III.The same summer I happened to meet the Rev. Robert Hughes, of Uwchlaw’r Ffynnon, near Ỻanaelhaearn, a village on which Tre’r Ceiri, or the Town of the Keiri, looks down in its primitive grimness from the top of one of the three heights of the Eifl, or Rivals as English people call them. The district is remarkable for the longevity of its inhabitants, and Mr. Hughes counted fifteen farmers in his immediate neighbourhood whose average age was eighty-three; and four years previously the average age of eighteen of them was no less than eighty-five. He himself was, when I met him, seventy-one years of age, and he considered that he represented the traditions of more than a century and a half, as he was a boy of twelve when one of his grandfathers died at the age of ninety-two: the age reached by one of his grandmothers was all but equal, while his father died only a few years ago, after nearly reaching his ninety-fifth birthday.Story-telling was kept alive in the parish of Ỻanaelhaearn by the institution known there as thepilnos, orpeeling night, when the neighbours met in one another’s houses to spend the long winter evenings dressing hemp and carding wool, though I guess that apilnoswas originally the night when people met topeelrushes for rushlights. When they left these merry meetings they were ready, as Mr. Hughes says, to see anything. In fact, he gives an instance of some people coming from apilnosacross the mountain from Nant Gwrtheyrn to Ỻithfaen, and finding the fairies singing and dancing with all their might: they were drawn in among them and found themselves left alone in the morning on the heather. Indeed, Mr. Hughes has seen the fairies himself: it was on the Pwỻheli road, as he was returning in the grey of the morning from the house of hisfiancéewhen he was twenty-seven. The fairies he saw came along riding on wee horses: his recollection is that he now and then mastered his eyes and found the road quite clear, but the next moment the vision would return, and he thought he saw the diminutive cavalcade as plainly as possible. Similarly, a man of the name of Solomon Evans, when, thirty years ago, making his way home late at night through Glynỻifon Park, found himself followed by quite a crowd of little creatures, which he described as being of the size of guinea pigs and covered with red and white spots. He was an ignorant man, who knew no better than to believe to the day of his death, some eight or nine years ago, that they were demons. This is probably a blurred version of a story concerningCwn Annwn, ‘Hell hounds,’ such as the following, published by Mr. O. M. Edwards in hisCymrufor 1897, p. 190, from Mr. J. H. Roberts’ essay mentioned above at p. 148:—‘Ages ago as a man who had been engaged on business, not the most creditable in the world, was returning in the depth of night across Cefn Creini, and thinking in a downcast frame of mindover what he had been doing, he heard in the distance a low and fear-inspiring bark; then another bark, and another, and then half a dozen and more. Ere long he became aware that he was being pursued by dogs, and that they wereCwn Annwn. He beheld them coming: he tried to flee, but he felt quite powerless and could not escape. Nearer and nearer they came, and he saw the shepherd with them: his face was black and he had horns on his head. They had come round him and stood in a semicircle ready to rush upon him, when he had a remarkable deliverance: he remembered that he had in his pocket a small cross, which he showed them. They fled in the greatest terror in all directions, and this accounts for the proverb,Mwy na’r cythraul at y groes(Any more than the devil to the cross).’ That is Mr. Roberts’ story; but several allusions have already been made toCwn Annwn. It would be right probably to identify them in the first instance with the pack with which Arawn, king of Annwn, is found hunting by Pwyỻ, king of Dyfed, when the latter happens to meet him in Glyn Cuch in his own realm. Then in a poem in theBlack Book of Carmarthenwe find Gwyn ab Nûđ with a pack led by Dormarth, a hound with a red snout which he kept close to the ground when engaged in the chase; similarly in the story of Iolo ab Huw the dogs are treated as belonging to Gwyn. But on the whole the later idea has more usually been, that the devil is the huntsman, that his dogs give chase in the air, that their quarry consists of the souls of the departed, and that their bark forebodes a death, since they watch for the souls of men about to die. This, however, might be objected to as pagan; so I have heard the finishing touch given to it in the neighbourhood of Ystrad Meurig, by one who, like Mr. Pughe, explained that it is the souls only of notoriously wicked men and well-known evil livers.With this limitation the pack10seems in no immediate danger of being regarded as poaching.To return to Ỻanaelhaearn, it is right to say that good spirits too, who attend on good Calvinists, are there believed in. Morris Hughes, of Cwm Corryn, was the first Calvinistic Methodist at Ỻanaelhaearn; he was great-grandfather to Robert Hughes’ wife; and he used to be followed by two pretty little yellow birds. He would call to them, ‘Wryd, Wryd!’ and they would come and feed out of his hand, and when he was dying they came and flapped their wings against his window. This was testified to by John Thomas, of Moelfre Bach, who was present at the time. Thomas died some twenty-five years ago, at the age of eighty-seven. I have heard this story from other people, but I do not know what to make of it, though I may add that the little birds are believed to have been angels. In Mr. Rees’Welsh Saints, pp. 305–6, Gwryd is given as the name of a friar who lived about the end of the twelfth century, and has been commemorated on November 1; and the author adds a note referring to theCambrian Registerfor 1800, vol. iii. p. 221, where it is said that Gwryd relieved the bard Einion ab Gwalchmai of some oppression, probably mental, which had afflicted him for seven years. Is one to suppose that Gwryd sent two angels in the form of little birds to protect the first Ỻanaelhaearn Methodist? The call ‘Wryd, Wryd,’ would seem to indicate that the name was not originallyGwryd, butWryd, to be identified possibly with the Pictish nameUoretin an inscription at St. Vigean’s, near Arbroath, and to be distinguishedfrom the Welsh wordgwryd, ‘valour,’ and from the Welsh nameGwriad, representing what in its Gaulish form wasViriatus. We possibly have the nameWrydin Hafod Wryd, a place in the Machno Valley above Bettws y Coed; otherwise one would have expectedHafod y Gwryd, making colloquially,Hafod Gwryd.Mr. Hughes told me a variety of things about Nant Gwrtheyrn, one of the spots where the Vortigern story is localized. The Nant is a sort of acul