CHAPTER IX

PLACE-NAME STORIES

The Dindsenchas is a collection of stories (senchasa), in Middle-Irish prose and verse, about the names of noteworthy places (dind) in Ireland--plains, mountains, ridges, cairns, lakes, rivers, fords, estuaries, islands, and so forth.... But its value to students of Irish folklore, romance (sometimes called history), and topography has long been recognized by competent authorities, such as Petrie, O'Donovan, and Mr. Alfred Nutt.

Whitley Stokes.

In the previous chapters some folklore has been produced in which we have swine figuring: see more especially that concerned with the Hwch Du Gwta, pp. 224-6 above. Now I wish to bring before the reader certain other groups of swine legends not vouched for by oral tradition so much as found in manuscripts more or less ancient. The first three to be mentioned occur in one of the Triads [78]. I give the substance of it in the three best known versions, premising that the Triad is entitled that of the Three Stout Swineherds of the Isle of Prydain:--

i. 30a:--Drystan [79] son of Tallwch who guarded the swine of March son of Meirchion while the swineherd went to bid Essyllt come to meet him: at the same time Arthur sought to have one sow by fraud or force, and failed.

ii. 56b:--Drystan son of Tallwch with the swine of March ab Meirchion while the swineherd went on a message to Essyllt. Arthur and March and Cai and Bedwyr came all four to him, but obtained from Drystan not even as much as a single porker, whether by force, by fraud, or by theft.

iii. 101c:--The third was Trystan son of Tallwch, who guarded the swine of March son of Meirchion while the swineherd had gone on a message to Essyllt to bid her appoint a meeting with Trystan. Now Arthur and Marchell and Cai and Bedwyr undertook to go and make an attempt on him, but they proved unable to get possession of as much as one porker either as a gift or as a purchase, whether by fraud, by force, or by theft.

In this story the well-known love of Drystan and Essyllt is taken for granted; but the whole setting is so peculiar and so unlike that of the story of Tristan and Iselt or Iseut in the romances, that there is no reason to suppose it in any way derived from the latter.

The next portion of the Triad runs thus:--

1 30b:--And Pryderi son of Pwyll of Annwvyn who guarded the swine of Pendaran of Dyfed in the Glen of the Cuch in Emlyn.

ii. 56a:--Pryderi son of Pwyll Head of Annwn with the swine of Pendaran of Dyfed his foster father. The swine were the seven brought away by Pwyll Head of Annwn and given by him to Pendaran of Dyfed his foster father; and the Glen of the Cuch was the place where they were kept. The reason why Pryderi is called a mighty swineherd is that no one could prevail over him either by fraud or by force [80].

iii. 101a:--The first was Pryderi son of Pwyll of Pendaran in Dyfed [81], who guarded his father's swine while he was in Annwn, and it was in the Glen of the Cuch that he guarded them.

The history of the pigs is given, so to say, in the Mabinogion. Pwyll had been able to strike up a friendship and even an alliance with Arawn king of Annwvyn [82] or Annwn, which now means Hades or the other world; and they kept up their friendship partly by exchanging presents of horses, greyhounds, falcons, and any other things calculated to give gratification to the receiver of them. Among other gifts which Pryderi appears to have received from the king of Annwn were hobeu or moch, 'pigs, swine,' which had never before been heard of in the island of Prydain. The news about this new race of animals, and that they formed sweeter food than oxen, was not long before it reached Gwyned; and we shall presently see that there was another story which flatly contradicts this part of the Triad, namely to the effect that Gwydion, nephew of Math king of Gwyned and a great magician, came to Pryderi's court at Rhudlan, near Dolau Bach or Highmead on the Teifi in what is now the county of Cardigan, and obtained some of the swine by deceiving the king. But, to pass by that for the present, I may say that Dyfed seems to have been famous for rearing swine; and at the present day one affects to believe in the neighbouring districts that the chief industry in Dyfed, more especially in South Cardiganshire, consists in the rearing of parsons, carpenters, and pigs. Perhaps it is also worth mentioning that the people of the southern portion of Dyfed are nicknamed by the men of Glamorgan to this day Moch Sir Benfro, 'the Pigs of Pembrokeshire.'

But why so much importance attached to pigs? I cannot well give a better answer than the reader can himself supply if he will only consider what rôle the pig plays in the domestic economy of modern Ireland. But, to judge from old Irish literature, it was even more so in ancient times, as pigs' meat was so highly appreciated, that under some one or other of its various names it usually takes its place at the head of all flesh meats in Irish stories. This seems the case, for instance, in the medieval story called the Vision of MacConglinne [83]; and, to go further back, to the Feast of Bricriu for instance, one finds it decidedly the case with the Champion's Portion [84] at that stormy banquet. Then one may mention the story of the fatal feast on Mac-Dáthó's great swine [85], where that beast would have apparently sufficed for the braves both of Connaught and Ulster had Conall Cernach carved fair, and not given more than their share to his own Ultonian friends in order to insult the Connaught men by leaving them nothing but the fore-legs. It is right, however, to point out that most of the stories go to show, that the gourmands of ancient Erin laid great stress on the pig being properly fed, chiefly on milk and the best kind of meal. It cannot have been very different in ancient Wales; for we read in the story of Peredur that, when he sets out from his mother's home full of his mother's counsel, he comes by-and-by to a pavilion, in front of which he sees food, some of which he proceeds to take according to his mother's advice, though the gorgeously dressed lady sitting near it has not the politeness to anticipate his wish. It consisted, we are told, of two bottles of wine, two loaves of white bread, and collops of a milk-fed pig's flesh [86]. The home of the fairies was imagined to be a land of luxury and happiness with which nothing could compare in this world. In this certain Welsh and Irish stories agree; and in one of the latter, where the king of the fairies is trying to persuade the queen of Ireland to elope with him, we find that among the many inducements offered her are fresh pig, sweet milk, and ale [87]. Conversely, as the fairies were considered to be always living and to be a very old-fashioned and ancient people, it was but natural to suppose that they had the animals which man found useful, such as horses, cattle, and sheep, except that they were held to be of superior breeds, as they are represented, for instance, in our lake legends. Similarly, it is natural enough that other stories should ascribe to them also the possession of herds of swine; and all this prior to man's having any. The next step in the reasoning would be that man had obtained his from the fairies. It is some tradition of this kind that possibly suggested the line taken by the Pwyll story in the matter of the derivation of the pig from Annwn: see the last chapter.

The next story in the Triad is, if possible, wilder still: it runs as follows:--

i. 30c:--Coll son of Collfrewi [88] who guarded Henwen [89], Dallweir Dallben's sow, which went burrowing as far as the Headland of Awstin in Kernyw and then took to the sea. It was at Aber Torogi in Gwent Is-coed that she came to land, with Coll keeping his grip on her bristles whatever way she went by sea or by land. Now in Maes Gwenith, 'Wheat Field,' in Gwent she dropped a grain of wheat and a bee, and thenceforth that has been the best place for wheat. Then she went as far as Llonwen in Penfro and there dropped a grain of barley and a bee, and thenceforth Llonwen has been the best place for barley. Then she proceeded to Rhiw Gyferthwch in Eryri and dropped a wolf-cub and an eagle-chick. These Coll gave away, the eagle to the Goidel Brynach from the North, and the wolf to Menwaed of Arllechwed, and they came to be known as Menwaed's Wolf and Brynach's Eagle. Then the sow went as far as the Maen Du at Llanfair in Arfon, and there she dropped a kitten, and that kitten Coll cast into the Menai: that came later to be known as Cath Paluc, 'Palug's Cat.'

ii. 56c:--The third was Coll son of Kallureuy with the swine of Dallwyr Dallben in Dallwyr's Glen in Kernyw. Now one of the swine was with young and Henwen was her name; and it was foretold that the Isle of Prydain would be the worse for her litter; and Arthur collected the host of Prydain and went about to destroy it. Then one sow went burrowing, and at the Headland of Hawstin in Kernyw she took to the sea with the swineherd following her. And in Maes Gwenith in Gwent she dropped a grain of wheat and a bee, and ever since Maes Gwenith is the best place for wheat and bees. And at Llonyon in Penfro she dropped a grain of barley and another of wheat: therefore the barley of Llonyon has passed into a proverb. And on Rhiw Gyferthwch in Arfon she dropped a wolf-cub and an eagle-chick. The wolf was given to Mergaed and the eagle to Breat a prince from the North, and they were the worse for having them. And at Llanfair in Arfon, to wit below the Maen Du, she dropped a kitten, and from the Maen Du the swineherd cast it into the sea, but the sons of Paluc reared it to their detriment. It grew to be Cath Paluc, 'Palug's Cat,' and proved one of the three chief molestations of Mona reared in the island: the second was Daronwy and the third was Edwin king of England.

iii. 101b:--The second was Coll son of Collfrewi who guarded Dallwaran Dallben's sow, that came burrowing as far as the Headland of Penwedic in Kernyw and then took to the sea; and she came to land at Aber Tarogi in Gwent Is-coed with Coll keeping his hold of her bristles whithersoever she went on sea or land. At Maes Gwenith in Gwent she dropped three grains of wheat and three bees, and ever since Gwent has the best wheat and bees. From Gwent she proceeded to Dyfed and dropped a grain of barley and a porker, and ever since Dyfed has the best barley and pigs: it was in Llonnio Llonnwen these were dropped. Afterwards she proceeded to Arfon (sic) and in Lleyn she dropped the grain of rye, and ever since Lleyn and Eifionyd have the best rye. And on the side of Rhiw Gyferthwch she dropped a wolf-cub and an eagle-chick. Coll gave the eagle to Brynach the Goidel of Dinas Affaraon, and the wolf to Menwaed lord of Arllechwed, and one often hears of Brynach's Wolf and Menwaed's Eagle [the writer was careless: he has made the owners exchange pests]. Then she went as far as the Maen Du in Arfon, where she dropped a kitten and Coll cast it into the Menai. That was the Cath Balwg (sic), 'Palug's Cat': it proved a molestation to the Isle of Mona subsequently.

