
ears. We hear more of them in folklore than we do of their master,
though even their tradition is dying out with the spread of newspapers
and railways. We are not likely to find another Reverend Edmund
Jones[551] to insist upon belief in them, lest, by closing our minds to
such manifest witnesses of the supernatural world, we should become
infidels. Still, we may even now find peasants ready to swear that they
have heard them sweeping along the hill-sides upon stormy nights, as
they pursued the flying souls of unshriven men or unbaptized babes. The
tales told of them agree curiously. Their cry is like that of a pack of
foxhounds, but softer in tone. The nearer they are to a man, the less
loud their voices seem, and the farther off they are, the louder. But
they are less often seen than heard, and it has been suggested that the
sounds were the cries of migrating bean-geese, which are not unlike
those of hounds in chase. The superstition is widely spread. The _Cwn
Annwn_ of Wales are called in North Devon the “Yeth” (Heath or Heathen),
or “Yell” Hounds, and on Dartmoor, the “Wish” Hounds. In Durham and
Yorkshire they are called “Gabriel” Hounds, and they are known by
various names in Norfolk, Gloucestershire, and Cornwall. In Scotland it
is Arthur who leads the Wild Hunt, and the tradition is found over
almost the whole of western Europe.
Not many folk-tales have been preserved in which Gwyn is mentioned by
name. His memory has lingered longest and latest in the fairy-haunted
Vale of Neath, so close to his “ridge, the Tawë abode ... not the
nearest Tawë ... but that Tawë which is the farthest”. But it may be
understood whenever the king of the fairies is mentioned. As the last of
the greater gods of the old mythology, he has been endowed by popular
fancy with the rule of all the varied fairy population of Britain, so
far, at least, as it is of Celtic or pre-Celtic origin. For some of the
fairies most famous in English literature are Teutonic. King Oberon
derives his name, through the French _fabliaux_, from Elberich, the
dwarf king of the _Niebelungenlied_,[552] though his queen, Titania, was
probably named out of Ovid’s _Metamorphoses_.[553] Puck, another of
Shakespeare’s fays, is merely the personification of his race, the
“pwccas” of Wales, “pookas” of Ireland, “poakes” of Worcestershire, and
“pixies” of the West of England.[554] It is Wales that at the present
time preserves the most numerous and diverse collection of fairies. Some
of them are beautiful, some hideous; some kindly, some malevolent. There
are the gentle damsels of the lakes and streams called Gwragedd Annwn,
and the fierce and cruel mountain fairies known as the Gwyllion. There
are the household sprites called Bwbachod, like the Scotch and English
“brownies”; the Coblynau, or gnomes of the mines (called “knockers” in
Cornwall); and the Ellyllon, or elves, of whom the pwccas are a
branch.[555] In the North of England the spirits belong more wholly to
the lower type. The bogles, brownies, killmoulis, redcaps, and their
like seem little akin to the higher, Aryan-seeming fairies. The Welsh
bwbach, too, is described as brown and hairy, and the coblynau as black
or copper-faced. We shall hardly do wrong in regarding such spectres as
the degraded gods of a pre-Aryan race, like the Irish leprechauns and
pookas, who have nothing in common with the still beautiful, still noble
figures of the Tuatha Dé Danann.
Of these numberless and nameless subjects of Gwyn, some dwell beneath
the earth or under the surface of lakes—which seem to take, in Wales,
the place of the Gaelic “fairy hills”—and others in Avilion, a
mysterious western isle of all delights lying on or just beneath the
sea. Pembrokeshire—the ancient Dyfed—has kept the tradition most
completely. The story goes that there is a certain square yard in the
hundred of Cemmes in that county which holds the secret of the fairy
realm. If a man happens to set his feet on it by chance, his eyes are
opened, and he can see that which is hidden from other men—the fairy
country and commonwealth,—but, the moment he moves from the enchanted
spot, he loses the vision, and he can never find the same place
again.[556] That country is upon the sea, and not far from shore; like
the Irish paradise of which it is the counterpart, it may sometimes be
sighted by sailors. The “Green Meadows of Enchantment” are still an
article of faith among Pembrokeshire and Caermarthenshire sailors, and
evidently not without some reason. In 1896 a correspondent of the
_Pembroke County Guardian_ sent in a report made to him by a certain
Captain John Evans to the effect that, one summer morning, while
trending up the Channel, and passing Gresholm Island (the scene of the
entertaining of Brân’s head), in what he had always known as deep water,
he was surprised to see to windward of him a large tract of land covered
with a beautiful green meadow. It was not, however, above water, but two
or three feet below it, so that the grass waved or swam about as the
ripple floated over it, in a way that made one who watched it feel
drowsy. Captain Evans had often heard of the tradition of the fairy
island from old people, but admitted that he had never hoped to see it
with his own eyes.[557] As with the “Hounds of Annwn” one may suspect a
quite natural explanation. Mirage is at once common enough and rare
enough on our coasts to give rise to such a legend, and it must have
been some such phenomenon as the “Fata Morgana” of Sicily which has made
sober men swear so confidently to ocular evidence of the Celtic
Paradise, whether seen from the farthest western coasts of Gaelic
Ireland or Scotland, or of British Wales.
