Book 4 — CHAPTER V.

Baleful Spirits of Storm—The Shower at the Magic Fountain—Obstacles in the way of Treasure-Seekers—The Red Lady of Paviland—The Fall of Coychurch Tower—Thunder and Lightning evoked by Digging—The Treasure-Chest under Moel Arthur in the Vale of Clwyd—Modern Credulity—The Cavern of the Ravens—The Eagle-guarded Coffer of Castell Coch—Sleeping Warriors as Treasure-Guarders—The Dragon which St. Samson drove out of Wales—Dragons in the Mabinogion—Whence came the Red Dragon of Wales?—The Original Dragon of Mythology—Prototypes of the Welsh Caverns and Treasure-Hills—The Goblins of Electricity.

I.

In the prominent part played by storm—torrents of rain, blinding lightning, deafening thunder—in legends of disturbed cromlechs, and other awful stones, is involved the ancient belief that these elements were themselves baleful spirits, which could be evoked by certain acts. They were in the service of fiends and fairies, and came at their bidding to avenge the intrusion of venturesome mortals, daring to meddle with sacred things. This fascinating superstition is preserved in numberless Welsh legends relating to hidden treasures, buried under cromlechs or rocky mounds, or in caverns. In the ‘Mabinogion’ it appears in the enchanted barrier to the Castle of the Lady of the Fountain. Under a certain tall tree in the midst of a wide valley there was a fountain, ‘and by the side of the fountain a marble slab, and on the marble slab a silver bowl, attached by a chain of silver, so that it may not be carried away. Take the bowl and throw a bowlful of water on the slab,’ says the black giant of the wood to Sir Kai, ‘and thou wilt hear a mighty peal of thunder, so that thou wilt think that heaven and earth are trembling with its fury. With the thunder there will come a shower so severe that it will be scarce possible for thee to endure it and live. And the shower will be of hailstones; and after the shower the weather will become fair, but every leaf that was upon the tree will have been carried away by the shower.’[183] Of course the knight dares this awful obstacle, throws the bowlful of water upon the slab, receives the terrible storm upon his shield, and fights the knight who owned the fountain, on his coming forth. Sir Kai is worsted, and returns home to Arthur’s court; whereupon Sir Owain takes up the contest. He sallies forth, evokes the storm, encounters the black knight, slays him, and becomes master of all that was his—his castle, his lands, his wife, and all his treasures.

The peasant of to-day who sets out in quest of hidden treasures evokes the avenging storm in like manner. Sometimes the treasure is in the ground, under a cromlech or a carn; he digs, and the thunder shakes the air, the lightnings flash, torrents descend, and he is frustrated in his search. Again, the treasure is in a cavern, guarded by a dragon, which belches forth fire upon him and scorches his eyeballs. Welsh folk-lore is full of legends of this character; and the curious way in which science and religion sometimes get mixed up with these superstitions is most suggestive—as in the cases of the falling of Coychurch tower, and the Red Lady of Paviland. The latter is the name given a skeleton found by Dr. Buckland in his exploration of the Paviland caves, the bones of which were stained by red oxide of iron. The vulgar belief is that the Red Lady was entombed in the cave by a storm while seeking treasure there—a legend the truth of which no one can dispute with authority, since the bones are certainly of a period contemporary with the Roman rule in this island. Coins of Constantine were found in the same earth, cemented with fragments of charcoal and bone ornaments. In the case of Coychurch tower, it undoubtedly fell because it was undermined by a contractor who had the job of removing certain defunct forefathers from their graves near its base. Some eighteen hundred skulls were taken from the ground and carted off to a hole on the east side of the church. But the country folk pooh-pooh the idea that the tower fell for any reason other than sheer indignation and horror at the disturbance of this hallowed ground by utilitarian pickaxe and spade. They call your attention to the fact that not only did the venerable tower come crashing down, after having stood for centuries erect, but that in falling it struck to the earth St. Crallo’s cross—an upright stone in the churchyard as venerable as itself—breaking it all to pieces.

FOOTNOTE:

II.

A hollow in the road near Caerau, in Cardiganshire, ‘rings when any wheeled vehicle goes over it.’ Early in this century, two men having been led to believe that there were treasures hidden there (for a fairy in the semblance of a gipsy had appeared and thrown out hints on the fascinating subject from time to time), made up their minds to dig for it. They dug accordingly until they came, by their solemn statement, to the oaken frame of a subterranean doorway; and feeling sure now, that they had serious work before them, prepared for the same by going to dinner. They had no sooner gone than a terrible storm arose; the rain fell in torrents, the thunder pealed and the lightning flashed. When they went back to their work, the hole they had digged was closed up; and nothing would convince them that this was done by any other than a supernatural agency. Moreover, but a little above the place where they were, there had been no rain at all.[184]

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III.

