1As to the spelling of Welsh names, it may be pointed out for the benefit of English readers that Welshfhas the sound of Englishv, while the sound of Englishfis writtenff(andph) in Welsh, and however strange it may seem to them that the writtenfshould be soundedv, it is borrowed from an old English alphabet which did so likewise more or less systematically.Thin such English words asthinandbreathis writtenth, but the soft sound as inthisandbreatheis usually printed in Welshddand written in modern Welsh manuscript sometimes δ, like a small Greek delta: this will be found represented byđin the Welsh extracts edited by me in this volume.—J. R.↑2‘Blaensawđe, or the upper end of the river Sawđe, is situate about three-quarters of a mile south-east from the village of Ỻanđeusant. It gives its name to one of the hamlets of that parish. The Sawđe has its source in Ỻyn y Fan Fach, which is nearly two miles distant from Blaensawđe House.’↑3The rendering might be more correctly given thus: ‘O thou of the crimped bread, it is not easy to catch me.’—J. R.↑4‘Myđfai parish was, in former times, celebrated for its fair maidens, but whether they were descendants of the Lady of the Lake or otherwise cannot be determined. An old penniỻ records the fact of their beauty thus:—Mae eira gwynAr ben y bryn,A’r glasgoed yn y Ferdre,Mae bedw mânYnghoed Cwm-brân,A merched glân yn Myđfe.Which may be translated,There is white snowOn the mountain’s brow,And greenwood at the Verdre,Young birch so goodIn Cwm-brân wood,And lovely girls in Myđfe.’↑5Similarly this should be rendered: ‘O thou of the moist bread, I will not have thee.’—J. R.↑6In the best Demetian Welsh this word would behweđel, and in the Gwentian of Glamorgan it isgweđel, mutatedweđel, as may be heard in the neighbourhood of Bridgend.—J. R.↑7This is not generally accepted, as some Welsh antiquarians find reasons to believe that Dafyđ ap Gwilym was buried at Strata Florida.—J. R.↑8This is not quite correct, as I believe that Dr. C. Rice Williams, who lives at Aberystwyth, is one of the Međygon. That means the year 1881, when this chapter was written, excepting the portions concerning which the reader is apprised of a later date.—J. R.↑9Later it will be seen that thetribanin the above form was meant for neither of the two lakes, though it would seem to have adapted itself to several. In the case of the Fan Fach Lake the town meant must have been Carmarthen, and the couplet probably ran thus:Os na cha’i lonyđ yn ym ỻe,Fi fođa dre’ Garfyrđin.↑10Ỻwchis the Goidelic wordlochborrowed, andỺyn Cwm y Ỻwchliterally means the Lake of the Loch Dingle.↑11I make no attempt to translate these lines, but I find that Mr. Ỻewellyn Williams has found a still more obscure version of them, as follows:—Prw međ, prw međ, prw’r gwartheg i dre’,Prw milfach a malfach, pedair ỻualfach,Ỻualfach ac Acli, pedair lafi,Lafi a chromwen, pedair nepwen,Nepwen drwynog, brech yn ỻyn a gwaun dodyn,Tair bryncethin, tair cyffredin,Tair caseg đu, draw yn yr eithin;Dewch i gyd i lys y brenin.↑12The Ty-fry is a house said to be some 200 years old, and situated about two miles from Rhonđa Fechan: more exactly it is about one-fourth of a mile from the station of Ystrad Rhonđa, and stands at the foot of Mynyđ yr Eglwys on the Treorky side. It is now surrounded by the cottages of colliers, one of whom occupies it. For this information I have to thank Mr. Probert Evans.↑13It is to be borne in mind that the sound ofhis uncertain in Glamorganpronunciation, whether the language used is Welsh or English. The pronunciation indicated, however, by Mr. Evans comes near enough to the authentic form writtenElfarch.↑14In the Snowdon district of Gwyneđ the call isdrwi, drwi, drŵ-i bach, while in North Cardiganshire it istrwi, trwi, trw-e fach, also pronounced sometimes with a surdr, produced by making the breath cause both lips to vibrate—tR′wi, tR′wi, which can hardly be distinguished frompR′wi, pR′wi. For the more forcibly the lips are vibrated the more difficult it becomes to start by closing them to pronouncep: so the tendency withR′is to make the preceding consonant into some kind of at.↑15This is the Welsh form of the borrowed nameJane, and its pronunciation in North Cardiganshire is Si̯ân, with si̯ pronounced approximately like thetiof such French words asnationand the like; but of late years I find the si̯ made into Englishshunder the influence, probably, to some extent of the English taught at school. This happens in North Wales, even in districts where there are still plenty of people who cannot approach the English wordsfishandshillingnearer thanfissandsilling. Si̯ôn and Si̯ân represent an old importation of EnglishJohnandJane, but they are now considered old-fashioned and superseded by John and Jane, which I learned to pronounce Dsi̯òn and Dsi̯ên, except that Si̯ôn survives as a family name, written Shone, in the neighbourhood of Wrexham.↑16This termdafad(ordafaden), ‘a sheep,’ also used for ‘a wart,’ anddafad(ordafaden)wyỻt, literally ‘a wild sheep,’ for cancer or epithelioma, raises a question which I am quite unable to answer: why should a wart have been likened to a sheep?↑17The name is probably a shortening of Caweỻyn, and that perhaps ofCaweỻ-lyn, ‘Creel or Basket Lake.’ Its old name is said to have beenỺyn Tarđenni.↑18Tynis a shortening oftyđyn, which is not quite forgotten in the case ofTyn GadlasorTyn Siarlas(forTyđyn Siarlys), ‘Charles’ Tenement,’ in the immediate neighbourhood. Similarly the Anglesey Farm ofTyn yr Onnenused at one time to beTyđyn yr Onnenin the books of Jesus College, Oxford, to which it belongs.↑19That is the pronunciation which I have learnt at Ỻanberis, but there is another, which I have also heard, namelyDerwenyđ.↑20Ystradis the Welsh corresponding to Scotchstrath, and it is nearly related to the English wordstrand. It means the flat land near a river.↑21Betws(orBettws)Garmonseems to mean Germanus’sBede-hūsor House of Prayer, butGarmoncan hardly have come down in Welsh from the time of the famous saint in the fifth century, as it would then have probably yieldedGerfonand notGarmon: it looks as if it had come through the Goidelic of this country.↑22One of the rare merits of our Welsh bards is their habit of assuming permanentnoms de plume, by means of which they prevent a number of excellent native names from falling into utter oblivion in the general chaos of Anglo-Hebrew ones, such as Jones, Davies, and Williams, which cover the Principality. Welsh place-names have similarly been threatened by Hebrew names of chapels, such as Bethesda, Rehoboth, and Jerusalem, but in this direction the Jewish mania has only here and there effected permanent mischief.