Cornishmen, apparently, never forgave St. Keyne for the properties of her well; for Carew, in his Survey of Cornwall, terms her “no over holy saint;” and Norden thus vituperates her: “this Kayne is sayde to be a woman saynte, of whom it (the well) taketh name; but it better resembleth Kayne, the devil, who had the shape of a man, the name of an apostle, and the qualitie of a traitor.” Gwenllian, white linen, is still sometimes used.

Gwyn also signifies blessed or happy, and this gwynnedd is an epithet of some of the favourite kings. Gwynaeth, a state of bliss, is a female name still in use, and often written Gyneth, though it gets translated into Venetia, and, in the latter form, named the lady whom Sir Kenelm Digby rendered famous.

Section IV.—Gwalchmai, Sir Gawain, and Sir Owen.

No knight is more distinguished, either in the Triads or in romance, than Gwalchmai, perhaps from Gwalch, a hawk, and maedd, a blow.

In Welsh pedigrees, he is Arthur’s nephew, son of his sister Ernnos and of Llew, king of Lothian and Orkney. He probably had a real existence, for the Triads celebrate him as one of the three golden-tongued knights of Britain, one of the three learned ones of Britain, and one of the three most courteous men towards strangers. In a Welsh poem, he is represented as using his courteous tongue in behalf of his friend Trystan; and in the Mabinogion, in the ‘Lady of the Fountain,’ he takes such a prominent part, that the French romance is called that of Sir Yvaine and Sir Gawaine. Walganus and Walwyn had Latinized the Hawk of Battle, and have caused it to be confounded with the Teutonic Walwine, slaughter-lover; but the Gwalchmai of Wales can be identified with the Gawain, or Wawyn, of romance by his friendship with Trystan, his relationship to Arthur, and his title in the romances of the Flower of Courtesy.

It was Sir Gawaine who in the ballad boldly adventured himself to wed the “Loathly Lady,” and was rewarded by breaking the spell, and discovering her loveliness. Gawaine was the hero of the great battle with the giant Rhyence, and, though unsuccessful, was one of the foremost in the quest of the San-grail, until warned by a dream how the enterprise was to result. Finally, Sir Gawaine took his uncle’s side first in the war with Lancelot, then with Mordred, and died of the renewal of a wound received in battle with the former, writing on his death-bed a letter that brought Lancelot to repentance.

His name, whether as Walwyn, Gawain, or Gavin, was popular in England and Scotland in the middle ages; and in the last-mentioned shape named the high-spirited bishop of Dunkeld, the one son of old Bell the Cat, who could “pen a line,” and who did so to such good purpose when “he gave rude Scotland Virgil’s page.” Nor is Gavin by any means extinct in Scotland.

Sir Gawain is coupled in English romance with his intimate friend, Sir Ywaine, as in French with Sir Yvaine; and in the Welsh story, in the Mabinogion, he is Sir Owain. He there sets forth from court in search of adventures, and falls in with a knight in black armour, whom he conquers, and thereupon is conducted to a castle, where he becomes guardian of an enchanted fountain, and husband of a lady in yellow satin, with long yellow hair, and a hundred maids always embroidering satin. Of course, when Sir Gawain came in quest of him, and he was allowed to go back to King Arthur’s court, he forgot the whole affair, until at the end of three years, he was recalled by his lady’s confidential handmaid, Luned, and proceeded to atone for his unfaithfulness by another severe course of adventures, during which he delivered a black lion from a serpent, thus binding the faithful beast to his service for ever, and after a due slaughter of giants, rejoined his wife, and lived happy ever after. The French of the thirteenth century knew him as Sir Yueins, le Chevalier du Lion; and even the Scandinavians had his story in their Ivent Saga. In the Morte d'Arthur, he is Sir Gareth, and brother to Gawain; but he must have been his cousin, as he was the son of Urien, and of Arthur’s sister, Morgwen. In the Morte d'Arthur, Luned is Linet, and in the French romances she is Lunette. Her name seems to be derivable from llun, a shape or form, and if so, would mean the shapely; but the hagiologists identify it with that Elined, the daughter of Brychan, who suffered martyrdom on the hill of Penginger, and was canonized as St. Almedha, a name still to be seen on the sign of an inn at Knaresborough.

