CHAPTER VI

CHAPTER VIThe Folklore of the Wells… Iuvat integros accedere fontes.—Lucretius.It is only recently1that I heard for the first time of Welsh instances of the habit of tying rags and bits of clothing to the branches of a tree growing near a holy well. Since then I have obtained several items of information in point: the first is a communication received in June, 1892, from Mr. J. H. Davies, of Lincoln College, Oxford—since then of Lincoln’s Inn—relating to a Glamorganshire holy well, situated near the pathway leading from Coychurch to Bridgend. It is the custom there, he states, for people suffering from any malady to dip a rag in the water, and to bathe the affected part of the body, the rag being then placed on a tree close to the well. When Mr. Davies passed that way, some three years previously, there were, he adds, hundreds of such shreds on the tree, some of which distinctly presented the appearance of having been very recently placed there. The well is called Ffynnon Cae Moch, ‘Swine-field Well,’ which can hardly have been its old name; and a later communication from Mr. Davies summarizes a conversation which he had about the well, on December 16, 1892, with Mr. J. T. Howell, of Pencoed, near Bridgend. His notes run thus:—‘Ffynnon Cae Moch, between Coychurch and Bridgend, is onemile from Coychurch, one and a quarter from Bridgend, near Tremains. It is within twelve or fifteen yards of the high-road, just where the pathway begins. People suffering from rheumatism go there. They bathe the part affected with water, and afterwards tie a piece of rag to the tree which overhangs the well. The rag is not put in the water at all, but is only put on the tree for luck. It is a stunted, but very old tree, and is simplycoveredwith rags.’ A little less than a year later, I had an opportunity of visiting this well in the company of Mr. Brynmor-Jones; and I find in my notes that it is not situated so near the road as Mr. Howell would seem to have stated to Mr. Davies. We found the well, which is a powerful spring, surrounded by a circular wall. It is overshadowed by a dying thorn tree, and a little further back stands another thorn which is not so decayed: it was on this latter thorn we found the rags. I took off a twig with two rags, while Mr. Brynmor-Jones counted over a dozen other rags on the tree; and we noticed that some of them had only recently been suspended there: among them were portions undoubtedly of a woman’s clothing. At one of the hotels at Bridgend, I found an illiterate servant who was acquainted with the well, and I cross-examined him on the subject of it. He stated that a man with a wound, which he explained to mean a cut, would go and stand in the well within the wall, and there he would untie the rag that had been used to tie up the wound and would wash the wound with it: then he would tie up the wound with a fresh rag and hang the old one on the tree. The more respectable people whom I questioned talked more vaguely, and only of tying a rag to the tree, except one who mentioned a pin being thrown into the wellora rag being tied to the tree.My next informant is Mr. D. J. Jones, a native of theRhonđa Valley, in the same county of Glamorgan. He was an undergraduate of Jesus College, Oxford, when I consulted him in 1892. His information was to the effect that he knows of three interesting wells in the county. The first is situated within two miles of his home, and is known asFfynnon Pen Rhys, or the Well of Pen Rhys. The custom there is that the person who wishes his health to be benefited should wash in the water of the well, and throw a pin into it afterwards. He next mentions a well at Ỻancarvan, some five or six miles from Cowbridge, where the custom prevails of tying rags to the branches of a tree growing close at hand. Lastly, he calls my attention to a passage inHanes Morganwg, ‘The History of Glamorgan,’ written by Mr. D. W. Jones, known in Welsh literature as Dafyđ Morganwg. In that work, p. 29, the author speaks ofFfynnon Marcros, ‘the Well of Marcros,’ to the following effect:—‘It is the custom for those who are healed in it to tie a shred of linen or cotton to the branches of a tree that stands close by; and there the shreds are, almost as numerous as the leaves.’ Marcros is, I may say, near Nash Point, and looks on the map as if it were about eight miles distant from Bridgend. Let me here make it clear that so far we have had to do with four different wells2, three of which are severally distinguished by the presence of a tree adorned with rags by those who seek health in those waters; but they are all three, as the reader will have doubtless noticed, in the same district, namely, the part of Glamorganshire near the main line of the Great Western Railway.There is no reason, however, to think that the custom of tying rags to a well tree was peculiar to that part ofthe Principality. One day, in looking through some old notes of mine, I came across an entry bearing the date of August 7, 1887, when I was spending a few days with my friend, Chancellor Silvan Evans, at Ỻanwrin Rectory, near Machynỻeth. Mrs. Evans was then alive and well, and took a keen interest in Welsh antiquities and folklore. Among other things, she related to me how she had, some twenty years before, visited a well in the parish of Ỻandriỻo yn Rhos, namelyFfynnon Eilian, or Elian’s Well, between Abergele and Ỻandudno, when her attention was directed to some bushes near the well, which had once been covered with bits of rags left by those who frequented the well. This was told Mrs. Evans by an old woman of seventy, who, on being questioned by Mrs. Evans concerning the history of the well, informed her that the rags used to be tied to the bushes by means of wool. She was explicit on the point, that wool had to be used for the purpose, and that even woollen yarn would not do: it had to be wool in its natural state. The old woman remembered this to have been the rule ever since she was a child. Mrs. Evans noticed corks, with pins stuck in them, floating in the well, and her informant remembered many more in years gone by; for Elian’s Well was once in great repute as affynnon reibio, or a well to which people resorted for the kindly purpose of bewitching those whom they hated. I infer, however, from what Mrs. Evans was told of the rags, that Elian’s Well was visited, not only by the malicious, but also by the sick and suffering. My note is not clear on the point whether there were any rags on the bushes by the well when Mrs. Evans visited the spot, or whether she was only told of them by the caretaker. Even in the latter case it seems evident that this habit of tying rags to trees or bushes near sacred wells has onlyceased in that part of Denbighshire within this century. It is very possible that it continued in North Wales more recently than this instance would lead one to suppose; indeed, I should not be in the least surprised to learn that it is still practised in out of the way places in Gwyneđ, just as it is in Glamorgan: we want more information.I cannot say for certain whether it was customary in any of the cases to which I have called attention to tie rags to the well tree as well as to throw pins or other small objects into the well; but I cannot help adhering to the view, that the distinction was probably an ancient one between two orders of things. In other words, I am inclined to believe that the rag was regarded as the vehicle of the disease of which the ailing visitor to the well wished to be rid, and that the bead, button, or coin deposited by him in the well, or in a receptacle near the well, formed alone the offering. In opposition to this view Mr. Gomme has expressed himself as follows inFolk-Lore, 1892, p. 89:—‘There is some evidence against that, from the fact that in the case of some wells, especially in Scotland at one time, the whole garment was put down as an offering. Gradually these offerings of clothes became less and less till they came down to rags. Also in other parts, the geographical distribution of rag-offerings coincides with the existence of monoliths and dolmens.’ As to the monoliths and dolmens, I am too little conversant with the facts to risk any opinion as to the value of the coincidence; but as to the suggestion that the rag originally meant the whole garment, that will suit my hypothesis admirably. In other words, the whole garment was, as I take it, the vehicle of the disease: the whole was accursed, and not merely a part. But Mr. Gomme had previously touched on the question in his presidential address (Folk-Lorefor 1892, p. 13); and I mustat once admit that he succeeded then in proving that a certain amount of confusion occurs between things which I should regard as belonging originally to distinct categories: witness the inimitable Irish instance which he quotes:—‘To St. Columbkill—I offer up this button, a bit o’ the waistband o’ my own breeches, an’ a taste o’ my wife’s petticoat, in remimbrance of us havin’ made this holy station; an’ may they rise up in glory to prove it for us in the last day.’ Here not only the button is treated as an offering, but also the bits of clothing; but the confusion of ideas I should explain as being, at least in part, one of the natural results of substituting a portion of a garment for the entire garment; for thereby a button or a pin becomes a part of the dress, and capable of being interpreted in two senses. After all, however, the ordinary practices have not, as I look at them, resulted in effacing the distinction altogether: the rag is not left in the well; nor is the bead, button, or pin attached to a branch of the tree. So, in the main, it seemed to me easier to explain the facts, taken altogether, on the supposition that originally the rag was regarded as the vehicle of the disease, and the bead, button, or coin as the offering. My object in calling attention to this point was to have it discussed, and I am happy to say that I have not been disappointed; for, since my remarks were published3, a paper entitledPin-wells and Rag-busheswas read before the British Association by Mr. Hartland, in 1893, and published inFolk-Lorefor the same year, pp. 451–70. In that paper the whole question is gone into with searching logic, and Mr. Hartland finds the required explanation in one of the dogmas of magic. For ‘if an article of my clothing,’ he says, ‘in a witch’s hands may cause me to suffer, the same article in contact with a beneficent power may relieve my pain, restore me tohealth, or promote my general prosperity. A pin that has pricked my wart … has by its contact, by the wound it has inflicted, acquired a peculiar bond with the wart; the rag that has rubbed the wart has by that friction acquired a similar bond; so that whatever is done to the pin or the rag, whatever influences the pin or the rag may undergo, the same influences are by that very act brought to bear, upon the wart. If, instead of using a rag, or making a pilgrimage to a sacred well, I rub my warts with raw meat and then bury the meat, the wart will decay and disappear with the decay and dissolution of the meat …. In like manner my shirt or stocking, or a rag to represent it, placed upon a sacred bush, or thrust into a sacred well—my name written upon the walls of a temple—a stone or a pellet from my hand cast upon a sacred image or a sacred cairn—is thenceforth in continual contact with divinity; and the effluence of divinity, reaching and involving it, will reach and involve me.’ Mr. Hartland concludes from a large number of instances, that as a rule ‘where the pin or button is dropped into the well, the patient does not trouble about the rag, and vice versa.’ This wider argument as to the effluence of the divinity of a particular spot of special holiness seems to me conclusive. It applies also, needless to say, to a large category of cases besides those in question between Mr. Gomme and the present writer.So now I would revise my position thus:—I continue to regard the rag much as before, but treat the article thrown into the well as the more special means of establishing a beneficial relation with the well divinity: whether it could also be viewed as an offering would depend on the value attached to it. Some of the following notes may serve as illustrations, especially those relating to the wool and the pin:—FfynnonGwynwy, or the Well of Gwynwy, near Ỻangelynin, on the river Conwy, appears to be partly in point; for it formerly used to be well stocked with crooked pins, which nobody would touch lest he might get from them the warts supposed to attach to them, whence it would appear that a pin might be regarded as the vehicle of the disease. There was a well of some repute at Cae Garw, in the parish of Pistyỻ, near the foot of Carnguwch, in Ỻeyn, or West Carnarvonshire. The water possessed virtues to cure one of rheumatism and warts; but, in order to be rid of the latter, it was requisite to throw a pin into the well for each individual wart. For these two items of information, and several more to be mentioned presently, I have to thank Mr. John Jones, better known in Wales by his bardic name of Myrđin Farđ, and as an enthusiastic collector of Welsh antiquities, whether in the form of manuscript or of unwritten folklore. On the second day of the year 1893 I paid him a visit at Chwilog, on the Carnarvon and Avon Wen Railway, and asked him many questions: these he not only answered with the utmost willingness, but he also showed me the unpublished materials which he had collected. I come next to a competition on the folklore of North Wales at the London Eisteđfod in 1887, in which, as one of the adjudicators, I observed that several of the competitors mentioned the prevalent belief, that every well with healing properties must have its outlet towards the south (i’r dê). According to one of them, if you wished to get rid of warts, you should, on your way to the well, look for wool which the sheep had lost. When you had found enough wool you should prick each wart with a pin, and then rub the wart well with the wool. The next thing was to bend the pin and throw it into the well. Then youshould place the wool on the first whitethorn you could find, and as the wind scattered the wool, the warts would disappear. There was a well of the kind, the writer went on to say, near his home; and he, with three or four other boys, went from school one day to the well to charm their warts away. For he had twenty-three on one of his hands; so that he always tried to hide it, as it was the belief that if one counted the warts they would double their number. He forgets what became of the other boys’ warts, but his own disappeared soon afterwards; and his grandfather used to maintain that it was owing to the virtue of the well. Such were the words of this writer, whose name is unknown to me; but I guess him to have been a native of Carnarvonshire, or else of one of the neighbouring districts of Denbighshire or Merionethshire. To return to Myrđin Farđ, he mentionedFfynnon Cefn Ỻeithfan, or the Well of the Ỻeithfan Ridge, on the eastern slope of Mynyđ y Rhiw, in the parish of Bryncroes, in the west of Ỻeyn. In the case of this well it is necessary, when going to it and coming from it, to be careful not to utter a word to anybody, or to turn to look back. What one has to do at the well is to bathe the warts with a rag or clout which has grease on it. When that is done, the clout with the grease has to be carefully concealed beneath the stone at the mouth of the well. This brings to my mind the fact that I noticed more than once, years ago, rags underneath stones in the water flowing from wells in Wales, and sometimes thrust into holes in the walls of wells, but I had no notion how they came there.On the subject of pin-wells I had in 1893, from Mr. T. E. Morris, of Portmadoc, barrister-at-law, some account ofFfynnon Faglan, or Baglan’s Well, in the parish of Ỻanfaglan, near Carnarvon. The well issituated in an open field to the right of the road leading towards the church, and close to it. The church and churchyard form an enclosure in the middle of the same field, and the former has in its wall the old stone readingFILI LOVERNII ANATEMORI. My friend derived information from Mrs. Roberts, of Cefn y Coed, near Carnarvon, as follows:—‘The old people who would be likely to know anything aboutFfynnon Faglanhave all died. The two oldest inhabitants, who have always lived in this parish of Ỻanfaglan, remember the well being used for healing purposes. One told me his mother used to take him to it, when he was a child, for sore eyes, bathe them with the water, and then drop in a pin. The other man, when he was young, bathed in it for rheumatism; and until quite lately people used to fetch away the water for medicinal purposes. The latter, who lives near the well, at Tan y Graig, said that he remembered it being cleaned out about fifty years ago, when two basinfuls of pins were taken out, but no coin of any kind. The pins were all bent, and I conclude the intention was to exorcise the evil spirit supposed to afflict the person who dropped them in, or, as the Welsh say,dadwitsio. No doubt some ominous words were also used. The well is at present nearly dry, the field where it lies having been drained some years ago, and the water in consequence withdrawn from it. It was much used for the cure of warts. The wart was washed, then pricked with a pin, which, after being bent, was thrown into the well. There is a very large and well-known well of the kind at C’lynnog,Ffynnon Beuno, “St. Beuno’s Well,” which was considered to have miraculous healing powers; and even yet, I believe, some people have faith in it.Ffynnon Faglanis, in its construction, an imitation, on a smaller scale, of St. Beuno’s Well at C’lynnog.’In the cliffs at the west end of Ỻeyn is a wishing-well calledFfynnon Fair, or St. Mary’s Well, to the left of the site of Eglwys Fair, and facing Ynys Enỻi, or Bardsey. Here, to obtain your wish, you have to descend the steps to the well and walk up again to the top with your mouth full of the water; and then you have to go round the ruins of the church once or more times with the water still in your mouth. Viewing the position of the well from the sea, I should be disposed to think that the realization of one’s wish at that price could not be regarded as altogether cheap. Myrđin Farđ also told me that there used to be a well near Criccieth Church. It was known asFfynnon y Saint, or the Saints’ Well, and it was the custom to throw keys or pins into it on the morning of Easter Sunday, in order to propitiate St. Catherine, who was the patron of the well. I should be glad to know what this exactly meant.Lastly, a few of the wells in that part of Gwyneđ may be grouped together and described as oracular. One of these, the big well in the parish of Ỻanbedrog in Ỻeyn, as I learn from Myrđin Farđ, required the devotee to kneel by it and avow his faith in it. When this had been duly done, he might proceed in this wise: to ascertain, for instance, the name of the thief who had stolen from him, he had to throw a bit of bread into the well and name the person whom he suspected. At the name of the thief the bread would sink; so the inquirer went on naming all the persons he could think of until the bit of bread sank, when the thief was identified. How far is one to suppose that we have here traces of the influences of the water ordeal common in the Middle Ages? Another well of the same kind wasFfynnon Saethon, in Ỻanfihangel Bacheỻaeth parish, also in Ỻeyn. Here it was customary, as he had it in writing,for lovers to throw pins (pinnau) into the well; but these pins appear to have been the points of the blackthorn. At any rate, they cannot well have been of any kind of metal, as we are told that, if they sank in the water, one concluded that one’s lover was not sincere in his or her love.Next may be mentioned a well, bearing the remarkable name ofFfynnon Gwyneđ, or the Well of Gwyned, which is situated near Mynyđ Mawr, in the parish of Abererch: it used to be consulted in the following manner:—When it was desired to discover whether an ailing person would recover, a garment of his would be thrown into the well, and according to the side on which it sank it was known whether he would live or die.Ffynnon Gybi, or St. Cybi’s Well, in the parish of Ỻangybi, was the scene of a somewhat similar practice; for there, girls who wished to know their lovers’ intentions would spread their pocket-handkerchiefs on the water of the well, and, if the water pushed the handkerchiefs to the south—in Welshi’r dê—they knew that everything was right—in Welsho đê—and that their lovers were honest and honourable in their intentions; but, if the water shifted the handkerchiefs northwards, they concluded the contrary. A reference to this is made by a modern Welsh poet, as follows:—Ambeỻ đyn, gwaelđyn, a gyrchI bant gorís Moel Bentyrch,Mewn gobaith mai hen GybiGlodfawr syđ yn ỻwyđaw’r ỻi.Some folks, worthless4folks, visitA hollow below Moel Bentyrch,In hopes that ancient KybiOf noble fame blesses the flood.The spot is not far from where Myrđin Farđ lives; and he mentioned, that adjoining the well is a building which was probably intended for the person in chargeof the well: it has been tenanted within his memory. Not only for this but also for several of the foregoing items of information am I indebted to Myrđin; and now I come to Mrs. Williams-Ellis, of Glasfryn Uchaf, who tells me that one day not long ago, she met at Ỻangybi a native who had not visited the place since his boyhood: he had been away as an engineer in South Wales nearly all his life, but had returned to see an aged relative. So the reminiscences of the place filled his mind, and, among other things, he said that he remembered very well what concern there was one day in the village at a mischievous person having taken a very large eel out of the well. Many of the old people, he said, felt that much of the virtue of the well was probably taken away with the eel. To see it coiling about their limbs when they went into the water was a good sign: so he gave one to understand. As a sort of parallel I may mention that I have seen the fish living inFfynnon Beris, not far from the parish church of Ỻanberis. It is jealously guarded by the inhabitants, and when it was once or twice taken out by a mischievous stranger he was forced to put it back again. However, I never could get the history of this sacred fish, but I found that it was regarded as very old5. I may add that it appears the wellcalledFfynnon Fair, ‘Mary’s Well,’ at Ỻanđwyn, in Anglesey, used formerly to have inhabiting it a sacred fish, whose movements indicated the fortunes of the love-sick men and maidens who visited there the shrine of St. Dwynwen6. Possibly inquiry would result in showing that such sacred fish have been far more common once in the Principality than they are now.The next class of wells to claim our attention consists of what I may call fairy wells, of which few are mentioned in connexion with Wales; but the legends about them are of absorbing interest. One of them is in Myrđin Farđ’s neighbourhood, and I questioned him a good deal on the subject: it is calledFfynnon Grassi, or Grace’s Well, and it occupies, according to him, a few square feet—he has measured it himself—of the south-east corner of the lake of Glasfryn Uchaf, in the parish of Ỻangybi. It appears that it was walled in, and that the stone forming its eastern side has several holes in it, which were intended to let water enter the well and not issue from it. It had a door or cover on its surface; and it was necessary to keep the door always shut, except when water was being drawn. Through somebody’s negligence, however, it was once on a time left open: the consequence was that the waterof the well flowed out and formed the Glasfryn Lake, which is so considerable as to be navigable for small boats. Grassi is supposed in the locality to have been the name of the owner of the well, or at any rate of a lady who had something to do with it.Grassi, or Grace, however, can only be a name which a modern version of the legend has introduced. It probably stands for an older name given to the person in charge of the well; to the one, in fact, who neglected to shut the door; but though the name must be comparatively modern, the story, as a whole, does not appear to be at all modern, but very decidedly the contrary.So I wrote in 1893; but years after my conversation with Myrđin Farđ, my attention was called to the fact that the Glasfryn family, of which the Rev. J. C. Williams-Ellis is the head, have in their coat of arms a mermaid, who is represented in the usual way, holding a comb in her right hand and a mirror in her left. I had from the first expected to find some kind of Undine or Liban story associated with the well and the lake, though I had abstained from trying the risky effects of leading questions; but when I heard of the heraldic mermaid I wrote to Mr. Williams-Ellis to ask whether he knew her history. His words, though not encouraging as regards the mermaid, soon convinced me that I had not been wholly wrong in supposing that more folklore attached to the well and lake than I had been able to discover. Since then Mrs. Williams-Ellis has taken the trouble of collecting on the spot all the items of tradition which she could find: she communicated them to me in the month of March, 1899, and the following is an abstract of them, preceded by a brief description of the ground:—The well itself is at the foot of a very green field-bank at the head of the lake, but not on the same levelwith it, as the lake has had its waters lowered half a century or more ago by the outlet having been cut deeper. Adjoining the field containing the well is a larger field, which also slopes down to the lake and extends in another direction to the grounds belonging to the house. This larger field is called Cae’r Ladi, ‘the Lady’s Field,’ and it is remarkable for having in its centre an ancient standing stone, which, as seen from the windows of the house, presents the appearance of a female figure hurrying along, with the wind slightly swelling out her veil and the skirt of her dress. Mr. Williams-Ellis remembers how when he was a boy the stone was partially white-washed, and how an old bonnet adorned the top of this would-be statue, and he thinks that an old shawl used to be thrown over the shoulders.Now as to Grassi, she is mostly regarded as a ghostly person somehow connected with the lake and the house of Glasfryn. One story is to the effect, that on a certain evening she forgot to close the well, and that when the gushing waters had formed the lake, poor Grassi, overcome with remorse, wandered up and down the high ground of Cae’r Ladi, moaning and weeping. There, in fact, she is still at times to be heard lamenting her fate, especially at two o’clock in the early morning. Some people say that she is also to be seen about the lake, which is now the haunt of some half a dozen swans. But on the whole her visits appear to have been most frequent and troublesome at the house itself. Several persons still living are mentioned, who believe that they have seen her there, and two of them, Mrs. Jones of Talafon, and old Sydney Griffith of Tyđyn Bach, agree in the main in their description of what they saw, namely, a tall lady with well marked features and large bright eyes: she was dressed in white silk and a white velvet bonnet.The woman, Sydney Griffith, thought that she had seen the lady walking several times about the house and in Cae’r Ladi. This comes, in both instances, from a young lady born and bred in the immediate neighbourhood, and studying now at the University College of North Wales; but Mrs. Williams-Ellis has had similar accounts from other sources, and she mentions tenants of Glasfryn who found it difficult to keep servants there, because they felt that the place was haunted. In fact one of the tenants himself felt so unsafe that he used to take his gun and his dog with him to his bedroom at night; not to mention that when the Williams-Ellises lived themselves, as they do still, in the house, their visitors have been known to declare that they heard the strange plaintive cry out of doors at two o’clock in the morning.Traces also of a very different story are reported by Mrs. Williams-Ellis, to the effect that when the water broke forth to form the lake, the fairies seized Grassi and changed her into a swan, and that she continued in that form to live on the lake sixscore years, and that when at length she died, she loudly lamented her lot: that cry is still to be heard at night. This story is in process apparently of being rationalized; at any rate the young lady student, to whom I have referred, remembers perfectly that her grandfather used to explain to her and the other children at home that Grassi was changed into a swan as a punishment for haunting Glasfryn, but that nevertheless the old lady still visited the place, especially when there happened to be strangers in the house. At the end of September last Mrs. Rhys and I had the pleasure of spending a few days at Glasfryn, in the hope of hearing the plaintive wail, and of seeing the lady in white silk revisiting her familiar haunts. But alas! our sleep was never oncedisturbed, nor was our peace once troubled by suspicions of anything uncanny. This, however, is negative, and characterized by the usual weakness of all such evidence.It is now time to turn to another order of facts: in the first place may be mentioned that the young lady student’s grandmother used to call the wellFfynnon Grâs Siôn Gruffuđ, as she had always heard that Grâs was the daughter of a certain Siôn Gruffyđ, ‘John Griffith,’ who lived near the well; and Mrs. Williams-Ellis finds that Grâs was buried, at a very advanced age, on December 14, 1743, at the parish church of Ỻangybi, where the register describes her asGrace Jones, alias Grace Jones Griffith. She had lived till the end at Glasfryn, but from documents in the possession of the Glasfryn family it is known that in 1728 Hugh Lloyd of Traỻwyn purchased the house and estate of Glasfryn from a son of Grace’s, namedJohn ab Cadwaladr, and that Hugh Lloyd of Traỻwyn’s son, the Rev. William Lloyd, sold them to Archdeacon Ellis, from whom they have descended to the Rev. J. C. Williams-Ellis. In the light of these facts there is no reason to connect the old lady’s name very closely with the well or the lake. She was once the dominant figure at Glasfryn, that is all; and when she died she was as usual supposed to haunt the house and its immediate surroundings; and if we might venture to suppose that Glasfryn was sold by her son against her will, though subject to conditions which enabled her to remain in possession of the place to the day of her death, we should have a further explanation, perhaps, of her supposed moaning and lamentation.In the background, however, of the story, one detects the possibility of another female figure, for it may be that the standing stone in Cae’r Ladi represents awoman buried there centuries before Grace ruled at Glasfryn, and that traditions about the earlier lady have survived to be inextricably mixed with those concerning the later one. Lastly, those traditions may have also associated the subject of them with the well and the lake; but I wish to attach no importance to this conjecture, as we have in reserve a third figure of larger possibilities than either Grace or the stone woman. It needs no better introduction than Mrs. Williams-Ellis’ own words: ‘Our younger boys have a crew of three little Welsh boys who live near the lake, to join them in their boat sailing about the pool and in camping on the island, &c. They asked me once whoMorganwas, whom the little boys were always saying they were to be careful against. An old man living at Tal Ỻyn, “Lake’s End,” a farm close by, says that as a boy he was always told that “naughty boys would be carried off by Morgan into the lake.” Others tell me that Morgan is always held to be ready to take off troublesome children, and somehow Morgan is thought of as a bad one.’ Now as Morgan carries children off into the pool, he would seem to issue from the pool, and to have his home in it. Further, he plays the same part as the fairies against whom a Snowdonian mother used to warn her children: they were on no account to wander away from the house when there was a mist, lest the fairies should carry them to their home beneath Ỻyn Dwythwch. In other words, Morgan may be said to act in the same way as the mermaid, who takes a sailor down to her submarine home; and it explains to my mind a discussion which I once heard of the name Morgan by a party of men and women making hay one fine summer’s day in the neighbourhood of Ponterwyd, in North Cardiganshire. I was a child, but I remember vividly how they teased one of their number whose‘style’ was Morgan. They hinted at dreadful things associated with the name; but it was all so vague that I could not gather that his great unknown namesake was a thief, a murderer, or any kind of ordinary criminal. The impression left on my mind was rather the notion of something weird, uncanny, or non-human; and the fact that the Welsh version of the Book of Common Prayer calls the PelagiansMorganiaid, ‘Morgans,’ does not offer an adequate explanation. But I now see clearly that it is to be sought in the indistinct echo of such folklore as that which makes Morgan a terror to children in the neighbourhood of the Glasfryn Lake.The name, however, presents points of difficulty which require some notice: the Welsh translators of Article IX in the Prayer Book were probably wrong in makingPelagiansintoMorganiaid, as the Welsh forPelagiusseems to have been ratherMorien7, which in its oldest recorded form wasMorgen, and meant sea-born, or offspring of the sea. In a still earlier form it must have beenMorigenos, with a feminineMorigena, but when the endings came to be dropped both vocables would becomeMorgen, laterMori̯en. I do not remember coming across a feminineMorgenin Welsh, but the presumption is that it did exist. For, among other things, I may mention that we have it in Irish asMuirgen, one of the names of the lake lady Liban, who, when the waters of the neglected well rushed forth to form Lough Neagh, lived beneath that lake until she desired to be changed into a salmon. The same conclusion may be drawn from the nameMorgainorMorgan, given in the French romances to one or more water ladies; for those names are easiest to explain as the BrythonicMorgenborrowed from a Welsh or Breton source, unless one found it possible to trace it direct to theGoidels of Wales. No sooner, however, had the confusion taken place between Morgen and the name which is so common in Wales as exclusively a man’s name, than the aquatic figure must also become male. That is why the Glasfryn Morgan is now a male, and not a female like the other characters whose rôle he plays. But while the name was in Welsh successivelyMorgenandMorien, the man’s name wasMorcant,Morgant, orMorgan8, so that, phonologically speaking, no confusion could be regarded as possible between the two series. Here, therefore, one detects the influence, doubtless, of the French romances which spoke of a lake lady Morgain, Morgan, or Morgue. The character varied: Morgain le Fay was a designing and wicked person; but Morgan was also the name of a well disposed lady of the same fairy kind, who took Arthur away to be healed at her home in the Isle of Avallon. We seem to be on the track of the same confusing influence of the name, when it occurs in the story of Geraint and Enid; for there the chief physician of Arthur’s court is called Morgan Tut or Morgant Tut, and the wordtuthas been shown by M. Loth to have meant the same sort of non-human being whom an eleventh-century Life of St. Maudez mentions asquidam dæmon quem BritonesTutheappellant. Thus the nameMorgan Tutis meant as the Welsh equivalent of the FrenchMorgain le FayorMorgan la Fée9; but so long as the compiler of the story of Geraint and Enid employed in his Welsh the form Morgan, he had practically no choice but to treat the person called Morgan as a man, whether that was or was not the sex in the original texts on which he was drawing. Of course he could have avoided the difficulty in case he was aware of it, if he had found some available formula in use likeMary-Morgant, said to be a common name for a fairy on the island of Ouessant, off the coast of Brittany.Summarizing the foregoing notes, we seem to be right in drawing the following conclusions:—(1) The well was left in the charge of a woman who forgot to shut it, and when she saw the water bursting forth, she bewailed her negligence, as in the case of her counterpart in the legend of Cantre’r Gwaelod. (2) The original name of the Glasfryn ‘Morgan’ was Morgen, later Morien. (3) The person changed into a swan on the occasion of the Glasfryn well erupting was not Grassi, but most probably Morgen. And (4) the character was originally feminine, like that of the mermaid or the fairies, whose rôle the Glasfryn Morgan plays; and more especially may one compare the Irish Muirgen, theMorgenmore usually called Líban. For it is to be noticed that when the neglected well burst forth she, Muirgen or Líban, was not drowned like the othersinvolved in the calamity, but lived in her chamber at the bottom of the lake formed by the overflowing well, until she was changed into a salmon. In that form she lived on some three centuries, until in fact she was caught in the net of a fisherman, and obtained the boon of a Christian burial. However, the change into a swan is also known on Irish ground: take for instance the story of the Children of Lir, who were converted into swans by their stepmother, and lived in that form on Loch Dairbhreach, in Westmeath, for three hundred years, and twice as long on the open sea, until their destiny closed with the advent of St. Patrick and the first ringing of a Christian bell in Erin10.The next legend was kindly communicated to me by Mr. Wm. Davies already mentioned at p. 147 above: he found it inCyfaiỻ yr Aelwyd11, “The Friend of the Hearth,” where it is stated that it belonged to David Jones’Storehouse of Curiosities, a collection which does not seem to have ever assumed the form of a printed book. David Jones, of Trefriw, in the Conwy Valley, was a publisher and poet who wrote between 1750 and 1780. This is his story: ‘In 1735 I had a conversation with a man concerning Tegid Lake. He had heard from old people that near the middle of it there was a well opposite Ỻangower, and the well was calledFfynnon Gywer, “Cower’s Well,” and at that time the town was round about the well. It was obligatory to place a lid on the well every night. (It seems that in those days somebody was aware that unless this was done it would prove thedestruction of the town.) But one night it was forgotten, and by the morning, behold the town had subsided and the lake became three miles long and one mile wide. They say, moreover, that on clear days some people see the chimneys of the houses. It is since then that the town was built atthe lower end of the lake. It is calledY Bala12, and the man told me that he had talked with an old Bala man who had, when he was a youth, had two days’ mowing of hay13between the road and the lake; but by this time the lake had spread over that land and the road also, which necessitated the purchase of land further away for the road; and some say that the town will yet sink as far as the place called Ỻanfor—others call it Ỻanfawđ, “Drown-church,” or Ỻanfawr, “Great-church,” in Penỻyn …. Further, when the weather is stormy water appears oozing through every floor within Bala, and at other times anybody can get water enough for the use of his house, provided he dig a little into the floor of it.’In reference to the idea that the town is to sink,together with the neighbouring village of Ỻanfor, the writer quotes in a note the couplet known still to everybody in the neighbourhood as follows:—Y Bala aeth, a’r Bala aiff,A Ỻanfor aiff yn Ỻyn.Bala old the lake has had, and Bala newThe lake will have, and Ỻanfor too.This probably implies that old Bala is beneath the lake, and that the present Bala is to meet the like fate at some time to come. This kind of prophecy is not very uncommon: thus there has been one current as to the Montgomeryshire town of Pool, called, in Welsh, Traỻwng or Traỻwm, and in English, Welshpool, to distinguish it from the English town of Pool. As to Welshpool, a very deep water called Ỻyn Du, lying between the town and theCasteỻ Cochor Powys Castle, and right in the domain of the castle, is suddenly to spread itself, and one fine market day to engulf the whole place14. Further, when I was a boy in North Cardiganshire, the following couplet was quite familiar to me, and supposed to have been one of Merlin’s prophecies:—Caer Fyrđin, cei oer fore;Daear a’th lwnc, dw’r i’th le.Carmarthen, a cold morn awaits thee;Earth gapes, and water in thy place will be.In regard to the earlier half of the line, concerning Bala gone, the story of Ffynnon Gywer might be said to explain it, but there is another which is later and far better known. It is of the same kind as the storiesrelated in Welsh concerning Ỻynclys and Syfađon; but I reserve it with these and others of the same sort for chapter vii.For the next legend belonging here I have to thank the Rev. J. Fisher, a native of the parish of Ỻandybïe, who, in spite of his name, is a genuine Welshman, and—what is more—a Welsh scholar. The following are his words:—‘Ỻyn Ỻech Owen (the last word is locally soundedw-en, likeoo-enin English, as is also the personal name Owen) is on Mynyđ Mawr, in the ecclesiastical parish of Gors Lâs, and the civil parish of Ỻanarthney, Carmarthenshire. It is a small lake, forming the source of the Gwendraeth Fawr. I have heard the tradition about its origin told by several persons, and by all, until quite recently, pretty much in the same form. In 1884 I took it down from my grandfather, Rees Thomas (b.1809,d.1892), of Cil Coỻ Ỻandebïe—a very intelligent man, with a good fund of old-world Welsh lore—who had lived all his life in the neighbouring parishes of Ỻandeilo Fawr and Ỻandybïe.