↑23TheBrythonwas a valuable Welsh periodical published by Mr. Robert Isaac Jones, at Tremadoc, in the years 1858–1863, and edited by the Rev. Chancellor Silvan Evans, who was then the curate of Ỻangïan in Ỻeyn: in fact he was curate for fourteen years! His excellent work in editing theBrythonearned for him his diocesan’s displeasure, but it is easier to imagine than to describe how hard it was for him to resign the honorarium of £24 derived from theBrythonwhen his stipend as a clergyman was only £92, at the same time that he had dependent on him a wife and six children. However much some people affect to laugh at the revival of the national spirit in Wales, we have, I think, got so far as to make it, for some time to come, impossible for a Welsh clergyman to be snubbed on account of his literary tastes or his delight in the archæology of his country.↑24This parish is called after a saint namedTegáiorTygái, likeTyfaelogandTysilio, and though the accent rests on the final syllable nothing could prevent the grammarian Huw Tegai and his friends from making it intoTégaiin Huw’s name.↑25Forcanthey now usually putAnn, and Mr. Hughes remembers hearing it so many years ago.↑26I remember seeing a similar mound at Ỻanfyrnach, in Pembrokeshire; and the last use made of the hollow on the top of this also is supposed to have been for cock-fights.↑27My attention has also been called tofreit,frete,freet,fret, ‘news, inquiry, augury,’ corresponding to Anglo-Saxonfreht, ‘divination.’ But the disparity of meaning seems to stand in the way of ourffritbeing referred to this origin.↑28The OxfordMabinogion, p. 63; Guest, iii. 223.↑29See theItinerarium Kambriæ, i. 2 (pp. 33–5), andCeltic Britain, p. 64.↑30As for example in theArchæologia Cambrensisfor 1870, pp. 192–8; see also 1872, pp. 146–8.↑31Howells has also an account of Ỻyn Savadhan, as he writes it: see hisCambrian Superstitions, pp. 100–2, where he quaintly says that the story of the wickedness of the ancient lord of Syfađon is assigned as the reason why ‘the superstitious little river Lewenny will not mix its water with that of the lake.’Lewennyis a reckless improvement of Mapes’Leueni(printedLenem); and Giraldus’Clamosumimplies an old spellingỺefni, pronounced the same as the later spellingỺyfni, which is now made intoỺynfiorỺynvi: the river so called flows through the lake and into the Wye at Glasbury. As toSafađanorSyfađon, it is probably of Goidelic origin, and to be identified with such an Irish name as the feminineSamthann: see Dec. 19 in the Martyrologies. To keep within our data, we are at liberty to suppose that this was the name of the wicked princess in the story, and that she was the ancestress of a clan once powerful on and around the lake, which lies within a Goidelic area indicated by its Ogam inscriptions.↑
1As to the spelling of Welsh names, it may be pointed out for the benefit of English readers that Welshfhas the sound of Englishv, while the sound of Englishfis writtenff(andph) in Welsh, and however strange it may seem to them that the writtenfshould be soundedv, it is borrowed from an old English alphabet which did so likewise more or less systematically.Thin such English words asthinandbreathis writtenth, but the soft sound as inthisandbreatheis usually printed in Welshddand written in modern Welsh manuscript sometimes δ, like a small Greek delta: this will be found represented byđin the Welsh extracts edited by me in this volume.—J. R.↑2‘Blaensawđe, or the upper end of the river Sawđe, is situate about three-quarters of a mile south-east from the village of Ỻanđeusant. It gives its name to one of the hamlets of that parish. The Sawđe has its source in Ỻyn y Fan Fach, which is nearly two miles distant from Blaensawđe House.’↑3The rendering might be more correctly given thus: ‘O thou of the crimped bread, it is not easy to catch me.’—J. R.↑4‘Myđfai parish was, in former times, celebrated for its fair maidens, but whether they were descendants of the Lady of the Lake or otherwise cannot be determined. An old penniỻ records the fact of their beauty thus:—Mae eira gwynAr ben y bryn,A’r glasgoed yn y Ferdre,Mae bedw mânYnghoed Cwm-brân,A merched glân yn Myđfe.Which may be translated,There is white snowOn the mountain’s brow,And greenwood at the Verdre,Young birch so goodIn Cwm-brân wood,And lovely girls in Myđfe.’↑5Similarly this should be rendered: ‘O thou of the moist bread, I will not have thee.’—J. R.↑6In the best Demetian Welsh this word would behweđel, and in the Gwentian of Glamorgan it isgweđel, mutatedweđel, as may be heard in the neighbourhood of Bridgend.—J. R.↑7This is not generally accepted, as some Welsh antiquarians find reasons to believe that Dafyđ ap Gwilym was buried at Strata Florida.—J. R.↑8This is not quite correct, as I believe that Dr. C. Rice Williams, who lives at Aberystwyth, is one of the Međygon. That means the year 1881, when this chapter was written, excepting the portions concerning which the reader is apprised of a later date.—J. R.↑9Later it will be seen that thetribanin the above form was meant for neither of the two lakes, though it would seem to have adapted itself to several. In the case of the Fan Fach Lake the town meant must have been Carmarthen, and the couplet probably ran thus:Os na cha’i lonyđ yn ym ỻe,Fi fođa dre’ Garfyrđin.↑10Ỻwchis the Goidelic wordlochborrowed, andỺyn Cwm y Ỻwchliterally means the Lake of the Loch Dingle.↑11I make no attempt to translate these lines, but I find that Mr. Ỻewellyn Williams has found a still more obscure version of them, as follows:—Prw međ, prw međ, prw’r gwartheg i dre’,Prw milfach a malfach, pedair ỻualfach,Ỻualfach ac Acli, pedair lafi,Lafi a chromwen, pedair nepwen,Nepwen drwynog, brech yn ỻyn a gwaun dodyn,Tair bryncethin, tair cyffredin,Tair caseg đu, draw yn yr eithin;Dewch i gyd i lys y brenin.↑12The Ty-fry is a house said to be some 200 years old, and situated about two miles from Rhonđa Fechan: more exactly it is about one-fourth of a mile from the station of Ystrad Rhonđa, and stands at the foot of Mynyđ yr Eglwys on the Treorky side. It is now surrounded by the cottages of colliers, one of whom occupies it. For this information I have to thank Mr. Probert Evans.↑13It is to be borne in mind that the sound ofhis uncertain in Glamorganpronunciation, whether the language used is Welsh or English. The pronunciation indicated, however, by Mr. Evans comes near enough to the authentic form writtenElfarch.