Note 20 — Chapter X · Difficulties of the Folklorist

Lastly, from the Goidels of Arfon must not be too violently severed those of Mona, among whom we have found, pp. 504–5, the mysterious Cathbalug, whose name, still half unexplained, reminds one of such Irish ones as Cathbuadach, ‘battle-victorious or conquering in war’; and to the same stratum belongs Daronwy, p. 504, which survives as the name of a farm in the parish of Ỻanfachreth. The Record of Carnarvon, p. 59, speaks both of a Molendinum de Darronwy et Cornewe, ‘Mill of Daronwy20 and Cornwy,’ and of Villæ de Dorronwy et Kuwghdornok, ‘Vills of Daronwy and of the Cnwch Dernog,’ which has been mentioned as now pronounced Clwch Dernog, p. 457: it is situated in the adjoining parish of Ỻanđeusant. The name is given in the same Record as Dernok, and is doubtless to be identified with the Ternóc not very uncommon in Irish hagiology. With these names the Record further associates a holding called Wele Conus, and Conus survives in Weun Gonnws, the name of a field on the farm of Bron Heulog, adjoining Clwch Dernog. That is not all, for Connws turns out to be the Welsh pronunciation of the Goidelic name Cunagussus, of which we have the Latinized genitive on the Bodfeđan menhir, some distance north-east of the railway station of Ty Croes. It reads: CVNOGVSI HIC IACIT, ‘Here lies (the body) of Cunagussus,’ and involves a name which has regularly become in Irish Conghus, while the native Welsh equivalent would be Cynwst21. These names, and one22 or two more which might be added to them, suggest a very Goidelic population as occupying, in the fifth or sixth century, the part of the island west of a line from Amlwch to Maỻdraeth.