Note 39 — Chapter IX · Place-name Stories

Besides Grugyn and Twrch Ỻawin, there was a third brother to whom the story gives a special name, to wit, Ỻwydawc Gouynnyat, and this was, I take it, meant also to account for a place-name, which, however, is not given: it should have been somewhere in Ystrad Yw, in the county of Brecknock. Still greater interest attaches to the swine that have not been favoured with names of their own, those referred to simply as banw, ‘a young boar,’ and benwic, ‘a young sow.’ Now banw has its equivalent in Irish in the word banbh, which O’Reilly explains as meaning a ‘sucking pig,’ and that is the meaning also of the Manx bannoo; but formerly the word may have had a somewhat wider meaning. The Welsh appellative is introduced twice into the story of Twrch Trwyth; once to account, as I take it, for the name Mynyđ Amanw, ‘Amman Mountain,’ and once for Dyffryn Amanw, ‘Amman Valley.’ In both instances Amanw was meant, as I think, to be accounted for by the banw killed at each of the places in question. But how, you will ask, does the word banw account for Amanw, or throw any light on it at all? Very simply, if you will just suppose the name to have been Goidelic; for then you have only to provide it with the definite article and it makes in banbh, ‘the pig or the boar,’ and that could not in Welsh yield anything but ymmanw or ammanw39, which with the accent shifted backwards, became Ammanw and Amman or Aman.