↑14In the Snowdon district of Gwyneđ the call isdrwi, drwi, drŵ-i bach, while in North Cardiganshire it istrwi, trwi, trw-e fach, also pronounced sometimes with a surdr, produced by making the breath cause both lips to vibrate—tR′wi, tR′wi, which can hardly be distinguished frompR′wi, pR′wi. For the more forcibly the lips are vibrated the more difficult it becomes to start by closing them to pronouncep: so the tendency withR′is to make the preceding consonant into some kind of at.↑15This is the Welsh form of the borrowed nameJane, and its pronunciation in North Cardiganshire is Si̯ân, with si̯ pronounced approximately like thetiof such French words asnationand the like; but of late years I find the si̯ made into Englishshunder the influence, probably, to some extent of the English taught at school. This happens in North Wales, even in districts where there are still plenty of people who cannot approach the English wordsfishandshillingnearer thanfissandsilling. Si̯ôn and Si̯ân represent an old importation of EnglishJohnandJane, but they are now considered old-fashioned and superseded by John and Jane, which I learned to pronounce Dsi̯òn and Dsi̯ên, except that Si̯ôn survives as a family name, written Shone, in the neighbourhood of Wrexham.↑16This termdafad(ordafaden), ‘a sheep,’ also used for ‘a wart,’ anddafad(ordafaden)wyỻt, literally ‘a wild sheep,’ for cancer or epithelioma, raises a question which I am quite unable to answer: why should a wart have been likened to a sheep?↑17The name is probably a shortening of Caweỻyn, and that perhaps ofCaweỻ-lyn, ‘Creel or Basket Lake.’ Its old name is said to have beenỺyn Tarđenni.↑18Tynis a shortening oftyđyn, which is not quite forgotten in the case ofTyn GadlasorTyn Siarlas(forTyđyn Siarlys), ‘Charles’ Tenement,’ in the immediate neighbourhood. Similarly the Anglesey Farm ofTyn yr Onnenused at one time to beTyđyn yr Onnenin the books of Jesus College, Oxford, to which it belongs.↑19That is the pronunciation which I have learnt at Ỻanberis, but there is another, which I have also heard, namelyDerwenyđ.↑20Ystradis the Welsh corresponding to Scotchstrath, and it is nearly related to the English wordstrand. It means the flat land near a river.↑21Betws(orBettws)Garmonseems to mean Germanus’sBede-hūsor House of Prayer, butGarmoncan hardly have come down in Welsh from the time of the famous saint in the fifth century, as it would then have probably yieldedGerfonand notGarmon: it looks as if it had come through the Goidelic of this country.↑22One of the rare merits of our Welsh bards is their habit of assuming permanentnoms de plume, by means of which they prevent a number of excellent native names from falling into utter oblivion in the general chaos of Anglo-Hebrew ones, such as Jones, Davies, and Williams, which cover the Principality. Welsh place-names have similarly been threatened by Hebrew names of chapels, such as Bethesda, Rehoboth, and Jerusalem, but in this direction the Jewish mania has only here and there effected permanent mischief.↑23TheBrythonwas a valuable Welsh periodical published by Mr. Robert Isaac Jones, at Tremadoc, in the years 1858–1863, and edited by the Rev. Chancellor Silvan Evans, who was then the curate of Ỻangïan in Ỻeyn: in fact he was curate for fourteen years! His excellent work in editing theBrythonearned for him his diocesan’s displeasure, but it is easier to imagine than to describe how hard it was for him to resign the honorarium of £24 derived from theBrythonwhen his stipend as a clergyman was only £92, at the same time that he had dependent on him a wife and six children. However much some people affect to laugh at the revival of the national spirit in Wales, we have, I think, got so far as to make it, for some time to come, impossible for a Welsh clergyman to be snubbed on account of his literary tastes or his delight in the archæology of his country.↑24This parish is called after a saint namedTegáiorTygái, likeTyfaelogandTysilio, and though the accent rests on the final syllable nothing could prevent the grammarian Huw Tegai and his friends from making it intoTégaiin Huw’s name.↑25Forcanthey now usually putAnn, and Mr. Hughes remembers hearing it so many years ago.↑26I remember seeing a similar mound at Ỻanfyrnach, in Pembrokeshire; and the last use made of the hollow on the top of this also is supposed to have been for cock-fights.↑27My attention has also been called tofreit,frete,freet,fret, ‘news, inquiry, augury,’ corresponding to Anglo-Saxonfreht, ‘divination.’ But the disparity of meaning seems to stand in the way of ourffritbeing referred to this origin.↑28The OxfordMabinogion, p. 63; Guest, iii. 223.↑29See theItinerarium Kambriæ, i. 2 (pp. 33–5), andCeltic Britain, p. 64.↑30As for example in theArchæologia Cambrensisfor 1870, pp. 192–8; see also 1872, pp. 146–8.↑31Howells has also an account of Ỻyn Savadhan, as he writes it: see hisCambrian Superstitions, pp. 100–2, where he quaintly says that the story of the wickedness of the ancient lord of Syfađon is assigned as the reason why ‘the superstitious little river Lewenny will not mix its water with that of the lake.’Lewennyis a reckless improvement of Mapes’Leueni(printedLenem); and Giraldus’Clamosumimplies an old spellingỺefni, pronounced the same as the later spellingỺyfni, which is now made intoỺynfiorỺynvi: the river so called flows through the lake and into the Wye at Glasbury. As toSafađanorSyfađon, it is probably of Goidelic origin, and to be identified with such an Irish name as the feminineSamthann: see Dec. 19 in the Martyrologies. To keep within our data, we are at liberty to suppose that this was the name of the wicked princess in the story, and that she was the ancestress of a clan once powerful on and around the lake, which lies within a Goidelic area indicated by its Ogam inscriptions.↑
