Note 10 — Chapter VI · The Folklore of the Wells

Summarizing the foregoing notes, we seem to be right in drawing the following conclusions:—(1) The well was left in the charge of a woman who forgot to shut it, and when she saw the water bursting forth, she bewailed her negligence, as in the case of her counterpart in the legend of Cantre’r Gwaelod. (2) The original name of the Glasfryn ‘Morgan’ was Morgen, later Morien. (3) The person changed into a swan on the occasion of the Glasfryn well erupting was not Grassi, but most probably Morgen. And (4) the character was originally feminine, like that of the mermaid or the fairies, whose rôle the Glasfryn Morgan plays; and more especially may one compare the Irish Muirgen, the Morgen more usually called Líban. For it is to be noticed that when the neglected well burst forth she, Muirgen or Líban, was not drowned like the others involved in the calamity, but lived in her chamber at the bottom of the lake formed by the overflowing well, until she was changed into a salmon. In that form she lived on some three centuries, until in fact she was caught in the net of a fisherman, and obtained the boon of a Christian burial. However, the change into a swan is also known on Irish ground: take for instance the story of the Children of Lir, who were converted into swans by their stepmother, and lived in that form on Loch Dairbhreach, in Westmeath, for three hundred years, and twice as long on the open sea, until their destiny closed with the advent of St. Patrick and the first ringing of a Christian bell in Erin10.