Owain, Oen in Brittany, continued popular in Wales, though, perhaps, rather more usual at a late than an early period. The notable Owen Glendower, as Shakespeare has taught us to call him, was really Owain ap Gruffydd of Glendfrdwy, his estate in Merionethshire, where he kept a grand household.

It was he who made Owen the most common of Welsh names, in honour of the last Welshman who lived and died free of the English yoke.

Owain is so like the word oen that in Welsh stands for a sheep or lamb, that it is generally so translated; but it is most likely that this is a case of an adaptation of a derivative from an obsolete word to a familiar one, and that Owen ought to be carried much further back to the same source as the Erse Eoghan, which comes from êoghunn, youth, from og, young, and is translated, young warrior. It has the feminine Eoghania, of course turned into Eugenia.

There were many Eoghans in Ireland. One of them, a king of Connaught, when dying of his wounds, commanded himself to be buried upright, with his red javelin in his hand, and his face turned towards Ulster, as though still fighting with his foes. As long as he thus remained, Connaught prevailed and Ulster lost; but the Ultonians discovered the spell, and re-buried him in an opposite direction, thereby changing the tide of success.

Eoghan, in Scotland, is pronounced Yō-hăn, and indiscriminately translated by Evan, Ewan, and Hugh. Several of the early kings, who are all numbered together in Scotland as Eugenius, were properly Eoghan, and Evan or Ewan is certainly the right Anglicism, though Hugh is made to do duty for these as well as for Aodh.

The same Eoghan seems in ăanother form to have supplied the Welsh Evan, or Evan may be intended for John. A certain Evan of Wales, claiming the blood of the Welsh princes, who became a mercenary under Charles V. of France, made a bold descent upon Guernsey, and was killed at the siege of Mortain-sur-mer, by what Froissart calls a short Spanish dagger, but his illuminator has made to look much more like a very large arrow. Welsh history takes no cognizance of him, but he is thought to be traceable in the national songs as Jevan Dovy.

Another translation of Owain is “apt to serve.” A British prince of Strathcluyd was called Uen or Hoen.^[102]

Section V.—Trystan and Ysolt.

The episode of Trystan is one of the most celebrated incidents of Arthur’s court, and has not failed to be treated by Davies as a magnificent emblematic myth.

The Triads begin by declaring that the three mighty swineherds of the Isle of Britain were Pryderi, Coll, and Trystan.

Another adds,—

The third swineherd was Trystan, son of Tallwch, who kept the swine of March, the son of Meirchion, while the swineherd was conveying a message to Essylt, to appoint an assignation with her.

Again, he is one of the three heralds of Britain, also one of the three diademed chiefs, also one of the three knights who had the conducting of mysteries.

Besides, the three unchaste matrons of Britain are Penarwen, Bun, and Esyllt Fingwen.

And the tale told by the Cymric race in Cambria and Armorica has resounded throughout southern Europe. There the mighty swineherd is the son of Roland and Blanchefleur, sister of Mark, king of Cornwall. Almost at the moment of his birth, she hears the tidings of his father’s death, and expires from the shock, calling her babe Tristan, or the sad. He grows up to be an accomplished knight, and after various adventures, is sent by his uncle, King Mark, to Ireland, to bring home the promised bride Ysolt the fair.

The mother of Ysolt gives her maid, Brengwain, a magic draught, which was to be administered to the pair on their bridal day, to secure their mutual affection. A storm rises on the voyage, and, intending to refresh her lady and the knight after his exertions and her alarm, Brengwain, in her confusion, gives them the fatal draught, and their passion for one another became the theme of the storytellers who preferred guilty love to high aspirations. Tristrem was married to another Ysolt called of the white hands, or of Brittany; he was dangerously wounded, and lay sick in her castle in Brittany. Nothing could cure him but the presence of Ysolt of Cornwall, and to her he sent his squire, with his ring, entreating, like the father of Theseus, that if she came to him the sails of the ship might be white, if she refused, the squire should hoist a black sail.