1As to the spelling of Welsh names, it may be pointed out for the benefit of English readers that Welshfhas the sound of Englishv, while the sound of Englishfis writtenff(andph) in Welsh, and however strange it may seem to them that the writtenfshould be soundedv, it is borrowed from an old English alphabet which did so likewise more or less systematically.Thin such English words asthinandbreathis writtenth, but the soft sound as inthisandbreatheis usually printed in Welshddand written in modern Welsh manuscript sometimes δ, like a small Greek delta: this will be found represented byđin the Welsh extracts edited by me in this volume.—J. R.↑2‘Blaensawđe, or the upper end of the river Sawđe, is situate about three-quarters of a mile south-east from the village of Ỻanđeusant. It gives its name to one of the hamlets of that parish. The Sawđe has its source in Ỻyn y Fan Fach, which is nearly two miles distant from Blaensawđe House.’↑3The rendering might be more correctly given thus: ‘O thou of the crimped bread, it is not easy to catch me.’—J. R.↑4‘Myđfai parish was, in former times, celebrated for its fair maidens, but whether they were descendants of the Lady of the Lake or otherwise cannot be determined. An old penniỻ records the fact of their beauty thus:—Mae eira gwynAr ben y bryn,A’r glasgoed yn y Ferdre,Mae bedw mânYnghoed Cwm-brân,A merched glân yn Myđfe.Which may be translated,There is white snowOn the mountain’s brow,And greenwood at the Verdre,Young birch so goodIn Cwm-brân wood,And lovely girls in Myđfe.’↑5Similarly this should be rendered: ‘O thou of the moist bread, I will not have thee.’—J. R.↑6In the best Demetian Welsh this word would behweđel, and in the Gwentian of Glamorgan it isgweđel, mutatedweđel, as may be heard in the neighbourhood of Bridgend.—J. R.↑7This is not generally accepted, as some Welsh antiquarians find reasons to believe that Dafyđ ap Gwilym was buried at Strata Florida.—J. R.↑8This is not quite correct, as I believe that Dr. C. Rice Williams, who lives at Aberystwyth, is one of the Međygon. That means the year 1881, when this chapter was written, excepting the portions concerning which the reader is apprised of a later date.—J. R.↑9Later it will be seen that thetribanin the above form was meant for neither of the two lakes, though it would seem to have adapted itself to several. In the case of the Fan Fach Lake the town meant must have been Carmarthen, and the couplet probably ran thus:Os na cha’i lonyđ yn ym ỻe,Fi fođa dre’ Garfyrđin.↑10Ỻwchis the Goidelic wordlochborrowed, andỺyn Cwm y Ỻwchliterally means the Lake of the Loch Dingle.↑11I make no attempt to translate these lines, but I find that Mr. Ỻewellyn Williams has found a still more obscure version of them, as follows:—Prw međ, prw međ, prw’r gwartheg i dre’,Prw milfach a malfach, pedair ỻualfach,Ỻualfach ac Acli, pedair lafi,Lafi a chromwen, pedair nepwen,Nepwen drwynog, brech yn ỻyn a gwaun dodyn,Tair bryncethin, tair cyffredin,Tair caseg đu, draw yn yr eithin;Dewch i gyd i lys y brenin.↑12The Ty-fry is a house said to be some 200 years old, and situated about two miles from Rhonđa Fechan: more exactly it is about one-fourth of a mile from the station of Ystrad Rhonđa, and stands at the foot of Mynyđ yr Eglwys on the Treorky side. It is now surrounded by the cottages of colliers, one of whom occupies it. For this information I have to thank Mr. Probert Evans.↑13It is to be borne in mind that the sound ofhis uncertain in Glamorganpronunciation, whether the language used is Welsh or English. The pronunciation indicated, however, by Mr. Evans comes near enough to the authentic form writtenElfarch.↑14In the Snowdon district of Gwyneđ the call isdrwi, drwi, drŵ-i bach, while in North Cardiganshire it istrwi, trwi, trw-e fach, also pronounced sometimes with a surdr, produced by making the breath cause both lips to vibrate—tR′wi, tR′wi, which can hardly be distinguished frompR′wi, pR′wi. For the more forcibly the lips are vibrated the more difficult it becomes to start by closing them to pronouncep: so the tendency withR′is to make the preceding consonant into some kind of at.↑15This is the Welsh form of the borrowed nameJane, and its pronunciation in North Cardiganshire is Si̯ân, with si̯ pronounced approximately like thetiof such French words asnationand the like; but of late years I find the si̯ made into Englishshunder the influence, probably, to some extent of the English taught at school. This happens in North Wales, even in districts where there are still plenty of people who cannot approach the English wordsfishandshillingnearer thanfissandsilling. Si̯ôn and Si̯ân represent an old importation of EnglishJohnandJane, but they are now considered old-fashioned and superseded by John and Jane, which I learned to pronounce Dsi̯òn and Dsi̯ên, except that Si̯ôn survives as a family name, written Shone, in the neighbourhood of Wrexham.↑16This termdafad(ordafaden), ‘a sheep,’ also used for ‘a wart,’ anddafad(ordafaden)wyỻt, literally ‘a wild sheep,’ for cancer or epithelioma, raises a question which I am quite unable to answer: why should a wart have been likened to a sheep?↑17The name is probably a shortening of Caweỻyn, and that perhaps ofCaweỻ-lyn, ‘Creel or Basket Lake.’ Its old name is said to have beenỺyn Tarđenni.↑18Tynis a shortening oftyđyn, which is not quite forgotten in the case ofTyn GadlasorTyn Siarlas(forTyđyn Siarlys), ‘Charles’ Tenement,’ in the immediate neighbourhood. Similarly the Anglesey Farm ofTyn yr Onnenused at one time to beTyđyn yr Onnenin the books of Jesus College, Oxford, to which it belongs.↑19That is the pronunciation which I have learnt at Ỻanberis, but there is another, which I have also heard, namelyDerwenyđ.↑20Ystradis the Welsh corresponding to Scotchstrath, and it is nearly related to the English wordstrand. It means the flat land near a river.↑21Betws(orBettws)Garmonseems to mean Germanus’sBede-hūsor House of Prayer, butGarmoncan hardly have come down in Welsh from the time of the famous saint in the fifth century, as it would then have probably yieldedGerfonand notGarmon: it looks as if it had come through the Goidelic of this country.↑22One of the rare merits of our Welsh bards is their habit of assuming permanentnoms de plume, by means of which they prevent a number of excellent native names from falling into utter oblivion in the general chaos of Anglo-Hebrew ones, such as Jones, Davies, and Williams, which cover the Principality. Welsh place-names have similarly been threatened by Hebrew names of chapels, such as Bethesda, Rehoboth, and Jerusalem, but in this direction the Jewish mania has only here and there effected permanent mischief.↑23TheBrythonwas a valuable Welsh periodical published by Mr. Robert Isaac Jones, at Tremadoc, in the years 1858–1863, and edited by the Rev. Chancellor Silvan Evans, who was then the curate of Ỻangïan in Ỻeyn: in fact he was curate for fourteen years! His excellent work in editing theBrythonearned for him his diocesan’s displeasure, but it is easier to imagine than to describe how hard it was for him to resign the honorarium of £24 derived from theBrythonwhen his stipend as a clergyman was only £92, at the same time that he had dependent on him a wife and six children. However much some people affect to laugh at the revival of the national spirit in Wales, we have, I think, got so far as to make it, for some time to come, impossible for a Welsh clergyman to be snubbed on account of his literary tastes or his delight in the archæology of his country.