Note 4 — Chapter III · Fairy Ways and Words

A story, however, mentioned by Cynđelw in the Brython for 1860, p. 57, makes Ned Pugh enter the cave of Tal y Clegyr, which the writer in his article identifies with Ness Cliff, near Shrewsbury. In that cave, which was regarded as a wonderful one, he says the musician disappeared, while the air he was playing, Ffarwel Ned Puw, “Ned Pugh’s Farewell,” was retained in memory of him. Some account of the departure of Ned Pugh and of the interminable cave into which he entered, will be found given in a rambling fashion in the Cambrian Quarterly Magazine (London, 1829), vol. i, pp. 40–5, where the minstrel’s Welsh name is given as Iolo ap Huw. There we are told that he was last seen in the twilight of a misty Halloween, and the notes of the tune he was last heard to play are duly given. One of the surmises as to Iolo’s ultimate fate is also recorded, namely, that in the other world he has exchanged his fiddle for a bugle, and become huntsman-in-chief to Gwyn ab Nûđ, so that every Halloween he may be found cheering Cwn Annwn, ‘the Hounds of the Other World,’ over Cader Idris4.