She came, but the wife, Ysolt of the white hands, falsely told the sick man that the sails were black; he sank back in despair and died, and Ysolt died of grief beside him.

Such is the story told by Thomas of Ercildoune, in the thirteenth century, as well as by hosts of romances.

Trust was really a Cymric name, and was called among the Picts Drust, or Drest. There is a Trust or Drust, MacTallaghi among the Pictish kings, who possibly may be the origin of Tristan, since many of the legends are common to Strath Clyde, Wales, and Cornwall. The Pictish Pendragon, who was elected at the time the Romans quitted Britain, was called by his countrymen Drust of the Hundred Battles, and many of his successors bore the same name, which means din, tumult, or loud noise, and thus may poetically be translated as a proclaimer or herald. Trwst ap Taran (tumult the son of thunder) was the poetical name of another of the line. The influence of Latin upon Welsh, however, made trist really mean sad, so that it was there accepted as suited to the melancholy circumstance of the hero’s birth; and Tristram, or sad face, became identified with the notion of sorrow; so that the child of St. Louis, born while his father was in captivity on the Nile, and his mother in danger at Damietta, was named Jean Tristan. Never would the cheerful Greeks have accepted such a name as Tristrem, Tristan, Tristano; but in Europe it regularly entered the ranks of the names of sorrow, and it was, no doubt, in allusion to it that Don Quixote accepted the soubriquet of the Knight of the Rueful Countenance. The earliest form of the name was Adsalutta, a Keltic goddess, whose name occurs in two inscriptions, one at Laybach and the other at Ratschöck in Istria. It is identified by the learned with Esyltt, and connected with Suraya, the Sungod of the Vedas.

Esyltt was the French Yseulte, or Ysoude, the Italian Isolta, and English Ysolte, Isolda, or Izolta, and in all these shapes was frequent in the families of the middle ages; recurring again and again in registers, down to the seventeenth century: indeed, within the last fifty years a person was alive who bore this romantic name in the form of Izod.

Tallwch is the torrent, and seems to have been translated into Roland, from the sound of rolling, when the Armorican bards laid claim to the great Paladin of Charlemagne’s court, on the score of his having been Warden of the Marches of Brittany, and wanted to make out that Roland was a name of their own. They had thus caused Rowland to be considered as a regular Cymric name.

King Mark himself was most probably a compromise between the Roman Marcus and the native march, which belongs to all the Kelts—nay, Pausanias tells us, meant a horse, in the dialect of the tribe who tried to take Delphi. Its fellow, mar, passed into Teutonic; named Marshalls, as Marskalk, or horse servant; and lives among us as our mare, in the feminine. Indeed, Marcus may itself be another instance of the Keltic element in Latin.

Marchell was the daughter of Tewdrig, king of North Wales, and, in 382, married Brychan, son of Cormac Mac Cairbre, one of the kings of Ireland.Ireland. Her name was, no doubt, a mixture of the Keltic March and the Latin Marcella; and it was she who must have rendered the name of Marcella so common in Ireland.

The more common Gadhaelic word is, however, each, first cousin to equus, aspa, and many another word for the gallant animal.

Each was the saint who spent his life in Boyne Water, and was said to have uttered the curse that caused the battle of Magh Rath, a libel disproved by his previous death.

Each, in combination, has formed sundry names,—Eachmarchach, a sort of reduplication; Eachmilidh, horse-warrior; Eachaid, horseman, the most famous of them belonging to many kings, and rendered into Latin—Eochodius, or Equitius, the last not so incorrect. Auhy, or Atty, were the usual ways of rendering it; but these have been confounded with Arthur, and the name is lost.

Several other Eochaids were kings of Scotland, but they are grievously confused by Latinity, and, with the owners of the following name, turned into Eugenius; Eochaidbuidhe, or the fair-haired, appearing as Eugenius Flavus; and Eochoid Rinne Mhail as Eugenius Crooked Nose!

Another Eochaid has, by the capricious fancy of Scotland, been transmitted to us as Achaius. He is said to have been an ally of Charlemagne, and begun the custom of lending auxiliaries to the French, numerous Scotsmen coming to honour and dignity for their assistance in their conquest of Saxony. Achaius is also said to have married the sister of the king of the Picts, and formed an alliance with him against the Anglo-Saxons. While marching against the English forces, the cross of St. Andrew suddenly appeared in the sky giving assurance of victory, and, in consequence, was adopted as the ensign of the Picts, and afterwards of the Scots.