↑24This parish is called after a saint namedTegáiorTygái, likeTyfaelogandTysilio, and though the accent rests on the final syllable nothing could prevent the grammarian Huw Tegai and his friends from making it intoTégaiin Huw’s name.↑25Forcanthey now usually putAnn, and Mr. Hughes remembers hearing it so many years ago.↑26I remember seeing a similar mound at Ỻanfyrnach, in Pembrokeshire; and the last use made of the hollow on the top of this also is supposed to have been for cock-fights.↑27My attention has also been called tofreit,frete,freet,fret, ‘news, inquiry, augury,’ corresponding to Anglo-Saxonfreht, ‘divination.’ But the disparity of meaning seems to stand in the way of ourffritbeing referred to this origin.↑28The OxfordMabinogion, p. 63; Guest, iii. 223.↑29See theItinerarium Kambriæ, i. 2 (pp. 33–5), andCeltic Britain, p. 64.↑30As for example in theArchæologia Cambrensisfor 1870, pp. 192–8; see also 1872, pp. 146–8.↑31Howells has also an account of Ỻyn Savadhan, as he writes it: see hisCambrian Superstitions, pp. 100–2, where he quaintly says that the story of the wickedness of the ancient lord of Syfađon is assigned as the reason why ‘the superstitious little river Lewenny will not mix its water with that of the lake.’Lewennyis a reckless improvement of Mapes’Leueni(printedLenem); and Giraldus’Clamosumimplies an old spellingỺefni, pronounced the same as the later spellingỺyfni, which is now made intoỺynfiorỺynvi: the river so called flows through the lake and into the Wye at Glasbury. As toSafađanorSyfađon, it is probably of Goidelic origin, and to be identified with such an Irish name as the feminineSamthann: see Dec. 19 in the Martyrologies. To keep within our data, we are at liberty to suppose that this was the name of the wicked princess in the story, and that she was the ancestress of a clan once powerful on and around the lake, which lies within a Goidelic area indicated by its Ogam inscriptions.↑
1As to the spelling of Welsh names, it may be pointed out for the benefit of English readers that Welshfhas the sound of Englishv, while the sound of Englishfis writtenff(andph) in Welsh, and however strange it may seem to them that the writtenfshould be soundedv, it is borrowed from an old English alphabet which did so likewise more or less systematically.Thin such English words asthinandbreathis writtenth, but the soft sound as inthisandbreatheis usually printed in Welshddand written in modern Welsh manuscript sometimes δ, like a small Greek delta: this will be found represented byđin the Welsh extracts edited by me in this volume.—J. R.↑2‘Blaensawđe, or the upper end of the river Sawđe, is situate about three-quarters of a mile south-east from the village of Ỻanđeusant. It gives its name to one of the hamlets of that parish. The Sawđe has its source in Ỻyn y Fan Fach, which is nearly two miles distant from Blaensawđe House.’↑3The rendering might be more correctly given thus: ‘O thou of the crimped bread, it is not easy to catch me.’—J. R.↑4‘Myđfai parish was, in former times, celebrated for its fair maidens, but whether they were descendants of the Lady of the Lake or otherwise cannot be determined. An old penniỻ records the fact of their beauty thus:—Mae eira gwynAr ben y bryn,A’r glasgoed yn y Ferdre,Mae bedw mânYnghoed Cwm-brân,A merched glân yn Myđfe.Which may be translated,There is white snowOn the mountain’s brow,And greenwood at the Verdre,Young birch so goodIn Cwm-brân wood,And lovely girls in Myđfe.’↑5Similarly this should be rendered: ‘O thou of the moist bread, I will not have thee.’—J. R.↑6In the best Demetian Welsh this word would behweđel, and in the Gwentian of Glamorgan it isgweđel, mutatedweđel, as may be heard in the neighbourhood of Bridgend.—J. R.↑7This is not generally accepted, as some Welsh antiquarians find reasons to believe that Dafyđ ap Gwilym was buried at Strata Florida.—J. R.↑8This is not quite correct, as I believe that Dr. C. Rice Williams, who lives at Aberystwyth, is one of the Međygon. That means the year 1881, when this chapter was written, excepting the portions concerning which the reader is apprised of a later date.—J. R.↑9Later it will be seen that thetribanin the above form was meant for neither of the two lakes, though it would seem to have adapted itself to several. In the case of the Fan Fach Lake the town meant must have been Carmarthen, and the couplet probably ran thus:Os na cha’i lonyđ yn ym ỻe,Fi fođa dre’ Garfyrđin.↑10Ỻwchis the Goidelic wordlochborrowed, andỺyn Cwm y Ỻwchliterally means the Lake of the Loch Dingle.↑11I make no attempt to translate these lines, but I find that Mr. Ỻewellyn Williams has found a still more obscure version of them, as follows:—Prw međ, prw međ, prw’r gwartheg i dre’,Prw milfach a malfach, pedair ỻualfach,Ỻualfach ac Acli, pedair lafi,Lafi a chromwen, pedair nepwen,Nepwen drwynog, brech yn ỻyn a gwaun dodyn,Tair bryncethin, tair cyffredin,Tair caseg đu, draw yn yr eithin;Dewch i gyd i lys y brenin.↑12The Ty-fry is a house said to be some 200 years old, and situated about two miles from Rhonđa Fechan: more exactly it is about one-fourth of a mile from the station of Ystrad Rhonđa, and stands at the foot of Mynyđ yr Eglwys on the Treorky side. It is now surrounded by the cottages of colliers, one of whom occupies it. For this information I have to thank Mr. Probert Evans.↑13It is to be borne in mind that the sound ofhis uncertain in Glamorganpronunciation, whether the language used is Welsh or English. The pronunciation indicated, however, by Mr. Evans comes near enough to the authentic form writtenElfarch.↑14In the Snowdon district of Gwyneđ the call isdrwi, drwi, drŵ-i bach, while in North Cardiganshire it istrwi, trwi, trw-e fach, also pronounced sometimes with a surdr, produced by making the breath cause both lips to vibrate—tR′wi, tR′wi, which can hardly be distinguished frompR′wi, pR′wi. For the more forcibly the lips are vibrated the more difficult it becomes to start by closing them to pronouncep: so the tendency withR′is to make the preceding consonant into some kind of at.