de sachollow opening to the sea at the foot of the Eifl. There is a rock there calledY Farches, and the angle of the sea next to the old castle, which seems to be merely a mound, is calledY Ỻynclyn, or ‘The Whirlpool’; and this is perhaps an important item in the localizing of Vortigern’s city there. I was informed by Mr. Hughes that the grave of Olfyn is in this Nant, with a razed church close by: both are otherwise quite unknown to me. Coming away from this weird spot to the neighbourhood of Celynnog, one finds that the Pennarđ of theMabinogiof Math is now called Pennarth, and has on it a well-known cromlech. Of course, I did not leave Mr. Hughes without asking him about Caer Arianrhod, and I found that he called it Tre’ Gaer Anrheg: he described it as a stony patch in the sea, and it can, he says, be reached on foot when the ebb is at its lowest in spring and autumn. The story he had heard about it when he was a boy at school with David Thomas, better known by his bardic name ofDafyđ Đu Eryri, was the following:—‘Tregaer Anrheg was inhabited by a family of robbers, and among other things they killed and robbed a man at Glyn Iwrch, near the further wall of Glynnỻifon Park: this completed the measure of their lawlessness. There was one woman, however, living with them at Tregaer Anrheg, who was not related to them, and as she went out one evening withher pitcher to fetch water, she heard a voice crying out,Dos i ben y bryn i wel’d rhyfeđod, that is, Go up the hill to see a wonder. She obeyed, and as soon as she got to the top of the hill, whereby was meant Dinas Dinỻe, she beheld Tregaer Anrheg sinking in the sea.’As I have wandered away from the fairies I may add the following curious bit of legend which Mr. Hughes gave me:—‘When St. Beuno lived at Celynnog, he used to go regularly to preach at Ỻanđwyn on the opposite side of the water, which he always crossed on foot. But one Sunday he accidentally dropped his book of sermons into the water, and when he had failed to recover it agylfin-hir, or curlew, came by, picked it up, and placed it on a stone out of the reach of the tide. The saint prayed for the protection and favour of the Creator for thegylfin-hir: it was granted, and so nobody ever knows where that bird makes its nest.’
III.The same summer I happened to meet the Rev. Robert Hughes, of Uwchlaw’r Ffynnon, near Ỻanaelhaearn, a village on which Tre’r Ceiri, or the Town of the Keiri, looks down in its primitive grimness from the top of one of the three heights of the Eifl, or Rivals as English people call them. The district is remarkable for the longevity of its inhabitants, and Mr. Hughes counted fifteen farmers in his immediate neighbourhood whose average age was eighty-three; and four years previously the average age of eighteen of them was no less than eighty-five. He himself was, when I met him, seventy-one years of age, and he considered that he represented the traditions of more than a century and a half, as he was a boy of twelve when one of his grandfathers died at the age of ninety-two: the age reached by one of his grandmothers was all but equal, while his father died only a few years ago, after nearly reaching his ninety-fifth birthday.Story-telling was kept alive in the parish of Ỻanaelhaearn by the institution known there as thepilnos, orpeeling night, when the neighbours met in one another’s houses to spend the long winter evenings dressing hemp and carding wool, though I guess that apilnoswas originally the night when people met topeelrushes for rushlights. When they left these merry meetings they were ready, as Mr. Hughes says, to see anything. In fact, he gives an instance of some people coming from apilnosacross the mountain from Nant Gwrtheyrn to Ỻithfaen, and finding the fairies singing and dancing with all their might: they were drawn in among them and found themselves left alone in the morning on the heather. Indeed, Mr. Hughes has seen the fairies himself: it was on the Pwỻheli road, as he was returning in the grey of the morning from the house of hisfiancéewhen he was twenty-seven. The fairies he saw came along riding on wee horses: his recollection is that he now and then mastered his eyes and found the road quite clear, but the next moment the vision would return, and he thought he saw the diminutive cavalcade as plainly as possible. Similarly, a man of the name of Solomon Evans, when, thirty years ago, making his way home late at night through Glynỻifon Park, found himself followed by quite a crowd of little creatures, which he described as being of the size of guinea pigs and covered with red and white spots. He was an ignorant man, who knew no better than to believe to the day of his death, some eight or nine years ago, that they were demons. This is probably a blurred version of a story concerningCwn Annwn, ‘Hell hounds,’ such as the following, published by Mr. O. M. Edwards in hisCymrufor 1897, p. 190, from Mr. J. H. Roberts’ essay mentioned above at p. 148:—‘Ages ago as a man who had been engaged on business, not the most creditable in the world, was returning in the depth of night across Cefn Creini, and thinking in a downcast frame of mindover what he had been doing, he heard in the distance a low and fear-inspiring bark; then another bark, and another, and then half a dozen and more. Ere long he became aware that he was being pursued by dogs, and that they wereCwn Annwn. He beheld them coming: he tried to flee, but he felt quite powerless and could not escape. Nearer and nearer they came, and he saw the shepherd with them: his face was black and he had horns on his head. They had come round him and stood in a semicircle ready to rush upon him, when he had a remarkable deliverance: he remembered that he had in his pocket a small cross, which he showed them. They fled in the greatest terror in all directions, and this accounts for the proverb,Mwy na’r cythraul at y groes(Any more than the devil to the cross).’ That is Mr. Roberts’ story; but several allusions have already been made toCwn Annwn. It would be right probably to identify them in the first instance with the pack with which Arawn, king of Annwn, is found hunting by Pwyỻ, king of Dyfed, when the latter happens to meet him in Glyn Cuch in his own realm. Then in a poem in theBlack Book of Carmarthenwe find Gwyn ab Nûđ with a pack led by Dormarth, a hound with a red snout which he kept close to the ground when engaged in the chase; similarly in the story of Iolo ab Huw the dogs are treated as belonging to Gwyn. But on the whole the later idea has more usually been, that the devil is the huntsman, that his dogs give chase in the air, that their quarry consists of the souls of the departed, and that their bark forebodes a death, since they watch for the souls of men about to die. This, however, might be objected to as pagan; so I have heard the finishing touch given to it in the neighbourhood of Ystrad Meurig, by one who, like Mr. Pughe, explained that it is the souls only of notoriously wicked men and well-known evil livers.With this limitation the pack10seems in no immediate danger of being regarded as poaching.To return to Ỻanaelhaearn, it is right to say that good spirits too, who attend on good Calvinists, are there believed in. Morris Hughes, of Cwm Corryn, was the first Calvinistic Methodist at Ỻanaelhaearn; he was great-grandfather to Robert Hughes’ wife; and he used to be followed by two pretty little yellow birds. He would call to them, ‘Wryd, Wryd!’ and they would come and feed out of his hand, and when he was dying they came and flapped their wings against his window. This was testified to by John Thomas, of Moelfre Bach, who was present at the time. Thomas died some twenty-five years ago, at the age of eighty-seven. I have heard this story from other people, but I do not know what to make of it, though I may add that the little birds are believed to have been angels. In Mr. Rees’Welsh Saints, pp. 305–6, Gwryd is given as the name of a friar who lived about the end of the twelfth century, and has been commemorated on November 1; and the author adds a note referring to theCambrian Registerfor 1800, vol. iii. p. 221, where it is said that Gwryd relieved the bard Einion ab Gwalchmai of some oppression, probably mental, which had afflicted him for seven years. Is one to suppose that Gwryd sent two angels in the form of little birds to protect the first Ỻanaelhaearn Methodist? The call ‘Wryd, Wryd,’ would seem to indicate that the name was not originallyGwryd, butWryd, to be identified possibly with the Pictish nameUoretin an inscription at St. Vigean’s, near Arbroath, and to be distinguishedfrom the Welsh wordgwryd, ‘valour,’ and from the Welsh nameGwriad, representing what in its Gaulish form wasViriatus. We possibly have the nameWrydin Hafod Wryd, a place in the Machno Valley above Bettws y Coed; otherwise one would have expectedHafod y Gwryd, making colloquially,Hafod Gwryd.Mr. Hughes told me a variety of things about Nant Gwrtheyrn, one of the spots where the Vortigern story is localized. The Nant is a sort of acul de sachollow opening to the sea at the foot of the Eifl. There is a rock there calledY Farches, and the angle of the sea next to the old castle, which seems to be merely a mound, is calledY Ỻynclyn, or ‘The Whirlpool’; and this is perhaps an important item in the localizing of Vortigern’s city there. I was informed by Mr. Hughes that the grave of Olfyn is in this Nant, with a razed church close by: both are otherwise quite unknown to me. Coming away from this weird spot to the neighbourhood of Celynnog, one finds that the Pennarđ of theMabinogiof Math is now called Pennarth, and has on it a well-known cromlech. Of course, I did not leave Mr. Hughes without asking him about Caer Arianrhod, and I found that he called it Tre’ Gaer Anrheg: he described it as a stony patch in the sea, and it can, he says, be reached on foot when the ebb is at its lowest in spring and autumn. The story he had heard about it when he was a boy at school with David Thomas, better known by his bardic name ofDafyđ Đu Eryri, was the following:—‘Tregaer Anrheg was inhabited by a family of robbers, and among other things they killed and robbed a man at Glyn Iwrch, near the further wall of Glynnỻifon Park: this completed the measure of their lawlessness. There was one woman, however, living with them at Tregaer Anrheg, who was not related to them, and as she went out one evening withher pitcher to fetch water, she heard a voice crying out,Dos i ben y bryn i wel’d rhyfeđod, that is, Go up the hill to see a wonder. She obeyed, and as soon as she got to the top of the hill, whereby was meant Dinas Dinỻe, she beheld Tregaer Anrheg sinking in the sea.’As I have wandered away from the fairies I may add the following curious bit of legend which Mr. Hughes gave me:—‘When St. Beuno lived at Celynnog, he used to go regularly to preach at Ỻanđwyn on the opposite side of the water, which he always crossed on foot. But one Sunday he accidentally dropped his book of sermons into the water, and when he had failed to recover it agylfin-hir, or curlew, came by, picked it up, and placed it on a stone out of the reach of the tide. The saint prayed for the protection and favour of the Creator for thegylfin-hir: it was granted, and so nobody ever knows where that bird makes its nest.’
III.The same summer I happened to meet the Rev. Robert Hughes, of Uwchlaw’r Ffynnon, near Ỻanaelhaearn, a village on which Tre’r Ceiri, or the Town of the Keiri, looks down in its primitive grimness from the top of one of the three heights of the Eifl, or Rivals as English people call them. The district is remarkable for the longevity of its inhabitants, and Mr. Hughes counted fifteen farmers in his immediate neighbourhood whose average age was eighty-three; and four years previously the average age of eighteen of them was no less than eighty-five. He himself was, when I met him, seventy-one years of age, and he considered that he represented the traditions of more than a century and a half, as he was a boy of twelve when one of his grandfathers died at the age of ninety-two: the age reached by one of his grandmothers was all but equal, while his father died only a few years ago, after nearly reaching his ninety-fifth birthday.Story-telling was kept alive in the parish of Ỻanaelhaearn by the institution known there as thepilnos, orpeeling night, when the neighbours met in one another’s houses to spend the long winter evenings dressing hemp and carding wool, though I guess that apilnoswas originally the night when people met topeelrushes for rushlights. When they left these merry meetings they were ready, as Mr. Hughes says, to see anything. In fact, he gives an instance of some people coming from apilnosacross the mountain from Nant Gwrtheyrn to Ỻithfaen, and finding the fairies singing and dancing with all their might: they were drawn in among them and found themselves left alone in the morning on the heather. Indeed, Mr. Hughes has seen the fairies himself: it was on the Pwỻheli road, as he was returning in the grey of the morning from the house of hisfiancéewhen he was twenty-seven. The fairies he saw came along riding on wee horses: his recollection is that he now and then mastered his eyes and found the road quite clear, but the next moment the vision would return, and he thought he saw the diminutive cavalcade as plainly as possible. Similarly, a man of the name of Solomon Evans, when, thirty years ago, making his way home late at night through Glynỻifon Park, found himself followed by quite a crowd of little creatures, which he