The “double tressure, flory and counterflory,” that surrounds the field where “the ruddy lion ramps in gold,” is also said to have been “first by Achaius worn,” though he was probably innocent of all armorial bearings, as he died in 819.

Eachan is the most usual form of the Highland name, and has for many years been, by general consent, converted into Hector.

The feminine Eacha is an old Irish name.^[103]

Section VI.—Hoel and Ryence.

The romances of Arthur give him, among his many nephews, one named Hoel, Duke of Brittany, whose niece Helena was seized upon by the horrible giant Ritho, and devoured upon the top of Tombelaine.

This Hoel does not seem to have been a real character. His name Higuel, the lordly or conspicuous, was a common one in Wales and Brittany; and a prince so called seems really to have fled to Arthur for aid against the Franks, and to have returned with a fresh colony of Britons, by whose aid he became king of Armorica.

He reigned for thirty years, and died in 545, Other Hoels reigned after him, the third of whom is said to have been killed at Roncevalles.

In Wales, Hywel continued in favour, and Hywel-Dha, or the Good, who reigned in the tenth century, is famous for having gone to Rome to study law, by which he so profited as afterwards to draw up the famous code that has thrown so much light on the manners of the Cambrian mountaineers, the order of precedence in the king’s household, and even the price of animals. He signs King Athelstan’s charter as Hoel-Subregulus, or under king.

Hywel was a name in frequent use among the Welsh princes, and ‘highborn Hoel’s harp’ was frequently sounded, for various bards were so called.

Another Hoel was that unfortunate relative of Owen Glendower whom he was said to have killed and hidden in the blasted tree.

The giant Ritho is evidently a relation of Rhitta Gawr, who, in the Welsh stories, interfered to put a stop to a furious battle between two kings named Nynniaw and Peibiaw, who had quarrelledquarrelled about the moon and stars. Rhitta Gawr defeated them both, and cut off their beards, and afterwards the beards of seventy-eight more kings who collected to avenge them. Of these eighty beards he made a mantle that reached from his head to his heels, for he was the largest man in Britain, and wore it as a warning to all to maintain law and order.

The romances of Arthur turned Rhitta Gawr into a fierce monarch called Rhyence, king of North Wales, an aggressor instead of a defender of justice, who, however, had his scarlet mantle purfled with the moderate number of eleven royal beards, and politely demanded that of King Arthur to complete the trimming, with what consequences no one acquainted with King Arthur can doubt.

Whence come the names of Ryence and Rhittar? They connect themselves closely with the universal words for ruler, the Gadhaelic righ, Teuton rik, Latin rex, and the rajah of India. Rhys is, in Welsh, a rushing man or warrior, and most likely comes from the same source; and Rhesus, the chieftain, slain by Ulysses and Diomed, on the night of his arrival before Troy, probably was called from some extinct word of the same origin.

At any rate Rhys has ever since been a Welsh name, sometimes spelt in English according to its pronunciation as Reece, and sometimes as Rice. It has furnished the surnames of Rice, Rees.

In Brittany we meet a saint called by the diminutive of Rhys, Riok, or Rieuk. His legend begins with one of the allegories that arose from the prophecy, that the weaned child should put his hand on the cockatrice’s den, for when he was almost an infant he was employed by the holy knight Derrien, to lead away in a scarf a terrible basilisk, whom the saint had tamed by making the sign of the cross over him. His parents were heathens, but were convinced by this miracle; and he became, in after years, a great saint, living for forty-one years on a rock on the sea-coast, eating nothing but herbs and little fish, and wearing a plain garment which when it wore out was supplied by a certain ruddy moss growing all over his body. His name has continued in use in Brittany.^[104]

