CHAPTER VIII

WELSH CAVE LEGENDS

Ἐκεῖ μέντοι μίαν εἶναι νῆσον, ἐν ᾗ τὸν Κρόνον καθεῖρχθαι φρουρούμενον ὑπὸ τοῦ Βριάρεω καθεύδοντα· δεσμὸν γὰρ αὐτῷ τὸν ὕπνον μεμηχανῆσθαι, πολλοὺς δὲ περὶ αὐτὸν εἶναι δαίμονας ὀπαδοὺς καὶ θεράποντας.—PLUTARCH.

In previous chapters sundry allusions have been made to treasure caves besides that of Marchlyn Mawr, which has been given at length on pp. 234-7 above. Here follow some more, illustrative of this kind of folklore prevalent in Wales: they are difficult to classify, but most of them mention treasure with or without sleeping warriors guarding it. The others are so miscellaneous as to baffle any attempt to characterize them generally and briefly. Take for instance a cave in the part of Rhiwarth rock nearest to Cwm Lanhafan, in the neighbourhood of ILangynog in Montgomeryshire. Into that, according to Cyndelw in the Brython for 1860, p. 57, some men penetrated as far as the pound of candles lasted, with which they had provided themselves; but it appears to be tenanted by a hag who is always busily washing clothes in a brass pan.

Or take the following, from J. H. Roberts' essay, as given in West in Edwards' Cymru for 1897, p. 190: it reminds one of an ordinary fairy tale, but it is not quite like any other which I happen to know:-In the western end of the Arennig Fawr there is a cave: in fact there

are several caves there, and some of them are very large too; but there is one to which the finger of tradition points as an ancient abode of the Tylwyth Teg. About two generations ago, the shepherds of that country used to be enchanted by one of them called Mary, who was remarkable for her beauty. Many an effort was made to catch her or to meet her face to face, but without success, as she was too quick on her feet. She used to show herself day after day, and she might be seen, with her little harp, climbing the bare slopes of the mountain. In misty weather when the days were longest in summer, the music she made used to be wafted by the breeze to the ears of the love-sick shepherds. Many a time had the boys of the Filttir Gerrig heard sweet singing when passing the cave in the full light of day, but they were subject to some spell, so that they never ventured to enter. But the shepherd of Boch y Rhaiadr had a better view of the fairies one Allhallows night (ryw noson Galangaeaf) when returning home from a merry-making at Amnođ. On the sward in front of the cave what should he see but scores of the Tylwyth Teg singing and dancing! He never saw another assembly in his life so fair, and great was the trouble he had to resist being drawn into their circles.

Let us now come to the treasure caves, and begin with Ogof Arthur, 'Arthur's Cave,' in the southern side of Mynyd y Cnwc1 in the parish of ILangwyfan, on the south-western coast of Anglesey. The foot of Mynyd y Cnwc is washed by the sea, and the mouth of the cave is closed by its waters at high tide, but the cave, which

This seems to be the Goidelic word borrowed, which in Mod. Irish is written cnocc or cnoc, 'a hill': the native Welsh form is cnwch, as in Cnwch Coch in Cardiganshire, Cnwch Dernog (corrupted into Clwch Dernog) in Anglesey, printed Kuwgh Dernok in the Record of Carnarvon, p. 59, where it is associated with other interesting names to be noticed later.

come, like the Irish banshee, in a dark mist to the window of a person who has been long ailing, and to flap her wings against the glass, while repeating aloud his or her name, which was believed to mean that the patient must die1. The picture usually given of the Cyhiraeth is of the most repellent kind: tangled hair, long black teeth, wretched, skinny, shrivelled arms of unwonted length out of all proportion to the body. Nevertheless it is, in my opinion, but another aspect of the banshee-like female who intervenes in the story of the Curse of Pantannas. One might perhaps treat both as survivals of a belief in a sort of personification of, or divinity identified with, a family or tribe, but for the fact that such language is emptied of most of its meaning by the abstractions which it would connect with a primitive state of society. So it is preferable, as coming probably near the truth, to say that what we have here is a trace of an ancestress. Such an idea of an ancestress as against that of an ancestor is abundantly countenanced by dim figures like that of the Dôn of the Mabinogion, and of her counterpart, after whom the Tribes of the goddess Donu or Danu 2 are known as Tuatha Dé Danann in Irish literature. But the one who most provokes comparison is the Old Woman of Beare, already mentioned, pp. 393-4: she figures largely in Irish folklore as a hag surviving to see her descendants reckoned by tribes and peoples. It may be only an accident that a poetically wrought legend pictures her not so much interested in the fortunes of her progeny as engaged in bewailing the unattractive appearance of her thin arms and shrivelled hands, together with the

This statement I give from Choice Notes, p. 32; but I must confess that I am sceptical as to the 'wings of a leathery and bat-like substance,' or of any other substance whatsoever.

For more about her and similar ancestral personages, see The Welsh People, pp. 54-61.

general wreck of the beauty which had been hers some time or other centuries before.

However, the evidence of folklore is not of a kind to warrant our building any heavy superstructure of theory on the supposition, that the foundations are firmly held together by a powerful sense of consistency or homogeneity. So I should hesitate to do anything so rash as to pronounce the fairies to be all of one and the same origin: they may well be of several. For instance, there may be those that have grown out of traditions about an aboriginal pre-Celtic race, and some may be the representatives of the ghosts of departed men and women, regarded as one's ancestors; but there can hardly be any doubt that others, and those possibly not the least interesting, have originated in the demons and divinities—not all of ancestral origin-with which the weird fancy of our remote forefathers peopled lakes and streams, bays and creeks and estuaries. Perhaps it is not too much to hope that the reader is convinced. that in the course of this chapter some interesting specimens have, so to say, been caught in their native element, or else in the enjoyment of an amphibious life of mirth and frolic, largely spent hard by sequestered lakes, near placid rivers or babbling brooks.

CHAPTER VIII

WELSH CAVe Legends

Ἐκεῖ μέντοι μίαν εἶναι νῆσον, ἐν ᾗ τὸν Κρόνον καθεῖρχθαι φρουρούμενον ὑπὸ τοῦ Βριάρεω καθεύδοντα· δεσμὸν γὰρ αὐτῷ τὸν ὕπνον μεμηχανῆσθαι, πολλοὺς δὲ περὶ αὐτὸν εἶναι δαίμονας ὀπαδοὺς καὶ θεράποντας.—PLUTARCH.

In previous chapters sundry allusions have been made to treasure caves besides that of Marchlyn Mawr, which has been given at length on pp. 234-7 above. Here follow some more, illustrative of this kind of folklore prevalent in Wales: they are difficult to classify, but most of them mention treasure with or without sleeping warriors guarding it. The others are so miscellaneous as to baffle any attempt to characterize them generally and briefly. Take for instance a cave in the part of Rhiwarth rock nearest to Cwm ILanhafan, in the neighbourhood of ILangynog in Montgomeryshire. Into that, according to Cynđelw in the Brython for 1860, p. 57, some men penetrated as far as the pound of candles lasted, with which they had provided themselves; but it appears to be tenanted by a hag who is always busily washing clothes in a brass pan.

Or take the following, from J. H. Roberts' essay, as given in Welsh in Edwards' Cymru for 1897, p. 190: it reminds one of an ordinary fairy tale, but it is not quite like any other which I happen to know:-In the western end of the Arennig Fawr there is a cave: in fact there