Note 22 — Chapter III · Fairy Ways and Words (continued 2)

I am far from certain what y nos, ‘the night,’ may mean in such names as this and Craig y Nos, ‘the Rock of the Night’ (p. 254 above), to which perhaps might be added such an instance as Blaen Nos, ‘the Point of (the?) Night,’ in the neighbourhood of Ỻandovery, in Carmarthenshire. Can the allusion be merely to thickly overshadowed spots where the darkness of night might be said to lurk in defiance of the light of day? I have never visited the places in point, and leading questions addressed to local authorities are too apt to elicit misleading answers: the poetic faculty is dangerously rampant in the Principality. ↑