No name has had more derivations suggested for it than this. The Norman family so called came from Perche-val, the valley of the Perche; but as to the knight of romance, he was at first supposed to be Perce-val, pierce the valley, on the principle on which Percy was hatched out of Pierce-eye, and the story invented of the Piercie who thrust his spear with the keys dangling on it into the eye of Malcolm Ceanômor at Alnwick Castle. The romance of Perceforest was even named on the principle that it was as suitable to pierce the forest as the valley. Mr. Keightley derives the name from the Arabic Parse, or Parschfal, poor dummling, who appears to have been the hero of an Eastern tale of a wonderful cup, whence arose the mysterious allegory of the Holy Greal. A Provençal Troubadour, named Kyot, or Guiot, professes to have found at Toledo a book written in heathen characters by a magician, Saracen on the father’s side, but descended by his mother from Solomon. His book is lost, but two founded on it survive,—the German romance of Parzifal, by Wolfram von Eschenbach, and the Norman French, Sir Perceval, of Walter Mapes, Archdeacon of Oxford under Henry II.

Equally old, however, is a Welsh legend of Peredur, who is perhaps Pair-kedor, the warrior of the cauldron; Pair-cyfaill would then be champion of the cauldron, or bowl; Peredur was certainly a historical person, and may perhaps be the same as Perceval. Chrétien de Troyes has a long poem on the story of Perceval, and his adventures are almost identical with those of the Peredur of the Mabinogion.

The story of the orphan, stirred up to chivalry by the sight of the knight whom he took for an angel, the same as that of Mervyn les Breiz, here appears, and Perceval or Peredur shows some kindred with the dummling of Persia by his ignorance and dulness till he comes to the castle, where he sees the wounded king, the bleeding lance, and the Greal or bowl of pure gold, that are the great features in his history. Probably, the magic bowl was an Indo-European idea, but there seems to have been Druidic traditions about a magic bowl, which Bran the Blessed obtained from a great black man in Ireland, and which cured mortal wounds and raised the dead. It was one of the thirteen wonders of the Isle of Britain, and disappeared with Merddin in his glass vessel.

However, in the twelfth century, the ideas of this vessel had assumed a Christian form. It was the bowl used at the institution of the Holy Eucharist, and the lance was that of Longinus the centurion, brought to Bran by Joseph of Arimathea, and thenceforth its quest became the emblem of the Christian search for holiness through the world, only gratified by gleams here, but with full fruition hereafter. Perceval, once the companion and guard of the sacred Grail, gradually descended from his high estate, and became only a knight of the Round Table, high and pure of faith and spotless of life, but only on the same terms as the rest, and though not failing in the quest, still inferior to Galahad.

It is curious that his other name, Peredur, has by the sound been turned into Peter. One Robert de Barron tells, that from Bran, the Grail descended to Alan, and thence to Petrus his nephew; and a story of the Breton peasantry still gives the adventures of Perronik, like the original Peredur, an idiot at first, but sent to the Castle of Caerglas to fetch a diamond lance and golden cup, which would raise the dead by a touch.

The later French romances spoilt the nobleness and purity of Perceval’s character, but he is always one of the best of the knights, and succeeds in finding the Sanc-greal. But Galahad, the pure and virgin knight, son of Lancelot, and predestined to occupy the Siége Perilous at the Round Table, resist all temptation, conquer all peril, and finally obtain full fruition of the Greal, then, at his own desire, pass out of the world of sin and care, has, in England, taken the place once the right of Peredur or Perceval, though Wagner’s splendid ‘Parcifal’ has restored to him the chief place. I suspect him, as before said, to have been the separate produce of the story of Cattwg, first warrior, and afterwards hermit and saint, and that Galahad may have been an epithet from his starry purity.

In the Mabinogion, Perceval has a ladye love, whom, however, he only loves with distant chivalrous devotion, and who answers to his sister, who in Mallory’s beautiful story gave the blood from her own veins to heal a lady who could only be cured with the life-blood of a pure virgin.

In the Mabinogion her name is Angharad Law-eurag, or with the hand of gold, and Angharad, or the free from shame, the undisgraced (from angharz), was continued in Wales, but it is now generally considered as the equivalent of Anne, and thus accounts for Anna being universally called in romance the sister of Arthur, and mother of the traitor nephew Medrawd.

