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

2 I am indebted for this information to Mr. J. Herbert James of Vaynor, who visited Kenfig lately and has called my attention to an article headed ‘The Borough of Kenfig,’ in the Archæologia Cambrensis for 1898: see more especially the maps at pp. 138–42. ↑

3 Here the Welsh has a word edafwr, the exact meaning of which escapes me, and I gather from the remarks of local etymologers that no such word is now in use in Glamorgan. ↑

4 See the Book of Aberpergwm, printed as Brut y Tywysogion, in the Myvyrian Archaiology, ii. 524; also Morgan’s Antiquarian Survey of East Gower, p. 66, where the incident is given from ‘Brut y Tywysogion, A. D. 1088.’ It is, however, not in what usually passes by the name of Brut y Tywysogion, but comes, as the author kindly informs me, from a volume entitled ‘Brut y Tywysogion, the Gwentian Chronicle of Caradoc of Ỻancarvan, with a translation by the late Aneurin Owen, and printed for the Cambrian Archæological Association, 1863’: see pp. 70–1. ↑

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

6 I do not know whether anybody has identified the spot which the writer had in view, or whether the coast of the Severn still offers any feature which corresponds in any way to the description. ↑

7 Supposed to be so called after a certain Tegid Foel, or ‘Tegid the Bald,’ of Penỻyn: the name Tegid is the phonetic spelling of what might be expected in writing as Tegyd—it is the Latin Tacitus borrowed, and comes with other Latin names in Pedigree I. of the Cuneđa dynasty; see the Cymmrodor, xi. 170. In point of spelling one may compare Idris for what might be expected written Idrys, of the same pronunciation, for an earlier Iuđrys or Iuđris. ↑

8 The translation was made by Thomas Twyne, and published in 1573 under the title of The Breuiary of Britayne, where the passage here given occurs, on fol. 69^b. The original was entitled Commentarioli Britannicæ Descriptionis Fragmentum, published at Cologne in 1572. The original of our passage, fol. 57^a, has Gụynedhia and Llụnclis. The stem ỻwnc of ỻyncaf, ‘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 Ỻwyd’s vorago Palatij instead of Palatium voratum. ↑

9 For other occurrences of the name, see the Black Book, fol. 35^a, 52^a, and Morris’ Celtic Remains, where, s. v. Benỻi, the Welsh name of Bardsey, to wit, Ynys Enỻi, is treated by somebody, doubtless rightly, as a shortening of Ynys Fenỻi. ↑

10 The meaning of this name is not certain, but it seems to equate with the Irish Fochard, anglicized Faughard, in County Louth: see O’Donovan’s Four Masters, A. D. 1595; also the Book of the Dun Cow, where it is Focherd, genitive Focherda, dative Focheird, fo. 70^b, 73^b, 75^a, 75^b, 76^a, 77^a. ↑

11 This is sometimes given as Glannach, which looks like the Goidelic form of the name: witness Giraldus’ Enislannach in his Itin. Kambriæ, ii. 7 (p. 131). ↑

12 See Choice Notes, p. 92, and Gerald Griffin’s Poetical and Dramatic Works, p. 106. ↑

13 Failing to see this, various writers have tried to claim the honour of owning the bells for Aberteifi, ‘Cardigan,’ or for Abertawe, ‘Swansea’; but no arguments worthy of consideration have been urged on behalf of either place: see Cyfaiỻ yr Aelwyd for 1892, p. 184. ↑

14 For some of the data as to the reckoning of the pedigrees and branching of a family, see the first volume of Aneurin Owen’s Ancient Laws—Gwyneđ, III. i. 12–5 (pp. 222–7); Dyfed, II. i. 17–29 (pp. 408–11); Gwent, II. viii. 1–7 (pp. 700–3); also The Welsh People, pp. 230–1. ↑

15 See the Book of the Dun Cow, fol. 99^a & seq. ↑

16 For instances, the reader may turn back to pp. 154 or 191, but there are plenty more in the foregoing chapters; and he may also consult Howells’ Cambrian Superstitions, pp. 123–8, 141–2, 146. In one case, p. 123, he gives an instance of the contrary kind of imagination: the shepherd who joined a fairy party on Frenni Fach was convinced, when his senses and his memory returned, that, ‘although he thought he had been absent so many years, he had been only so many minutes.’ The story has the ordinary setting; but can it be of popular origin? The Frenni Fach is a part of the mountain known as the Frenni Fawr, in the north-east of Pembrokeshire; the names mean respectively the Little Breni, and the Great Breni. The obsolete word breni meant, in Old Welsh, the prow of a ship; local habit tends, however, to the solecism of Brenin Fawr, with brenin, ‘king,’ qualified by an adjective mutated feminine; but people at a distance who call it Frenni Fawr, pronounce the former vocable with nn. Lastly, Y Vrevi Vaỽr occurs in Maxen’s Dream in the Red Book (Oxford Mab. p. 89); but in the White Book (in the Peniarth collection), col. 187, the proper name is written Freni: for this information I have to thank Mr. Gwenogvryn Evans. ↑

