1 This chapter, except where a later date is suggested, may be regarded as written in the summer of 1883. ↑

2 Trefriw means the town of the slope or hillside, and stands for Tref y Riw, not tref y Rhiw, which would have yielded Treffriw, for there is a tendency in Gwyneđ to make the mutation after the definite article conform to the general rule, and to say y law, ‘the hand,’ and y raw, ‘the spade,’ instead of what would be in books y ỻaw and y rhaw from yr ỻaw and yr rhaw. ↑

3 Why the writer spells the name Criccieth in this way I cannot tell, except that he was more or less under the influence of the more intelligible spelling Crugcaith, as where Lewis Glyn Cothi. I. xxiv, sang

This spelling postulates the interpretation Crug-Caith, earlier Crug y Ceith, ‘the mound or barrow of the captives,’ in reference to some forgotten interment; but when the accent receded to the first syllable the second was slurred almost out of recognition, so that Crug-ceith, or Cruc-ceith, became Crúceth, whence Crúci̭eth and Crici̭eth. The Bruts have Crugyeith the only time it occurs, and the Record of Carnarvon (several times) Krukyth. ↑

4 Out of excessive fondness for our Arthur English people translate this name into Arthur’s Seat instead of Idris’ Seat; but Idris was also somebody: he was a giant with a liking for the study of the stars. But let that be: I wish to say a word concerning his name: Idris may be explained as meaning ‘War-champion,’ or the like; and, phonologically speaking, it comes from Iuđ-rys, which was made successively into Id-rys, Idris. The syllable i̭uđ meant battle or fight, and it undergoes a variety of forms in Welsh names. Thus before n, r, l, and w, it becomes id, as in Idnerth, Idloes, and Idwal, while Iuđ-hael yields Ithel, whence Ab Ithel, anglicized Bethel. At the end, however, it is yđ or uđ, as in Gruffuđ or Gruffyđ, from Old Welsh Grippi̭uđ, and Mareduđ or Meredyđ for an older Marget-i̭uđ. By itself it is possibly the word which the poets write uđ, and understand to mean lord; but if these forms are related, it must have originally meant rather a fighter, soldier, or champion. ↑

5 There is a special similarity between this and an Anglesey story given by Howells, p. 138: it consists in the sequence of seeing the fairies dance and finding money left by them. Why was the money left? ↑

6 It was so called by the poet D. ab Gwilym, cxcii. 12, when he sang:

 ↑

7 This is commonly pronounced ‘Y Gath Dorwen,’ but the people of the neighbourhood wish to explain away a farm name which could, strangely enough, only mean ‘the white-bellied cat’; but y Garth Dorwen, ‘the white-bellied garth or hill,’ is not a very likely name either. ↑

8 The hiring time in Wales is the beginning of winter and of summer; or, as one would say in Welsh, at the Calends of Winter and the Calends of May respectively. In North Cardiganshire the great hiring fair was held at the former date when I was a boy, and so, as I learn from my wife, it was in Carnarvonshire. ↑

9 In a Cornish story mentioned in Choice Notes, p. 77, we have, instead of ointment, simply soap. See also Mrs. Bray’s Banks of the Tamar, pp. 174–7, where she alludes to H. Cornelius Agrippa’s statement how such ointment used to be made—the reference must, I think, be to his book De Occulta Philosophia Libri III (Paris, 1567), i. 45 (pp. 81–2). ↑

10 See the Mabinogion, pp. 1–2; Evans’ Facsimile of the Black Book of Carmarthen, fol. 49^b–50^a; Rhys’ Arthurian Legend, pp. 155–8; Edmund Jones’ Spirits in the County of Monmouth, pp. 39, 71, 82; and in this volume, pp. 143, 203, above. I may mention that the Cornish also have had their Cwn Annwn, though the name is a different one, to wit in the phrase, ‘the Devil and his Dandy-dogs’: see Choice Notes, pp. 78–80. ↑

11 As it stands now this would be unmutated Césel Gýfarch, ‘Cyfarch’s Nook,’ but there never was such a name. There was, however, Elgýfarch or Aelgýfarch and Rhygýfarch, and in such a combination as Césel Elgýfarch there would be every temptation to drop one unaccented el. ↑

