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CELTIC FOLKLORE

J. RHtS

HENRY FROWDE, MA.

PUBLISHER TO THE UNIVERSITY OF OXFORD

LONDON, EDINBURGH, AND NEW YORK

CELTIC FOLKLORE

WELSH;.-A^NIi>:;iMANX

BY

JOHN RHYS; M.A.; H'LiTT.

HON. LL.D. OF THE UNIVfiRSltY OF EDINBURGH

PROFESSOR OF CELTIC

PRINCIPAL OF JESUS COLLEGE, OXFORD

VOLUME II

OXFORD

AT THE CLARENDON PRESS

2onVc£tr>:^thr.Ta£ET^^

Ojcfoxi)

PRINTED AT THK CLARENDON PRESS

BY HORACE HART, M.A. PRINTER TO THE UNIVERSITY

PROPERTY OF THE 3^g CITY OF NEW YOnK ij^

Triumphs of the Water-world

Une des legendes !es plus repandues en Bretagne est cclie'd'une pretendue ville d'ls, qui, a une 'epo'que inconnue, aurait ete eng4oAt;f par la men On montre, a divers endroiiS de ^a cote, remplacement.d-i; <;ette cite fabuleuse, et les pecheurs vous en' font d'etranges recits. Les jours de tempete, assurent-ils, on voit, dans leS creiix des vaguts. 'le- ublliniet des fleches de ses ^glises ; les jours de calif e, ';)p entend mpntei d^ I'abime le son de ses cloches, modulant I'hymne du jour.^ — Renan.

More than once in the last chapter was the subject of submersions and cataclysms brought before the reader, and it may be convenient to enumerate here the most remarkable cases, and to add one or two to their number, as well as to dwell at somewhat greater length on some instances which may be said to have found their way into Welsh literature. He has already been told of the outburst of the Glasfrj^n Lake (p. 367) and Ffynnon Gywer (p. 376), of ILyn ILech Owen (p. 379) and the Crymlyn (p. 191), also of the drowning of Cantre'r Gwaelod (p. 383); not to mention that one of my informants had something to say (p. 219) of the submergence of Caer Arianrhod, a rock now visible only at low water between Celynnog Fawr and Dinas Dintte, on the coast of Arfon. But, to put it briefly, it is an ancient belief in the Principality that its lakes generally have swallowed up habitations of men, as in the case of ILyn Syfadon (p. 73) and the Pool of Cor- wrion (p. 57). To these I now proceed to add other instances, to wit those of Bala Lake, Kenfig Pool,

RHYS D d

CEfSrmAL_RESERVE

402 CELTIC FOLKLORE [ch.

ILynclys, and Helig ab Glannog's territory including Traeth Lafan.

Perhaps it is best to begin with historical events, namely those implied in the encroachment of the sea and the sand on the. coast of Glamorganshire, from the Mumbles, in GoweV-jto the;* fnplith of the Ogmore, below Bridgend..* 'It 'is. belJeved'thaf formerly the shores of Swansea ■ Bay'' were from three 'to* 'fiye miles further out than the present strand, and "the oyster dredgers point to tba^t'part of the bay which they call the Green Grounds, while trawlers, hovering over these sunken meadows of the Grove Island, declare that they can sometimes sfife the foundation^ of the ancient home- steads overwhehj7jed by a terrific storm which raged some three centuries ago. The old people sometimes talk of an extensive forest called Coed Avian, ' Silver Wood,' stretching from the foreshore of the Mumbles to Kenfig Burrows, and there is a tradition of a long- lost bridle path used by many generations of Mansels, Mowbrays, and Talbots, from Penrice Castle to Margam Abbey. All this is said to be corroborated by the fishing up every now and then in Swansea Bay of stags' antlers, elks' horns, those of the wild ox, and wild boars' tusks, together with the remains of other ancient tenants of the submerged forest. Various references in the registers of Swansea and Aberavon mark succes- sive stages in the advance of the desolation from the latter part of the fifteenth century down. Among others a great sandstorm is mentioned, which overwhelmed the borough of Cynffig or Kenfig, and encroached on the coast generally : the series of catastrophes seems to have culminated in an inundation caused by a terrible tidal wave in the early part of the year 1607 \

