Chapter XII · Race in Folklore and Myth

The method of philological mythology is thus discredited by the disputes of its adherents. The system may be called orthodox, but it is an orthodoxy which alters with every new scholar who enters the sacred enclosure.—Andrew Lang.

It has been well said, that while it is not science to know the contents of myths, it is science to know why the human race has produced them. It is not my intention to trace minutely the history of that science, but I may hazard the remark, that she could not be said to have reached years of discretion till she began to compare one thing with another; and even when mythology had become comparative mythology, her horizon remained till within recent years comparatively narrow. In other words, the comparisons were wont to be very circumscribed: you might, one was told, compare the myths of Greeks and Teutons and Hindus, because those nations were considered to be of the same stock; but even within that range comparisons were scarcely contemplated, except in the case of myths enshrined in the most classical literatures of those nations. This kind of mythology was eclectic rather than comparative, and it was apt to regard myths as a mere disease of language. By-and-by, however, the student showed a preference for a larger field and a wider range; and in so doing he was, whether consciously or unconsciously, beginning to keep step with a larger movement extending to the march of all the kindred sciences, and especially that of language.

At one time the student of language was satisfied with mummified speech, wrapped up, as it were, in the musty coils of the records of the past: in fact, he often became a mere researcher of the dead letter of language, instead of a careful observer of the breath of life animating her frame. So long as that remained the case, glottology deserved the whole irony of Voltaire’s well-known account of etymology as being in fact, ‘une science où les voyelles ne font rien, et les consonnes fort peu de chose.’ In the course, however, of recent years a great change has come over the scene: not only have the laws of the Aryan consonants gained greatly in precision, but those of the Aryan vowels have at last been discovered to a considerable extent. The result for me and others who learnt that the Aryan peasant of idyllic habits harped eternally on the three notes of a, i, u, is that we have to unlearn this and a great deal more: in fact, the vowels prove to be far more troublesome than the consonants. But difficult as these lessons are, the glottologist must learn them, unless he is content to remain with the stragglers who happen to be unable to move on. Now the change to which I allude, in connexion with the study of language, has been inseparably accompanied with the paying of increased attention to actual speech, with a more careful scrutiny of dialects, even obscure dialects such as the literary man is wont to regard with scorn.

Similarly the student of mythology now seeks the wherewithal of his comparisons from the mouth of the traveller and the missionary, wherever they may roam; not from the Rig-Veda or the Iliad alone, but from the rude stories of the peasant, and the wild fancies of the savage from Tierra del Fuego to Greenland’s icy mountains. The parallel may be drawn still closer. Just as the glottologist, fearing lest the written letter may have slurred over or hidden away important peculiarities of ancient speech, resorts for a corrective to the actuality of modern Aryan, so the mythologist, apt to suspect the testimony of the highly respectable bards of the Rig-Veda, may on occasion give ear to the fresh evidence of a savage, however inconsequent it may sound. The movements to which I allude in glottology and mythology began so recently that their history has not yet been written. Suffice it to say that in glottology, or the science of language, the names most intimately connected with the new departure are those of Ascoli, J. Schmidt, and Fick, those of Leskien, Brugmann, Osthoff, and De Saussure; while of the names of the teachers of the anthropological method of studying myths, several are by this time household words in this country. But, so far as I know, the first to give a systematic exposition of the subject was Professor Tylor, in his work on Primitive Culture, published first in 1871.