12 Owing to some oversight he has ‘a clean or a dirty cow’ instead of cow-yard or cow-house, as I understand it. ↑

13 Cwta makes cota in the feminine in North Cardiganshire; the word is nevertheless only the English cutty borrowed. Du, ‘black,’ has corresponding to it in Irish, dubh. So the Welsh word seems to have passed through the stages dyv, dyw, before yw was contracted into û, which was formerly pronounced like French û, as proved by the grammar already mentioned (p. 22) of J. D. Rhys, published in London in 1592; see p. 33, to which my attention has been called by Prof. J. Morris Jones. In Old or pre-Norman Welsh m did duty for m and v, so one detects dyv as dim in a woman’s name Penardim, ‘she of the very black head’; there was also a Penarwen, ‘she of the very blonde head.’ The look of Penardim having baffled the redactor of the Branwen, he left the spelling unchanged: see the (Oxford) Mabinogion, p. 26. The same sort of change which produced du has produced cnu, ‘a fleece,’ as compared with cneifio, ‘to fleece’; ỻuarth, ‘a kitchen garden,’ as compared with its Irish equivalent lubhghort. Compare also Rhiwabon, locally pronounced Rhuabon, and Rhiwaỻon, occurring sometimes as Rhuaỻon. But the most notable rôle of this phonetic process is exemplified by the verbal nouns ending in u, such as caru, ‘to love,’ credu, ‘to believe,’ tyngu, ‘to swear,’ in which the u corresponds to an m termination in Old Irish, as in sechem, ‘to follow,’ cretem, ‘belief,’ sessam or sessom, ‘to stand.’ ↑

14 In medieval Welsh poetry this name was still a dissyllable; but now it is pronounced Ỻŷn, in conformity with the habit of the Gwyndodeg, which makes into porfŷđ what is written porfeyđ, ‘pastures,’ and pronounced porféiđ in North Cardiganshire. So in the Ỻeyn name Sarn Fyỻteyrn the second vocable represents Maelteyrn, in the Record of Carnarvon (p. 38) Mayltern̄: it is now sounded Myỻtyrn with the second y short and accented. Ỻeyn is a plural of the people (genitive Ỻaën in Porth Dinỻaën), used as a singular of their country, like Cymru = Cymry, and Prydyn. The singular is ỻain, ‘a spear,’ in the Book of Aneurin: see Skene, ii. 64, 88, 92. ↑

15 It is also called dolur byr, or the ‘short disease’; I believe I have been told that it is the disease known to ‘the vet.’ as anthrax. ↑

16 Here the writer seems to have been puzzled by the mh of Amheirchion, and to have argued back to a radical form Parch; but he was on the wrong tack—Amheirchion comes from Ap-Meirchion, where the p helped to make the m a surd, which, with the syllabic accent on the succeeding vowel, became fixed as mh, while the p disappeared by assimilation. We have, later on, a similar instance in Owen y Mhaxen for Owen Amhacsen = O. ap Macsen. Another instance will be found at the opening of the Mabinogi of Branwen, to wit, in the word prynhawngweith, ‘once on an afternoon,’ from prynhawn, ‘afternoon,’ for which our dictionaries substitute prydnawn, with the accent on the ultima, though D. ab Gwilym used pyrnhawn, as in poem xl. 30. But the ordinary pronunciation continues to be prynháwn or pyrnháwn, sometimes reduced in Gwyneđ to pnawn. Let me add an instance which has reached me since writing the above: In the Archæologia Cambrensis for 1899, pp. 325–6, we have the pedigree of the Ameridiths from the Visitation of Devonshire in 1620: in the course of it one finds that Iuan ap Merydeth has a son Thomas Amerideth, who, knowing probably no Welsh, took to writing his patronymic more nearly as it was pronounced. The line is brought down to Ames Amerideth, who was created baronet in 1639. Amerideth of course = Ap Meredyđ, and the present member of the family who writes to the Archæologia Cambrensis spells his patronymic more correctly, Ameridith; but if it had survived in Wales it might have been Amheredyđ. For an older instance than any of these see the Book of Taliessin, poem xlix (= Skene, ii. 204), where one reads of Beli Amhanogan, ‘B. ab Mynogan.’ ↑