The Welsh Angharawd, probably the source of Ankaret, which occurs in the family of Le Strange in 1344, is generally supposed to mean an anchorite; but as it has no parallel on the Continent, it is much more likely to be the Welsh Angharad. Annan was, however, a separate name—for the three sprightly ladies of Britain are Annan, Angharad, and Perwyr.

Myfanwy is one of the unaccountable feminine Welsh names, not yet extinct among families of strong national feeling, though in general Fanny has been substituted for it. It may possibly be Mabanwy, child of the water, or else it may be My-manwy, my fine (or rare one).

The three primary bards of Britain were Plenydd, Alawn, and Gwron, whom Mr. Davies explains as light, harmony, and virtue. Plenydd, it is thought, is related to Belenus; and Alawn is erected by ardent Cymrians into the mythic Greek Olen, who is said to have been the first writer of hymns in hexameter, and whom the Delphic poetess, Boeo, calls a Hyperborean; this name is said to mean the flute-player. At any rate, I have found Alwn Aulerv in Welsh genealogies as brother of Bran the Blessed, and this must be the real origin of the Breton Alan. Elian and Hilarius were both used as its Latinisms.^[105]

It is first found in early Breton history, then it came to England with Alan Fergéant, Count of Brittany, the companion of William the Conqueror, and first holder of the earldom of Richmond, in Yorkshire; and, indeed, one Alan, partly Breton, partly Norman, seems to have taken up his abode in our island before the Conquest, and four besides the count came after it. In the time of Henry I., one of these gentlemen, or his son, held Oswestry; and as these were the times when Anglo-Norman barons were fast flowing into Scotland, his son Walter married a lady, whom Douglas’s Peerage of Scotland calls Eschina, the heiress of Molla and Huntlaw, in Roxburghshire; and their son, another Alan, secured another heiress, Eva, the daughter of the Lord of Tippermuir; and, becoming high steward of Scotland, was both the progenitor of the race of Stuart, and the original of the hosts of Alans and Allens, who have ever since filled Scotland. That country has taken much more kindly to this Breton name than has England, in spite of Allen-a-dale, and of a few families where Allen has been kept up; but as a surname, spelt various ways, it is still common.

Like mare in Latin, and meer in Teuton, the Gaelic muir, Welsh môr, and Breton mor, are close kindred, and watery names derived from them abound.

King Arthur’s sister, Morgana, or Morgaine, Morgue la Fée, or La Fata Morgana, as she is variously termed in different tongues, was Morgan Maritime—the derivative from sea. From her, or from some lingering old Keltic notion in ancient Italy, the Sicilian fisherman connects the towers and palaces painted on the surface of the Mediterranean with La Fata Morgana, the lady of the sea.

Morgwn was the native name of the heresiarch, who called himself by the Greek equivalent Pelagius, and thus named the Pelagian heresy. Some writers say that sundry heretic names lingered about the Spanish Visigoths after their union with the Church, and instance both Ario, a distinguished author, and Pelayo, the Asturian Robert Bruce, as instances of names so borne. However this may be, Morgan has continued, even to the present day, to be very common in Wales.

Morvryn may be sea-king. “Morolt with the iron mace,” as romance calls him, the brother of Yseulte, who was killed by Sir Trystan, is called Morogh by his own countrymen in Ireland. It is the contraction of Muireadhach, or sea protector, a favourite Irish name, though, after degenerating into Morogh, it was usually rendered into Morgan, and so continues in modern Ireland. It is perhaps the same with Meriadek, or Meiriadwg, the title of Conan, the chieftain who is said to have colonized Brittany, and also with the Welsh Meredith, both as a Christian and a surname. In Ireland, the sons of Morogh became O'Muireadaig, and then contracted into Murray. Muredach is said to have reigned over the Scots from 733 to 736, and is transformed into Murdach, Murochat, Muirtec, Mordacus. It must have become mixed with Muircheartach, from ceart (a right), which has produced Moriertagh, Murtagh, or Morty, as a Christian name in Ireland; but it is now made into Mortimer. It is Murdoch in Scotland, once very common, and not yet extinct, and the North, adopting it with other Keltic names, calls it Kjartan.

