1This was written at the end of 1892, and read to a joint meeting of the Cymmrodorion and Folk-Lore Societies on January 11, 1893.↑2Some account of them was given by me inFolk-Lorefor 1892, p. 380; but somehow or other my contribution was printed unrevised, with results more peculiar than edifying.↑3InFolk-Lorefor 1893, pp. 58–9.↑4In the neighbourhood I find that the wordgwaeldynin this verse is sometimes explained to mean not a worthless but an ailing person, on the strength of the fact that the adjectivegwaelis colloquially used both for vile and for ailing.↑5Since writing the above remarks the following paragraph, purporting to be copied from theLiverpool Mercuryfor November 18, 1896, appeared in theArchæologia Cambrensisfor 1899, p. 334:—‘Two new fishes have just been put in the “Sacred Well,” Ffynnon y Sant, at Tyn y Ffynnon, in the village of Nant Peris, Ỻanberis. Invalids in large numbers came, during the last century and the first half of the present century, to this well to drink of its “miraculous waters”; and the oak box, where the contributions of those who visited the spot were kept, is still in its place at the side of the well. There have always been two “sacred fishes” in this well; and there is a tradition in the village to the effect that if one of the Tyn y Ffynnon fishes came out of its hiding-place when an invalid took some of the water for drinking or for bathing purposes, cure was certain; but if the fishes remained in their den, the water would do those who took it no good. Two fishes only are to be put in the well at a time, and they generally live in its waters for about half a century. If one dies before the other, it wouldbe of no use to put in a new fish, for the old fish would not associate with it, and it would die. The experiment has been tried. The last of the two fishes put in the well about fifty years ago died last August. It had been blind for some time previous to its death. When taken out of the water it measured seventeen inches, and was buried in the garden adjoining the well. It is stated in a document of the year 1776 that the parish clerk was to receive the money put in the box of the well by visitors. This money, together with the amount of 6s.4d., was his annual stipend.’ Tyn y Ffynnon means ‘the Tenement of the Well,’tynbeing a shortened form oftyđyn, ‘a tenement,’as mentioned at p. 33 above; but the mapsters make it intoty’n=ty yn, ‘a house in,’ so that the present instance,Ty’n y Ffynnon, could only mean ‘the House in the Well,’ which, needless to say, it is not. But one would like to know whether the house and land were once held rent-free on condition that the tenant took care of the sacred fish.↑6See Ashton’sIolo Goch, p. 234, and Lewis’Top. Dict.↑7See myHibbert Lectures, p. 229, and theIolo MSS., pp. 42–3, 420–1.↑8A curious note bearing on this name occurs in the Jesus College MS. 20 (Cymmrodor, viii. p. 86) in reference to the nameMorgannwg, ‘Glamorgan’:—O enỽ Morgant vchot y gelwir Morgannỽc. Ereiỻ a dyweit. Mae o enỽ Mochteyrn Predein.‘It is from the name of the above Morgan that Morgannwg is called. Others say that it is from the name of themochdeyrnof Pictland.’ Themochteyrnmust have been a Pictish king or mórmáer called Morgan. The name occurs in the charters from theBook of Deerin Stokes’Goidelica. pp. 109, 111, asMorcunt,Morcunn, andMorgunnundeclined,also withMorgainnfor genitive; and so in Skene’sChronicles of the Picts and Scots, pp. 77, 317, where it is printedMorgaind; see also Stokes’ Tigernach, in theRevue Celtique, xvii. 198. Compare Geoffrey’s story, ii. 15, which introduces a northern Marganus to account for the name Margan, nowMargam, in Morgannwg.↑9M. Loth’s remarks in point will be found in theRevue Celtique, xiii. 496–7, where he compares withtutthe Bretonteuz, ‘lutin, génie malfaisant ou bienfaisant’; and for the successive guesses on the subject of the nameMorgan tutone should also consult Zimmer’s remarks in Foerster’s Introduction to hisErec, pp. xxvii–xxxi, and myArthurian Legend, p. 391, to which I should add a reference to theBook of Ballymote, fo. 360a, where we haveo na bantuathaib, which O’Curry has rendered ‘on the part of their Witches’ in hisManners and Customs of the Ancient Irish, iii. 526–7. Comparedá bhantuathaigh, ‘two female sorcerers,’ in Joyce’s Keating’sHistory of Ireland, pp. 122–3.↑10For all about the Children of Lir, and about Liban and Lough Neagh, see Joyce’sOld Celtic Romances, pp. 4–36, 97–105.↑11On my appealing to Cadrawd, one of the later editors, he has found me the exact reference, to wit, volume ix of theCyfaiỻ(published in 1889), p. 50; and he has since contributed a translation of the story to the columns of theSouth Wales Daily Newsfor February 15, 1899, where he has also given an account of Crymlyn, which is to be mentioned later.↑12Judging from the three best-known instances,y balameant the outlet of a lake: I allude to thisBalaat the outlet of Ỻyn Tegid;Pont y Bala, ‘the Bridge of thebala,’ across the water flowing from the Upper into the Lower Lake at Ỻanberis; andBala Deulyn, ‘thebalaof two lakes,’ at Nantỻe. Two places calledBryn y Balaare mentioned s. v.Balain Morris’Celtic Remains, one near Aberystwyth, at a spot which I have never seen, and the other near the lower end of the Lower Lake of Ỻanberis, as to which it has been suggested to me that it is an error forBryn y Bela. It is needless to say thatbalahas nothing to do with the Anglo-Irishbally, of such names asBallymurphyorBallynahunt: this vocable is in Englishbailey, and in South Walesbeili, ‘a farm yard or enclosure,’ all three probably from the late Latinbaliumorballium, ‘locus palis munitus et circumseptus.’ Our etymologists never stop short withbally: they go as far asBalaklavaand, probably,Ballarat, to claim cognates for ourBala.↑13Cadrawd here gives the Welsh as ‘2bladur… 2đyđ o wair,’ and observes that the lacuna consists of an illegible word of three letters. If that word was eithersef, ‘that is,’ orneu, ‘or,’ the sense would be as given above. In North Cardiganshire we speak of a day’s mowing asgwaith gwr, ‘a man’s work for a day,’ and sometimes of agwaith gwr bach, ‘a man’s work for a short day.’↑14SeeBy-Gonesfor May 24, 1899. The full name of Welshpool in Welsh isTraỻwng Ỻywelyn, so called after a Ỻywelyn descended from Cuneđa, and supposed to have established a religious house there; for there are other Traỻwngs, and at first sight it would seem as ifTraỻwnghad something to do with a lake or piece of water. But there is a Traỻwng, for instance, near Brecon, where there is no lake to give it the name; and my attention has been called to Thos. Richards’Welsh-English Dictionary, where atraỻwngis said to be ‘such a soft place on the road (or elsewhere) as travellers may be apt to sink into, a dirty pool.’ So the word seems to be partly of the same derivation asgo-ỻwng, ‘to let go, to give way.’ The form of the word in use now isTraỻwm, notTraỻwngorTraỻwn.↑15See theBook of the Dun Cow, fo. 39a–41band Joyce’sOld Celtic Romances, pp. 97–105; but the story may now be consulted in O’Grady’sSilva Gadelica, i. 233–7, translated in ii. 265–9. On turning over the leaves of this great collection of Irish lore, I chanced, i. 174, ii. 196, on an allusion to a well which, when uncovered, was about to drown the whole locality but for a miracle performed by St. Patrick to arrest the flow of its waters. A similar story of a well bursting and forming Lough Reagh, in County Galway, will be found told in verse in theBook of Leinster; fo. 202b: see also fo. 170a, and the editor’s notes, pp. 45,53.↑16See Evans’ autotype edition of theBlack Book of Carmarthen, fos. 53b, 54a, also 32a: the punctuation is that of the MS. In the seventh tripletkedaulis writtenkeadaul, which seems to meankadaulcorrected intokedaul; but theais not deleted, so other readings are possible.↑17In theIolo MSS., p. 89,finaun wenestiris made intoFfynon-Wenestrand said to be one of the ornamental epithets of the sea; but I am convinced that it should be rather treated asffynnon fenestrwithwenestirorfenestrmutated frommenestr, which meant a servant, attendant, cup-bearer: for one or two instances see Pughe’sDictionary. The word is probably, as suggested by M. Loth in hisMots Latins, p. 186. the old Frenchmenestre, ‘cup-bearer,’ borrowed. Compare the mention of Nechtán’s men having access to the secret well in Sid Nechtáin, p. 390 below, and note that they were his threemenestresor cup-bearers.↑18See theCymmrodor, viii. 88 (No. xxix), where a Marereda is mentioned as a daughter of Madog son of Meredyđ brother to Rhys Gryg.↑19There is another reading which would make them intoSegantii, and render it irrelevant—to say the least of it—to mention them here.↑20See theMabinogion, p. 35: the passage has been mistranslated in Lady Charlotte Guest’sMabinogion, iii. 117.↑21See myArthurian Legend, pp. 263–4.