17 This is pronounced Rhiwan, though probably made up of Rhiw-wen, for it is the tendency of the Gwyndodeg to convert e and ai of the unaccented ultima into a, and so with e in Glamorgan; see such instances as Cornwan and casag, p. 29 above. It is possibly a tendency inherited from Goidelic, as Irish is found to proceed in the same way. ↑

18 I may mention that some of the Francises of Anglesey are supposed to be descendants of Frazers, who changed their name on finding refuge in the island in the time of the troubles which brought there the ancestor of the Frazer who, from time to time, claims to be the rightful head of the Lovat family. ↑

19 According to old Welsh orthography this would be written Moudin, and in the book Welsh of the present day it would have to become Meuđin. Restored, however, to the level of Gallo-Roman names, it would be Mogodunum or Magodunum. The place is known as Casteỻ Moeđin, and includes within it the end of a hill about halfway between Ỻannarth and Lampeter. ↑

20 For other mentions of the colours of fairy dress see pp. 44, 139 above, where red prevails, and contrast the Lake Lady of Ỻyn Barfog clad in green, p. 145. ↑

21 This name means the Bridge of the Blessed Ford, but how the ford came to be so called I know not. The word bendigaid, ‘blessed,’ comes from the Latin verb benedico, ‘I bless,’ and should, but for the objection to nđ in book Welsh, be benđigaid, which, in fact, it is approximately in the northern part of the county, where it is colloquially sounded Pont Rhyd Fynđiged, Fyđiged, or even Fđiged, also Pont Rhyd m̥điged, which represents the result of the unmutated form Bđiged coming directly after the d of rhyd. Somewhat the same is the case with the name of the herb Dail y Fendigaid, literally ‘the Leaves of the Blessed’ (in the feminine singular without any further indication of the noun to be supplied). This name means, I find, ‘hypericum androsæmum, tutsan,’ and in North Cardiganshire we call it Dail y Fynđiged or Fđiged, but in Carnarvonshire the adjective is made to qualify dail, so that it sounds Dail Byđigad or Bđigad, ‘Blessed Leaves.’ ↑

22 I am far from certain what y nos, ‘the night,’ may mean in such names as this and Craig y Nos, ‘the Rock of the Night’ (p. 254 above), to which perhaps might be added such an instance as Blaen Nos, ‘the Point of (the?) Night,’ in the neighbourhood of Ỻandovery, in Carmarthenshire. Can the allusion be merely to thickly overshadowed spots where the darkness of night might be said to lurk in defiance of the light of day? I have never visited the places in point, and leading questions addressed to local authorities are too apt to elicit misleading answers: the poetic faculty is dangerously rampant in the Principality. ↑

23 Dâr is a Glamorgan pronunciation, metri gratiâ of what is written daear, ‘earth’: compare d’ar-fochyn in Glamorgan for a badger, literally ‘an earth pig.’ The dwarf’s answer was probably in some sort of verse, with dâr and iâr to rhyme. ↑