Such has been the intimate connexion between mythology and glottology that I may be pardoned for going back again to the latter. It is applicable in its method to all languages, but, as a matter of fact, it came into being in the domain of Aryan philology, so that it has been all along principally the science of comparing the Aryan languages with one another. It began with Sir William Jones’ discovery of the kinship of Sanskrit with Greek and Latin, and for a long time it took the lead of the more closely related sciences: this proved partly beneficial and partly the reverse. In the case of ethnology, for instance, the influence of glottology has probably done more harm than good, since it has opened up a wide field for confounding race with language. In the case of mythology the same influence has been partly helpful, and it has partly fallen short of being such. Where names could be analysed with certainty, and where they could be equated, leaving little room for doubt, as in the case of that of the Greek Ζεύς, the Norse Týr, and the Sanskrit Dyaus, the science of language rendered a veritable help to mythology; but where the students of language, all pointing in different directions, claimed each to hold in his hand the one safety-lamp, beyond the range of which the mythologist durst not take a single step except at the imminent risk of breaking his neck, the help may be pronounced, to say the least of it, as somewhat doubtful. The anthropological method of studying myths put an end to the unequal relation between the students of the two sciences, and it is now pretty well agreed that the proper relationship between them is that of mutual aid. This will doubtless prove the solution of the whole matter, but it would be premature to say that the period of strained relations is quite over, since the mythologist has so recently made good his escape from the embarrassing attentions of the students of language, that he has not yet quite got out of his ears the bewildering notes of the chorus of discordant cries of ‘Dawn,’ ‘Sun,’ and ‘Storm-cloud.’

Now that I have touched on the friendly relations which ought to exist between the science of language and the science of myth, I may perhaps be allowed to notice a point or two where it is possible or desirable for the one to render service to the other. The student of language naturally wants the help of the student of myth, ritual, and religion on matters which most immediately concern his own department of study; and I may perhaps be excused for taking my stand on Celtic ground, and calling attention to some of my own difficulties. Here is one of them: when one would say in English ‘It rains’ or ‘It freezes,’ I should have to say in my own language, Y mae hi’n bwrw glaw and Y mae hi’n rhewi, which literally means ‘She is casting rain’ and ‘She is freezing.’ Nor is this sort of locution confined to weather topics, for when you would say ‘He is badly off’ or ‘He is hard up,’ a Welshman might say, Y mae hi’n đrwg arno or Y mae hi’n galed arno, that is literally, ‘She is evil on him’ or ‘She is hard on him.’ And the same feminine pronoun fixes itself in other locutions in the language. Now I wish to invoke the student of myth, ritual, and religion to help in the identification of this ubiquitous ‘she’ of the Welsh. Whenever it is mentioned to Englishmen, it merely calls to their minds the Highland ‘she’ of English and Scotch caricature, as for instance when Sir Walter Scott makes Donald appeal in the following strain to Lord Menteith’s man, Anderson, who had learnt manners in France: ‘What the deil, man, can she no drink after her ain master without washing the cup and spilling the ale, and be tamned to her!’ The Highlander denies the charge which our caricature tries to fasten on him; but even granting that it was once to some extent justified, it is easy to explain it by a reference to Gaelic, where the pronouns se and sibh, for ‘he’ and ‘you’ respectively, approach in pronunciation the sound of the English pronoun ‘she.’ This may have led to confusion in the mouths of Highlanders who had but very imperfectly mastered English. In any case, it is far too superficial to be quoted as a parallel to the hi, ‘she,’ in question in Welsh. A cautious Celtist, if such there be, might warn us, before proceeding further with the search, to make sure that the whole phenomenon is not a mere accident of Welsh phonetics, and that it is not a case of two pronouns, one meaning ‘she’ and the other ‘it,’ being confounded as the result merely of phonetic decay. The answer to that is, that the language knows nothing of any neuter pronoun which could assume the form of the hi which occupies us; and further, that in locutions where the legitimate representative of the neuter might be expected, the pronoun used is a different one, ef, e, meaning both ‘he’ and ‘it,’ as in ï-e for ï-ef, ‘it is he, she, it or they,’ nag-e, ‘not he, she, it or they,’ ef a allai or fe allai, ‘perhaps, peradventure, peut-être, il est possible.’ The French sentence suggests the analogous question, what was the original force of denotation of the ‘il’ in such sentences as ‘il fait beau,’ ‘il pleut,’ and ‘il neige’? In such cases it now denotes nobody in particular, but has it always been one of his names? French historical grammar may be able, unaided, to dispose of the attenuated fortunes of M. Il, but we have to look for help to the student of myth and allied subjects to enable us to identify the great ‘she’ persistently eluding our search in the syntax of the Welsh language. Only two feminine names suggest themselves to me as in any way appropriate: one is tynghed, ‘fate or fortune,’ and the other is Dôn, mother of some of the most nebulous personages in Celtic literature.

