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This volume collects and analyzes Welsh and Manx traditions about watery catastrophes and submerged settlements, assembling local tales, topographical evidence, and historical notices. It recounts legends of lakes and coastal lands swallowed by the sea, examines reports of visible chimneys, drowned towns, and marine-borne relics, and discusses practices and explanations such as sympathetic magic that shape belief in attractions into water. Comparative notes tie field reports, manuscript sources, and register entries to patterns of coastal erosion and folklore transmission, blending narrative accounts with folkloristic interpretation throughout.
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.