↑22I do not profess to see my way through the difficulties which the probable etymological connexion between the names Setantii, Setanta, Seithyn, and Seithennin implies. But parts of the following string of guesses may be found to hold good:—Seithynis probably more correct thanSeithin, as it rhymes withcristin=Cristyn(inCristynogaeth: see Silvan Evans’Geiriadur, s. v., and Skene’sFour Ancient Books, ii. 210); and it might be assumed to be from the same stem asSeizun; but, supposing it to represent an earlierSeithynt, it would equate phonologically withSetanta, betterSetinte, of which the genitiveSetintiactually occurs, as a river name, in theBook of the Dun Cow, fo. 125b: see myHibbert Lectures, p. 455, and see also theRevue Celtique, xi. 457. It would mean some such an early formSetn̥ti̯o-s, andSeithenhin, another derivative from the same stem,Setn̥tīno-s. But the retention ofnbeforetinSetinteproves it not to be unconnected withSeithyn, but borrowed from some Brythonic dialect when the latter was pronouncedSeithn̥ti̯o-s. If this be anywhere nearly right one has to assume that the manuscripts of Ptolemy giving the genitive plural asΣεταντίωνorΣεγαντίωνshould have readΣεκταντίων, unless one should rather conjectureΣεγταντίωνwithchtrepresented bygtas in Ogams in Pembrokeshire: witnessOgteneandMaqui Quegte. This conjecture as to the original reading would suggest that the name was derived from the seventh numeralsechtn̥, just as that of the Galloway people of theNovantæseems to be from the ninth numeral. Ptolemy’s next entry to the Harbour of the Setantii is the estuary of the Belisama, supposed to be the Mersey; and next comes the estuary of theΣετείαorΣεγεία, supposed to be the Dee. Now the country of the Setantii, when they had a country, may have reached from their harbour near the mouth of the Ribble to the Seteia or the Dee without the name Seteia or Segeia having anything to do with their own, except that it may have influenced the latter in the manuscripts of Ptolemy’s text. Then we possibly have a representative ofSeteiaorSegeiain theSaidiorSeidi, sometimes appended to Seithyn’s name. In that caseSeithyn Saidi, in the late Triad iii. 37, would mean Seithyn of Seteia, or the Dee. AMab Saidioccurs in the Kulhwch story (Mabinogion, p. 106), also Cas, son of Saidi (ib. 110); and inRhonabwy’s DreamKadyrieith, son of Saidi (ib. 160); but the latter vocable isSeidiin Triad ii. 26 (ib. 303). It is to be borne in mind that Ptolemy does not represent the Setantii as a people in his time: he only mentions a harbour called after the Setantii. So it looks as if they then belonged to the past—that in fact they were, as I should put it, a Goidelic people who had been conquered and partly expelled by Brythonic tribes, to wit, by the Brigantes, and also by the Cornavii in case the Setantii had once extended southwards to the Dee. This naturally leads one to think that some of them escaped to places on the coast, such as Dyfed, and that some made for the opposite coast of Ireland, and that, by the time when the Cúchulainn stories came to be edited as we have them, the people in question were known to the redactors of those stories only by the Brythonic form of their name, which underlies that ofSetanta Beg, or the Little Setantian. Those of them who found a home on the coast of Cardigan Bay may have brought with them a version of the inundation story with Seithennin, son of Seithyn, as the principal figure in it. So in due time he had to be attached to some royal family, and in theIolo MSS., pp. 141–2, he is made to descend from a certain Plaws Hen, king of Dyfed, while the saints named as his descendants seem to have belonged chiefly to Gwyneđ and Powys.↑23See the Professor’sAddress on the Place of a University in the History of Wales, delivered at Bangor at the opening ceremony of the Session of 1899–1900 (Bangor, 1900), p. 6. The reference to Giraldus is to hisItin. Kambriæ, i. 13 (p. 100), and theExpugnatio Hibernica, i. 36 (p. 284).↑24Instead of ‘she followed it’ one would have expected ‘it followed her’; but the style is very loose and rough.↑25As a ‘Cardy’ I have here two grievances, one against my Northwalian fellow countrymen, that they insist on writingRheidiolout of sheer weakness for the semivowel i̯; and the other against the compilers of school books on geography, who give the lake away to the Wye or the Severn. I am told that this does not matter, as our geographers are notoriously accurate about Natal and other distant lands; so I ought to rest satisfied.↑26Professor Meyer has given a number of extracts concerning her in his notes to his edition ofThe Vision of Mac Conglinne(London, 1892), pp. 131–4, 208–10, and recently he has publishedThe Song of the Old Woman of Bearein theOtia Merseiana(London, 1899), pp. 119–28, from the Trinity College codex, H. 3, 18, where we are told, among other things, that her name was Digdi, and that she belonged to Corcaguiny. The name Béara, or Bérre, would seem to suggest identification with that of Bera, daughter of Eibhear, king of Spain, and wife of Eoghan Taidhleach, in the late story ofThe Courtship of Moméra, edited by O’Curry in hisBattle of Magh Leana(Dublin, 1855); but the other name Digdi would seem to stand in the way. However none of the literature in point has yet been discovered in any really old manuscript, and it may be that the place-nameBerre, inCaillech Bérri, has usurped the place of the personal nameBéra, whose antiquity in some such a form asBéraorMérais proved by its honorific formMo-mera: see O’Curry’s volume, p. 166, and his Introduction, p. xx.↑
1This was written at the end of 1892, and read to a joint meeting of the Cymmrodorion and Folk-Lore Societies on January 11, 1893.↑2Some account of them was given by me inFolk-Lorefor 1892, p. 380; but somehow or other my contribution was printed unrevised, with results more peculiar than edifying.↑3InFolk-Lorefor 1893, pp. 58–9.↑4In the neighbourhood I find that the wordgwaeldynin this verse is sometimes explained to mean not a worthless but an ailing person, on the strength of the fact that the adjectivegwaelis colloquially used both for vile and for ailing.↑5Since writing the above remarks the following paragraph, purporting to be copied from theLiverpool Mercuryfor November 18, 1896, appeared in theArchæologia Cambrensisfor 1899, p. 334:—‘Two new fishes have just been put in the “Sacred Well,” Ffynnon y Sant, at Tyn y Ffynnon, in the village of Nant Peris, Ỻanberis. Invalids in large numbers came, during the last century and the first half of the present century, to this well to drink of its “miraculous waters”; and the oak box, where the contributions of those who visited the spot were kept, is still in its place at the side of the well. There have always been two “sacred fishes” in this well; and there is a tradition in the village to the effect that if one of the Tyn y Ffynnon fishes came out of its hiding-place when an invalid took some of the water for drinking or for bathing purposes, cure was certain; but if the fishes remained in their den, the water would do those who took it no good. Two fishes only are to be put in the well at a time, and they generally live in its waters for about half a century. If one dies before the other, it wouldbe of no use to put in a new fish, for the old fish would not associate with it, and it would die. The experiment has been tried. The last of the two fishes put in the well about fifty years ago died last August. It had been blind for some time previous to its death. When taken out of the water it measured seventeen inches, and was buried in the garden adjoining the well. It is stated in a document of the year 1776 that the parish clerk was to receive the money put in the box of the well by visitors. This money, together with the amount of 6s.4d., was his annual stipend.’ Tyn y Ffynnon means ‘the Tenement of the Well,’tynbeing a shortened form oftyđyn, ‘a tenement,’as mentioned at p. 33 above; but the mapsters make it intoty’n=ty yn, ‘a house in,’ so that the present instance,Ty’n y Ffynnon, could only mean ‘the House in the Well,’ which, needless to say, it is not. But one would like to know whether the house and land were once held rent-free on condition that the tenant took care of the sacred fish.↑6See Ashton’sIolo Goch, p. 234, and Lewis’Top. Dict.↑7See myHibbert Lectures, p. 229, and theIolo MSS., pp. 42–3, 420–1.↑8A curious note bearing on this name occurs in the Jesus College MS. 20 (Cymmrodor, viii. p. 86) in reference to the nameMorgannwg, ‘Glamorgan’:—O enỽ Morgant vchot y gelwir Morgannỽc. Ereiỻ a dyweit. Mae o enỽ Mochteyrn Predein.‘It is from the name of the above Morgan that Morgannwg is called. Others say that it is from the name of themochdeyrnof Pictland.’ Themochteyrnmust have been a Pictish king or mórmáer called Morgan. The name occurs in the charters from theBook of Deerin Stokes’Goidelica. pp. 109, 111, asMorcunt,Morcunn, andMorgunnundeclined,also withMorgainnfor genitive; and so in Skene’sChronicles of the Picts and Scots, pp. 77, 317, where it is printedMorgaind; see also Stokes’ Tigernach, in theRevue Celtique, xvii. 198. Compare Geoffrey’s story, ii. 15, which introduces a northern Marganus to account for the name Margan, nowMargam, in Morgannwg.