For my next illustration, namely tynghed, ‘fate,’ I would cite a passage from the opening of one of the most Celtic of Welsh stories, that of Kulhwch and Olwen. Kulhwch’s father, after being for some time a widower, marries again, and conceals from his second wife the fact that he has a son. She finds it out and lets her husband know it; so he sends for his son Kulhwch, and the following is the account of the son’s interview with his stepmother, as given in Lady Charlotte Guest’s translation, ii. 252:—‘His stepmother said unto him, “It were well for thee to have a wife, and I have a daughter who is sought of every man of renown in the world.” “I am not of an age to wed,” answered the youth. Then said she unto him, “I declare to thee, that it is thy destiny not to be suited with a wife until thou obtain Olwen, the daughter of Yspađaden Penkawr.” And the youth blushed, and the love of the maiden diffused itself through all his frame, although he had never seen her. And his father inquired of him, “What has come over thee, my son, and what aileth thee?” “My stepmother has declared to me, that I shall never have a wife until I obtain Olwen, the daughter of Yspađaden Penkawr.” “That will be easy for thee,” answered his father. “Arthur is thy cousin. Go, therefore, unto Arthur to cut thy hair, and ask this of him as a boon.” ’

To return to the Latin fatum, I would point out that the Romans had a plurality of fata; but how far they were suggested by the Greek μοῖραι is not quite clear: nor is it known that the ancient Welsh had more than one tynghed. In the case, however, of old Norse literature, we come across the Fate there as one bearing a name which is perhaps cognate with the Welsh tynghed. I allude to a female figure, called Þokk, who appears in the touching myth of Balder’s death. When Balder had fallen at the hands of Loki and Höđr, his mother Frigg asked who would like to earn her good will by going as her messenger to treat with Hell for the release of Balder. Hermóđr the Swift, another of the sons of Woden, undertook to set out on that journey on his father’s charger Sleipnir. For nine dreary nights he pursued his perilous course without interruption, through glens dark and deep, till he came to the river called Yell, when he was questioned as to his errand by the maid in charge of the Yell bridge. On and on he rode afterwards till he came to the fence of Hell’s abode, which his horse cleared at full speed. Hermóđr entered the hall, and there found his brother Balder seated in the place of honour. He abode with him that night, and in the morning he asked Hell to let Balder ride home with him to the Anses. He urged Hell to consider the grief which everybody and everything felt for Balder. She replied that she would put that to the test by letting Balder go if everything animate and inanimate would weep for him; but he would be detained if anybody or anything declined to do so. Hermóđr made his way back alone to the Anses, and announced to Frigg the answer which Hell had given to her request. Messengers were sent forth without delay to bid all the world beweep Woden’s son out of the power of Hell. This was done accordingly by all, by men and animals, by earth and stones, by trees and all metals, ‘as you have doubtless seen these things weep,’ says the writer of the Prose Edda, ‘when they pass from frost to warmth.’ When the messengers, however, were on their way home, after discharging their duty, they chanced on a cave where dwelt a giantess called Þokk, whom they ordered to join in the weeping for Balder; but she only answered:—

Þokk will weep dry tears

At Balder’s bale-fire.

What is the son of man, quick or dead, to me!

In this ogress Þokk, deaf to the appeals of the tenderer feelings, we seem to have the counterpart of our Celtic tocad and tynghed; and the latter’s name as a part of the formula in the Welsh story, while giving us the key of the myth, shows how the early Aryan knew of nothing more binding than the magic force of an oath. On the one hand, this conception of destiny carries with it the marks of its humble origin, and one readily agrees with Cicero’s words, De Divinatione, ii. 7, when he says, anile sane et plenum superstitionis fati nomen ipsum. On the other hand, it rises to the grim dignity of a name for the dark, inexorable power which the whole universe is conceived to obey, a power before which the great and resplendent Ζεύς of the Aryan race is a mere puppet.