Muirgis, once common in Ireland, is rendered by Maurice, or Morris, and Murchada has become Murphy.

And there is a name, still very common in the North of England, that I cannot help connecting with some of these, namely Marmaduke, which appeared among the chivalry of England about the thirteenth century, and has never become extinct. It is most likely a corruption of one or other of the sea names, in fact, it is not far from Muireadach; or it may be the offspring of the Scottish title, Maormar, from maor, a steward or officer, and mor, great, thus meaning the great officer of the crown, the term which prevailed before the Saxon Thegn or Danish Earl displaced it.^[106]

Section VIII.—Llew.

We find Llew, lion, naming Lleurwg ab Coel ab Cyllyn, also called Llewfer Mawr, the great light, and correctly translated by the Latin Lucius, the king who is said to have sent messengers to Rome to bring home Christianity, though some think Lucius a mere figment of Roman writers accepted by the bards.

Llew is the name given in Welsh genealogies to the king of the Orkneys, who married King Arthur’s sister, and was the father of Gwalchmai.

Llewel, lion-like, formed Llewelyn, which is not very early in Wales, unless the Sir Lionel of romance be intended to represent it. A Welsh Llewelyn seems to have come over to Ireland with Richard Strongbow, and his descendants, after passing through the stage of MacUighilins, are now the Quillinans.

The English have broken it down into Leoline. Llewelyn the Great of Wales was a contemporary of King John, and from this time the name has been much in use, partly from affection to the last native prince, Llewelyn ap Gruffyd, who perished at Piercefield. It is now usually Anglicized as Lewis for a Christian, Lewin for a family, name.

The old records of Brittany give a most graceful story of the saint who made Hervé a favourite in the duchy.

Hyvernion, a British bard, was warned by an angel in a dream to come to Armorica in quest of his wife. Near the fountain of Rivannon, he met a beautiful maiden drawing water, who, when he accosted her, sang “Though I am but a poor flower by the wayside, men call me the little queen of the fountain.” Perceiving that she was the damsel of his vision, he married her, and they had one child, who was born blind, and was named by his parents in their sorrow, Houerf, or bitter. His worm-eaten oaken cradle is still shown in the parish of Treflaouenan, as a relic, for the blind child became both monk and poet, and according to his maxim, ‘It is better to instruct a child than to gather wealth for him,’ he composed numerous simple and religious poems, which have been sung by the Breton peasantry through the twelve hundred years that have passed since the death of the blind bard; one of them, on the duties of a Christian child, is exceedingly beautiful. Arianwen, Silver woman, was another Welsh saint, whose name has continued in use.

Houerv, or Hervé, is not accepted in the Roman Calendar, but he was enthusiastically beloved in the country for which he had “made ballads,” and Hervé has been the name of peer and peasant there ever since his time. Hervé came over to us among the many adventurers who “came out of Brittany.” Two landowners so called are mentioned in Domesday Book, and the widely-spread surname of Harvey can hardly be taken from anything else, though some derive it from Heriwig, army war, a Teutonic word.

Here let us mention a Breton name, Tanneguy. There was a saint so called who founded an abbey at Finisterre, and who is claimed as a relation by the family of Du Chastel. It is curious to find Sir Tanneguy Du Chastel figuring among the heroes of Froissart, and making his old Christian name renowned.

But the local saints of the Kelts are far past enumeration, such as St. Monacella, or Melangell, whose Welsh name perhaps means honey-coloured or yellow. She was a little nun, who saved a hare hunted by Brocmael, prince of Powys, and is buried at Pennant Melangle. Also there was St. Sativola, or Sidwell, as she is called at Exeter, whose head was cut off by a mower with a scythe, and who had a well marking the spot, till the railway made away with it; but at least she appears in her own church, with her head in one hand and a scythe in the other, and she has a window in the cathedral. Once she had namesakes, but they are all gone now.

Einion is said to signify an anvil, in Welsh, though the word most like it in Dr. Owen Pugh’s dictionary is einioes, life. St. Einion was one of the early saints of the Cymry, after whom is named a spring at Llanvareth in Radnorshire. Another Einion was grandson of Howell Dha. The name is sometimes rendered by Æneas.