Such are the versions we have of this story, and a few notes on the names seem necessary before proceeding further. Coll is called Coll son of Collurewy in i. 30, and Coll son of Kallureuy in ii. 56: all that is known of him comes from other Triads, i. 32-3, ii. 20, and iii. 90. The first two tell us that he was one of the Three chief Enchanters of the Isle of Prydain, and that he was taught his magic by Rhudlwm the Giant; while ii. 20 calls the latter a dwarf and adds that Coll was nephew to him. The matter is differently put in iii. 90, to the effect that Rhudlwm the Giant learnt his magic from Eid[il]ig the Dwarf and from Coll son of Collfrewi. Nothing is known of Dallwyr's Glen in Kernyw, or of the person after whom it was named. Kernyw is the Welsh for Cornwall, but if Penryn Awstin or Hawstin is to be identified with Aust Cliff on the Severn Sea in Gloucestershire, the story would seem to indicate a time when Cornwall extended north-eastwards as far as that point. The later Triad, iii. 101, avoids Penryn Awstin and substitutes Penwedic, which recalls some such a name as Pengwaed [90] or Penwith in Cornwall: elsewhere Penwedic [91] is only given as the name of the most northern hundred of Keredigion. Gwent Is-coed means Gwent below the Wood or Forest, and Aber Torogi or Tarogi--omitted, probably by accident, in ii. 56--is now Caldicot Pill, where the small river Tarogi, now called Troggy, discharges itself not very far from Portskewet. Maes Gwenith in the same neighbourhood is still known by that name. The correct spelling of the name of the place in Penfro was probably Llonyon, but it is variously given as Llonwen, Llonyon, and Llonion, not to mention the Llonnio Llonnwen of the later form of the Triad: should this last prove to be based on any authority one might suggest Llonyon Henwen, so called after the sow, as the original. The modern Welsh spelling of Llonyon would be Llonion, and it is identified by Mr. Egerton Phillimore with Lanion near Pembroke [92]. Rhiw Gyferthwch is guessed to have been one of the slopes of Snowdon on the Bedgelert side; but I have failed to discover anybody who has ever heard the name used in that neighbourhood.

Arllechwed was, roughly speaking, that part of Carnarvonshire which drains into the sea between Conway and Bangor. Brynach and Menwaed or Mengwaed [93] seem to be the names underlying the misreadings in ii. 56; but it is quite possible that Brynach, probably for an Irish Bronach, has here superseded an earlier Urnach or Eurnach also a Goidel, to whom I shall have to return in another chapter. Dinas Affaraon [94] is the place called Dinas Ffaraon Dande in the story of Llud and Llevelys, where we are told that after Llud had had the two dragons buried there, which had been dug up at the centre of his realm, to wit at Oxford, Ffaraon, after whom the place was called, died of grief. Later it came to be called Dinas Emrys from Myrdin Emrys, 'Merlinus Ambrosius,' who induced Vortigern to go away from there in quest of another place to build his castle [95]. So the reader will see that the mention of this Dinas brings us back to a weird spot with which he has been familiarized in the previous chapter: see pp. 469, 495 above. Llanfair in Arfon is Llanfair Is-gaer near Port Dinorwic on the Menai Straits, and the Maen Du should be a black rock or black stone on the southern side of those straits. Daronwy and Cath Paluc are both personages on whom light is still wanted. Lastly, by Edwin king of England is to be understood Edwin king of the Angles of Deira and Bernicia, whom Welsh tradition represents as having found refuge for a time in Anglesey.

Now this story as a whole looks like a sort of device for stringing together explanations of the origin of certain place-names and of certain local characteristics. Leaving entirely out of the reckoning the whole of Mid-Wales, that is to say, the more Brythonic portion of the country, it is remarkable as giving to South Wales credit for certain resources, but to North Wales for pests alone and scourges, except that the writer of the late version bethought himself of Lleyn and Eifionyd as having good land for growing rye; but he was very hazy as to the geography of North Wales--both he and the redactors of the other Triads equally belonged doubtless to South Wales. Among the place-names, Maes Gwenith, 'the Wheat Field,' is clear; but hardly less so is the case of Aber Torogi, 'Mouth of the Troggy,' where torogi is 'the pregnancy of animals,' from torrog, 'being with young.' So with Rhiw Gyferthwch, 'the Hillside or Ascent of Cyferthwch,' where cyferthwch means 'pantings, pangs, labour.' The name Maen Du, 'Black Rock,' is left to explain itself; and I am not sure that the original story was not so put as also to explain Llonion, to wit, as a sort of plural of llawn, 'full,' in reference, let us say, to the full ears of the barley grown there. But the reference to the place-names seems to have partly escaped the later tellers of the story or to have failed to impress them as worth emphasizing. They appear to have thought more of explaining the origin of Menwaed's Wolf and Brynach's Eagle. Whether this means in the former case that the district of Arllechwed was more infested by wolves than any other part of Wales, or that Menwaed, lord of Arllechwed, had a wolf as his symbol, it is impossible to say. In another Triad, however, i. 23 = ii. 57, he is reckoned one of the Three Battle-knights who were favourites at Arthur's court, the others being Caradog Freichfras and Llyr Llüydog or Llud Llurugog, while in iii. 29 Menwaed's place is taken by a son of his called Mael Hir. Similarly with regard to Brynach's Eagle one has nothing to say, except that common parlance some time or other would seem to have associated the eagle in some way with Brynach the Goidel. The former prevalence of the eagle in the Snowdon district seems to be the explanation of its Welsh name of Eryri--as already suggested, p. 479 above--and the association of the bird with the Goidelic chieftain who had his stronghold under the shadow of Snowdon seems to follow naturally enough. But the details are conspicuous by their scarcity in Welsh literature, though Brynach's Eagle is probably to be identified with the Aquila Fabulosa of Eryri, of which Giraldus makes a curious mention [96]. Perhaps the final disuse of Goidelic speech in the district is to be, to some extent, regarded as accounting for our dearth of data. A change of language involved in all probability the shipwreck of many a familiar mode of thought; and many a homely expression must have been lost in the transition before an equivalent acceptable to the Goidel was discovered by him in his adopted idiom.

This question of linguistic change will be found further illustrated by the story to which I wish now to pass, namely that of the hunting of Twrch Trwyth. It is one of those incorporated in the larger tale known as that of Kulhwch and Olwen, the hero and heroine concerned: see the Oxford Mabinogion, pp. 135-41, and Guest's translation, iii. 306-16. Twrch Trwyth is pictured as a formidable boar at the head of his offspring, consisting of seven swine, and the Twrch himself is represented as carrying between his ears a comb, a razor, and a pair of shears. The plot of the Kulhwch renders it necessary that these precious articles should be procured; so Kulhwch prevails on his cousin Arthur to undertake the hunt. Arthur began by sending one of his men, to wit, Menw [97] son of Teirgwaed, to see whether the three precious things mentioned were really where they were said to be, namely, between Twrch Trwyth's ears. Menw was a great magician who usually formed one of any party of Arthur's men about to visit a pagan country; for it was his business to subject the inhabitants to magic and enchantment, so that they should not see Arthur's men, while the latter saw them. Menw found Twrch Trwyth and his offspring at a place in Ireland called Esgeir Oervel [98], and in order to approach them he alighted in the form of a bird near where they were. He tried to snatch one of the three precious articles from Twrch Trwyth, but he only succeeded in securing one of his bristles, whereupon the Twrch stood up and shook himself so vigorously that a drop of venom from his bristles fell on Menw, who never enjoyed a day's health afterwards as long as he lived. Menw now returned and assured Arthur that the treasures were really about the Twrch's head as it was reported. Arthur then crossed to Ireland with a host and did not stop until he found Twrch Trwyth and his swine at Esgeir Oervel. The hunt began and was continued for several days, but it did not prevent the Twrch from laying waste a fifth part of Ireland, that is in Medieval Irish cóiced, a province of the island. Arthur's men, however, succeeded in killing one of the Twrch's offspring, and they asked Arthur the history [99] of that swine. Arthur replied that it had been a king before being transformed by God into a swine on account of his sins. Here I should remark by the way, that the narrator of the story forgets the death of this young boar, and continues to reckon the Twrch's herd as seven.

Arthur's next move was to send one of his men, Gwrhyr, interpreter of tongues [100], to parley with the boars. Gwrhyr, in the form of a bird, alighted above where Twrch Trwyth and his swine lay, and addressed them as follows: 'For the sake of Him who fashioned you in this shape, if you can speak, I ask one of you to come to converse with Arthur.' Answer was made by one of the boars, called Grugyn Gwrych Ereint, that is, Grugyn Silver-bristle; for like feathers of silver, we are told, were his bristles wherever he went, and whether in woods or on plains, one saw the gleam of his bristles. The following, then, was Grugyn's answer: 'By Him who fashioned us in this shape, we shall not do so, and we shall not converse with Arthur. Enough evil has God done to us when He fashioned us in this shape, without your coming to fight with us.' Gwrhyr replied: 'I tell you that Arthur will fight for the comb, the razor, and the shears that are between the ears of Twrch Trwyth.' 'Until his life has first been taken,' said Grugyn, 'those trinkets shall not be taken, and to-morrow morning we set out hence for Arthur's own country, and all the harm we can, shall we do there.'