‘The following is the version of the story (translated) as I had it from him:—There was once a man of the name of Owen living on Mynyđ Mawr, and he had a well, “ffynnon.” Over this well he kept a large flag (“fflagen neu lech fawr”: “fflagen” is the word in common use now in these parts for a large flat stone), which he was always careful to replace over its mouth after he had satisfied himself or his beast with water. It happened, however, that one day he went on horseback to the well to water his horse, and forgot to put the flag back in its place. He rode off leisurely in the direction of his home; but, after he had gone some distance, he casually looked back, and, to his great astonishment, he saw that the well had burst out and was overflowing the whole place. He suddenly bethought him that he should rideback and encompass the overflow of the water as fast as he could; and it was the horse’s track in galloping round the water that put a stop to its further overflow. It is fully believed that, had he not galloped round the flood in the way he did, the well would have been sure to inundate the whole district and drown all. Hence the lake was called the Lake of Owen’s Flag, “Ỻyn Ỻech Owen.”‘I have always felt interested in this story, as it resembled that about the formation of Lough Neagh, &c.; and, happening to meet the Rev. D. Harwood Hughes, B.A., the vicar of Gors Lâs (St. Ỻeian’s), last August (1892), I asked him to tell me the legend as he had heard it in his parish. He said that he had been told it, but in a form different from mine, where the “Owen” was said to have been Owen Glyndwr. This is the substance of the legend as he had heard it:—Owen Glyndwr, when once passing through these parts, arrived here of an evening. He came across a well, and, having watered his horse, placed a stone over it in order to find it again next morning. He then went to lodge for the night at Dyỻgoed Farm, close by. In the morning, before proceeding on his journey, he took his horse to the well to give him water, but found to his surprise that the well had become a lake.’Mr. Fisher goes on to mention the later history of the lake: how, some eighty years ago, its banks were the resort on Sunday afternoons of the young people of the neighbourhood, and how a Baptist preacher put an end to their amusements and various kinds of games by preaching at them. However, the lake-side appears to be still a favourite spot for picnics and Sunday-school gatherings. Mr. Fisher was quite right in appending to his own version that of his friend; but, from the point of view of folklore, I must confess that I can makenothing of the latter: it differs from the older one as much as chalk does from cheese. It would be naturally gratifying to the pride of local topography to be able to connect with the pool the name of Owen Glyndwr; but it is worthy of note that this highly respectable attempt to rationalize the legend wholly fails, as it does not explain why there is now a lake where there was once but a well. In other words, the euhemerized story is itself evidence corroborative of Mr. Fisher’s older version, which is furthermore kept in countenance by Howells’ account, p. 104, where we are told who the Owen in question was, namely, Owen Lawgoch, a personage dear, as we shall see later, to the Welsh legend of the district. He and his men had their abode in a cave on the northern side of Mynyđ Mawr, and while there Owen used, we are informed, to water his steed at a fine spring covered with a large stone, which it required the strength of a giant to lift. But one day he forgot to replace it, and when he next sought the well he found the lake. He returned to his cave and told his men what had happened. Thereupon both he and they fell into a sleep, which is to last till it is broken by the sound of a trumpet and the clang of arms on Rhiw Goch: then they are to sally forth to conquer.Now the story as told by Howells and Fisher provokes comparison, as the latter suggests, with the Irish legend of the formation of Lough Ree and of Lough Neagh in the story of the Death of Eochaid McMaireda15. In bothof these legends also there is a horse, a kind of water-horse, who forms the well which eventually overflows and becomes Lough Ree, and so with the still larger body of water known as Lough Neagh. In the latter case the fairy well was placed in the charge of a woman; but she one day left the cover of the well open, and the catastrophe took place—the water issued forth and overflowed the country. One of Eochaid’s daughters, named Líban, however, was not drowned, but only changed into a salmon as already mentioned at p. 376 above. In myArthurian Legend, p. 361, I have attempted to show that the nameLíbanmay have its Welsh equivalent in that ofỺïon, occurring in the name ofỺyn Ỻïon, or Ỻïon’s Lake, the bursting of which is described in the latest series of Triads, iii. 13, 97, as causing a sort of deluge. I am not certain as to the nature of the relationship between those names, but it seems evident that the stories have a common substratum, though it is to be noticed that no well, fairy or otherwise, figures in the Ỻyn Ỻïon legend, which makes the presence of the monster called the afanc the cause of the waters bursting forth. So Hu the Mighty, with his team of famous oxen, is made to drag the afanc out of the lake.There is, however, another Welsh legend concerning a great overflow in which a well does figure: I allude to that ofCantre’r Gwaelod, or the Bottom Hundred, a fine spacious country supposed to be submerged in Cardigan Bay. Modern euhemerism treats it as defended by embankments and sluices, which, we are told, were in the charge of the prince of the country, named Seithennin, who, being one day in his cups, forgot to shut the sluices, and thus brought about the inundation, which was the end of his fertile realm. This, however, is not the old legend: that speaks of a well, and lays the blame on a woman—a pretty sure sign of antiquity, asthe reader may judge from other old stories which will readily occur to him. The Welsh legend to which I allude is embodied in a short poem in theBlack Book of Carmarthen16: it consists of eight triplets, to which is added a triplet from the Englynion of the Graves. The following is the original with a tentative translation:—Seithenhin sawde allan.ac edrẏchuirde varanres mor.maes guitnev rẏtoes.Boed emendiceid ẏ morvinaehellẏgaut guẏdi cvin.finaun wenestir17mor terruin.Boed emendiceid ẏ vachteith.ae . golligaut guẏdi gueith.finaun wenestir mor diffeith.Diaspadmereridẏ ar vann caer.hid ar duu ẏ dodir.gnaud guẏdi traha trangc hir.Diaspad mererid . ẏ ar van kaer hetiv.hid ar duu ẏ dadoluch.gnaud guẏdi traha attreguch.Diaspad mererid am gorchuit heno.ac nimhaut gorlluit.gnaud guẏdi traha tramguit.Diaspad mererid ẏ ar gwinev kadirkedaul duv ae gorev.gnaud guẏdi gormot eissev.Diaspad mererid . am kẏmhell henoẏ urth uẏistauell.gnaud guẏdi traha trangc pell.Bet seithenhin sẏnhuir vannrug kaer kenedir a glan.mor maurhidic a kinran.Seithennin, stand thou forthAnd see the vanguard of the main:Gwyđno’s plain has it covered.Accursed be the maidenWho let it loose after supping,Well cup-bearer of the mighty main.Accursed be the damselWho let it loose after battle,Well minister of the high sea.Mererid’s cry from a city’s height,Even to God is it directed:After pride comes a long pause.Mererid’s cry from a city’s height to-day,Even to God her expiation:After pride comes reflection.Mererid’s cry o’ercomes me to-night,Nor can I readily prosper:After pride comes a fall.Mererid’s cry over strong wines,Bounteous God has wrought it:After excess comes privation.Mererid’s cry drives me to-nightFrom my chamber away:After insolence comes long death.Weak-witted Seithennin’s grave is itBetween Kenedyr’s Fort and the shore,With majestic Mor’s and Kynran’s.The names in these lines present great difficulties: first comes that ofMererid, which is no other word thanMargarita, ‘a pearl,’ borrowed; but what does it here mean?Margarita, besides meaning a pearl, was used in Welsh, e.g. under the formMarereda18, as the proper name written in EnglishMargaret. That is probably how it is to be taken here, namely, as the name given to the negligent guardian of the fairy well. It cannot very well be, however, the name belonging to the original form of the legend; and we have the somewhat parallel case ofFfynnon Grassi, or Grace’s Well; but what old Celtic name that of Mererid has replaced in the story, I cannot say. In the next place, nobody has been able to identifyCaer Kenedyr, and I have nothing to say as toMor Maurhidic, except that a person of that name is mentioned in another of the Englynion of the Graves. It runs thus in theBlack Book, fol. 33a:—Bet mor maurhidic diessic unben.post kinhen kinteic.mab peredur penwetic.The grave of Mor the Grand, … prince,Pillar of the … conflict,Son of Peredur of Penweđig.The last name in the final triplet of the poem which I have attempted to translate isKinran, which is otherwise unknown as a Welsh name; but I am inclined to identify it with that of one of the three who escaped the catastrophe in the Irish legend. The name there isCurnán, which was borne by the idiot of the family,who, like many later idiots, was at the same time a prophet. For he is represented as always prophesying that the waters were going to burst forth, and as advising his friends to prepare boats. So he may be set, after a fashion, over against ourSeithenhin synhuir vann, ‘S. of the feeble mind.’ But one might perhaps ask why I do not point out an equivalent in Irish for the Welsh Seithennin, as his name is now pronounced. The fact is that no such equivalent occurs in the Irish story in question, nor exactly, so far as I know, in any other.That is what I wrote when penning these notes; but it has occurred to me since then, that there is an Irish name, an important Irish name, which looks as if related toSeithenhin, and that isSetanta Beg, ‘the little Setantian,’ the first name of the Irish hero Cúchulainn. Thent, I may point out, makes one suspect thatSetantais a name of Brythonic origin in Irish; and I have been in the habit of associating it with that of the people of the Setantii19, placed by Ptolemy on the coast of what is now Lancashire. Whether any legend has ever been current about a country submerged on the coast of Lancashire I cannot say, but the soundings would make such a legend quite comprehensible. I remember, however, reading somewhere as to the Plain of Muirthemhne, of which Cúchulainn, our Setanta Beg, had special charge, that it was so called because it had once been submarine and become since the converse, so to say, of Seithennin’s country. The latter is beneath Cardigan Bay, while the other fringed the opposite side of the sea, consisting as it did of the level portion of County Louth. On the whole, I am not altogether indisposed to believe that we have here traces of an ancient legendof a wider scope than is represented by theBlack Booktriplets, which I have essayed to translate. I think that I am right in recognizing that legend in theMabinogiof Branwen, daughter of Ỻyr. There we read that, when Brân and his men crossed from Wales to Ireland, the intervening sea consisted merely of two navigable rivers, called Ỻi and Archan. The story-teller adds words to the effect, that it is only since then the sea has multiplied its realms20between Ireland andYnys y Kedyrn, or the Isle of the Keiri, a name which has already been discussed: see pp. 279–83.These are not all the questions which such stories suggest; for Seithennin is represented in later Welsh literature as the son of oneSeithyn, associated with Dyfed; and the nameSeithynleads off to the coast of Brittany. For I learn from a paper by the late M. le Men, in theRevue Archéologiquefor 1872 (xxiii. 52), that the Île de Sein is called in BretonEnez-Sun, in whichSunis a dialectic shortening ofSizun, which is also met with asSeidhun. That being so, one would seem to be right in regarding Sizun as nearly related to ourSeithyn. That is not all—the tradition reminds one of the Welsh legend: M. le Men refers to theVie du P. Maunoirby Boschet (Paris, 1697) p. 126, and adds that, in his own time, the road ending on the Pointe du Raz opposite the Île de Sein passed ‘pour être l’ancien chemin qui conduisait à la ville d’Is (Kaer-a-Is, la ville de la partie basse).’ It is my own experience, that nobody can go about much in Brittany without hearing over and over again about the submerged city of Is. There is no doubt that we have in these names distant echoes of an inundation story, once widely current in both Britains and perhaps also in Ireland. With regard to Wales we have an indicationto that effect in the fact, that Gwyđno, to whom the inundated region is treated as having belonged, is associated not only with Cardigan Bay, but also with the coast of North Wales, especially the part of it situated between Bangor and Ỻandudno21. Adjoining it is supposed to lie submerged a once fertile district called Tyno Helig, a legend about which will come under notice later. This brings the inundation story nearer to the coast where Ptolemy in the second century located the Harbour of the Setantii, about the mouth of the river Ribble, and in their name we seem to have some sort of a historical basis for that of the drunken Seithennin22. I cannot close these remarks better than byappending what Professor Boyd Dawkins has recently said with regard to the sea between Britain and Ireland:—‘It may be interesting to remark further that during the time of the Iberian dominion in Wales, the geography of the seaboard was different to what it is now. A forest, containing the remains of their domestic oxen that had run wild, and of the indigenous wild animals such as the bear and the red deer, united Anglesey with the mainland, and occupied the shallows of Cardigan Bay, known in legend as “the lost lands of Wales.” It extended southwards from the present sea margin across the estuary of the Severn, to Somerset, Devon, and Cornwall. It passed northwards across the Irish Sea off the coast of Cheshire and Lancashire, and occupied Morecambe Bay with a dense growth of oak, Scotch fir, alder, birch, and hazel. It ranged seawards beyond the ten-fathom line, and is to be found on mostshores beneath the sand-banks and mud-banks, as for example at Rhyl and Cardiff. In Cardigan Bay it excited the wonder of Giraldus de Barri23.’To return to fairy wells, I have to confess that I cannot decide what may be precisely the meaning of the notion of a well with a woman set carefully to see that the door or cover of the well is kept shut. It will occur, however, to everybody to compare the well which Undine wished to have kept shut, on account of its affording a ready access from her subterranean country to the residence of her refractory knight in his castle above ground. And in the case of the Glasfryn Lake, the walling and cover that were to keep the spring from overflowing were, according to the story, not water-tight, seeing that there were holes made in one of the stones. This suggests the idea that the cover was to prevent the passage of some such full-grown fairies as those with which legend seems to have once peopled all the pools and tarns of Wales. But, in the next place, is the maiden in charge of the well to be regarded as priestess of the well? The idea of a priesthood in connexion with wells in Wales is not wholly unknown.I wish, however, before discussing these instances, to call attention to one or two Irish ones which point in another direction. Foremost may be mentioned the source of the river Boyne, which is now called Trinity Well, situated in the Barony of Carbury, in County Kildare. The following is the RennesDindsenchasconcerning it, as translated by Dr. Stokes, in theRevue Celtique, xv. 315–6:—‘Bóand, wife of Nechtán son of Labraid, went to the secret well which was in the green of Síd Nechtáin. Whoever went to it would not comefrom it without his two eyes bursting, unless it were Nechtán himself and his three cup-bearers, whose names were Flesc and Lám and Luam. Once upon a time Bóand went through pride to test the well’s power, and declared that it had no secret force which could shatter her form, and thrice she walked withershins round the well. (Whereupon) three waves from the well break over her and deprive her of a thigh [?wounded her thigh] and one of her hands and one of her eyes. Then she, fleeing her shame, turns seaward, with the water behind her as far as Boyne-mouth, (where she was drowned).’ This is to explain why the river is calledBóand, ‘Boyne.’ A version to the same effect in theBook of Leinster, fol. 191a, makes the general statement that no one who gazed right into the well could avoid the instant ruin of his two eyes or otherwise escape with impunity. A similar story is related to show how the Shannon, in IrishSinann,Sinand, orSinend, is called after a woman of that name. It occurs in the same Rennes manuscript, and the following is Stokes’ translation in theRevue Celtique, xv. 457:—‘Sinend, daughter of Lodan Lucharglan son of Ler out of Tir Tairngire (Land of Promise, Fairyland), went to Connla’s Well, which is under sea, to behold it. That is a well at which are the hazels and inspirations (?) of wisdom, that is, the hazels of the science of poetry, and in the same hour their fruit and their blossom and their foliage break forth, and these fall on the well in the same shower, which raises on the water a royal surge of purple. Then the salmon chew the fruit, and the juice of the nuts is apparent on their purple bellies. And seven streams of wisdom spring forth and turn there again. Now Sinend went to seek the inspiration, for she wanted nothing save only wisdom. She went with the stream till she reachedLinn Mna Feile, “thePool of the Modest Woman,” that is Bri Ele—and she went ahead on her journey; but the well left its place, and she followed it24to the banks of the riverTarr-cáin, “Fair-back.” After this it overwhelmed her, so that her back (tarr) went upwards, and when she had come to the land on this side (of the Shannon) she tasted death. WhenceSinannandLinn Mna FeileandTarr-cain.’In these stories the reader will have noticed that the foremost punishment on any intruder who looked into the forbidden well was the instant ruin of his two eyes. One naturally asks why the eyes are made the special objects of the punishment, and I am inclined to think the meaning to have originally been that the well or spring was regarded as the eye of the divinity of the water. Should this prove well founded it looks natural that the eyes, which transgressed by gazing into the eye of the divinity, should be the first objects of that divinity’s vengeance. This is suggested to me by the fact that the regular Welsh word for the source of a river isỻygad, Old Welshlicat, ‘eye,’ as for instance in the case ofLicat Amirmentioned by Nennius, § 73; ofỺygad Ỻychwr, ‘the source of the Loughor river’ in the hills behind Carreg Cennen Castle; and of the weird lake in which the Rheidol25rises near the top of Plinlimmon: it is calledỺyn Ỻygad y Rheidol, ‘the Lake of the Rheidol’s Eye.’ By the way, the Rheidol is not wholly without its folklore, for I used to be told in my childhood, that she and the Wye and the Severn sallied forth simultaneously from Plinlimmon one fine morningto run a race to the sea. The result was, one was told, that the Rheidol won great honour by reaching the sea three weeks before her bigger sisters. Somebody has alluded to the legend in the following lines:—Tair afon gynt a rifwydAr đwyfron Pumlumon lwyd,Hafren a Gwy’n hyfryd ei gweđ,A’r Rheidol fawr ei hanrhydeđ.Three rivers of yore were seenOn grey Plinlimmon’s breast,Severn, and Wye of pleasant mien,And Rheidol rich in great renown.To return to the Irish legends, I may mention that Eugene O’Curry has a good deal to say of the mysterious nuts and ‘the salmon of knowledge,’ the partaking of which was synonymous with the acquisition of knowledge and wisdom: see hisManners and Customs of the Ancient Irish, ii. 142–4. He gives it as his opinion that Connla’s Well was situated somewhere in Lower Ormond; but the locality of this Helicon, with the seven streams of wisdom circulating out of it and back again into it, is more intelligible when regarded as a matter of fairy geography. A portion of the note appended to the foregoing legend by Stokes is in point here: he traces the earliest mention of the nine hazels of wisdom, growing at the heads of the chief rivers of Ireland, to the Dialogue of the Two Sages in theBook of Leinster, fol. 186b, whence he cites the poet Néde mac Adnai saying whence he had come, as follows:—a caillib .i. a nói collaib na Segsa … a caillib didiu assa mbenaiter clessa na súad tanacsa, ‘from hazels, to wit, from the nine hazels of the Segais … from hazels out of which are obtained the feats of the sages, I have come.’ The relevancy of this passage will be seen when I add, that Segais was one of the names of the mound in which the Boyne rises; so it may be safely inferred that Bóand’s transgression was of the same nature as that of Sinand, to wit, that of intruding on sacred ground in quest of wisdom and inspiration whichwas not permitted their sex: certain sources of knowledge, certainquellen, were reserved for men alone.Before I have done with the Irish instances I must append one in the form it was told me in the summer of 1894: I was in Meath and went to see the remarkable chambered cairns on the hill known asSliabh na Caillighe, ‘the Hag’s Mountain,’ near Oldcastle and Lough Crew. I had as my guide a young shepherd whom I picked up on the way. He knew all about the hag after whom the hill was called except her name: she was, he said, a giantess, and so she brought there, in three apronfuls, the stones forming the three principal cairns. As to the cairn on the hill point known as Belrath, that is called the Chair Cairn from a big stone placed there by the hag to serve as her seat when she wished to have a quiet look on the country round. But usually she was to be seen riding on a wonderful pony she had: that creature was so nimble and strong that it used to take the hag at a leap from one hill-top to another. However, the end of it all was that the hag rode so hard that the pony fell down, and that both horse and rider were killed. The hag appears to have beenCailleach Bhéara, orCaillech Bérre, ‘the Old Woman of Beare,’ that is, Bearhaven, in County Cork26. Now the viewfrom the Hag’s Mountain is very extensive, and I asked the shepherd to point out some places in the distance. Among other things we could see Lough Ramor, which he called the Virginia Water, and more to the west he identified Lough Sheelin, about which he had the following legend to tell:—A long, long time ago there was no lake there, but only a well with a flagstone kept over it, and everybody would put the flag back after taking water out of the well. But one day a woman who fetched water from it forgot to replace the stone, and the water burst forth in pursuit of the luckless woman, who fled as hard as she could before the angry flood. She continued until she had run about seven miles—the estimated length of the lake at the present day. Now at this point a man, who was busily mowing hay in the field through which she was running, saw what was happening and mowed the woman down with his scythe, whereupon the water advanced no further. Such was the shepherd’s yarn, which partly agrees with the Boyne and Shannon stories in that the woman was pursued by the water, which only stopped where she died. On the other hand, it resembles the Ỻyn Ỻech Owen legend and that of Lough Neagh in placing to the woman’s charge only the neglect to cover the well. It looks as if we had in these stories a confusion of two different institutions, one being a well of wisdom which no woman durst visit without fatal vengeance overtaking her, and the other a fairy well which was attended to by a woman who was to keep it covered, and who may, perhaps, be regarded as priestess of the spring. If we try to interpret the Cantre’r Gwaelod story from these two points of view we have to note the following matters:—Though it is not said that themoruin, or damsel, had a lid or cover on the well, the wordgolligautorhelligaut, ‘did let run,’ implies some such an ideaas that of a lid or door; for opening the sluices, in the sense of the later version, seems to me out of the question. In two of the Englynion she is cursed for the action implied, and if she was the well minister or well servant, as I takefinaun wenestirto mean, we might perhaps regard her as the priestess of that spring. On the other hand, the prevailing note in the other Englynion is thetraha, ‘presumption, arrogance, insolence, pride,’ which forms the burden of four out of five of them. This would seem to point to an attitude on the part of the damsel resembling that of Bóand or Sinand when prying into the secrets of wells which were tabu to them. The seventh Englyn alludes to wines, and its burden isgormođ, ‘too much, excess, extravagance,’ whereby the poet seems to lend countenance to some such a later story as that of Seithennin’s intemperance.Lastly, the question of priest or priestess of a sacred well has been alluded to once or twice, and it may be perhaps illustrated on Welsh ground by the history of Ffynnon Eilian, or St. Elian’s Well, which has been mentioned in another context, p. 357 above. Of that well we read as follows, s. v.Ỻandriỻo, in the third edition of Lewis’Topographical Dictionary of Wales:—‘Fynnon Elian, … even in the present age, is frequently visited by the superstitious, for the purpose of invoking curses upon the heads of those who have grievously offended them, and also of supplicating prosperity to themselves; but the numbers are evidently decreasing. The ceremony is performed by the applicant standing upon a certain spot near the well, whilst the owner of it reads a few passages of the sacred Scriptures, and then, taking a small quantity of water, gives it to the former to drink, and throws the residue over his head, which is repeated three times, the party continuing to mutter imprecationsin whatever terms his vengeance may dictate.’ Rice Rees, in hisEssay on the Welsh Saints(London, 1836), p. 267, speaks of St. Elian as follows: ‘Miraculous cures were lately supposed to be performed at his shrine at Ỻanelian, Anglesey; and near to the church of Ỻanelian, Denbighshire, is a well called Ffynnon Elian, which is thought by the peasantry of the neighbourhood to be endued with miraculous powers even at present.’Foulkes, s. v.Elian, in hisEnwogion Cymru, published in Liverpool in 1870, expresses the opinion that the visits of the superstitious to the well had ceased for some time. The last person supposed to have had charge of the well was a certain John Evans, but some of the most amusing stories of the shrewdness of the caretaker refer to a woman who had charge of the well before Evans’ time. A series of articles onFfynnon Eilianappeared in 1861 in a Welsh periodical calledY Nofelyđ, printed by Mr. Aubrey at Ỻanerch y Međ, in Anglesey. The articles in question were afterwards published, I am told, as a shilling book, which I have not seen, and they dealt with the superstition, with the history of John Evans, and with his confessions and conversion. I have searched in vain for any account in Welsh of the ritual followed at the well. When Mrs. Silvan Evans visited the place, the person in charge of the well was a woman, and Peter Roberts, in hisCambrian Popular Antiquities, published in London in 1815, alludes to her or a predecessor of hers in the following terms, p. 246:—‘Near the Well resided some worthless and infamous wretch, who officiated as priestess.’ He furthermore gives one to understand that she kept a book in which she registered the name of each evil wisher for a trifling sum of money. When this had been done, a pin was dropped into the well inthe name of the victim. This proceeding looks adequate from the magical point of view, though less complicated than the ritual indicated by Lewis. This latter writer calls the person who took charge of the well the owner; and I have always understood that, whether owner or not, he or she used to receive gifts, not only for placing in the well the names of men who were to be cursed, but also from those men for taking their names out again, so as to relieve them from the malediction. In fact, the trade in curses seems to have been a very thriving one: its influence was powerful and widespread.Here there is, I think, very little doubt that the owner or guardian of the well was, so to say, the representative of an ancient priesthood of the well. That priesthood dated its origin probably many centuries before a Christian church was built near the well, and coming down to later times we have unfortunately no sufficient data to show how the right to such priesthood was acquired, whether by inheritance or otherwise; but we know that a woman might have charge of St. Elian’s Well.Let me cite another instance, which I unexpectedly discovered some years ago in the course of a ramble in quest of early inscriptions. Among other places which I visited was Ỻandeilo Ỻwydarth, near Maen Clochog, in the northern part of Pembrokeshire. This is one of the many churches bearing the name of St. Teilo in South Wales: the building is in ruins, but the churchyard is still used, and contains two of the most ancient post-Roman inscriptions in the Principality. If you ask now for ‘Ỻandeilo’ in this district, you will be understood to be inquiring after the farm house of that name, close to the old church; and I learnt from the landlady that her family had been there for many generations, though they have not very long been the proprietors ofthe land. She also told me of St. Teilo’s Well, a little above the house: she added that it was considered to have the property of curing the whooping-cough. I asked if there was any rite or ceremony necessary to be performed in order to derive benefit from the water. Certainly, I was told: the water must be lifted out of the well and given to the patient to drink by some member of the family. To be more accurate, I ought to say that this must be done by somebody born in the house. Her eldest son, however, had told me previously, when I was busy with the inscriptions, that the water must be given to the patient by the heir, not by anybody else. Then came my question how the water was lifted, or out of what the patient had to drink, to which I was answered that it was out of the skull. ‘What skull?’ said I. ‘St. Teilo’s skull,’ was the answer. ‘Where do you get the saint’s skull?’ I asked. ‘Here it is,’ was the answer, and I was given it to handle and examine. I know next to nothing about skulls; but it struck me that it was the upper portion of a thick, strong skull, and it called to my mind the story of the three churches which contended for the saint’s corpse. That story will be found in theBook of Ỻan Dâv, pp. 116–7, and according to it the contest became so keen that it had to be settled by prayer and fasting. So, in the morning, lo and behold! there were three corpses of St. Teilo—not simply one—and so like were they in features and stature that nobody could tell which were the corpses made to order and which the old one. I should have guessed that the skull which I saw belonged to the former description, as not having been much thinned by the owner’s use of it; but this I am forbidden to do by the fact that, according to the legend, this particular Ỻandeilo was not one of the three contending churches which bore away in triumpha dead Teilo each. The reader, perhaps, would like to take another view, namely, that the story has been edited in such a way as to reduce a larger number of Teilos to three, in order to gratify the Welsh weakness for triads.Since my visit to the neighbourhood I have been favoured with an account of the well as it is now current there. My informant is Mr. Benjamin Gibby of Ỻangolman Mill, who writes mentioning, among other things, that the people around call the wellFfynnon yr Ychen, or the Oxen’s Well, and that the family owning and occupying the farm house of Ỻandeilo have been there for centuries. Their name, which is Melchior (pronounced Melshor), is by no means a common one in the Principality, so far as I know; but, whatever may be its history in Wales, the bearers of it are excellent Kymry. Mr. Gibby informs me that the current story solves the difficulty as to the saint’s skull as follows:—The saint had a favourite maid servant from the Pembrokeshire Ỻandeilo: she was a beautiful woman, and had the privilege of attending on the saint when he was on his death-bed. As his end was approaching he gave his maid a strict and solemn command that in a year’s time from the day of his burial at Ỻandeilo Fawr, in Carmarthenshire, she was to take his skull to the other Ỻandeilo, and to leave it there to be a blessing to coming generations of men, who, when ailing, would have their health restored by drinking water out of it. So the belief prevailed that to drink out of the skull some of the water of Teilo’s Well ensured health, especially against the whooping-cough. The faith of some of those who used to visit the well was so great in its efficacy, that they were wont to leave it, he says, with their constitutions wonderfully improved; and he mentions a story related to him by an old neighbour,Stifyn Ifan, who has been dead for some years, to the effect that a carriage, drawn by four horses, came once, more than half a century ago, to Ỻandeilo. It was full of invalids coming from Pen Clawđ, in Gower, Glamorganshire, to try the water of the well. They returned, however, no better than they came; for though they had drunk of the well, they had neglected to do so out of the skull. This was afterwards pointed out to them by somebody, and they resolved to make the long journey to the well again. This time they did the right thing, we are told, and departed in excellent health.Such are the contents of Mr. Gibby’s Welsh letter; and I would now only point out that we have here an instance of a well which was probably sacred before the time of St. Teilo: in fact, one would possibly be right in supposing that the sanctity of the well and its immediate surroundings was one of the causes why the site was chosen by a Christian missionary. But consider for a moment what has happened: the well paganism has annexed the saint, and established a belief ascribing to him the skull used in the well ritual. The landlady and her family, it is true, neither believe in the efficacy of the well, nor take gifts from those who visit the well; but they continue, out of kindness, as they put it, to hand the skull full of water to any one who perseveres in believing in it. In other words, the faith in the well continues in a measure intact, while the walls of the church have long fallen into utter decay. Such is the great persistence of some primitive beliefs; and in this particular instance we have a succession which seems to point unmistakably to an ancient priesthood of a sacred spring.