↑15This is the Welsh form of the borrowed nameJane, and its pronunciation in North Cardiganshire is Si̯ân, with si̯ pronounced approximately like thetiof such French words asnationand the like; but of late years I find the si̯ made into Englishshunder the influence, probably, to some extent of the English taught at school. This happens in North Wales, even in districts where there are still plenty of people who cannot approach the English wordsfishandshillingnearer thanfissandsilling. Si̯ôn and Si̯ân represent an old importation of EnglishJohnandJane, but they are now considered old-fashioned and superseded by John and Jane, which I learned to pronounce Dsi̯òn and Dsi̯ên, except that Si̯ôn survives as a family name, written Shone, in the neighbourhood of Wrexham.↑16This termdafad(ordafaden), ‘a sheep,’ also used for ‘a wart,’ anddafad(ordafaden)wyỻt, literally ‘a wild sheep,’ for cancer or epithelioma, raises a question which I am quite unable to answer: why should a wart have been likened to a sheep?↑17The name is probably a shortening of Caweỻyn, and that perhaps ofCaweỻ-lyn, ‘Creel or Basket Lake.’ Its old name is said to have beenỺyn Tarđenni.↑18Tynis a shortening oftyđyn, which is not quite forgotten in the case ofTyn GadlasorTyn Siarlas(forTyđyn Siarlys), ‘Charles’ Tenement,’ in the immediate neighbourhood. Similarly the Anglesey Farm ofTyn yr Onnenused at one time to beTyđyn yr Onnenin the books of Jesus College, Oxford, to which it belongs.↑19That is the pronunciation which I have learnt at Ỻanberis, but there is another, which I have also heard, namelyDerwenyđ.↑20Ystradis the Welsh corresponding to Scotchstrath, and it is nearly related to the English wordstrand. It means the flat land near a river.↑21Betws(orBettws)Garmonseems to mean Germanus’sBede-hūsor House of Prayer, butGarmoncan hardly have come down in Welsh from the time of the famous saint in the fifth century, as it would then have probably yieldedGerfonand notGarmon: it looks as if it had come through the Goidelic of this country.↑22One of the rare merits of our Welsh bards is their habit of assuming permanentnoms de plume, by means of which they prevent a number of excellent native names from falling into utter oblivion in the general chaos of Anglo-Hebrew ones, such as Jones, Davies, and Williams, which cover the Principality. Welsh place-names have similarly been threatened by Hebrew names of chapels, such as Bethesda, Rehoboth, and Jerusalem, but in this direction the Jewish mania has only here and there effected permanent mischief.↑23TheBrythonwas a valuable Welsh periodical published by Mr. Robert Isaac Jones, at Tremadoc, in the years 1858–1863, and edited by the Rev. Chancellor Silvan Evans, who was then the curate of Ỻangïan in Ỻeyn: in fact he was curate for fourteen years! His excellent work in editing theBrythonearned for him his diocesan’s displeasure, but it is easier to imagine than to describe how hard it was for him to resign the honorarium of £24 derived from theBrythonwhen his stipend as a clergyman was only £92, at the same time that he had dependent on him a wife and six children. However much some people affect to laugh at the revival of the national spirit in Wales, we have, I think, got so far as to make it, for some time to come, impossible for a Welsh clergyman to be snubbed on account of his literary tastes or his delight in the archæology of his country.↑24This parish is called after a saint namedTegáiorTygái, likeTyfaelogandTysilio, and though the accent rests on the final syllable nothing could prevent the grammarian Huw Tegai and his friends from making it intoTégaiin Huw’s name.↑25Forcanthey now usually putAnn, and Mr. Hughes remembers hearing it so many years ago.↑26I remember seeing a similar mound at Ỻanfyrnach, in Pembrokeshire; and the last use made of the hollow on the top of this also is supposed to have been for cock-fights.↑27My attention has also been called tofreit,frete,freet,fret, ‘news, inquiry, augury,’ corresponding to Anglo-Saxonfreht, ‘divination.’ But the disparity of meaning seems to stand in the way of ourffritbeing referred to this origin.↑28The OxfordMabinogion, p. 63; Guest, iii. 223.↑29See theItinerarium Kambriæ, i. 2 (pp. 33–5), andCeltic Britain, p. 64.↑30As for example in theArchæologia Cambrensisfor 1870, pp. 192–8; see also 1872, pp. 146–8.↑31Howells has also an account of Ỻyn Savadhan, as he writes it: see hisCambrian Superstitions, pp. 100–2, where he quaintly says that the story of the wickedness of the ancient lord of Syfađon is assigned as the reason why ‘the superstitious little river Lewenny will not mix its water with that of the lake.’Lewennyis a reckless improvement of Mapes’Leueni(printedLenem); and Giraldus’Clamosumimplies an old spellingỺefni, pronounced the same as the later spellingỺyfni, which is now made intoỺynfiorỺynvi: the river so called flows through the lake and into the Wye at Glasbury. As toSafađanorSyfađon, it is probably of Goidelic origin, and to be identified with such an Irish name as the feminineSamthann: see Dec. 19 in the Martyrologies. To keep within our data, we are at liberty to suppose that this was the name of the wicked princess in the story, and that she was the ancestress of a clan once powerful on and around the lake, which lies within a Goidelic area indicated by its Ogam inscriptions.↑
1As to the spelling of Welsh names, it may be pointed out for the benefit of English readers that Welshfhas the sound of Englishv, while the sound of Englishfis writtenff(andph) in Welsh, and however strange it may seem to them that the writtenfshould be soundedv, it is borrowed from an old English alphabet which did so likewise more or less systematically.Thin such English words asthinandbreathis writtenth, but the soft sound as inthisandbreatheis usually printed in Welshddand written in modern Welsh manuscript sometimes δ, like a small Greek delta: this will be found represented byđin the Welsh extracts edited by me in this volume.—J. R.↑
2‘Blaensawđe, or the upper end of the river Sawđe, is situate about three-quarters of a mile south-east from the village of Ỻanđeusant. It gives its name to one of the hamlets of that parish. The Sawđe has its source in Ỻyn y Fan Fach, which is nearly two miles distant from Blaensawđe House.’↑
3The rendering might be more correctly given thus: ‘O thou of the crimped bread, it is not easy to catch me.’—J. R.↑
4‘Myđfai parish was, in former times, celebrated for its fair maidens, but whether they were descendants of the Lady of the Lake or otherwise cannot be determined. An old penniỻ records the fact of their beauty thus:—
Mae eira gwynAr ben y bryn,A’r glasgoed yn y Ferdre,Mae bedw mânYnghoed Cwm-brân,A merched glân yn Myđfe.