The boars accordingly set out for Wales, while Arthur with his host, his horses, and his hounds, on board his ship Prydwen, kept within sight of them. Twrch Trwyth came to land at Porth Clais, a small creek south of St. David's, but Arthur went that night to Mynyw, which seems to have been Menevia or St. David's. The next day Arthur was told that the boars had gone past, and he overtook them killing the herds of Kynnwas Cwrvagyl, after they had destroyed all they could find in Deugledyf, whether man or beast. Then the Twrch went as far as Presseleu, a name which survives in that of Preselly or Precelly, as in Preselly Top and Preselly Mountains in North Pembrokeshire. Arthur and his men began the hunt again, while his warriors were ranged on both sides of the Nyfer or the river Nevern. The Twrch then left the Glen of the Nevern and made his way to Cwm Kerwyn, the name of which survives in that of Moel Cwm Kerwyn, one of the Preselly heights. In the course of the hunt in that district the Twrch killed Arthur's four champions and many of the people of the country. He was next overtaken in a district called Peuliniauc [101] or Peuliniog, which appears to have occupied a central area between the mountains, Llandewi Velfrey, Henllan Amgoed, and Laugharne: it probably covered portions of the parish of Whitland and of that of Llandysilio, the church of which is a little to the north of the railway station of Clyn Derwen on the Great Western line. Leaving Peuliniog for the Laugharne Burrows, he crossed, as it seems, from Ginst Point to Aber Towy or Towy Mouth [102], which at low water are separated mostly by tracts of sand interrupted only by one or two channels of no very considerable width; for Aber Towy would seem to have been a little south-east of St. Ishmael's, on the eastern bank of the Towy. Thence the Twrch makes his way to Glynn Ystu, more correctly perhaps Clyn Ystun, now written Clyn Ystyn [103], the name of a farm between Carmarthen and the junction of the Amman with the Llychwr, more exactly about six miles from that junction and about eight and a half from Carmarthen as the crow flies. The hunt is resumed in the Valley of the Llychwr or Loughor [104], where Grugyn and another young boar, called Llwydawc Gouynnyat [105], committed terrible ravages among the huntsmen. This brought Arthur and his host to the rescue, and Twrch Trwyth, on his part, came to help his boars; but as a tremendous attack was now made on him he moved away, leaving the Llychwr, and making eastwards for Mynyd Amanw, or 'the Mountain of Amman,' for Amanw is plentifully preserved in that neighbourhood in the shortened form of Aman or Amman [106]. On Mynyd Amanw one of his boars was killed, but he is not distinguished by any proper name: he is simply called a banw, 'a young boar.' The Twrch was again hard pressed, and lost another called Twrch Llawin. Then a third of the swine is killed, called Gwys, whereupon Twrch Trwyth went to Dyffryn Amanw, or the Vale of Amman, where he lost a banw and a benwic, a 'boar' and a 'sow.' All this evidently takes place in the same district, and Mynyd Amanw was, if not Bryn Amman, probably one of the mountains to the south or south-east of the river Amman, so that Dyffryn Amanw may have been what is still called Dyffryn Amman, or the Valley of the Amman from Bryn Amman to where the river Amman falls into the Llychwr. From the Amman the Twrch and the two remaining boars of his herd made their way to Llwch Ewin, 'the lake or pool of Ewin,' which is now represented by a bog mere above a farm house called Llwch in the parish of Bettws, which covers the southern slope of the Amman Valley. I have found this bog called in a map Llwch is Awel, 'Pool below Breeze,' whatever that may mean.

We find them next at Llwch Tawi, the position of which is indicated by that of Ynys Pen Llwch, 'Pool's End Isle,' some distance lower down the Tawe than Pont ar Dawe. At this point the boars separate, and Grugyn goes away to Din Tywi, 'Towy Fort,' an unidentified position somewhere on the Towy, possibly Grongar Hill near Llandeilo, and thence to a place in Keredigion where he was killed, namely, Garth Grugyn. I have not yet been able to identify the spot, though it must have once had a castle, as we read of a castle called Garthgrugyn being strengthened by Maelgwn Vychan in the year 1242: the Bruts locate it in Keredigion [107], but this part of the story is obscured by careless copying on the part of the scribe [108] of the Red Book. After Grugyn's death we read of Llwydawc having made his way to Ystrad Yw, and, after inflicting slaughter on several of his assailants, he is himself killed there. Now Ystrad Yw, which our mapsters would have us call Ystrad Wy, as if it had been on the Wye [109], is supposed to have covered till Henry VIII's time the same area approximately as the hundred of Crickhowel has since, namely, the parishes of (1) Crickhowel, (2) Llanbedr Ystrad Yw with Patrishow, (3) Llanfihangel Cwm Du with Tretower and Penmyarth, (4) Llangattock with Llangenny, (5) Llanelly with Brynmawr, and (6) Llangynidr. Of these Llanbedr perpetuates the name of Ystrad Yw, although it is situated near the junction of the Greater and Lesser Grwynë and not in the Strath of the Yw, which Ystrad Yw means. So one can only treat Lanbedr Ystrad Yw as meaning that particular Llanbedr or St. Peter's Church which belongs to the district comprehensively called Ystrad Yw. Now if one glances at the Red Book list of cantreds and cymwds, dating in the latter part of the fourteenth century, one will find Ystrad Yw and Cruc Howel existing as separate cymwds. So we have to look for the former in the direction of the parish of Cwm Du; and on going back to the Taxatio of Pope Nicholas IV dating about 1291, we find that practically we have to identify with Cwm Du a name Stratden', p. 273a, which one is probably to treat as Strat d'Eue [110] or some similar Norman spelling; for most of the other parishes of the district are mentioned by the names which they still bear. That is not all; for from Cwm Du a tributary of the Usk called the Rhiangoll comes down and receives at Tretower the waters of a smaller stream called the Yw. The land on both sides of that Yw burn forms the ystrad or strath of which we are in quest. The chief source of this water is called Llygad Yw, and gives its name to a house of some pretensions bearing an inscription showing that it was built in its present form about the middle of the seventeenth century by a member of the Gunter family well known in the history of the county. Near the house stands a yew tree on the boundary line of the garden, and close to its trunk, but at a lower level, is a spring of bubbling water: this is Llygad Yw, 'the Eye of the Yw.' For Llygad Yw is a succinct expression for the source of the Yw burn [111], and the stream retains the name Yw to its fall into the Rhiangoll; but besides the spring of Llygad Yw it has several other similar sources in the fields near the house. There is nothing, however, in this brook to account for the name of Ystrad Yw having been extended to an important district; but if one traces its short course one will at once guess the explanation. For a few fields below Llygad Yw is the hamlet of the Gaer or fortress, consisting of four farm houses called the Upper, Middle, and Lower Gaer, and Pen y Gaer: through this hamlet of the Gaer flows the Yw. These, and more especially Pen y Gaer, are supposed to have been the site of a Roman camp of considerable importance, and close by it the Yw is supposed to have been crossed by the Roman road proceeding towards Brecon [112]. The camp in the Strath of the Yw was the head quarters of the ruling power in the district, and hence the application of the name of Ystrad Yw to a wider area. But for our story one has to regard the name as confined to the land about the Yw burn, or at most to a somewhat larger portion of the parish of Cwm Du, to which the Yw and Tretower belong. The position of the Gaer in Ystrad Yw at the foot of the Bwlch or the gap in the difficult mountain spur stretching down towards the Usk is more likely to have been selected by the Romans than by any of the Celtic inhabitants, whose works are to be found on several of the neighbouring hills, such as Myarth [113] between the Yw and the Usk.

We next find Twrch Trwyth, now the sole survivor, making his way towards the Severn: so Arthur summons Cornwall and Devon to meet him at Aber Hafren or Severn mouth. Then a furious conflict with the Twrch takes place in the very waters of that river, between Llyn Lliwan (p. 407) and Aber Gwy or the mouth of the Wye. After much trouble, Arthur's men succeed in getting possession of two out of the three treasures of the boar, but he escapes with the third, namely, the comb, across the Severn [114]. Then as soon as he gets ashore he makes his way to Cornwall, where the comb is at length snatched from him. Chased thence, he goes straight into the sea, with the hounds Anet and Aethlem after him, and nothing has ever been heard of any of the three from that day to this.

That is the story of Twrch Trwyth, and Dr. Stokes calls my attention to a somewhat similar hunt briefly described in the Rennes Dindsenchas in the Revue Celtique, xv. 474-5. Then as to the precious articles carried by the Twrch about his head and ears, the comb, the razor, and the shears, two out of the three--the comb and the razor--belong to the regular stock of a certain group of tales which recount how the hero elopes with the daughter of a giant who loses his life in the pursuit [115]. In order to make sure of escaping from the infuriated giant, the daughter abstracts from her father's keeping a comb, a razor, and another article. When she and her lover fleeing on their horse are hard pressed, the latter throws behind him the comb, which at once becomes a rough impenetrable forest to detain the giant for a while. When he is again on the point of overtaking them, the lover throws behind him the razor, which becomes a steep and sharp mountain ridge through which the pursuing giant has to waste time tunnelling his way. The third article is usually such as, when thrown in the giant's way, becomes a lake in which he is drowned while attempting to swim across. In the Kulhwch story, however, as we have it, the allusion to these objects is torn away from what might be expected as its context. The giant is Yspadaden Penkawr, whose death is effected in another way; but before the giant is finally disposed of he requires to be shaved and to have his hair dressed. His hair, moreover, is so rough that the dressing cannot be done without the comb and shears in the possession of Twrch Trwyth, whence the hunt; and for the shaving one would have expected the Twrch's razor to have been requisite; but not so, as the shaving had to be done by means of another article, namely, the tusk of Yskithyrwynn Pennbeid, 'White-tusk chief of Boars,' for the obtaining of which one is treated briefly to another boar hunt. The Kulhwch story is in this respect very mixed and disjointed, owing, it would seem, to the determination of the narrator to multiply the number of things difficult to procure, each involving a separate feat to be described.