CHAPTER VIThe Folklore of the Wells… Iuvat integros accedere fontes.—Lucretius.It is only recently1that I heard for the first time of Welsh instances of the habit of tying rags and bits of clothing to the branches of a tree growing near a holy well. Since then I have obtained several items of information in point: the first is a communication received in June, 1892, from Mr. J. H. Davies, of Lincoln College, Oxford—since then of Lincoln’s Inn—relating to a Glamorganshire holy well, situated near the pathway leading from Coychurch to Bridgend. It is the custom there, he states, for people suffering from any malady to dip a rag in the water, and to bathe the affected part of the body, the rag being then placed on a tree close to the well. When Mr. Davies passed that way, some three years previously, there were, he adds, hundreds of such shreds on the tree, some of which distinctly presented the appearance of having been very recently placed there. The well is called Ffynnon Cae Moch, ‘Swine-field Well,’ which can hardly have been its old name; and a later communication from Mr. Davies summarizes a conversation which he had about the well, on December 16, 1892, with Mr. J. T. Howell, of Pencoed, near Bridgend. His notes run thus:—‘Ffynnon Cae Moch, between Coychurch and Bridgend, is onemile from Coychurch, one and a quarter from Bridgend, near Tremains. It is within twelve or fifteen yards of the high-road, just where the pathway begins. People suffering from rheumatism go there. They bathe the part affected with water, and afterwards tie a piece of rag to the tree which overhangs the well. The rag is not put in the water at all, but is only put on the tree for luck. It is a stunted, but very old tree, and is simplycoveredwith rags.’ A little less than a year later, I had an opportunity of visiting this well in the company of Mr. Brynmor-Jones; and I find in my notes that it is not situated so near the road as Mr. Howell would seem to have stated to Mr. Davies. We found the well, which is a powerful spring, surrounded by a circular wall. It is overshadowed by a dying thorn tree, and a little further back stands another thorn which is not so decayed: it was on this latter thorn we found the rags. I took off a twig with two rags, while Mr. Brynmor-Jones counted over a dozen other rags on the tree; and we noticed that some of them had only recently been suspended there: among them were portions undoubtedly of a woman’s clothing. At one of the hotels at Bridgend, I found an illiterate servant who was acquainted with the well, and I cross-examined him on the subject of it. He stated that a man with a wound, which he explained to mean a cut, would go and stand in the well within the wall, and there he would untie the rag that had been used to tie up the wound and would wash the wound with it: then he would tie up the wound with a fresh rag and hang the old one on the tree. The more respectable people whom I questioned talked more vaguely, and only of tying a rag to the tree, except one who mentioned a pin being thrown into the wellora rag being tied to the tree.My next informant is Mr. D. J. Jones, a native of theRhonđa Valley, in the same county of Glamorgan. He was an undergraduate of Jesus College, Oxford, when I consulted him in 1892. His information was to the effect that he knows of three interesting wells in the county. The first is situated within two miles of his home, and is known asFfynnon Pen Rhys, or the Well of Pen Rhys. The custom there is that the person who wishes his health to be benefited should wash in the water of the well, and throw a pin into it afterwards. He next mentions a well at Ỻancarvan, some five or six miles from Cowbridge, where the custom prevails of tying rags to the branches of a tree growing close at hand. Lastly, he calls my attention to a passage inHanes Morganwg, ‘The History of Glamorgan,’ written by Mr. D. W. Jones, known in Welsh literature as Dafyđ Morganwg. In that work, p. 29, the author speaks ofFfynnon Marcros, ‘the Well of Marcros,’ to the following effect:—‘It is the custom for those who are healed in it to tie a shred of linen or cotton to the branches of a tree that stands close by; and there the shreds are, almost as numerous as the leaves.’ Marcros is, I may say, near Nash Point, and looks on the map as if it were about eight miles distant from Bridgend. Let me here make it clear that so far we have had to do with four different wells2, three of which are severally distinguished by the presence of a tree adorned with rags by those who seek health in those waters; but they are all three, as the reader will have doubtless noticed, in the same district, namely, the part of Glamorganshire near the main line of the Great Western Railway.There is no reason, however, to think that the custom of tying rags to a well tree was peculiar to that part ofthe Principality. One day, in looking through some old notes of mine, I came across an entry bearing the date of August 7, 1887, when I was spending a few days with my friend, Chancellor Silvan Evans, at Ỻanwrin Rectory, near Machynỻeth. Mrs. Evans was then alive and well, and took a keen interest in Welsh antiquities and folklore. Among other things, she related to me how she had, some twenty years before, visited a well in the parish of Ỻandriỻo yn Rhos, namelyFfynnon Eilian, or Elian’s Well, between Abergele and Ỻandudno, when her attention was directed to some bushes near the well, which had once been covered with bits of rags left by those who frequented the well. This was told Mrs. Evans by an old woman of seventy, who, on being questioned by Mrs. Evans concerning the history of the well, informed her that the rags used to be tied to the bushes by means of wool. She was explicit on the point, that wool had to be used for the purpose, and that even woollen yarn would not do: it had to be wool in its natural state. The old woman remembered this to have been the rule ever since she was a child. Mrs. Evans noticed corks, with pins stuck in them, floating in the well, and her informant remembered many more in years gone by; for Elian’s Well was once in great repute as affynnon reibio, or a well to which people resorted for the kindly purpose of bewitching those whom they hated. I infer, however, from what Mrs. Evans was told of the rags, that Elian’s Well was visited, not only by the malicious, but also by the sick and suffering. My note is not clear on the point whether there were any rags on the bushes by the well when Mrs. Evans visited the spot, or whether she was only told of them by the caretaker. Even in the latter case it seems evident that this habit of tying rags to trees or bushes near sacred wells has onlyceased in that part of Denbighshire within this century. It is very possible that it continued in North Wales more recently than this instance would lead one to suppose; indeed, I should not be in the least surprised to learn that it is still practised in out of the way places in Gwyneđ, just as it is in Glamorgan: we want more information.I cannot say for certain whether it was customary in any of the cases to which I have called attention to tie rags to the well tree as well as to throw pins or other small objects into the well; but I cannot help adhering to the view, that the distinction was probably an ancient one between two orders of things. In other words, I am inclined to believe that the rag was regarded as the vehicle of the disease of which the ailing visitor to the well wished to be rid, and that the bead, button, or coin deposited by him in the well, or in a receptacle near the well, formed alone the offering. In opposition to this view Mr. Gomme has expressed himself as follows inFolk-Lore, 1892, p. 89:—‘There is some evidence against that, from the fact that in the case of some wells, especially in Scotland at one time, the whole garment was put down as an offering. Gradually these offerings of clothes became less and less till they came down to rags. Also in other parts, the geographical distribution of rag-offerings coincides with the existence of monoliths and dolmens.’ As to the monoliths and dolmens, I am too little conversant with the facts to risk any opinion as to the value of the coincidence; but as to the suggestion that the rag originally meant the whole garment, that will suit my hypothesis admirably. In other words, the whole garment was, as I take it, the vehicle of the disease: the whole was accursed, and not merely a part. But Mr. Gomme had previously touched on the question in his presidential address (Folk-Lorefor 1892, p. 13); and I mustat once admit that he succeeded then in proving that a certain amount of confusion occurs between things which I should regard as belonging originally to distinct categories: witness the inimitable Irish instance which he quotes:—‘To St. Columbkill—I offer up this button, a bit o’ the waistband o’ my own breeches, an’ a taste o’ my wife’s petticoat, in remimbrance of us havin’ made this holy station; an’ may they rise up in glory to prove it for us in the last day.’ Here not only the button is treated as an offering, but also the bits of clothing; but the confusion of ideas I should explain as being, at least in part, one of the natural results of substituting a portion of a garment for the entire garment; for thereby a button or a pin becomes a part of the dress, and capable of being interpreted in two senses. After all, however, the ordinary practices have not, as I look at them, resulted in effacing the distinction altogether: the rag is not left in the well; nor is the bead, button, or pin attached to a branch of the tree. So, in the main, it seemed to me easier to explain the facts, taken altogether, on the supposition that originally the rag was regarded as the vehicle of the disease, and the bead, button, or coin as the offering. My object in calling attention to this point was to have it discussed, and I am happy to say that I have not been disappointed; for, since my remarks were published3, a paper entitledPin-wells and Rag-busheswas read before the British Association by Mr. Hartland, in 1893, and published inFolk-Lorefor the same year, pp. 451–70. In that paper the whole question is gone into with searching logic, and Mr. Hartland finds the required explanation in one of the dogmas of magic. For ‘if an article of my clothing,’ he says, ‘in a witch’s hands may cause me to suffer, the same article in contact with a beneficent power may relieve my pain, restore me tohealth, or promote my general prosperity. A pin that has pricked my wart … has by its contact, by the wound it has inflicted, acquired a peculiar bond with the wart; the rag that has rubbed the wart has by that friction acquired a similar bond; so that whatever is done to the pin or the rag, whatever influences the pin or the rag may undergo, the same influences are by that very act brought to bear, upon the wart. If, instead of using a rag, or making a pilgrimage to a sacred well, I rub my warts with raw meat and then bury the meat, the wart will decay and disappear with the decay and dissolution of the meat …. In like manner my shirt or stocking, or a rag to represent it, placed upon a sacred bush, or thrust into a sacred well—my name written upon the walls of a temple—a stone or a pellet from my hand cast upon a sacred image or a sacred cairn—is thenceforth in continual contact with divinity; and the effluence of divinity, reaching and involving it, will reach and involve me.’ Mr. Hartland concludes from a large number of instances, that as a rule ‘where the pin or button is dropped into the well, the patient does not trouble about the rag, and vice versa.’ This wider argument as to the effluence of the divinity of a particular spot of special holiness seems to me conclusive. It applies also, needless to say, to a large category of cases besides those in question between Mr. Gomme and the present writer.So now I would revise my position thus:—I continue to regard the rag much as before, but treat the article thrown into the well as the more special means of establishing a beneficial relation with the well divinity: whether it could also be viewed as an offering would depend on the value attached to it. Some of the following notes may serve as illustrations, especially those relating to the wool and the pin:—FfynnonGwynwy, or the Well of Gwynwy, near Ỻangelynin, on the river Conwy, appears to be partly in point; for it formerly used to be well stocked with crooked pins, which nobody would touch lest he might get from them the warts supposed to attach to them, whence it would appear that a pin might be regarded as the vehicle of the disease. There was a well of some repute at Cae Garw, in the parish of Pistyỻ, near the foot of Carnguwch, in Ỻeyn, or West Carnarvonshire. The water possessed virtues to cure one of rheumatism and warts; but, in order to be rid of the latter, it was requisite to throw a pin into the well for each individual wart. For these two items of information, and several more to be mentioned presently, I have to thank Mr. John Jones, better known in Wales by his bardic name of Myrđin Farđ, and as an enthusiastic collector of Welsh antiquities, whether in the form of manuscript or of unwritten folklore. On the second day of the year 1893 I paid him a visit at Chwilog, on the Carnarvon and Avon Wen Railway, and asked him many questions: these he not only answered with the utmost willingness, but he also showed me the unpublished materials which he had collected. I come next to a competition on the folklore of North Wales at the London Eisteđfod in 1887, in which, as one of the adjudicators, I observed that several of the competitors mentioned the prevalent belief, that every well with healing properties must have its outlet towards the south (i’r dê). According to one of them, if you wished to get rid of warts, you should, on your way to the well, look for wool which the sheep had lost. When you had found enough wool you should prick each wart with a pin, and then rub the wart well with the wool. The next thing was to bend the pin and throw it into the well. Then youshould place the wool on the first whitethorn you could find, and as the wind scattered the wool, the warts would disappear. There was a well of the kind, the writer went on to say, near his home; and he, with three or four other boys, went from school one day to the well to charm their warts away. For he had twenty-three on one of his hands; so that he always tried to hide it, as it was the belief that if one counted the warts they would double their number. He forgets what became of the other boys’ warts, but his own disappeared soon afterwards; and his grandfather used to maintain that it was owing to the virtue of the well. Such were the words of this writer, whose name is unknown to me; but I guess him to have been a native of Carnarvonshire, or else of one of the neighbouring districts of Denbighshire or Merionethshire. To return to Myrđin Farđ, he mentionedFfynnon Cefn Ỻeithfan, or the Well of the Ỻeithfan Ridge, on the eastern slope of Mynyđ y Rhiw, in the parish of Bryncroes, in the west of Ỻeyn. In the case of this well it is necessary, when going to it and coming from it, to be careful not to utter a word to anybody, or to turn to look back. What one has to do at the well is to bathe the warts with a rag or clout which has grease on it. When that is done, the clout with the grease has to be carefully concealed beneath the stone at the mouth of the well. This brings to my mind the fact that I noticed more than once, years ago, rags underneath stones in the water flowing from wells in Wales, and sometimes thrust into holes in the walls of wells, but I had no notion how they came there.On the subject of pin-wells I had in 1893, from Mr. T. E. Morris, of Portmadoc, barrister-at-law, some account ofFfynnon Faglan, or Baglan’s Well, in the parish of Ỻanfaglan, near Carnarvon. The well issituated in an open field to the right of the road leading towards the church, and close to it. The church and churchyard form an enclosure in the middle of the same field, and the former has in its wall the old stone readingFILI LOVERNII ANATEMORI. My friend derived information from Mrs. Roberts, of Cefn y Coed, near Carnarvon, as follows:—‘The old people who would be likely to know anything aboutFfynnon Faglanhave all died. The two oldest inhabitants, who have always lived in this parish of Ỻanfaglan, remember the well being used for healing purposes. One told me his mother used to take him to it, when he was a child, for sore eyes, bathe them with the water, and then drop in a pin. The other man, when he was young, bathed in it for rheumatism; and until quite lately people used to fetch away the water for medicinal purposes. The latter, who lives near the well, at Tan y Graig, said that he remembered it being cleaned out about fifty years ago, when two basinfuls of pins were taken out, but no coin of any kind. The pins were all bent, and I conclude the intention was to exorcise the evil spirit supposed to afflict the person who dropped them in, or, as the Welsh say,dadwitsio. No doubt some ominous words were also used. The well is at present nearly dry, the field where it lies having been drained some years ago, and the water in consequence withdrawn from it. It was much used for the cure of warts. The wart was washed, then pricked with a pin, which, after being bent, was thrown into the well. There is a very large and well-known well of the kind at C’lynnog,Ffynnon Beuno, “St. Beuno’s Well,” which was considered to have miraculous healing powers; and even yet, I believe, some people have faith in it.Ffynnon Faglanis, in its construction, an imitation, on a smaller scale, of St. Beuno’s Well at C’lynnog.’In the cliffs at the west end of Ỻeyn is a wishing-well calledFfynnon Fair, or St. Mary’s Well, to the left of the site of Eglwys Fair, and facing Ynys Enỻi, or Bardsey. Here, to obtain your wish, you have to descend the steps to the well and walk up again to the top with your mouth full of the water; and then you have to go round the ruins of the church once or more times with the water still in your mouth. Viewing the position of the well from the sea, I should be disposed to think that the realization of one’s wish at that price could not be regarded as altogether cheap. Myrđin Farđ also told me that there used to be a well near Criccieth Church. It was known asFfynnon y Saint, or the Saints’ Well, and it was the custom to throw keys or pins into it on the morning of Easter Sunday, in order to propitiate St. Catherine, who was the patron of the well. I should be glad to know what this exactly meant.Lastly, a few of the wells in that part of Gwyneđ may be grouped together and described as oracular. One of these, the big well in the parish of Ỻanbedrog in Ỻeyn, as I learn from Myrđin Farđ, required the devotee to kneel by it and avow his faith in it. When this had been duly done, he might proceed in this wise: to ascertain, for instance, the name of the thief who had stolen from him, he had to throw a bit of bread into the well and name the person whom he suspected. At the name of the thief the bread would sink; so the inquirer went on naming all the persons he could think of until the bit of bread sank, when the thief was identified. How far is one to suppose that we have here traces of the influences of the water ordeal common in the Middle Ages? Another well of the same kind wasFfynnon Saethon, in Ỻanfihangel Bacheỻaeth parish, also in Ỻeyn. Here it was customary, as he had it in writing,for lovers to throw pins (pinnau) into the well; but these pins appear to have been the points of the blackthorn. At any rate, they cannot well have been of any kind of metal, as we are told that, if they sank in the water, one concluded that one’s lover was not sincere in his or her love.Next may be mentioned a well, bearing the remarkable name ofFfynnon Gwyneđ, or the Well of Gwyned, which is situated near Mynyđ Mawr, in the parish of Abererch: it used to be consulted in the following manner:—When it was desired to discover whether an ailing person would recover, a garment of his would be thrown into the well, and according to the side on which it sank it was known whether he would live or die.Ffynnon Gybi, or St. Cybi’s Well, in the parish of Ỻangybi, was the scene of a somewhat similar practice; for there, girls who wished to know their lovers’ intentions would spread their pocket-handkerchiefs on the water of the well, and, if the water pushed the handkerchiefs to the south—in Welshi’r dê—they knew that everything was right—in Welsho đê—and that their lovers were honest and honourable in their intentions; but, if the water shifted the handkerchiefs northwards, they concluded the contrary. A reference to this is made by a modern Welsh poet, as follows:—Ambeỻ đyn, gwaelđyn, a gyrchI bant gorís Moel Bentyrch,Mewn gobaith mai hen GybiGlodfawr syđ yn ỻwyđaw’r ỻi.Some folks, worthless4folks, visitA hollow below Moel Bentyrch,In hopes that ancient KybiOf noble fame blesses the flood.The spot is not far from where Myrđin Farđ lives; and he mentioned, that adjoining the well is a building which was probably intended for the person in chargeof the well: it has been tenanted within his memory. Not only for this but also for several of the foregoing items of information am I indebted to Myrđin; and now I come to Mrs. Williams-Ellis, of Glasfryn Uchaf, who tells me that one day not long ago, she met at Ỻangybi a native who had not visited the place since his boyhood: he had been away as an engineer in South Wales nearly all his life, but had returned to see an aged relative. So the reminiscences of the place filled his mind, and, among other things, he said that he remembered very well what concern there was one day in the village at a mischievous person having taken a very large eel out of the well. Many of the old people, he said, felt that much of the virtue of the well was probably taken away with the eel. To see it coiling about their limbs when they went into the water was a good sign: so he gave one to understand. As a sort of parallel I may mention that I have seen the fish living inFfynnon Beris, not far from the parish church of Ỻanberis. It is jealously guarded by the inhabitants, and when it was once or twice taken out by a mischievous stranger he was forced to put it back again. However, I never could get the history of this sacred fish, but I found that it was regarded as very old5. I may add that it appears the wellcalledFfynnon Fair, ‘Mary’s Well,’ at Ỻanđwyn, in Anglesey, used formerly to have inhabiting it a sacred fish, whose movements indicated the fortunes of the love-sick men and maidens who visited there the shrine of St. Dwynwen6. Possibly inquiry would result in showing that such sacred fish have been far more common once in the Principality than they are now.The next class of wells to claim our attention consists of what I may call fairy wells, of which few are mentioned in connexion with Wales; but the legends about them are of absorbing interest. One of them is in Myrđin Farđ’s neighbourhood, and I questioned him a good deal on the subject: it is calledFfynnon Grassi, or Grace’s Well, and it occupies, according to him, a few square feet—he has measured it himself—of the south-east corner of the lake of Glasfryn Uchaf, in the parish of Ỻangybi. It appears that it was walled in, and that the stone forming its eastern side has several holes in it, which were intended to let water enter the well and not issue from it. It had a door or cover on its surface; and it was necessary to keep the door always shut, except when water was being drawn. Through somebody’s negligence, however, it was once on a time left open: the consequence was that the waterof the well flowed out and formed the Glasfryn Lake, which is so considerable as to be navigable for small boats. Grassi is supposed in the locality to have been the name of the owner of the well, or at any rate of a lady who had something to do with it.Grassi, or Grace, however, can only be a name which a modern version of the legend has introduced. It probably stands for an older name given to the person in charge of the well; to the one, in fact, who neglected to shut the door; but though the name must be comparatively modern, the story, as a whole, does not appear to be at all modern, but very decidedly the contrary.So I wrote in 1893; but years after my conversation with Myrđin Farđ, my attention was called to the fact that the Glasfryn family, of which the Rev. J. C. Williams-Ellis is the head, have in their coat of arms a mermaid, who is represented in the usual way, holding a comb in her right hand and a mirror in her left. I had from the first expected to find some kind of Undine or Liban story associated with the well and the lake, though I had abstained from trying the risky effects of leading questions; but when I heard of the heraldic mermaid I wrote to Mr. Williams-Ellis to ask whether he knew her history. His words, though not encouraging as regards the mermaid, soon convinced me that I had not been wholly wrong in supposing that more folklore attached to the well and lake than I had been able to discover. Since then Mrs. Williams-Ellis has taken the trouble of collecting on the spot all the items of tradition which she could find: she communicated them to me in the month of March, 1899, and the following is an abstract of them, preceded by a brief description of the ground:—The well itself is at the foot of a very green field-bank at the head of the lake, but not on the same levelwith it, as the lake has had its waters lowered half a century or more ago by the outlet having been cut deeper. Adjoining the field containing the well is a larger field, which also slopes down to the lake and extends in another direction to the grounds belonging to the house. This larger field is called Cae’r Ladi, ‘the Lady’s Field,’ and it is remarkable for having in its centre an ancient standing stone, which, as seen from the windows of the house, presents the appearance of a female figure hurrying along, with the wind slightly swelling out her veil and the skirt of her dress. Mr. Williams-Ellis remembers how when he was a boy the stone was partially white-washed, and how an old bonnet adorned the top of this would-be statue, and he thinks that an old shawl used to be thrown over the shoulders.Now as to Grassi, she is mostly regarded as a ghostly person somehow connected with the lake and the house of Glasfryn. One story is to the effect, that on a certain evening she forgot to close the well, and that when the gushing waters had formed the lake, poor Grassi, overcome with remorse, wandered up and down the high ground of Cae’r Ladi, moaning and weeping. There, in fact, she is still at times to be heard lamenting her fate, especially at two o’clock in the early morning. Some people say that she is also to be seen about the lake, which is now the haunt of some half a dozen swans. But on the whole her visits appear to have been most frequent and troublesome at the house itself. Several persons still living are mentioned, who believe that they have seen her there, and two of them, Mrs. Jones of Talafon, and old Sydney Griffith of Tyđyn Bach, agree in the main in their description of what they saw, namely, a tall lady with well marked features and large bright eyes: she was dressed in white silk and a white velvet bonnet.The woman, Sydney Griffith, thought that she had seen the lady walking several times about the house and in Cae’r Ladi. This comes, in both instances, from a young lady born and bred in the immediate neighbourhood, and studying now at the University College of North Wales; but Mrs. Williams-Ellis has had similar accounts from other sources, and she mentions tenants of Glasfryn who found it difficult to keep servants there, because they felt that the place was haunted. In fact one of the tenants himself felt so unsafe that he used to take his gun and his dog with him to his bedroom at night; not to mention that when the Williams-Ellises lived themselves, as they do still, in the house, their visitors have been known to declare that they heard the strange plaintive cry out of doors at two o’clock in the morning.Traces also of a very different story are reported by Mrs. Williams-Ellis, to the effect that when the water broke forth to form the lake, the fairies seized Grassi and changed her into a swan, and that she continued in that form to live on the lake sixscore years, and that when at length she died, she loudly lamented her lot: that cry is still to be heard at night. This story is in process apparently of being rationalized; at any rate the young lady student, to whom I have referred, remembers perfectly that her grandfather used to explain to her and the other children at home that Grassi was changed into a swan as a punishment for haunting Glasfryn, but that nevertheless the old lady still visited the place, especially when there happened to be strangers in the house. At the end of September last Mrs. Rhys and I had the pleasure of spending a few days at Glasfryn, in the hope of hearing the plaintive wail, and of seeing the lady in white silk revisiting her familiar haunts. But alas! our sleep was never oncedisturbed, nor was our peace once troubled by suspicions of anything uncanny. This, however, is negative, and characterized by the usual weakness of all such evidence.It is now time to turn to another order of facts: in the first place may be mentioned that the young lady student’s grandmother used to call the wellFfynnon Grâs Siôn Gruffuđ, as she had always heard that Grâs was the daughter of a certain Siôn Gruffyđ, ‘John Griffith,’ who lived near the well; and Mrs. Williams-Ellis finds that Grâs was buried, at a very advanced age, on December 14, 1743, at the parish church of Ỻangybi, where the register describes her asGrace Jones, alias Grace Jones Griffith. She had lived till the end at Glasfryn, but from documents in the possession of the Glasfryn family it is known that in 1728 Hugh Lloyd of Traỻwyn purchased the house and estate of Glasfryn from a son of Grace’s, namedJohn ab Cadwaladr, and that Hugh Lloyd of Traỻwyn’s son, the Rev. William Lloyd, sold them to Archdeacon Ellis, from whom they have descended to the Rev. J. C. Williams-Ellis. In the light of these facts there is no reason to connect the old lady’s name very closely with the well or the lake. She was once the dominant figure at Glasfryn, that is all; and when she died she was as usual supposed to haunt the house and its immediate surroundings; and if we might venture to suppose that Glasfryn was sold by her son against her will, though subject to conditions which enabled her to remain in possession of the place to the day of her death, we should have a further explanation, perhaps, of her supposed moaning and lamentation.In the background, however, of the story, one detects the possibility of another female figure, for it may be that the standing stone in Cae’r Ladi represents awoman buried there centuries before Grace ruled at Glasfryn, and that traditions about the earlier lady have survived to be inextricably mixed with those concerning the later one. Lastly, those traditions may have also associated the subject of them with the well and the lake; but I wish to attach no importance to this conjecture, as we have in reserve a third figure of larger possibilities than either Grace or the stone woman. It needs no better introduction than Mrs. Williams-Ellis’ own words: ‘Our younger boys have a crew of three little Welsh boys who live near the lake, to join them in their boat sailing about the pool and in camping on the island, &c. They asked me once whoMorganwas, whom the little boys were always saying they were to be careful against. An old man living at Tal Ỻyn, “Lake’s End,” a farm close by, says that as a boy he was always told that “naughty boys would be carried off by Morgan into the lake.” Others tell me that Morgan is always held to be ready to take off troublesome children, and somehow Morgan is thought of as a bad one.’ Now as Morgan carries children off into the pool, he would seem to issue from the pool, and to have his home in it. Further, he plays the same part as the fairies against whom a Snowdonian mother used to warn her children: they were on no account to wander away from the house when there was a mist, lest the fairies should carry them to their home beneath Ỻyn Dwythwch. In other words, Morgan may be said to act in the same way as the mermaid, who takes a sailor down to her submarine home; and it explains to my mind a discussion which I once heard of the name Morgan by a party of men and women making hay one fine summer’s day in the neighbourhood of Ponterwyd, in North Cardiganshire. I was a child, but I remember vividly how they teased one of their number whose‘style’ was Morgan. They hinted at dreadful things associated with the name; but it was all so vague that I could not gather that his great unknown namesake was a thief, a murderer, or any kind of ordinary criminal. The impression left on my mind was rather the notion of something weird, uncanny, or non-human; and the fact that the Welsh version of the Book of Common Prayer calls the PelagiansMorganiaid, ‘Morgans,’ does not offer an adequate explanation. But I now see clearly that it is to be sought in the indistinct echo of such folklore as that which makes Morgan a terror to children in the neighbourhood of the Glasfryn Lake.The name, however, presents points of difficulty which require some notice: the Welsh translators of Article IX in the Prayer Book were probably wrong in makingPelagiansintoMorganiaid, as the Welsh forPelagiusseems to have been ratherMorien7, which in its oldest recorded form wasMorgen, and meant sea-born, or offspring of the sea. In a still earlier form it must have beenMorigenos, with a feminineMorigena, but when the endings came to be dropped both vocables would becomeMorgen, laterMori̯en. I do not remember coming across a feminineMorgenin Welsh, but the presumption is that it did exist. For, among other things, I may mention that we have it in Irish asMuirgen, one of the names of the lake lady Liban, who, when the waters of the neglected well rushed forth to form Lough Neagh, lived beneath that lake until she desired to be changed into a salmon. The same conclusion may be drawn from the nameMorgainorMorgan, given in the French romances to one or more water ladies; for those names are easiest to explain as the BrythonicMorgenborrowed from a Welsh or Breton source, unless one found it possible to trace it direct to theGoidels of Wales. No sooner, however, had the confusion taken place between Morgen and the name which is so common in Wales as exclusively a man’s name, than the aquatic figure must also become male. That is why the Glasfryn Morgan is now a male, and not a female like the other characters whose rôle he plays. But while the name was in Welsh successivelyMorgenandMorien, the man’s name wasMorcant,Morgant, orMorgan8, so that, phonologically speaking, no confusion could be regarded as possible between the two series. Here, therefore, one detects the influence, doubtless, of the French romances which spoke of a lake lady Morgain, Morgan, or Morgue. The character varied: Morgain le Fay was a designing and wicked person; but Morgan was also the name of a well disposed lady of the same fairy kind, who took Arthur away to be healed at her home in the Isle of Avallon. We seem to be on the track of the same confusing influence of the name, when it occurs in the story of Geraint and Enid; for there the chief physician of Arthur’s court is called Morgan Tut or Morgant Tut, and the wordtuthas been shown by M. Loth to have meant the same sort of non-human being whom an eleventh-century Life of St. Maudez mentions asquidam dæmon quem BritonesTutheappellant. Thus the nameMorgan Tutis meant as the Welsh equivalent of the FrenchMorgain le FayorMorgan la Fée9; but so long as the compiler of the story of Geraint and Enid employed in his Welsh the form Morgan, he had practically no choice but to treat the person called Morgan as a man, whether that was or was not the sex in the original texts on which he was drawing. Of course he could have avoided the difficulty in case he was aware of it, if he had found some available formula in use likeMary-Morgant, said to be a common name for a fairy on the island of Ouessant, off the coast of Brittany.Summarizing the foregoing notes, we seem to be right in drawing the following conclusions:—(1) The well was left in the charge of a woman who forgot to shut it, and when she saw the water bursting forth, she bewailed her negligence, as in the case of her counterpart in the legend of Cantre’r Gwaelod. (2) The original name of the Glasfryn ‘Morgan’ was Morgen, later Morien. (3) The person changed into a swan on the occasion of the Glasfryn well erupting was not Grassi, but most probably Morgen. And (4) the character was originally feminine, like that of the mermaid or the fairies, whose rôle the Glasfryn Morgan plays; and more especially may one compare the Irish Muirgen, theMorgenmore usually called Líban. For it is to be noticed that when the neglected well burst forth she, Muirgen or Líban, was not drowned like the othersinvolved in the calamity, but lived in her chamber at the bottom of the lake formed by the overflowing well, until she was changed into a salmon. In that form she lived on some three centuries, until in fact she was caught in the net of a fisherman, and obtained the boon of a Christian burial. However, the change into a swan is also known on Irish ground: take for instance the story of the Children of Lir, who were converted into swans by their stepmother, and lived in that form on Loch Dairbhreach, in Westmeath, for three hundred years, and twice as long on the open sea, until their destiny closed with the advent of St. Patrick and the first ringing of a Christian bell in Erin10.The next legend was kindly communicated to me by Mr. Wm. Davies already mentioned at p. 147 above: he found it inCyfaiỻ yr Aelwyd11, “The Friend of the Hearth,” where it is stated that it belonged to David Jones’Storehouse of Curiosities, a collection which does not seem to have ever assumed the form of a printed book. David Jones, of Trefriw, in the Conwy Valley, was a publisher and poet who wrote between 1750 and 1780. This is his story: ‘In 1735 I had a conversation with a man concerning Tegid Lake. He had heard from old people that near the middle of it there was a well opposite Ỻangower, and the well was calledFfynnon Gywer, “Cower’s Well,” and at that time the town was round about the well. It was obligatory to place a lid on the well every night. (It seems that in those days somebody was aware that unless this was done it would prove thedestruction of the town.) But one night it was forgotten, and by the morning, behold the town had subsided and the lake became three miles long and one mile wide. They say, moreover, that on clear days some people see the chimneys of the houses. It is since then that the town was built atthe lower end of the lake. It is calledY Bala12, and the man told me that he had talked with an old Bala man who had, when he was a youth, had two days’ mowing of hay13between the road and the lake; but by this time the lake had spread over that land and the road also, which necessitated the purchase of land further away for the road; and some say that the town will yet sink as far as the place called Ỻanfor—others call it Ỻanfawđ, “Drown-church,” or Ỻanfawr, “Great-church,” in Penỻyn …. Further, when the weather is stormy water appears oozing through every floor within Bala, and at other times anybody can get water enough for the use of his house, provided he dig a little into the floor of it.’In reference to the idea that the town is to sink,together with the neighbouring village of Ỻanfor, the writer quotes in a note the couplet known still to everybody in the neighbourhood as follows:—Y Bala aeth, a’r Bala aiff,A Ỻanfor aiff yn Ỻyn.Bala old the lake has had, and Bala newThe lake will have, and Ỻanfor too.This probably implies that old Bala is beneath the lake, and that the present Bala is to meet the like fate at some time to come. This kind of prophecy is not very uncommon: thus there has been one current as to the Montgomeryshire town of Pool, called, in Welsh, Traỻwng or Traỻwm, and in English, Welshpool, to distinguish it from the English town of Pool. As to Welshpool, a very deep water called Ỻyn Du, lying between the town and theCasteỻ Cochor Powys Castle, and right in the domain of the castle, is suddenly to spread itself, and one fine market day to engulf the whole place14. Further, when I was a boy in North Cardiganshire, the following couplet was quite familiar to me, and supposed to have been one of Merlin’s prophecies:—Caer Fyrđin, cei oer fore;Daear a’th lwnc, dw’r i’th le.Carmarthen, a cold morn awaits thee;Earth gapes, and water in thy place will be.In regard to the earlier half of the line, concerning Bala gone, the story of Ffynnon Gywer might be said to explain it, but there is another which is later and far better known. It is of the same kind as the storiesrelated in Welsh concerning Ỻynclys and Syfađon; but I reserve it with these and others of the same sort for chapter vii.For the next legend belonging here I have to thank the Rev. J. Fisher, a native of the parish of Ỻandybïe, who, in spite of his name, is a genuine Welshman, and—what is more—a Welsh scholar. The following are his words:—‘Ỻyn Ỻech Owen (the last word is locally soundedw-en, likeoo-enin English, as is also the personal name Owen) is on Mynyđ Mawr, in the ecclesiastical parish of Gors Lâs, and the civil parish of Ỻanarthney, Carmarthenshire. It is a small lake, forming the source of the Gwendraeth Fawr. I have heard the tradition about its origin told by several persons, and by all, until quite recently, pretty much in the same form. In 1884 I took it down from my grandfather, Rees Thomas (b.1809,d.1892), of Cil Coỻ Ỻandebïe—a very intelligent man, with a good fund of old-world Welsh lore—who had lived all his life in the neighbouring parishes of Ỻandeilo Fawr and Ỻandybïe.‘The following is the version of the story (translated) as I had it from him:—There was once a man of the name of Owen living on Mynyđ Mawr, and he had a well, “ffynnon.” Over this well he kept a large flag (“fflagen neu lech fawr”: “fflagen” is the word in common use now in these parts for a large flat stone), which he was always careful to replace over its mouth after he had satisfied himself or his beast with water. It happened, however, that one day he went on horseback to the well to water his horse, and forgot to put the flag back in its place. He rode off leisurely in the direction of his home; but, after he had gone some distance, he casually looked back, and, to his great astonishment, he saw that the well had burst out and was overflowing the whole place. He suddenly bethought him that he should rideback and encompass the overflow of the water as fast as he could; and it was the horse’s track in galloping round the water that put a stop to its further overflow. It is fully believed that, had he not galloped round the flood in the way he did, the well would have been sure to inundate the whole district and drown all. Hence the lake was called the Lake of Owen’s Flag, “Ỻyn Ỻech Owen.”‘I have always felt interested in this story, as it resembled that about the formation of Lough Neagh, &c.; and, happening to meet the Rev. D. Harwood Hughes, B.A., the vicar of Gors Lâs (St. Ỻeian’s), last August (1892), I asked him to tell me the legend as he had heard it in his parish. He said that he had been told it, but in a form different from mine, where the “Owen” was said to have been Owen Glyndwr. This is the substance of the legend as he had heard it:—Owen Glyndwr, when once passing through these parts, arrived here of an evening. He came across a well, and, having watered his horse, placed a stone over it in order to find it again next morning. He then went to lodge for the night at Dyỻgoed Farm, close by. In the morning, before proceeding on his journey, he took his horse to the well to give him water, but found to his surprise that the well had become a lake.’Mr. Fisher goes on to mention the later history of the lake: how, some eighty years ago, its banks were the resort on Sunday afternoons of the young people of the neighbourhood, and how a Baptist preacher put an end to their amusements and various kinds of games by preaching at them. However, the lake-side appears to be still a favourite spot for picnics and Sunday-school gatherings. Mr. Fisher was quite right in appending to his own version that of his friend; but, from the point of view of folklore, I must confess that I can makenothing of the latter: it differs from the older one as much as chalk does from cheese. It would be naturally gratifying to the pride of local topography to be able to connect with the pool the name of Owen Glyndwr; but it is worthy of note that this highly respectable attempt to rationalize the legend wholly fails, as it does not explain why there is now a lake where there was once but a well. In other words, the euhemerized story is itself evidence corroborative of Mr. Fisher’s older version, which is furthermore kept in countenance by Howells’ account, p. 104, where we are told who the Owen in question was, namely, Owen Lawgoch, a personage dear, as we shall see later, to the Welsh legend of the district. He and his men had their abode in a cave on the northern side of Mynyđ Mawr, and while there Owen used, we are informed, to water his steed at a fine spring covered with a large stone, which it required the strength of a giant to lift. But one day he forgot to replace it, and when he next sought the well he found the lake. He returned to his cave and told his men what had happened. Thereupon both he and they fell into a sleep, which is to last till it is broken by the sound of a trumpet and the clang of arms on Rhiw Goch: then they are to sally forth to conquer.Now the story as told by Howells and Fisher provokes comparison, as the latter suggests, with the Irish legend of the formation of Lough Ree and of Lough Neagh in the story of the Death of Eochaid McMaireda15. In bothof these legends also there is a horse, a kind of water-horse, who forms the well which eventually overflows and becomes Lough Ree, and so with the still larger body of water known as Lough Neagh. In the latter case the fairy well was placed in the charge of a woman; but she one day left the cover of the well open, and the catastrophe took place—the water issued forth and overflowed the country. One of Eochaid’s daughters, named Líban, however, was not drowned, but only changed into a salmon as already mentioned at p. 376 above. In myArthurian Legend, p. 361, I have attempted to show that the nameLíbanmay have its Welsh equivalent in that ofỺïon, occurring in the name ofỺyn Ỻïon, or Ỻïon’s Lake, the bursting of which is described in the latest series of Triads, iii. 13, 97, as causing a sort of deluge. I am not certain as to the nature of the relationship between those names, but it seems evident that the stories have a common substratum, though it is to be noticed that no well, fairy or otherwise, figures in the Ỻyn Ỻïon legend, which makes the presence of the monster called the afanc the cause of the waters bursting forth. So Hu the Mighty, with his team of famous oxen, is made to drag the afanc out of the lake.There is, however, another Welsh legend concerning a great overflow in which a well does figure: I allude to that ofCantre’r Gwaelod, or the Bottom Hundred, a fine spacious country supposed to be submerged in Cardigan Bay. Modern euhemerism treats it as defended by embankments and sluices, which, we are told, were in the charge of the prince of the country, named Seithennin, who, being one day in his cups, forgot to shut the sluices, and thus brought about the inundation, which was the end of his fertile realm. This, however, is not the old legend: that speaks of a well, and lays the blame on a woman—a pretty sure sign of antiquity, asthe reader may judge from other old stories which will readily occur to him. The Welsh legend to which I allude is embodied in a short poem in theBlack Book of Carmarthen16: it consists of eight triplets, to which is added a triplet from the Englynion of the Graves. The following is the original with a tentative translation:—Seithenhin sawde allan.ac edrẏchuirde varanres mor.maes guitnev rẏtoes.Boed emendiceid ẏ morvinaehellẏgaut guẏdi cvin.finaun wenestir17mor terruin.Boed emendiceid ẏ vachteith.ae . golligaut guẏdi gueith.finaun wenestir mor diffeith.Diaspadmereridẏ ar vann caer.hid ar duu ẏ dodir.gnaud guẏdi traha trangc hir.Diaspad mererid . ẏ ar van kaer hetiv.hid ar duu ẏ dadoluch.gnaud guẏdi traha attreguch.Diaspad mererid am gorchuit heno.ac nimhaut gorlluit.gnaud guẏdi traha tramguit.Diaspad mererid ẏ ar gwinev kadirkedaul duv ae gorev.gnaud guẏdi gormot eissev.Diaspad mererid . am kẏmhell henoẏ urth uẏistauell.gnaud guẏdi traha trangc pell.Bet seithenhin sẏnhuir vannrug kaer kenedir a glan.mor maurhidic a kinran.Seithennin, stand thou forthAnd see the vanguard of the main:Gwyđno’s plain has it covered.Accursed be the maidenWho let it loose after supping,Well cup-bearer of the mighty main.Accursed be the damselWho let it loose after battle,Well minister of the high sea.Mererid’s cry from a city’s height,Even to God is it directed:After pride comes a long pause.Mererid’s cry from a city’s height to-day,Even to God her expiation:After pride comes reflection.Mererid’s cry o’ercomes me to-night,Nor can I readily prosper:After pride comes a fall.Mererid’s cry over strong wines,Bounteous God has wrought it:After excess comes privation.Mererid’s cry drives me to-nightFrom my chamber away:After insolence comes long death.Weak-witted Seithennin’s grave is itBetween Kenedyr’s Fort and the shore,With majestic Mor’s and Kynran’s.The names in these lines present great difficulties: first comes that ofMererid, which is no other word thanMargarita, ‘a pearl,’ borrowed; but what does it here mean?Margarita, besides meaning a pearl, was used in Welsh, e.g. under the formMarereda18, as the proper name written in EnglishMargaret. That is probably how it is to be taken here, namely, as the name given to the negligent guardian of the fairy well. It cannot very well be, however, the name belonging to the original form of the legend; and we have the somewhat parallel case ofFfynnon Grassi, or Grace’s Well; but what old Celtic name that of Mererid has replaced in the story, I cannot say. In the next place, nobody has been able to identifyCaer Kenedyr, and I have nothing to say as toMor Maurhidic, except that a person of that name is mentioned in another of the Englynion of the Graves. It runs thus in theBlack Book, fol. 33a:—Bet mor maurhidic diessic unben.post kinhen kinteic.mab peredur penwetic.The grave of Mor the Grand, … prince,Pillar of the … conflict,Son of Peredur of Penweđig.The last name in the final triplet of the poem which I have attempted to translate isKinran, which is otherwise unknown as a Welsh name; but I am inclined to identify it with that of one of the three who escaped the catastrophe in the Irish legend. The name there isCurnán, which was borne by the idiot of the family,who, like many later idiots, was at the same time a prophet. For he is represented as always prophesying that the waters were going to burst forth, and as advising his friends to prepare boats. So he may be set, after a fashion, over against ourSeithenhin synhuir vann, ‘S. of the feeble mind.’ But one might perhaps ask why I do not point out an equivalent in Irish for the Welsh Seithennin, as his name is now pronounced. The fact is that no such equivalent occurs in the Irish story in question, nor exactly, so far as I know, in any other.That is what I wrote when penning these notes; but it has occurred to me since then, that there is an Irish name, an important Irish name, which looks as if related toSeithenhin, and that isSetanta Beg, ‘the little Setantian,’ the first name of the Irish hero Cúchulainn. Thent, I may point out, makes one suspect thatSetantais a name of Brythonic origin in Irish; and I have been in the habit of associating it with that of the people of the Setantii19, placed by Ptolemy on the coast of what is now Lancashire. Whether any legend has ever been current about a country submerged on the coast of Lancashire I cannot say, but the soundings would make such a legend quite comprehensible. I remember, however, reading somewhere as to the Plain of Muirthemhne, of which Cúchulainn, our Setanta Beg, had special charge, that it was so called because it had once been submarine and become since the converse, so to say, of Seithennin’s country. The latter is beneath Cardigan Bay, while the other fringed the opposite side of the sea, consisting as it did of the level portion of County Louth. On the whole, I am not altogether indisposed to believe that we have here traces of an ancient legendof a wider scope than is represented by theBlack Booktriplets, which I have essayed to translate. I think that I am right in recognizing that legend in theMabinogiof Branwen, daughter of Ỻyr. There we read that, when Brân and his men crossed from Wales to Ireland, the intervening sea consisted merely of two navigable rivers, called Ỻi and Archan. The story-teller adds words to the effect, that it is only since then the sea has multiplied its realms20between Ireland andYnys y Kedyrn, or the Isle of the Keiri, a name which has already been discussed: see pp. 279–83.These are not all the questions which such stories suggest; for Seithennin is represented in later Welsh literature as the son of oneSeithyn, associated with Dyfed; and the nameSeithynleads off to the coast of Brittany. For I learn from a paper by the late M. le Men, in theRevue Archéologiquefor 1872 (xxiii. 52), that the Île de Sein is called in BretonEnez-Sun, in whichSunis a dialectic shortening ofSizun, which is also met with asSeidhun. That being so, one would seem to be right in regarding Sizun as nearly related to ourSeithyn. That is not all—the tradition reminds one of the Welsh legend: M. le Men refers to theVie du P. Maunoirby Boschet (Paris, 1697) p. 126, and adds that, in his own time, the road ending on the Pointe du Raz opposite the Île de Sein passed ‘pour être l’ancien chemin qui conduisait à la ville d’Is (Kaer-a-Is, la ville de la partie basse).’ It is my own experience, that nobody can go about much in Brittany without hearing over and over again about the submerged city of Is. There is no doubt that we have in these names distant echoes of an inundation story, once widely current in both Britains and perhaps also in Ireland. With regard to Wales we have an indicationto that effect in the fact, that Gwyđno, to whom the inundated region is treated as having belonged, is associated not only with Cardigan Bay, but also with the coast of North Wales, especially the part of it situated between Bangor and Ỻandudno21. Adjoining it is supposed to lie submerged a once fertile district called Tyno Helig, a legend about which will come under notice later. This brings the inundation story nearer to the coast where Ptolemy in the second century located the Harbour of the Setantii, about the mouth of the river Ribble, and in their name we seem to have some sort of a historical basis for that of the drunken Seithennin22. I cannot close these remarks better than byappending what Professor Boyd Dawkins has recently said with regard to the sea between Britain and Ireland:—‘It may be interesting to remark further that during the time of the Iberian dominion in Wales, the geography of the seaboard was different to what it is now. A forest, containing the remains of their domestic oxen that had run wild, and of the indigenous wild animals such as the bear and the red deer, united Anglesey with the mainland, and occupied the shallows of Cardigan Bay, known in legend as “the lost lands of Wales.” It extended southwards from the present sea margin across the estuary of the Severn, to Somerset, Devon, and Cornwall. It passed northwards across the Irish Sea off the coast of Cheshire and Lancashire, and occupied Morecambe Bay with a dense growth of oak, Scotch fir, alder, birch, and hazel. It ranged seawards beyond the ten-fathom line, and is to be found on mostshores beneath the sand-banks and mud-banks, as for example at Rhyl and Cardiff. In Cardigan Bay it excited the wonder of Giraldus de Barri23.’To return to fairy wells, I have to confess that I cannot decide what may be precisely the meaning of the notion of a well with a woman set carefully to see that the door or cover of the well is kept shut. It will occur, however, to everybody to compare the well which Undine wished to have kept shut, on account of its affording a ready access from her subterranean country to the residence of her refractory knight in his castle above ground. And in the case of the Glasfryn Lake, the walling and cover that were to keep the spring from overflowing were, according to the story, not water-tight, seeing that there were holes made in one of the stones. This suggests the idea that the cover was to prevent the passage of some such full-grown fairies as those with which legend seems to have once peopled all the pools and tarns of Wales. But, in the next place, is the maiden in charge of the well to be regarded as priestess of the well? The idea of a priesthood in connexion with wells in Wales is not wholly unknown.I wish, however, before discussing these instances, to call attention to one or two Irish ones which point in another direction. Foremost may be mentioned the source of the river Boyne, which is now called Trinity Well, situated in the Barony of Carbury, in County Kildare. The following is the RennesDindsenchasconcerning it, as translated by Dr. Stokes, in theRevue Celtique, xv. 315–6:—‘Bóand, wife of Nechtán son of Labraid, went to the secret well which was in the green of Síd Nechtáin. Whoever went to it would not comefrom it without his two eyes bursting, unless it were Nechtán himself and his three cup-bearers, whose names were Flesc and Lám and Luam. Once upon a time Bóand went through pride to test the well’s power, and declared that it had no secret force which could shatter her form, and thrice she walked withershins round the well. (Whereupon) three waves from the well break over her and deprive her of a thigh [?wounded her thigh] and one of her hands and one of her eyes. Then she, fleeing her shame, turns seaward, with the water behind her as far as Boyne-mouth, (where she was drowned).’ This is to explain why the river is calledBóand, ‘Boyne.’ A version to the same effect in theBook of Leinster, fol. 191a, makes the general statement that no one who gazed right into the well could avoid the instant ruin of his two eyes or otherwise escape with impunity. A similar story is related to show how the Shannon, in IrishSinann,Sinand, orSinend, is called after a woman of that name. It occurs in the same Rennes manuscript, and the following is Stokes’ translation in theRevue Celtique, xv. 457:—‘Sinend, daughter of Lodan Lucharglan son of Ler out of Tir Tairngire (Land of Promise, Fairyland), went to Connla’s Well, which is under sea, to behold it. That is a well at which are the hazels and inspirations (?) of wisdom, that is, the hazels of the science of poetry, and in the same hour their fruit and their blossom and their foliage break forth, and these fall on the well in the same shower, which raises on the water a royal surge of purple. Then the salmon chew the fruit, and the juice of the nuts is apparent on their purple bellies. And seven streams of wisdom spring forth and turn there again. Now Sinend went to seek the inspiration, for she wanted nothing save only wisdom. She went with the stream till she reachedLinn Mna Feile, “thePool of the Modest Woman,” that is Bri Ele—and she went ahead on her journey; but the well left its place, and she followed it24to the banks of the riverTarr-cáin, “Fair-back.” After this it overwhelmed her, so that her back (tarr) went upwards, and when she had come to the land on this side (of the Shannon) she tasted death. WhenceSinannandLinn Mna FeileandTarr-cain.’In these stories the reader will have noticed that the foremost punishment on any intruder who looked into the forbidden well was the instant ruin of his two eyes. One naturally asks why the eyes are made the special objects of the punishment, and I am inclined to think the meaning to have originally been that the well or spring was regarded as the eye of the divinity of the water. Should this prove well founded it looks natural that the eyes, which transgressed by gazing into the eye of the divinity, should be the first objects of that divinity’s vengeance. This is suggested to me by the fact that the regular Welsh word for the source of a river isỻygad, Old Welshlicat, ‘eye,’ as for instance in the case ofLicat Amirmentioned by Nennius, § 73; ofỺygad Ỻychwr, ‘the source of the Loughor river’ in the hills behind Carreg Cennen Castle; and of the weird lake in which the Rheidol25rises near the top of Plinlimmon: it is calledỺyn Ỻygad y Rheidol, ‘the Lake of the Rheidol’s Eye.’ By the way, the Rheidol is not wholly without its folklore, for I used to be told in my childhood, that she and the Wye and the Severn sallied forth simultaneously from Plinlimmon one fine morningto run a race to the sea. The result was, one was told, that the Rheidol won great honour by reaching the sea three weeks before her bigger sisters. Somebody has alluded to the legend in the following lines:—Tair afon gynt a rifwydAr đwyfron Pumlumon lwyd,Hafren a Gwy’n hyfryd ei gweđ,A’r Rheidol fawr ei hanrhydeđ.Three rivers of yore were seenOn grey Plinlimmon’s breast,Severn, and Wye of pleasant mien,And Rheidol rich in great renown.To return to the Irish legends, I may mention that Eugene O’Curry has a good deal to say of the mysterious nuts and ‘the salmon of knowledge,’ the partaking of which was synonymous with the acquisition of knowledge and wisdom: see hisManners and Customs of the Ancient Irish, ii. 142–4. He gives it as his opinion that Connla’s Well was situated somewhere in Lower Ormond; but the locality of this Helicon, with the seven streams of wisdom circulating out of it and back again into it, is more intelligible when regarded as a matter of fairy geography. A portion of the note appended to the foregoing legend by Stokes is in point here: he traces the earliest mention of the nine hazels of wisdom, growing at the heads of the chief rivers of Ireland, to the Dialogue of the Two Sages in theBook of Leinster, fol. 186b, whence he cites the poet Néde mac Adnai saying whence he had come, as follows:—a caillib .i. a nói collaib na Segsa … a caillib didiu assa mbenaiter clessa na súad tanacsa, ‘from hazels, to wit, from the nine hazels of the Segais … from hazels out of which are obtained the feats of the sages, I have come.’ The relevancy of this passage will be seen when I add, that Segais was one of the names of the mound in which the Boyne rises; so it may be safely inferred that Bóand’s transgression was of the same nature as that of Sinand, to wit, that of intruding on sacred ground in quest of wisdom and inspiration whichwas not permitted their sex: certain sources of knowledge, certainquellen, were reserved for men alone.Before I have done with the Irish instances I must append one in the form it was told me in the summer of 1894: I was in Meath and went to see the remarkable chambered cairns on the hill known asSliabh na Caillighe, ‘the Hag’s Mountain,’ near Oldcastle and Lough Crew. I had as my guide a young shepherd whom I picked up on the way. He knew all about the hag after whom the hill was called except her name: she was, he said, a giantess, and so she brought there, in three apronfuls, the stones forming the three principal cairns. As to the cairn on the hill point known as Belrath, that is called the Chair Cairn from a big stone placed there by the hag to serve as her seat when she wished to have a quiet look on the country round. But usually she was to be seen riding on a wonderful pony she had: that creature was so nimble and strong that it used to take the hag at a leap from one hill-top to another. However, the end of it all was that the hag rode so hard that the pony fell down, and that both horse and rider were killed. The hag appears to have beenCailleach Bhéara, orCaillech Bérre, ‘the Old Woman of Beare,’ that is, Bearhaven, in County Cork26. Now the viewfrom the Hag’s Mountain is very extensive, and I asked the shepherd to point out some places in the distance. Among other things we could see Lough Ramor, which he called the Virginia Water, and more to the west he identified Lough Sheelin, about which he had the following legend to tell:—A long, long time ago there was no lake there, but only a well with a flagstone kept over it, and everybody would put the flag back after taking water out of the well. But one day a woman who fetched water from it forgot to replace the stone, and the water burst forth in pursuit of the luckless woman, who fled as hard as she could before the angry flood. She continued until she had run about seven miles—the estimated length of the lake at the present day. Now at this point a man, who was busily mowing hay in the field through which she was running, saw what was happening and mowed the woman down with his scythe, whereupon the water advanced no further. Such was the shepherd’s yarn, which partly agrees with the Boyne and Shannon stories in that the woman was pursued by the water, which only stopped where she died. On the other hand, it resembles the Ỻyn Ỻech Owen legend and that of Lough Neagh in placing to the woman’s charge only the neglect to cover the well. It looks as if we had in these stories a confusion of two different institutions, one being a well of wisdom which no woman durst visit without fatal vengeance overtaking her, and the other a fairy well which was attended to by a woman who was to keep it covered, and who may, perhaps, be regarded as priestess of the spring. If we try to interpret the Cantre’r Gwaelod story from these two points of view we have to note the following matters:—Though it is not said that themoruin, or damsel, had a lid or cover on the well, the wordgolligautorhelligaut, ‘did let run,’ implies some such an ideaas that of a lid or door; for opening the sluices, in the sense of the later version, seems to me out of the question. In two of the Englynion she is cursed for the action implied, and if she was the well minister or well servant, as I takefinaun wenestirto mean, we might perhaps regard her as the priestess of that spring. On the other hand, the prevailing note in the other Englynion is thetraha, ‘presumption, arrogance, insolence, pride,’ which forms the burden of four out of five of them. This would seem to point to an attitude on the part of the damsel resembling that of Bóand or Sinand when prying into the secrets of wells which were tabu to them. The seventh Englyn alludes to wines, and its burden isgormođ, ‘too much, excess, extravagance,’ whereby the poet seems to lend countenance to some such a later story as that of Seithennin’s intemperance.Lastly, the question of priest or priestess of a sacred well has been alluded to once or twice, and it may be perhaps illustrated on Welsh ground by the history of Ffynnon Eilian, or St. Elian’s Well, which has been mentioned in another context, p. 357 above. Of that well we read as follows, s. v.Ỻandriỻo, in the third edition of Lewis’Topographical Dictionary of Wales:—‘Fynnon Elian, … even in the present age, is frequently visited by the superstitious, for the purpose of invoking curses upon the heads of those who have grievously offended them, and also of supplicating prosperity to themselves; but the numbers are evidently decreasing. The ceremony is performed by the applicant standing upon a certain spot near the well, whilst the owner of it reads a few passages of the sacred Scriptures, and then, taking a small quantity of water, gives it to the former to drink, and throws the residue over his head, which is repeated three times, the party continuing to mutter imprecationsin whatever terms his vengeance may dictate.’ Rice Rees, in hisEssay on the Welsh Saints(London, 1836), p. 267, speaks of St. Elian as follows: ‘Miraculous cures were lately supposed to be performed at his shrine at Ỻanelian, Anglesey; and near to the church of Ỻanelian, Denbighshire, is a well called Ffynnon Elian, which is thought by the peasantry of the neighbourhood to be endued with miraculous powers even at present.’Foulkes, s. v.Elian, in hisEnwogion Cymru, published in Liverpool in 1870, expresses the opinion that the visits of the superstitious to the well had ceased for some time. The last person supposed to have had charge of the well was a certain John Evans, but some of the most amusing stories of the shrewdness of the caretaker refer to a woman who had charge of the well before Evans’ time. A series of articles onFfynnon Eilianappeared in 1861 in a Welsh periodical calledY Nofelyđ, printed by Mr. Aubrey at Ỻanerch y Međ, in Anglesey. The articles in question were afterwards published, I am told, as a shilling book, which I have not seen, and they dealt with the superstition, with the history of John Evans, and with his confessions and conversion. I have searched in vain for any account in Welsh of the ritual followed at the well. When Mrs. Silvan Evans visited the place, the person in charge of the well was a woman, and Peter Roberts, in hisCambrian Popular Antiquities, published in London in 1815, alludes to her or a predecessor of hers in the following terms, p. 246:—‘Near the Well resided some worthless and infamous wretch, who officiated as priestess.’ He furthermore gives one to understand that she kept a book in which she registered the name of each evil wisher for a trifling sum of money. When this had been done, a pin was dropped into the well inthe name of the victim. This proceeding looks adequate from the magical point of view, though less complicated than the ritual indicated by Lewis. This latter writer calls the person who took charge of the well the owner; and I have always understood that, whether owner or not, he or she used to receive gifts, not only for placing in the well the names of men who were to be cursed, but also from those men for taking their names out again, so as to relieve them from the malediction. In fact, the trade in curses seems to have been a very thriving one: its influence was powerful and widespread.Here there is, I think, very little doubt that the owner or guardian of the well was, so to say, the representative of an ancient priesthood of the well. That priesthood dated its origin probably many centuries before a Christian church was built near the well, and coming down to later times we have unfortunately no sufficient data to show how the right to such priesthood was acquired, whether by inheritance or otherwise; but we know that a woman might have charge of St. Elian’s Well.Let me cite another instance, which I unexpectedly discovered some years ago in the course of a ramble in quest of early inscriptions. Among other places which I visited was Ỻandeilo Ỻwydarth, near Maen Clochog, in the northern part of Pembrokeshire. This is one of the many churches bearing the name of St. Teilo in South Wales: the building is in ruins, but the churchyard is still used, and contains two of the most ancient post-Roman inscriptions in the Principality. If you ask now for ‘Ỻandeilo’ in this district, you will be understood to be inquiring after the farm house of that name, close to the old church; and I learnt from the landlady that her family had been there for many generations, though they have not very long been the proprietors ofthe land. She also told me of St. Teilo’s Well, a little above the house: she added that it was considered to have the property of curing the whooping-cough. I asked if there was any rite or ceremony necessary to be performed in order to derive benefit from the water. Certainly, I was told: the water must be lifted out of the well and given to the patient to drink by some member of the family. To be more accurate, I ought to say that this must be done by somebody born in the house. Her eldest son, however, had told me previously, when I was busy with the inscriptions, that the water must be given to the patient by the heir, not by anybody else. Then came my question how the water was lifted, or out of what the patient had to drink, to which I was answered that it was out of the skull. ‘What skull?’ said I. ‘St. Teilo’s skull,’ was the answer. ‘Where do you get the saint’s skull?’ I asked. ‘Here it is,’ was the answer, and I was given it to handle and examine. I know next to nothing about skulls; but it struck me that it was the upper portion of a thick, strong skull, and it called to my mind the story of the three churches which contended for the saint’s corpse. That story will be found in theBook of Ỻan Dâv, pp. 116–7, and according to it the contest became so keen that it had to be settled by prayer and fasting. So, in the morning, lo and behold! there were three corpses of St. Teilo—not simply one—and so like were they in features and stature that nobody could tell which were the corpses made to order and which the old one. I should have guessed that the skull which I saw belonged to the former description, as not having been much thinned by the owner’s use of it; but this I am forbidden to do by the fact that, according to the legend, this particular Ỻandeilo was not one of the three contending churches which bore away in triumpha dead Teilo each. The reader, perhaps, would like to take another view, namely, that the story has been edited in such a way as to reduce a larger number of Teilos to three, in order to gratify the Welsh weakness for triads.Since my visit to the neighbourhood I have been favoured with an account of the well as it is now current there. My informant is Mr. Benjamin Gibby of Ỻangolman Mill, who writes mentioning, among other things, that the people around call the wellFfynnon yr Ychen, or the Oxen’s Well, and that the family owning and occupying the farm house of Ỻandeilo have been there for centuries. Their name, which is Melchior (pronounced Melshor), is by no means a common one in the Principality, so far as I know; but, whatever may be its history in Wales, the bearers of it are excellent Kymry. Mr. Gibby informs me that the current story solves the difficulty as to the saint’s skull as follows:—The saint had a favourite maid servant from the Pembrokeshire Ỻandeilo: she was a beautiful woman, and had the privilege of attending on the saint when he was on his death-bed. As his end was approaching he gave his maid a strict and solemn command that in a year’s time from the day of his burial at Ỻandeilo Fawr, in Carmarthenshire, she was to take his skull to the other Ỻandeilo, and to leave it there to be a blessing to coming generations of men, who, when ailing, would have their health restored by drinking water out of it. So the belief prevailed that to drink out of the skull some of the water of Teilo’s Well ensured health, especially against the whooping-cough. The faith of some of those who used to visit the well was so great in its efficacy, that they were wont to leave it, he says, with their constitutions wonderfully improved; and he mentions a story related to him by an old neighbour,Stifyn Ifan, who has been dead for some years, to the effect that a carriage, drawn by four horses, came once, more than half a century ago, to Ỻandeilo. It was full of invalids coming from Pen Clawđ, in Gower, Glamorganshire, to try the water of the well. They returned, however, no better than they came; for though they had drunk of the well, they had neglected to do so out of the skull. This was afterwards pointed out to them by somebody, and they resolved to make the long journey to the well again. This time they did the right thing, we are told, and departed in excellent health.Such are the contents of Mr. Gibby’s Welsh letter; and I would now only point out that we have here an instance of a well which was probably sacred before the time of St. Teilo: in fact, one would possibly be right in supposing that the sanctity of the well and its immediate surroundings was one of the causes why the site was chosen by a Christian missionary. But consider for a moment what has happened: the well paganism has annexed the saint, and established a belief ascribing to him the skull used in the well ritual. The landlady and her family, it is true, neither believe in the efficacy of the well, nor take gifts from those who visit the well; but they continue, out of kindness, as they put it, to hand the skull full of water to any one who perseveres in believing in it. In other words, the faith in the well continues in a measure intact, while the walls of the church have long fallen into utter decay. Such is the great persistence of some primitive beliefs; and in this particular instance we have a succession which seems to point unmistakably to an ancient priesthood of a sacred spring.

