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had dreamt that night that he was at a place called Swaffham in Norfolk, and that if he only dug under a great oak tree in an orchard behind a pedlar's house there, he would find a vast treasure; but the place was utterly unknown to him, and he was not such a fool as to follow a silly dream. No, he was wiser than that; so he advised the pedlar to go home to mind his business. The pedlar very quietly took in the words as to the dream, and hastened home to Swaffham, where he found the treasure in his own orchard. The rest of the story need not be related here, as it is quite different from the Welsh ones, which the reader has just had brought under his notice 1.

To return to Owen Lawgoch, for we have by no means done with him: on the farm of Cil yr Ychen there stands a remarkable limestone hill called y Dinas, 'the Fortress,' hardly a mile to the north of the village of ILandybïe, in Carmarthenshire. This dinas and the lime-kilns that are gradually consuming it are to be seen on the right from the railway as you go from Landeilo to ILandybïe. It is a steep high rock which forms a very good natural fortification, and in the level area on the top is the mouth of a very long cavern, known as Ogo'r Dinas, 'the Dinas Cave.' The entrance into it is small and low, but it gradually widens out, becoming in one place lofty and roomy with several smaller branch caves leading out of it; and it is believed that some of them connect Ogo'r Dinas with smaller caves at Pant y ILyn, 'the Lake Hollow,' where, as the

1 I am indebted for the English story to an article entitled 'The Two Pedlar Legends of Lambeth and Swaffham,' contributed by Mr. Gomme to the pages of the Antiquary, x. 202–5, in which he gives local details and makes valuable comparisons. I have to thank Mr. Gomme also for a cutting from the weekly issue of the Leeds Mercury for Jan. 3, 1885, devoted to 'Local Notes and Queries' (No. cccxii), where practically the same story is given at greater length as located at Upsall Castle in Yorkshire.

name indicates, there is a small lake a little higher up : both Ogo'r Dinas and Pant y ILyn are within a mile of the village of ILandybïe1. Now I am informed, in a letter written in 1893 by one native, that the local legend about Ogo'r Dinas is that Owen Lawgoch and his men are lying asleep in it, while another native, Mr. Fisher, writing in the same year, but on the authority of somewhat later hearsay, expresses himself as follows:-' I remember hearing two traditions respecting Ogo'r Dinas: (1) that King Arthur and his warriors lie sleeping in it with their right hands clasping the hilts of their drawn swords ready to encounter anyone who may venture to disturb their repose-is there not a dinas somewhere in Carnarvonshire with a similar legend? (2) That Owen Lawgoch lived in it some time or other: that is all that I remember having heard about him in connection with this ogof.' Mr. Fisher proceeds, moreover, to state that it is said of an ogof at Pant y ILyn, that Owen Lawgoch and his men on a certain occasion took refuge in it, where they were shut up and starved to death. He adds that, however this may be, it is a fact that in the year 1813 ten or more human skeletons of unusual stature were discovered in an ogof there 2.

1 1 I have never been to the spot, and I owe these particulars partly to Mr. J. P. Owen, of 72 Comeragh Road, Kensington, and partly to the Rev. John Fisher, already quoted at p. 379. This is the parish where some would locate the story of the sin-eater, which others stoutly deny, as certain periodical outbursts of polemics in the pages of the Academy and elsewhere have shown. Mr. Owen, writing to me in 1893, states, that, when he last visited the dinas some thirty years previously, he found the mouth of the cave stopped up in order to prevent cattle and sheep straying into it.

sea.

" Mr. Fisher refers me to an account of the discovery published in the Cambrian newspaper for Aug. 14, 1813, a complete file of which exists, as he informs me, in the library of the Royal Institution of South Wales at SwanFurther, at the Cambrians' meeting in 1892 that account was discussed and corrected by Mr. Stepney-Gulston: see the Archæologia Cambrensis for 1893, pp. 163-7. He also 'pointed out that on the opposite side of the gap in the ridge the noted cave of Owain Law Goch was to be found. Near the Pant-y-ttyn bone caves is a place called Craig Derwydon, and close by is

To this I may append a reference to the Geninen for 1896, p. 84, where Mr. ILeufer Thomas, who is also a native of the district, alludes to the local belief that Owen Lawgoch and his men are asleep, as already mentioned, in the cave of Pant y ILyn, and that they are to go on sleeping there till a trumpet blast and the clash of arms on Rhiw Goch rouse them to sally forth to combat the Saxons and to conquer, as set forth by Howells: see p. 381 above. It is needless to say that there is no reason, as will be seen presently, to suppose Owen Lawgoch to have ever been near any of the caves to which allusion has here been made; but that does not appreciably detract from the fascination of the legend which has gathered round his personality; and in passing I may be allowed to express my surprise that in such stories as these the earlier Owen has not been eclipsed by Owen Glyndwr: there must be some historical reason why that has not taken place. Can it be that a habit of caution made Welshmen speak of Owen Lawgoch when the other Owen was really meant?