Let us now consider the hunt somewhat more in detail, with special reference to the names mentioned; and let us begin with that of Twrch Trwyth: the word twrch means the male of a beast of the swine kind, and twrch coed, 'a wood pig,' is a wild boar, while twrch daear, 'an earth pig,' is the word in North Wales for a mole. In the next place we can practically equate Twrch Trwyth with a name at the head of one of the articles in Cormac's Irish Glossary. There the exact form is Orc tréith, and the following is the first part of the article itself as given in O'Donovan's translation edited by Stokes:--'Orc Tréith, i. e. nomen for a king's son, triath enim rex vocatur, unde dixit poeta Oínach n-uirc tréith "fair of a king's son," i. e. food and precious raiment, down and quilts, ale and flesh-meat, chessmen and chessboards, horses and chariots, greyhounds and playthings besides.' In this extract the word orc occurs in the genitive as uirc, and it means a 'pig' or 'boar'; in fact it is, with the usual Celtic loss of the consonant p, the exact Goidelic equivalent of the Latin porcus, genitive porci. From another article in Cormac's Glossary, we learn that Tréith is the genitive of Triath, which has been explained to mean a king. Thus, Orc Tréith means Triath's Orc, Triath's Boar, or the King's Boar; so we take Twrch Trwyth in the same way to mean 'Trwyth's Boar.' But we have here a discrepancy, which the reader will have noticed, for twrch is not the same word as Irish orc, the nearest form to be expected in Welsh being Wrch, not Twrch; but such a word as Wrch does not, so far as I know, exist. Now did the Welsh render orc by a different word unrelated to the Goidelic one which they heard? I think not; for it is remarkable that Irish has besides orc a word torc, meaning a 'boar,' and torc is exactly the Welsh twrch. So there seems to be no objection to our supposing that what Cormac calls Orc Tréith was known in the Goidelic of Wales as Torc Tréith, which had the alliteration to recommend it to popular favour. In that case one could say that the Goidelic name Torc Tréith appears in Welsh with a minimum of change as Twrch Trwyth, and also with the stamp of popular favour more especially in the retention of the Goidelic th, just as in the name of an ancient camp or fortification on the Withy Bush Estate in Pembrokeshire: it is called the Rath, or the Rath Ring. Here rath is identical with the Irish word ráth, 'a fortification or earthworks,' and we seem to have it also in Cil Râth Fawr, the name of a farm in the neighbourhood of Narberth. Now the Goidelic word tréith appears to have come into Welsh as treth-i, the long vowel of which must in Welsh have become oi or ui by about the end of the sixth century; and if the th had been treated on etymological principles its proper equivalent in the Welsh of that time would have been d or t. The retention of the th is a proof, therefore, of oral transmission; that is to say, the Goidelic word passed bodily into Brythonic, to submit afterwards to the phonological rules of that language.

A little scrutiny of the tale will, I think, convince the reader that one of the objects of the original story-teller was to account for certain place-names. Thus Grugyn was meant to account for the name of Garth Grugyn, where Grugyn was killed; Gwys, to account similarly for that of Gwys, a tributary of the Twrch, which gives its name to a station on the line of railway between Ystalyfera and Bryn Amman; and Twrch Llawin to account for the name of the river Twrch, which receives the Gwys, and falls into the Tawe some distance below Ystrad Gynlais, between the counties of Brecknock and Glamorgan.

Besides Grugyn and Twrch Llawin, there was a third brother to whom the story gives a special name, to wit, Llwydawc Gouynnyat, and this was, I take it, meant also to account for a place-name, which, however, is not given: it should have been somewhere in Ystrad Yw, in the county of Brecknock. Still greater interest attaches to the swine that have not been favoured with names of their own, those referred to simply as banw, 'a young boar,' and benwic, 'a young sow.' Now banw has its equivalent in Irish in the word banbh, which O'Reilly explains as meaning a 'sucking pig,' and that is the meaning also of the Manx bannoo; but formerly the word may have had a somewhat wider meaning. The Welsh appellative is introduced twice into the story of Twrch Trwyth; once to account, as I take it, for the name Mynyd Amanw, 'Amman Mountain,' and once for Dyffryn Amanw, 'Amman Valley.' In both instances Amanw was meant, as I think, to be accounted for by the banw killed at each of the places in question. But how, you will ask, does the word banw account for Amanw, or throw any light on it at all? Very simply, if you will just suppose the name to have been Goidelic; for then you have only to provide it with the definite article and it makes in banbh, 'the pig or the boar,' and that could not in Welsh yield anything but ymmanw or ammanw [116], which with the accent shifted backwards, became Ammanw and Amman or Aman.

Having premised these explanations let us, before we proceed further, see to what our evidence exactly amounts. Here, then, we have a mention of seven swine, but as two of them, a banw and a benwic, are killed at one and the same place, our figure is practically reduced to six [117]. The question then is, in how many of these six cases the story of the hunt accounts for the names of the places of the deaths respectively, that is to say, accounts for them in the ordinary way with which one is familiar in other Welsh stories. They may be enumerated as follows:--

1. A banw is killed at Mynyd Amanw.

2. A twrch is killed in the same neighbourhood, where there is a river Twrch.

3. A swine called Gwys is killed in the same neighbourhood still, where there is a river called Gwys, falling into the Twrch.

4. A banw and a benwic are killed in Dyffryn Amanw.

5. Grugyn is killed at a place called Garth Grugyn.

6. A swine called Llwydawc is killed at a spot, not named, in Ystrad Yw or not far off [118].

Thus in five cases out of the six, the story accounts for the place-name, and the question now is, can that be a mere accident? Just think what the probabilities of the case would be if you put them into numbers: South Wales, from St. David's to the Vale of the Usk, would supply hundreds of place-names as deserving of mention, to say the least, as those in this story; is it likely then that out of a given six among them no less than five should be accounted for or alluded to by any mere accident in the course of a story of the brevity of that of Twrch Trwyth. To my thinking such an accident is inconceivable, and I am forced, therefore, to suppose that the narrative was originally so designed as to account for them. I said 'originally so designed,' for the scribe of the Red Book, or let us say the last redactor of the story as it stands in the Red Book, shows no signs of having noticed any such design. Had he detected the play on the names of the places introduced, he would probably have been more inclined to develop that feature of the story than to efface it.

What I mean may best be illustrated by another swine story, namely, that which has already been referred to as occurring in the Mabinogi of Math. There we find Pryderi, king of Dyfed, holding his court at Rhudlan on the Teifi, but though he had become the proud possessor of a new race of animals, given him as a present by his friend Arawn, king of Annwn, he had made a solemn promise to his people, that he should give none of them away until they had doubled their number in Dyfed: these animals were the hobeu or pigs to which reference was made at p. 69 above. Now Gwydion, having heard of them, visited Pryderi's court, and by magic and enchantment deceived the king. Successful in his quest, he sets out for Gwyned with his hobeu, and this is how his journey is described in the Mabinogi: 'And that evening they journeyed as far as the upper end of Keredigion, to a place which is still called, for that reason, Mochdref, "Swine-town or Pigs' stead." On the morrow they went their way, and came across the Elenyd mountains, and that night they spent between Kerry and Arwystli, in the stead which is also called for that reason Mochdref. Thence they proceeded, and came the same evening as far as a commot in Powys, which is for that reason called Mochnant [119], "Swine-burn." Thence they journeyed to the cantred of Rhôs, and spent that night within the town which is still called Mochdref [120].' 'Ah, my men,' said Gwydion, 'let us make for the fastness of Gwyned with these beasts: the country is being raised in pursuit of us.' So this is what they did: they made for the highest town of Arllechwed, and there built a creu or sty for the pigs, and for that reason the town was called Creu-Wyrion, that is, perhaps, 'Wyrion's Sty.' In this, it is needless to state, we have the Corwrion of chap. i: see pp. 47, 50-70 above--the name is variously pronounced also Cyrwrion and C'rwrion.

That is how a portion of the Math story is made to account for a series of place-names, and had the editor of the Kulhwch understood the play on the names of places in question in the story of Twrch Trwyth, it might be expected that he would have given it prominence, as already suggested. Then comes the question, how it came to pass that he did not understand it? The first thing to suggest itself as an answer is, that he may have been a stranger to the geography of the country concerned. That, however, is a very inadequate explanation; for his being a stranger, though it might account for his making blunders as to the localities, would not be likely to deter him from venturing into geography which he had not mastered.

