Chapter VI · The Folklore of the Wells

… Iuvat integros accedere fontes.—Lucretius.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Ambeỻ đyn, gwaelđyn, a gyrch

I bant gorís Moel Bentyrch,

Mewn gobaith mai hen Gybi

Glodfawr syđ yn ỻwyđaw’r ỻi.

A hollow below Moel Bentyrch,

In hopes that ancient Kybi

Of noble fame blesses the flood.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Y Bala aeth, a’r Bala aiff,

A Ỻanfor aiff yn Ỻyn.

Bala old the lake has had, and Bala new

The lake will have, and Ỻanfor too.

Caer Fyrđin, cei oer fore;

Daear a’th lwnc, dw’r i’th le.

Carmarthen, a cold morn awaits thee;

Earth gapes, and water in thy place will be.

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

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

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

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

Mr. Fisher goes on to mention the later history of the lake: how, some eighty years ago, its banks were the resort on Sunday afternoons of the young people of the neighbourhood, and how a Baptist preacher put an end to their amusements and various kinds of games by preaching at them. However, the lake-side appears to be still a favourite spot for picnics and Sunday-school gatherings. Mr. Fisher was quite right in appending to his own version that of his friend; but, from the point of view of folklore, I must confess that I can make nothing of the latter: it differs from the older one as much as chalk does from cheese. It would be naturally gratifying to the pride of local topography to be able to connect with the pool the name of Owen Glyndwr; but it is worthy of note that this highly respectable attempt to rationalize the legend wholly fails, as it does not explain why there is now a lake where there was once but a well. In other words, the euhemerized story is itself evidence corroborative of Mr. Fisher’s older version, which is furthermore kept in countenance by Howells’ account, p. 104, where we are told who the Owen in question was, namely, Owen Lawgoch, a personage dear, as we shall see later, to the Welsh legend of the district. He and his men had their abode in a cave on the northern side of Mynyđ Mawr, and while there Owen used, we are informed, to water his steed at a fine spring covered with a large stone, which it required the strength of a giant to lift. But one day he forgot to replace it, and when he next sought the well he found the lake. He returned to his cave and told his men what had happened. Thereupon both he and they fell into a sleep, which is to last till it is broken by the sound of a trumpet and the clang of arms on Rhiw Goch: then they are to sally forth to conquer.

Seithenhin sawde allan.

ac edrẏchuirde varanres mor.

maes guitnev rẏtoes.

Boed emendiceid ẏ morvin

aehellẏgaut guẏdi cvin.

Boed emendiceid ẏ vachteith.

ae . golligaut guẏdi gueith.

finaun wenestir mor diffeith.

Diaspad mererid ẏ ar vann caer.

hid ar duu ẏ dodir.

gnaud guẏdi traha trangc hir.

Diaspad mererid . ẏ ar van kaer hetiv.

hid ar duu ẏ dadoluch.

gnaud guẏdi traha attreguch.

Diaspad mererid am gorchuit heno.

ac nimhaut gorlluit.

gnaud guẏdi traha tramguit.

Diaspad mererid ẏ ar gwinev kadir

kedaul duv ae gorev.

gnaud guẏdi gormot eissev.

Diaspad mererid . am kẏmhell heno

ẏ urth uẏistauell.

gnaud guẏdi traha trangc pell.

Bet seithenhin sẏnhuir vann

rug kaer kenedir a glan.

mor maurhidic a kinran.

Seithennin, stand thou forth

And see the vanguard of the main:

Gwyđno’s plain has it covered.

Accursed be the maiden

Who let it loose after supping,

Well cup-bearer of the mighty main.

Accursed be the damsel

Who let it loose after battle,

Well minister of the high sea.

Mererid’s cry from a city’s height,

Even to God is it directed:

After pride comes a long pause.

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

Even to God her expiation:

After pride comes reflection.

Mererid’s cry o’ercomes me to-night,

Nor can I readily prosper:

After pride comes a fall.

Mererid’s cry over strong wines,

Bounteous God has wrought it:

After excess comes privation.

Mererid’s cry drives me to-night

From my chamber away:

After insolence comes long death.

Weak-witted Seithennin’s grave is it

Between Kenedyr’s Fort and the shore,

With majestic Mor’s and Kynran’s.

Bet mor maurhidic diessic unben.

post kinhen kinteic.

mab peredur penwetic.

The grave of Mor the Grand, … prince,

Pillar of the … conflict,

Son of Peredur of Penweđig.

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

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

Tair afon gynt a rifwyd

Ar đwyfron Pumlumon lwyd,

Hafren a Gwy’n hyfryd ei gweđ,

A’r Rheidol fawr ei hanrhydeđ.

Three rivers of yore were seen

On grey Plinlimmon’s breast,

Severn, and Wye of pleasant mien,

And Rheidol rich in great renown.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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