-----
Footnote 522:
See, for example, a folk-tale, pp. 117-123 in Rhys’s _Celtic
Folklore_.
Footnote 523:
Stephens’s Preliminary Dissertation to his translation of Aneurin’s
_Gododin_.
Footnote 524:
_Iolo MSS._, p. 471.
Footnote 525:
_Iolo MSS._, pp. 597-600.
Footnote 526:
_Historia Britonum_, Books IX, X, and chaps. I and II of XI.
Footnote 527:
_Historia Britonum_, Book XI, chap. II.
Footnote 528:
_Ibid._, Book IX, chap. IX.
Footnote 529:
_Ibid._, Book IX, chap. _XII_. They appear also as Guanius, King of
the Huns, and Melga, King of the Picts, in Book V, chap. XVI.
Footnote 530:
_Historia Britonum_, Book III, chap. XIX.
Footnote 531:
_Ibid._, Book III, chap. XX.
Footnote 532:
_I.e._ London, under its traditionary earlier name, Troja Nova, given
it by Brutus.
Footnote 533:
_The Story of Lludd and Llevelys._
Footnote 534:
The name means “dwarfs”. Rhys: _Hibbert Lectures_, p. 606.
Footnote 535:
_Historia Britonum_, Book II, chap, X-XIV.
Footnote 536:
Alba, or North Britain.
Footnote 537:
Now Calais.
Footnote 538:
Rhys: _Arthurian Legend_, pp. 131-132.
Footnote 539:
_Historia Britonum_, Book III, chaps. I-X.
Footnote 540:
The same fabulous personage, perhaps, as the original of Rabelais’
Gargantua, a popular Celtic god.
Footnote 541:
_Historia Britonum_, Book III, Chaps. XI-XII.
Footnote 542:
See the _Iolo MSS._ The genealogies and families of the saints of the
island of Britain. Copied by Iolo Morganwg in 1783 from the _Long Book
of Thomas Truman of Pantlliwydd_ in the parish of Llansanor in
Glamorgan, p. 515, &c. Also see _An Essay on the Welsh Saints_ by the
Rev. Rice Rees, Sections IV and V.
Footnote 543:
Rhys: _Arthurian Legend_, pp. 261-262.
Footnote 544:
_Iolo MSS._, p. 474.
Footnote 545:
“The Welsh bards call Dwynwen the goddess, or saint of love and
affection, as the poets designate Venus.” _Iolo MSS._
Footnote 546:
Wirt Sikes: _British Goblins_, p. 350.
Footnote 547:
_Iolo MSS._, p. 523.
Footnote 548:
_The Faerie Queene_, Prologue to Book II.
Footnote 549:
_Ibid._, Book II, canto I, verse 6.
Footnote 550:
Published in _Y Greal_ (London, 1805), and is to be found quoted in
Rhys: _Arthurian Legend_, pp. 338, 339; also in Sikes: _British
Goblins_, pp. 7-8.
Footnote 551:
_A Relation of Apparitions of Spirits in the County of Monmouth and
the Principality of Wales._ Published at Newport, 1813.
Footnote 552:
Thistleton Dyer: _Folklore of Shakespeare_, p. 3.
Footnote 553:
_Ibid._, p. 4.
Footnote 554:
_Ibid._, p. 5.
Footnote 555:
Wirt Sikes: _British Goblins_, p. 12.
Footnote 556:
The _Brython_, Vol. I, p. 130.
Footnote 557:
Rhys: _Celtic Folklore_, pp. 171-172.
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SURVIVALS OF THE CELTIC
PAGANISM
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