CHAPTER VIThe Folklore of the Wells… Iuvat integros accedere fontes.—Lucretius.

… Iuvat integros accedere fontes.—Lucretius.

… Iuvat integros accedere fontes.—Lucretius.

It is only recently1that I heard for the first time of Welsh instances of the habit of tying rags and bits of clothing to the branches of a tree growing near a holy well. Since then I have obtained several items of information in point: the first is a communication received in June, 1892, from Mr. J. H. Davies, of Lincoln College, Oxford—since then of Lincoln’s Inn—relating to a Glamorganshire holy well, situated near the pathway leading from Coychurch to Bridgend. It is the custom there, he states, for people suffering from any malady to dip a rag in the water, and to bathe the affected part of the body, the rag being then placed on a tree close to the well. When Mr. Davies passed that way, some three years previously, there were, he adds, hundreds of such shreds on the tree, some of which distinctly presented the appearance of having been very recently placed there. The well is called Ffynnon Cae Moch, ‘Swine-field Well,’ which can hardly have been its old name; and a later communication from Mr. Davies summarizes a conversation which he had about the well, on December 16, 1892, with Mr. J. T. Howell, of Pencoed, near Bridgend. His notes run thus:—‘Ffynnon Cae Moch, between Coychurch and Bridgend, is onemile from Coychurch, one and a quarter from Bridgend, near Tremains. It is within twelve or fifteen yards of the high-road, just where the pathway begins. People suffering from rheumatism go there. They bathe the part affected with water, and afterwards tie a piece of rag to the tree which overhangs the well. The rag is not put in the water at all, but is only put on the tree for luck. It is a stunted, but very old tree, and is simplycoveredwith rags.’ A little less than a year later, I had an opportunity of visiting this well in the company of Mr. Brynmor-Jones; and I find in my notes that it is not situated so near the road as Mr. Howell would seem to have stated to Mr. Davies. We found the well, which is a powerful spring, surrounded by a circular wall. It is overshadowed by a dying thorn tree, and a little further back stands another thorn which is not so decayed: it was on this latter thorn we found the rags. I took off a twig with two rags, while Mr. Brynmor-Jones counted over a dozen other rags on the tree; and we noticed that some of them had only recently been suspended there: among them were portions undoubtedly of a woman’s clothing. At one of the hotels at Bridgend, I found an illiterate servant who was acquainted with the well, and I cross-examined him on the subject of it. He stated that a man with a wound, which he explained to mean a cut, would go and stand in the well within the wall, and there he would untie the rag that had been used to tie up the wound and would wash the wound with it: then he would tie up the wound with a fresh rag and hang the old one on the tree. The more respectable people whom I questioned talked more vaguely, and only of tying a rag to the tree, except one who mentioned a pin being thrown into the wellora rag being tied to the tree.My next informant is Mr. D. J. Jones, a native of theRhonđa Valley, in the same county of Glamorgan. He was an undergraduate of Jesus College, Oxford, when I consulted him in 1892. His information was to the effect that he knows of three interesting wells in the county. The first is situated within two miles of his home, and is known asFfynnon Pen Rhys, or the Well of Pen Rhys. The custom there is that the person who wishes his health to be benefited should wash in the water of the well, and throw a pin into it afterwards. He next mentions a well at Ỻancarvan, some five or six miles from Cowbridge, where the custom prevails of tying rags to the branches of a tree growing close at hand. Lastly, he calls my attention to a passage inHanes Morganwg, ‘The History of Glamorgan,’ written by Mr. D. W. Jones, known in Welsh literature as Dafyđ Morganwg. In that work, p. 29, the author speaks ofFfynnon Marcros, ‘the Well of Marcros,’ to the following effect:—‘It is the custom for those who are healed in it to tie a shred of linen or cotton to the branches of a tree that stands close by; and there the shreds are, almost as numerous as the leaves.’ Marcros is, I may say, near Nash Point, and looks on the map as if it were about eight miles distant from Bridgend. Let me here make it clear that so far we have had to do with four different wells2, three of which are severally distinguished by the presence of a tree adorned with rags by those who seek health in those waters; but they are all three, as the reader will have doubtless noticed, in the same district, namely, the part of Glamorganshire near the main line of the Great Western Railway.There is no reason, however, to think that the custom of tying rags to a well tree was peculiar to that part ofthe Principality. One day, in looking through some old notes of mine, I came across an entry bearing the date of August 7, 1887, when I was spending a few days with my friend, Chancellor Silvan Evans, at Ỻanwrin Rectory, near Machynỻeth. Mrs. Evans was then alive and well, and took a keen interest in Welsh antiquities and folklore. Among other things, she related to me how she had, some twenty years before, visited a well in the parish of Ỻandriỻo yn Rhos, namelyFfynnon Eilian, or Elian’s Well, between Abergele and Ỻandudno, when her attention was directed to some bushes near the well, which had once been covered with bits of rags left by those who frequented the well. This was told Mrs. Evans by an old woman of seventy, who, on being questioned by Mrs. Evans concerning the history of the well, informed her that the rags used to be tied to the bushes by means of wool. She was explicit on the point, that wool had to be used for the purpose, and that even woollen yarn would not do: it had to be wool in its natural state. The old woman remembered this to have been the rule ever since she was a child. Mrs. Evans noticed corks, with pins stuck in them, floating in the well, and her informant remembered many more in years gone by; for Elian’s Well was once in great repute as affynnon reibio, or a well to which people resorted for the kindly purpose of bewitching those whom they hated. I infer, however, from what Mrs. Evans was told of the rags, that Elian’s Well was visited, not only by the malicious, but also by the sick and suffering. My note is not clear on the point whether there were any rags on the bushes by the well when Mrs. Evans visited the spot, or whether she was only told of them by the caretaker. Even in the latter case it seems evident that this habit of tying rags to trees or bushes near sacred wells has onlyceased in that part of Denbighshire within this century. It is very possible that it continued in North Wales more recently than this instance would lead one to suppose; indeed, I should not be in the least surprised to learn that it is still practised in out of the way places in Gwyneđ, just as it is in Glamorgan: we want more information.I cannot say for certain whether it was customary in any of the cases to which I have called attention to tie rags to the well tree as well as to throw pins or other small objects into the well; but I cannot help adhering to the view, that the distinction was probably an ancient one between two orders of things. In other words, I am inclined to believe that the rag was regarded as the vehicle of the disease of which the ailing visitor to the well wished to be rid, and that the bead, button, or coin deposited by him in the well, or in a receptacle near the well, formed alone the offering. In opposition to this view Mr. Gomme has expressed himself as follows inFolk-Lore, 1892, p. 89:—‘There is some evidence against that, from the fact that in the case of some wells, especially in Scotland at one time, the whole garment was put down as an offering. Gradually these offerings of clothes became less and less till they came down to rags. Also in other parts, the geographical distribution of rag-offerings coincides with the existence of monoliths and dolmens.’ As to the monoliths and dolmens, I am too little conversant with the facts to risk any opinion as to the value of the coincidence; but as to the suggestion that the rag originally meant the whole garment, that will suit my hypothesis admirably. In other words, the whole garment was, as I take it, the vehicle of the disease: the whole was accursed, and not merely a part. But Mr. Gomme had previously touched on the question in his presidential address (Folk-Lorefor 1892, p. 13); and I mustat once admit that he succeeded then in proving that a certain amount of confusion occurs between things which I should regard as belonging originally to distinct categories: witness the inimitable Irish instance which he quotes:—‘To St. Columbkill—I offer up this button, a bit o’ the waistband o’ my own breeches, an’ a taste o’ my wife’s petticoat, in remimbrance of us havin’ made this holy station; an’ may they rise up in glory to prove it for us in the last day.’ Here not only the button is treated as an offering, but also the bits of clothing; but the confusion of ideas I should explain as being, at least in part, one of the natural results of substituting a portion of a garment for the entire garment; for thereby a button or a pin becomes a part of the dress, and capable of being interpreted in two senses. After all, however, the ordinary practices have not, as I look at them, resulted in effacing the distinction altogether: the rag is not left in the well; nor is the bead, button, or pin attached to a branch of the tree. So, in the main, it seemed to me easier to explain the facts, taken altogether, on the supposition that originally the rag was regarded as the vehicle of the disease, and the bead, button, or coin as the offering. My object in calling attention to this point was to have it discussed, and I am happy to say that I have not been disappointed; for, since my remarks were published3, a paper entitledPin-wells and Rag-busheswas read before the British Association by Mr. Hartland, in 1893, and published inFolk-Lorefor the same year, pp. 451–70. In that paper the whole question is gone into with searching logic, and Mr. Hartland finds the required explanation in one of the dogmas of magic. For ‘if an article of my clothing,’ he says, ‘in a witch’s hands may cause me to suffer, the same article in contact with a beneficent power may relieve my pain, restore me tohealth, or promote my general prosperity. A pin that has pricked my wart … has by its contact, by the wound it has inflicted, acquired a peculiar bond with the wart; the rag that has rubbed the wart has by that friction acquired a similar bond; so that whatever is done to the pin or the rag, whatever influences the pin or the rag may undergo, the same influences are by that very act brought to bear, upon the wart. If, instead of using a rag, or making a pilgrimage to a sacred well, I rub my warts with raw meat and then bury the meat, the wart will decay and disappear with the decay and dissolution of the meat …. In like manner my shirt or stocking, or a rag to represent it, placed upon a sacred bush, or thrust into a sacred well—my name written upon the walls of a temple—a stone or a pellet from my hand cast upon a sacred image or a sacred cairn—is thenceforth in continual contact with divinity; and the effluence of divinity, reaching and involving it, will reach and involve me.’ Mr. Hartland concludes from a large number of instances, that as a rule ‘where the pin or button is dropped into the well, the patient does not trouble about the rag, and vice versa.’ This wider argument as to the effluence of the divinity of a particular spot of special holiness seems to me conclusive. It applies also, needless to say, to a large category of cases besides those in question between Mr. Gomme and the present writer.So now I would revise my position thus:—I continue to regard the rag much as before, but treat the article thrown into the well as the more special means of establishing a beneficial relation with the well divinity: whether it could also be viewed as an offering would depend on the value attached to it. Some of the following notes may serve as illustrations, especially those relating to the wool and the pin:—FfynnonGwynwy, or the Well of Gwynwy, near Ỻangelynin, on the river Conwy, appears to be partly in point; for it formerly used to be well stocked with crooked pins, which nobody would touch lest he might get from them the warts supposed to attach to them, whence it would appear that a pin might be regarded as the vehicle of the disease. There was a well of some repute at Cae Garw, in the parish of Pistyỻ, near the foot of Carnguwch, in Ỻeyn, or West Carnarvonshire. The water possessed virtues to cure one of rheumatism and warts; but, in order to be rid of the latter, it was requisite to throw a pin into the well for each individual wart. For these two items of information, and several more to be mentioned presently, I have to thank Mr. John Jones, better known in Wales by his bardic name of Myrđin Farđ, and as an enthusiastic collector of Welsh antiquities, whether in the form of manuscript or of unwritten folklore. On the second day of the year 1893 I paid him a visit at Chwilog, on the Carnarvon and Avon Wen Railway, and asked him many questions: these he not only answered with the utmost willingness, but he also showed me the unpublished materials which he had collected. I come next to a competition on the folklore of North Wales at the London Eisteđfod in 1887, in which, as one of the adjudicators, I observed that several of the competitors mentioned the prevalent belief, that every well with healing properties must have its outlet towards the south (i’r dê). According to one of them, if you wished to get rid of warts, you should, on your way to the well, look for wool which the sheep had lost. When you had found enough wool you should prick each wart with a pin, and then rub the wart well with the wool. The next thing was to bend the pin and throw it into the well. Then youshould place the wool on the first whitethorn you could find, and as the wind scattered the wool, the warts would disappear. There was a well of the kind, the writer went on to say, near his home; and he, with three or four other boys, went from school one day to the well to charm their warts away. For he had twenty-three on one of his hands; so that he always tried to hide it, as it was the belief that if one counted the warts they would double their number. He forgets what became of the other boys’ warts, but his own disappeared soon afterwards; and his grandfather used to maintain that it was owing to the virtue of the well. Such were the words of this writer, whose name is unknown to me; but I guess him to have been a native of Carnarvonshire, or else of one of the neighbouring districts of Denbighshire or Merionethshire. To return to Myrđin Farđ, he mentionedFfynnon Cefn Ỻeithfan, or the Well of the Ỻeithfan Ridge, on the eastern slope of Mynyđ y Rhiw, in the parish of Bryncroes, in the west of Ỻeyn. In the case of this well it is necessary, when going to it and coming from it, to be careful not to utter a word to anybody, or to turn to look back. What one has to do at the well is to bathe the warts with a rag or clout which has grease on it. When that is done, the clout with the grease has to be carefully concealed beneath the stone at the mouth of the well. This brings to my mind the fact that I noticed more than once, years ago, rags underneath stones in the water flowing from wells in Wales, and sometimes thrust into holes in the walls of wells, but I had no notion how they came there.On the subject of pin-wells I had in 1893, from Mr. T. E. Morris, of Portmadoc, barrister-at-law, some account ofFfynnon Faglan, or Baglan’s Well, in the parish of Ỻanfaglan, near Carnarvon. The well issituated in an open field to the right of the road leading towards the church, and close to it. The church and churchyard form an enclosure in the middle of the same field, and the former has in its wall the old stone readingFILI LOVERNII ANATEMORI. My friend derived information from Mrs. Roberts, of Cefn y Coed, near Carnarvon, as follows:—‘The old people who would be likely to know anything aboutFfynnon Faglanhave all died. The two oldest inhabitants, who have always lived in this parish of Ỻanfaglan, remember the well being used for healing purposes. One told me his mother used to take him to it, when he was a child, for sore eyes, bathe them with the water, and then drop in a pin. The other man, when he was young, bathed in it for rheumatism; and until quite lately people used to fetch away the water for medicinal purposes. The latter, who lives near the well, at Tan y Graig, said that he remembered it being cleaned out about fifty years ago, when two basinfuls of pins were taken out, but no coin of any kind. The pins were all bent, and I conclude the intention was to exorcise the evil spirit supposed to afflict the person who dropped them in, or, as the Welsh say,dadwitsio. No doubt some ominous words were also used. The well is at present nearly dry, the field where it lies having been drained some years ago, and the water in consequence withdrawn from it. It was much used for the cure of warts. The wart was washed, then pricked with a pin, which, after being bent, was thrown into the well. There is a very large and well-known well of the kind at C’lynnog,Ffynnon Beuno, “St. Beuno’s Well,” which was considered to have miraculous healing powers; and even yet, I believe, some people have faith in it.Ffynnon Faglanis, in its construction, an imitation, on a smaller scale, of St. Beuno’s Well at C’lynnog.’In the cliffs at the west end of Ỻeyn is a wishing-well calledFfynnon Fair, or St. Mary’s Well, to the left of the site of Eglwys Fair, and facing Ynys Enỻi, or Bardsey. Here, to obtain your wish, you have to descend the steps to the well and walk up again to the top with your mouth full of the water; and then you have to go round the ruins of the church once or more times with the water still in your mouth. Viewing the position of the well from the sea, I should be disposed to think that the realization of one’s wish at that price could not be regarded as altogether cheap. Myrđin Farđ also told me that there used to be a well near Criccieth Church. It was known asFfynnon y Saint, or the Saints’ Well, and it was the custom to throw keys or pins into it on the morning of Easter Sunday, in order to propitiate St. Catherine, who was the patron of the well. I should be glad to know what this exactly meant.Lastly, a few of the wells in that part of Gwyneđ may be grouped together and described as oracular. One of these, the big well in the parish of Ỻanbedrog in Ỻeyn, as I learn from Myrđin Farđ, required the devotee to kneel by it and avow his faith in it. When this had been duly done, he might proceed in this wise: to ascertain, for instance, the name of the thief who had stolen from him, he had to throw a bit of bread into the well and name the person whom he suspected. At the name of the thief the bread would sink; so the inquirer went on naming all the persons he could think of until the bit of bread sank, when the thief was identified. How far is one to suppose that we have here traces of the influences of the water ordeal common in the Middle Ages? Another well of the same kind wasFfynnon Saethon, in Ỻanfihangel Bacheỻaeth parish, also in Ỻeyn. Here it was customary, as he had it in writing,for lovers to throw pins (pinnau) into the well; but these pins appear to have been the points of the blackthorn. At any rate, they cannot well have been of any kind of metal, as we are told that, if they sank in the water, one concluded that one’s lover was not sincere in his or her love.Next may be mentioned a well, bearing the remarkable name ofFfynnon Gwyneđ, or the Well of Gwyned, which is situated near Mynyđ Mawr, in the parish of Abererch: it used to be consulted in the following manner:—When it was desired to discover whether an ailing person would recover, a garment of his would be thrown into the well, and according to the side on which it sank it was known whether he would live or die.Ffynnon Gybi, or St. Cybi’s Well, in the parish of Ỻangybi, was the scene of a somewhat similar practice; for there, girls who wished to know their lovers’ intentions would spread their pocket-handkerchiefs on the water of the well, and, if the water pushed the handkerchiefs to the south—in Welshi’r dê—they knew that everything was right—in Welsho đê—and that their lovers were honest and honourable in their intentions; but, if the water shifted the handkerchiefs northwards, they concluded the contrary. A reference to this is made by a modern Welsh poet, as follows:—Ambeỻ đyn, gwaelđyn, a gyrchI bant gorís Moel Bentyrch,Mewn gobaith mai hen GybiGlodfawr syđ yn ỻwyđaw’r ỻi.Some folks, worthless4folks, visitA hollow below Moel Bentyrch,In hopes that ancient KybiOf noble fame blesses the flood.The spot is not far from where Myrđin Farđ lives; and he mentioned, that adjoining the well is a building which was probably intended for the person in chargeof the well: it has been tenanted within his memory. Not only for this but also for several of the foregoing items of information am I indebted to Myrđin; and now I come to Mrs. Williams-Ellis, of Glasfryn Uchaf, who tells me that one day not long ago, she met at Ỻangybi a native who had not visited the place since his boyhood: he had been away as an engineer in South Wales nearly all his life, but had returned to see an aged relative. So the reminiscences of the place filled his mind, and, among other things, he said that he remembered very well what concern there was one day in the village at a mischievous person having taken a very large eel out of the well. Many of the old people, he said, felt that much of the virtue of the well was probably taken away with the eel. To see it coiling about their limbs when they went into the water was a good sign: so he gave one to understand. As a sort of parallel I may mention that I have seen the fish living inFfynnon Beris, not far from the parish church of Ỻanberis. It is jealously guarded by the inhabitants, and when it was once or twice taken out by a mischievous stranger he was forced to put it back again. However, I never could get the history of this sacred fish, but I found that it was regarded as very old5. I may add that it appears the wellcalledFfynnon Fair, ‘Mary’s Well,’ at Ỻanđwyn, in Anglesey, used formerly to have inhabiting it a sacred fish, whose movements indicated the fortunes of the love-sick men and maidens who visited there the shrine of St. Dwynwen6. Possibly inquiry would result in showing that such sacred fish have been far more common once in the Principality than they are now.The next class of wells to claim our attention consists of what I may call fairy wells, of which few are mentioned in connexion with Wales; but the legends about them are of absorbing interest. One of them is in Myrđin Farđ’s neighbourhood, and I questioned him a good deal on the subject: it is calledFfynnon Grassi, or Grace’s Well, and it occupies, according to him, a few square feet—he has measured it himself—of the south-east corner of the lake of Glasfryn Uchaf, in the parish of Ỻangybi. It appears that it was walled in, and that the stone forming its eastern side has several holes in it, which were intended to let water enter the well and not issue from it. It had a door or cover on its surface; and it was necessary to keep the door always shut, except when water was being drawn. Through somebody’s negligence, however, it was once on a time left open: the consequence was that the waterof the well flowed out and formed the Glasfryn Lake, which is so considerable as to be navigable for small boats. Grassi is supposed in the locality to have been the name of the owner of the well, or at any rate of a lady who had something to do with it.Grassi, or Grace, however, can only be a name which a modern version of the legend has introduced. It probably stands for an older name given to the person in charge of the well; to the one, in fact, who neglected to shut the door; but though the name must be comparatively modern, the story, as a whole, does not appear to be at all modern, but very decidedly the contrary.So I wrote in 1893; but years after my conversation with Myrđin Farđ, my attention was called to the fact that the Glasfryn family, of which the Rev. J. C. Williams-Ellis is the head, have in their coat of arms a mermaid, who is represented in the usual way, holding a comb in her right hand and a mirror in her left. I had from the first expected to find some kind of Undine or Liban story associated with the well and the lake, though I had abstained from trying the risky effects of leading questions; but when I heard of the heraldic mermaid I wrote to Mr. Williams-Ellis to ask whether he knew her history. His words, though not encouraging as regards the mermaid, soon convinced me that I had not been wholly wrong in supposing that more folklore attached to the well and lake than I had been able to discover. Since then Mrs. Williams-Ellis has taken the trouble of collecting on the spot all the items of tradition which she could find: she communicated them to me in the month of March, 1899, and the following is an abstract of them, preceded by a brief description of the ground:—The well itself is at the foot of a very green field-bank at the head of the lake, but not on the same levelwith it, as the lake has had its waters lowered half a century or more ago by the outlet having been cut deeper. Adjoining the field containing the well is a larger field, which also slopes down to the lake and extends in another direction to the grounds belonging to the house. This larger field is called Cae’r Ladi, ‘the Lady’s Field,’ and it is remarkable for having in its centre an ancient standing stone, which, as seen from the windows of the house, presents the appearance of a female figure hurrying along, with the wind slightly swelling out her veil and the skirt of her dress. Mr. Williams-Ellis remembers how when he was a boy the stone was partially white-washed, and how an old bonnet adorned the top of this would-be statue, and he thinks that an old shawl used to be thrown over the shoulders.Now as to Grassi, she is mostly regarded as a ghostly person somehow connected with the lake and the house of Glasfryn. One story is to the effect, that on a certain evening she forgot to close the well, and that when the gushing waters had formed the lake, poor Grassi, overcome with remorse, wandered up and down the high ground of Cae’r Ladi, moaning and weeping. There, in fact, she is still at times to be heard lamenting her fate, especially at two o’clock in the early morning. Some people say that she is also to be seen about the lake, which is now the haunt of some half a dozen swans. But on the whole her visits appear to have been most frequent and troublesome at the house itself. Several persons still living are mentioned, who believe that they have seen her there, and two of them, Mrs. Jones of Talafon, and old Sydney Griffith of Tyđyn Bach, agree in the main in their description of what they saw, namely, a tall lady with well marked features and large bright eyes: she was dressed in white silk and a white velvet bonnet.The woman, Sydney Griffith, thought that she had seen the lady walking several times about the house and in Cae’r Ladi. This comes, in both instances, from a young lady born and bred in the immediate neighbourhood, and studying now at the University College of North Wales; but Mrs. Williams-Ellis has had similar accounts from other sources, and she mentions tenants of Glasfryn who found it difficult to keep servants there, because they felt that the place was haunted. In fact one of the tenants himself felt so unsafe that he used to take his gun and his dog with him to his bedroom at night; not to mention that when the Williams-Ellises lived themselves, as they do still, in the house, their visitors have been known to declare that they heard the strange plaintive cry out of doors at two o’clock in the morning.Traces also of a very different story are reported by Mrs. Williams-Ellis, to the effect that when the water broke forth to form the lake, the fairies seized Grassi and changed her into a swan, and that she continued in that form to live on the lake sixscore years, and that when at length she died, she loudly lamented her lot: that cry is still to be heard at night. This story is in process apparently of being rationalized; at any rate the young lady student, to whom I have referred, remembers perfectly that her grandfather used to explain to her and the other children at home that Grassi was changed into a swan as a punishment for haunting Glasfryn, but that nevertheless the old lady still visited the place, especially when there happened to be strangers in the house. At the end of September last Mrs. Rhys and I had the pleasure of spending a few days at Glasfryn, in the hope of hearing the plaintive wail, and of seeing the lady in white silk revisiting her familiar haunts. But alas! our sleep was never oncedisturbed, nor was our peace once troubled by suspicions of anything uncanny. This, however, is negative, and characterized by the usual weakness of all such evidence.It is now time to turn to another order of facts: in the first place may be mentioned that the young lady student’s grandmother used to call the wellFfynnon Grâs Siôn Gruffuđ, as she had always heard that Grâs was the daughter of a certain Siôn Gruffyđ, ‘John Griffith,’ who lived near the well; and Mrs. Williams-Ellis finds that Grâs was buried, at a very advanced age, on December 14, 1743, at the parish church of Ỻangybi, where the register describes her asGrace Jones, alias Grace Jones Griffith. She had lived till the end at Glasfryn, but from documents in the possession of the Glasfryn family it is known that in 1728 Hugh Lloyd of Traỻwyn purchased the house and estate of Glasfryn from a son of Grace’s, namedJohn ab Cadwaladr, and that Hugh Lloyd of Traỻwyn’s son, the Rev. William Lloyd, sold them to Archdeacon Ellis, from whom they have descended to the Rev. J. C. Williams-Ellis. In the light of these facts there is no reason to connect the old lady’s name very closely with the well or the lake. She was once the dominant figure at Glasfryn, that is all; and when she died she was as usual supposed to haunt the house and its immediate surroundings; and if we might venture to suppose that Glasfryn was sold by her son against her will, though subject to conditions which enabled her to remain in possession of the place to the day of her death, we should have a further explanation, perhaps, of her supposed moaning and lamentation.In the background, however, of the story, one detects the possibility of another female figure, for it may be that the standing stone in Cae’r Ladi represents awoman buried there centuries before Grace ruled at Glasfryn, and that traditions about the earlier lady have survived to be inextricably mixed with those concerning the later one. Lastly, those traditions may have also associated the subject of them with the well and the lake; but I wish to attach no importance to this conjecture, as we have in reserve a third figure of larger possibilities than either Grace or the stone woman. It needs no better introduction than Mrs. Williams-Ellis’ own words: ‘Our younger boys have a crew of three little Welsh boys who live near the lake, to join them in their boat sailing about the pool and in camping on the island, &c. They asked me once whoMorganwas, whom the little boys were always saying they were to be careful against. An old man living at Tal Ỻyn, “Lake’s End,” a farm close by, says that as a boy he was always told that “naughty boys would be carried off by Morgan into the lake.” Others tell me that Morgan is always held to be ready to take off troublesome children, and somehow Morgan is thought of as a bad one.’ Now as Morgan carries children off into the pool, he would seem to issue from the pool, and to have his home in it. Further, he plays the same part as the fairies against whom a Snowdonian mother used to warn her children: they were on no account to wander away from the house when there was a mist, lest the fairies should carry them to their home beneath Ỻyn Dwythwch. In other words, Morgan may be said to act in the same way as the mermaid, who takes a sailor down to her submarine home; and it explains to my mind a discussion which I once heard of the name Morgan by a party of men and women making hay one fine summer’s day in the neighbourhood of Ponterwyd, in North Cardiganshire. I was a child, but I remember vividly how they teased one of their number whose‘style’ was Morgan. They hinted at dreadful things associated with the name; but it was all so vague that I could not gather that his great unknown namesake was a thief, a murderer, or any kind of ordinary criminal. The impression left on my mind was rather the notion of something weird, uncanny, or non-human; and the fact that the Welsh version of the Book of Common Prayer calls the PelagiansMorganiaid, ‘Morgans,’ does not offer an adequate explanation. But I now see clearly that it is to be sought in the indistinct echo of such folklore as that which makes Morgan a terror to children in the neighbourhood of the Glasfryn Lake.The name, however, presents points of difficulty which require some notice: the Welsh translators of Article IX in the Prayer Book were probably wrong in makingPelagiansintoMorganiaid, as the Welsh forPelagiusseems to have been ratherMorien7, which in its oldest recorded form wasMorgen, and meant sea-born, or offspring of the sea. In a still earlier form it must have beenMorigenos, with a feminineMorigena, but when the endings came to be dropped both vocables would becomeMorgen, laterMori̯en. I do not remember coming across a feminineMorgenin Welsh, but the presumption is that it did exist. For, among other things, I may mention that we have it in Irish asMuirgen, one of the names of the lake lady Liban, who, when the waters of the neglected well rushed forth to form Lough Neagh, lived beneath that lake until she desired to be changed into a salmon. The same conclusion may be drawn from the nameMorgainorMorgan, given in the French romances to one or more water ladies; for those names are easiest to explain as the BrythonicMorgenborrowed from a Welsh or Breton source, unless one found it possible to trace it direct to theGoidels of Wales. No sooner, however, had the confusion taken place between Morgen and the name which is so common in Wales as exclusively a man’s name, than the aquatic figure must also become male. That is why the Glasfryn Morgan is now a male, and not a female like the other characters whose rôle he plays. But while the name was in Welsh successivelyMorgenandMorien, the man’s name wasMorcant,Morgant, orMorgan8, so that, phonologically speaking, no confusion could be regarded as possible between the two series. Here, therefore, one detects the influence, doubtless, of the French romances which spoke of a lake lady Morgain, Morgan, or Morgue. The character varied: Morgain le Fay was a designing and wicked person; but Morgan was also the name of a well disposed lady of the same fairy kind, who took Arthur away to be healed at her home in the Isle of Avallon. We seem to be on the track of the same confusing influence of the name, when it occurs in the story of Geraint and Enid; for there the chief physician of Arthur’s court is called Morgan Tut or Morgant Tut, and the wordtuthas been shown by M. Loth to have meant the same sort of non-human being whom an eleventh-century Life of St. Maudez mentions asquidam dæmon quem BritonesTutheappellant. Thus the nameMorgan Tutis meant as the Welsh equivalent of the FrenchMorgain le FayorMorgan la Fée9; but so long as the compiler of the story of Geraint and Enid employed in his Welsh the form Morgan, he had practically no choice but to treat the person called Morgan as a man, whether that was or was not the sex in the original texts on which he was drawing. Of course he could have avoided the difficulty in case he was aware of it, if he had found some available formula in use likeMary-Morgant, said to be a common name for a fairy on the island of Ouessant, off the coast of Brittany.Summarizing the foregoing notes, we seem to be right in drawing the following conclusions:—(1) The well was left in the charge of a woman who forgot to shut it, and when she saw the water bursting forth, she bewailed her negligence, as in the case of her counterpart in the legend of Cantre’r Gwaelod. (2) The original name of the Glasfryn ‘Morgan’ was Morgen, later Morien. (3) The person changed into a swan on the occasion of the Glasfryn well erupting was not Grassi, but most probably Morgen. And (4) the character was originally feminine, like that of the mermaid or the fairies, whose rôle the Glasfryn Morgan plays; and more especially may one compare the Irish Muirgen, theMorgenmore usually called Líban. For it is to be noticed that when the neglected well burst forth she, Muirgen or Líban, was not drowned like the othersinvolved in the calamity, but lived in her chamber at the bottom of the lake formed by the overflowing well, until she was changed into a salmon. In that form she lived on some three centuries, until in fact she was caught in the net of a fisherman, and obtained the boon of a Christian burial. However, the change into a swan is also known on Irish ground: take for instance the story of the Children of Lir, who were converted into swans by their stepmother, and lived in that form on Loch Dairbhreach, in Westmeath, for three hundred years, and twice as long on the open sea, until their destiny closed with the advent of St. Patrick and the first ringing of a Christian bell in Erin10.The next legend was kindly communicated to me by Mr. Wm. Davies already mentioned at p. 147 above: he found it inCyfaiỻ yr Aelwyd11, “The Friend of the Hearth,” where it is stated that it belonged to David Jones’Storehouse of Curiosities, a collection which does not seem to have ever assumed the form of a printed book. David Jones, of Trefriw, in the Conwy Valley, was a publisher and poet who wrote between 1750 and 1780. This is his story: ‘In 1735 I had a conversation with a man concerning Tegid Lake. He had heard from old people that near the middle of it there was a well opposite Ỻangower, and the well was calledFfynnon Gywer, “Cower’s Well,” and at that time the town was round about the well. It was obligatory to place a lid on the well every night. (It seems that in those days somebody was aware that unless this was done it would prove thedestruction of the town.) But one night it was forgotten, and by the morning, behold the town had subsided and the lake became three miles long and one mile wide. They say, moreover, that on clear days some people see the chimneys of the houses. It is since then that the town was built atthe lower end of the lake. It is calledY Bala12, and the man told me that he had talked with an old Bala man who had, when he was a youth, had two days’ mowing of hay13between the road and the lake; but by this time the lake had spread over that land and the road also, which necessitated the purchase of land further away for the road; and some say that the town will yet sink as far as the place called Ỻanfor—others call it Ỻanfawđ, “Drown-church,” or Ỻanfawr, “Great-church,” in Penỻyn …. Further, when the weather is stormy water appears oozing through every floor within Bala, and at other times anybody can get water enough for the use of his house, provided he dig a little into the floor of it.’In reference to the idea that the town is to sink,together with the neighbouring village of Ỻanfor, the writer quotes in a note the couplet known still to everybody in the neighbourhood as follows:—Y Bala aeth, a’r Bala aiff,A Ỻanfor aiff yn Ỻyn.Bala old the lake has had, and Bala newThe lake will have, and Ỻanfor too.This probably implies that old Bala is beneath the lake, and that the present Bala is to meet the like fate at some time to come. This kind of prophecy is not very uncommon: thus there has been one current as to the Montgomeryshire town of Pool, called, in Welsh, Traỻwng or Traỻwm, and in English, Welshpool, to distinguish it from the English town of Pool. As to Welshpool, a very deep water called Ỻyn Du, lying between the town and theCasteỻ Cochor Powys Castle, and right in the domain of the castle, is suddenly to spread itself, and one fine market day to engulf the whole place14. Further, when I was a boy in North Cardiganshire, the following couplet was quite familiar to me, and supposed to have been one of Merlin’s prophecies:—Caer Fyrđin, cei oer fore;Daear a’th lwnc, dw’r i’th le.Carmarthen, a cold morn awaits thee;Earth gapes, and water in thy place will be.In regard to the earlier half of the line, concerning Bala gone, the story of Ffynnon Gywer might be said to explain it, but there is another which is later and far better known. It is of the same kind as the storiesrelated in Welsh concerning Ỻynclys and Syfađon; but I reserve it with these and others of the same sort for chapter vii.For the next legend belonging here I have to thank the Rev. J. Fisher, a native of the parish of Ỻandybïe, who, in spite of his name, is a genuine Welshman, and—what is more—a Welsh scholar. The following are his words:—‘Ỻyn Ỻech Owen (the last word is locally soundedw-en, likeoo-enin English, as is also the personal name Owen) is on Mynyđ Mawr, in the ecclesiastical parish of Gors Lâs, and the civil parish of Ỻanarthney, Carmarthenshire. It is a small lake, forming the source of the Gwendraeth Fawr. I have heard the tradition about its origin told by several persons, and by all, until quite recently, pretty much in the same form. In 1884 I took it down from my grandfather, Rees Thomas (b.1809,d.1892), of Cil Coỻ Ỻandebïe—a very intelligent man, with a good fund of old-world Welsh lore—who had lived all his life in the neighbouring parishes of Ỻandeilo Fawr and Ỻandybïe.