↑9M. Loth’s remarks in point will be found in theRevue Celtique, xiii. 496–7, where he compares withtutthe Bretonteuz, ‘lutin, génie malfaisant ou bienfaisant’; and for the successive guesses on the subject of the nameMorgan tutone should also consult Zimmer’s remarks in Foerster’s Introduction to hisErec, pp. xxvii–xxxi, and myArthurian Legend, p. 391, to which I should add a reference to theBook of Ballymote, fo. 360a, where we haveo na bantuathaib, which O’Curry has rendered ‘on the part of their Witches’ in hisManners and Customs of the Ancient Irish, iii. 526–7. Comparedá bhantuathaigh, ‘two female sorcerers,’ in Joyce’s Keating’sHistory of Ireland, pp. 122–3.↑10For all about the Children of Lir, and about Liban and Lough Neagh, see Joyce’sOld Celtic Romances, pp. 4–36, 97–105.↑11On my appealing to Cadrawd, one of the later editors, he has found me the exact reference, to wit, volume ix of theCyfaiỻ(published in 1889), p. 50; and he has since contributed a translation of the story to the columns of theSouth Wales Daily Newsfor February 15, 1899, where he has also given an account of Crymlyn, which is to be mentioned later.↑12Judging from the three best-known instances,y balameant the outlet of a lake: I allude to thisBalaat the outlet of Ỻyn Tegid;Pont y Bala, ‘the Bridge of thebala,’ across the water flowing from the Upper into the Lower Lake at Ỻanberis; andBala Deulyn, ‘thebalaof two lakes,’ at Nantỻe. Two places calledBryn y Balaare mentioned s. v.Balain Morris’Celtic Remains, one near Aberystwyth, at a spot which I have never seen, and the other near the lower end of the Lower Lake of Ỻanberis, as to which it has been suggested to me that it is an error forBryn y Bela. It is needless to say thatbalahas nothing to do with the Anglo-Irishbally, of such names asBallymurphyorBallynahunt: this vocable is in Englishbailey, and in South Walesbeili, ‘a farm yard or enclosure,’ all three probably from the late Latinbaliumorballium, ‘locus palis munitus et circumseptus.’ Our etymologists never stop short withbally: they go as far asBalaklavaand, probably,Ballarat, to claim cognates for ourBala.↑13Cadrawd here gives the Welsh as ‘2bladur… 2đyđ o wair,’ and observes that the lacuna consists of an illegible word of three letters. If that word was eithersef, ‘that is,’ orneu, ‘or,’ the sense would be as given above. In North Cardiganshire we speak of a day’s mowing asgwaith gwr, ‘a man’s work for a day,’ and sometimes of agwaith gwr bach, ‘a man’s work for a short day.’↑14SeeBy-Gonesfor May 24, 1899. The full name of Welshpool in Welsh isTraỻwng Ỻywelyn, so called after a Ỻywelyn descended from Cuneđa, and supposed to have established a religious house there; for there are other Traỻwngs, and at first sight it would seem as ifTraỻwnghad something to do with a lake or piece of water. But there is a Traỻwng, for instance, near Brecon, where there is no lake to give it the name; and my attention has been called to Thos. Richards’Welsh-English Dictionary, where atraỻwngis said to be ‘such a soft place on the road (or elsewhere) as travellers may be apt to sink into, a dirty pool.’ So the word seems to be partly of the same derivation asgo-ỻwng, ‘to let go, to give way.’ The form of the word in use now isTraỻwm, notTraỻwngorTraỻwn.↑15See theBook of the Dun Cow, fo. 39a–41band Joyce’sOld Celtic Romances, pp. 97–105; but the story may now be consulted in O’Grady’sSilva Gadelica, i. 233–7, translated in ii. 265–9. On turning over the leaves of this great collection of Irish lore, I chanced, i. 174, ii. 196, on an allusion to a well which, when uncovered, was about to drown the whole locality but for a miracle performed by St. Patrick to arrest the flow of its waters. A similar story of a well bursting and forming Lough Reagh, in County Galway, will be found told in verse in theBook of Leinster; fo. 202b: see also fo. 170a, and the editor’s notes, pp. 45,53.↑16See Evans’ autotype edition of theBlack Book of Carmarthen, fos. 53b, 54a, also 32a: the punctuation is that of the MS. In the seventh tripletkedaulis writtenkeadaul, which seems to meankadaulcorrected intokedaul; but theais not deleted, so other readings are possible.↑17In theIolo MSS., p. 89,finaun wenestiris made intoFfynon-Wenestrand said to be one of the ornamental epithets of the sea; but I am convinced that it should be rather treated asffynnon fenestrwithwenestirorfenestrmutated frommenestr, which meant a servant, attendant, cup-bearer: for one or two instances see Pughe’sDictionary. The word is probably, as suggested by M. Loth in hisMots Latins, p. 186. the old Frenchmenestre, ‘cup-bearer,’ borrowed. Compare the mention of Nechtán’s men having access to the secret well in Sid Nechtáin, p. 390 below, and note that they were his threemenestresor cup-bearers.↑18See theCymmrodor, viii. 88 (No. xxix), where a Marereda is mentioned as a daughter of Madog son of Meredyđ brother to Rhys Gryg.↑19There is another reading which would make them intoSegantii, and render it irrelevant—to say the least of it—to mention them here.↑20See theMabinogion, p. 35: the passage has been mistranslated in Lady Charlotte Guest’sMabinogion, iii. 117.↑21See myArthurian Legend, pp. 263–4.↑22I do not profess to see my way through the difficulties which the probable etymological connexion between the names Setantii, Setanta, Seithyn, and Seithennin implies. But parts of the following string of guesses may be found to hold good:—Seithynis probably more correct thanSeithin, as it rhymes withcristin=Cristyn(inCristynogaeth: see Silvan Evans’Geiriadur, s. v., and Skene’sFour Ancient Books, ii. 210); and it might be assumed to be from the same stem asSeizun; but, supposing it to represent an earlierSeithynt, it would equate phonologically withSetanta, betterSetinte, of which the genitiveSetintiactually occurs, as a river name, in theBook of the Dun Cow, fo. 125b: see myHibbert Lectures, p. 455, and see also theRevue Celtique, xi. 457. It would mean some such an early formSetn̥ti̯o-s, andSeithenhin, another derivative from the same stem,Setn̥tīno-s. But the retention ofnbeforetinSetinteproves it not to be unconnected withSeithyn, but borrowed from some Brythonic dialect when the latter was pronouncedSeithn̥ti̯o-s. If this be anywhere nearly right one has to assume that the manuscripts of Ptolemy giving the genitive plural asΣεταντίωνorΣεγαντίωνshould have readΣεκταντίων, unless one should rather conjectureΣεγταντίωνwithchtrepresented bygtas in Ogams in Pembrokeshire: witnessOgteneandMaqui Quegte. This conjecture as to the original reading would suggest that the name was derived from the seventh numeralsechtn̥, just as that of the Galloway people of theNovantæseems to be from the ninth numeral. Ptolemy’s next entry to the Harbour of the Setantii is the estuary of the Belisama, supposed to be the Mersey; and next comes the estuary of theΣετείαorΣεγεία, supposed to be the Dee. Now the country of the Setantii, when they had a country, may have reached from their harbour near the mouth of the Ribble to the Seteia or the Dee without the name Seteia or Segeia having anything to do with their own, except that it may have influenced the latter in the manuscripts of Ptolemy’s text. Then we possibly have a representative ofSeteiaorSegeiain theSaidiorSeidi, sometimes appended to Seithyn’s name. In that caseSeithyn Saidi, in the late Triad iii. 37, would mean Seithyn of Seteia, or the Dee. AMab Saidioccurs in the Kulhwch story (Mabinogion, p. 106), also Cas, son of Saidi (ib. 110); and inRhonabwy’s DreamKadyrieith, son of Saidi (ib. 160); but the latter vocable isSeidiin Triad ii. 26 (ib. 303). It is to be borne in mind that Ptolemy does not represent the Setantii as a people in his time: he only mentions a harbour called after the Setantii. So it looks as if they then belonged to the past—that in fact they were, as I should put it, a Goidelic people who had been conquered and partly expelled by Brythonic tribes, to wit, by the Brigantes, and also by the Cornavii in case the Setantii had once extended southwards to the Dee. This naturally leads one to think that some of them escaped to places on the coast, such as Dyfed, and that some made for the opposite coast of Ireland, and that, by the time when the Cúchulainn stories came to be edited as we have them, the people in question were known to the redactors of those stories only by the Brythonic form of their name, which underlies that ofSetanta Beg, or the Little Setantian. Those of them who found a home on the coast of Cardigan Bay may have brought with them a version of the inundation story with Seithennin, son of Seithyn, as the principal figure in it. So in due time he had to be attached to some royal family, and in theIolo MSS., pp. 141–2, he is made to descend from a certain Plaws Hen, king of Dyfed, while the saints named as his descendants seem to have belonged chiefly to Gwyneđ and Powys.