Perhaps I have dwelt only too long on the policy of ‘give and take’ which ought to obtain between mythology and glottology. Unfortunately, one can add without fear of contradiction, that, even when that policy is carried out to the utmost, both sciences will still have difficulties more than enough. In the case of mythology these difficulties spring chiefly from two distinct sources, from the blending of history with myth, and from the mixing of one race with another. Let us now consider the latter: the difficulties from this source are many and great, but every fresh acquisition of knowledge tending to make our ideas of ethnology more accurate, gives us a better leverage for placing the myths of mixed peoples in their proper places as regards the races composing those peoples. Still, we have far fewer propositions to lay down than questions to ask: thus to go no further afield than the well-known stories attaching to the name of Heracles, how many of them are Aryan, how many Semitic, and how many Aryan and Semitic at one and the same time? That is the sort of question which besets the student of Celtic mythology at every step; for the Celtic nations of the present day are the mixed descendants of Aryan invaders and the native populations which those Aryan invaders found in possession. So the question thrusts itself on the student, to which of these races a particular myth, rite, or custom is to be regarded as originally belonging. Take, for instance, Brân’s colossal figure, to which attention has already been called, pp. 552–3 above. Brân was too large to enter a house or go on board a ship: is he to be regarded as the outcome of Celtic imagination, or of that of a people that preceded the Celts in Celtic lands? The comparison with the Gaulish Tricephal would seem to point in the direction of the southern seaboard of the Baltic (p. 553): what then?

The same kind of question arises in reference to the Irish hero Cúchulainn: take, for instance, the stock description of Cúchulainn in a rage. Thus when angered he underwent strange distortions: the calves of his legs came round to where his shins should have been; his mouth enlarged itself so that it showed his liver and lungs swinging in his throat; one of his eyes became as small as a needle’s, or else it sank back into his head further than a crane could have reached, while the other protruded itself to a corresponding length; every hair on his body became as sharp as a thorn, and held on its point a drop of blood or a spark of fire. It would be dangerous then to stop him from fighting, and even when he had fought enough, he required for his cooling to be plunged into three baths of cold water; the first into which he went would instantly boil over, the second would be too hot for anybody else to bear, and the third only would be of congenial warmth. I do not ask whether that strange picture betrays a touch of the solar brush, but I should be very glad to know whether it can be regarded as an Aryan creation or not.

Another instance, the race origin of which one would like to ascertain, offers itself in the curious belief, that, when a child is born, it is one of the ancestors of the family come back to live again. Traces of this occur in Irish literature, namely, in one of the stories about Cúchulainn. There we read to the following effect:—The Ultonians took counsel on account of Cúchulainn, because their wives and girls loved him greatly; for Cúchulainn had no consort at that time. This was their counsel, namely, that they should seek for Cúchulainn a consort pleasing to him to woo. For it was evident to them that a man who has the consort of his companionship with him would be so much the less likely to attempt the ruin of their girls and to receive the affection of their wives. Then, moreover, they were anxious and afraid lest the death of Cúchulainn should take place early, so they were desirous for that reason to give him a wife in order that he might leave an heir; for they knew that it was from himself that his rebirth (athgein) would be. That is what one reads in the eleventh-century copy of the ancient manuscript of the Book of the Dun Cow, fo. 121^b; and this atavistic belief, which was touched upon in connexion with the transformations discussed in the last chapter, I need scarcely say, is well known elsewhere to the anthropologist, as one will find on consulting the opening pages of Dr. Tylor’s second volume on Primitive Culture. He there mentions the idea as familiar to American Indians, to various African peoples, to the Maoris and the aborigines of Australia, to Cheremiss Tartars and Lapps. Among such nations the words of Don Diègue to his victorious son, the Cid, could hardly fail to be construed in a sort of literal sense when he exclaims:—

………… ton illustre audace

Fait bien revivre en toi les héros de ma race.

The next question which I wish to suggest is as to the ethnology of the fairies; but before coming to that, one has to ask how the fairies have been evolved. The idea of fairies, such as Welshmen have been familiar with from their childhood, clearly involves elements of two distinct origins. Some of those elements come undoubtedly from the workshop of the imagination, as, for example, the stock notion that their food and drink are brought to the fairies by the mere force of wishing, and without the ministration of servants; or the notion, especially prevalent in Arfon, that the fairies dwell in a country beneath the lakes of Snowdon; not to mention the more general connexion of a certain class of fairies with the world of waters, as indicated in chapter vii. Add to this that the dead ancestor has also probably contributed to our bundle of notions about them; but that contains also an element of fact or something which may at any rate be conceived as historical. Under this head I should place the following articles of faith concerning them: the sallowness of their skins and the smallness of their stature, their dwelling underground, their dislike of iron, and the comparative poverty of their homes in the matter of useful articles of furniture, their deep-rooted objection to the green sward being broken up by the plough, the success of the fairy wife in attending to the domestic animals and to the dairy, the limited range generally of the fairies’ ability to count; and lastly, one may perhaps mention their using a language of their own (p. 279), which would imply a time when the little people understood no other, and explain why they should be represented doing their marketing without uttering a syllable to anybody (p. 161).