' For most of my information on this subject I have to thank Mr. David Davies, editor of the South Wales Daily Post, pubhshed at Swansea.

vn] TRIUMPHS OF THE WATER-WORLD 403

To return to Kenfig, what remains of that old town is near the sea, and it is on all sides surrounded by hillocks of finely powdered sand and flanked by ridges of the same fringing the coast. The ruins of several old buildings half buried in the sand peep out of the ground, and in the immediate neighbourhood is Kenfig Pool, which is said to have a circumference of nearly two miles. When the pool formed itself I have not been able to discover : from such accounts as have come in my way I should gather that it is older than the growing spread of the sand, but the island now to be seen in it is artificial and of modern make ^. The story relating to the lake is given as follows in the volume of the lolo Manuscripts, p. 194, and the original, from which I translate, is crisp, compressed, and, as I fancy, in lolo's own words : —

' A plebeian was in love with Earl Clare's daughter : she would not have him as he was not wealthy. He took to the highway, and watched the agent of the lord of the dominion coming towards the castle from collecting his lord's money. He killed him, took the money, and produced the coin, and the lady married him. A splendid banquet was held : the best men of the country were invited, and they made as merry as possible. On the second night the marriage was con- summated, and when happiest one heard a voice : all ear one listened and caught the words, " Vengeance comes, vengeance comes, vengeance comes," three times. One asked, " When ? " " In the ninth generation (dch)," said the voice. " No reason for us to fear," said the married pair ; " we shall be under the mould long before." They lived on, however, and a goresgynnyd^,

' 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 Archaologia Cambrensis for 1898: see more especially the maps at pp. 138-42.

D d 2

404

CELTIC FOLKLORE [ch.

that is to say, a descendant of the sixth direct genera- tion, was born to them, also to the murdered man a gor- esgyTinydlwho, seeing that the time fixed was come, visited Kenfig. This was a discreet youth of gentle manners, and he looked at the city and its splendour, and noted that nobody owned a furrow or a chamber there except the offspring of the murderer: he and his wife were still living. At cockcrow he heard a cry, "Vengeance is come, is come, is come." It is asked, "On whom?" and answered, " On him who murdered my father of the ninth dch." He rises in terror : he goes towards the city ; but there is nothing to see save a large lake with three chimney tops above the surface emitting smoke that formed a stinking . . . ^ On the face of the waters the gloves of the murdered man float to the young man's feet : he picks them up, and sees on them the murdered man's name and arms ; and he hears at dawn of day the sound of praise to God rendered by myriads joining in heavenly music. And so the story ends.'

On this coast is another piece of water in point, namely Crymlyn, or ' Crumlin Pool,' now locally called the Bog. It appears also to have been sometimes called Pwtt Cynan, after the name of a son of Rhys ab Tewdwr, who, in his flight after his father's defeat on Hirwaen Wrgan, was drowned in its waters^. It lies

' 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.

^ See the Book of Aberpergwm, printed as Brut y Tywysogion, in the Myvy- rian Archaiology, ii. 524 ; also Morgan's Aniiquarian 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 oi Brut y Tywysogion, but comes, as the author kindly informs me, from a volume entitled ' Brut y Tywysogion, the Gwcntian Chronicle of Caradoc of ILancarvan, with a trans- lation by the late Aneurin Owen, and printed for the Cambrian Archaeo- logical Association, 1863 ' : see pp. 70-1.

vii] TRIUMPHS OF THE WATER-WORLD 405

on Lord Jersey's estate, at a distance of about one mile east of the mouth of the Tawe, and about a quarter of a mile from high-water mark, from which it is separated by a strip of ground known in the neighbourhood as Crymlyn Burrows. The name Crymlyn means Crooked Lake, which, I am told, describes the shape of this piece of water. When the bog becomes a pool it encloses an island consisting of a little rocky hillock showing no trace of piles, or walling, or any other handiwork of man ^. The story about this pool also is that it covers a town buried beneath its waters. Mr. Wirt Sikes' reference to it has already been mentioned, and I have it on the evidence of a native of the immediate neighbourhood, that he has often heard his father and grandfather talk about the submerged town. Add to this that Cadrawd, to whom I have had already (pp. 23, 376) to acknowledge my indebtedness, speaks in the columns of the South Wales Daily News for February 15, 1899, of Crymlyn as follows : —