↑23See the Professor’sAddress on the Place of a University in the History of Wales, delivered at Bangor at the opening ceremony of the Session of 1899–1900 (Bangor, 1900), p. 6. The reference to Giraldus is to hisItin. Kambriæ, i. 13 (p. 100), and theExpugnatio Hibernica, i. 36 (p. 284).↑24Instead of ‘she followed it’ one would have expected ‘it followed her’; but the style is very loose and rough.↑25As a ‘Cardy’ I have here two grievances, one against my Northwalian fellow countrymen, that they insist on writingRheidiolout of sheer weakness for the semivowel i̯; and the other against the compilers of school books on geography, who give the lake away to the Wye or the Severn. I am told that this does not matter, as our geographers are notoriously accurate about Natal and other distant lands; so I ought to rest satisfied.↑26Professor Meyer has given a number of extracts concerning her in his notes to his edition ofThe Vision of Mac Conglinne(London, 1892), pp. 131–4, 208–10, and recently he has publishedThe Song of the Old Woman of Bearein theOtia Merseiana(London, 1899), pp. 119–28, from the Trinity College codex, H. 3, 18, where we are told, among other things, that her name was Digdi, and that she belonged to Corcaguiny. The name Béara, or Bérre, would seem to suggest identification with that of Bera, daughter of Eibhear, king of Spain, and wife of Eoghan Taidhleach, in the late story ofThe Courtship of Moméra, edited by O’Curry in hisBattle of Magh Leana(Dublin, 1855); but the other name Digdi would seem to stand in the way. However none of the literature in point has yet been discovered in any really old manuscript, and it may be that the place-nameBerre, inCaillech Bérri, has usurped the place of the personal nameBéra, whose antiquity in some such a form asBéraorMérais proved by its honorific formMo-mera: see O’Curry’s volume, p. 166, and his Introduction, p. xx.↑
1This was written at the end of 1892, and read to a joint meeting of the Cymmrodorion and Folk-Lore Societies on January 11, 1893.↑2Some account of them was given by me inFolk-Lorefor 1892, p. 380; but somehow or other my contribution was printed unrevised, with results more peculiar than edifying.↑3InFolk-Lorefor 1893, pp. 58–9.↑4In the neighbourhood I find that the wordgwaeldynin this verse is sometimes explained to mean not a worthless but an ailing person, on the strength of the fact that the adjectivegwaelis colloquially used both for vile and for ailing.↑5Since writing the above remarks the following paragraph, purporting to be copied from theLiverpool Mercuryfor November 18, 1896, appeared in theArchæologia Cambrensisfor 1899, p. 334:—‘Two new fishes have just been put in the “Sacred Well,” Ffynnon y Sant, at Tyn y Ffynnon, in the village of Nant Peris, Ỻanberis. Invalids in large numbers came, during the last century and the first half of the present century, to this well to drink of its “miraculous waters”; and the oak box, where the contributions of those who visited the spot were kept, is still in its place at the side of the well. There have always been two “sacred fishes” in this well; and there is a tradition in the village to the effect that if one of the Tyn y Ffynnon fishes came out of its hiding-place when an invalid took some of the water for drinking or for bathing purposes, cure was certain; but if the fishes remained in their den, the water would do those who took it no good. Two fishes only are to be put in the well at a time, and they generally live in its waters for about half a century. If one dies before the other, it wouldbe of no use to put in a new fish, for the old fish would not associate with it, and it would die. The experiment has been tried. The last of the two fishes put in the well about fifty years ago died last August. It had been blind for some time previous to its death. When taken out of the water it measured seventeen inches, and was buried in the garden adjoining the well. It is stated in a document of the year 1776 that the parish clerk was to receive the money put in the box of the well by visitors. This money, together with the amount of 6s.4d., was his annual stipend.’ Tyn y Ffynnon means ‘the Tenement of the Well,’tynbeing a shortened form oftyđyn, ‘a tenement,’as mentioned at p. 33 above; but the mapsters make it intoty’n=ty yn, ‘a house in,’ so that the present instance,Ty’n y Ffynnon, could only mean ‘the House in the Well,’ which, needless to say, it is not. But one would like to know whether the house and land were once held rent-free on condition that the tenant took care of the sacred fish.↑6See Ashton’sIolo Goch, p. 234, and Lewis’Top. Dict.↑7See myHibbert Lectures, p. 229, and theIolo MSS., pp. 42–3, 420–1.↑8A curious note bearing on this name occurs in the Jesus College MS. 20 (Cymmrodor, viii. p. 86) in reference to the nameMorgannwg, ‘Glamorgan’:—O enỽ Morgant vchot y gelwir Morgannỽc. Ereiỻ a dyweit. Mae o enỽ Mochteyrn Predein.‘It is from the name of the above Morgan that Morgannwg is called. Others say that it is from the name of themochdeyrnof Pictland.’ Themochteyrnmust have been a Pictish king or mórmáer called Morgan. The name occurs in the charters from theBook of Deerin Stokes’Goidelica. pp. 109, 111, asMorcunt,Morcunn, andMorgunnundeclined,also withMorgainnfor genitive; and so in Skene’sChronicles of the Picts and Scots, pp. 77, 317, where it is printedMorgaind; see also Stokes’ Tigernach, in theRevue Celtique, xvii. 198. Compare Geoffrey’s story, ii. 15, which introduces a northern Marganus to account for the name Margan, nowMargam, in Morgannwg.↑9M. Loth’s remarks in point will be found in theRevue Celtique, xiii. 496–7, where he compares withtutthe Bretonteuz, ‘lutin, génie malfaisant ou bienfaisant’; and for the successive guesses on the subject of the nameMorgan tutone should also consult Zimmer’s remarks in Foerster’s Introduction to hisErec, pp. xxvii–xxxi, and myArthurian Legend, p. 391, to which I should add a reference to theBook of Ballymote, fo. 360a, where we haveo na bantuathaib, which O’Curry has rendered ‘on the part of their Witches’ in hisManners and Customs of the Ancient Irish, iii. 526–7. Comparedá bhantuathaigh, ‘two female sorcerers,’ in Joyce’s Keating’sHistory of Ireland, pp. 122–3.↑10For all about the Children of Lir, and about Liban and Lough Neagh, see Joyce’sOld Celtic Romances, pp. 4–36, 97–105.↑11On my appealing to Cadrawd, one of the later editors, he has found me the exact reference, to wit, volume ix of theCyfaiỻ(published in 1889), p. 50; and he has since contributed a translation of the story to the columns of theSouth Wales Daily Newsfor February 15, 1899, where he has also given an account of Crymlyn, which is to be mentioned later.↑12Judging from the three best-known instances,y balameant the outlet of a lake: I allude to thisBalaat the outlet of Ỻyn Tegid;Pont y Bala, ‘the Bridge of thebala,’ across the water flowing from the Upper into the Lower Lake at Ỻanberis; andBala Deulyn, ‘thebalaof two lakes,’ at Nantỻe. Two places calledBryn y Balaare mentioned s. v.Balain Morris’Celtic Remains, one near Aberystwyth, at a spot which I have never seen, and the other near the lower end of the Lower Lake of Ỻanberis, as to which it has been suggested to me that it is an error forBryn y Bela. It is needless to say thatbalahas nothing to do with the Anglo-Irishbally, of such names asBallymurphyorBallynahunt: this vocable is in Englishbailey, and in South Walesbeili, ‘a farm yard or enclosure,’ all three probably from the late Latinbaliumorballium, ‘locus palis munitus et circumseptus.’ Our etymologists never stop short withbally: they go as far asBalaklavaand, probably,Ballarat, to claim cognates for ourBala.↑13Cadrawd here gives the Welsh as ‘2bladur… 2đyđ o wair,’ and observes that the lacuna consists of an illegible word of three letters. If that word was eithersef, ‘that is,’ orneu, ‘or,’ the sense would be as given above. In North Cardiganshire we speak of a day’s mowing asgwaith gwr, ‘a man’s work for a day,’ and sometimes of agwaith gwr bach, ‘a man’s work for a short day.’↑14SeeBy-Gonesfor May 24, 1899. The full name of Welshpool in Welsh isTraỻwng Ỻywelyn, so called after a Ỻywelyn descended from Cuneđa, and supposed to have established a religious house there; for there are other Traỻwngs, and at first sight it would seem as ifTraỻwnghad something to do with a lake or piece of water. But there is a Traỻwng, for instance, near Brecon, where there is no lake to give it the name; and my attention has been called to Thos. Richards’Welsh-English Dictionary, where atraỻwngis said to be ‘such a soft place on the road (or elsewhere) as travellers may be apt to sink into, a dirty pool.’ So the word seems to be partly of the same derivation asgo-ỻwng, ‘to let go, to give way.’ The form of the word in use now isTraỻwm, notTraỻwngorTraỻwn.