17 It is right to say that another account is given in the Rennes Dindṡenchas, published by Stokes in the Revue Celtique, xvi. 164, namely, that Laiglinne with fifty warriors ‘came to the well of Dera son of Scera. A wave burst over them and drowned Laiglinne with his fifty warriors, and thereof a lake was made. Hence we say Loch Laiglinni, Laiglinne’s Lake.’ ↑

18 The Oxford Mabinogion, p. 224, and Guest’s, i. 343. ↑

19 See Afanc in the Geiriadur of Silvan Evans, who cites instances in point. ↑

20 See the Revue Celtique, i. 257, and my Hibbert Lectures, pp. 92–3. ↑

21 The Four Masters, A.M. 3520. ↑

22 In another version Campbell had found it to be sand and nothing else. ↑

23 As to this incident of a girl and a supernatural, Campbell says that he had heard it in the Isle of Man also, and elsewhere. ↑

24 See the Revue Celtique, ii. 197. He was also called Labraid Longsech, and Labraid Longsech Lorc. The explanation of Labraid Lorc is possibly that it was originally Labraid Morc, and that the fondness for alliteration brought it into line as Labraid Lorc: compare Ỻûđ Ỻaweraint in Welsh for Nûđ Ỻaweraint. This is not disproved by the fact that Labraid Lorc’s grandfather is said to have been called Loegaire Lorc: Loegaire Lorc and Labraid Lorc are rather to be regarded perhaps as duplicates of the same original. ↑

25 See my Arthurian Legend, p. 70; also Hibbert Lectures, p. 590. ↑

26 The original has in these passages respectively siblais a fual corbo thipra, ‘minxit urinam suam so that it was a spring’; ar na siblad a fúal ar na bad fochond báis doib, ‘ne mingat urinam suam lest it should be the cause of death to them’; and silis, ‘minxit,’ fo. 39b. For a translation of the whole story see Dr. O’Grady’s Silva Gadelica, pp. 265–9; also Joyce’s Old Celtic Romances, pp. 97–105. ↑

27 See the story in Dr. O’Grady’s Silva Gadelica, pp. 292–311. ↑

28 See Stengel’s edition of li Romans de Durmart le Galois (Tübingen, 1873), lines 4185–340, and my Arthurian Legend, pp. 68–9. ↑

29 See Williams’ Scint Greal, pp. 60–1, 474–5; Nutt’s Holy Grail, p. 44; and my Arthurian Legend, pp. 69–70. ↑

30 Barđoniaeth D. ab Gwilym, poem 183. A similar descent of Blodeuweđ’s appears implied in the following englyn—one of two—by Anthony Powel, who died in 1618: it is given by Taliesin ab Iolo in his essay on the Neath Valley, entitled Traethawd ar Gywreineđ, Hynafiaeth, a hen Bendefigion Glynn Neđ (Aberdare, 1886), p. 15:—

It refers, with six other englynion by other authors, to a remarkable rock called Craig y Đinas, with which Taliesin associated a cave where Arthur or Owen Lawgoch and his men are supposed, according to him, to enjoy a secular sleep, and it implies that Blodeuweđ, whose end in the Mabinogi of Mâth was to be converted into an owl, was, according to another account, overwhelmed by Craig y Đinas. It may be Englished somewhat as follows:

 ↑

31 This comes from the late series of Triads, iii. 10, where Merlin’s nine companions are called naw beirđ cylfeirđ: cylfeirđ should be the plural of cylfarđ, which must be the same word as the Irish culbard, name of one of the bardic grades in Ireland. ↑

32 For some more remarks on this subject generally, see my Arthurian Legend, chapter xv, on the ‘Isles of the Dead.’ ↑

33 See his Itinerarium Kambriæ, ii. 11 (p. 139); also my Celtic Britain, p. 68, and Arthurian Legend, p. 364. ↑

34 From the Myvyrian Archaiology of Wales, i. 302. ↑

35 I regard nid kywiw as a corruption of ni chywiw from cyf-yw, an instance of the verb corresponding to cymod (= cym-bod), ‘peace, conciliation.’ The preterite has, in the Oxford Bruts, A.D. 1217 (p. 358), been printed kynni for what one may read kymu: the words would then be y kymu reinald y breỽys ar brenhin, ‘that Reginald de Breos was reconciled with the king, or settled matters with him.’ ↑

36 See the Book of Taliessin, poem xxx, in Skene’s Four Ancient Books, ii. 181; also Guest’s Mabinogion, ii. 354, and the Brython for 1860, p. 372^b, where more than one article of similar capacity of distinguishing brave men from cowards is mentioned. ↑