To speak, however, of paternity as merely not reckoned is by no means to go far enough; so here we have to return to take another look at the imaginary aspect of the fairies, to which a cursory allusion has just been made. The reader will possibly recall the sturdy smith of Ystrad Meurig, who would not reduce the notions which he had formed of the fairies when he was a child to conformity with those of a later generation around him. In any case, he will remember the smith’s statement that the fairies were all women: see p. 245. The idea was already familiar to me as a Welshman, though I cannot recollect how I got it. But the smith’s words brought to my mind at once the story of Condla Rúad or the Red, one of the fairy tales first recorded in Irish literature (p. 291). There the damsel who takes Condla away in her boat of glass to the realm of the Everliving sings the praises of that delectable country, and uses, among others, the following words, which occur in the Book of the Dun Cow, fo. 120:—

There is no race there but women and maidens alone.

Nevertheless, it is to some population in that low position, in the remote prehistory of this country, that one is to trace the belief that the fairies were all women. It is to be regarded as a position distinctly lower than that of the Ultonians in the time of Cúchulainn; for the couvade seems to me to argue a notion of paternity—perhaps, in their case, as clear a notion of paternity as was possible for a community which was not quite out of the promiscuous stage of society.

Unfortunately, the language of those inhabitants has died out, so that we cannot appeal to its numerals directly; and the next best course to adopt is to take as a sort of substitute for their language that of possible kinsmen of a pre-Celtic race in this country. Now the students of ethnology, especially those devoted to the investigation of skulls and skins, tell us that we have among us, notably in Wales and Ireland, living representatives of a dark-haired, long-skulled race of the same description as one of the types which occur, as they allege, among the Basque populations of the Pyrenees. We turn accordingly to Basque, and what do we find? Why, that the first five numerals in that language are bat, bi, iru, lau, bost, all of which appear to be native; but when we come to the sixth numeral we have sei, which looks like an Aryan word borrowed from Latin, Gaulish, or some related tongue. The case is much the same with ‘seven,’ for that is in Basque zazpi, which is also probably an Aryan loan-word. Basque has native words, zortzi and bederatzi, for eight and nine, but they are longer than the first five, and appear to be of a later formation affecting, in common with sei and zazpi, the termination i. I submit, therefore, that here we have evidence of the former existence of a people in the West of Europe who at one time only counted as far as five. Some of the early peoples of the British Isles may have been on the same level, so that our notions about the fairies have probably been derived, to a greater or less extent, from ideas formed by the Celts concerning those non-Celtic, non-Aryan natives of whose country they took possession.

As regards my appeal to the authority of craniology, I have to confess that it is made with a certain amount of reservation, since the case is far less simple than it looks at first sight. Thus, in August, 1891, the Cambrian Archæological Association, including among them Professor Sayce, visited the south-west of Ireland. During our pleasant excursions in Kerry, the question of race was one of our constant topics; and Professor Sayce was reminded by what he saw in Ireland of his visit to North Africa, especially the hilly regions of the country inhabited by the Berbers. Among other things, he used to say that if a number of Berbers from the mountains were to be brought to an Irish village and clad as Irishmen, he felt positive that he should not be able to tell them from the Irishmen themselves, such as we saw on our rambles in Kerry. This struck me as all the more remarkable, since his reference was to fairly tall, blue-eyed men whose hair could not be called black. On the other hand, owing perhaps to ignorance and careless ways of looking at things around me, I am a little sceptical as to the swarthy long-skulls: they did not seem to meet us at every turn in Ireland; and as for Wales, which I know as well as most people do, I cannot in my ignorance of craniology say with any confidence that I have ever noticed vast numbers of that type. I should like, however, to see the heads of some of the singers whom I have noticed at our Eisteđfodau at Cardiff, Aberdare, and Swansea, placed under the hands of an experienced skull-man. For I have long suspected that we cannot regard as of Aryan origin the vocal talent so general in Wales, and so conspicuous in our choirs of working people as to astonish all the great musicians who have visited our national festival. Beyond all doubt, race has not a little to do with the artistic feelings: a short-skull may be as unmusical, for example, as I am; but has anybody in this country ever known a narrow long-skull to be the reverse of unmusical? or has any one ever considered how few clergymen of the tall, fair-haired, blue-eyed type have been converted to the ritualistic and æsthetic movement in the Church of England?