↑15See theBook of the Dun Cow, fo. 39a–41band Joyce’sOld Celtic Romances, pp. 97–105; but the story may now be consulted in O’Grady’sSilva Gadelica, i. 233–7, translated in ii. 265–9. On turning over the leaves of this great collection of Irish lore, I chanced, i. 174, ii. 196, on an allusion to a well which, when uncovered, was about to drown the whole locality but for a miracle performed by St. Patrick to arrest the flow of its waters. A similar story of a well bursting and forming Lough Reagh, in County Galway, will be found told in verse in theBook of Leinster; fo. 202b: see also fo. 170a, and the editor’s notes, pp. 45,53.↑16See Evans’ autotype edition of theBlack Book of Carmarthen, fos. 53b, 54a, also 32a: the punctuation is that of the MS. In the seventh tripletkedaulis writtenkeadaul, which seems to meankadaulcorrected intokedaul; but theais not deleted, so other readings are possible.↑17In theIolo MSS., p. 89,finaun wenestiris made intoFfynon-Wenestrand said to be one of the ornamental epithets of the sea; but I am convinced that it should be rather treated asffynnon fenestrwithwenestirorfenestrmutated frommenestr, which meant a servant, attendant, cup-bearer: for one or two instances see Pughe’sDictionary. The word is probably, as suggested by M. Loth in hisMots Latins, p. 186. the old Frenchmenestre, ‘cup-bearer,’ borrowed. Compare the mention of Nechtán’s men having access to the secret well in Sid Nechtáin, p. 390 below, and note that they were his threemenestresor cup-bearers.↑18See theCymmrodor, viii. 88 (No. xxix), where a Marereda is mentioned as a daughter of Madog son of Meredyđ brother to Rhys Gryg.↑19There is another reading which would make them intoSegantii, and render it irrelevant—to say the least of it—to mention them here.↑20See theMabinogion, p. 35: the passage has been mistranslated in Lady Charlotte Guest’sMabinogion, iii. 117.↑21See myArthurian Legend, pp. 263–4.↑22I do not profess to see my way through the difficulties which the probable etymological connexion between the names Setantii, Setanta, Seithyn, and Seithennin implies. But parts of the following string of guesses may be found to hold good:—Seithynis probably more correct thanSeithin, as it rhymes withcristin=Cristyn(inCristynogaeth: see Silvan Evans’Geiriadur, s. v., and Skene’sFour Ancient Books, ii. 210); and it might be assumed to be from the same stem asSeizun; but, supposing it to represent an earlierSeithynt, it would equate phonologically withSetanta, betterSetinte, of which the genitiveSetintiactually occurs, as a river name, in theBook of the Dun Cow, fo. 125b: see myHibbert Lectures, p. 455, and see also theRevue Celtique, xi. 457. It would mean some such an early formSetn̥ti̯o-s, andSeithenhin, another derivative from the same stem,Setn̥tīno-s. But the retention ofnbeforetinSetinteproves it not to be unconnected withSeithyn, but borrowed from some Brythonic dialect when the latter was pronouncedSeithn̥ti̯o-s. If this be anywhere nearly right one has to assume that the manuscripts of Ptolemy giving the genitive plural asΣεταντίωνorΣεγαντίωνshould have readΣεκταντίων, unless one should rather conjectureΣεγταντίωνwithchtrepresented bygtas in Ogams in Pembrokeshire: witnessOgteneandMaqui Quegte. This conjecture as to the original reading would suggest that the name was derived from the seventh numeralsechtn̥, just as that of the Galloway people of theNovantæseems to be from the ninth numeral. Ptolemy’s next entry to the Harbour of the Setantii is the estuary of the Belisama, supposed to be the Mersey; and next comes the estuary of theΣετείαorΣεγεία, supposed to be the Dee. Now the country of the Setantii, when they had a country, may have reached from their harbour near the mouth of the Ribble to the Seteia or the Dee without the name Seteia or Segeia having anything to do with their own, except that it may have influenced the latter in the manuscripts of Ptolemy’s text. Then we possibly have a representative ofSeteiaorSegeiain theSaidiorSeidi, sometimes appended to Seithyn’s name. In that caseSeithyn Saidi, in the late Triad iii. 37, would mean Seithyn of Seteia, or the Dee. AMab Saidioccurs in the Kulhwch story (Mabinogion, p. 106), also Cas, son of Saidi (ib. 110); and inRhonabwy’s DreamKadyrieith, son of Saidi (ib. 160); but the latter vocable isSeidiin Triad ii. 26 (ib. 303). It is to be borne in mind that Ptolemy does not represent the Setantii as a people in his time: he only mentions a harbour called after the Setantii. So it looks as if they then belonged to the past—that in fact they were, as I should put it, a Goidelic people who had been conquered and partly expelled by Brythonic tribes, to wit, by the Brigantes, and also by the Cornavii in case the Setantii had once extended southwards to the Dee. This naturally leads one to think that some of them escaped to places on the coast, such as Dyfed, and that some made for the opposite coast of Ireland, and that, by the time when the Cúchulainn stories came to be edited as we have them, the people in question were known to the redactors of those stories only by the Brythonic form of their name, which underlies that ofSetanta Beg, or the Little Setantian. Those of them who found a home on the coast of Cardigan Bay may have brought with them a version of the inundation story with Seithennin, son of Seithyn, as the principal figure in it. So in due time he had to be attached to some royal family, and in theIolo MSS., pp. 141–2, he is made to descend from a certain Plaws Hen, king of Dyfed, while the saints named as his descendants seem to have belonged chiefly to Gwyneđ and Powys.↑23See the Professor’sAddress on the Place of a University in the History of Wales, delivered at Bangor at the opening ceremony of the Session of 1899–1900 (Bangor, 1900), p. 6. The reference to Giraldus is to hisItin. Kambriæ, i. 13 (p. 100), and theExpugnatio Hibernica, i. 36 (p. 284).↑24Instead of ‘she followed it’ one would have expected ‘it followed her’; but the style is very loose and rough.↑25As a ‘Cardy’ I have here two grievances, one against my Northwalian fellow countrymen, that they insist on writingRheidiolout of sheer weakness for the semivowel i̯; and the other against the compilers of school books on geography, who give the lake away to the Wye or the Severn. I am told that this does not matter, as our geographers are notoriously accurate about Natal and other distant lands; so I ought to rest satisfied.↑26Professor Meyer has given a number of extracts concerning her in his notes to his edition ofThe Vision of Mac Conglinne(London, 1892), pp. 131–4, 208–10, and recently he has publishedThe Song of the Old Woman of Bearein theOtia Merseiana(London, 1899), pp. 119–28, from the Trinity College codex, H. 3, 18, where we are told, among other things, that her name was Digdi, and that she belonged to Corcaguiny. The name Béara, or Bérre, would seem to suggest identification with that of Bera, daughter of Eibhear, king of Spain, and wife of Eoghan Taidhleach, in the late story ofThe Courtship of Moméra, edited by O’Curry in hisBattle of Magh Leana(Dublin, 1855); but the other name Digdi would seem to stand in the way. However none of the literature in point has yet been discovered in any really old manuscript, and it may be that the place-nameBerre, inCaillech Bérri, has usurped the place of the personal nameBéra, whose antiquity in some such a form asBéraorMérais proved by its honorific formMo-mera: see O’Curry’s volume, p. 166, and his Introduction, p. xx.↑
1This was written at the end of 1892, and read to a joint meeting of the Cymmrodorion and Folk-Lore Societies on January 11, 1893.↑2Some account of them was given by me inFolk-Lorefor 1892, p. 380; but somehow or other my contribution was printed unrevised, with results more peculiar than edifying.↑3InFolk-Lorefor 1893, pp. 58–9.↑4In the neighbourhood I find that the wordgwaeldynin this verse is sometimes explained to mean not a worthless but an ailing person, on the strength of the fact that the adjectivegwaelis colloquially used both for vile and for ailing.↑5Since writing the above remarks the following paragraph, purporting to be copied from theLiverpool Mercuryfor November 18, 1896, appeared in theArchæologia Cambrensisfor 1899, p. 334:—‘Two new fishes have just been put in the “Sacred Well,” Ffynnon y Sant, at Tyn y Ffynnon, in the village of Nant Peris, Ỻanberis. Invalids in large numbers came, during the last century and the first half of the present century, to this well to drink of its “miraculous waters”; and the oak box, where the contributions of those who visited the spot were kept, is still in its place at the side of the well. There have always been two “sacred fishes” in this well; and there is a tradition in the village to the effect that if one of the Tyn y Ffynnon fishes came out of its hiding-place when an invalid took some of the water for drinking or for bathing purposes, cure was certain; but if the fishes remained in their den, the water would do those who took it no good. Two fishes only are to be put in the well at a time, and they generally live in its waters for about half a century. If one dies before the other, it wouldbe of no use to put in a new fish, for the old fish would not associate with it, and it would die. The experiment has been tried. The last of the two fishes put in the well about fifty years ago died last August. It had been blind for some time previous to its death. When taken out of the water it measured seventeen inches, and was buried in the garden adjoining the well. It is stated in a document of the year 1776 that the parish clerk was to receive the money put in the box of the well by visitors. This money, together with the amount of 6s.4d., was his annual stipend.’ Tyn y Ffynnon means ‘the Tenement of the Well,’tynbeing a shortened form oftyđyn, ‘a tenement,’as mentioned at p. 33 above; but the mapsters make it intoty’n=ty yn, ‘a house in,’ so that the present instance,Ty’n y Ffynnon, could only mean ‘the House in the Well,’ which, needless to say, it is not. But one would like to know whether the house and land were once held rent-free on condition that the tenant took care of the sacred fish.↑6See Ashton’sIolo Goch, p. 234, and Lewis’Top. Dict.↑7See myHibbert Lectures, p. 229, and theIolo MSS., pp. 42–3, 420–1.↑8A curious note bearing on this name occurs in the Jesus College MS. 20 (Cymmrodor, viii. p. 86) in reference to the nameMorgannwg, ‘Glamorgan’:—O enỽ Morgant vchot y gelwir Morgannỽc. Ereiỻ a dyweit. Mae o enỽ Mochteyrn Predein.‘It is from the name of the above Morgan that Morgannwg is called. Others say that it is from the name of themochdeyrnof Pictland.’ Themochteyrnmust have been a Pictish king or mórmáer called Morgan. The name occurs in the charters from theBook of Deerin Stokes’Goidelica. pp. 109, 111, asMorcunt,Morcunn, andMorgunnundeclined,also withMorgainnfor genitive; and so in Skene’sChronicles of the Picts and Scots, pp. 77, 317, where it is printedMorgaind; see also Stokes’ Tigernach, in theRevue Celtique, xvii. 198. Compare Geoffrey’s story, ii. 15, which introduces a northern Marganus to account for the name Margan, nowMargam, in Morgannwg.↑9M. Loth’s remarks in point will be found in theRevue Celtique, xiii. 496–7, where he compares withtutthe Bretonteuz, ‘lutin, génie malfaisant ou bienfaisant’; and for the successive guesses on the subject of the nameMorgan tutone should also consult Zimmer’s remarks in Foerster’s Introduction to hisErec, pp. xxvii–xxxi, and myArthurian Legend, p. 391, to which I should add a reference to theBook of Ballymote, fo. 360a, where we haveo na bantuathaib, which O’Curry has rendered ‘on the part of their Witches’ in hisManners and Customs of the Ancient Irish, iii. 526–7. Comparedá bhantuathaigh, ‘two female sorcerers,’ in Joyce’s Keating’sHistory of Ireland, pp. 122–3.↑10For all about the Children of Lir, and about Liban and Lough Neagh, see Joyce’sOld Celtic Romances, pp. 4–36, 97–105.↑11On my appealing to Cadrawd, one of the later editors, he has found me the exact reference, to wit, volume ix of theCyfaiỻ(published in 1889), p. 50; and he has since contributed a translation of the story to the columns of theSouth Wales Daily Newsfor February 15, 1899, where he has also given an account of Crymlyn, which is to be mentioned later.↑12Judging from the three best-known instances,y balameant the outlet of a lake: I allude to thisBalaat the outlet of Ỻyn Tegid;Pont y Bala, ‘the Bridge of thebala,’ across the water flowing from the Upper into the Lower Lake at Ỻanberis; andBala Deulyn, ‘thebalaof two lakes,’ at Nantỻe. Two places calledBryn y Balaare mentioned s. v.Balain Morris’Celtic Remains, one near Aberystwyth, at a spot which I have never seen, and the other near the lower end of the Lower Lake of Ỻanberis, as to which it has been suggested to me that it is an error forBryn y Bela. It is needless to say thatbalahas nothing to do with the Anglo-Irishbally, of such names asBallymurphyorBallynahunt: this vocable is in Englishbailey, and in South Walesbeili, ‘a farm yard or enclosure,’ all three probably from the late Latinbaliumorballium, ‘locus palis munitus et circumseptus.’ Our etymologists never stop short withbally: they go as far asBalaklavaand, probably,Ballarat, to claim cognates for ourBala.↑13Cadrawd here gives the Welsh as ‘2bladur… 2đyđ o wair,’ and observes that the lacuna consists of an illegible word of three letters. If that word was eithersef, ‘that is,’ orneu, ‘or,’ the sense would be as given above. In North Cardiganshire we speak of a day’s mowing asgwaith gwr, ‘a man’s work for a day,’ and sometimes of agwaith gwr bach, ‘a man’s work for a short day.’↑14SeeBy-Gonesfor May 24, 1899. The full name of Welshpool in Welsh isTraỻwng Ỻywelyn, so called after a Ỻywelyn descended from Cuneđa, and supposed to have established a religious house there; for there are other Traỻwngs, and at first sight it would seem as ifTraỻwnghad something to do with a lake or piece of water. But there is a Traỻwng, for instance, near Brecon, where there is no lake to give it the name; and my attention has been called to Thos. Richards’Welsh-English Dictionary, where atraỻwngis said to be ‘such a soft place on the road (or elsewhere) as travellers may be apt to sink into, a dirty pool.’ So the word seems to be partly of the same derivation asgo-ỻwng, ‘to let go, to give way.’ The form of the word in use now isTraỻwm, notTraỻwngorTraỻwn.↑15See theBook of the Dun Cow, fo. 39a–41band Joyce’sOld Celtic Romances, pp. 97–105; but the story may now be consulted in O’Grady’sSilva Gadelica, i. 233–7, translated in ii. 265–9. On turning over the leaves of this great collection of Irish lore, I chanced, i. 174, ii. 196, on an allusion to a well which, when uncovered, was about to drown the whole locality but for a miracle performed by St. Patrick to arrest the flow of its waters. A similar story of a well bursting and forming Lough Reagh, in County Galway, will be found told in verse in theBook of Leinster; fo. 202b: see also fo. 170a, and the editor’s notes, pp. 45,53.↑16See Evans’ autotype edition of theBlack Book of Carmarthen, fos. 53b, 54a, also 32a: the punctuation is that of the MS. In the seventh tripletkedaulis writtenkeadaul, which seems to meankadaulcorrected intokedaul; but theais not deleted, so other readings are possible.↑17In theIolo MSS., p. 89,finaun wenestiris made intoFfynon-Wenestrand said to be one of the ornamental epithets of the sea; but I am convinced that it should be rather treated asffynnon fenestrwithwenestirorfenestrmutated frommenestr, which meant a servant, attendant, cup-bearer: for one or two instances see Pughe’sDictionary. The word is probably, as suggested by M. Loth in hisMots Latins, p. 186. the old Frenchmenestre, ‘cup-bearer,’ borrowed. Compare the mention of Nechtán’s men having access to the secret well in Sid Nechtáin, p. 390 below, and note that they were his threemenestresor cup-bearers.↑18See theCymmrodor, viii. 88 (No. xxix), where a Marereda is mentioned as a daughter of Madog son of Meredyđ brother to Rhys Gryg.↑19There is another reading which would make them intoSegantii, and render it irrelevant—to say the least of it—to mention them here.↑20See theMabinogion, p. 35: the passage has been mistranslated in Lady Charlotte Guest’sMabinogion, iii. 117.↑21See myArthurian Legend, pp. 263–4.↑22I do not profess to see my way through the difficulties which the probable etymological connexion between the names Setantii, Setanta, Seithyn, and Seithennin implies. But parts of the following string of guesses may be found to hold good:—Seithynis probably more correct thanSeithin, as it rhymes withcristin=Cristyn(inCristynogaeth: see Silvan Evans’Geiriadur, s. v., and Skene’sFour Ancient Books, ii. 210); and it might be assumed to be from the same stem asSeizun; but, supposing it to represent an earlierSeithynt, it would equate phonologically withSetanta, betterSetinte, of which the genitiveSetintiactually occurs, as a river name, in theBook of the Dun Cow, fo. 125b: see myHibbert Lectures, p. 455, and see also theRevue Celtique, xi. 457. It would mean some such an early formSetn̥ti̯o-s, andSeithenhin, another derivative from the same stem,Setn̥tīno-s. But the retention ofnbeforetinSetinteproves it not to be unconnected withSeithyn, but borrowed from some Brythonic dialect when the latter was pronouncedSeithn̥ti̯o-s. If this be anywhere nearly right one has to assume that the manuscripts of Ptolemy giving the genitive plural asΣεταντίωνorΣεγαντίωνshould have readΣεκταντίων, unless one should rather conjectureΣεγταντίωνwithchtrepresented bygtas in Ogams in Pembrokeshire: witnessOgteneandMaqui Quegte. This conjecture as to the original reading would suggest that the name was derived from the seventh numeralsechtn̥, just as that of the Galloway people of theNovantæseems to be from the ninth numeral. Ptolemy’s next entry to the Harbour of the Setantii is the estuary of the Belisama, supposed to be the Mersey; and next comes the estuary of theΣετείαorΣεγεία, supposed to be the Dee. Now the country of the Setantii, when they had a country, may have reached from their harbour near the mouth of the Ribble to the Seteia or the Dee without the name Seteia or Segeia having anything to do with their own, except that it may have influenced the latter in the manuscripts of