‘The following is the version of the story (translated) as I had it from him:—There was once a man of the name of Owen living on Mynyđ Mawr, and he had a well, “ffynnon.” Over this well he kept a large flag (“fflagen neu lech fawr”: “fflagen” is the word in common use now in these parts for a large flat stone), which he was always careful to replace over its mouth after he had satisfied himself or his beast with water. It happened, however, that one day he went on horseback to the well to water his horse, and forgot to put the flag back in its place. He rode off leisurely in the direction of his home; but, after he had gone some distance, he casually looked back, and, to his great astonishment, he saw that the well had burst out and was overflowing the whole place. He suddenly bethought him that he should rideback and encompass the overflow of the water as fast as he could; and it was the horse’s track in galloping round the water that put a stop to its further overflow. It is fully believed that, had he not galloped round the flood in the way he did, the well would have been sure to inundate the whole district and drown all. Hence the lake was called the Lake of Owen’s Flag, “Ỻyn Ỻech Owen.”‘I have always felt interested in this story, as it resembled that about the formation of Lough Neagh, &c.; and, happening to meet the Rev. D. Harwood Hughes, B.A., the vicar of Gors Lâs (St. Ỻeian’s), last August (1892), I asked him to tell me the legend as he had heard it in his parish. He said that he had been told it, but in a form different from mine, where the “Owen” was said to have been Owen Glyndwr. This is the substance of the legend as he had heard it:—Owen Glyndwr, when once passing through these parts, arrived here of an evening. He came across a well, and, having watered his horse, placed a stone over it in order to find it again next morning. He then went to lodge for the night at Dyỻgoed Farm, close by. In the morning, before proceeding on his journey, he took his horse to the well to give him water, but found to his surprise that the well had become a lake.’Mr. Fisher goes on to mention the later history of the lake: how, some eighty years ago, its banks were the resort on Sunday afternoons of the young people of the neighbourhood, and how a Baptist preacher put an end to their amusements and various kinds of games by preaching at them. However, the lake-side appears to be still a favourite spot for picnics and Sunday-school gatherings. Mr. Fisher was quite right in appending to his own version that of his friend; but, from the point of view of folklore, I must confess that I can makenothing of the latter: it differs from the older one as much as chalk does from cheese. It would be naturally gratifying to the pride of local topography to be able to connect with the pool the name of Owen Glyndwr; but it is worthy of note that this highly respectable attempt to rationalize the legend wholly fails, as it does not explain why there is now a lake where there was once but a well. In other words, the euhemerized story is itself evidence corroborative of Mr. Fisher’s older version, which is furthermore kept in countenance by Howells’ account, p. 104, where we are told who the Owen in question was, namely, Owen Lawgoch, a personage dear, as we shall see later, to the Welsh legend of the district. He and his men had their abode in a cave on the northern side of Mynyđ Mawr, and while there Owen used, we are informed, to water his steed at a fine spring covered with a large stone, which it required the strength of a giant to lift. But one day he forgot to replace it, and when he next sought the well he found the lake. He returned to his cave and told his men what had happened. Thereupon both he and they fell into a sleep, which is to last till it is broken by the sound of a trumpet and the clang of arms on Rhiw Goch: then they are to sally forth to conquer.Now the story as told by Howells and Fisher provokes comparison, as the latter suggests, with the Irish legend of the formation of Lough Ree and of Lough Neagh in the story of the Death of Eochaid McMaireda15. In bothof these legends also there is a horse, a kind of water-horse, who forms the well which eventually overflows and becomes Lough Ree, and so with the still larger body of water known as Lough Neagh. In the latter case the fairy well was placed in the charge of a woman; but she one day left the cover of the well open, and the catastrophe took place—the water issued forth and overflowed the country. One of Eochaid’s daughters, named Líban, however, was not drowned, but only changed into a salmon as already mentioned at p. 376 above. In myArthurian Legend, p. 361, I have attempted to show that the nameLíbanmay have its Welsh equivalent in that ofỺïon, occurring in the name ofỺyn Ỻïon, or Ỻïon’s Lake, the bursting of which is described in the latest series of Triads, iii. 13, 97, as causing a sort of deluge. I am not certain as to the nature of the relationship between those names, but it seems evident that the stories have a common substratum, though it is to be noticed that no well, fairy or otherwise, figures in the Ỻyn Ỻïon legend, which makes the presence of the monster called the afanc the cause of the waters bursting forth. So Hu the Mighty, with his team of famous oxen, is made to drag the afanc out of the lake.There is, however, another Welsh legend concerning a great overflow in which a well does figure: I allude to that ofCantre’r Gwaelod, or the Bottom Hundred, a fine spacious country supposed to be submerged in Cardigan Bay. Modern euhemerism treats it as defended by embankments and sluices, which, we are told, were in the charge of the prince of the country, named Seithennin, who, being one day in his cups, forgot to shut the sluices, and thus brought about the inundation, which was the end of his fertile realm. This, however, is not the old legend: that speaks of a well, and lays the blame on a woman—a pretty sure sign of antiquity, asthe reader may judge from other old stories which will readily occur to him. The Welsh legend to which I allude is embodied in a short poem in theBlack Book of Carmarthen16: it consists of eight triplets, to which is added a triplet from the Englynion of the Graves. The following is the original with a tentative translation:—Seithenhin sawde allan.ac edrẏchuirde varanres mor.maes guitnev rẏtoes.Boed emendiceid ẏ morvinaehellẏgaut guẏdi cvin.finaun wenestir17mor terruin.Boed emendiceid ẏ vachteith.ae . golligaut guẏdi gueith.finaun wenestir mor diffeith.Diaspadmereridẏ ar vann caer.hid ar duu ẏ dodir.gnaud guẏdi traha trangc hir.Diaspad mererid . ẏ ar van kaer hetiv.hid ar duu ẏ dadoluch.gnaud guẏdi traha attreguch.Diaspad mererid am gorchuit heno.ac nimhaut gorlluit.gnaud guẏdi traha tramguit.Diaspad mererid ẏ ar gwinev kadirkedaul duv ae gorev.gnaud guẏdi gormot eissev.Diaspad mererid . am kẏmhell henoẏ urth uẏistauell.gnaud guẏdi traha trangc pell.Bet seithenhin sẏnhuir vannrug kaer kenedir a glan.mor maurhidic a kinran.Seithennin, stand thou forthAnd see the vanguard of the main:Gwyđno’s plain has it covered.Accursed be the maidenWho let it loose after supping,Well cup-bearer of the mighty main.Accursed be the damselWho let it loose after battle,Well minister of the high sea.Mererid’s cry from a city’s height,Even to God is it directed:After pride comes a long pause.Mererid’s cry from a city’s height to-day,Even to God her expiation:After pride comes reflection.Mererid’s cry o’ercomes me to-night,Nor can I readily prosper:After pride comes a fall.Mererid’s cry over strong wines,Bounteous God has wrought it:After excess comes privation.Mererid’s cry drives me to-nightFrom my chamber away:After insolence comes long death.Weak-witted Seithennin’s grave is itBetween Kenedyr’s Fort and the shore,With majestic Mor’s and Kynran’s.The names in these lines present great difficulties: first comes that ofMererid, which is no other word thanMargarita, ‘a pearl,’ borrowed; but what does it here mean?Margarita, besides meaning a pearl, was used in Welsh, e.g. under the formMarereda18, as the proper name written in EnglishMargaret. That is probably how it is to be taken here, namely, as the name given to the negligent guardian of the fairy well. It cannot very well be, however, the name belonging to the original form of the legend; and we have the somewhat parallel case ofFfynnon Grassi, or Grace’s Well; but what old Celtic name that of Mererid has replaced in the story, I cannot say. In the next place, nobody has been able to identifyCaer Kenedyr, and I have nothing to say as toMor Maurhidic, except that a person of that name is mentioned in another of the Englynion of the Graves. It runs thus in theBlack Book, fol. 33a:—Bet mor maurhidic diessic unben.post kinhen kinteic.mab peredur penwetic.The grave of Mor the Grand, … prince,Pillar of the … conflict,Son of Peredur of Penweđig.The last name in the final triplet of the poem which I have attempted to translate isKinran, which is otherwise unknown as a Welsh name; but I am inclined to identify it with that of one of the three who escaped the catastrophe in the Irish legend. The name there isCurnán, which was borne by the idiot of the family,who, like many later idiots, was at the same time a prophet. For he is represented as always prophesying that the waters were going to burst forth, and as advising his friends to prepare boats. So he may be set, after a fashion, over against ourSeithenhin synhuir vann, ‘S. of the feeble mind.’ But one might perhaps ask why I do not point out an equivalent in Irish for the Welsh Seithennin, as his name is now pronounced. The fact is that no such equivalent occurs in the Irish story in question, nor exactly, so far as I know, in any other.That is what I wrote when penning these notes; but it has occurred to me since then, that there is an Irish name, an important Irish name, which looks as if related toSeithenhin, and that isSetanta Beg, ‘the little Setantian,’ the first name of the Irish hero Cúchulainn. Thent, I may point out, makes one suspect thatSetantais a name of Brythonic origin in Irish; and I have been in the habit of associating it with that of the people of the Setantii19, placed by Ptolemy on the coast of what is now Lancashire. Whether any legend has ever been current about a country submerged on the coast of Lancashire I cannot say, but the soundings would make such a legend quite comprehensible. I remember, however, reading somewhere as to the Plain of Muirthemhne, of which Cúchulainn, our Setanta Beg, had special charge, that it was so called because it had once been submarine and become since the converse, so to say, of Seithennin’s country. The latter is beneath Cardigan Bay, while the other fringed the opposite side of the sea, consisting as it did of the level portion of County Louth. On the whole, I am not altogether indisposed to believe that we have here traces of an ancient legendof a wider scope than is represented by theBlack Booktriplets, which I have essayed to translate. I think that I am right in recognizing that legend in theMabinogiof Branwen, daughter of Ỻyr. There we read that, when Brân and his men crossed from Wales to Ireland, the intervening sea consisted merely of two navigable rivers, called Ỻi and Archan. The story-teller adds words to the effect, that it is only since then the sea has multiplied its realms20between Ireland andYnys y Kedyrn, or the Isle of the Keiri, a name which has already been discussed: see pp. 279–83.These are not all the questions which such stories suggest; for Seithennin is represented in later Welsh literature as the son of oneSeithyn, associated with Dyfed; and the nameSeithynleads off to the coast of Brittany. For I learn from a paper by the late M. le Men, in theRevue Archéologiquefor 1872 (xxiii. 52), that the Île de Sein is called in BretonEnez-Sun, in whichSunis a dialectic shortening ofSizun, which is also met with asSeidhun. That being so, one would seem to be right in regarding Sizun as nearly related to ourSeithyn. That is not all—the tradition reminds one of the Welsh legend: M. le Men refers to theVie du P. Maunoirby Boschet (Paris, 1697) p. 126, and adds that, in his own time, the road ending on the Pointe du Raz opposite the Île de Sein passed ‘pour être l’ancien chemin qui conduisait à la ville d’Is (Kaer-a-Is, la ville de la partie basse).’ It is my own experience, that nobody can go about much in Brittany without hearing over and over again about the submerged city of Is. There is no doubt that we have in these names distant echoes of an inundation story, once widely current in both Britains and perhaps also in Ireland. With regard to Wales we have an indicationto that effect in the fact, that Gwyđno, to whom the inundated region is treated as having belonged, is associated not only with Cardigan Bay, but also with the coast of North Wales, especially the part of it situated between Bangor and Ỻandudno21. Adjoining it is supposed to lie submerged a once fertile district called Tyno Helig, a legend about which will come under notice later. This brings the inundation story nearer to the coast where Ptolemy in the second century located the Harbour of the Setantii, about the mouth of the river Ribble, and in their name we seem to have some sort of a historical basis for that of the drunken Seithennin22. I cannot close these remarks better than byappending what Professor Boyd Dawkins has recently said with regard to the sea between Britain and Ireland:—‘It may be interesting to remark further that during the time of the Iberian dominion in Wales, the geography of the seaboard was different to what it is now. A forest, containing the remains of their domestic oxen that had run wild, and of the indigenous wild animals such as the bear and the red deer, united Anglesey with the mainland, and occupied the shallows of Cardigan Bay, known in legend as “the lost lands of Wales.” It extended southwards from the present sea margin across the estuary of the Severn, to Somerset, Devon, and Cornwall. It passed northwards across the Irish Sea off the coast of Cheshire and Lancashire, and occupied Morecambe Bay with a dense growth of oak, Scotch fir, alder, birch, and hazel. It ranged seawards beyond the ten-fathom line, and is to be found on mostshores beneath the sand-banks and mud-banks, as for example at Rhyl and Cardiff. In Cardigan Bay it excited the wonder of Giraldus de Barri23.’To return to fairy wells, I have to confess that I cannot decide what may be precisely the meaning of the notion of a well with a woman set carefully to see that the door or cover of the well is kept shut. It will occur, however, to everybody to compare the well which Undine wished to have kept shut, on account of its affording a ready access from her subterranean country to the residence of her refractory knight in his castle above ground. And in the case of the Glasfryn Lake, the walling and cover that were to keep the spring from overflowing were, according to the story, not water-tight, seeing that there were holes made in one of the stones. This suggests the idea that the cover was to prevent the passage of some such full-grown fairies as those with which legend seems to have once peopled all the pools and tarns of Wales. But, in the next place, is the maiden in charge of the well to be regarded as priestess of the well? The idea of a priesthood in connexion with wells in Wales is not wholly unknown.I wish, however, before discussing these instances, to call attention to one or two Irish ones which point in another direction. Foremost may be mentioned the source of the river Boyne, which is now called Trinity Well, situated in the Barony of Carbury, in County Kildare. The following is the RennesDindsenchasconcerning it, as translated by Dr. Stokes, in theRevue Celtique, xv. 315–6:—‘Bóand, wife of Nechtán son of Labraid, went to the secret well which was in the green of Síd Nechtáin. Whoever went to it would not comefrom it without his two eyes bursting, unless it were Nechtán himself and his three cup-bearers, whose names were Flesc and Lám and Luam. Once upon a time Bóand went through pride to test the well’s power, and declared that it had no secret force which could shatter her form, and thrice she walked withershins round the well. (Whereupon) three waves from the well break over her and deprive her of a thigh [?wounded her thigh] and one of her hands and one of her eyes. Then she, fleeing her shame, turns seaward, with the water behind her as far as Boyne-mouth, (where she was drowned).’ This is to explain why the river is calledBóand, ‘Boyne.’ A version to the same effect in theBook of Leinster, fol. 191a, makes the general statement that no one who gazed right into the well could avoid the instant ruin of his two eyes or otherwise escape with impunity. A similar story is related to show how the Shannon, in IrishSinann,Sinand, orSinend, is called after a woman of that name. It occurs in the same Rennes manuscript, and the following is Stokes’ translation in theRevue Celtique, xv. 457:—‘Sinend, daughter of Lodan Lucharglan son of Ler out of Tir Tairngire (Land of Promise, Fairyland), went to Connla’s Well, which is under sea, to behold it. That is a well at which are the hazels and inspirations (?) of wisdom, that is, the hazels of the science of poetry, and in the same hour their fruit and their blossom and their foliage break forth, and these fall on the well in the same shower, which raises on the water a royal surge of purple. Then the salmon chew the fruit, and the juice of the nuts is apparent on their purple bellies. And seven streams of wisdom spring forth and turn there again. Now Sinend went to seek the inspiration, for she wanted nothing save only wisdom. She went with the stream till she reachedLinn Mna Feile, “thePool of the Modest Woman,” that is Bri Ele—and she went ahead on her journey; but the well left its place, and she followed it24to the banks of the riverTarr-cáin, “Fair-back.” After this it overwhelmed her, so that her back (tarr) went upwards, and when she had come to the land on this side (of the Shannon) she tasted death. WhenceSinannandLinn Mna FeileandTarr-cain.’In these stories the reader will have noticed that the foremost punishment on any intruder who looked into the forbidden well was the instant ruin of his two eyes. One naturally asks why the eyes are made the special objects of the punishment, and I am inclined to think the meaning to have originally been that the well or spring was regarded as the eye of the divinity of the water. Should this prove well founded it looks natural that the eyes, which transgressed by gazing into the eye of the divinity, should be the first objects of that divinity’s vengeance. This is suggested to me by the fact that the regular Welsh word for the source of a river isỻygad, Old Welshlicat, ‘eye,’ as for instance in the case ofLicat Amirmentioned by Nennius, § 73; ofỺygad Ỻychwr, ‘the source of the Loughor river’ in the hills behind Carreg Cennen Castle; and of the weird lake in which the Rheidol25rises near the top of Plinlimmon: it is calledỺyn Ỻygad y Rheidol, ‘the Lake of the Rheidol’s Eye.’ By the way, the Rheidol is not wholly without its folklore, for I used to be told in my childhood, that she and the Wye and the Severn sallied forth simultaneously from Plinlimmon one fine morningto run a race to the sea. The result was, one was told, that the Rheidol won great honour by reaching the sea three weeks before her bigger sisters. Somebody has alluded to the legend in the following lines:—Tair afon gynt a rifwydAr đwyfron Pumlumon lwyd,Hafren a Gwy’n hyfryd ei gweđ,A’r Rheidol fawr ei hanrhydeđ.Three rivers of yore were seenOn grey Plinlimmon’s breast,Severn, and Wye of pleasant mien,And Rheidol rich in great renown.To return to the Irish legends, I may mention that Eugene O’Curry has a good deal to say of the mysterious nuts and ‘the salmon of knowledge,’ the partaking of which was synonymous with the acquisition of knowledge and wisdom: see hisManners and Customs of the Ancient Irish, ii. 142–4. He gives it as his opinion that Connla’s Well was situated somewhere in Lower Ormond; but the locality of this Helicon, with the seven streams of wisdom circulating out of it and back again into it, is more intelligible when regarded as a matter of fairy geography. A portion of the note appended to the foregoing legend by Stokes is in point here: he traces the earliest mention of the nine hazels of wisdom, growing at the heads of the chief rivers of Ireland, to the Dialogue of the Two Sages in theBook of Leinster, fol. 186b, whence he cites the poet Néde mac Adnai saying whence he had come, as follows:—a caillib .i. a nói collaib na Segsa … a caillib didiu assa mbenaiter clessa na súad tanacsa, ‘from hazels, to wit, from the nine hazels of the Segais … from hazels out of which are obtained the feats of the sages, I have come.’ The relevancy of this passage will be seen when I add, that Segais was one of the names of the mound in which the Boyne rises; so it may be safely inferred that Bóand’s transgression was of the same nature as that of Sinand, to wit, that of intruding on sacred ground in quest of wisdom and inspiration whichwas not permitted their sex: certain sources of knowledge, certainquellen, were reserved for men alone.Before I have done with the Irish instances I must append one in the form it was told me in the summer of 1894: I was in Meath and went to see the remarkable chambered cairns on the hill known asSliabh na Caillighe, ‘the Hag’s Mountain,’ near Oldcastle and Lough Crew. I had as my guide a young shepherd whom I picked up on the way. He knew all about the hag after whom the hill was called except her name: she was, he said, a giantess, and so she brought there, in three apronfuls, the stones forming the three principal cairns. As to the cairn on the hill point known as Belrath, that is called the Chair Cairn from a big stone placed there by the hag to serve as her seat when she wished to have a quiet look on the country round. But usually she was to be seen riding on a wonderful pony she had: that creature was so nimble and strong that it used to take the hag at a leap from one hill-top to another. However, the end of it all was that the hag rode so hard that the pony fell down, and that both horse and rider were killed. The hag appears to have beenCailleach Bhéara, orCaillech Bérre, ‘the Old Woman of Beare,’ that is, Bearhaven, in County Cork26. Now the viewfrom the Hag’s Mountain is very extensive, and I asked the shepherd to point out some places in the distance. Among other things we could see Lough Ramor, which he called the Virginia Water, and more to the west he identified Lough Sheelin, about which he had the following legend to tell:—A long, long time ago there was no lake there, but only a well with a flagstone kept over it, and everybody would put the flag back after taking water out of the well. But one day a woman who fetched water from it forgot to replace the stone, and the water burst forth in pursuit of the luckless woman, who fled as hard as she could before the angry flood. She continued until she had run about seven miles—the estimated length of the lake at the present day. Now at this point a man, who was busily mowing hay in the field through which she was running, saw what was happening and mowed the woman down with his scythe, whereupon the water advanced no further. Such was the shepherd’s yarn, which partly agrees with the Boyne and Shannon stories in that the woman was pursued by the water, which only stopped where she died. On the other hand, it resembles the Ỻyn Ỻech Owen legend and that of Lough Neagh in placing to the woman’s charge only the neglect to cover the well. It looks as if we had in these stories a confusion of two different institutions, one being a well of wisdom which no woman durst visit without fatal vengeance overtaking her, and the other a fairy well which was attended to by a woman who was to keep it covered, and who may, perhaps, be regarded as priestess of the spring. If we try to interpret the Cantre’r Gwaelod story from these two points of view we have to note the following matters:—Though it is not said that themoruin, or damsel, had a lid or cover on the well, the wordgolligautorhelligaut, ‘did let run,’ implies some such an ideaas that of a lid or door; for opening the sluices, in the sense of the later version, seems to me out of the question. In two of the Englynion she is cursed for the action implied, and if she was the well minister or well servant, as I takefinaun wenestirto mean, we might perhaps regard her as the priestess of that spring. On the other hand, the prevailing note in the other Englynion is thetraha, ‘presumption, arrogance, insolence, pride,’ which forms the burden of four out of five of them. This would seem to point to an attitude on the part of the damsel resembling that of Bóand or Sinand when prying into the secrets of wells which were tabu to them. The seventh Englyn alludes to wines, and its burden isgormođ, ‘too much, excess, extravagance,’ whereby the poet seems to lend countenance to some such a later story as that of Seithennin’s intemperance.Lastly, the question of priest or priestess of a sacred well has been alluded to once or twice, and it may be perhaps illustrated on Welsh ground by the history of Ffynnon Eilian, or St. Elian’s Well, which has been mentioned in another context, p. 357 above. Of that well we read as follows, s. v.Ỻandriỻo, in the third edition of Lewis’Topographical Dictionary of Wales:—‘Fynnon Elian, … even in the present age, is frequently visited by the superstitious, for the purpose of invoking curses upon the heads of those who have grievously offended them, and also of supplicating prosperity to themselves; but the numbers are evidently decreasing. The ceremony is performed by the applicant standing upon a certain spot near the well, whilst the owner of it reads a few passages of the sacred Scriptures, and then, taking a small quantity of water, gives it to the former to drink, and throws the residue over his head, which is repeated three times, the party continuing to mutter imprecationsin whatever terms his vengeance may dictate.’ Rice Rees, in hisEssay on the Welsh Saints(London, 1836), p. 267, speaks of St. Elian as follows: ‘Miraculous cures were lately supposed to be performed at his shrine at Ỻanelian, Anglesey; and near to the church of Ỻanelian, Denbighshire, is a well called Ffynnon Elian, which is thought by the peasantry of the neighbourhood to be endued with miraculous powers even at present.’Foulkes, s. v.Elian, in hisEnwogion Cymru, published in Liverpool in 1870, expresses the opinion that the visits of the superstitious to the well had ceased for some time. The last person supposed to have had charge of the well was a certain John Evans, but some of the most amusing stories of the shrewdness of the caretaker refer to a woman who had charge of the well before Evans’ time. A series of articles onFfynnon Eilianappeared in 1861 in a Welsh periodical calledY Nofelyđ, printed by Mr. Aubrey at Ỻanerch y Međ, in Anglesey. The articles in question were afterwards published, I am told, as a shilling book, which I have not seen, and they dealt with the superstition, with the history of John Evans, and with his confessions and conversion. I have searched in vain for any account in Welsh of the ritual followed at the well. When Mrs. Silvan Evans visited the place, the person in charge of the well was a woman, and Peter Roberts, in hisCambrian Popular Antiquities, published in London in 1815, alludes to her or a predecessor of hers in the following terms, p. 246:—‘Near the Well resided some worthless and infamous wretch, who officiated as priestess.’ He furthermore gives one to understand that she kept a book in which she registered the name of each evil wisher for a trifling sum of money. When this had been done, a pin was dropped into the well inthe name of the victim. This proceeding looks adequate from the magical point of view, though less complicated than the ritual indicated by Lewis. This latter writer calls the person who took charge of the well the owner; and I have always understood that, whether owner or not, he or she used to receive gifts, not only for placing in the well the names of men who were to be cursed, but also from those men for taking their names out again, so as to relieve them from the malediction. In fact, the trade in curses seems to have been a very thriving one: its influence was powerful and widespread.Here there is, I think, very little doubt that the owner or guardian of the well was, so to say, the representative of an ancient priesthood of the well. That priesthood dated its origin probably many centuries before a Christian church was built near the well, and coming down to later times we have unfortunately no sufficient data to show how the right to such priesthood was acquired, whether by inheritance or otherwise; but we know that a woman might have charge of St. Elian’s Well.Let me cite another instance, which I unexpectedly discovered some years ago in the course of a ramble in quest of early inscriptions. Among other places which I visited was Ỻandeilo Ỻwydarth, near Maen Clochog, in the northern part of Pembrokeshire. This is one of the many churches bearing the name of St. Teilo in South Wales: the building is in ruins, but the churchyard is still used, and contains two of the most ancient post-Roman inscriptions in the Principality. If you ask now for ‘Ỻandeilo’ in this district, you will be understood to be inquiring after the farm house of that name, close to the old church; and I learnt from the landlady that her family had been there for many generations, though they have not very long been the proprietors ofthe land. She also told me of St. Teilo’s Well, a little above the house: she added that it was considered to have the property of curing the whooping-cough. I asked if there was any rite or ceremony necessary to be performed in order to derive benefit from the water. Certainly, I was told: the water must be lifted out of the well and given to the patient to drink by some member of the family. To be more accurate, I ought to say that this must be done by somebody born in the house. Her eldest son, however, had told me previously, when I was busy with the inscriptions, that the water must be given to the patient by the heir, not by anybody else. Then came my question how the water was lifted, or out of what the patient had to drink, to which I was answered that it was out of the skull. ‘What skull?’ said I. ‘St. Teilo’s skull,’ was the answer. ‘Where do you get the saint’s skull?’ I asked. ‘Here it is,’ was the answer, and I was given it to handle and examine. I know next to nothing about skulls; but it struck me that it was the upper portion of a thick, strong skull, and it called to my mind the story of the three churches which contended for the saint’s corpse. That story will be found in theBook of Ỻan Dâv, pp. 116–7, and according to it the contest became so keen that it had to be settled by prayer and fasting. So, in the morning, lo and behold! there were three corpses of St. Teilo—not simply one—and so like were they in features and stature that nobody could tell which were the corpses made to order and which the old one. I should have guessed that the skull which I saw belonged to the former description, as not having been much thinned by the owner’s use of it; but this I am forbidden to do by the fact that, according to the legend, this particular Ỻandeilo was not one of the three contending churches which bore away in triumpha dead Teilo each. The reader, perhaps, would like to take another view, namely, that the story has been edited in such a way as to reduce a larger number of Teilos to three, in order to gratify the Welsh weakness for triads.Since my visit to the neighbourhood I have been favoured with an account of the well as it is now current there. My informant is Mr. Benjamin Gibby of Ỻangolman Mill, who writes mentioning, among other things, that the people around call the wellFfynnon yr Ychen, or the Oxen’s Well, and that the family owning and occupying the farm house of Ỻandeilo have been there for centuries. Their name, which is Melchior (pronounced Melshor), is by no means a common one in the Principality, so far as I know; but, whatever may be its history in Wales, the bearers of it are excellent Kymry. Mr. Gibby informs me that the current story solves the difficulty as to the saint’s skull as follows:—The saint had a favourite maid servant from the Pembrokeshire Ỻandeilo: she was a beautiful woman, and had the privilege of attending on the saint when he was on his death-bed. As his end was approaching he gave his maid a strict and solemn command that in a year’s time from the day of his burial at Ỻandeilo Fawr, in Carmarthenshire, she was to take his skull to the other Ỻandeilo, and to leave it there to be a blessing to coming generations of men, who, when ailing, would have their health restored by drinking water out of it. So the belief prevailed that to drink out of the skull some of the water of Teilo’s Well ensured health, especially against the whooping-cough. The faith of some of those who used to visit the well was so great in its efficacy, that they were wont to leave it, he says, with their constitutions wonderfully improved; and he mentions a story related to him by an old neighbour,Stifyn Ifan, who has been dead for some years, to the effect that a carriage, drawn by four horses, came once, more than half a century ago, to Ỻandeilo. It was full of invalids coming from Pen Clawđ, in Gower, Glamorganshire, to try the water of the well. They returned, however, no better than they came; for though they had drunk of the well, they had neglected to do so out of the skull. This was afterwards pointed out to them by somebody, and they resolved to make the long journey to the well again. This time they did the right thing, we are told, and departed in excellent health.Such are the contents of Mr. Gibby’s Welsh letter; and I would now only point out that we have here an instance of a well which was probably sacred before the time of St. Teilo: in fact, one would possibly be right in supposing that the sanctity of the well and its immediate surroundings was one of the causes why the site was chosen by a Christian missionary. But consider for a moment what has happened: the well paganism has annexed the saint, and established a belief ascribing to him the skull used in the well ritual. The landlady and her family, it is true, neither believe in the efficacy of the well, nor take gifts from those who visit the well; but they continue, out of kindness, as they put it, to hand the skull full of water to any one who perseveres in believing in it. In other words, the faith in the well continues in a measure intact, while the walls of the church have long fallen into utter decay. Such is the great persistence of some primitive beliefs; and in this particular instance we have a succession which seems to point unmistakably to an ancient priesthood of a sacred spring.