As it seems to me that the bulk of the Welsh people would have to be described as short-skulls, it would be very gratifying to see those who are wont to refer freely to the dark-complexioned long-skulls of Wales catch a respectable number of specimens. I trust there are plenty to be found; and of course I do not care how they are taken, whether it be by an instantaneous process of photography or in the meshes of some anthropometric sportsman, like Dr. Beddoe. Let them be secured anyhow, so that one may rest assured that the type is still numerically safe, and be able to judge with one’s own eyes how heads long and swarthy look on the shoulders of living Welshmen. We might then be in a position also to compare with them the prevalent description of fairy changelings; for when the fairies steal nice, blond babies, they usually place in their stead their own aged-looking brats with short legs, sallow skins, and squeaky voices. Unfortunately for me, all the adult changelings of whom I happen to have heard any account had died some years before I began to turn my attention to the population of Faery, with the exception, perhaps, of one whose name I obtained under the seal of secrecy. It was that of the wife of a farmer living near Nefyn, in West Carnarvonshire. It was whispered that she was a changeling, so I am inclined to regard her as no other than one of the representatives of the same aboriginal stock to which one might conjecture some of her neighbours also to belong; she ought to be an extreme specimen of the type. It is to be hoped that the photographer and his anthropometric brother have found her out in time and in good humour; but it is now many years since I heard of her.

It is needless to say that we have no trace of any fairies approaching the minute dimensions of Shakespeare’s Queen Mab; for, after all, our fairies are mostly represented as not extravagantly unlike other people in personal appearance—not so unlike, in fact, that other folk might not be mistaken for them now and then as late as the latter part of the fifteenth century. Witness the following passage from Sir John Wynne’s History of the Gwydir Family, p. 74:—

‘Haveing purchased this lease, he removed his dwelling to the castle of Dolwyđelan, which at that time was in part thereof habitable, where one Howell ap Jevan ap Rys Gethin, in the beginning of Edward the Fourth his raigne, captaine of the countrey and an outlaw, had dwelt. Against this man David ap Jenkin rose, and contended with him for the sovreignety of the countrey; and being superiour to him, in the end he drew a draught for him, and took him in his bed at Penanmen with his concubine, performing by craft, what he could not by force, and brought him to Conway Castle. Thus, after many bickerings betweene Howell and David ap Jenkin, he being too weake, was faigne to flie the countrey, and to goe to Ireland, where he was a yeare or thereabouts. In the end he returned in the summer time, haveing himselfe, and all his followers clad in greene, who, being come into the countrey, he dispersed here and there among his friends, lurking by day, and walkeing in the night for feare of his adversaries; and such of the countrey as happened to have a sight of him and his followers, said they were the fairies, and soe ran away.’

But what has doubtless helped, above all other things, to perpetuate the belief in the existence of fairies may be said to be the popular association with them of the circles in the grass, commonly known in English as fairy rings. This phenomenon must have answered for ages the purpose for our ancestors, practically speaking, of ocular demonstration, as it still does no doubt in many a rustic neighbourhood.

Ys kyweir vyg kadeir ygkaer sidi.

Nys plaỽd heint a heneint a uo yndi.

Ys gwyr manaỽyt a phryderi.

Teir oryan y am tan agan recdi.

Ac am y banneu ffrydyeu gỽeilgi.

Ar ffynnhaỽn ffrỽythlaỽn yssyd oduchti.

Ys whegach nor gỽin gỽyn yllyn yndi.