The passage I have cited from Mr. Fisher's letter raises the question of a dinas in Carnarvonshire, which that of his native parish recalled to his mind; and this is to be considered next. Doubtless he meant Dinas Emrys formerly called Din Emreis', 'the Fortress of Ambrosius,' situated near Bedgelert, and known in the neighbourhood simply as y Dinas, 'the Fort.' It is celebrated in the Vortigern legend as the place where the dragons had been hidden, that frustrated the buildthe scene of the exploits of Owain Law Goch, a character who appears to have absorbed some of the features of Arthurian romance. A cave in the locality bears Owain's name.'

As in Lewelyn's charter to the Monks of Aberconwy, where we have, according to Dugdale's Monasticon, v. 673a, a Scubordynemreis, that is Scubor Dyn Emreis, Din-Emreis Barn,' supposed to be Hafod y Borth, near Bedgelert: see Jenkins' Bed Gelert, p. 198. In the Myvyrian, i. 195", it has been printed Din Emrais.

ing of that king's castle; and the spot is described in Lewis' Topographical Dictionary of Wales, in the article on Bethgelart (Bed-Celert), as an isolated rocky eminence with an extensive top area, which is defended by walls of loose stones, and accessible only on one side. He adds that the entrance appears to have been guarded by two towers, and that within the enclosed area are the foundations of circular buildings of loose stones forming walls of about five feet in thickness. Concerning that Dinas we read in the Brython for 1861, p. 329, a legend to the following effect:-Now after the departure of Vortigern, Myrðin, or Merlin as he is called in English, remained himself in the Dinas for a long time, until, in fact, he went away with Emrys Ben-aur, 'Ambrosius the Gold-headed'-evidently Aurelius Ambrosius is meant. When he was about to set out with the latter, he put all his treasure and wealth into a crochan aur, 'a gold cauldron,' and hid it in a cave in the Dinas, and on the mouth of the cave he rolled a huge stone, which he covered up with earth and sods, so that it was impossible for any one to find it. He intended this wealth to be the property of some special person in a future generation, and it is said that the heir to it is to be a youth with yellow hair and blue eyes. When that one comes near to the Dinas a bell will ring to invite him to the cave, which will open of itself as soon as his foot touches it. Now the fact that some such legend was once currently believed about Bedgelert and Nanhwynain is proved by the curious stories as to various attempts made to find the treasure, and the thunderstorms and portents which used to vanquish the local greed for gold. For several instances in point see the Brython, pp. 329-30; and for others, showing how hidden treasure is carefully reserved for the right sort of heir, see p. 148 above. To prove how widely this idea prevailed in Carnarvonshire,

I may add a short story which Mrs. Williams-Ellis of Glasfryn got from the engineer who told her of the sacred eel of ILangybi (p. 366):-There was on Pentyrch, the hill above ILangybi, he said, a large stone so heavy and fixed so fast in the ground that no horses, no men could move it: it had often been tried. One day, however, a little girl happened to be playing by the stone, and at the touch of her little hand the stone moved. A hoard of coins was found under it, and that at a time when the little girl's parents happened to be in dire need of it. Search had long been made by undeserving men for treasure supposed to be hidden at that spot; but it was always unsuccessful until the right person touched the stone to move. The failure of the wrong person to secure the treasure, even when discovered, is illustrated by a story given by Mr. Derfel Hughes in his Antiquities of ILandegai and ILanttechid, pp. 35-6, to the effect that a servant man, somewhere up among the mountains near Ogwen Lake, chanced to come across the mouth of a cave with abundance of vessels of brass (pres) of every shape and description within it. He went at once and seized one of them, but, alas! it was too heavy for him to stir it. So he resolved to go away and return early on the morrow with a friend to help him; but before going he closed the mouth of the cave with stones and sods so as to leave it safe. While thus engaged he remembered having heard how others had like him found caves and failed to refind them. He could procure nothing readily that would satisfy him as a mark, so it occurred to him to dot his path with the chippings of his stick, which he whittled all the way as he went back until he came to a familiar track the chips were to guide him back to the cave. So when the morning came he and his friend set out, but when they reached the point where the chips should

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