* It was said by the old people that on the site of this bog once stood the old town of Swansea, and that in clear and calm weather the chimneys and even the church steeple could be seen at the bottom of the lake, and in the loneliness of the night the bells were often heard ringing in the lake. It was also said that should any person happen to stand with his face towards the lake when the wind is blowing across the lake, and if any of the spray of that water should touch his clothes, it would be only with the greatest difficulty he could save himself from being attracted or sucked into the water. The lake was at one time much larger than at present. The efforts made to drain it have drawn a good deal of the water from it, but only to convert it

^ For this also I have to thank Mr. Herbert James, who recently inspected the spot with Mr. Glascodine of Swansea.

4o6 CELTIC FOLKLORE [ch.

into a bog, which no one can venture to cross except in exceptionally dry seasons or hard frost.'

On this I wish to remark in passing, that, while common sense would lead one to suppose that the wind blowing across the water would help the man facing it to get away whenever he chose, the reasoning here is of another order, one characteristic in fact of the ways and means of sympathetic magic. For specimens in point the reader may be conveniently referred to page 360, where he may compare the words quoted from Mr. Hartland, especially as to the use there mentioned of stones or pellets thrown from one's hands. In the case of Crymlyn, the wind blowing off the face of the water into the onlooker's face and carrying with it some of the water in the form of spray which wets his clothes, howsoever little, was evidently regarded as establishing a link of connexion between him and the body of the water — or shall I say rather, between him and the divinity of the water?— and that this link was believed to be so strong that it required the man's utmost effort to break it and escape being drawn in and drowned like Cynan. The statement, supremely silly as it reads, is no modern invention ; for one finds that Nennius — or somebody else — reasoned in precisely the same way, except that for a single onlooker he sub- stitutes a whole army of men and horses, and that he points the antithesis by distinctly stating, that if they kept their backs turned to the fascinating flood they would be out of danger. The conditions which he had in view were, doubtless, that the men should face the water and have their clothing more or less wetted by the spray from it. The passage (§ 69) to which I refer is in the Mirahilia, and Geoffrey of Monmouth is found to repeat it in a somewhat better style of Latin (ix. 7) : the following is the Nennian version : —

vii] TRIUMPHS OF THE WATER-WORLD 407

Aliud miraculum est, id est Oper Linn Liguan. Ostium flmninis illius Jlvtit in Sabrina et quando Sabrina inun- datur ad sissam, et mare inundatur similiter in ostio supra dicti Jluminis et in stagno ostii recipitur in modmn voraginis et mare non vadit sursum et est litus juxta flumen et quamdiu Sabrina inundatur ad sissam, istud litus non tegitur et quando recedit mare et Sabrina, tunc Stag- num Liuan eructat omne quod devoravit de mari et litus istud tegitur et instar montis in una unda eructat et rumpit. Et sifuerit exercitus totius regionis, in qua est, et direxerit faciem contra undam, et exercitum trahit unda per vim hu- more repletis vestibus et equi similiter trahuntur. Siautem exercitus terga versus fuerit contra earn, non nocet ei unda.

* There is another wonder, to wit Aber ILyn ILiwan. The water from the mouth of that river flows into the Severn, and when the Severn is in flood up to its banks, and when the sea is also in flood at the mouth of the above-named river and is sucked in Hke a whirl- pool into the pool of the Aber, the sea does not go on rising : it leaves a margin of beach by the side of the river, and all the time the Severn is in flood up to its bank, that beach is not covered. And when the sea and the Severn ebb, then ILyn ILiwan brings up all it had swallowed from the sea, and that beach is covered while ILyn ILiwan discharges its contents m one mountain-like wave and vomits forth. Now if the army of the whole district in which this wonder is, were to be present with the men facing the wave, the force of it would, once their clothes are drenched by the spray, draw them in, and their horses would likewise be drawn. But if the men should have their backs turned towards the water, the wave would not harm them \'

' 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.

4o8 CELTIC FOLKLORE [ch.