There is a current belief among the peasants about Moel Arthur—a mountain overlooking the Vale of Clwyd—that treasure, concealed in an iron chest with a ring-handle to it, lies buried there. The place of concealment is often illuminated at night by a supernatural light. Several people thereabouts are known to have seen the light, and there are even men who will tell you that bold adventurers have so far succeeded as to grasp the handle of the iron chest, when an outburst of wild tempest wrested it from their hold and struck them senseless. Local tradition points out the place as the residence of an ancient prince, and as a spot charmed against the spade of the antiquary. ‘Whoever digs there,’ said an old woman in Welsh to some men going home from their work on this spot, after a drenching wet day, ‘is always driven away by thunder and lightning and storm; you have been served like everybody else who has made the attempt.’

IV.

So prevalent are superstitions of this class even in the present day that cases get into the newspapers now and then. The ‘Herald Cymraeg’ of September 25, 1874, gave an account of some excavations made at Pant-y-Saer cromlech, Anglesea, by the instigation of John Jones of Llandudno, ‘a brother of Isaac Jones, the present tenant of Pant-y-Saer,’ at the time on a visit to the latter. The immediately exciting cause of the digging was a dream in which the dreamer was told that there was a pot of treasure buried within the cromlech’s precincts. The result was the revelation of a large number of human bones, among them five lower jaws with the teeth sound; but no crochan aur (pitcher of gold) turned up, and the digging was abandoned in disgust. Is it credible that between this account and the following yawns the gulf of seven hundred years? Thus Giraldus: In the province of Kemeys, one of the seven cantrefs of Pembrokeshire, ‘during the reign of King Henry I., a rich man who had a residence on the northern side of the Preseleu mountains was warned for three successive nights by dreams that if he put his hand under a stone which hung over the spring of a neighbouring well called the Fountain of St. Bernacus, he should find there a golden chain; obeying the admonition, on the third day he received from a viper a deadly wound in his finger; but as it appears that many treasures have been discovered through dreams, it seems to me probable that some ought and some ought not to be believed.’[185]

FOOTNOTE:

V.

In a certain cavern in Glamorganshire, called the Ogof Cigfrain, or Cavern of the Ravens, is said to be a chest of gold, watched over by two birds of gloomy plumage, in a darkness so profound that nothing can be seen but the fire of their sleepless eyes. To go there with the purpose of disturbing them is to bring on a heaving and rolling of the ground, accompanied by thunder and lightning. A swaggering drover from Brecknockshire, though warned by a ‘dark woman’ that he had better not try it, sneered that ‘a couple of ravens were a fine matter to be afraid of indeed!’ and ventured into the cavern, with a long rope about his waist, and a lantern in his hand. Some men who accompanied him (seeing that he was bent on this rash and dangerous emprise,) held the coil of rope, and paid it out as he went further and further in. The result was prompt and simple: the sky cracked with loud bursts of thunder and flashes of lightning, and the drover roared with affright and rushed out of the dark cavern with his hair on end. No coaxing ever prevailed on him to reveal the terrible sights he had seen; when questioned he would only repeat in Welsh the advice of ‘Punch’ to those about to marry, viz., ‘Peidiwch!’

VI.

In the legend of Castell Coch, instead of a raven it is a pair of huge eagles which watch the treasure. Castell Coch is an easy and pleasant two hours’ walk from Cardiff Castle, with which it is vulgarly believed to be connected by a subterranean passage. A short time ago—well, to be precise, a hundred years ago, but that is no time at all in the history of Castell Coch, which was a crumbling ruin then as it is now[186]—in or about the year 1780, a reduced lady was allowed to fit up three or four rooms in the ruin as a residence, and to live there with two old servants of her house. One night this lady was awakened from her sleep to receive the visit of a venerable ghost in a full dress-suit of an earlier century, who distressed her by his troubled countenance and vexed her by his eccentric behaviour, for when she spoke to him from the depths of her nightcap he at once got through the wall. He came on subsequent nights so often, and frightened the servants so much by the noise he made—in getting through the wall, of course—that the lady gave up her strange abode, and was glad to pay house rent ever after in other parts. This old ghost was in the flesh proprietor of the castle, it appears, and during the civil wars buried an iron chest full of gold in the subterranean passage—which is still there, guarded by two large eagles. A party of gentlemen who somewhere about 1800 attempted to explore the passage saw the eagles, and were attacked by the birds of freedom so fiercely that they retreated in disorder. Subsequently they returned with pistols and shot the eagles, which resented this trifling impertinence by tearing the treasure-seekers in a shocking manner. After having recovered from their wounds, the determined Welshmen renewed the attack—this time with silver bullets, which they had got blessed by a good-natured priest. The bullets rattled harmlessly on the feathers of the terrible birds; the ground shook under foot; rain descended in torrents; with their great wings the eagles beat out the gold-hunters’ torches, and they barely escaped with their lives.

FOOTNOTE:

VII.