37 See Dugdale’s Monasticon, v. 672, where they are printed Dwynech and Dwynaur respectively. ↑

38 See my Hibbert Lectures, pp. 649–50. ↑

39 A full account of them will be found in a volume devoted to them, and entitled Roman Antiquities at Lydney Park, Gloucestershire, being a posthumous work of the Rev. W. Hiley Bathurst, with Notes by C. W. King, London, 1879. See also an article entitled ‘Das Heiligtum des Nodon,’ by Dr. Hübner in the Jahrbücher des Vereins von Alterthumsfreunden im Rheinlande, lxvii. pp. 29–46, where several things in Mr. King’s book are criticized. ↑

40 See my Hibbert Lectures, pp. 122, 125. ↑

41 On this subject, see The Welsh People, especially pp. 54–61. ↑

42 Why our dictionary makers have taken into their heads to treat it as Tamĕsis I know not. The Welsh is Tafwys with a diphthong regularly representing an earlier long e or ei in the second syllable. There is, as far as I know, no reason to suppose Tafwys an invention, rather than a genuine vocable of the same origin as the name of the Glamorganshire river Taff, in Welsh Taf, which is also the name of the river emptying itself at Laugharne, in Carmarthenshire. Tafwys, however, does not appear to occur in any old Welsh document; but no such weakness attaches to the testimony of the French Tamise, which could hardly come from Tamĕsis: compare also the place-name Tamise near the Scheldt in East Flanders; this, however, may be of a wholly different origin. ↑

43 A more difficult version has been sent me by Dewi Glan Ffrydlas, of Bethesda: Caffed y wrach, ‘Let him seize the hag’; Methu’r cryfaglach, ‘You have failed, urchin.’ But he has not been able to get any explanation of the words at the Penrhyn Quarries. Cryfaglach is also the form in Mur y Cryfaglach, ‘the Urchin’s Wall,’ in Jenkins’ Beđ Gelert, p. 249. He informs me that this is the name of an old ruin on an elevated spot some twenty or thirty yards from a swift brook, and not far in a south-south-easterly direction from Sir Edward Watkin’s chalet. ↑

44 For this I am indebted to Mr. Wm. Davies (p. 147 above), who tells me that he copied the original from Chwedlau a Thrađodiadau Gwyneđ, ‘Gwyneđ Tales and Traditions,’ published in a periodical, which I have not been able to consult, called Y Gordofigion, for the year 1873. ↑

45 The meaning of the word mwthlach is doubtful, as it is now current in Gwyneđ only in the sense of a soft, doughy, or puffy person who is all of a heap, so to say. Pughe gives mwythlan and mwythlen with similar significations. But mwthlach would seem to have had some such a meaning in the doggerel as that of rough ground or a place covered with a scrubby, tangled growth. It is possibly the same word as the Irish mothlach, ‘rough, bushy, ragged, shaggy’; see the Vision of Laisrén, edited by Professor K. Meyer, in the Otia Merseiana, pp. 114, 117. ↑

46 The account here given of the Cyhiraeth is taken partly from Choice Notes, pp. 31–2, and partly from Howells, pp. 31–4, 56–7, who appears to have got uncertain in his narrative as to the sex of the Cyhiraeth; but there is no reason whatsoever for regarding it as either male or female—the latter alone is warranted, as he might have gathered from her being called y Gyhiraeth, ‘the Cyhiraeth,’ never y Cyhiraeth as far as I know. In North Cardiganshire the spectre intended is known only by another name, that of Gwrach y Rhibyn, but y Gyhiraeth or yr hen Gyhiraeth is a common term of abuse applied to a lanky, cadaverous person, both there and in Gwyneđ; in books, however, it is found sometimes meaning a phantom funeral. The word cyhiraeth would seem to have originally meant a skeleton with cyhyrau, ‘sinews,’ but no flesh. However, cyhyrau, singular cyhyr, would be more correctly written with an i; for the words are pronounced—even in Gwyneđ—cyhir, cyhirau. The spelling cyhyraeth corresponds to no pronunciation I have ever heard of the word; but there is a third spelling, cyheuraeth, which corresponds to an actual cyhoereth or cyhoyreth, the colloquial pronunciation to be heard in parts of South Wales: I cannot account for this variant. Gwrach y Rhibyn means the Hag of the Rhibyn, and rhibyn usually means a row, streak, a line—ma’ nhw’n mynd yn un rhibyn, ‘they are going in a line.’ But what exactly Gwrach y Rhibyn should connote I am unable to say. I may mention, however, on the authority of Mr. Gwenogvryn Evans, that in Mid-Cardiganshire the term Gwrach y Rhibyn means a long roll or bustle of fern tied with ropes of straw and placed along the middle of the top of a hayrick. This is to form a ridge over which and on which the thatch is worked and supported: gwrach unqualified is, I am told, used in this sense in Glamorganshire. Something about the Gwrach sprite will be found in the Brython for 1860, p. 23^a, while a different account is given in Jenkins’ Beđ Gelert, pp. 80–1. ↑

47 This statement I give from Choice Notes, p. 32; but I must confess that I am sceptical as to the ‘wings of a leathery and bat-like substance,’ or of any other substance whatsoever. ↑

48 For more about her and similar ancestral personages, see The Welsh People, pp. 54–61. ↑