One story about the formation of Bala Lake, or tt^yn Tegid^ as it is called in Welsh, has been given at p. 376 : here is another which I translate from a version in Hugh Humphreys' Lyfr Gwybodaefh Gyffredinol (Car- narvon), second series, vol. i, no. 2, p. i. I may premise that the contributor, whose name is not given, betrays a sort of literary ambition which has led him to relate the story in a confused fashion ; and among other things he uses the word edifeirwch^ ' repentance,' throughout, instead of dial, 'vengeance.' With that correction it runs somewhat as follows : — Tradition relates that Bala Lake is but the watery tomb of the palaces of iniquity ; and that some old boatmen can on quiet moonlight nights in harvest see towers in ruins at the bottom of its waters, and also hear at times a feeble voice saying, Dial a daw, dial a daw, * Vengeance will come ' ; and another voice inquiring. Pa bryd y daw, ' When will it come ? ' Then the first voice answers, Yn y dryded genhedlaeth, ' In the third generation.' Those voices were but a recollection over oblivion, for in one of those palaces lived in days of yore an oppres- sive and cruel prince, corresponding to the well-known description of one of whom it is said, ' Whom he would he slew ; and whom he would he kept alive.' The oppression and cruelty practised by him on the poor farmers were notorious far and near. This prince, while enjoying the morning breezes of summer in his garden, used frequently to hear a voice saying, 'Ven- geance will come.' But he always laughed the threat away with reckless contempt. One night a poor harper

' Supposed to be so called after a certain Tegid Foel, or ' Tegid the Bald,' of Penttyn : the name Tegid is the phonetic spelling of what might be ex- pected in writing as Tegyd — it is the Latin Tacitus borrowed, and comes with other Latin names in Pedigree L of the Cuneda dynasty ; see the Cymmrodor, xi. 170. In point of spelling one may compare Idris for what might be ex- pected written Idrys, of the same pronunciation, for an earlier ludrys or ludris.

VII] TRIUMPHS OF THE WATER-WORLD 409

from the neighbouring hills was ordered to come to the prince's palace. On his way the harper was told that there was great rejoicing at the palace at the birth of the first child of the prince's son. When he had reached the palace the harper was astonished at the number of the guests, including among them noble lords, princes, and princesses : never before had he seen such splendour at any feast. When he had begun playing the gentlemen and ladies dancing presented a superb appearance. So the mirth and wine abounded, nor did he love playing for them any more than they loved dancing to the music of his harp. But about midnight, when there was an interval in the dancing, and the old harper had been left alone in a corner, he suddenly heard a voice singing in a sort of a whisper in his ear, 'Vengeance, vengeance! ' He turned at once, and saw a little bird hovering above him and beckoning him, as it were, to follow him. He followed the bird as fast as he could, but after getting outside the palace he began to hesitate. But the bird continued to invite him on, and to sing in a plaintive and mournful voice the word 'Vengeance, vengeance!' The old harper was afraid of refusing to follow, and so they went on over bogs and through thickets, whilst the bird was all the time hovering in front of him and leading him along the easiest and safest paths. But if he stopped for a moment the same mournful note of ' Vengeance, vengeance ! ' would be sung to him in a more and more plaintive and heartbreaking fashion. They had by this time reached the top of the hill, a considerable distance from the palace. As the old harper felt rather fatigued and weary, he ventured once more to stop and rest, but he heard the bird's warning voice no more. He listened, but he heard nothing save the murmuring of the little burn hard by. He now began to think how foolish he

4IO CELTIC FOLKLORE [ch.

had been to allow himself to be led away from the feast at the palace : he turned back in order to be there in time for the next dance. As he wandered on the hill he lost his way, and found himself forced to await the break of day. In the morning, as he turned his eyes in the direction of the palace, he could see no trace of it : the whole tract below was one calm, large lake, with his harp floating on the face of the waters.

Next comes the story of ILynclys Pool in the neigh- bourhood of Oswestry. That piece of water is said to be of extraordinary depth, and its name means the ' swallowed court.' The village of ILynclys is called after it, and the legend concerning the pool is preserved in verses printed among the compositions of the local poet, John F. M. Dovaston, who published his works in 1825. The first stanza runs thus : —

Clerk Willin he sat at king Alaric's board,

And a cunning clerk was he ; For he'd lived in the land of Oxenford

With the sons of Grammarie.