What was it, then, that hid from him a portion of the original in this instance? In part, at least, it must have been a difficulty of language. Let us take an illustration: Gwys has already been mentioned more than once as a name applied to one of Twrch Trwyth's offspring, and the words used are very brief, to the following effect:--'And then another of his swine was killed: Gwys was its name.' As a matter of fact, the scribe was labouring under a mistake, for he ought to have said rather, 'And then another of his swine was killed: it was a sow'; since gwys was a word meaning a sow, and not the name of any individual hog. The word has, doubtless, long been obsolete in Welsh; but it was known to the poet of the 'Little Pig's Lullaby' in the Black Book of Carmarthen, where one of the stanzas begins, fo. 29a, with the line:

Oian aparchellan. aparchell. guin guis.

The late Dr. Pughe translated it thus:

Listen, little porkling! thou forward little white pig.

I fear I should be obliged to render it less elegantly:

Lullaby, little porker, white sow porker.

For the last four words Stokes suggests 'O pigling of a white sow'; but perhaps the most natural rendering of the words would be 'O white porker of a sow!'--which does not recommend itself greatly on the score of sense, I must admit. The word occurs, also, in Breton as gwiz or gwéz, 'truie, femelle du porc,' and as gwys or guis in Old Cornish, while in Irish it was feis. Nevertheless, the editor of the Twrch Trwyth story did not know it; but it would be in no way surprising that a Welshman, who knew his language fairly well, should be baffled by such a word in case it was not in use in his own district in his own time. This, however, barely touches the fringe of the question. The range of the hunt, as already given, was mostly within the boundaries, so to say, of the portion of South Wales where we find Goidelic inscriptions in the Ogam character of the fifth or sixth century; and I am persuaded that the Goidelic language must have lived down to the sixth or seventh century in the south and in the north of Wales [121], a tract of Mid-Wales being then, probably, the only district which can be assumed to have been completely Brythonic in point of speech. In this very story, probably, such a name as Garth Grugyn is but slightly modified from a Goidelic Gort Grucaind, 'the enclosure of Grucand [122] or Grugan': compare Cúchulaind or Cúchulainn made in Welsh into Cocholyn. But the capital instance in the story of Twrch Trwyth as has already been indicated is that of Amanw, which I detect also as Ammann (probably to be read Ammanu), in the Book of Llan Dâv (or Liber Landavensis), p. 199: it is there borne by a lay witness to a grant of land called Tir Dimuner, which would appear to have been in what is now Monmouthshire. Interpreted as standing for in Banbh, 'the Boar,' it would make a man's name of the same class as Ibleid, found elsewhere in the same manuscript (pp. 178, 184), meaning evidently i Bleid, now y Blaid, 'the Wolf.' But observe that the latter was Welsh and the former Goidelic, which makes all the difference for our story. The Goidel relating the story would say that a boar, banbh, was killed on the mountain or hill of in Banbh or of 'the Boar'; and his Goidelic hearer could not fail to associate the place-name with the appellative. But a Brython could hardly understand what the words in Banbh meant, and certainly not after he had transformed them into Ammanw, with the nb assimilated into mm, and the accent shifted to the first syllable. It is needless to say that my remarks have no meaning unless Goidelic was the original language of the tale.

In the summary I have given of the hunt, I omitted a number of proper names of the men who fell at the different spots where the Twrch is represented brought to bay. I wish now to return to them with the question, why were their names inserted in the story at all? It may be suspected that they also, or at any rate some of them, were intended to explain place-names; but I must confess to having had little success in identifying traces of them in the ordnance maps. Others, however, may fare better, who have a better acquaintance with the districts in point, and in that hope I append them in their order in the story:--

1. Arthur sends to the hunt on the banks of the Nevern, in Pembrokeshire, his men, Eli and Trachmyr, Gwarthegyd son of Caw, and Bedwyr; also Tri meib Cledyv Divwlch, 'three Sons of the Gapless Sword.' The dogs are also mentioned: Drudwyn, Greid son of Eri's whelp, led by Arthur himself; Glythmyr Ledewig's two dogs, led by Gwarthegyd son of Caw; and Arthur's dog Cavall, led by Bedwyr.

2. Twrch Trwyth makes for Cwm Kerwyn in the Preselly Mountains, and turns to bay, killing the following men, who are called Arthur's four rhyswyr [123] or champions--Gwarthegyd son of Caw, Tarawg of Allt Clwyd, Rheidwn son of Eli Atver, and Iscovan Hael.

3. He turns to bay a second time in Cwm Kerwyn, and kills Gwydre son of Arthur, Garselid Wydel, Glew son of Yscawt, and Iscawyn son of Bannon or Panon.

4. Next day he is overtaken in the same neighbourhood, and he kills Glewlwyd Gavaelvawr's three men, Huandaw, Gogigwr, and Penn Pingon, many of the men of the country also, and Gwlydyn Saer, one of Arthur's chief architects.

5. Arthur overtakes the Twrch next in Peuliniauc (p. 512 above); and the Twrch there kills Madawc son of Teithion, Gwyn son of Tringad son of Neued, and Eiriawn Penlloran.

6. Twrch Trwyth next turns to bay at Aber Towy, 'Towy Mouth,' and kills Cynlas son of Cynan, and Gwilenhin, king of France.

7. The next occasion of his killing any men whose names are given, is when he reaches Llwch Ewin (p. 515), near which he killed Echel Vordwyd-twll, Arwyli eil Gwydawg Gwyr, and many men and dogs besides.

8. Grugyn, one of the Twrch's offspring, goes to Garth Grugyn in Keredigion with Eli and Trachmyr pursuing him; but what happened to them we are not told in consequence of the omission mentioned above (p. 515) as occurring in the manuscript.

9. Llwydawc at bay in an uncertain locality kills Rudvyw Rys [124] and many others.

10. Llwydawc goes to Ystrad Yw, where he is met by the Men of Llydaw, and he kills Hirpeissawc, king of Llydaw, also Llygatrud Emys and Gwrbothu Hên, maternal uncles to Arthur.

By way of notes on these items, I would begin with the last by asking, what is one to make of these Men of Llydaw? First of all, one notices that their names are singular: thus Hirpeissawc, 'Long-coated or Long-robed,' is a curious name for their king, as it sounds more like an epithet than a name itself. Then Llygatrud (also Llysgatrud, which I cannot understand, except as a scribal error) Emys is also unusual: one would have rather expected Emys Lygatrud, 'Emys the Red-eyed.' As it stands it looks as if it meant the 'Red-eyed One of Emys.' Moreover Emys reminds one of the name of Emyr Llydaw, the ancestor in Welsh hagiology of a number of Welsh saints. It looks as if the redactor of the Red Book had mistaken an r for an s in copying from a pre-Norman original. That he had to work on such a manuscript is proved by the remaining instance, Gwrbothu Hên, 'G. the Ancient,' in which we have undoubtedly a pre-Norman spelling of Gwrfodw: the same redactor having failed to recognize the name, left it without being converted into the spelling of his own school. In the Book of Llan Dâv it will be found variously written Gurbodu, Guoruodu, and Guruodu. Then the epithet hên, 'old or ancient,' reminds one of such instances as Math Hên and Gofynion Hên, to be noticed a little later in this chapter. Let us now direct the reader's attention for a moment to the word Llydaw, in order to see whether that may not suggest something. The etymology of it is contested, so one has to infer its meaning, as well as one can, from the way in which it is found used. Now it is the ordinary Welsh word for Brittany or Little Britain, and in Irish it becomes Letha, which is found applied not only to Armorica but also to Latium. Conversely one could not be surprised if a Goidel, writing Latin, rendered his own Letha or the Welsh Llydaw by Latium, even when no part of Italy was meant. Now it so happens that Llydaw occurs in Wales itself, to wit in the name of Llyn Llydaw, a Snowdonian lake already mentioned, p. 475. It is thus described by Pennant, ii. 339:--'We found, on arriving at the top, an hollow a mile in length, filled with Llyn Llydaw, a fine lake, winding beneath the rocks, and vastly indented by rocky projections, here and there jutting into it. In it was one little island, the haunt of black-backed gulls, which breed here, and, alarmed by such unexpected visitants, broke the silence of this sequestered place by their deep screams.' But since Pennant's time mining operations [125] have been carried on close to the margin of this lake; and in the course of them the level of the water is said to have been lowered to the extent of sixteen feet, when, in the year 1856, an ancient canoe was discovered there. According to the late Mr. E. L. Barnwell, who has described it in the Archæologia Cambrensis for 1874, pp. 150-1, it was in the possession of Dr. Griffith Griffith of Tal y Treudyn, near Harlech, who exhibited it at the Cambrian Archæological Association's meeting at Machynlleth in 1866 [126]. 'It measures,' Mr. Barnwell says, 'nine feet nine inches--a not uncommon length in the Scotch early canoes,--and has been hollowed out of one piece of wood, as is universally the case with these early boats.' He goes on to surmise that 'this canoe may have been used to reach the island, for the sake of birds or eggs; or what is not impossible, the island may have been the residence of some one who had reasons for preferring so isolated an abode. It may, in fact, have been a kind of small natural crannog, and, in one sense, a veritable lake-dwelling, access to and from which was easy by means of such a canoe.' Stokes conjectures Llydaw to have meant coast-land, and Thurneysen connects it with the Sanskrit prthivi and Old Saxon folda [127], 'earth': and, so far as I can see, one is at liberty to assume a meaning that would satisfy Llydaw, 'Armorica,' and the Llydaw of Llyn Llydaw, 'the Lake of Llydaw,' namely that it signified land which one had to reach by boat, so that it was in fact applicable to a lake settlement of any kind, in other words, that Llydaw on Snowdon was the name of the lake-dwelling. So I cannot help suggesting, with great deference, that the place whence came the Men of Llydaw in the story of the hunting of Twrch Trwyth was the settlement in Syfadon lake (p. 73), and that the name of that stronghold, whether it was a crannog or a stockaded islet, was also Llydaw. For the power of that settlement over the surrounding country to have extended a few miles around would be but natural to suppose--the distance between the Yw and Llyn Syfadon is, I am told, under three miles. Should this guess prove well founded, we should have to scan with renewed care the allusions in our stories to Llydaw, and not assume that they always refer us to Brittany.

