Introductory material
Reading edition
Rag wells in Wales 354
The question of distinguishing between offerings and vehicles of disease 358
Mr. Hartland’s decision 359
The author’s view revised and illustrated 360
T. E. Morris’ account of the pin well of Ỻanfaglan 362
Other wishing and divining wells 364
The sacred fish of Ỻanberis and Ỻangybi 366
Ffynnon Grassi producing the Glasfryn lake 367
The Morgan of that lake and his name 372
Ffynnon Gywer producing Bala Lake 376
Bala and other towns doomed to submersion 377
The legend of Ỻyn Ỻech Owen 379
The parallels of Lough Neagh and Lough Ree 381
Seithennin’s realm overwhelmed by the sea 382
Seithennin’s name and its congeners 385
Prof. Dawkins on the Lost Lands of Wales 388
Certain Irish wells not visited with impunity 389
The Lough Sheelin legend compared with that of Seithennin 393
The priesthood of the wells of St. Elian and St. Teilo 395
CHAPTER VII
Triumphs of the Water-world 401
The sea encroaching on the coast of Glamorgan 402
The Kenfig tale of crime and vengeance 403
The Crymlyn story and its touch of fascination 404
Nennius’ description of Oper Linn Liguan compared 406
The vengeance legend of Bala Lake 408
Legends about the Ỻynclys Pool 410
The fate of Tyno Helig 414
The belief in cities submerged intact 415
The phantom city and the bells of Aberdovey 418
The ethics of the foregoing legends discussed 419
The limits of the delay of punishment 420
Why the fairies delay their vengeance 423
Non-ethical legends of the eruption of water 425
Cutting the green sward a probable violation of ancient tabu avenged by water divinities 427
The lake afanc’s rôle in this connexion 428
The pigmies of the water-world 432
The Conwy afanc and the Highland water-horse 433
The equine features of March and Labraid Lore 435
Mider and the Mac Óc’s well horses 436
The Gilla Decair’s horse and Du March Moro 437
March ab Meirchion associated with Mona 439
The Welsh deluge Triads 440
Names of the Dee and other rivers in North Wales 441
The Lydney god Nudons, Nuada, and Ỻuđ 445
The fairies associated in various ways with water 449
The cyhiraeth and the Welsh banshee 452
Ancestress rather than ancestor 454
CHAPTER VIII
Welsh Cave Legends 456
The question of classification 456
The fairy cave of the Arennig Fawr 456
The cave of Mynyđ y Cnwc 457
Waring’s version of Iolo’s legend of Craig y Đinas 458
Craigfryn Hughes’ Monmouthshire tale 462
The story of the cave occupied by Owen Lawgoch 464
How London Bridge came to figure in that story 466
Owen Lawgoch in Ogo’r Đinas 467
Dinas Emrys with the treasure hidden by Merlin 469
Snowdonian treasure reserved for the Goidel 470
Arthur’s death on the side of Snowdon 473
The graves of Arthur and Rhita 474
Elis o’r Nant’s story of Ỻanciau Eryri’s cave 476
The top of Snowdon named after Rhita 477
Drystan’s cairn 480
The hairy man’s cave 481
Returning heroes for comparison with Arthur and Owen Lawgoch 481
The baledwyr’s Owen to return as Henry the Ninth 484
Owen a historical man = Froissart’s Yvain de Gales 487
Froissart’s account of him and the questions it raises 488
Owen ousting Arthur as a cave-dweller 493
Arthur previously supplanting a divinity of the class of the sleeping Cronus of Demetrius 493
Arthur’s original sojourn located in Faery 495
CHAPTER IX
Place-name Stories 498
The Triad of the Swineherds of the Isle of Prydain 499
The former importance of swine’s flesh as food 501
The Triad clause about Coỻ’s straying sow 503
Coỻ’s wanderings arranged to explain place-names 508
The Kulhwch account of Arthur’s hunt of Twrch Trwyth in Ireland 509
A parley with the boars 511
The hunt resumed in Pembrokeshire 512
The boars reaching the Loughor Valley 514
Their separation 515
One killed by the Men of Ỻydaw in Ystrad Yw 516
Ystrad Yw defined and its name explained 516
Twrch Trwyth escaping to Cornwall after an encounter in the estuary of the Severn 519
The comb, razor, and shears of Twrch Trwyth 519
The name Twrch Trwyth 521
Some of the names evidence of Goidelic speech 523
The story about Gwydion and his swine compared 525
Place-name explanations blurred or effaced 526
Enumeration of Arthur’s losses in the hunt 529
The Men of Ỻydaw’s identity and their Syfađon home 531
Further traces of Goidelic names 536
A Twrch Trwyth incident mentioned by Nennius 537
The place-name Carn Cabal discussed 538
Duplicate names with the Goidelic form preferred in Wales 541
The same phenomenon in the Mabinogion 543
The relation between the families of Ỻyr, Dôn, and Pwyỻ 548
The elemental associations of Ỻyr and Lir 549
Matthew Arnold’s idea of Medieval Welsh story 551
Brân, the Tricephal, and the Letto-Slavic Triglaus 552
Summary remarks as to the Goidels in Wales 553
CHAPTER X
Difficulties of the Folklorist 556
The terrors of superstition and magic 557
The folklorist’s activity no fostering of superstition 558
Folklore a portion of history 558
The difficulty of separating story and history 559
Arthur and the Snowdon Goidels as an illustration 559
Rhita Gawr and the mad kings Nynio and Peibio 560
Malory’s version and the name Rhita, Ritho, Ryons 562
Snowdon stories about Owen Ymhacsen and Cai 564
Goidelic topography in Gwyneđ 566