How much exactly of the poem comes from Dovaston's own muse, and how much comes from the legend, I cannot tell. Take for instance the king's name, this I should say is not derived from the story ; but as to the name of the clerk, that possibly is, for the poet bases it on Croes- Willin, the Welsh form of which has been given me as Croes- Wylan, that is Wylan's Cross, the name of the base of what is supposed to have been an old cross, a little way out of Oswestry on the north side ; and I have been told that there is a farm in the same neighbourhood called Tre' Wylan, 'Wylan's Stead.' To return to the legend, Alaric's queen was endowed with youth and beauty, but the king was not happy ; and when he had lived with her nine years he told Clerk Willin how he first met her when he was

vn] TRIUMPHS OF THE WATER-WORLD 411

hunting 'fair Blodwell's rocks among.' He married her on the condition that she should be allowed to leave him one night in every seven, and this she did without his once knowing whither she went on the night of her absence. Clerk Willin promised to restore peace to the king if he would resign the queen to him, and a tithe annually of his cattle and of the wine in his cellar to him and the monks of the White Minster. The king consented, and the wily clerk hurried away with his book late at night to the rocks by the Giant's Grave, where there was an ogo' or cave which was sup- posed to lead down to Faery. While the queen was inside the cave, he began his spells and made it irrevo- cable that she should be his, aifd that his fare should be what fed on the king's meadow and what flowed in his cellar. When the clerk's potent spells forced the queen to meet him to consummate his bargain with the king, what should he behold but a grim ogress, who told him that their spells had clashed. She explained to him how she had been the king's wife for thirty years, and how the king began to be tired of her wrinkles and old age. Then, on condition of returning to the Ogo to be an ogress one night in seven, she was given youth and beauty again, with which she attracted the king anew. In fact, she had promised him happiness

Till within his hall the flag-reeds tall And the long green rushes grow.

The ogress continued in words which made the clerk see how completely he had been caught in his own net :

Then take thy bride to thy cloistered bed,

As by oath and spell decreed, And nought be thy fare but the pike and the dare,

And the water in which they feed.

The clerk had succeeded in restoring peace at the

412 CELTIC FOLKLORE [ch.

king's banqueting board, but it was the peace of the dead ;

For down went the king, and his palace and all,

And the waters now o'er it flow, And already in his hall do the flag-reeds tall

And the long green rushes grow.

But the visitor will, Dovaston says, find Willin's peace relieved by the stories which the villagers have to tell of that wily clerk, of Croes-Willin, and of 'the cave called the Grim Ogo ' ; not to mention that when the lake is clear, they will show you the towers of the palace below, the ILynclys, which the Brython of ages gone by believed to be there.

We now come to a different story about this pool, namely, one which has fieen preserved in Latin by the historian Humfrey Lhuyd, or Humphrey ILwyd, to the following effect : —

' After the description of Gwynedh, let vs now come to Powys, the seconde kyngedome of Wales, which in the time of German Altisiodorensis [St. Germanus of Auxerre], which preached sometime there, agaynst Pelagius Heresie : was of power, as is gathered out of his life. The kynge wherof, as^ is there read, bycause he refused to heare that good man : by the secret and terrible iudgement of God, with his Palace, and all his householde : was swallowed vp into the bowels of the Earth, in that place, whereas, not farre from Oswastry, is now a standyng water, of an vnknowne depth, called LJmnclys, that is to say : the deuouryng of the Palace. And there are many Churches founde in the same Province, dedicated to the name of German ^'

' The translation was made by Thomas Twyne, and published in 1573 under the title of The Breniary of Britayne, where the passage here given occurs, on fol. 69''. The original was entitled Comntentarioli BritanniccB Descripiionis Fragmentum, published at Cologne in 1572. The original of our passage, fol. 57", has Guynedhia and Lhinclis. The stem tiwnc oftiyncaf.

vii] TRIUMPHS OF THE WATER-WORLD 413

I have not succeeded in finding the story in any of the hves of St. Germanus, but Nennius, § 32, mentions a certain Benli, whom he describes as rex iniquus atque tyranmts valde, who, after refusing to admit St. Germanus and his following into his city, was destroyed with all his courtiers, not by water, however, but by fire from heaven. But the name Benh, in modern Welsh spell- ing Bentti \ points to the Moel Famau range of moun- tains, one of which is known as Moel Fentti, between Ruthin and Mold, rather than to any place near Oswestry. In any case there is no reason to suppose that this story with its Christian and ethical motive is anything like so old as the substratum of Dovaston's verses.