24 Applied in Glamorgan to a child that looks poorly and does not grow. ↑

25 In Cardiganshire a conjurer is called dyn hysbys, where hysbys (or, in older orthography, hyspys) means ‘informed’: it is the man who is informed on matters which are dark to others; but the word is also used of facts—Y mae ’r peth yn hysbys, ‘the thing is known or manifest.’ The word is divisible into hy-spys, which would be in Irish, had it existed in the language, so-scese for an early su-squesti̭a-s, the related Irish words being ad-chiu, ‘I see,’ pass. preterite ad-chess, ‘was seen,’ and the like, in which ci and ces have been equated by Zimmer with the Sanskrit verb caksh, ‘to see,’ from a root quas. The adjective cynnil applied to the dyn hyspys in Glamorgan means now, as a rule, ‘economical’ or ‘thrifty,’ but in this instance it would seem to have signified ‘shrewd,’ ‘cunning,’ or ‘clever,’ though it would probably come nearer the original meaning of the word to render it by ‘smart,’ for it is in Irish conduail, which is found applied to ingenious work, such as the ornamentation on the hilt of a sword. Another term for a wizard or conjurer is gwr cyfarwyđ, with which the reader is already familiar. Here cyfarwyđ forms a link with the kyvarỽyd of the Mabinogion, where it usually means a professional man, especially one skilled in story and history; and what constituted his knowledge was called kyvarỽydyt, which included, among other things, acquaintance with boundaries and pedigrees, but it meant most frequently perhaps story; see the (Oxford) Mabinogion, pp. 5, 61, 72, 93. All these terms should, strictly speaking, have gwr—gwr hyspys, gwr cynnil, and gwr cyfarwyđ—but for the fact that modern Welsh tends to restrict gwr to signify ‘a husband’ or ‘a married man,’ while dyn, which only signifies a mortal, is made to mean man, and provided with a feminine dynes, ‘woman,’ unknown to good Welsh literature. Thus the spoken language is in this matter nearly on a level with English and French, which have quite lost the word for vir and ἀνήρ. ↑

26 Rhyd y Gloch means ‘the Ford of the Bell,’ in allusion, as the story goes, to a silver bell that used in former ages to be at Ỻanwonno Church. The people of Ỻanfabon took a liking to it, and one night a band of them stole it; but as they were carrying it across the Taff the moon happened to make her appearance suddenly, and they, in their fright, taking it to be sunrise, dropped the bell in the bed of the river, so that nothing has ever been heard of it since. But for ages afterwards, and even at the present day indeed, nothing could rouse the natives of Ỻanfabon to greater fury than to hear the moon spoken of as haul Ỻanfabon, ‘the sun of Ỻanfabon.’ ↑

27 It was peat fires that were usual in those days even in Glamorgan. ↑

28 See Hartland’s Science of Fairy Tales, pp. 112–6. ↑

29 In no other version has Mr. Reynolds heard cwcwỻ wy iâr, but either plisgyn or cibyn wy iâr, to which I may add masgal from Mr. Craigfryn Hughes’ versions. The word cwcwỻ usually means a cowl, but perhaps it is best here to treat cwcwỻ as a distinct word derived somehow from conchylium or the French coquille, ‘a shell.’ ↑

30 The whole passage will be found in the Itinerarium Kambriæ, i. 8 (pp. 75–8), and Giraldus fixes the story a little before his time somewhere in the district around Swansea and Neath. With this agrees closely enough the fact that a second David, Dafyđ ab Geraỻd or David Fitzgerald, appears to have been consecrated Bishop of St. David’s in 1147, and to have died in 1176. ↑

31 The words in the original are: Nec carne vescebantur, nec pisce; lacteis plerumque cibariis utentes, et in pultis modum quasi croco confectis. ↑

32 Perhaps it is this also that suggested the name Eliodorus, as it were Ἡλιόδωρος; for the original name was probably the medieval Welsh one of Elidyr = Irish Ailithir, ailither, ‘a pilgrim’: compare the Pembrokeshire name Pergrin and the like. It is curious that Elidyr did not occur to Glasynys and prevent him from substituting Elfod, which is quite another name, and more correctly written Elfođ for the earlier El-fođw, found not only as Elbodu but also Elbodug-o, Elbodg, Elbot and Elfod: see p. 117 above. ↑

33 For one or two more instances from Wales see Howells, pp. 54–7. Brittany also is a great country for death portents: see A. Le Braz, Légende de la Mort en Basse-Bretagne (Paris, 1893), also Sébillot’s Traditions et Superstitions de la Haute-Bretagne (Paris, 1882), i. pp. 270–1. For Scotland see The Ghost Lights of the West Highlands by Dr. R. C. Maclagan in Folk-Lore for 1897, pp. 203–256, and for the cognate subject of second sight see Dalyell’s Darker Superstitions of Scotland, pp. 466–88. ↑