described as being of the size of guinea pigs and covered with red and white spots. He was an ignorant man, who knew no better than to believe to the day of his death, some eight or nine years ago, that they were demons. This is probably a blurred version of a story concerningCwn Annwn, ‘Hell hounds,’ such as the following, published by Mr. O. M. Edwards in hisCymrufor 1897, p. 190, from Mr. J. H. Roberts’ essay mentioned above at p. 148:—‘Ages ago as a man who had been engaged on business, not the most creditable in the world, was returning in the depth of night across Cefn Creini, and thinking in a downcast frame of mindover what he had been doing, he heard in the distance a low and fear-inspiring bark; then another bark, and another, and then half a dozen and more. Ere long he became aware that he was being pursued by dogs, and that they wereCwn Annwn. He beheld them coming: he tried to flee, but he felt quite powerless and could not escape. Nearer and nearer they came, and he saw the shepherd with them: his face was black and he had horns on his head. They had come round him and stood in a semicircle ready to rush upon him, when he had a remarkable deliverance: he remembered that he had in his pocket a small cross, which he showed them. They fled in the greatest terror in all directions, and this accounts for the proverb,Mwy na’r cythraul at y groes(Any more than the devil to the cross).’ That is Mr. Roberts’ story; but several allusions have already been made toCwn Annwn. It would be right probably to identify them in the first instance with the pack with which Arawn, king of Annwn, is found hunting by Pwyỻ, king of Dyfed, when the latter happens to meet him in Glyn Cuch in his own realm. Then in a poem in theBlack Book of Carmarthenwe find Gwyn ab Nûđ with a pack led by Dormarth, a hound with a red snout which he kept close to the ground when engaged in the chase; similarly in the story of Iolo ab Huw the dogs are treated as belonging to Gwyn. But on the whole the later idea has more usually been, that the devil is the huntsman, that his dogs give chase in the air, that their quarry consists of the souls of the departed, and that their bark forebodes a death, since they watch for the souls of men about to die. This, however, might be objected to as pagan; so I have heard the finishing touch given to it in the neighbourhood of Ystrad Meurig, by one who, like Mr. Pughe, explained that it is the souls only of notoriously wicked men and well-known evil livers.With this limitation the pack10seems in no immediate danger of being regarded as poaching.To return to Ỻanaelhaearn, it is right to say that good spirits too, who attend on good Calvinists, are there believed in. Morris Hughes, of Cwm Corryn, was the first Calvinistic Methodist at Ỻanaelhaearn; he was great-grandfather to Robert Hughes’ wife; and he used to be followed by two pretty little yellow birds. He would call to them, ‘Wryd, Wryd!’ and they would come and feed out of his hand, and when he was dying they came and flapped their wings against his window. This was testified to by John Thomas, of Moelfre Bach, who was present at the time. Thomas died some twenty-five years ago, at the age of eighty-seven. I have heard this story from other people, but I do not know what to make of it, though I may add that the little birds are believed to have been angels. In Mr. Rees’Welsh Saints, pp. 305–6, Gwryd is given as the name of a friar who lived about the end of the twelfth century, and has been commemorated on November 1; and the author adds a note referring to theCambrian Registerfor 1800, vol. iii. p. 221, where it is said that Gwryd relieved the bard Einion ab Gwalchmai of some oppression, probably mental, which had afflicted him for seven years. Is one to suppose that Gwryd sent two angels in the form of little birds to protect the first Ỻanaelhaearn Methodist? The call ‘Wryd, Wryd,’ would seem to indicate that the name was not originallyGwryd, butWryd, to be identified possibly with the Pictish nameUoretin an inscription at St. Vigean’s, near Arbroath, and to be distinguishedfrom the Welsh wordgwryd, ‘valour,’ and from the Welsh nameGwriad, representing what in its Gaulish form wasViriatus. We possibly have the nameWrydin Hafod Wryd, a place in the Machno Valley above Bettws y Coed; otherwise one would have expectedHafod y Gwryd, making colloquially,Hafod Gwryd.Mr. Hughes told me a variety of things about Nant Gwrtheyrn, one of the spots where the Vortigern story is localized. The Nant is a sort of acul de sachollow opening to the sea at the foot of the Eifl. There is a rock there calledY Farches, and the angle of the sea next to the old castle, which seems to be merely a mound, is calledY Ỻynclyn, or ‘The Whirlpool’; and this is perhaps an important item in the localizing of Vortigern’s city there. I was informed by Mr. Hughes that the grave of Olfyn is in this Nant, with a razed church close by: both are otherwise quite unknown to me. Coming away from this weird spot to the neighbourhood of Celynnog, one finds that the Pennarđ of theMabinogiof Math is now called Pennarth, and has on it a well-known cromlech. Of course, I did not leave Mr. Hughes without asking him about Caer Arianrhod, and I found that he called it Tre’ Gaer Anrheg: he described it as a stony patch in the sea, and it can, he says, be reached on foot when the ebb is at its lowest in spring and autumn. The story he had heard about it when he was a boy at school with David Thomas, better known by his bardic name ofDafyđ Đu Eryri, was the following:—‘Tregaer Anrheg was inhabited by a family of robbers, and among other things they killed and robbed a man at Glyn Iwrch, near the further wall of Glynnỻifon Park: this completed the measure of their lawlessness. There was one woman, however, living with them at Tregaer Anrheg, who was not related to them, and as she went out one evening withher pitcher to fetch water, she heard a voice crying out,Dos i ben y bryn i wel’d rhyfeđod, that is, Go up the hill to see a wonder. She obeyed, and as soon as she got to the top of the hill, whereby was meant Dinas Dinỻe, she beheld Tregaer Anrheg sinking in the sea.’As I have wandered away from the fairies I may add the following curious bit of legend which Mr. Hughes gave me:—‘When St. Beuno lived at Celynnog, he used to go regularly to preach at Ỻanđwyn on the opposite side of the water, which he always crossed on foot. But one Sunday he accidentally dropped his book of sermons into the water, and when he had failed to recover it agylfin-hir, or curlew, came by, picked it up, and placed it on a stone out of the reach of the tide. The saint prayed for the protection and favour of the Creator for thegylfin-hir: it was granted, and so nobody ever knows where that bird makes its nest.’