The only version known to me in the Welsh language of the ILynclys legend is to be found printed in the Brython for 1863, p. 338, and it may be summarized as follows : — The ILynclys family were notorious for their riotous living, and at their feasts a voice used to be heard proclaiming, ' Vengeance is coming, coming,' but nobody took it much to heart. However, one day a reckless maid asked the voice, ' When ? ' The prompt reply was to the effect that it was in the sixth generation : the voice was heard no more. So one night, when the sixth heir in descent from the time of the warning last heard was giving a great drinking feast, and music had been vigorously contributing to the entertainment of host and guest, the harper went outside for a breath of

' 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 ILwyd's vorago Palatij instead of Palatium voratum.

* For other occurrences of the name, see the Black Book, fol. 35* , 52*, and Morris' Celfic Remains, where, s. v. Bentii, the Welsh name of Bardsey, to wit, Ynys Entti, is treated by somebody, doubtless rightly, as a shortening of Ynys Fentti.

414

CELTIC FOLKLORE [ch.

air ; but when he turned to come back, lo and behold ! the whole court had disappeared. Its place was occu- pied by a quiet piece of water, on whose waves he saw his harp floating, nothing more.

Here must, lastly, be added one more legend of sub- mergence, namely, that supposed to have taken place some time or other on the north coast of Carnarvonshire. In the Brython for 1863, pp. 393-4, we have what pur- ports to be a quotation from Owen Jones' Aberconwy a'i Chyffiniau, 'Conway and its Environs,' a work which I have not been able to find. Here one reads of a tract of country supposed to have once extended from the Gogarth ^ ' the Great Orme,' to Bangor, and from ILanfair Fechan to Ynys Seiriol, ' Priestholme or Puffin Island/ and of its belonging to a wicked prince named Helig ab Glannawc or Glannog^, from whom it was called Tyno Helig, ' Helig's Hollow.' Tradition, the writer says, fixes the spot where the court stood about halfway between Penmaen Mawr and Pen y Gogarth, * the Great Orme's Head,' over against Trwyn yr Wylfa ; and the story relates that here a calamity had been foretold four generations before it came, namely as the vengeance of Heaven on Helig ab Glannog for his nefarious impiety. As that ancient prince rode through his fertile heritage one day at the approach of night, he heard the voice of an invisible follower warning him that ' Vengeance is coming, coming.' The wicked old prince once asked excitedly, * When ? ' The answer was, * In the time of thy grand- children, great-grandchildren, and their children.' Per-

* 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. 70'', 73'', 75*, 75'', 76", 77*.

' This is sometimes given as Glannach, which looks like the Goidelic form of the name : witness GiraJdus' Enislannach in his Itin. Kambria, ii. 7 (p. 131 ).

vii] TRIUMPHS OF THE WATER-WORLD 415

adventure Helig calmed himself with the thought, that, if such a thing came, it would not happen in his lifetime. But on the occasion of a great feast held at the court, and when the family down to the fifth generation were present taking part in the festivities, one of the servants noticed, when visiting the mead cellar to draw more drink, that water was forcing its way in. He had only time to warn the harper of the danger he was in, when all the others, in the midst of their intoxication, were overwhelmed by the flood.'