That the name Llydaw did on occasion refer to the region of Llyn Syfadon admits of indirect proof as follows:--The church of Llangorse on its banks is dedicated to a Saint Paulinus, after whom also is called Capel Peulin, in the upper course of the Towy, adjacent to the Cardiganshire parish of Llandewi Brefi. Moreover, tradition makes Paulinus attend a synod in 519 at Llandewi Brefi, where St. David distinguished himself by his preaching against Pelagianism. Paulinus was then an old man, and St. David had been one of his pupils at the Ty Gwyn, 'Whitland,' on the Taf, where Paulinus had established a religious house [128]; and some five miles up a tributary brook of the Taf is the church of Llandysilio, where an ancient inscription mentions a Paulinus. These two places, Whitland and Llandysilio, were probably in the cymwd of Peuliniog, which is called after a Paulinus, and through which we have just followed the hunt of Twrch Trwyth (p. 512). Now the inscription to which I have referred reads [129], with ligatures:--

CLVTORIGI FILI PAVLINI MARINILATIO

This probably means '(the Monument) of Clutorix, son of Paulinus from Latium in the Marsh'; unless one ought rather to treat Marini as an epithet to Paulini. In either case Latio has probably to be construed 'of or from Latium': compare a Roman inscription found at Bath (Hübner's No. 48), which begins with C. Murrius. | C. F. Arniensis | Foro. Iuli. Modestus [130], and makes in English, according to Mr. Haverfield, 'Gaius Murrius Modestus, son of Gaius, of the tribe Arniensis, of the town Forum Iulii.' The easiest way to explain the last line as a whole is probably to treat it as a compound with the qualifying word deriving its meaning, not from mare, 'the sea,' but from the Late Latin mara, 'a marsh or bog.' Thus Marini-Latium would mean 'Marshy Latium,' to distinguish it from Latium in Italy, and from Letha or Llydaw in the sense of Brittany, which was analogously termed in Medieval Irish Armuirc Letha [131], that is the Armorica of Letha. This is borne out by the name of the church of Paulinus, which is in Welsh Llan y Gors, anglicized Llangorse, 'the Church of the Marsh or Bog,' and that is exactly the meaning of the name given it in the Taxatio of Pope Nicholas, which is that of Ecclesia de Mara. In other terms, we have in the qualified Latium of the inscription the Latium or Letha which came to be called in Welsh Llydaw. It is, in my opinion, from that settlement as their head quarters, that the Men of Llydaw sallied forth to take part in the hunt in Ystrad Yw, where the boar Llwydog was killed.

The idea that the story of Twrch Trwyth was more or less topographical is not a new one. Lady Charlotte Guest, in her Mabinogion, ii. 363-5, traces the hunt through several places called after Arthur, such as Buarth Arthur, 'Arthur's Cattle-pen,' and Bwrd Arthur, 'Arthur's Table,' besides others more miscellaneously named, such as Twyn y Moch, 'the Swine's Hill,' near the source of the Amman, and Llwyn y Moch, 'the Swine's Grove,' near the foot of the same eminence. But one of the most remarkable statements in her note is the following:--'Another singular coincidence may be traced between the name of a brook in this neighbourhood, called Echel, and the Echel Fordwyttwll who is recorded in the tale as having been slain at this period of the chase.' I have been unable to discover any clue to a brook called Echel, but one called Egel occurs in the right place; so I take it that Lady Charlotte Guest's informants tacitly identified the name with that of Echel. Substantially they were probably correct, as the Egel, called Ecel in the dialect of the district, flows into the upper Clydach, which in its turn falls into the Tawe near Pont ar Dawe. As the next pool mentioned is Llwch Tawe, I presume it was some water or other which drained into the Tawe in this same neighbourhood. The relative positions of Llwch Ewin, the Egel, and Llwch Tawe as indicated above offer no apparent difficulty. The Goidelic name underlying that of Echel was probably some such a one as Eccel or Ecell; and Ecell occurs, for instance, in the Book of the Dun Cow, fo. 80b, as the name of a noble or prince. In rendering this name into Welsh as Echel, due regard was had for the etymological equivalence of Goidelic cc or c to Welsh ch, but the unbroken oral tradition of a people changing its language by degrees from Goidelic to Welsh was subject to no such influence, especially in the matter of local names; so the one here in question passed into Welsh as Eccel, liable only to be modified into Egel. In any case, one may assume that the death of the hero Echel was introduced to account for the name of the brook Egel. Indications of something similar in the linguistic sense occur in the part of the narrative relating the death of Grugyn, at Garth Grugyn. This boar is pursued by two huntsmen called Eli and Trachmyr, the name of the former of whom reminds one of Garth Eli, in the parish of Llandewi Brefi. Possibly the original story located at Garth Eli the death of Eli, or some other incident in which Grugyn was concerned; but the difficulty here is that the exact position of Garth Grugyn is still uncertain.

Lastly, our information as to the hunting of Twrch Trwyth is not exclusively derived from the Kulhwch, for besides an extremely obscure poem about the Twrch in the Book of Aneurin, a manuscript of the thirteenth century, we have one item given in the Mirabilia associated with the Historia Brittonum of Nennius, § 73, and this carries us back to the eighth century. It reads as follows:--

Est aliud mirabile in regione quæ dicitur Buelt. Est ibi cumulus lapidum, et unus lapis superpositus super congestum, cum vestigio canis in eo. Quando venatus est porcum Troit, impressit Cabal, qui erat canis Arthuri militis, vestigium in lapide, et Arthur postea congregavit congestum lapidum sub lapide in quo erat vestigium canis sui, et vocatur Carn Cabal. Et veniunt homines et tollunt lapidem in manibus suis per spacium diei et noctis, et in crastino die invenitur super congestum suum.

'Another wonder there is in the district called Buallt: there is there a heap of stones, and one stone is placed on the top of the pile with the footmark of a dog in it. Cafall, the dog of the warrior Arthur, when chasing the pig Trwyd printed the mark of his foot on it, and Arthur afterwards collected a heap of stones underneath the stone in which was the footmark of his dog, and it is called Cafall's Cairn. And men come and take the stone away in their hands for the space of a day and a night, and on the following day the stone is found on the top of its heap [132].'

Lady Charlotte Guest, in a note to the Kulhwch story in her Mabinogion, ii. 360, appears to have been astonished to find that Carn Cavall, as she writes it, was no fabulous mound but an actual 'mountain in the district of Builth, to the south of Rhayader Gwy, and within sight of that town.' She went so far as to persuade one of her friends to visit the summit, and he begins his account of it to her with the words: 'Carn Cavall, or as it is generally pronounced Corn Cavall, is a lofty and rugged mountain.' On one of the cairns on the mountain he discovered what may have been the very stone to which the Mirabilia story refers; but the sketch with which he accompanied his communication cannot be said to be convincing, and he must have been drawing on his imagination when he spoke of this somewhat high hill as a lofty mountain. Moreover his account of its name only goes just far enough to be misleading: the name as pronounced in the neighbourhood of Rhayader is Corn Gafallt by Welsh-speaking people, and Corn Gavalt by monoglot Englishmen. So it is probable that at one time the pronunciation was Carn Gavall [133]. But to return to the incident recorded by Nennius, one has to remark that it does not occur in the Kulhwch; nor, seeing the position of the hill, can it have been visited by Arthur or his dog in the course of the Twrch Trwyth hunt as described by the redactor of the story in its present form. This suggests the reflection not only that the Twrch story is very old, but that it was put together by selecting certain incidents out of an indefinite number, which, taken all together, would probably have formed a network covering the whole of South Wales as far north as the boundary of the portion of Mid-Wales occupied by the Brythons before the Roman occupation. In other words, the Goidels of this country had stories current among them to explain the names of the places with which they were familiar; and it is known that was the case with the Goidels of Ireland. Witness the place-name legends known in Medieval Irish as Dindsenchas, with which the old literature of Ireland abounds. On what principle the narrator of the Kulhwch made his selection from the repertoire I cannot say; but one cannot help seeing that he takes little interest in the details, and that he shows still less insight into the etymological motif of the incidents which he mentions. However, this should be laid mainly to the charge, perhaps, of the early medieval redactor.