III.The same summer I happened to meet the Rev. Robert Hughes, of Uwchlaw’r Ffynnon, near Ỻanaelhaearn, a village on which Tre’r Ceiri, or the Town of the Keiri, looks down in its primitive grimness from the top of one of the three heights of the Eifl, or Rivals as English people call them. The district is remarkable for the longevity of its inhabitants, and Mr. Hughes counted fifteen farmers in his immediate neighbourhood whose average age was eighty-three; and four years previously the average age of eighteen of them was no less than eighty-five. He himself was, when I met him, seventy-one years of age, and he considered that he represented the traditions of more than a century and a half, as he was a boy of twelve when one of his grandfathers died at the age of ninety-two: the age reached by one of his grandmothers was all but equal, while his father died only a few years ago, after nearly reaching his ninety-fifth birthday.Story-telling was kept alive in the parish of Ỻanaelhaearn by the institution known there as thepilnos, orpeeling night, when the neighbours met in one another’s houses to spend the long winter evenings dressing hemp and carding wool, though I guess that apilnoswas originally the night when people met topeelrushes for rushlights. When they left these merry meetings they were ready, as Mr. Hughes says, to see anything. In fact, he gives an instance of some people coming from apilnosacross the mountain from Nant Gwrtheyrn to Ỻithfaen, and finding the fairies singing and dancing with all their might: they were drawn in among them and found themselves left alone in the morning on the heather. Indeed, Mr. Hughes has seen the fairies himself: it was on the Pwỻheli road, as he was returning in the grey of the morning from the house of hisfiancéewhen he was twenty-seven. The fairies he saw came along riding on wee horses: his recollection is that he now and then mastered his eyes and found the road quite clear, but the next moment the vision would return, and he thought he saw the diminutive cavalcade as plainly as possible. Similarly, a man of the name of Solomon Evans, when, thirty years ago, making his way home late at night through Glynỻifon Park, found himself followed by quite a crowd of little creatures, which he described as being of the size of guinea pigs and covered with red and white spots. He was an ignorant man, who knew no better than to believe to the day of his death, some eight or nine years ago, that they were demons. This is probably a blurred version of a story concerningCwn Annwn, ‘Hell hounds,’ such as the following, published by Mr. O. M. Edwards in hisCymrufor 1897, p. 190, from Mr. J. H. Roberts’ essay mentioned above at p. 148:—‘Ages ago as a man who had been engaged on business, not the most creditable in the world, was returning in the depth of night across Cefn Creini, and thinking in a downcast frame of mindover what he had been doing, he heard in the distance a low and fear-inspiring bark; then another bark, and another, and then half a dozen and more. Ere long he became aware that he was being pursued by dogs, and that they wereCwn Annwn. He beheld them coming: he tried to flee, but he felt quite powerless and could not escape. Nearer and nearer they came, and he saw the shepherd with them: his face was black and he had horns on his head. They had come round him and stood in a semicircle ready to rush upon him, when he had a remarkable deliverance: he remembered that he had in his pocket a small cross, which he showed them. They fled in the greatest terror in all directions, and this accounts for the proverb,Mwy na’r cythraul at y groes(Any more than the devil to the cross).’ That is Mr. Roberts’ story; but several allusions have already been made toCwn Annwn. It would be right probably to identify them in the first instance with the pack with which Arawn, king of Annwn, is found hunting by Pwyỻ, king of Dyfed, when the latter happens to meet him in Glyn Cuch in his own realm. Then in a poem in theBlack Book of Carmarthenwe find Gwyn ab Nûđ with a pack led by Dormarth, a hound with a red snout which he kept close to the ground when engaged in the chase; similarly in the story of Iolo ab Huw the dogs are treated as belonging to Gwyn. But on the whole the later idea has more usually been, that the devil is the huntsman, that his dogs give chase in the air, that their quarry consists of the souls of the departed, and that their bark forebodes a death, since they watch for the souls of men about to die. This, however, might be objected to as pagan; so I have heard the finishing touch given to it in the neighbourhood of Ystrad Meurig, by one who, like Mr. Pughe, explained that it is the souls only of notoriously wicked men and well-known evil livers.With this limitation the pack10seems in no immediate danger of being regarded as poaching.To return to Ỻanaelhaearn, it is right to say that good spirits too, who attend on good Calvinists, are there believed in. Morris Hughes, of Cwm Corryn, was the first Calvinistic Methodist at Ỻanaelhaearn; he was great-grandfather to Robert Hughes’ wife; and he used to be followed by two pretty little yellow birds. He would call to them, ‘Wryd, Wryd!’ and they would come and feed out of his hand, and when he was dying they came and flapped their wings against his window. This was testified to by John Thomas, of Moelfre Bach, who was present at the time. Thomas died some twenty-five years ago, at the age of eighty-seven. I have heard this story from other people, but I do not know what to make of it, though I may add that the little birds are believed to have been angels. In Mr. Rees’Welsh Saints, pp. 305–6, Gwryd is given as the name of a friar who lived about the end of the twelfth century, and has been commemorated on November 1; and the author adds a note referring to theCambrian Registerfor 1800, vol. iii. p. 221, where it is said that Gwryd relieved the bard Einion ab Gwalchmai of some oppression, probably mental, which had afflicted him for seven years. Is one to suppose that Gwryd sent two angels in the form of little birds to protect the first Ỻanaelhaearn Methodist? The call ‘Wryd, Wryd,’ would seem to indicate that the name was not originallyGwryd, butWryd, to be identified possibly with the Pictish nameUoretin an inscription at St. Vigean’s, near Arbroath, and to be