Note 48 — Chapter IX · Place-name Stories

By way of notes on these items, I would begin with the last by asking, what is one to make of these Men of Ỻydaw? First of all, one notices that their names are singular: thus Hirpeissawc, ‘Long-coated or Long-robed,’ is a curious name for their king, as it sounds more like an epithet than a name itself. Then Ỻygatruđ (also Ỻysgatruđ, which I cannot understand, except as a scribal error) Emys is also unusual: one would have rather expected Emys Lygatruđ, ‘Emys the Red-eyed.’ As it stands it looks as if it meant the ‘Red-eyed One of Emys.’ Moreover Emys reminds one of the name of Emyr Ỻydaw, the ancestor in Welsh hagiology of a number of Welsh saints. It looks as if the redactor of the Red Book had mistaken an r for an s in copying from a pre-Norman original. That he had to work on such a manuscript is proved by the remaining instance, Gwrbothu Hên, ‘G. the Ancient,’ in which we have undoubtedly a pre-Norman spelling of Gwrfođw: the same redactor having failed to recognize the name, left it without being converted into the spelling of his own school. In the Book of Ỻan Dâv it will be found variously written Gurbodu, Guoruodu, and Guruodu. Then the epithet hên, ‘old or ancient,’ reminds one of such instances as Math Hên and Gofynion Hên, to be noticed a little later in this chapter. Let us now direct the reader’s attention for a moment to the word Ỻydaw, in order to see whether that may not suggest something. The etymology of it is contested, so one has to infer its meaning, as well as one can, from the way in which it is found used. Now it is the ordinary Welsh word for Brittany or Little Britain, and in Irish it becomes Letha, which is found applied not only to Armorica but also to Latium. Conversely one could not be surprised if a Goidel, writing Latin, rendered his own Letha or the Welsh Ỻydaw by Latium, even when no part of Italy was meant. Now it so happens that Ỻydaw occurs in Wales itself, to wit in the name of Ỻyn Ỻydaw, a Snowdonian lake already mentioned, p. 475. It is thus described by Pennant, ii. 339:—‘We found, on arriving at the top, an hollow a mile in length, filled with Ỻyn Ỻydaw, a fine lake, winding beneath the rocks, and vastly indented by rocky projections, here and there jutting into it. In it was one little island, the haunt of black-backed gulls, which breed here, and, alarmed by such unexpected visitants, broke the silence of this sequestered place by their deep screams.’ But since Pennant’s time mining operations48 have been carried on close to the margin of this lake; and in the course of them the level of the water is said to have been lowered to the extent of sixteen feet, when, in the year 1856, an ancient canoe was discovered there. According to the late Mr. E. L. Barnwell, who has described it in the Archæologia Cambrensis for 1874, pp. 150–1, it was in the possession of Dr. Griffith Griffith of Tal y Treuđyn, near Harlech, who exhibited it at the Cambrian Archæological Association’s meeting at Machynỻeth in 186649. ‘It measures,’ Mr. Barnwell says, ‘nine feet nine inches—a not uncommon length in the Scotch early canoes,—and has been hollowed out of one piece of wood, as is universally the case with these early boats.’ He goes on to surmise that ‘this canoe may have been used to reach the island, for the sake of birds or eggs; or what is not impossible, the island may have been the residence of some one who had reasons for preferring so isolated an abode. It may, in fact, have been a kind of small natural crannog, and, in one sense, a veritable lake-dwelling, access to and from which was easy by means of such a canoe.’ Stokes conjectures Ỻydaw to have meant coast-land, and Thurneysen connects it with the Sanskrit pṛthivī and Old Saxon folda50, ‘earth’: and, so far as I can see, one is at liberty to assume a meaning that would satisfy Ỻydaw, ‘Armorica,’ and the Ỻydaw of Ỻyn Ỻydaw, ‘the Lake of Ỻydaw,’ namely that it signified land which one had to reach by boat, so that it was in fact applicable to a lake settlement of any kind, in other words, that Ỻydaw on Snowdon was the name of the lake-dwelling. So I cannot help suggesting, with great deference, that the place whence came the Men of Ỻydaw in the story of the hunting of Twrch Trwyth was the settlement in Syfađon lake (p. 73), and that the name of that stronghold, whether it was a crannog or a stockaded islet, was also Ỻydaw. For the power of that settlement over the surrounding country to have extended a few miles around would be but natural to suppose—the distance between the Yw and Ỻyn Syfađon is, I am told, under three miles. Should this guess prove well founded, we should have to scan with renewed care the allusions in our stories to Ỻydaw, and not assume that they always refer us to Brittany.