It is only recently1that I heard for the first time of Welsh instances of the habit of tying rags and bits of clothing to the branches of a tree growing near a holy well. Since then I have obtained several items of information in point: the first is a communication received in June, 1892, from Mr. J. H. Davies, of Lincoln College, Oxford—since then of Lincoln’s Inn—relating to a Glamorganshire holy well, situated near the pathway leading from Coychurch to Bridgend. It is the custom there, he states, for people suffering from any malady to dip a rag in the water, and to bathe the affected part of the body, the rag being then placed on a tree close to the well. When Mr. Davies passed that way, some three years previously, there were, he adds, hundreds of such shreds on the tree, some of which distinctly presented the appearance of having been very recently placed there. The well is called Ffynnon Cae Moch, ‘Swine-field Well,’ which can hardly have been its old name; and a later communication from Mr. Davies summarizes a conversation which he had about the well, on December 16, 1892, with Mr. J. T. Howell, of Pencoed, near Bridgend. His notes run thus:—‘Ffynnon Cae Moch, between Coychurch and Bridgend, is onemile from Coychurch, one and a quarter from Bridgend, near Tremains. It is within twelve or fifteen yards of the high-road, just where the pathway begins. People suffering from rheumatism go there. They bathe the part affected with water, and afterwards tie a piece of rag to the tree which overhangs the well. The rag is not put in the water at all, but is only put on the tree for luck. It is a stunted, but very old tree, and is simplycoveredwith rags.’ A little less than a year later, I had an opportunity of visiting this well in the company of Mr. Brynmor-Jones; and I find in my notes that it is not situated so near the road as Mr. Howell would seem to have stated to Mr. Davies. We found the well, which is a powerful spring, surrounded by a circular wall. It is overshadowed by a dying thorn tree, and a little further back stands another thorn which is not so decayed: it was on this latter thorn we found the rags. I took off a twig with two rags, while Mr. Brynmor-Jones counted over a dozen other rags on the tree; and we noticed that some of them had only recently been suspended there: among them were portions undoubtedly of a woman’s clothing. At one of the hotels at Bridgend, I found an illiterate servant who was acquainted with the well, and I cross-examined him on the subject of it. He stated that a man with a wound, which he explained to mean a cut, would go and stand in the well within the wall, and there he would untie the rag that had been used to tie up the wound and would wash the wound with it: then he would tie up the wound with a fresh rag and hang the old one on the tree. The more respectable people whom I questioned talked more vaguely, and only of tying a rag to the tree, except one who mentioned a pin being thrown into the wellora rag being tied to the tree.

My next informant is Mr. D. J. Jones, a native of theRhonđa Valley, in the same county of Glamorgan. He was an undergraduate of Jesus College, Oxford, when I consulted him in 1892. His information was to the effect that he knows of three interesting wells in the county. The first is situated within two miles of his home, and is known asFfynnon Pen Rhys, or the Well of Pen Rhys. The custom there is that the person who wishes his health to be benefited should wash in the water of the well, and throw a pin into it afterwards. He next mentions a well at Ỻancarvan, some five or six miles from Cowbridge, where the custom prevails of tying rags to the branches of a tree growing close at hand. Lastly, he calls my attention to a passage inHanes Morganwg, ‘The History of Glamorgan,’ written by Mr. D. W. Jones, known in Welsh literature as Dafyđ Morganwg. In that work, p. 29, the author speaks ofFfynnon Marcros, ‘the Well of Marcros,’ to the following effect:—‘It is the custom for those who are healed in it to tie a shred of linen or cotton to the branches of a tree that stands close by; and there the shreds are, almost as numerous as the leaves.’ Marcros is, I may say, near Nash Point, and looks on the map as if it were about eight miles distant from Bridgend. Let me here make it clear that so far we have had to do with four different wells2, three of which are severally distinguished by the presence of a tree adorned with rags by those who seek health in those waters; but they are all three, as the reader will have doubtless noticed, in the same district, namely, the part of Glamorganshire near the main line of the Great Western Railway.