Mae eira gwynAr ben y bryn,A’r glasgoed yn y Ferdre,Mae bedw mânYnghoed Cwm-brân,A merched glân yn Myđfe.
Mae eira gwynAr ben y bryn,A’r glasgoed yn y Ferdre,Mae bedw mânYnghoed Cwm-brân,A merched glân yn Myđfe.
Mae eira gwynAr ben y bryn,A’r glasgoed yn y Ferdre,Mae bedw mânYnghoed Cwm-brân,A merched glân yn Myđfe.
Mae eira gwyn
Ar ben y bryn,
A’r glasgoed yn y Ferdre,
Mae bedw mân
Ynghoed Cwm-brân,
A merched glân yn Myđfe.
Which may be translated,
There is white snowOn the mountain’s brow,And greenwood at the Verdre,Young birch so goodIn Cwm-brân wood,And lovely girls in Myđfe.’
There is white snowOn the mountain’s brow,And greenwood at the Verdre,Young birch so goodIn Cwm-brân wood,And lovely girls in Myđfe.’
There is white snowOn the mountain’s brow,And greenwood at the Verdre,Young birch so goodIn Cwm-brân wood,And lovely girls in Myđfe.’
There is white snowOn the mountain’s brow,And greenwood at the Verdre,Young birch so goodIn Cwm-brân wood,And lovely girls in Myđfe.’
There is white snow
On the mountain’s brow,
And greenwood at the Verdre,
Young birch so good
In Cwm-brân wood,
And lovely girls in Myđfe.’
↑
5Similarly this should be rendered: ‘O thou of the moist bread, I will not have thee.’—J. R.↑
6In the best Demetian Welsh this word would behweđel, and in the Gwentian of Glamorgan it isgweđel, mutatedweđel, as may be heard in the neighbourhood of Bridgend.—J. R.↑
7This is not generally accepted, as some Welsh antiquarians find reasons to believe that Dafyđ ap Gwilym was buried at Strata Florida.—J. R.↑
8This is not quite correct, as I believe that Dr. C. Rice Williams, who lives at Aberystwyth, is one of the Međygon. That means the year 1881, when this chapter was written, excepting the portions concerning which the reader is apprised of a later date.—J. R.↑
9Later it will be seen that thetribanin the above form was meant for neither of the two lakes, though it would seem to have adapted itself to several. In the case of the Fan Fach Lake the town meant must have been Carmarthen, and the couplet probably ran thus:
Os na cha’i lonyđ yn ym ỻe,Fi fođa dre’ Garfyrđin.
Os na cha’i lonyđ yn ym ỻe,Fi fođa dre’ Garfyrđin.
Os na cha’i lonyđ yn ym ỻe,Fi fođa dre’ Garfyrđin.
Os na cha’i lonyđ yn ym ỻe,Fi fođa dre’ Garfyrđin.
Os na cha’i lonyđ yn ym ỻe,
Fi fođa dre’ Garfyrđin.
↑
10Ỻwchis the Goidelic wordlochborrowed, andỺyn Cwm y Ỻwchliterally means the Lake of the Loch Dingle.↑
11I make no attempt to translate these lines, but I find that Mr. Ỻewellyn Williams has found a still more obscure version of them, as follows:—
Prw međ, prw međ, prw’r gwartheg i dre’,Prw milfach a malfach, pedair ỻualfach,Ỻualfach ac Acli, pedair lafi,Lafi a chromwen, pedair nepwen,Nepwen drwynog, brech yn ỻyn a gwaun dodyn,Tair bryncethin, tair cyffredin,Tair caseg đu, draw yn yr eithin;Dewch i gyd i lys y brenin.
Prw međ, prw međ, prw’r gwartheg i dre’,Prw milfach a malfach, pedair ỻualfach,Ỻualfach ac Acli, pedair lafi,Lafi a chromwen, pedair nepwen,Nepwen drwynog, brech yn ỻyn a gwaun dodyn,Tair bryncethin, tair cyffredin,Tair caseg đu, draw yn yr eithin;Dewch i gyd i lys y brenin.
Prw međ, prw međ, prw’r gwartheg i dre’,Prw milfach a malfach, pedair ỻualfach,Ỻualfach ac Acli, pedair lafi,Lafi a chromwen, pedair nepwen,Nepwen drwynog, brech yn ỻyn a gwaun dodyn,Tair bryncethin, tair cyffredin,Tair caseg đu, draw yn yr eithin;Dewch i gyd i lys y brenin.
Prw međ, prw međ, prw’r gwartheg i dre’,Prw milfach a malfach, pedair ỻualfach,Ỻualfach ac Acli, pedair lafi,Lafi a chromwen, pedair nepwen,Nepwen drwynog, brech yn ỻyn a gwaun dodyn,Tair bryncethin, tair cyffredin,Tair caseg đu, draw yn yr eithin;Dewch i gyd i lys y brenin.
Prw međ, prw međ, prw’r gwartheg i dre’,
Prw milfach a malfach, pedair ỻualfach,
Ỻualfach ac Acli, pedair lafi,
Lafi a chromwen, pedair nepwen,
Nepwen drwynog, brech yn ỻyn a gwaun dodyn,
Tair bryncethin, tair cyffredin,
Tair caseg đu, draw yn yr eithin;
Dewch i gyd i lys y brenin.