The Goidels becoming Compatriots or Kymry 569
The obscurity of certain superstitions a difficulty 571
Difficulties arising from their apparent absurdity illustrated by the March and Labraid stories 571
Difficulties from careless record illustrated by Howells’ Ychen Bannog 575
Possible survival of traditions about the urus 579
A brief review of the lake legends and the iron tabu 581
The scrappiness of the Welsh Tom Tit Tot stories 583
The story of the widow of Kittlerumpit compared 585
Items to explain the names Sìli Ffrit and Sìli go Dwt 590
Bwca’r Trwyn both brownie and bogie in one 593
That bwca a fairy in service, like the Pennant nurse 597
The question of fairies concealing their names 597
Magic identifying the name with the person 598
Modryb Mari regarding cheese-baking as disastrous to the flock 599
Her story about the reaper’s little black soul 601
Gwenogvryn Evans’ lizard version 603
Diseases regarded as also material entities 604
The difficulty of realizing primitive modes of thought 605
CHAPTER XI
Folklore Philosophy 607
The soul as a pigmy or a lizard, and the word enaid 607
A different notion in the Mabinogi of Math 608
The belief in the persistence of the body through changes 610
Shape-shifting and rebirth in Gwion’s transformations 612
Tuan mac Cairill, Amairgen, and Taliessin 615
D’Arbois de Jubainville’s view of Erigena’s teaching 617
The druid master of his own transformations 620
Death not a matter of course so much as of magic 620
This incipient philosophy as Gaulish druidism 622
The Gauls not all of one and the same beliefs 623
The name and the man 624
Enw, ‘name,’ and the idea of breathing 625
The exact nature of the association still obscure 627
The Celts not distinguishing between names and things 628
A Celt’s name on him, not by him or with him 629
The druid’s method of name-giving non-Aryan 631
Magic requiring metrical formulæ 632
The professional man’s curse producing blisters 632
A natural phenomenon arguing a thin-skinned race 633
Cursing of no avail without the victim’s name 635
Magic and kingship linked in the female line 636
CHAPTER XII
Race in Folklore and Myth 639
Glottology and comparative mythology 640
The question of the feminine in Welsh syntax 642
The Irish goddess Danu and the Welsh Dôn 644
Tynghed or destiny in the Kulhwch story 646
Traces of a Welsh confarreatio in the same context 649
Þokk in the Balder story compared with tynghed 650
Questions of mythology all the harder owing to race mixture 652
Whether the picture of Cúchulainn in a rage be Aryan or not 653
Cúchulainn exempt from the Ultonian couvade 654
Cúchulainn racially a Celt in a society reckoning descent by birth 656
Cúchulainn as a rebirth of Lug paralleled in Lapland 657
Doubtful origin of certain legends about Lug 658
The historical element in fairy stories and lake legends 659
The notion of the fairies being all women 661
An illustration from Central Australia 662
Fairy counting by fives evidence of a non-Celtic race 663
The Basque numerals as an illustration 665
Prof. Sayce on Irishmen and Berbers 665
Dark-complexioned people and fairy changelings 666
The blond fairies of the Pennant district exceptional 668
A summary of fairy life from previous chapters 668
Sir John Wynne’s instance of men taken for fairies 670
Some of the Brythonic names for fairies 671
Dwarfs attached to the fortunes of their masters 672
The question of fairy cannibalism 673
The fairy Corannians and the historical Coritani 674
St. Guthlac at Croyland in the Fens 676
The Irish sid, side, and the Welsh Caer Sidi 677
The mound dwellings of Pechts and Irish fairies 679
Prof. J. Morris Jones explaining the non-Aryan syntax of neo-Celtic by means of Egyptian and Berber 681
The Picts probably the race that introduced it 682
The first pre-Celtic people here 683
Probably of the same race as the neolithic dwarfs of the Continent 683
The other pre-Celtic race, the Picts and the people of the Mabinogion 684
A word or two by way of epilogue 686
Additions and Corrections 689
Index 695
We are too hasty when we set down our ancestors in the gross for fools, for the monstrous inconsistencies (as they seem to us) involved in their creed of witchcraft. In the relations of this visible world we find them to have been as rational, and shrewd to detect an historic anomaly, as ourselves. But when once the invisible world was supposed to be opened, and the lawless agency of bad spirits assumed, what measures of probability, of decency, of fitness, or proportion—of that which distinguishes the likely from the palpable absurd—could they have to guide them in the rejection or admission of any particular testimony? That maidens pined away, wasting inwardly as their waxen images consumed before a fire—that corn was lodged, and cattle lamed—that whirlwinds uptore in diabolic revelry the oaks of the forest—or that spits and kettles only danced a fearful-innocent vagary about some rustic’s kitchen when no wind was stirring—were all equally probable where no law of agency was understood …. There is no law to judge of the lawless, or canon by which a dream may be criticised.
Charles Lamb’s Essays of Elia.