There is no reason, however, to think that the custom of tying rags to a well tree was peculiar to that part ofthe Principality. One day, in looking through some old notes of mine, I came across an entry bearing the date of August 7, 1887, when I was spending a few days with my friend, Chancellor Silvan Evans, at Ỻanwrin Rectory, near Machynỻeth. Mrs. Evans was then alive and well, and took a keen interest in Welsh antiquities and folklore. Among other things, she related to me how she had, some twenty years before, visited a well in the parish of Ỻandriỻo yn Rhos, namelyFfynnon Eilian, or Elian’s Well, between Abergele and Ỻandudno, when her attention was directed to some bushes near the well, which had once been covered with bits of rags left by those who frequented the well. This was told Mrs. Evans by an old woman of seventy, who, on being questioned by Mrs. Evans concerning the history of the well, informed her that the rags used to be tied to the bushes by means of wool. She was explicit on the point, that wool had to be used for the purpose, and that even woollen yarn would not do: it had to be wool in its natural state. The old woman remembered this to have been the rule ever since she was a child. Mrs. Evans noticed corks, with pins stuck in them, floating in the well, and her informant remembered many more in years gone by; for Elian’s Well was once in great repute as affynnon reibio, or a well to which people resorted for the kindly purpose of bewitching those whom they hated. I infer, however, from what Mrs. Evans was told of the rags, that Elian’s Well was visited, not only by the malicious, but also by the sick and suffering. My note is not clear on the point whether there were any rags on the bushes by the well when Mrs. Evans visited the spot, or whether she was only told of them by the caretaker. Even in the latter case it seems evident that this habit of tying rags to trees or bushes near sacred wells has onlyceased in that part of Denbighshire within this century. It is very possible that it continued in North Wales more recently than this instance would lead one to suppose; indeed, I should not be in the least surprised to learn that it is still practised in out of the way places in Gwyneđ, just as it is in Glamorgan: we want more information.

I cannot say for certain whether it was customary in any of the cases to which I have called attention to tie rags to the well tree as well as to throw pins or other small objects into the well; but I cannot help adhering to the view, that the distinction was probably an ancient one between two orders of things. In other words, I am inclined to believe that the rag was regarded as the vehicle of the disease of which the ailing visitor to the well wished to be rid, and that the bead, button, or coin deposited by him in the well, or in a receptacle near the well, formed alone the offering. In opposition to this view Mr. Gomme has expressed himself as follows inFolk-Lore, 1892, p. 89:—‘There is some evidence against that, from the fact that in the case of some wells, especially in Scotland at one time, the whole garment was put down as an offering. Gradually these offerings of clothes became less and less till they came down to rags. Also in other parts, the geographical distribution of rag-offerings coincides with the existence of monoliths and dolmens.’ As to the monoliths and dolmens, I am too little conversant with the facts to risk any opinion as to the value of the coincidence; but as to the suggestion that the rag originally meant the whole garment, that will suit my hypothesis admirably. In other words, the whole garment was, as I take it, the vehicle of the disease: the whole was accursed, and not merely a part. But Mr. Gomme had previously touched on the question in his presidential address (Folk-Lorefor 1892, p. 13); and I mustat once admit that he succeeded then in proving that a certain amount of confusion occurs between things which I should regard as belonging originally to distinct categories: witness the inimitable Irish instance which he quotes:—‘To St. Columbkill—I offer up this button, a bit o’ the waistband o’ my own breeches, an’ a taste o’ my wife’s petticoat, in remimbrance of us havin’ made this holy station; an’ may they rise up in glory to prove it for us in the last day.’ Here not only the button is treated as an offering, but also the bits of clothing; but the confusion of ideas I should explain as being, at least in part, one of the natural results of substituting a portion of a garment for the entire garment; for thereby a button or a pin becomes a part of the dress, and capable of being interpreted in two senses. After all, however, the ordinary practices have not, as I look at them, resulted in effacing the distinction altogether: the rag is not left in the well; nor is the bead, button, or pin attached to a branch of the tree. So, in the main, it seemed to me easier to explain the facts, taken altogether, on the supposition that originally the rag was regarded as the vehicle of the disease, and the bead, button, or coin as the offering. My object in calling attention to this point was to have it discussed, and I am happy to say that I have not been disappointed; for, since my remarks were published3, a paper entitledPin-wells and Rag-busheswas read before the British Association by Mr. Hartland, in 1893, and published inFolk-Lorefor the same year, pp. 451–70. In that paper the whole question is gone into with searching logic, and Mr. Hartland finds the required explanation in one of the dogmas of magic. For ‘if an article of my clothing,’ he says, ‘in a witch’s hands may cause me to suffer, the same article in contact with a beneficent power may relieve my pain, restore me tohealth, or promote my general prosperity. A pin that has pricked my wart … has by its contact, by the wound it has inflicted, acquired a peculiar bond with the wart; the rag that has rubbed the wart has by that friction acquired a similar bond; so that whatever is done to the pin or the rag, whatever influences the pin or the rag may undergo, the same influences are by that very act brought to bear, upon the wart. If, instead of using a rag, or making a pilgrimage to a sacred well, I rub my warts with raw meat and then bury the meat, the wart will decay and disappear with the decay and dissolution of the meat …. In like manner my shirt or stocking, or a rag to represent it, placed upon a sacred bush, or thrust into a sacred well—my name written upon the walls of a temple—a stone or a pellet from my hand cast upon a sacred image or a sacred cairn—is thenceforth in continual contact with divinity; and the effluence of divinity, reaching and involving it, will reach and involve me.’ Mr. Hartland concludes from a large number of instances, that as a rule ‘where the pin or button is dropped into the well, the patient does not trouble about the rag, and vice versa.’ This wider argument as to the effluence of the divinity of a particular spot of special holiness seems to me conclusive. It applies also, needless to say, to a large category of cases besides those in question between Mr. Gomme and the present writer.

So now I would revise my position thus:—I continue to regard the rag much as before, but treat the article thrown into the well as the more special means of establishing a beneficial relation with the well divinity: whether it could also be viewed as an offering would depend on the value attached to it. Some of the following notes may serve as illustrations, especially those relating to the wool and the pin:—FfynnonGwynwy, or the Well of Gwynwy, near Ỻangelynin, on the river Conwy, appears to be partly in point; for it formerly used to be well stocked with crooked pins, which nobody would touch lest he might get from them the warts supposed to attach to them, whence it would appear that a pin might be regarded as the vehicle of the disease. There was a well of some repute at Cae Garw, in the parish of Pistyỻ, near the foot of Carnguwch, in Ỻeyn, or West Carnarvonshire. The water possessed virtues to cure one of rheumatism and warts; but, in order to be rid of the latter, it was requisite to throw a pin into the well for each individual wart. For these two items of information, and several more to be mentioned presently, I have to thank Mr. John Jones, better known in Wales by his bardic name of Myrđin Farđ, and as an enthusiastic collector of Welsh antiquities, whether in the form of manuscript or of unwritten folklore. On the second day of the year 1893 I paid him a visit at Chwilog, on the Carnarvon and Avon Wen Railway, and asked him many questions: these he not only answered with the utmost willingness, but he also showed me the unpublished materials which he had collected. I come next to a competition on the folklore of North Wales at the London Eisteđfod in 1887, in which, as one of the adjudicators, I observed that several of the competitors mentioned the prevalent belief, that every well with healing properties must have its outlet towards the south (i’r dê). According to one of them, if you wished to get rid of warts, you should, on your way to the well, look for wool which the sheep had lost. When you had found enough wool you should prick each wart with a pin, and then rub the wart well with the wool. The next thing was to bend the pin and throw it into the well. Then youshould place the wool on the first whitethorn you could find, and as the wind scattered the wool, the warts would disappear. There was a well of the kind, the writer went on to say, near his home; and he, with three or four other boys, went from school one day to the well to charm their warts away. For he had twenty-three on one of his hands; so that he always tried to hide it, as it was the belief that if one counted the warts they would double their number. He forgets what became of the other boys’ warts, but his own disappeared soon afterwards; and his grandfather used to maintain that it was owing to the virtue of the well. Such were the words of this writer, whose name is unknown to me; but I guess him to have been a native of Carnarvonshire, or else of one of the neighbouring districts of Denbighshire or Merionethshire. To return to Myrđin Farđ, he mentionedFfynnon Cefn Ỻeithfan, or the Well of the Ỻeithfan Ridge, on the eastern slope of Mynyđ y Rhiw, in the parish of Bryncroes, in the west of Ỻeyn. In the case of this well it is necessary, when going to it and coming from it, to be careful not to utter a word to anybody, or to turn to look back. What one has to do at the well is to bathe the warts with a rag or clout which has grease on it. When that is done, the clout with the grease has to be carefully concealed beneath the stone at the mouth of the well. This brings to my mind the fact that I noticed more than once, years ago, rags underneath stones in the water flowing from wells in Wales, and sometimes thrust into holes in the walls of wells, but I had no notion how they came there.

On the subject of pin-wells I had in 1893, from Mr. T. E. Morris, of Portmadoc, barrister-at-law, some account ofFfynnon Faglan, or Baglan’s Well, in the parish of Ỻanfaglan, near Carnarvon. The well issituated in an open field to the right of the road leading towards the church, and close to it. The church and churchyard form an enclosure in the middle of the same field, and the former has in its wall the old stone readingFILI LOVERNII ANATEMORI. My friend derived information from Mrs. Roberts, of Cefn y Coed, near Carnarvon, as follows:—‘The old people who would be likely to know anything aboutFfynnon Faglanhave all died. The two oldest inhabitants, who have always lived in this parish of Ỻanfaglan, remember the well being used for healing purposes. One told me his mother used to take him to it, when he was a child, for sore eyes, bathe them with the water, and then drop in a pin. The other man, when he was young, bathed in it for rheumatism; and until quite lately people used to fetch away the water for medicinal purposes. The latter, who lives near the well, at Tan y Graig, said that he remembered it being cleaned out about fifty years ago, when two basinfuls of pins were taken out, but no coin of any kind. The pins were all bent, and I conclude the intention was to exorcise the evil spirit supposed to afflict the person who dropped them in, or, as the Welsh say,dadwitsio. No doubt some ominous words were also used. The well is at present nearly dry, the field where it lies having been drained some years ago, and the water in consequence withdrawn from it. It was much used for the cure of warts. The wart was washed, then pricked with a pin, which, after being bent, was thrown into the well. There is a very large and well-known well of the kind at C’lynnog,Ffynnon Beuno, “St. Beuno’s Well,” which was considered to have miraculous healing powers; and even yet, I believe, some people have faith in it.Ffynnon Faglanis, in its construction, an imitation, on a smaller scale, of St. Beuno’s Well at C’lynnog.’

In the cliffs at the west end of Ỻeyn is a wishing-well calledFfynnon Fair, or St. Mary’s Well, to the left of the site of Eglwys Fair, and facing Ynys Enỻi, or Bardsey. Here, to obtain your wish, you have to descend the steps to the well and walk up again to the top with your mouth full of the water; and then you have to go round the ruins of the church once or more times with the water still in your mouth. Viewing the position of the well from the sea, I should be disposed to think that the realization of one’s wish at that price could not be regarded as altogether cheap. Myrđin Farđ also told me that there used to be a well near Criccieth Church. It was known asFfynnon y Saint, or the Saints’ Well, and it was the custom to throw keys or pins into it on the morning of Easter Sunday, in order to propitiate St. Catherine, who was the patron of the well. I should be glad to know what this exactly meant.

Lastly, a few of the wells in that part of Gwyneđ may be grouped together and described as oracular. One of these, the big well in the parish of Ỻanbedrog in Ỻeyn, as I learn from Myrđin Farđ, required the devotee to kneel by it and avow his faith in it. When this had been duly done, he might proceed in this wise: to ascertain, for instance, the name of the thief who had stolen from him, he had to throw a bit of bread into the well and name the person whom he suspected. At the name of the thief the bread would sink; so the inquirer went on naming all the persons he could think of until the bit of bread sank, when the thief was identified. How far is one to suppose that we have here traces of the influences of the water ordeal common in the Middle Ages? Another well of the same kind wasFfynnon Saethon, in Ỻanfihangel Bacheỻaeth parish, also in Ỻeyn. Here it was customary, as he had it in writing,for lovers to throw pins (pinnau) into the well; but these pins appear to have been the points of the blackthorn. At any rate, they cannot well have been of any kind of metal, as we are told that, if they sank in the water, one concluded that one’s lover was not sincere in his or her love.

Next may be mentioned a well, bearing the remarkable name ofFfynnon Gwyneđ, or the Well of Gwyned, which is situated near Mynyđ Mawr, in the parish of Abererch: it used to be consulted in the following manner:—When it was desired to discover whether an ailing person would recover, a garment of his would be thrown into the well, and according to the side on which it sank it was known whether he would live or die.

Ffynnon Gybi, or St. Cybi’s Well, in the parish of Ỻangybi, was the scene of a somewhat similar practice; for there, girls who wished to know their lovers’ intentions would spread their pocket-handkerchiefs on the water of the well, and, if the water pushed the handkerchiefs to the south—in Welshi’r dê—they knew that everything was right—in Welsho đê—and that their lovers were honest and honourable in their intentions; but, if the water shifted the handkerchiefs northwards, they concluded the contrary. A reference to this is made by a modern Welsh poet, as follows:—

Ambeỻ đyn, gwaelđyn, a gyrchI bant gorís Moel Bentyrch,Mewn gobaith mai hen GybiGlodfawr syđ yn ỻwyđaw’r ỻi.Some folks, worthless4folks, visitA hollow below Moel Bentyrch,In hopes that ancient KybiOf noble fame blesses the flood.

Ambeỻ đyn, gwaelđyn, a gyrchI bant gorís Moel Bentyrch,Mewn gobaith mai hen GybiGlodfawr syđ yn ỻwyđaw’r ỻi.

Ambeỻ đyn, gwaelđyn, a gyrch

I bant gorís Moel Bentyrch,

Mewn gobaith mai hen Gybi

Glodfawr syđ yn ỻwyđaw’r ỻi.

Some folks, worthless4folks, visitA hollow below Moel Bentyrch,In hopes that ancient KybiOf noble fame blesses the flood.

Some folks, worthless4folks, visit

A hollow below Moel Bentyrch,

In hopes that ancient Kybi

Of noble fame blesses the flood.

The spot is not far from where Myrđin Farđ lives; and he mentioned, that adjoining the well is a building which was probably intended for the person in chargeof the well: it has been tenanted within his memory. Not only for this but also for several of the foregoing items of information am I indebted to Myrđin; and now I come to Mrs. Williams-Ellis, of Glasfryn Uchaf, who tells me that one day not long ago, she met at Ỻangybi a native who had not visited the place since his boyhood: he had been away as an engineer in South Wales nearly all his life, but had returned to see an aged relative. So the reminiscences of the place filled his mind, and, among other things, he said that he remembered very well what concern there was one day in the village at a mischievous person having taken a very large eel out of the well. Many of the old people, he said, felt that much of the virtue of the well was probably taken away with the eel. To see it coiling about their limbs when they went into the water was a good sign: so he gave one to understand. As a sort of parallel I may mention that I have seen the fish living inFfynnon Beris, not far from the parish church of Ỻanberis. It is jealously guarded by the inhabitants, and when it was once or twice taken out by a mischievous stranger he was forced to put it back again. However, I never could get the history of this sacred fish, but I found that it was regarded as very old5. I may add that it appears the wellcalledFfynnon Fair, ‘Mary’s Well,’ at Ỻanđwyn, in Anglesey, used formerly to have inhabiting it a sacred fish, whose movements indicated the fortunes of the love-sick men and maidens who visited there the shrine of St. Dwynwen6. Possibly inquiry would result in showing that such sacred fish have been far more common once in the Principality than they are now.

The next class of wells to claim our attention consists of what I may call fairy wells, of which few are mentioned in connexion with Wales; but the legends about them are of absorbing interest. One of them is in Myrđin Farđ’s neighbourhood, and I questioned him a good deal on the subject: it is calledFfynnon Grassi, or Grace’s Well, and it occupies, according to him, a few square feet—he has measured it himself—of the south-east corner of the lake of Glasfryn Uchaf, in the parish of Ỻangybi. It appears that it was walled in, and that the stone forming its eastern side has several holes in it, which were intended to let water enter the well and not issue from it. It had a door or cover on its surface; and it was necessary to keep the door always shut, except when water was being drawn. Through somebody’s negligence, however, it was once on a time left open: the consequence was that the waterof the well flowed out and formed the Glasfryn Lake, which is so considerable as to be navigable for small boats. Grassi is supposed in the locality to have been the name of the owner of the well, or at any rate of a lady who had something to do with it.Grassi, or Grace, however, can only be a name which a modern version of the legend has introduced. It probably stands for an older name given to the person in charge of the well; to the one, in fact, who neglected to shut the door; but though the name must be comparatively modern, the story, as a whole, does not appear to be at all modern, but very decidedly the contrary.

So I wrote in 1893; but years after my conversation with Myrđin Farđ, my attention was called to the fact that the Glasfryn family, of which the Rev. J. C. Williams-Ellis is the head, have in their coat of arms a mermaid, who is represented in the usual way, holding a comb in her right hand and a mirror in her left. I had from the first expected to find some kind of Undine or Liban story associated with the well and the lake, though I had abstained from trying the risky effects of leading questions; but when I heard of the heraldic mermaid I wrote to Mr. Williams-Ellis to ask whether he knew her history. His words, though not encouraging as regards the mermaid, soon convinced me that I had not been wholly wrong in supposing that more folklore attached to the well and lake than I had been able to discover. Since then Mrs. Williams-Ellis has taken the trouble of collecting on the spot all the items of tradition which she could find: she communicated them to me in the month of March, 1899, and the following is an abstract of them, preceded by a brief description of the ground:—

The well itself is at the foot of a very green field-bank at the head of the lake, but not on the same levelwith it, as the lake has had its waters lowered half a century or more ago by the outlet having been cut deeper. Adjoining the field containing the well is a larger field, which also slopes down to the lake and extends in another direction to the grounds belonging to the house. This larger field is called Cae’r Ladi, ‘the Lady’s Field,’ and it is remarkable for having in its centre an ancient standing stone, which, as seen from the windows of the house, presents the appearance of a female figure hurrying along, with the wind slightly swelling out her veil and the skirt of her dress. Mr. Williams-Ellis remembers how when he was a boy the stone was partially white-washed, and how an old bonnet adorned the top of this would-be statue, and he thinks that an old shawl used to be thrown over the shoulders.

Now as to Grassi, she is mostly regarded as a ghostly person somehow connected with the lake and the house of Glasfryn. One story is to the effect, that on a certain evening she forgot to close the well, and that when the gushing waters had formed the lake, poor Grassi, overcome with remorse, wandered up and down the high ground of Cae’r Ladi, moaning and weeping. There, in fact, she is still at times to be heard lamenting her fate, especially at two o’clock in the early morning. Some people say that she is also to be seen about the lake, which is now the haunt of some half a dozen swans. But on the whole her visits appear to have been most frequent and troublesome at the house itself. Several persons still living are mentioned, who believe that they have seen her there, and two of them, Mrs. Jones of Talafon, and old Sydney Griffith of Tyđyn Bach, agree in the main in their description of what they saw, namely, a tall lady with well marked features and large bright eyes: she was dressed in white silk and a white velvet bonnet.The woman, Sydney Griffith, thought that she had seen the lady walking several times about the house and in Cae’r Ladi. This comes, in both instances, from a young lady born and bred in the immediate neighbourhood, and studying now at the University College of North Wales; but Mrs. Williams-Ellis has had similar accounts from other sources, and she mentions tenants of Glasfryn who found it difficult to keep servants there, because they felt that the place was haunted. In fact one of the tenants himself felt so unsafe that he used to take his gun and his dog with him to his bedroom at night; not to mention that when the Williams-Ellises lived themselves, as they do still, in the house, their visitors have been known to declare that they heard the strange plaintive cry out of doors at two o’clock in the morning.

Traces also of a very different story are reported by Mrs. Williams-Ellis, to the effect that when the water broke forth to form the lake, the fairies seized Grassi and changed her into a swan, and that she continued in that form to live on the lake sixscore years, and that when at length she died, she loudly lamented her lot: that cry is still to be heard at night. This story is in process apparently of being rationalized; at any rate the young lady student, to whom I have referred, remembers perfectly that her grandfather used to explain to her and the other children at home that Grassi was changed into a swan as a punishment for haunting Glasfryn, but that nevertheless the old lady still visited the place, especially when there happened to be strangers in the house. At the end of September last Mrs. Rhys and I had the pleasure of spending a few days at Glasfryn, in the hope of hearing the plaintive wail, and of seeing the lady in white silk revisiting her familiar haunts. But alas! our sleep was never oncedisturbed, nor was our peace once troubled by suspicions of anything uncanny. This, however, is negative, and characterized by the usual weakness of all such evidence.

It is now time to turn to another order of facts: in the first place may be mentioned that the young lady student’s grandmother used to call the wellFfynnon Grâs Siôn Gruffuđ, as she had always heard that Grâs was the daughter of a certain Siôn Gruffyđ, ‘John Griffith,’ who lived near the well; and Mrs. Williams-Ellis finds that Grâs was buried, at a very advanced age, on December 14, 1743, at the parish church of Ỻangybi, where the register describes her asGrace Jones, alias Grace Jones Griffith. She had lived till the end at Glasfryn, but from documents in the possession of the Glasfryn family it is known that in 1728 Hugh Lloyd of Traỻwyn purchased the house and estate of Glasfryn from a son of Grace’s, namedJohn ab Cadwaladr, and that Hugh Lloyd of Traỻwyn’s son, the Rev. William Lloyd, sold them to Archdeacon Ellis, from whom they have descended to the Rev. J. C. Williams-Ellis. In the light of these facts there is no reason to connect the old lady’s name very closely with the well or the lake. She was once the dominant figure at Glasfryn, that is all; and when she died she was as usual supposed to haunt the house and its immediate surroundings; and if we might venture to suppose that Glasfryn was sold by her son against her will, though subject to conditions which enabled her to remain in possession of the place to the day of her death, we should have a further explanation, perhaps, of her supposed moaning and lamentation.

In the background, however, of the story, one detects the possibility of another female figure, for it may be that the standing stone in Cae’r Ladi represents awoman buried there centuries before Grace ruled at Glasfryn, and that traditions about the earlier lady have survived to be inextricably mixed with those concerning the later one. Lastly, those traditions may have also associated the subject of them with the well and the lake; but I wish to attach no importance to this conjecture, as we have in reserve a third figure of larger possibilities than either Grace or the stone woman. It needs no better introduction than Mrs. Williams-Ellis’ own words: ‘Our younger boys have a crew of three little Welsh boys who live near the lake, to join them in their boat sailing about the pool and in camping on the island, &c. They asked me once whoMorganwas, whom the little boys were always saying they were to be careful against. An old man living at Tal Ỻyn, “Lake’s End,” a farm close by, says that as a boy he was always told that “naughty boys would be carried off by Morgan into the lake.” Others tell me that Morgan is always held to be ready to take off troublesome children, and somehow Morgan is thought of as a bad one.’ Now as Morgan carries children off into the pool, he would seem to issue from the pool, and to have his home in it. Further, he plays the same part as the fairies against whom a Snowdonian mother used to warn her children: they were on no account to wander away from the house when there was a mist, lest the fairies should carry them to their home beneath Ỻyn Dwythwch. In other words, Morgan may be said to act in the same way as the mermaid, who takes a sailor down to her submarine home; and it explains to my mind a discussion which I once heard of the name Morgan by a party of men and women making hay one fine summer’s day in the neighbourhood of Ponterwyd, in North Cardiganshire. I was a child, but I remember vividly how they teased one of their number whose‘style’ was Morgan. They hinted at dreadful things associated with the name; but it was all so vague that I could not gather that his great unknown namesake was a thief, a murderer, or any kind of ordinary criminal. The impression left on my mind was rather the notion of something weird, uncanny, or non-human; and the fact that the Welsh version of the Book of Common Prayer calls the PelagiansMorganiaid, ‘Morgans,’ does not offer an adequate explanation. But I now see clearly that it is to be sought in the indistinct echo of such folklore as that which makes Morgan a terror to children in the neighbourhood of the Glasfryn Lake.

The name, however, presents points of difficulty which require some notice: the Welsh translators of Article IX in the Prayer Book were probably wrong in makingPelagiansintoMorganiaid, as the Welsh forPelagiusseems to have been ratherMorien7, which in its oldest recorded form wasMorgen, and meant sea-born, or offspring of the sea. In a still earlier form it must have beenMorigenos, with a feminineMorigena, but when the endings came to be dropped both vocables would becomeMorgen, laterMori̯en. I do not remember coming across a feminineMorgenin Welsh, but the presumption is that it did exist. For, among other things, I may mention that we have it in Irish asMuirgen, one of the names of the lake lady Liban, who, when the waters of the neglected well rushed forth to form Lough Neagh, lived beneath that lake until she desired to be changed into a salmon. The same conclusion may be drawn from the nameMorgainorMorgan, given in the French romances to one or more water ladies; for those names are easiest to explain as the BrythonicMorgenborrowed from a Welsh or Breton source, unless one found it possible to trace it direct to theGoidels of Wales. No sooner, however, had the confusion taken place between Morgen and the name which is so common in Wales as exclusively a man’s name, than the aquatic figure must also become male. That is why the Glasfryn Morgan is now a male, and not a female like the other characters whose rôle he plays. But while the name was in Welsh successivelyMorgenandMorien, the man’s name wasMorcant,Morgant, orMorgan8, so that, phonologically speaking, no confusion could be regarded as possible between the two series. Here, therefore, one detects the influence, doubtless, of the French romances which spoke of a lake lady Morgain, Morgan, or Morgue. The character varied: Morgain le Fay was a designing and wicked person; but Morgan was also the name of a well disposed lady of the same fairy kind, who took Arthur away to be healed at her home in the Isle of Avallon. We seem to be on the track of the same confusing influence of the name, when it occurs in the story of Geraint and Enid; for there the chief physician of Arthur’s court is called Morgan Tut or Morgant Tut, and the wordtuthas been shown by M. Loth to have meant the same sort of non-human being whom an eleventh-century Life of St. Maudez mentions asquidam dæmon quem BritonesTutheappellant. Thus the nameMorgan Tutis meant as the Welsh equivalent of the FrenchMorgain le FayorMorgan la Fée9; but so long as the compiler of the story of Geraint and Enid employed in his Welsh the form Morgan, he had practically no choice but to treat the person called Morgan as a man, whether that was or was not the sex in the original texts on which he was drawing. Of course he could have avoided the difficulty in case he was aware of it, if he had found some available formula in use likeMary-Morgant, said to be a common name for a fairy on the island of Ouessant, off the coast of Brittany.

Summarizing the foregoing notes, we seem to be right in drawing the following conclusions:—(1) The well was left in the charge of a woman who forgot to shut it, and when she saw the water bursting forth, she bewailed her negligence, as in the case of her counterpart in the legend of Cantre’r Gwaelod. (2) The original name of the Glasfryn ‘Morgan’ was Morgen, later Morien. (3) The person changed into a swan on the occasion of the Glasfryn well erupting was not Grassi, but most probably Morgen. And (4) the character was originally feminine, like that of the mermaid or the fairies, whose rôle the Glasfryn Morgan plays; and more especially may one compare the Irish Muirgen, theMorgenmore usually called Líban. For it is to be noticed that when the neglected well burst forth she, Muirgen or Líban, was not drowned like the othersinvolved in the calamity, but lived in her chamber at the bottom of the lake formed by the overflowing well, until she was changed into a salmon. In that form she lived on some three centuries, until in fact she was caught in the net of a fisherman, and obtained the boon of a Christian burial. However, the change into a swan is also known on Irish ground: take for instance the story of the Children of Lir, who were converted into swans by their stepmother, and lived in that form on Loch Dairbhreach, in Westmeath, for three hundred years, and twice as long on the open sea, until their destiny closed with the advent of St. Patrick and the first ringing of a Christian bell in Erin10.

The next legend was kindly communicated to me by Mr. Wm. Davies already mentioned at p. 147 above: he found it inCyfaiỻ yr Aelwyd11, “The Friend of the Hearth,” where it is stated that it belonged to David Jones’Storehouse of Curiosities, a collection which does not seem to have ever assumed the form of a printed book. David Jones, of Trefriw, in the Conwy Valley, was a publisher and poet who wrote between 1750 and 1780. This is his story: ‘In 1735 I had a conversation with a man concerning Tegid Lake. He had heard from old people that near the middle of it there was a well opposite Ỻangower, and the well was calledFfynnon Gywer, “Cower’s Well,” and at that time the town was round about the well. It was obligatory to place a lid on the well every night. (It seems that in those days somebody was aware that unless this was done it would prove thedestruction of the town.) But one night it was forgotten, and by the morning, behold the town had subsided and the lake became three miles long and one mile wide. They say, moreover, that on clear days some people see the chimneys of the houses. It is since then that the town was built atthe lower end of the lake. It is calledY Bala12, and the man told me that he had talked with an old Bala man who had, when he was a youth, had two days’ mowing of hay13between the road and the lake; but by this time the lake had spread over that land and the road also, which necessitated the purchase of land further away for the road; and some say that the town will yet sink as far as the place called Ỻanfor—others call it Ỻanfawđ, “Drown-church,” or Ỻanfawr, “Great-church,” in Penỻyn …. Further, when the weather is stormy water appears oozing through every floor within Bala, and at other times anybody can get water enough for the use of his house, provided he dig a little into the floor of it.’

In reference to the idea that the town is to sink,together with the neighbouring village of Ỻanfor, the writer quotes in a note the couplet known still to everybody in the neighbourhood as follows:—

Y Bala aeth, a’r Bala aiff,A Ỻanfor aiff yn Ỻyn.Bala old the lake has had, and Bala newThe lake will have, and Ỻanfor too.

Y Bala aeth, a’r Bala aiff,A Ỻanfor aiff yn Ỻyn.

Y Bala aeth, a’r Bala aiff,

A Ỻanfor aiff yn Ỻyn.

Bala old the lake has had, and Bala newThe lake will have, and Ỻanfor too.

Bala old the lake has had, and Bala new

The lake will have, and Ỻanfor too.

This probably implies that old Bala is beneath the lake, and that the present Bala is to meet the like fate at some time to come. This kind of prophecy is not very uncommon: thus there has been one current as to the Montgomeryshire town of Pool, called, in Welsh, Traỻwng or Traỻwm, and in English, Welshpool, to distinguish it from the English town of Pool. As to Welshpool, a very deep water called Ỻyn Du, lying between the town and theCasteỻ Cochor Powys Castle, and right in the domain of the castle, is suddenly to spread itself, and one fine market day to engulf the whole place14. Further, when I was a boy in North Cardiganshire, the following couplet was quite familiar to me, and supposed to have been one of Merlin’s prophecies:—

Caer Fyrđin, cei oer fore;Daear a’th lwnc, dw’r i’th le.Carmarthen, a cold morn awaits thee;Earth gapes, and water in thy place will be.

Caer Fyrđin, cei oer fore;Daear a’th lwnc, dw’r i’th le.

Caer Fyrđin, cei oer fore;

Daear a’th lwnc, dw’r i’th le.

Carmarthen, a cold morn awaits thee;Earth gapes, and water in thy place will be.

Carmarthen, a cold morn awaits thee;

Earth gapes, and water in thy place will be.

In regard to the earlier half of the line, concerning Bala gone, the story of Ffynnon Gywer might be said to explain it, but there is another which is later and far better known. It is of the same kind as the storiesrelated in Welsh concerning Ỻynclys and Syfađon; but I reserve it with these and others of the same sort for chapter vii.

For the next legend belonging here I have to thank the Rev. J. Fisher, a native of the parish of Ỻandybïe, who, in spite of his name, is a genuine Welshman, and—what is more—a Welsh scholar. The following are his words:—‘Ỻyn Ỻech Owen (the last word is locally soundedw-en, likeoo-enin English, as is also the personal name Owen) is on Mynyđ Mawr, in the ecclesiastical parish of Gors Lâs, and the civil parish of Ỻanarthney, Carmarthenshire. It is a small lake, forming the source of the Gwendraeth Fawr. I have heard the tradition about its origin told by several persons, and by all, until quite recently, pretty much in the same form. In 1884 I took it down from my grandfather, Rees Thomas (b.1809,d.1892), of Cil Coỻ Ỻandebïe—a very intelligent man, with a good fund of old-world Welsh lore—who had lived all his life in the neighbouring parishes of Ỻandeilo Fawr and Ỻandybïe.

‘The following is the version of the story (translated) as I had it from him:—There was once a man of the name of Owen living on Mynyđ Mawr, and he had a well, “ffynnon.” Over this well he kept a large flag (“fflagen neu lech fawr”: “fflagen” is the word in common use now in these parts for a large flat stone), which he was always careful to replace over its mouth after he had satisfied himself or his beast with water. It happened, however, that one day he went on horseback to the well to water his horse, and forgot to put the flag back in its place. He rode off leisurely in the direction of his home; but, after he had gone some distance, he casually looked back, and, to his great astonishment, he saw that the well had burst out and was overflowing the whole place. He suddenly bethought him that he should rideback and encompass the overflow of the water as fast as he could; and it was the horse’s track in galloping round the water that put a stop to its further overflow. It is fully believed that, had he not galloped round the flood in the way he did, the well would have been sure to inundate the whole district and drown all. Hence the lake was called the Lake of Owen’s Flag, “Ỻyn Ỻech Owen.”

‘I have always felt interested in this story, as it resembled that about the formation of Lough Neagh, &c.; and, happening to meet the Rev. D. Harwood Hughes, B.A., the vicar of Gors Lâs (St. Ỻeian’s), last August (1892), I asked him to tell me the legend as he had heard it in his parish. He said that he had been told it, but in a form different from mine, where the “Owen” was said to have been Owen Glyndwr. This is the substance of the legend as he had heard it:—Owen Glyndwr, when once passing through these parts, arrived here of an evening. He came across a well, and, having watered his horse, placed a stone over it in order to find it again next morning. He then went to lodge for the night at Dyỻgoed Farm, close by. In the morning, before proceeding on his journey, he took his horse to the well to give him water, but found to his surprise that the well had become a lake.’

