Note 15 — Chapter VI · The Folklore of the Wells

Now the story as told by Howells and Fisher provokes comparison, as the latter suggests, with the Irish legend of the formation of Lough Ree and of Lough Neagh in the story of the Death of Eochaid McMaireda15. In both of these legends also there is a horse, a kind of water-horse, who forms the well which eventually overflows and becomes Lough Ree, and so with the still larger body of water known as Lough Neagh. In the latter case the fairy well was placed in the charge of a woman; but she one day left the cover of the well open, and the catastrophe took place—the water issued forth and overflowed the country. One of Eochaid’s daughters, named Líban, however, was not drowned, but only changed into a salmon as already mentioned at p. 376 above. In my Arthurian Legend, p. 361, I have attempted to show that the name Líban may have its Welsh equivalent in that of Ỻïon, occurring in the name of Ỻyn Ỻïon, or Ỻïon’s Lake, the bursting of which is described in the latest series of Triads, iii. 13, 97, as causing a sort of deluge. I am not certain as to the nature of the relationship between those names, but it seems evident that the stories have a common substratum, though it is to be noticed that no well, fairy or otherwise, figures in the Ỻyn Ỻïon legend, which makes the presence of the monster called the afanc the cause of the waters bursting forth. So Hu the Mighty, with his team of famous oxen, is made to drag the afanc out of the lake.