Note 11 — Chapter VIII · Welsh Cave Legends

Some further notes on Snowdon, together with a curious account of the Cave of Ỻanciau Eryri, have been kindly placed at my disposal by Mr. Ellis Pierce (Elis11 o’r Nant) of Dolwyđelan:—In the uppermost part of the hollow called Cwmỻan is Tregalan, and in the middle of Cwm Tregalan is a green hill, or rather an eminence which hardly forms a hill, but what is commonly called a boncyn12 in Carnarvonshire, and between that green boncyn and the Clogwyn Du, ‘Black Precipice,’ is a bog, the depth of which no one has ever succeeded in ascertaining, and a town—inferred perhaps from tre in Tregalan—is fabled to have been swallowed up there. Another of my informants speaks of several hillocks or boncyns as forming one side of this little cwm; but he has heard from geologists, that these green mounds represent moraines deposited there in the glacial period. From the bottom of the Clogwyn Du it is about a mile to Bwlch y Saethau. Then as to the cave of Ỻanciau Eryri, which nobody can now find, the slope down to it begins from the top of the Ỻiweđ, but ordinarily speaking one could not descend to where it is supposed to have been without the help of ropes, which seems incompatible with the story of the Cwm Dyli shepherd following a sheep until he was at the mouth of the cave; not to mention the difficulty which the descent would have offered to Arthur’s men when they entered it. Then Elis o’r Nant’s story represents it shutting after them, and only opening to the shepherd in consequence of his having trodden on a particular sod or spot. He then slid down unintentionally and touched the bell that was hanging there, so that it rang and instantly woke the sleeping warriors. No sooner had that happened than those men of Arthur’s took up their guns—never mind the anachronism—and the shepherd made his way out more dead than alive; and the frightened fellow never recovered from the shock to the day of his death. When these warriors take up their guns they fire away, we are told, without mercy from where each man stands: they are not to advance a single step till Arthur comes to call them back to the world.