The shadowy Horror which keeps vigil over these hidden treasures is now a dragon, again a raven or an eagle, again a worm. In the account of the treasure-seeker of Nantyglyn, it is a winged creature of unknown nature, a ‘mysterious incubus,’ which broods over the chest in the cave. The terrible Crocodile of the Lake, which was drawn from its watery hiding-place by the Ychain Banog, or Prominent Oxen of Hu Gadarn, is also sometimes called a dragon (draig) in those local accounts which survive in the folk-lore of several different districts. It infested the region round about the lake where it lay concealed, and the mighty oxen so strained themselves in the labour of drawing it forth that one of them died and the other rent the mountain in twain with his bellowing. Various legends of Sleeping Warriors appear in Welsh folk-lore, in which the dragon is displaced by a shadowy army of slumbering heroes, lying about in a circle, with their swords and shields by their sides, guarding great heaps of gold and silver. Now they are Owen Lawgoch and his men, who lie in their enchanted sleep in a cavern on the northern side of Mynydd Mawr, in Carmarthenshire; again they are Arthur and his warriors, asleep in a secret ogof under Craig-y-Ddinas, waiting for a day when the Briton and the Saxon shall go to war, when the noise of the struggle will awaken them, and they will reconquer the island, reduce London to dust, and re-establish their king at Caerleon, in Monmouthshire.

Dragon or demon, raven or serpent, eagle or sleeping warriors, the guardian of the underground vaults in Wales where treasures lie is a personification of the baleful influences which reside in caverns, graves, and subterraneous regions generally. It is something more than this, when traced back to its source in the primeval mythology; the dragon which watched the golden apples of Hesperides, and the Payshtha-more, or great worm, which in Ireland guards the riches of O’Rourke, is the same malarious creature which St. Samson drove out of Wales. According to the monkish legend, this pestiferous beast was of vast size, and by its deadly breath had destroyed two districts. It lay hid in a cave, near the river. Thither went St. Samson, accompanied only by a boy, and tied a linen girdle about the creature’s neck, and drew it out and threw it headlong from a certain high eminence into the sea.[187] This dreadful dragon became mild and gentle when addressed by the saint; did not lift up its terrible wings, nor gnash its teeth, nor put out its tongue to emit its fiery breath, but suffered itself to be led to the sea and hurled therein.[188] In the ‘Mabinogion,’ the dragon which fights in Lludd’s dominion is mentioned as a plague, whose shriek sounded on every May eve over every hearth in Britain; and it ‘went through people’s hearts, and so scared them, that the men lost their hue and their strength, and the women their children, and the young men and maidens lost their senses.’[189] ‘Whence came the red dragon of Cadwaladr?’ asks the learned Thomas Stephens.[190] ‘Why was the Welsh dragon in the fables of Merddin, Nennius, and Geoffrey, described as red, while the Saxon dragon was white?’ The question may remain long unanswered, for the reason that there is no answer outside the domain of fancy, and therefore no reason which could in our day be accepted as reasonable.[191] The Welsh word ‘dragon’ means equally a dragon and a leader in war. Red was the most honourable colour of military garments among the British in Arthur’s day; and Arthur wore a dragon on his helmet, according to tradition.

But the original dragon was an embodiment of mythological ideas as old as mankind, and older than any written record. The mysterious beast of the boy Taliesin’s song, in the marvellous legend of Gwion Bach, is a dragon worthy to be classed with the gigantic conceptions of the primeval imagination, which sought by these prodigious figures to explain all the phenomena of nature. ‘A noxious creature from the rampart of Satanas,’ sings Taliesin; with jaws as wide as mountains; in the hair of its two paws there is the load of nine hundred waggons, and in the nape of its neck three springs arise, through which sea-roughs swim.[193]

FOOTNOTES:

VIII.

For the prototype of the dragon-haunted caves and treasure-hills of Wales, we must look to the lightning caverns of old Aryan fable, into which no man might gaze and live, and which were in fact the attempted explanation of thunderstorms, when the clouds appeared torn asunder by the lightning.

Scholars have noted the impressive fact that the ancient Aryan people had the same name for cloud and mountain; in the Old Norse, ‘klakkr’ means both cloud and rock, and indeed the English word cloud has been identified with the Anglo-Saxon ‘clûd,’ rock.[194] Equally significant here is the fact that in the Welsh language ‘draig’ means both lightning and dragon.

Primeval man, ignorant that the cloud was in any way different in structure from the solid mountains whose peaks it emulated in appearance, started back aghast and trembling when with crashing thunders the celestial rocks opened, displaying for an instant the glowing cavern whose splendour haunted his dreams. From this phenomenon, whose goblins modern science has tamed and taught to run errands along a wire, came a host of glittering legends, the shining hammer of Thor, the lightning spear of Odin, the enchanted arrow of Prince Ahmed, and the forked trident of Poseidon, as well as the fire-darting dragons of our modern folk-lore.

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