Among the reasons which have been suggested for the latter overlooking and effacing the play on the place-names, I have hinted that he did not always understand them, as they sometimes involved a language which may not have been his. This raises the question of translation: if the story was originally in Goidelic, what was the process by which it passed into Brythonic? Two answers suggest themselves, and the first comes to this: if the story was in writing, we may suppose a literary man to have sat down to translate it word for word from Goidelic to Brythonic, or else to adapt it in a looser fashion. In either case, one should suppose him a master of both languages, and capable of doing justice to the play on the place-names. But it is readily conceivable that the fact of his understanding both languages might lead him to miscalculate what was exactly necessary to enable a monoglot Brython to grasp his meaning clearly. Moreover, if the translator had ideas of his own as to style, he might object on principle to anything like an explanation of words being interpolated in the narrative. In short, one could see several loopholes through which a little confusion might force itself in, and prevent the monoglot reader or hearer of the translation from correctly grasping the story at all points as it was in the original. The other view, and the more natural one, as I think, is that we should postulate the interference of no special translator, but suppose the story, or rather a congeries of stories, to have been current among the natives of a certain part of South Wales, say the Loughor Valley, at a time when their language was still Goidelic, and that, as they gradually gave up Goidelic and adopted Brythonic, they retained their stories and translated the narrative, while they did not always translate the place-names occurring in that narrative. Thus, for instance, would arise the discrepancy between banw and Amanw, the latter of which to be Welsh should have been rendered y Banw, 'the Boar.' If this is approximately what took place, it is easy to conceive the possibility of many points of nicety being completely effaced in the course of such a rough process of transformation. In one or two small matters it happens that we can contrast the community as translator with the literary individual at work: I allude to the word Trwyth. That vocable was not translated, not metaphoned, if I may so term it, at all at the time: it passed, when it was still Treth-i, from Goidelic into Brythonic, and continued in use without a break; for the changes whereby Treth-i has become Trwyth have been such as other words have undergone in the course of ages, as already stated. On the other hand, the literary man who knew something of the two languages seems to have reasoned, that where a Goidelic th occurred between vowels, the correct etymological equivalent in Brythonic was t, subject to be mutated to d. So when he took the name over he metaphoned Treth-i into Tret-i, whence we have the Porcus Troit of Nennius, and Twrch Trwyd [134] in Welsh poetry: these Troit and Trwyd were the literary forms as contrasted with the popular Trwyth. Now, if my surmises as to Echel and Egel are near the truth, their history must be similar; that is to say, Echel would be the literary form and Ecel, Egel the popular one respectively of the Goidelic Ecell. A third parallel offers itself in the case of the personal name Arwyli, borne by one of Echel's companions: the Arwyl of that name has its etymological equivalent in the Arwystl- of Arwystli, the name of a district comprising the eastern slopes of Plinlimmon, and represented now by the Deanery of Arwystli. So Arwystli challenges comparison with the Irish Airgialla or Airgéill, anglicized Oriel, which denotes, roughly speaking, the modern counties of Armagh, Louth, and Monaghan. For here we have the same prefix ar placed in front of one and the same vocable, which in Welsh is gwystl, 'a hostage,' and in Irish giall, of the same meaning and origin. The reader will at once think of the same word in German as geisel, 'a hostage,' Old High German gisal. But the divergence of sound between Arwystl-i and Arwyl-i arises out of the difference of treatment of sl in Welsh and Irish. In the Brythonic district of Mid-Wales we have Arwystli with sl treated in the Brythonic way, while in Arwyli we have the combination treated in the Goidelic way, the result being left standing when the speakers of Goidelic in South Wales learnt Brythonic [135].

Careful observation may be expected to add to the number of these instructive instances. It is, however, not to be supposed that all double forms of the names in these stories are to be explained in exactly the same way. Thus, for instance, corresponding to Lug, genitive Loga, we have the two forms Lleu and Llew, of which the former alone matches the Irish. But it is to be observed that Lleu remains in some verses [136] in the story of Math, whereas in the prose he appears to be called Llew. It is not improbable that the editing which introduced Llew dates comparatively late, and that it was done by a man who was not familiar with the Venedotian place-names of which Lleu formed part, namely, Dinlleu and Nantlleu, now Dinlle and Nantlle. Similarly the two brothers, Gofannon and Amaethon, as they are called in the Mabinogi of Math and in the Kulhwch story, are found also called Gofynyon and Amathaon. The former agrees with the Irish form Goibniu, genitive Goibnenn, whereas Gofannon does not. As to Amaethon or Amathaon the Irish counterpart has, unfortunately, not been identified. Gofannon and Amaethon have the appearance of being etymologically transparent in Welsh, and they have probably been remodelled by the hand of a literary redactor. There were also two forms of the name of Manawydan in Welsh; for by the side of that there was another, namely, Manawydan, liable to be shortened to Manawyd: both occur in old Welsh poetry [137]. But manawyd or mynawyd is the Welsh word for an awl, which is significant here, as the Mabinogi called after Manawydan makes him become a shoemaker on two occasions, whence the Triads style him one of the Three golden Shoemakers of the Isle of Prydain: see the Oxford Mabinogion, p. 308.

What has happened in the way of linguistic change in one of our stories, the Kulhwch, may have happened in others, say in the four branches of the Mabinogi, namely, Pwyll, prince of Dyved; Branwen, daughter of Llyr; Math, son of Mathonwy; and Manawydan, son of Llyr. Some time ago I endeavoured to show that the principal characters in the Mabinogi of Math, namely, the sons and daughters of Dôn, are to be identified as a group with the Tuatha Dé Danann, 'Tribes of the Goddess Danu or Donu,' of Irish legend. I called attention to the identity of our Welsh Dôn with the Irish Donu, genitive Donann, Gofynion or Gofannon with Goibniu, genitive Goibnenn, and of Lleu or Llew with Lug. Since then Professor Zimmer has gone further, and suggested that the Mabinogion are of Irish origin; but that I cannot quite admit. They are of Goidelic origin, but they do not come from the Irish or the Goidels of Ireland: they come rather, as I think, from this country's Goidels, who never migrated to the sister island, but remained here eventually to adopt Brythonic speech. There is no objection, however, so far as this argument is concerned, to their being regarded as this country's Goidels descended either from native Goidels or from early Goidelic invaders from Ireland, or else partly from the one origin and partly from the other. This last is perhaps the safest view to accept as a working hypothesis. Now Professor Zimmer fixes on that of Mathonwy, among other names, as probably the Welsh adaptation of some such an Irish name as the genitive Mathgamnai [138], now anglicized Mahony. This I am also prepared to accept in the sense that the Welsh form is a loan from a Goidelic one current some time or other in this country, and represented in Irish by Mathgamnai. The preservation of Goidelic th in Mathonwy stamps it as ranking with Trwyth, Egel, and Arwyli, as contrasted with a form etymologically more correct, of which we seem to have an echo in the Breton names Madganoe and Madgone [139].

Another name which I am inclined to regard as brought in from Goidelic is that of Gilvaethwy, son of Dôn: it would seem to involve some such a word as the Irish gilla, 'a youth, an attendant or servant,' and some form of the Goidelic name Maughteus or Mochta, so that the name Gilla-mochtai meant the attendant of Mochta. This last vocable appears in Irish as the name of several saints, but previously it was probably that of some pagan god of the Goidels, and its meaning was most likely the same as that of the Irish participial mochta, which Stokes explains as 'magnified, glorified': see his Calendar of Oengus, p. ccxiv, and compare the name Mael-mochta. Adamnan, in his Vita S. Columbæ, writes the name Maucteus in the following passage, pref. ii. p. 6:--

Nam quidam proselytus Brito, homo sanctus, sancti Patricii episcopi discipulus, Maucteus nomine, ita de nostro prophetizavit Patrono, sicuti nobis ab antiquis traditum expertis compertum habetur.

This saint, who is said to have prophesied of St. Columba and died in the year 534, is described in his Life (Aug. 19) as ortus ex Britannia [140], which, coupled with Adamnan's Brito, probably refers him to Wales; but it is remarkable that nevertheless he bore the very un-Brythonic name of Mochta or Mauchta [141].

To return to the Mabinogion: I have long been inclined to identify Llwyd, son of Kilcoed, with the Irish Liath, son of Celtchar, of Cualu in the present county of Wicklow. Liath, whose name means 'grey,' is described as the comeliest youth of noble rank among the fairies of Erin; and the only time the Welsh Llwyd, whose name also means 'grey,' appears in the Mabinogion he is ascribed, not the comeliest figure, it is true, or the greatest personal beauty, but the most imposing disguise of a bishop attended by his suite: he was a great magician. The name of his father, Kil-coet, seems to me merely an inexact popular rendering of Celtchar, the name of Liath's father: at any rate one fails here to detect the touch of the skilled translator or literary redactor. [142] But the Mabinogi of Manawydan, in which Llwyd figures, is also the one in which Pryderi king of Dyfed's wife is called Kicua or Cigfa, a name which has no claim to be regarded as Brythonic. It occurs early, however, in the legendary history of Ireland: the Four Masters, under the year A.M. 2520, mention a Ciocbha as wife of a son of Parthalon; and the name seems to be related to that of a man called Cioccal, A.M. 2530. Lastly, Manawydan, from whom the Mabinogi takes its name, is called mab Llyr, 'son of Llyr,' in Welsh, and Manannán mac Lir in Irish. Similarly with his brother Brân, and his sister Branwen, except that she has not been identified in Irish story. But in Irish literature the genitive Lir, as in mac Lir, 'son of Ler,' is so common, and the nominative so rare, that Lir came to be treated in late Irish as the nominative too; but a genitive of the form Lir suggests a nominative-accusative Ler, and as a matter of fact it occurs, for instance, in the couplet:--

Fer co n-ilur gnim dar ler Labraid Luath Lam ar Claideb [143].

A man of many feats beyond sea, Labraid swift of Hand on Sword is he.

So it seems probable that the Welsh Llyr [144] is no other word than the Goidelic genitive Lir, retained in use with its pronunciation modified according to the habits of the Welsh language; and in that case [145] it forms comprehensive evidence, that the stories about the Llyr family in Welsh legend were Goidelic before they put on a Brythonic garb.