Perfect is my seat in the fort of Sidi,

Nor pest nor age plagues him who dwells therein:

Manawyđan and Pryderi know it.

Three organs play before it about a fire.

Around its corners Ocean’s currents flow,

And above it is the fertile fountain,

And sweeter than white wine is the drink therein.

The wine is elsewhere mentioned, but the arrangement of the organs around a fire requires explanation, which I cannot give. The fortress is on an island, and in poem xxx of the Book of Taliessin we read of Arthur and his men sailing thither in his ship Prydwen: the poem is usually called the ‘Spoils of Annwn,’ and the lines in point run thus:—

Bu kyweir karchar gỽeir ygkaer sidi.

Trỽy ebostol pỽyll aphryderi.

Neb kyn noc ef nyt aeth idi.

Yr gadỽyn tromlas kywirwas ae ketwi.

Arac preideu annỽfyn tost yt geni.

Ac yt uraỽt parahaỽt ynbard wedi.

Tri lloneit prytwen yd aetham ni idi.

Nam seith ny dyrreith o gaer sidi.

Perfect was the prison of Gwair in Caer Sidi,

Thanks to Pwyỻ and Pryderi’s emissary.

Before him no one entered into it,

To the heavy, dark chain held by a faithful youth;

And before the spoils of Annwn sorely he sang,

And thenceforth remains he till doom a bard.

Three freights of Prydwen went we thither,

But only seven returned from Caer Sidi.

The incidents in these lines are mostly unintelligible to me, but the incarceration of Gweir or Gwair, together with other imprisonments, including that of Arthur in Caer Oeth and Anoeth (p. 619), are mentioned also in the Triads: see i. 50, ii. 7, 49, iii. 61. It is not improbable that the legend about Gwair located his prison on Lundy, as the Welsh name of that island appears to have been Ynys Wair, ‘Gwair’s Isle.’ Pwyỻ and Pryderi did not belong to Annwn, nor did Pryderi’s friend Manawyđan; but the Mabinogi of Pwyỻ relates how for a whole year Pwyỻ exchanged crown and kingdom with Arawn king of Annwn, from whom he obtained the first breed of domestic pigs for his own people (pp. 69, 525).

The other race may be called Picts, which is probably the earliest of the names given it by the Celts; and their affinities appear to be Libyan, possibly Iberian. It was a warlike stock, and stood higher altogether than the mound inhabitants; for it had a notion of paternity, though, on account of its promiscuity, it had to reckon descent by birth (pp. 654–6). To it probably belonged all the great family groups figuring in the Mabinogion and the corresponding class of literature in Irish: this would include the Danann-Dôn group and the Lir-Ỻyr group, together with the families represented by Pwyỻ and Rhiannon, who were inseparable from the Ỻyr group in Welsh, just as the Lir group was inseparable from the Tuatha Dé Danann in Irish legend (pp. 548–9). The Picts made slaves and drudges of the mound-haunting race, but how far any amalgamation may have taken place between them it is impossible to say. Even without any amalgamation, however, the little people, if employed as nurses to their Pictish lords’ children, could not help leaving their impress in time on the language of the ruling nationality. But it may be that the treatment of the Picts, by Scottish legend, as a kind of fairies really points to amalgamation, though it is not impossible that archæology may be able to classify the remains of the dwellings ascribed to the Pechts, that is, to assign a certain class to the warlike Picts of history and another to the dwarf race of the síds. A certain measure of amalgamation may also be the meaning of the Irish tradition, that when the Milesian Irish came and conquered, the defeated Tuatha Dé Danann gave up their life above ground and retired inside the hills like the fairies. This account of them may be as worthless as the story of the extermination of the Picts of Scotland: both peoples doubtless lived on to amalgamate in time with the conquering race; but it may mean that some of them retreated before the Celts, and concealed themselves after the manner of the little people—in underground dwellings in the less accessible parts of the country. In any case, it may well be that they got their magic and druidism from the dwellers of the síds. In the next place, it has been pointed out (pp. 550–1) how the adjective hên, ‘old, ancient,’ is applied in Welsh to several of the chief men of the Dôn group, and by this one may probably understand that they were old not merely to those who told the stories about them in Welsh, but to those who put those stories together in Goidelic ages earlier. The geography of the Mabinogion gives the prehistoric remains of Penmaen Mawr and Tre’r Ceiri to the Dôn group; but by its name, Tre’r Ceiri should be the ‘Town of the Keiri,’ a word probably referring to the Picts (pp. 279–83): this, so far as it goes, makes the sons of Dôn belong by race to the Picts. Lastly, it is the widely spread race of the Picts, conquered by the Celts of the Celtican or Goidelic branch and amalgamating with their conquerors in the course of time, that has left its non-Aryan impress on the syntax of the Celtic languages of the British Isles.