distinguishedfrom the Welsh wordgwryd, ‘valour,’ and from the Welsh nameGwriad, representing what in its Gaulish form wasViriatus. We possibly have the nameWrydin Hafod Wryd, a place in the Machno Valley above Bettws y Coed; otherwise one would have expectedHafod y Gwryd, making colloquially,Hafod Gwryd.Mr. Hughes told me a variety of things about Nant Gwrtheyrn, one of the spots where the Vortigern story is localized. The Nant is a sort of acul de sachollow opening to the sea at the foot of the Eifl. There is a rock there calledY Farches, and the angle of the sea next to the old castle, which seems to be merely a mound, is calledY Ỻynclyn, or ‘The Whirlpool’; and this is perhaps an important item in the localizing of Vortigern’s city there. I was informed by Mr. Hughes that the grave of Olfyn is in this Nant, with a razed church close by: both are otherwise quite unknown to me. Coming away from this weird spot to the neighbourhood of Celynnog, one finds that the Pennarđ of theMabinogiof Math is now called Pennarth, and has on it a well-known cromlech. Of course, I did not leave Mr. Hughes without asking him about Caer Arianrhod, and I found that he called it Tre’ Gaer Anrheg: he described it as a stony patch in the sea, and it can, he says, be reached on foot when the ebb is at its lowest in spring and autumn. The story he had heard about it when he was a boy at school with David Thomas, better known by his bardic name ofDafyđ Đu Eryri, was the following:—‘Tregaer Anrheg was inhabited by a family of robbers, and among other things they killed and robbed a man at Glyn Iwrch, near the further wall of Glynnỻifon Park: this completed the measure of their lawlessness. There was one woman, however, living with them at Tregaer Anrheg, who was not related to them, and as she went out one evening withher pitcher to fetch water, she heard a voice crying out,Dos i ben y bryn i wel’d rhyfeđod, that is, Go up the hill to see a wonder. She obeyed, and as soon as she got to the top of the hill, whereby was meant Dinas Dinỻe, she beheld Tregaer Anrheg sinking in the sea.’As I have wandered away from the fairies I may add the following curious bit of legend which Mr. Hughes gave me:—‘When St. Beuno lived at Celynnog, he used to go regularly to preach at Ỻanđwyn on the opposite side of the water, which he always crossed on foot. But one Sunday he accidentally dropped his book of sermons into the water, and when he had failed to recover it agylfin-hir, or curlew, came by, picked it up, and placed it on a stone out of the reach of the tide. The saint prayed for the protection and favour of the Creator for thegylfin-hir: it was granted, and so nobody ever knows where that bird makes its nest.’
III.
The same summer I happened to meet the Rev. Robert Hughes, of Uwchlaw’r Ffynnon, near Ỻanaelhaearn, a village on which Tre’r Ceiri, or the Town of the Keiri, looks down in its primitive grimness from the top of one of the three heights of the Eifl, or Rivals as English people call them. The district is remarkable for the longevity of its inhabitants, and Mr. Hughes counted fifteen farmers in his immediate neighbourhood whose average age was eighty-three; and four years previously the average age of eighteen of them was no less than eighty-five. He himself was, when I met him, seventy-one years of age, and he considered that he represented the traditions of more than a century and a half, as he was a boy of twelve when one of his grandfathers died at the age of ninety-two: the age reached by one of his grandmothers was all but equal, while his father died only a few years ago, after nearly reaching his ninety-fifth birthday.Story-telling was kept alive in the parish of Ỻanaelhaearn by the institution known there as thepilnos, orpeeling night, when the neighbours met in one another’s houses to spend the long winter evenings dressing hemp and carding wool, though I guess that apilnoswas originally the night when people met topeelrushes for rushlights. When they left these merry meetings they were ready, as Mr. Hughes says, to see anything. In fact, he gives an instance of some people coming from apilnosacross the mountain from Nant Gwrtheyrn to Ỻithfaen, and finding the fairies singing and dancing with all their might: they were drawn in among them and found themselves left alone in the morning on the heather. Indeed, Mr. Hughes has seen the fairies himself: it was on the Pwỻheli road, as he was returning in the grey of the morning from the house of hisfiancéewhen he was twenty-seven. The fairies he saw came along riding on wee horses: his recollection is that he now and then mastered his eyes and found the road quite clear, but the next moment the vision would return, and he thought he saw the diminutive cavalcade as plainly as possible. Similarly, a man of the name of Solomon Evans, when, thirty years ago, making his way home late at night through Glynỻifon Park, found himself followed by quite a crowd of little creatures, which he described as being of the size of guinea pigs and covered with red and white spots. He was an ignorant man, who knew no better than to believe to the day of his death, some eight or nine years ago, that they were demons. This is probably a blurred version of a story concerningCwn Annwn, ‘Hell hounds,’ such as the following, published by Mr. O. M. Edwards in hisCymrufor 1897, p. 190, from Mr. J. H. Roberts’ essay mentioned above at p. 148:—‘Ages ago as a man who had been engaged on business, not the most creditable in the world, was returning in the depth of night across Cefn Creini, and thinking in a downcast frame of mindover what he had been doing, he heard in the distance a low and fear-inspiring bark; then another bark, and another, and then half a dozen and more. Ere long he became aware that he was being pursued by dogs, and that they wereCwn Annwn. He beheld them coming: he tried to flee, but he felt quite powerless and could not escape. Nearer and nearer they came, and he saw the shepherd with them: his face was black and he had horns on his head. They had come round him and stood in a semicircle ready to rush upon him, when he had a remarkable deliverance: he remembered that he had in his pocket a small cross, which he showed them. They fled in the greatest terror in all directions, and this accounts for the proverb,Mwy na’r cythraul at y groes(Any more than the devil to the cross).’ That is Mr. Roberts’ story; but several allusions have already been made toCwn Annwn. It would be right probably to identify them in the first instance with the pack with which Arawn, king of Annwn, is found hunting by Pwyỻ, king of Dyfed, when the latter happens to meet him in Glyn Cuch in his own realm. Then in a poem in theBlack Book of Carmarthenwe find Gwyn ab Nûđ with a pack led by Dormarth, a hound with a red snout which he kept close to the ground when engaged in the chase; similarly in the story of Iolo ab Huw the dogs are treated as belonging to Gwyn. But on the whole the later idea has more usually been, that the devil is the huntsman, that his dogs give chase in the air, that their quarry consists of the souls of the departed, and that their bark forebodes a death, since they watch for the souls of men about to die. This, however, might be objected to as pagan; so I have heard the finishing touch given to it in the neighbourhood of Ystrad Meurig, by one who, like Mr. Pughe, explained that it is the souls only of notoriously wicked men and well-known evil livers.With this limitation the pack10seems in no immediate danger of being regarded as poaching.To return to Ỻanaelhaearn, it is right to say that good spirits too, who attend on good Calvinists, are there believed in. Morris Hughes, of Cwm Corryn, was the first Calvinistic Methodist at Ỻanaelhaearn; he was great-grandfather to Robert Hughes’ wife; and he used to be followed by two pretty little yellow birds. He would call to them, ‘Wryd, Wryd!’ and they would come and feed out of his hand, and when he was dying they came and flapped their wings against his window. This was testified to by John Thomas, of Moelfre Bach, who was present at the time. Thomas died some twenty-five years ago, at the age of eighty-seven. I have heard this story from other people, but I do not know what to make of it, though I may add that the little birds are believed to have been angels. In Mr. Rees’Welsh Saints, pp. 305–6, Gwryd is given as the name of a friar who lived about the end of the twelfth century, and has been commemorated on November 1; and the author adds a note referring to theCambrian Registerfor 1800, vol. iii. p. 221, where it is said that Gwryd relieved the bard Einion ab Gwalchmai of some oppression, probably mental, which had afflicted him for seven years. Is one to suppose that Gwryd sent two angels in the form of little birds to protect the first Ỻanaelhaearn Methodist? The call ‘Wryd, Wryd,’ would seem to indicate that the name was not originallyGwryd, butWryd, to be identified possibly with the Pictish nameUoretin an inscription at St. Vigean’s, near Arbroath, and to be distinguishedfrom the Welsh wordgwryd, ‘valour,’ and from the Welsh nameGwriad, representing what in its Gaulish form wasViriatus. We possibly have the nameWrydin Hafod Wryd, a place in the Machno Valley above Bettws y Coed; otherwise one would have expectedHafod y Gwryd, making colloquially,Hafod Gwryd.Mr. Hughes told me a variety of things about Nant Gwrtheyrn, one of the spots where the Vortigern story is localized. The Nant is a sort of acul de sachollow opening to the sea at the foot of the Eifl. There is a rock there calledY Farches, and the angle of the sea next to the old castle, which seems to be merely a mound, is calledY Ỻynclyn, or ‘The Whirlpool’; and this is perhaps an important item in the localizing of Vortigern’s city there. I was informed by Mr. Hughes that the grave of Olfyn is in this Nant, with a razed church close by: both are otherwise quite unknown to me. Coming away from this weird spot to the neighbourhood of Celynnog, one finds that the Pennarđ of theMabinogiof Math is now called Pennarth, and has on it a well-known cromlech. Of course, I did not leave Mr. Hughes without asking him about Caer Arianrhod, and I found that he called it Tre’ Gaer Anrheg: he described it as a stony patch in the sea, and it can, he says, be reached on foot when the ebb is at its lowest in spring and autumn. The story he had heard about it when he was a boy at school with David Thomas, better known by his bardic name ofDafyđ Đu Eryri, was the following:—‘Tregaer Anrheg was inhabited by a family of robbers, and among other things they killed and robbed a man at Glyn Iwrch, near the further wall of Glynnỻifon Park: this completed the measure of their lawlessness. There was one woman, however, living with them at Tregaer Anrheg, who was not related to them, and as she went out one evening withher pitcher to fetch water, she heard a voice crying out,Dos i ben y bryn i wel’d rhyfeđod, that is, Go up the hill to see a wonder. She obeyed, and as soon as she got to the top of the hill, whereby was meant Dinas Dinỻe, she beheld Tregaer Anrheg sinking in the sea.’As I have wandered away from the fairies I may add the following curious bit of legend which Mr. Hughes gave me:—‘When St. Beuno lived at Celynnog, he used to go regularly to preach at Ỻanđwyn on the opposite side of the water, which he always crossed on foot. But one Sunday he accidentally dropped his book of sermons into the water, and when he had failed to recover it agylfin-hir, or curlew, came by, picked it up, and placed it on a stone out of the reach of the tide. The saint prayed for the protection and favour of the Creator for thegylfin-hir: it was granted, and so nobody ever knows where that bird makes its nest.’
The same summer I happened to meet the Rev. Robert Hughes, of Uwchlaw’r Ffynnon, near Ỻanaelhaearn, a village on which Tre’r Ceiri, or the Town of the Keiri, looks down in its primitive grimness from the top of one of the three heights of the Eifl, or Rivals as English people call them. The district is remarkable for the longevity of its inhabitants, and Mr. Hughes counted fifteen farmers in his immediate neighbourhood whose average age was eighty-three; and four years previously the average age of eighteen of them was no less than eighty-five. He himself was, when I met him, seventy-one years of age, and he considered that he represented the traditions of more than a century and a half, as he was a boy of twelve when one of his grandfathers died at the age of ninety-two: the age reached by one of his grandmothers was all but equal, while his father died only a few years ago, after nearly reaching his ninety-fifth birthday.