↑
12The Ty-fry is a house said to be some 200 years old, and situated about two miles from Rhonđa Fechan: more exactly it is about one-fourth of a mile from the station of Ystrad Rhonđa, and stands at the foot of Mynyđ yr Eglwys on the Treorky side. It is now surrounded by the cottages of colliers, one of whom occupies it. For this information I have to thank Mr. Probert Evans.↑
13It is to be borne in mind that the sound ofhis uncertain in Glamorganpronunciation, whether the language used is Welsh or English. The pronunciation indicated, however, by Mr. Evans comes near enough to the authentic form writtenElfarch.↑
14In the Snowdon district of Gwyneđ the call isdrwi, drwi, drŵ-i bach, while in North Cardiganshire it istrwi, trwi, trw-e fach, also pronounced sometimes with a surdr, produced by making the breath cause both lips to vibrate—tR′wi, tR′wi, which can hardly be distinguished frompR′wi, pR′wi. For the more forcibly the lips are vibrated the more difficult it becomes to start by closing them to pronouncep: so the tendency withR′is to make the preceding consonant into some kind of at.↑
15This is the Welsh form of the borrowed nameJane, and its pronunciation in North Cardiganshire is Si̯ân, with si̯ pronounced approximately like thetiof such French words asnationand the like; but of late years I find the si̯ made into Englishshunder the influence, probably, to some extent of the English taught at school. This happens in North Wales, even in districts where there are still plenty of people who cannot approach the English wordsfishandshillingnearer thanfissandsilling. Si̯ôn and Si̯ân represent an old importation of EnglishJohnandJane, but they are now considered old-fashioned and superseded by John and Jane, which I learned to pronounce Dsi̯òn and Dsi̯ên, except that Si̯ôn survives as a family name, written Shone, in the neighbourhood of Wrexham.↑
16This termdafad(ordafaden), ‘a sheep,’ also used for ‘a wart,’ anddafad(ordafaden)wyỻt, literally ‘a wild sheep,’ for cancer or epithelioma, raises a question which I am quite unable to answer: why should a wart have been likened to a sheep?↑
17The name is probably a shortening of Caweỻyn, and that perhaps ofCaweỻ-lyn, ‘Creel or Basket Lake.’ Its old name is said to have beenỺyn Tarđenni.↑
18Tynis a shortening oftyđyn, which is not quite forgotten in the case ofTyn GadlasorTyn Siarlas(forTyđyn Siarlys), ‘Charles’ Tenement,’ in the immediate neighbourhood. Similarly the Anglesey Farm ofTyn yr Onnenused at one time to beTyđyn yr Onnenin the books of Jesus College, Oxford, to which it belongs.↑
19That is the pronunciation which I have learnt at Ỻanberis, but there is another, which I have also heard, namelyDerwenyđ.↑
20Ystradis the Welsh corresponding to Scotchstrath, and it is nearly related to the English wordstrand. It means the flat land near a river.↑
21Betws(orBettws)Garmonseems to mean Germanus’sBede-hūsor House of Prayer, butGarmoncan hardly have come down in Welsh from the time of the famous saint in the fifth century, as it would then have probably yieldedGerfonand notGarmon: it looks as if it had come through the Goidelic of this country.↑
22One of the rare merits of our Welsh bards is their habit of assuming permanentnoms de plume, by means of which they prevent a number of excellent native names from falling into utter oblivion in the general chaos of Anglo-Hebrew ones, such as Jones, Davies, and Williams, which cover the Principality. Welsh place-names have similarly been threatened by Hebrew names of chapels, such as Bethesda, Rehoboth, and Jerusalem, but in this direction the Jewish mania has only here and there effected permanent mischief.↑
23TheBrythonwas a valuable Welsh periodical published by Mr. Robert Isaac Jones, at Tremadoc, in the years 1858–1863, and edited by the Rev. Chancellor Silvan Evans, who was then the curate of Ỻangïan in Ỻeyn: in fact he was curate for fourteen years! His excellent work in editing theBrythonearned for him his diocesan’s displeasure, but it is easier to imagine than to describe how hard it was for him to resign the honorarium of £24 derived from theBrythonwhen his stipend as a clergyman was only £92, at the same time that he had dependent on him a wife and six children. However much some people affect to laugh at the revival of the national spirit in Wales, we have, I think, got so far as to make it, for some time to come, impossible for a Welsh clergyman to be snubbed on account of his literary tastes or his delight in the archæology of his country.↑
24This parish is called after a saint namedTegáiorTygái, likeTyfaelogandTysilio, and though the accent rests on the final syllable nothing could prevent the grammarian Huw Tegai and his friends from making it intoTégaiin Huw’s name.↑
25Forcanthey now usually putAnn, and Mr. Hughes remembers hearing it so many years ago.↑
26I remember seeing a similar mound at Ỻanfyrnach, in Pembrokeshire; and the last use made of the hollow on the top of this also is supposed to have been for cock-fights.↑
27My attention has also been called tofreit,frete,freet,fret, ‘news, inquiry, augury,’ corresponding to Anglo-Saxonfreht, ‘divination.’ But the disparity of meaning seems to stand in the way of ourffritbeing referred to this origin.↑
28The OxfordMabinogion, p. 63; Guest, iii. 223.↑
29See theItinerarium Kambriæ, i. 2 (pp. 33–5), andCeltic Britain, p. 64.↑
30As for example in theArchæologia Cambrensisfor 1870, pp. 192–8; see also 1872, pp. 146–8.↑
31Howells has also an account of Ỻyn Savadhan, as he writes it: see hisCambrian Superstitions, pp. 100–2, where he quaintly says that the story of the wickedness of the ancient lord of Syfađon is assigned as the reason why ‘the superstitious little river Lewenny will not mix its water with that of the lake.’Lewennyis a reckless improvement of Mapes’Leueni(printedLenem); and Giraldus’Clamosumimplies an old spellingỺefni, pronounced the same as the later spellingỺyfni, which is now made intoỺynfiorỺynvi: the river so called flows through the lake and into the Wye at Glasbury. As toSafađanorSyfađon, it is probably of Goidelic origin, and to be identified with such an Irish name as the feminineSamthann: see Dec. 19 in the Martyrologies. To keep within our data, we are at liberty to suppose that this was the name of the wicked princess in the story, and that she was the ancestress of a clan once powerful on and around the lake, which lies within a Goidelic area indicated by its Ogam inscriptions.↑