These inundation legends have many points of simi- larity among themselves : thus in those of ILynclys, Syfadon, ILyn Tegid, and Tyno Helig, though they have a ring of austerity about them, the harper is a favoured man, who always escapes when the banqueters are all involved in the catastrophe. The story, more- over, usually treats the submerged habitations as having sunk intact, so that the ancient spires and church towers may still at times be seen : nay the chimes of their bells may be heard by those who have ears for such music. In some cases there may have been, underlying the legend, a trace of fact such as has been indicated to me by Mr. Owen M, Edwards, of Lincoln College, in regard to Bala Lake. When the surface of that water, he says, is covered with broken ice, and a south-westerly wind is blowing, the mass of fragments is driven towards the north-eastern end near the town of Bala ; and he has observed that the friction produces a somewhat metallic noise which a quick imagination may convert into something like a distant ringing of bells. Perhaps the most remarkable instance remains to be mentioned : I refer to Cantre'r Gwaelod, as the submerged country of Gwydno Garanhir is termed, see p. 382 above. To one portion of his fabled realm the nearest actual centres of population are Aberdovey and Borth on

4i6 CELTIC FOLKLORE [ch.

either side of the estuary of the Dovey. / r of

Jesus College I had business in 1892 in ttie uoiden Valley of Herefordshire, and I stayed a day or two at Dorstone enjoying the hospitality of the rectory, and learning interesting facts from the rector, Mr. Prosser Powell, and from Mrs. Powell in particular, as to the folklore of the parish, which is still in several respects very Welsh, Mrs. Powell, however, did not confine herself to Dorstone or the Dore Valley, for she told me as follows : — ' I was at Aberdovey in 1852, and I dis- tinctly remember that my childish imagination was much excited by the legend of the city beneath the sea, and the bells which I was told might be heard at night. I used to lie awake trying, but in vain, to catch the echoes of the chime. I was only seven years old, and cannot remember who told me the story, though I have never forgotten it.' Mrs. Powell added that she has since heard it said, that at a certain stage of the tide at the mouth of the Dovey, the wa^^ in which the waves move the pebbles makes them produce a sortof jinghng noise which has been fancied to be the echo of distant bells ringing.

These clues appeared too good to be dropped at once, and the result of further inquiries led Mrs. Powell afterwards to refer me to The Monthly Packet for the year 1859, where I found an article headed ' Aberdovey Legends,' and signed M. B., the initials, Mrs. Powell thought, of Miss Bramston of Winchester. The writer gives a sketch of the story of the country overflowed by the neighbouring portion of Cardigan Bay, mention- ing, p. 645, that once on a time there were great cities on the banks of the Dovey and the Disynni, * Cities with marble wharfs,' she says, ' busy factories, and churches whose towers resounded with beautiful peals and chimes of bells.' She goes on to say that ' Mausna

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is the name of the city on the Dovey ; its eastern suburb was at the sand-bank now called Borth, its western stretched far out into the sea.' What the name Mausna may be I have no idea, unless it is the result of some confusion with that of the great turbary behind Borth, namely Mochno, or Cors Fochno, ' Bog of Mochno.' The name Borth stands for Y Borth, 'the Harbour,' which, more adequately described, was once Porfk Wydno, 'Gwydno's Harbour.' The writer, however, goes on with the story of the wicked prince, who left open the sluices of the sea-wall pro- tecting his country and its capital: we read on as follows :— ' But though the sea will not give back that fair city to light and air, it is keeping it as a trust but for a time, and even now sometimes, though very rarely, eyes gazing down through the green waters can see not only the fluted glistering sand dotted here and there with shells and tufts of waving sea-weed, but the wide streets and costly buildings of that now silent city. Yet not always silent, for now and then will come chimes and peals of bells, sometimes near, sometimes distant, sounding low and sweet hke a call to prayer, or as rejoicing for a victory. Even by day these tones arise, but more often they are heard in the long twilight evenings, or by night. English ears have sometimes heard these sounds even before they knew the tale, and fancied that they must come from some church among the hills, or on the other side of the water, but no such church is there to give the call ; the sound and its connexion is so pleasant, that one does not care to break the spell by seeking for the origin of the legend, as in the idler tales with which that neighbourhood abounds.'

The dream about 'the wide streets and costly buildings of that now silent city ' seems to have its counterpart on

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4i8 CELTIC FOLKLORE [ch.

the western coast of Erin — somewhere, let us say, off the cHffs of Moher \ in County Clare — witness Gerald Griffin's lines, to which a passing allusion has already been made, p. 205 : —

A story I heard on the cliffs of the West, That oft, through the breakers dividing,

A city is seen on the ocean's wild breast, In turreted majesty riding.