34 Another word for the toeli is given by Silvan Evans as used in certain parts of South Wales, namely, tolaeth or dolath, as to which he mentions the opinion that it is a corruption of tylwyth, a view corroborated by Howells using, p. 31, the plural tyloethod; but it could not be easily explained except as a corruption through the medium of English. Elias Owen, p. 303, uses the word in reference to the hammering and rapping noise attending the joinering of a phantom coffin for a man about to die, a sort of rehearsal well known throughout the Principality to every one who has ears spiritually tuned. Unfortunately I have not yet succeeded in locating the use of the word tolaeth, except that I have been assured by a Carmarthen man that it is current in Welsh there as toleth, and by a native of Pumsant that it is in use from Abergwili up to Ỻanbumsant. ↑

35 See, for instance, pp. 200, 221, 228. ↑

36 Mrs. Williams-Ellis of Glasfryn writes to me that the place is now called Bwlch Trwyn Swncwl, that it is a gap on the highest part of the road crossing from Ỻanaelhaearn to Pistyỻ, and that it is quite a little mountain pass between bleak heather-covered hillsides, in fact a very lonely spot in the outskirts of the Eifl, and with Carnguwch blocking the horizon in the direction of Cardigan Bay. ↑

37 For this I am indebted to Mr. Gwenogvryn Evans’ Report on MSS. in the Welsh Language, i. 585 k. The words were written by Williams about the beginning of the seventeenth century, and his û does not mean w. He was, however, probably thinking of cawr, cewri, and such instances as tawaf, ‘taceo,’ and tau, ‘tacet.’ At all events there is no trace of u in the local pronunciation of the name Tre’r Ceiri. I have heard it also as Tre’ Ceiri without the definite article; but had this been ancient one would expect it softened into Tre’ Geiri. ↑

38 See the Oxford Mabinogion, pp. 110, 113, and 27–9, 36–41, 44, also 309, where a Triad explains that the outposts were Anglesey, Man, and Lundy. But the other Triads, i. 3 = iii. 67, make them Orkney, Man, and Wight, for which we have the older authority of Nennius. § 8. The designation Tair Ynys Brydain, ‘The Three Isles of Prydain,’ was known to the fourteenth-century poet, Iolo Goch: see his works edited by Ashton, p. 669. ↑

39 For Prydyn in the plural see Skene’s Four Ancient Books of Wales, ii. 209, also 92, where Pryden is the form used. In modern Welsh the two senses of Cymry are distinguished in writing as Cymry and Cymru, but the difference is merely one of spelling and not very ancient. ↑

40 So Geoffrey (i. 12–15) brings his Trojans on their way to Britain into Aquitania, where they fight with the Pictavienses, whose king he calls Goffarius Pictus. ↑

41 Cadarn and cadr postulate respectively some such early forms as catṛno-s and cadro-s, which according to analogy should become cadarn and cađr. Welsh, however, is not fond of đr; so here begins a bifurcation: (1) retaining the d unchanged cadro-s yields cadr, or (2) dr is made into đr, and other changes set in resulting in the ceir of ceiri, as in Welsh aneirif, ‘numberless,’ from eirif, ‘number,’ of the same origin as Irish áram from *ađ-rim = *ad-rīmā, and Welsh eiliw, ‘species, colour,’ for ađ-liw, in both of which i follows đ combinations; but that is not essential, as shown by cader, cadair, for Old Welsh cateir, ‘a chair,’ from Latin cat[h]edra. The word that serves as our singular, namely cawr, is far harder to explain; but on the whole I am inclined to regard it as of a different origin, to wit, the Goidelic word caur, ‘a giant or hero,’ borrowed. The plural cewri or cawri is formed from the singular cawr, which means a giant, though, associated in the plural with ceiri, it has sometimes to follow suit with that vocable in connoting dress. ↑

42 The most important of these are the old Breton kazr, now kaer, ‘beautiful or pretty,’ and old Cornish caer of the same meaning; elsewhere we have, as in Greek, the Doric κέκαδμαι and κεκαδμένος, to be found used in reference to excelling or distinguishing one’s self; also κόσμος, ‘good order, ornament,’ while in Sanskrit there is the theme çad, ‘to excel or surpass.’ The old meaning of ‘beautiful,’ ‘decorated,’ or ‘loudly dressed,’ is not yet lost in the case of ceiri. ↑