Mr. Fisher goes on to mention the later history of the lake: how, some eighty years ago, its banks were the resort on Sunday afternoons of the young people of the neighbourhood, and how a Baptist preacher put an end to their amusements and various kinds of games by preaching at them. However, the lake-side appears to be still a favourite spot for picnics and Sunday-school gatherings. Mr. Fisher was quite right in appending to his own version that of his friend; but, from the point of view of folklore, I must confess that I can makenothing of the latter: it differs from the older one as much as chalk does from cheese. It would be naturally gratifying to the pride of local topography to be able to connect with the pool the name of Owen Glyndwr; but it is worthy of note that this highly respectable attempt to rationalize the legend wholly fails, as it does not explain why there is now a lake where there was once but a well. In other words, the euhemerized story is itself evidence corroborative of Mr. Fisher’s older version, which is furthermore kept in countenance by Howells’ account, p. 104, where we are told who the Owen in question was, namely, Owen Lawgoch, a personage dear, as we shall see later, to the Welsh legend of the district. He and his men had their abode in a cave on the northern side of Mynyđ Mawr, and while there Owen used, we are informed, to water his steed at a fine spring covered with a large stone, which it required the strength of a giant to lift. But one day he forgot to replace it, and when he next sought the well he found the lake. He returned to his cave and told his men what had happened. Thereupon both he and they fell into a sleep, which is to last till it is broken by the sound of a trumpet and the clang of arms on Rhiw Goch: then they are to sally forth to conquer.

Now the story as told by Howells and Fisher provokes comparison, as the latter suggests, with the Irish legend of the formation of Lough Ree and of Lough Neagh in the story of the Death of Eochaid McMaireda15. In bothof these legends also there is a horse, a kind of water-horse, who forms the well which eventually overflows and becomes Lough Ree, and so with the still larger body of water known as Lough Neagh. In the latter case the fairy well was placed in the charge of a woman; but she one day left the cover of the well open, and the catastrophe took place—the water issued forth and overflowed the country. One of Eochaid’s daughters, named Líban, however, was not drowned, but only changed into a salmon as already mentioned at p. 376 above. In myArthurian Legend, p. 361, I have attempted to show that the nameLíbanmay have its Welsh equivalent in that ofỺïon, occurring in the name ofỺyn Ỻïon, or Ỻïon’s Lake, the bursting of which is described in the latest series of Triads, iii. 13, 97, as causing a sort of deluge. I am not certain as to the nature of the relationship between those names, but it seems evident that the stories have a common substratum, though it is to be noticed that no well, fairy or otherwise, figures in the Ỻyn Ỻïon legend, which makes the presence of the monster called the afanc the cause of the waters bursting forth. So Hu the Mighty, with his team of famous oxen, is made to drag the afanc out of the lake.

There is, however, another Welsh legend concerning a great overflow in which a well does figure: I allude to that ofCantre’r Gwaelod, or the Bottom Hundred, a fine spacious country supposed to be submerged in Cardigan Bay. Modern euhemerism treats it as defended by embankments and sluices, which, we are told, were in the charge of the prince of the country, named Seithennin, who, being one day in his cups, forgot to shut the sluices, and thus brought about the inundation, which was the end of his fertile realm. This, however, is not the old legend: that speaks of a well, and lays the blame on a woman—a pretty sure sign of antiquity, asthe reader may judge from other old stories which will readily occur to him. The Welsh legend to which I allude is embodied in a short poem in theBlack Book of Carmarthen16: it consists of eight triplets, to which is added a triplet from the Englynion of the Graves. The following is the original with a tentative translation:—

Seithenhin sawde allan.ac edrẏchuirde varanres mor.maes guitnev rẏtoes.Boed emendiceid ẏ morvinaehellẏgaut guẏdi cvin.finaun wenestir17mor terruin.Boed emendiceid ẏ vachteith.ae . golligaut guẏdi gueith.finaun wenestir mor diffeith.Diaspadmereridẏ ar vann caer.hid ar duu ẏ dodir.gnaud guẏdi traha trangc hir.Diaspad mererid . ẏ ar van kaer hetiv.hid ar duu ẏ dadoluch.gnaud guẏdi traha attreguch.Diaspad mererid am gorchuit heno.ac nimhaut gorlluit.gnaud guẏdi traha tramguit.Diaspad mererid ẏ ar gwinev kadirkedaul duv ae gorev.gnaud guẏdi gormot eissev.Diaspad mererid . am kẏmhell henoẏ urth uẏistauell.gnaud guẏdi traha trangc pell.Bet seithenhin sẏnhuir vannrug kaer kenedir a glan.mor maurhidic a kinran.Seithennin, stand thou forthAnd see the vanguard of the main:Gwyđno’s plain has it covered.Accursed be the maidenWho let it loose after supping,Well cup-bearer of the mighty main.Accursed be the damselWho let it loose after battle,Well minister of the high sea.Mererid’s cry from a city’s height,Even to God is it directed:After pride comes a long pause.Mererid’s cry from a city’s height to-day,Even to God her expiation:After pride comes reflection.Mererid’s cry o’ercomes me to-night,Nor can I readily prosper:After pride comes a fall.Mererid’s cry over strong wines,Bounteous God has wrought it:After excess comes privation.Mererid’s cry drives me to-nightFrom my chamber away:After insolence comes long death.Weak-witted Seithennin’s grave is itBetween Kenedyr’s Fort and the shore,With majestic Mor’s and Kynran’s.

Seithenhin sawde allan.ac edrẏchuirde varanres mor.maes guitnev rẏtoes.

Seithenhin sawde allan.

ac edrẏchuirde varanres mor.

maes guitnev rẏtoes.

Boed emendiceid ẏ morvinaehellẏgaut guẏdi cvin.finaun wenestir17mor terruin.

Boed emendiceid ẏ morvin

aehellẏgaut guẏdi cvin.

finaun wenestir17mor terruin.

Boed emendiceid ẏ vachteith.ae . golligaut guẏdi gueith.finaun wenestir mor diffeith.

Boed emendiceid ẏ vachteith.

ae . golligaut guẏdi gueith.

finaun wenestir mor diffeith.

Diaspadmereridẏ ar vann caer.hid ar duu ẏ dodir.gnaud guẏdi traha trangc hir.

Diaspadmereridẏ ar vann caer.

hid ar duu ẏ dodir.

gnaud guẏdi traha trangc hir.

Diaspad mererid . ẏ ar van kaer hetiv.hid ar duu ẏ dadoluch.gnaud guẏdi traha attreguch.

Diaspad mererid . ẏ ar van kaer hetiv.

hid ar duu ẏ dadoluch.

gnaud guẏdi traha attreguch.

Diaspad mererid am gorchuit heno.ac nimhaut gorlluit.gnaud guẏdi traha tramguit.

Diaspad mererid am gorchuit heno.

ac nimhaut gorlluit.

gnaud guẏdi traha tramguit.

Diaspad mererid ẏ ar gwinev kadirkedaul duv ae gorev.gnaud guẏdi gormot eissev.

Diaspad mererid ẏ ar gwinev kadir

kedaul duv ae gorev.

gnaud guẏdi gormot eissev.

Diaspad mererid . am kẏmhell henoẏ urth uẏistauell.gnaud guẏdi traha trangc pell.

Diaspad mererid . am kẏmhell heno

ẏ urth uẏistauell.

gnaud guẏdi traha trangc pell.

Bet seithenhin sẏnhuir vannrug kaer kenedir a glan.mor maurhidic a kinran.

Bet seithenhin sẏnhuir vann

rug kaer kenedir a glan.

mor maurhidic a kinran.

Seithennin, stand thou forthAnd see the vanguard of the main:Gwyđno’s plain has it covered.

Seithennin, stand thou forth

And see the vanguard of the main:

Gwyđno’s plain has it covered.

Accursed be the maidenWho let it loose after supping,Well cup-bearer of the mighty main.

Accursed be the maiden

Who let it loose after supping,

Well cup-bearer of the mighty main.

Accursed be the damselWho let it loose after battle,Well minister of the high sea.

Accursed be the damsel

Who let it loose after battle,

Well minister of the high sea.

Mererid’s cry from a city’s height,Even to God is it directed:After pride comes a long pause.

Mererid’s cry from a city’s height,

Even to God is it directed:

After pride comes a long pause.

Mererid’s cry from a city’s height to-day,Even to God her expiation:After pride comes reflection.

Mererid’s cry from a city’s height to-day,

Even to God her expiation:

After pride comes reflection.

Mererid’s cry o’ercomes me to-night,Nor can I readily prosper:After pride comes a fall.

Mererid’s cry o’ercomes me to-night,

Nor can I readily prosper:

After pride comes a fall.

Mererid’s cry over strong wines,Bounteous God has wrought it:After excess comes privation.

Mererid’s cry over strong wines,

Bounteous God has wrought it:

After excess comes privation.

Mererid’s cry drives me to-nightFrom my chamber away:After insolence comes long death.

Mererid’s cry drives me to-night

From my chamber away:

After insolence comes long death.

Weak-witted Seithennin’s grave is itBetween Kenedyr’s Fort and the shore,With majestic Mor’s and Kynran’s.

Weak-witted Seithennin’s grave is it

Between Kenedyr’s Fort and the shore,

With majestic Mor’s and Kynran’s.

The names in these lines present great difficulties: first comes that ofMererid, which is no other word thanMargarita, ‘a pearl,’ borrowed; but what does it here mean?Margarita, besides meaning a pearl, was used in Welsh, e.g. under the formMarereda18, as the proper name written in EnglishMargaret. That is probably how it is to be taken here, namely, as the name given to the negligent guardian of the fairy well. It cannot very well be, however, the name belonging to the original form of the legend; and we have the somewhat parallel case ofFfynnon Grassi, or Grace’s Well; but what old Celtic name that of Mererid has replaced in the story, I cannot say. In the next place, nobody has been able to identifyCaer Kenedyr, and I have nothing to say as toMor Maurhidic, except that a person of that name is mentioned in another of the Englynion of the Graves. It runs thus in theBlack Book, fol. 33a:—

Bet mor maurhidic diessic unben.post kinhen kinteic.mab peredur penwetic.The grave of Mor the Grand, … prince,Pillar of the … conflict,Son of Peredur of Penweđig.

Bet mor maurhidic diessic unben.post kinhen kinteic.mab peredur penwetic.

Bet mor maurhidic diessic unben.

post kinhen kinteic.

mab peredur penwetic.

The grave of Mor the Grand, … prince,Pillar of the … conflict,Son of Peredur of Penweđig.

The grave of Mor the Grand, … prince,

Pillar of the … conflict,

Son of Peredur of Penweđig.

The last name in the final triplet of the poem which I have attempted to translate isKinran, which is otherwise unknown as a Welsh name; but I am inclined to identify it with that of one of the three who escaped the catastrophe in the Irish legend. The name there isCurnán, which was borne by the idiot of the family,who, like many later idiots, was at the same time a prophet. For he is represented as always prophesying that the waters were going to burst forth, and as advising his friends to prepare boats. So he may be set, after a fashion, over against ourSeithenhin synhuir vann, ‘S. of the feeble mind.’ But one might perhaps ask why I do not point out an equivalent in Irish for the Welsh Seithennin, as his name is now pronounced. The fact is that no such equivalent occurs in the Irish story in question, nor exactly, so far as I know, in any other.

That is what I wrote when penning these notes; but it has occurred to me since then, that there is an Irish name, an important Irish name, which looks as if related toSeithenhin, and that isSetanta Beg, ‘the little Setantian,’ the first name of the Irish hero Cúchulainn. Thent, I may point out, makes one suspect thatSetantais a name of Brythonic origin in Irish; and I have been in the habit of associating it with that of the people of the Setantii19, placed by Ptolemy on the coast of what is now Lancashire. Whether any legend has ever been current about a country submerged on the coast of Lancashire I cannot say, but the soundings would make such a legend quite comprehensible. I remember, however, reading somewhere as to the Plain of Muirthemhne, of which Cúchulainn, our Setanta Beg, had special charge, that it was so called because it had once been submarine and become since the converse, so to say, of Seithennin’s country. The latter is beneath Cardigan Bay, while the other fringed the opposite side of the sea, consisting as it did of the level portion of County Louth. On the whole, I am not altogether indisposed to believe that we have here traces of an ancient legendof a wider scope than is represented by theBlack Booktriplets, which I have essayed to translate. I think that I am right in recognizing that legend in theMabinogiof Branwen, daughter of Ỻyr. There we read that, when Brân and his men crossed from Wales to Ireland, the intervening sea consisted merely of two navigable rivers, called Ỻi and Archan. The story-teller adds words to the effect, that it is only since then the sea has multiplied its realms20between Ireland andYnys y Kedyrn, or the Isle of the Keiri, a name which has already been discussed: see pp. 279–83.

These are not all the questions which such stories suggest; for Seithennin is represented in later Welsh literature as the son of oneSeithyn, associated with Dyfed; and the nameSeithynleads off to the coast of Brittany. For I learn from a paper by the late M. le Men, in theRevue Archéologiquefor 1872 (xxiii. 52), that the Île de Sein is called in BretonEnez-Sun, in whichSunis a dialectic shortening ofSizun, which is also met with asSeidhun. That being so, one would seem to be right in regarding Sizun as nearly related to ourSeithyn. That is not all—the tradition reminds one of the Welsh legend: M. le Men refers to theVie du P. Maunoirby Boschet (Paris, 1697) p. 126, and adds that, in his own time, the road ending on the Pointe du Raz opposite the Île de Sein passed ‘pour être l’ancien chemin qui conduisait à la ville d’Is (Kaer-a-Is, la ville de la partie basse).’ It is my own experience, that nobody can go about much in Brittany without hearing over and over again about the submerged city of Is. There is no doubt that we have in these names distant echoes of an inundation story, once widely current in both Britains and perhaps also in Ireland. With regard to Wales we have an indicationto that effect in the fact, that Gwyđno, to whom the inundated region is treated as having belonged, is associated not only with Cardigan Bay, but also with the coast of North Wales, especially the part of it situated between Bangor and Ỻandudno21. Adjoining it is supposed to lie submerged a once fertile district called Tyno Helig, a legend about which will come under notice later. This brings the inundation story nearer to the coast where Ptolemy in the second century located the Harbour of the Setantii, about the mouth of the river Ribble, and in their name we seem to have some sort of a historical basis for that of the drunken Seithennin22. I cannot close these remarks better than byappending what Professor Boyd Dawkins has recently said with regard to the sea between Britain and Ireland:—

‘It may be interesting to remark further that during the time of the Iberian dominion in Wales, the geography of the seaboard was different to what it is now. A forest, containing the remains of their domestic oxen that had run wild, and of the indigenous wild animals such as the bear and the red deer, united Anglesey with the mainland, and occupied the shallows of Cardigan Bay, known in legend as “the lost lands of Wales.” It extended southwards from the present sea margin across the estuary of the Severn, to Somerset, Devon, and Cornwall. It passed northwards across the Irish Sea off the coast of Cheshire and Lancashire, and occupied Morecambe Bay with a dense growth of oak, Scotch fir, alder, birch, and hazel. It ranged seawards beyond the ten-fathom line, and is to be found on mostshores beneath the sand-banks and mud-banks, as for example at Rhyl and Cardiff. In Cardigan Bay it excited the wonder of Giraldus de Barri23.’

To return to fairy wells, I have to confess that I cannot decide what may be precisely the meaning of the notion of a well with a woman set carefully to see that the door or cover of the well is kept shut. It will occur, however, to everybody to compare the well which Undine wished to have kept shut, on account of its affording a ready access from her subterranean country to the residence of her refractory knight in his castle above ground. And in the case of the Glasfryn Lake, the walling and cover that were to keep the spring from overflowing were, according to the story, not water-tight, seeing that there were holes made in one of the stones. This suggests the idea that the cover was to prevent the passage of some such full-grown fairies as those with which legend seems to have once peopled all the pools and tarns of Wales. But, in the next place, is the maiden in charge of the well to be regarded as priestess of the well? The idea of a priesthood in connexion with wells in Wales is not wholly unknown.

I wish, however, before discussing these instances, to call attention to one or two Irish ones which point in another direction. Foremost may be mentioned the source of the river Boyne, which is now called Trinity Well, situated in the Barony of Carbury, in County Kildare. The following is the RennesDindsenchasconcerning it, as translated by Dr. Stokes, in theRevue Celtique, xv. 315–6:—‘Bóand, wife of Nechtán son of Labraid, went to the secret well which was in the green of Síd Nechtáin. Whoever went to it would not comefrom it without his two eyes bursting, unless it were Nechtán himself and his three cup-bearers, whose names were Flesc and Lám and Luam. Once upon a time Bóand went through pride to test the well’s power, and declared that it had no secret force which could shatter her form, and thrice she walked withershins round the well. (Whereupon) three waves from the well break over her and deprive her of a thigh [?wounded her thigh] and one of her hands and one of her eyes. Then she, fleeing her shame, turns seaward, with the water behind her as far as Boyne-mouth, (where she was drowned).’ This is to explain why the river is calledBóand, ‘Boyne.’ A version to the same effect in theBook of Leinster, fol. 191a, makes the general statement that no one who gazed right into the well could avoid the instant ruin of his two eyes or otherwise escape with impunity. A similar story is related to show how the Shannon, in IrishSinann,Sinand, orSinend, is called after a woman of that name. It occurs in the same Rennes manuscript, and the following is Stokes’ translation in theRevue Celtique, xv. 457:—‘Sinend, daughter of Lodan Lucharglan son of Ler out of Tir Tairngire (Land of Promise, Fairyland), went to Connla’s Well, which is under sea, to behold it. That is a well at which are the hazels and inspirations (?) of wisdom, that is, the hazels of the science of poetry, and in the same hour their fruit and their blossom and their foliage break forth, and these fall on the well in the same shower, which raises on the water a royal surge of purple. Then the salmon chew the fruit, and the juice of the nuts is apparent on their purple bellies. And seven streams of wisdom spring forth and turn there again. Now Sinend went to seek the inspiration, for she wanted nothing save only wisdom. She went with the stream till she reachedLinn Mna Feile, “thePool of the Modest Woman,” that is Bri Ele—and she went ahead on her journey; but the well left its place, and she followed it24to the banks of the riverTarr-cáin, “Fair-back.” After this it overwhelmed her, so that her back (tarr) went upwards, and when she had come to the land on this side (of the Shannon) she tasted death. WhenceSinannandLinn Mna FeileandTarr-cain.’

In these stories the reader will have noticed that the foremost punishment on any intruder who looked into the forbidden well was the instant ruin of his two eyes. One naturally asks why the eyes are made the special objects of the punishment, and I am inclined to think the meaning to have originally been that the well or spring was regarded as the eye of the divinity of the water. Should this prove well founded it looks natural that the eyes, which transgressed by gazing into the eye of the divinity, should be the first objects of that divinity’s vengeance. This is suggested to me by the fact that the regular Welsh word for the source of a river isỻygad, Old Welshlicat, ‘eye,’ as for instance in the case ofLicat Amirmentioned by Nennius, § 73; ofỺygad Ỻychwr, ‘the source of the Loughor river’ in the hills behind Carreg Cennen Castle; and of the weird lake in which the Rheidol25rises near the top of Plinlimmon: it is calledỺyn Ỻygad y Rheidol, ‘the Lake of the Rheidol’s Eye.’ By the way, the Rheidol is not wholly without its folklore, for I used to be told in my childhood, that she and the Wye and the Severn sallied forth simultaneously from Plinlimmon one fine morningto run a race to the sea. The result was, one was told, that the Rheidol won great honour by reaching the sea three weeks before her bigger sisters. Somebody has alluded to the legend in the following lines:—

Tair afon gynt a rifwydAr đwyfron Pumlumon lwyd,Hafren a Gwy’n hyfryd ei gweđ,A’r Rheidol fawr ei hanrhydeđ.Three rivers of yore were seenOn grey Plinlimmon’s breast,Severn, and Wye of pleasant mien,And Rheidol rich in great renown.

Tair afon gynt a rifwydAr đwyfron Pumlumon lwyd,Hafren a Gwy’n hyfryd ei gweđ,A’r Rheidol fawr ei hanrhydeđ.

Tair afon gynt a rifwyd

Ar đwyfron Pumlumon lwyd,

Hafren a Gwy’n hyfryd ei gweđ,

A’r Rheidol fawr ei hanrhydeđ.

Three rivers of yore were seenOn grey Plinlimmon’s breast,Severn, and Wye of pleasant mien,And Rheidol rich in great renown.

Three rivers of yore were seen

On grey Plinlimmon’s breast,

Severn, and Wye of pleasant mien,

And Rheidol rich in great renown.

To return to the Irish legends, I may mention that Eugene O’Curry has a good deal to say of the mysterious nuts and ‘the salmon of knowledge,’ the partaking of which was synonymous with the acquisition of knowledge and wisdom: see hisManners and Customs of the Ancient Irish, ii. 142–4. He gives it as his opinion that Connla’s Well was situated somewhere in Lower Ormond; but the locality of this Helicon, with the seven streams of wisdom circulating out of it and back again into it, is more intelligible when regarded as a matter of fairy geography. A portion of the note appended to the foregoing legend by Stokes is in point here: he traces the earliest mention of the nine hazels of wisdom, growing at the heads of the chief rivers of Ireland, to the Dialogue of the Two Sages in theBook of Leinster, fol. 186b, whence he cites the poet Néde mac Adnai saying whence he had come, as follows:—a caillib .i. a nói collaib na Segsa … a caillib didiu assa mbenaiter clessa na súad tanacsa, ‘from hazels, to wit, from the nine hazels of the Segais … from hazels out of which are obtained the feats of the sages, I have come.’ The relevancy of this passage will be seen when I add, that Segais was one of the names of the mound in which the Boyne rises; so it may be safely inferred that Bóand’s transgression was of the same nature as that of Sinand, to wit, that of intruding on sacred ground in quest of wisdom and inspiration whichwas not permitted their sex: certain sources of knowledge, certainquellen, were reserved for men alone.

Before I have done with the Irish instances I must append one in the form it was told me in the summer of 1894: I was in Meath and went to see the remarkable chambered cairns on the hill known asSliabh na Caillighe, ‘the Hag’s Mountain,’ near Oldcastle and Lough Crew. I had as my guide a young shepherd whom I picked up on the way. He knew all about the hag after whom the hill was called except her name: she was, he said, a giantess, and so she brought there, in three apronfuls, the stones forming the three principal cairns. As to the cairn on the hill point known as Belrath, that is called the Chair Cairn from a big stone placed there by the hag to serve as her seat when she wished to have a quiet look on the country round. But usually she was to be seen riding on a wonderful pony she had: that creature was so nimble and strong that it used to take the hag at a leap from one hill-top to another. However, the end of it all was that the hag rode so hard that the pony fell down, and that both horse and rider were killed. The hag appears to have beenCailleach Bhéara, orCaillech Bérre, ‘the Old Woman of Beare,’ that is, Bearhaven, in County Cork26. Now the viewfrom the Hag’s Mountain is very extensive, and I asked the shepherd to point out some places in the distance. Among other things we could see Lough Ramor, which he called the Virginia Water, and more to the west he identified Lough Sheelin, about which he had the following legend to tell:—A long, long time ago there was no lake there, but only a well with a flagstone kept over it, and everybody would put the flag back after taking water out of the well. But one day a woman who fetched water from it forgot to replace the stone, and the water burst forth in pursuit of the luckless woman, who fled as hard as she could before the angry flood. She continued until she had run about seven miles—the estimated length of the lake at the present day. Now at this point a man, who was busily mowing hay in the field through which she was running, saw what was happening and mowed the woman down with his scythe, whereupon the water advanced no further. Such was the shepherd’s yarn, which partly agrees with the Boyne and Shannon stories in that the woman was pursued by the water, which only stopped where she died. On the other hand, it resembles the Ỻyn Ỻech Owen legend and that of Lough Neagh in placing to the woman’s charge only the neglect to cover the well. It looks as if we had in these stories a confusion of two different institutions, one being a well of wisdom which no woman durst visit without fatal vengeance overtaking her, and the other a fairy well which was attended to by a woman who was to keep it covered, and who may, perhaps, be regarded as priestess of the spring. If we try to interpret the Cantre’r Gwaelod story from these two points of view we have to note the following matters:—Though it is not said that themoruin, or damsel, had a lid or cover on the well, the wordgolligautorhelligaut, ‘did let run,’ implies some such an ideaas that of a lid or door; for opening the sluices, in the sense of the later version, seems to me out of the question. In two of the Englynion she is cursed for the action implied, and if she was the well minister or well servant, as I takefinaun wenestirto mean, we might perhaps regard her as the priestess of that spring. On the other hand, the prevailing note in the other Englynion is thetraha, ‘presumption, arrogance, insolence, pride,’ which forms the burden of four out of five of them. This would seem to point to an attitude on the part of the damsel resembling that of Bóand or Sinand when prying into the secrets of wells which were tabu to them. The seventh Englyn alludes to wines, and its burden isgormođ, ‘too much, excess, extravagance,’ whereby the poet seems to lend countenance to some such a later story as that of Seithennin’s intemperance.

Lastly, the question of priest or priestess of a sacred well has been alluded to once or twice, and it may be perhaps illustrated on Welsh ground by the history of Ffynnon Eilian, or St. Elian’s Well, which has been mentioned in another context, p. 357 above. Of that well we read as follows, s. v.Ỻandriỻo, in the third edition of Lewis’Topographical Dictionary of Wales:—‘Fynnon Elian, … even in the present age, is frequently visited by the superstitious, for the purpose of invoking curses upon the heads of those who have grievously offended them, and also of supplicating prosperity to themselves; but the numbers are evidently decreasing. The ceremony is performed by the applicant standing upon a certain spot near the well, whilst the owner of it reads a few passages of the sacred Scriptures, and then, taking a small quantity of water, gives it to the former to drink, and throws the residue over his head, which is repeated three times, the party continuing to mutter imprecationsin whatever terms his vengeance may dictate.’ Rice Rees, in hisEssay on the Welsh Saints(London, 1836), p. 267, speaks of St. Elian as follows: ‘Miraculous cures were lately supposed to be performed at his shrine at Ỻanelian, Anglesey; and near to the church of Ỻanelian, Denbighshire, is a well called Ffynnon Elian, which is thought by the peasantry of the neighbourhood to be endued with miraculous powers even at present.’

Foulkes, s. v.Elian, in hisEnwogion Cymru, published in Liverpool in 1870, expresses the opinion that the visits of the superstitious to the well had ceased for some time. The last person supposed to have had charge of the well was a certain John Evans, but some of the most amusing stories of the shrewdness of the caretaker refer to a woman who had charge of the well before Evans’ time. A series of articles onFfynnon Eilianappeared in 1861 in a Welsh periodical calledY Nofelyđ, printed by Mr. Aubrey at Ỻanerch y Međ, in Anglesey. The articles in question were afterwards published, I am told, as a shilling book, which I have not seen, and they dealt with the superstition, with the history of John Evans, and with his confessions and conversion. I have searched in vain for any account in Welsh of the ritual followed at the well. When Mrs. Silvan Evans visited the place, the person in charge of the well was a woman, and Peter Roberts, in hisCambrian Popular Antiquities, published in London in 1815, alludes to her or a predecessor of hers in the following terms, p. 246:—‘Near the Well resided some worthless and infamous wretch, who officiated as priestess.’ He furthermore gives one to understand that she kept a book in which she registered the name of each evil wisher for a trifling sum of money. When this had been done, a pin was dropped into the well inthe name of the victim. This proceeding looks adequate from the magical point of view, though less complicated than the ritual indicated by Lewis. This latter writer calls the person who took charge of the well the owner; and I have always understood that, whether owner or not, he or she used to receive gifts, not only for placing in the well the names of men who were to be cursed, but also from those men for taking their names out again, so as to relieve them from the malediction. In fact, the trade in curses seems to have been a very thriving one: its influence was powerful and widespread.

Here there is, I think, very little doubt that the owner or guardian of the well was, so to say, the representative of an ancient priesthood of the well. That priesthood dated its origin probably many centuries before a Christian church was built near the well, and coming down to later times we have unfortunately no sufficient data to show how the right to such priesthood was acquired, whether by inheritance or otherwise; but we know that a woman might have charge of St. Elian’s Well.

Let me cite another instance, which I unexpectedly discovered some years ago in the course of a ramble in quest of early inscriptions. Among other places which I visited was Ỻandeilo Ỻwydarth, near Maen Clochog, in the northern part of Pembrokeshire. This is one of the many churches bearing the name of St. Teilo in South Wales: the building is in ruins, but the churchyard is still used, and contains two of the most ancient post-Roman inscriptions in the Principality. If you ask now for ‘Ỻandeilo’ in this district, you will be understood to be inquiring after the farm house of that name, close to the old church; and I learnt from the landlady that her family had been there for many generations, though they have not very long been the proprietors ofthe land. She also told me of St. Teilo’s Well, a little above the house: she added that it was considered to have the property of curing the whooping-cough. I asked if there was any rite or ceremony necessary to be performed in order to derive benefit from the water. Certainly, I was told: the water must be lifted out of the well and given to the patient to drink by some member of the family. To be more accurate, I ought to say that this must be done by somebody born in the house. Her eldest son, however, had told me previously, when I was busy with the inscriptions, that the water must be given to the patient by the heir, not by anybody else. Then came my question how the water was lifted, or out of what the patient had to drink, to which I was answered that it was out of the skull. ‘What skull?’ said I. ‘St. Teilo’s skull,’ was the answer. ‘Where do you get the saint’s skull?’ I asked. ‘Here it is,’ was the answer, and I was given it to handle and examine. I know next to nothing about skulls; but it struck me that it was the upper portion of a thick, strong skull, and it called to my mind the story of the three churches which contended for the saint’s corpse. That story will be found in theBook of Ỻan Dâv, pp. 116–7, and according to it the contest became so keen that it had to be settled by prayer and fasting. So, in the morning, lo and behold! there were three corpses of St. Teilo—not simply one—and so like were they in features and stature that nobody could tell which were the corpses made to order and which the old one. I should have guessed that the skull which I saw belonged to the former description, as not having been much thinned by the owner’s use of it; but this I am forbidden to do by the fact that, according to the legend, this particular Ỻandeilo was not one of the three contending churches which bore away in triumpha dead Teilo each. The reader, perhaps, would like to take another view, namely, that the story has been edited in such a way as to reduce a larger number of Teilos to three, in order to gratify the Welsh weakness for triads.

Since my visit to the neighbourhood I have been favoured with an account of the well as it is now current there. My informant is Mr. Benjamin Gibby of Ỻangolman Mill, who writes mentioning, among other things, that the people around call the wellFfynnon yr Ychen, or the Oxen’s Well, and that the family owning and occupying the farm house of Ỻandeilo have been there for centuries. Their name, which is Melchior (pronounced Melshor), is by no means a common one in the Principality, so far as I know; but, whatever may be its history in Wales, the bearers of it are excellent Kymry. Mr. Gibby informs me that the current story solves the difficulty as to the saint’s skull as follows:—The saint had a favourite maid servant from the Pembrokeshire Ỻandeilo: she was a beautiful woman, and had the privilege of attending on the saint when he was on his death-bed. As his end was approaching he gave his maid a strict and solemn command that in a year’s time from the day of his burial at Ỻandeilo Fawr, in Carmarthenshire, she was to take his skull to the other Ỻandeilo, and to leave it there to be a blessing to coming generations of men, who, when ailing, would have their health restored by drinking water out of it. So the belief prevailed that to drink out of the skull some of the water of Teilo’s Well ensured health, especially against the whooping-cough. The faith of some of those who used to visit the well was so great in its efficacy, that they were wont to leave it, he says, with their constitutions wonderfully improved; and he mentions a story related to him by an old neighbour,Stifyn Ifan, who has been dead for some years, to the effect that a carriage, drawn by four horses, came once, more than half a century ago, to Ỻandeilo. It was full of invalids coming from Pen Clawđ, in Gower, Glamorganshire, to try the water of the well. They returned, however, no better than they came; for though they had drunk of the well, they had neglected to do so out of the skull. This was afterwards pointed out to them by somebody, and they resolved to make the long journey to the well again. This time they did the right thing, we are told, and departed in excellent health.

Such are the contents of Mr. Gibby’s Welsh letter; and I would now only point out that we have here an instance of a well which was probably sacred before the time of St. Teilo: in fact, one would possibly be right in supposing that the sanctity of the well and its immediate surroundings was one of the causes why the site was chosen by a Christian missionary. But consider for a moment what has happened: the well paganism has annexed the saint, and established a belief ascribing to him the skull used in the well ritual. The landlady and her family, it is true, neither believe in the efficacy of the well, nor take gifts from those who visit the well; but they continue, out of kindness, as they put it, to hand the skull full of water to any one who perseveres in believing in it. In other words, the faith in the well continues in a measure intact, while the walls of the church have long fallen into utter decay. Such is the great persistence of some primitive beliefs; and in this particular instance we have a succession which seems to point unmistakably to an ancient priesthood of a sacred spring.

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