Story-telling was kept alive in the parish of Ỻanaelhaearn by the institution known there as thepilnos, orpeeling night, when the neighbours met in one another’s houses to spend the long winter evenings dressing hemp and carding wool, though I guess that apilnoswas originally the night when people met topeelrushes for rushlights. When they left these merry meetings they were ready, as Mr. Hughes says, to see anything. In fact, he gives an instance of some people coming from apilnosacross the mountain from Nant Gwrtheyrn to Ỻithfaen, and finding the fairies singing and dancing with all their might: they were drawn in among them and found themselves left alone in the morning on the heather. Indeed, Mr. Hughes has seen the fairies himself: it was on the Pwỻheli road, as he was returning in the grey of the morning from the house of hisfiancéewhen he was twenty-seven. The fairies he saw came along riding on wee horses: his recollection is that he now and then mastered his eyes and found the road quite clear, but the next moment the vision would return, and he thought he saw the diminutive cavalcade as plainly as possible. Similarly, a man of the name of Solomon Evans, when, thirty years ago, making his way home late at night through Glynỻifon Park, found himself followed by quite a crowd of little creatures, which he described as being of the size of guinea pigs and covered with red and white spots. He was an ignorant man, who knew no better than to believe to the day of his death, some eight or nine years ago, that they were demons. This is probably a blurred version of a story concerningCwn Annwn, ‘Hell hounds,’ such as the following, published by Mr. O. M. Edwards in hisCymrufor 1897, p. 190, from Mr. J. H. Roberts’ essay mentioned above at p. 148:—‘Ages ago as a man who had been engaged on business, not the most creditable in the world, was returning in the depth of night across Cefn Creini, and thinking in a downcast frame of mindover what he had been doing, he heard in the distance a low and fear-inspiring bark; then another bark, and another, and then half a dozen and more. Ere long he became aware that he was being pursued by dogs, and that they wereCwn Annwn. He beheld them coming: he tried to flee, but he felt quite powerless and could not escape. Nearer and nearer they came, and he saw the shepherd with them: his face was black and he had horns on his head. They had come round him and stood in a semicircle ready to rush upon him, when he had a remarkable deliverance: he remembered that he had in his pocket a small cross, which he showed them. They fled in the greatest terror in all directions, and this accounts for the proverb,Mwy na’r cythraul at y groes(Any more than the devil to the cross).’ That is Mr. Roberts’ story; but several allusions have already been made toCwn Annwn. It would be right probably to identify them in the first instance with the pack with which Arawn, king of Annwn, is found hunting by Pwyỻ, king of Dyfed, when the latter happens to meet him in Glyn Cuch in his own realm. Then in a poem in theBlack Book of Carmarthenwe find Gwyn ab Nûđ with a pack led by Dormarth, a hound with a red snout which he kept close to the ground when engaged in the chase; similarly in the story of Iolo ab Huw the dogs are treated as belonging to Gwyn. But on the whole the later idea has more usually been, that the devil is the huntsman, that his dogs give chase in the air, that their quarry consists of the souls of the departed, and that their bark forebodes a death, since they watch for the souls of men about to die. This, however, might be objected to as pagan; so I have heard the finishing touch given to it in the neighbourhood of Ystrad Meurig, by one who, like Mr. Pughe, explained that it is the souls only of notoriously wicked men and well-known evil livers.With this limitation the pack10seems in no immediate danger of being regarded as poaching.
To return to Ỻanaelhaearn, it is right to say that good spirits too, who attend on good Calvinists, are there believed in. Morris Hughes, of Cwm Corryn, was the first Calvinistic Methodist at Ỻanaelhaearn; he was great-grandfather to Robert Hughes’ wife; and he used to be followed by two pretty little yellow birds. He would call to them, ‘Wryd, Wryd!’ and they would come and feed out of his hand, and when he was dying they came and flapped their wings against his window. This was testified to by John Thomas, of Moelfre Bach, who was present at the time. Thomas died some twenty-five years ago, at the age of eighty-seven. I have heard this story from other people, but I do not know what to make of it, though I may add that the little birds are believed to have been angels. In Mr. Rees’Welsh Saints, pp. 305–6, Gwryd is given as the name of a friar who lived about the end of the twelfth century, and has been commemorated on November 1; and the author adds a note referring to theCambrian Registerfor 1800, vol. iii. p. 221, where it is said that Gwryd relieved the bard Einion ab Gwalchmai of some oppression, probably mental, which had afflicted him for seven years. Is one to suppose that Gwryd sent two angels in the form of little birds to protect the first Ỻanaelhaearn Methodist? The call ‘Wryd, Wryd,’ would seem to indicate that the name was not originallyGwryd, butWryd, to be identified possibly with the Pictish nameUoretin an inscription at St. Vigean’s, near Arbroath, and to be distinguishedfrom the Welsh wordgwryd, ‘valour,’ and from the Welsh nameGwriad, representing what in its Gaulish form wasViriatus. We possibly have the nameWrydin Hafod Wryd, a place in the Machno Valley above Bettws y Coed; otherwise one would have expectedHafod y Gwryd, making colloquially,Hafod Gwryd.
Mr. Hughes told me a variety of things about Nant Gwrtheyrn, one of the spots where the Vortigern story is localized. The Nant is a sort of acul de sachollow opening to the sea at the foot of the Eifl. There is a rock there calledY Farches, and the angle of the sea next to the old castle, which seems to be merely a mound, is calledY Ỻynclyn, or ‘The Whirlpool’; and this is perhaps an important item in the localizing of Vortigern’s city there. I was informed by Mr. Hughes that the grave of Olfyn is in this Nant, with a razed church close by: both are otherwise quite unknown to me. Coming away from this weird spot to the neighbourhood of Celynnog, one finds that the Pennarđ of theMabinogiof Math is now called Pennarth, and has on it a well-known cromlech. Of course, I did not leave Mr. Hughes without asking him about Caer Arianrhod, and I found that he called it Tre’ Gaer Anrheg: he described it as a stony patch in the sea, and it can, he says, be reached on foot when the ebb is at its lowest in spring and autumn. The story he had heard about it when he was a boy at school with David Thomas, better known by his bardic name ofDafyđ Đu Eryri, was the following:—
‘Tregaer Anrheg was inhabited by a family of robbers, and among other things they killed and robbed a man at Glyn Iwrch, near the further wall of Glynnỻifon Park: this completed the measure of their lawlessness. There was one woman, however, living with them at Tregaer Anrheg, who was not related to them, and as she went out one evening withher pitcher to fetch water, she heard a voice crying out,Dos i ben y bryn i wel’d rhyfeđod, that is, Go up the hill to see a wonder. She obeyed, and as soon as she got to the top of the hill, whereby was meant Dinas Dinỻe, she beheld Tregaer Anrheg sinking in the sea.’
As I have wandered away from the fairies I may add the following curious bit of legend which Mr. Hughes gave me:—‘When St. Beuno lived at Celynnog, he used to go regularly to preach at Ỻanđwyn on the opposite side of the water, which he always crossed on foot. But one Sunday he accidentally dropped his book of sermons into the water, and when he had failed to recover it agylfin-hir, or curlew, came by, picked it up, and placed it on a stone out of the reach of the tide. The saint prayed for the protection and favour of the Creator for thegylfin-hir: it was granted, and so nobody ever knows where that bird makes its nest.’