Ptolemy’s text. Then we possibly have a representative ofSeteiaorSegeiain theSaidiorSeidi, sometimes appended to Seithyn’s name. In that caseSeithyn Saidi, in the late Triad iii. 37, would mean Seithyn of Seteia, or the Dee. AMab Saidioccurs in the Kulhwch story (Mabinogion, p. 106), also Cas, son of Saidi (ib. 110); and inRhonabwy’s DreamKadyrieith, son of Saidi (ib. 160); but the latter vocable isSeidiin Triad ii. 26 (ib. 303). It is to be borne in mind that Ptolemy does not represent the Setantii as a people in his time: he only mentions a harbour called after the Setantii. So it looks as if they then belonged to the past—that in fact they were, as I should put it, a Goidelic people who had been conquered and partly expelled by Brythonic tribes, to wit, by the Brigantes, and also by the Cornavii in case the Setantii had once extended southwards to the Dee. This naturally leads one to think that some of them escaped to places on the coast, such as Dyfed, and that some made for the opposite coast of Ireland, and that, by the time when the Cúchulainn stories came to be edited as we have them, the people in question were known to the redactors of those stories only by the Brythonic form of their name, which underlies that ofSetanta Beg, or the Little Setantian. Those of them who found a home on the coast of Cardigan Bay may have brought with them a version of the inundation story with Seithennin, son of Seithyn, as the principal figure in it. So in due time he had to be attached to some royal family, and in theIolo MSS., pp. 141–2, he is made to descend from a certain Plaws Hen, king of Dyfed, while the saints named as his descendants seem to have belonged chiefly to Gwyneđ and Powys.↑23See the Professor’sAddress on the Place of a University in the History of Wales, delivered at Bangor at the opening ceremony of the Session of 1899–1900 (Bangor, 1900), p. 6. The reference to Giraldus is to hisItin. Kambriæ, i. 13 (p. 100), and theExpugnatio Hibernica, i. 36 (p. 284).↑24Instead of ‘she followed it’ one would have expected ‘it followed her’; but the style is very loose and rough.↑25As a ‘Cardy’ I have here two grievances, one against my Northwalian fellow countrymen, that they insist on writingRheidiolout of sheer weakness for the semivowel i̯; and the other against the compilers of school books on geography, who give the lake away to the Wye or the Severn. I am told that this does not matter, as our geographers are notoriously accurate about Natal and other distant lands; so I ought to rest satisfied.↑26Professor Meyer has given a number of extracts concerning her in his notes to his edition ofThe Vision of Mac Conglinne(London, 1892), pp. 131–4, 208–10, and recently he has publishedThe Song of the Old Woman of Bearein theOtia Merseiana(London, 1899), pp. 119–28, from the Trinity College codex, H. 3, 18, where we are told, among other things, that her name was Digdi, and that she belonged to Corcaguiny. The name Béara, or Bérre, would seem to suggest identification with that of Bera, daughter of Eibhear, king of Spain, and wife of Eoghan Taidhleach, in the late story ofThe Courtship of Moméra, edited by O’Curry in hisBattle of Magh Leana(Dublin, 1855); but the other name Digdi would seem to stand in the way. However none of the literature in point has yet been discovered in any really old manuscript, and it may be that the place-nameBerre, inCaillech Bérri, has usurped the place of the personal nameBéra, whose antiquity in some such a form asBéraorMérais proved by its honorific formMo-mera: see O’Curry’s volume, p. 166, and his Introduction, p. xx.↑
1This was written at the end of 1892, and read to a joint meeting of the Cymmrodorion and Folk-Lore Societies on January 11, 1893.↑
2Some account of them was given by me inFolk-Lorefor 1892, p. 380; but somehow or other my contribution was printed unrevised, with results more peculiar than edifying.↑
3InFolk-Lorefor 1893, pp. 58–9.↑
4In the neighbourhood I find that the wordgwaeldynin this verse is sometimes explained to mean not a worthless but an ailing person, on the strength of the fact that the adjectivegwaelis colloquially used both for vile and for ailing.↑
5Since writing the above remarks the following paragraph, purporting to be copied from theLiverpool Mercuryfor November 18, 1896, appeared in theArchæologia Cambrensisfor 1899, p. 334:—‘Two new fishes have just been put in the “Sacred Well,” Ffynnon y Sant, at Tyn y Ffynnon, in the village of Nant Peris, Ỻanberis. Invalids in large numbers came, during the last century and the first half of the present century, to this well to drink of its “miraculous waters”; and the oak box, where the contributions of those who visited the spot were kept, is still in its place at the side of the well. There have always been two “sacred fishes” in this well; and there is a tradition in the village to the effect that if one of the Tyn y Ffynnon fishes came out of its hiding-place when an invalid took some of the water for drinking or for bathing purposes, cure was certain; but if the fishes remained in their den, the water would do those who took it no good. Two fishes only are to be put in the well at a time, and they generally live in its waters for about half a century. If one dies before the other, it wouldbe of no use to put in a new fish, for the old fish would not associate with it, and it would die. The experiment has been tried. The last of the two fishes put in the well about fifty years ago died last August. It had been blind for some time previous to its death. When taken out of the water it measured seventeen inches, and was buried in the garden adjoining the well. It is stated in a document of the year 1776 that the parish clerk was to receive the money put in the box of the well by visitors. This money, together with the amount of 6s.4d., was his annual stipend.’ Tyn y Ffynnon means ‘the Tenement of the Well,’tynbeing a shortened form oftyđyn, ‘a tenement,’as mentioned at p. 33 above; but the mapsters make it intoty’n=ty yn, ‘a house in,’ so that the present instance,Ty’n y Ffynnon, could only mean ‘the House in the Well,’ which, needless to say, it is not. But one would like to know whether the house and land were once held rent-free on condition that the tenant took care of the sacred fish.↑
6See Ashton’sIolo Goch, p. 234, and Lewis’Top. Dict.↑
7See myHibbert Lectures, p. 229, and theIolo MSS., pp. 42–3, 420–1.↑
8A curious note bearing on this name occurs in the Jesus College MS. 20 (Cymmrodor, viii. p. 86) in reference to the nameMorgannwg, ‘Glamorgan’:—O enỽ Morgant vchot y gelwir Morgannỽc. Ereiỻ a dyweit. Mae o enỽ Mochteyrn Predein.‘It is from the name of the above Morgan that Morgannwg is called. Others say that it is from the name of themochdeyrnof Pictland.’ Themochteyrnmust have been a Pictish king or mórmáer called Morgan. The name occurs in the charters from theBook of Deerin Stokes’Goidelica. pp. 109, 111, asMorcunt,Morcunn, andMorgunnundeclined,also withMorgainnfor genitive; and so in Skene’sChronicles of the Picts and Scots, pp. 77, 317, where it is printedMorgaind; see also Stokes’ Tigernach, in theRevue Celtique, xvii. 198. Compare Geoffrey’s story, ii. 15, which introduces a northern Marganus to account for the name Margan, nowMargam, in Morgannwg.↑
9M. Loth’s remarks in point will be found in theRevue Celtique, xiii. 496–7, where he compares withtutthe Bretonteuz, ‘lutin, génie malfaisant ou bienfaisant’; and for the successive guesses on the subject of the nameMorgan tutone should also consult Zimmer’s remarks in Foerster’s Introduction to hisErec, pp. xxvii–xxxi, and myArthurian Legend, p. 391, to which I should add a reference to theBook of Ballymote, fo. 360a, where we haveo na bantuathaib, which O’Curry has rendered ‘on the part of their Witches’ in hisManners and Customs of the Ancient Irish, iii. 526–7. Comparedá bhantuathaigh, ‘two female sorcerers,’ in Joyce’s Keating’sHistory of Ireland, pp. 122–3.↑
10For all about the Children of Lir, and about Liban and Lough Neagh, see Joyce’sOld Celtic Romances, pp. 4–36, 97–105.↑
11On my appealing to Cadrawd, one of the later editors, he has found me the exact reference, to wit, volume ix of theCyfaiỻ(published in 1889), p. 50; and he has since contributed a translation of the story to the columns of theSouth Wales Daily Newsfor February 15, 1899, where he has also given an account of Crymlyn, which is to be mentioned later.↑
12Judging from the three best-known instances,y balameant the outlet of a lake: I allude to thisBalaat the outlet of Ỻyn Tegid;Pont y Bala, ‘the Bridge of thebala,’ across the water flowing from the Upper into the Lower Lake at Ỻanberis; andBala Deulyn, ‘thebalaof two lakes,’ at Nantỻe. Two places calledBryn y Balaare mentioned s. v.Balain Morris’Celtic Remains, one near Aberystwyth, at a spot which I have never seen, and the other near the lower end of the Lower Lake of Ỻanberis, as to which it has been suggested to me that it is an error forBryn y Bela. It is needless to say thatbalahas nothing to do with the Anglo-Irishbally, of such names asBallymurphyorBallynahunt: this vocable is in Englishbailey, and in South Walesbeili, ‘a farm yard or enclosure,’ all three probably from the late Latinbaliumorballium, ‘locus palis munitus et circumseptus.’ Our etymologists never stop short withbally: they go as far asBalaklavaand, probably,Ballarat, to claim cognates for ourBala.↑