As to the Mabinogion generally, one may say that they are devoted to the fortunes chiefly of three powerful houses or groups, the children of Dôn, the children of Llyr, and Pwyll's family. This last is brought into contact with the Llyr group, which takes practically the position of superiority. Pwyll's family belonged chiefly to Dyfed; but the power and influence of the sons of Llyr had a far wider range: we find them in Anglesey, at Harlech, in Gwales or the Isle of Grasholm off Pembrokeshire, at Aber Henvelen somewhere south of the Severn Sea, and in Ireland. But the expedition to Ireland under Brân, usually called Bendigeituran, 'Brân [146] the Blessed,' proved so disastrous that the Llyr group, as a whole, disappears, making way for the children of Dôn. These last came into collision with Pwyll's son, Pryderi, in whose country Manawydan, son of Llyr, had ended his days. Pryderi, in consequence of Gwydion's deceit (pp. 69, 501, 525), makes war on Math and the children of Dôn: he falls in it, and his army gives hostages to Math. Thus after the disappearance of the sons of Llyr, the children of Dôn are found in power in their stead in North Wales [147], and that state of things corresponds closely enough to the relation between the Tuatha Dé Danann and the Lir family in Irish legend. There Lir and his family are reckoned in the number of the Tuatha Dé Danann, but within that community Lir was so powerful that it was considered but natural that he should resent a rival candidate being elected king in preference to him. So the Tuatha Dé took pains to conciliate Lir, as did also their king, who gave his daughter to Lir to wife, and when she died he gave him another of his daughters [148]; and with the treatment of her stepchildren by that deceased wife's sister begins one of the three Sorrowful Tales of Erin, known to English readers as the Fate of the Children of Lir. But the reader should observe the relative position: the Tuatha Dé remain in power, while the children of Lir belong to the past, which is also the sequence in the Mabinogion. Possibly this is not to be considered as having any significance, but it is to be borne in mind that the Lir-Llyr group is strikingly elemental in its patronymic Lir, Llyr. The nominative, as already stated, was ler, 'sea,' and so Cormac renders mac Lir by filius maris. How far we may venture to consider the sea to have been personified in this context, and how early, it is impossible to say. In any case it is deserving of notice that one group of Goidels to this day do not say mac Lir, 'son of Lir,' filium maris, but always 'son of the lir': I allude to the Gaels of the Isle of Man, in whose language Manannán mac Lir is always Mannanan mac y Lir, or as they spell it, Lear; that is to say 'Mannanan, son of the ler.' Manxmen have been used to consider Manannan their eponymous hero, and first king of their island: they call him more familiarly Mannanan beg mac y Lear, 'Little Mannanan, son of the ler'. This we may, though no Manxman of the present day attaches any meaning to the word lir or lear, interpreted as 'Little Mannanan, son of the Sea.' The wanderings at large of the children of Lir before being eclipsed by the Danann-Dôn group, remind one of the story of the labours of Hercules, where it relates that hero's adventures on his return from robbing Geryon of his cattle. Pomponius Mela, ii. 5 (p. 50), makes Hercules on that journey fight in the neighbourhood of Aries with two sons of Poseidon or Neptune, whom he calls (in the accusative) Albiona and Bergyon. To us, with our more adequate knowledge of geography, the locality and the men cannot appear the most congruous, but there can hardly be any mistake as to the two personal names being echoes of those of Albion and Iverion, Britain and Ireland.

The whole cycle of the Mabinogion must have appeared strange to the story-teller and the poet of medieval Wales, and far removed from the world in which they lived. We have possibly a trace of this feeling in the epithet hên, 'old, ancient,' given to Math in a poem in the Red Book of Hergest, where we meet with the line [149]:--

Gan uath hen gan gouannon.

With Math the ancient, with Gofannon.

Similarly in the confused list of heroes which the story-teller of the Kulhwch (Mabinogion, p. 108) was able to put together, we seem to have Gofannon, Math's relative, referred to under the designation of Gouynyon Hen, 'Gofynion the Ancient.' To these might be added others, such as Gwrbothu Hên, mentioned above, p. 531, and from another source Lleu Hen [150], 'Llew the Ancient.' So strange, probably, and so obscure did some of the contents of the stories themselves seem to the story-tellers, that they may be now and then suspected of having effaced some of the features which it would have interested us to find preserved. This state of things brings back to my mind words of Matthew Arnold's, to which I had the pleasure of listening more years ago than I care to remember. He was lecturing at Oxford on Celtic literature, and observing 'how evidently the mediæval story-teller is pillaging an antiquity of which he does not fully possess the secret; he is like a peasant,' Matthew Arnold went on to say, 'building his hut on the site of Halicarnassus or Ephesus; he builds, but what he builds is full of materials of which he knows not the history, or knows by a glimmering tradition merely--stones "not of this building," but of an older architecture, greater, cunninger, more majestical. In the mediæval stories of no Latin or Teutonic people does this strike one as in those of the Welsh.' This becomes intelligible only on the theory of the stories having been in Goidelic before they put on a Welsh dress.

When saying that the Mabinogion and some of the stories contained in the Kulhwch, such as the Hunting of Twrch Trwyth, were Goidelic before they became Brythonic, I wish to be understood to use the word Goidelic in a qualified sense. For till the Brythons came, the Goidels were, I take it, the ruling race in most of the southern half of Britain, with the natives as their subjects, except in so far as that statement has to be limited by the fact, that we do not know how far they and the natives had been amalgamating together. In any case, the hostile advent of another race, the Brythons, would probably tend to hasten the process of amalgamation. That being so, the stories which I have loosely called Goidelic may have been largely aboriginal in point of origin, and by that I mean native, pre-Celtic and non-Aryan. It comes to this, then: we cannot say for certain whose creation Brân, for instance, should be considered to have been--that of Goidels or of non-Aryan natives. He sat, as the Mabinogi of Branwen describes him, on the rock of Harlech, a figure too colossal for any house to contain or any ship to carry. This would seem to challenge comparison with Cernunnos, the squatting god of ancient Gaul, around whom the other gods appear as mere striplings, as proved by the monumental representations in point. In these [151] he sometimes appears antlered like a stag; sometimes he is provided either with three normal heads or with one head furnished with three faces; and sometimes he is reduced to a head provided with no body, which reminds one of Brân, who, when he had been rid of his body in consequence of a poisoned wound inflicted on him in his foot in the slaughter of the Meal-bag Pavilion, was reduced to the Urdawl Ben, 'Venerable or Dignified Head,' mentioned in the Mabinogi of Branwen [152]. The Mabinogi goes on to relate how Brân's companions began to enjoy, subject to certain conditions, his 'Venerable Head's' society, which involved banquets of a fabulous duration and of a nature not readily to be surpassed by those around the Holy Grail. In fact here we have beyond all doubt one of the heathen originals of which the Grail is a Christian version. But the multiplicity of faces or heads of the Gaulish divinity find their analogues in a direction hitherto unnoticed as far as I know, namely, among the Letto-Slavic peoples of the Baltic sea-board. Thus the image of Svatovit in the island of Rügen is said to have had four faces [153]; and the life of Otto of Bamberg relates [154] how that high-handed evangelist proceeded to convert the ancient Prussians to Christianity. Among other things we are told how he found at Stettin an idol called Triglaus, a word referring to the three heads for which the god was remarkable. The saint took possession of the image and hewed away the body, reserving for himself the three heads, which are represented adhering together, forming one piece. This he sent as a trophy to Rome, and in Rome it may be still. Were it perchance to be found, it might be expected to show a close resemblance to the tricephal of the Gaulish altar found at Beaune in Burgundy.

Before closing this chapter a word may be permitted as to the Goidelic element in the history of Wales: it will come again before the reader in a later chapter, but what has already been advanced or implied concerning it may here be recapitulated as follows:--

It has been suggested that the hereditary dislike of the Brython for the Goidel argues their having formerly lived in close proximity to one another: see p. 473 above.

The tradition that the cave treasures of the Snowdon district belong by right to the Goidels, means that they were formerly supposed to have hidden them away when hard pressed by the Brythons: see pp. 471-2 above.

The sundry instances of a pair of names for a single person or place, one Goidelic (Brythonicized) still in use, and the other Brythonic (suggested by the Goidelic one), literary mostly and obsolete, go to prove that the Goidels were not expelled, but allowed to remain to adopt Brythonic speech.

Evidence of the indebtedness of story-tellers in Wales to their brethren of the same profession in Ireland is comparatively scarce; and almost in every instance of recent research establishing a connexion between topics or incidents in the Arthurian romances and the native literature of Ireland, the direct contact may be assumed to have been with the folklore and legend of the Goidelic inhabitants of Wales, whether before or after their change of language.

Probably the folklore and mythology of the Goidels of Wales and of Ireland were in the mass much the same, though in some instances they reach us in different stages of development: thus in such a case as that of Dôn and Danu (genitive Danann) the Welsh allusions in point refer to Dôn at a conspicuously earlier stage of her rôle than that represented by the Irish literature touching the Tuatha Dé Danann [155].

The common point of view from which our ancestors liked to look at the scenery around them is well illustrated by the fondness of the Goidel, in Wales and Ireland alike, for incidents to explain his place-names. He required the topography--indeed he requires it still, and hence the activity of the local etymologist--to connote story or history: he must have something that will impart the cold light of physical nature, river and lake, moor and mountain, a warmer tint, a dash of the pathetic element, a touch of the human, borrowed from the light and shade of the world of imagination and fancy in which he lives and dreams.