Note 8 — Chapter X · Difficulties of the Folklorist

Rhita is not said, it is true, to have been a Gwyđel, ‘Goidel’; but he is represented ruling over Ireland, and his name, which is not Welsh, recalls at first sight those of such men as Boya the Pict or Scot figuring in the life of St. David, and such as Ỻia Gvitel, ‘Ỻia the Goidel,’ mentioned in the Stanzas of the Graves in the Black Book of Carmarthen as buried in the seclusion of Ardudwy8. Malory’s Ryons is derived from the French Romances, where, as for example in the Merlin, according to the Huth MS., it occurs as Rion-s in the nominative, and Rion in régime. The latter, owing to the old French habit of eliding đ or th, derives regularly enough from such a form as the accusative Rithon-em9, which is the one occurring in Geoffrey’s text; and we should probably be right in concluding therefrom that the correct old Welsh form of the name was Rithon. But the Goidelic form was at the same time probably Ritta, with a genitive Rittann, for an earlier Ritton. Lastly, that the local legend should perpetuate the Goidelic Ritta slightly modified, has its parallel in the case of Trwyd and Trwyth, and of Echel and Egel or Ecel, pp. 541–2 and 536–7.