13Cadrawd here gives the Welsh as ‘2bladur… 2đyđ o wair,’ and observes that the lacuna consists of an illegible word of three letters. If that word was eithersef, ‘that is,’ orneu, ‘or,’ the sense would be as given above. In North Cardiganshire we speak of a day’s mowing asgwaith gwr, ‘a man’s work for a day,’ and sometimes of agwaith gwr bach, ‘a man’s work for a short day.’↑
14SeeBy-Gonesfor May 24, 1899. The full name of Welshpool in Welsh isTraỻwng Ỻywelyn, so called after a Ỻywelyn descended from Cuneđa, and supposed to have established a religious house there; for there are other Traỻwngs, and at first sight it would seem as ifTraỻwnghad something to do with a lake or piece of water. But there is a Traỻwng, for instance, near Brecon, where there is no lake to give it the name; and my attention has been called to Thos. Richards’Welsh-English Dictionary, where atraỻwngis said to be ‘such a soft place on the road (or elsewhere) as travellers may be apt to sink into, a dirty pool.’ So the word seems to be partly of the same derivation asgo-ỻwng, ‘to let go, to give way.’ The form of the word in use now isTraỻwm, notTraỻwngorTraỻwn.↑
15See theBook of the Dun Cow, fo. 39a–41band Joyce’sOld Celtic Romances, pp. 97–105; but the story may now be consulted in O’Grady’sSilva Gadelica, i. 233–7, translated in ii. 265–9. On turning over the leaves of this great collection of Irish lore, I chanced, i. 174, ii. 196, on an allusion to a well which, when uncovered, was about to drown the whole locality but for a miracle performed by St. Patrick to arrest the flow of its waters. A similar story of a well bursting and forming Lough Reagh, in County Galway, will be found told in verse in theBook of Leinster; fo. 202b: see also fo. 170a, and the editor’s notes, pp. 45,53.↑
16See Evans’ autotype edition of theBlack Book of Carmarthen, fos. 53b, 54a, also 32a: the punctuation is that of the MS. In the seventh tripletkedaulis writtenkeadaul, which seems to meankadaulcorrected intokedaul; but theais not deleted, so other readings are possible.↑
17In theIolo MSS., p. 89,finaun wenestiris made intoFfynon-Wenestrand said to be one of the ornamental epithets of the sea; but I am convinced that it should be rather treated asffynnon fenestrwithwenestirorfenestrmutated frommenestr, which meant a servant, attendant, cup-bearer: for one or two instances see Pughe’sDictionary. The word is probably, as suggested by M. Loth in hisMots Latins, p. 186. the old Frenchmenestre, ‘cup-bearer,’ borrowed. Compare the mention of Nechtán’s men having access to the secret well in Sid Nechtáin, p. 390 below, and note that they were his threemenestresor cup-bearers.↑
18See theCymmrodor, viii. 88 (No. xxix), where a Marereda is mentioned as a daughter of Madog son of Meredyđ brother to Rhys Gryg.↑
19There is another reading which would make them intoSegantii, and render it irrelevant—to say the least of it—to mention them here.↑
20See theMabinogion, p. 35: the passage has been mistranslated in Lady Charlotte Guest’sMabinogion, iii. 117.↑
21See myArthurian Legend, pp. 263–4.↑
22I do not profess to see my way through the difficulties which the probable etymological connexion between the names Setantii, Setanta, Seithyn, and Seithennin implies. But parts of the following string of guesses may be found to hold good:—Seithynis probably more correct thanSeithin, as it rhymes withcristin=Cristyn(inCristynogaeth: see Silvan Evans’Geiriadur, s. v., and Skene’sFour Ancient Books, ii. 210); and it might be assumed to be from the same stem asSeizun; but, supposing it to represent an earlierSeithynt, it would equate phonologically withSetanta, betterSetinte, of which the genitiveSetintiactually occurs, as a river name, in theBook of the Dun Cow, fo. 125b: see myHibbert Lectures, p. 455, and see also theRevue Celtique, xi. 457. It would mean some such an early formSetn̥ti̯o-s, andSeithenhin, another derivative from the same stem,Setn̥tīno-s. But the retention ofnbeforetinSetinteproves it not to be unconnected withSeithyn, but borrowed from some Brythonic dialect when the latter was pronouncedSeithn̥ti̯o-s. If this be anywhere nearly right one has to assume that the manuscripts of Ptolemy giving the genitive plural asΣεταντίωνorΣεγαντίωνshould have readΣεκταντίων, unless one should rather conjectureΣεγταντίωνwithchtrepresented bygtas in Ogams in Pembrokeshire: witnessOgteneandMaqui Quegte. This conjecture as to the original reading would suggest that the name was derived from the seventh numeralsechtn̥, just as that of the Galloway people of theNovantæseems to be from the ninth numeral. Ptolemy’s next entry to the Harbour of the Setantii is the estuary of the Belisama, supposed to be the Mersey; and next comes the estuary of theΣετείαorΣεγεία, supposed to be the Dee. Now the country of the Setantii, when they had a country, may have reached from their harbour near the mouth of the Ribble to the Seteia or the Dee without the name Seteia or Segeia having anything to do with their own, except that it may have influenced the latter in the manuscripts of Ptolemy’s text. Then we possibly have a representative ofSeteiaorSegeiain theSaidiorSeidi, sometimes appended to Seithyn’s name. In that caseSeithyn Saidi, in the late Triad iii. 37, would mean Seithyn of Seteia, or the Dee. AMab Saidioccurs in the Kulhwch story (Mabinogion, p. 106), also Cas, son of Saidi (ib. 110); and inRhonabwy’s DreamKadyrieith, son of Saidi (ib. 160); but the latter vocable isSeidiin Triad ii. 26 (ib. 303). It is to be borne in mind that Ptolemy does not represent the Setantii as a people in his time: he only mentions a harbour called after the Setantii. So it looks as if they then belonged to the past—that in fact they were, as I should put it, a Goidelic people who had been conquered and partly expelled by Brythonic tribes, to wit, by the Brigantes, and also by the Cornavii in case the Setantii had once extended southwards to the Dee. This naturally leads one to think that some of them escaped to places on the coast, such as Dyfed, and that some made for the opposite coast of Ireland, and that, by the time when the Cúchulainn stories came to be edited as we have them, the people in question were known to the redactors of those stories only by the Brythonic form of their name, which underlies that ofSetanta Beg, or the Little Setantian. Those of them who found a home on the coast of Cardigan Bay may have brought with them a version of the inundation story with Seithennin, son of Seithyn, as the principal figure in it. So in due time he had to be attached to some royal family, and in theIolo MSS., pp. 141–2, he is made to descend from a certain Plaws Hen, king of Dyfed, while the saints named as his descendants seem to have belonged chiefly to Gwyneđ and Powys.↑
23See the Professor’sAddress on the Place of a University in the History of Wales, delivered at Bangor at the opening ceremony of the Session of 1899–1900 (Bangor, 1900), p. 6. The reference to Giraldus is to hisItin. Kambriæ, i. 13 (p. 100), and theExpugnatio Hibernica, i. 36 (p. 284).↑
24Instead of ‘she followed it’ one would have expected ‘it followed her’; but the style is very loose and rough.↑
25As a ‘Cardy’ I have here two grievances, one against my Northwalian fellow countrymen, that they insist on writingRheidiolout of sheer weakness for the semivowel i̯; and the other against the compilers of school books on geography, who give the lake away to the Wye or the Severn. I am told that this does not matter, as our geographers are notoriously accurate about Natal and other distant lands; so I ought to rest satisfied.↑
26Professor Meyer has given a number of extracts concerning her in his notes to his edition ofThe Vision of Mac Conglinne(London, 1892), pp. 131–4, 208–10, and recently he has publishedThe Song of the Old Woman of Bearein theOtia Merseiana(London, 1899), pp. 119–28, from the Trinity College codex, H. 3, 18, where we are told, among other things, that her name was Digdi, and that she belonged to Corcaguiny. The name Béara, or Bérre, would seem to suggest identification with that of Bera, daughter of Eibhear, king of Spain, and wife of Eoghan Taidhleach, in the late story ofThe Courtship of Moméra, edited by O’Curry in hisBattle of Magh Leana(Dublin, 1855); but the other name Digdi would seem to stand in the way. However none of the literature in point has yet been discovered in any really old manuscript, and it may be that the place-nameBerre, inCaillech Bérri, has usurped the place of the personal nameBéra, whose antiquity in some such a form asBéraorMérais proved by its honorific formMo-mera: see O’Curry’s volume, p. 166, and his Introduction, p. xx.↑