These, it is needless to say, are conjectures which I cannot establish; but possibly somebody else may. For the present, however, they cannot fail to suggest a moral, habitually ignored with a light heart by most people—including the writer of these words—that men in his plight, men engaged in studies which, owing to a rapid accumulation of fresh facts or the blossoming of new theories, are in a shifting condition, should abstain from producing books or anything longer than a magazine article now and then. Even such minor productions should be understood to be liable to be cast into a great bonfire lit once a year, say on Halloween. This should help to clear the air of mistaken hypotheses, whether of folklore and myth or of history and language, and also serve to mark Nos Calangaeaf as the commencement of the ancient Celtic year. The business of selecting the papers to be saved from the burning might be delegated to an academy constituted, roughly speaking, on the lines of Plato’s aristocracy of intellect. Such academy, once in the enjoyment of its existence, would also find plenty of work in addition to the inquisitional business which I have suggested: it should, for example, be invested with summary jurisdiction over fond parents who venture to show any unreasonable anxiety to save their mental progeny from the annual bonfire. The best of that class of writers should be ordered by the academy to sing songs or indite original verse. As for the rest, some of them might be told off to gesticulate to the gallery, and some to administer the consolations of platitude to stragglers tired of the march of science. There is a mass of other useful work which would naturally devolve on an academy of the kind here suggested. I should be happy, if space permitted, to go through the particulars one by one, but let a single instance suffice: the academy might relieve us of the painful necessity of having seriously to consider any further the proposal that professors found professing after sixty should be shot. This will serve to indicate the kind of work which might advantageously be entrusted to the august body which is here but roughly projected.

There are some branches of learning in the happy position of having no occasion for such a body academical. Thus, if a man will have it that the earth is flat, as flat in fact as some people do their utmost to make it, ‘he will most likely,’ as the late Mr. Freeman in the Saturday Review once put it, ‘make few converts, and will be forgotten after at most a passing laugh from scientific men.’ If a man insists that the sum of two and two is five, he will probably find his way to a lunatic asylum, as the economy of society is, in a manner, self-acting. So with regard to him who carries his craze into the more material departments of such a science as chemistry: he may be expected to blow out his own eyes, for the almighty molecule executes its own vengeance. ‘But,’ to quote again from Mr. Freeman, if that man’s ‘craze had been historical or philological’—and above all if it had to do with the science of man or of myth—‘he might have put forth notions quite as absurd as the notion that the earth is flat, and many people would not have been in the least able to see that they were absurd. If any scholar had tried to confute him we should have heard of “controversies” and “differences of opinion.” ’ In fact, the worst that happens to the false prophet who shines in any such a science is, that he has usually only too many enthusiastic followers. The machinery is, so to say, not automatic, and hence it is that we want the help of an academy. But even supposing such an academy established, no one need feel alarmed lest opportunities enough could no longer be found for cultivating the example of those of the early Christians who had the rare grace to suffer fools gladly.

Personally, however, I should be against doing anything in a hurry; and, considering how little his fellows dare expect from the man who is just waiting to be final and perfect before he commit himself to type, the establishment of an academy invested with the summary powers which have been briefly sketched might, perhaps, after all, conveniently wait a while: my own feeling is that almost any time, say in the latter half of the twentieth century, would do better than this year or the next. In the meantime one must be content to entrust the fortunes of our studies to the combined forces of science and common sense. Judging by what they have achieved in recent years, there is no reason to be uneasy with regard to the time to come, for it is as true to-day as when it was first written, that the best of the prophets of the Future is the Past.