But brief is the glimpse of that phantom so bright : Soon close the white waters to screen it.

The allusion to the submarine chimes would make it unpardonable to pass by unnoticed the well-known Welsh air called Clychau Aberdyft, ' The Bells of Aber- dovey,' which I have always suspected of taking its name from fairy bells'^. This popular tune is of unknown origin, and the words to which it is usually sung make the bells say tm, dau, in, pedwar, pump, chwech, ' one, two, three, four, five, six ' ; and I have heard a charming Welsh vocalist putting on saifh, * seven,' in her rendering of the song. This is not to be wondered at, as her instincts must have rebelled against such a commonplace number as six in a song redolent of old-world sentiment. But our fairy bells ought to have stopped at five : this would seem to have been forgotten when the melody and the present words were wedded together. At any rate our stories seem to suggest that fairy counting did not go be3'^ond the fingering of one hand. The only Welsh fairy repre- sented counting is made to do it all by fives : she counts un, dau, tri, pedwar, pump ; un, dau, tri, pedwar, pump, as hard as her tongue can go. For on the number of

' See Choice Notes, p. 92, and Gerald Gu&n's Poetical and Dramatic IVorks, p. 106.

^ 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 Cyfaiti yr Aehvyd (or 1892, p. 184.

vii] TRIUMPHS OF THE WATER-WORLD 419

times she can repeat the five numerals at a single breath depends the number of the live stock of each kind, which are to form her dowry : see p. 8 above, and as to music in fairy tales, see pp. 202, 206, 292.

Now that a number of our inundation stories have been passed in review in this and the previous chapter, some room may be given to the question of their original form. They separate themselves, as it will have been seen, into at least two groups : (i) those in which the cause of the catastrophe is ethical, the punish- ment of the wicked and dissolute ; and (2) those in which no very distinct suggestion of the kind is made. It is needless to say that everything points to the comparative lateness of the fully developed ethical motive ; and we are not forced to rest content with this theoretical distinction, for in more than one of the instances we have the two kinds of story. In the case of ILyn Tegid, the less known and presumably the older story connects the formation of the lake with the neglect to keep the stone door of the well shut, while the more popular story makes the catastrophe a punishment for wicked and riotous living : compare pp. 377, 408, above. So with the older story of Cantre'r Gwaelod, on which we found the later one of the tipsy Seithennin as it were grafted, P- 395- The keeping of the wxll shut in the former case, as also in that of Ffynnon Gywer, was a precaution, but the neglect of it was not the cause of the ensuing misfortune. Even if we had stories like the Irish ones, which make the sacred well burst forth in pursuit of the intruder who has gazed into its depths, it would by no means be of a piece with the punishment of riotous and lawless living. Our comparison should rather be with the story of the Curse of Pantannas, where a man incurred the wrath of the fairies by ploughing up ground which they wished to retain as a green sward ;

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but the threatened vengeance for that act of culture did not come to pass for a century, till the time of one, in fact, who is not charged with having done anything to deserve it. The ethics of that legend are, it is clear, not easy to discover, and in our inundation stories one may trace stages of development from a similarly low level. The case may be represented thus : a divinity is offended by a man, and for some reason or other the former wreaks his vengeance, not on the offender, but on his descendants. This minimum granted, it is easy to see, that in time the popular conscience would fail to rest satisfied with the cruel idea of a jealous divinity visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children. One may accordingly distinguish the following stages : —

1. The legend lays it down as a fact that the father was very wicked.

2. It makes his descendants also wicked like him.

3. It represents the same punishment overtaking father and sons, ancestor and descendants.

4. The simplest way to secure this kind of equal justice was, no doubt, to let the offending ancestors live on to see their descendants of the generation for whose time the vengeance had been fixed, and to let them be swept away with them in one and the same cataclysm, as in the Welsh versions of the Syfadon and Kenfig legends, possibly also in those of ILyn Tegid and Tyno Helig, which are not explicit on this point.

Let us for a moment examine the indications of the time to which the vengeance is put off. In the case of the landed families of ancient Wales, every member of them <