in the least able to see that they were absurd. If any scholar had tried to confute him we should have heard of "controversies" and "differences of opinion."' In fact, the worst that happens to the false prophet who shines in any such a science is, that he has usually only too many enthusiastic followers. The machinery is, so to say, not automatic, and hence it is that we want the help of an academy. But even supposing such an academy established, no one need feel alarmed lest opportunities enough could no longer be found for cultivating the example of those of the early Christians who had the rare grace to suffer fools gladly.

Personally, however, I should be against doing anything in a hurry; and, considering how little his fellows dare expect from the man who is just waiting to be final and perfect before he commit himself to type, the establishment of an academy invested with the summary powers which have been briefly sketched might, perhaps, after all, conveniently wait a while: my own feeling is that almost any time, say in the latter half of the twentieth century, would do better than this year or the next. In the meantime one must be content to entrust the fortunes of our studies to the combined forces of science and common sense. Judging by what they have achieved in recent years, there is no reason to be uneasy with regard to the time to come, for it is as true to-day as when it was first written, that the best of the prophets of the Future is the Past.

ADDITIONS AND CORRECTIONS

P. 81. I learn that the plural of bodach glas was in Welsh bodachod glesion, a term which Elis o'r Nant remembers his mother applying to a kind of fairies dressed in blue and fond of leading people astray. She used to relate how a haymaking party once passed a summer's night at the cowhouse (beudy) of Bryn Bygely₫ (also Bryn Mygelyd), and how they saw in the dead of night a host of these dwarfs (corynnod) in blue dancing and capering about the place. The beudy in question is not very far from Dolwyđelan, on the way to Capel Curig. A different picture of the bodach is given in Jenkins' Bed Gelert, p. 82; and lastly one may contrast the Highland Bodach Glas mentioned at p. 520 above, not to mention still another kind, namely the one in Scott's Waverley.

P. 130. To Sarn yr Afanc add ILyn yr Afanc, near Lanđinam (Beauties of Wales, N. Wales, p. 841), and Bed yr Afanc, 'the Afanc's Grave,' the name of some sort of a tumulus, I am told, on a knoll near the Pembrokeshire stream of the Nevern. Mr. J. Thomas, of Bancau Bryn Berian close by, has communicated to me certain echoes of a story how an afanc was caught in a pool near the bridge of Bryn Berian, and how it was taken up to be interred in what is now regarded as its grave. A complete list of the afanc place-names in the Principality might possibly prove instructive. As to the word afanc, what seems to have happened is this: (1) from meaning simply a dwarf it came to be associated with such water dwarfs as those mentioned at p. 432; (2) the meaning being forgotten, the word was applied to any water monster; and (3) where afanc occurs in place-names the Hu story has been introduced to explain it, whether it fitted or not. This I should fancy to be the case with the Bryn Berian barrow, and it would be satisfactory to know whether it contains the remains of an ordinary dwarf. Peredur's lake afanc may have been a dwarf; but whether that was so or not, it is remarkable that the weapon which the afanc handled was a techwaew or flake-spear, that is, a missile tipped with stone.

P. 131. With the rôle of the girl in the afanc story compare that of Tegau, wife of Caradog Freichfras, on whom a serpent fastens and can only be allured away to seize on one of Tegau's breasts, of which she loses the nipple when the beast is cut off. The defect being replaced with gold, she is ever after known as Tegau Eur-fron, or 'Tegau of the golden Breast.' That is a version inferred of a story which is discussed by M. Gaston Paris in an article, on Caradoc et le Serpent, elicited by a paper published (in the November number of Modern Language Notes for 1898) by Miss C. A.

Harper, of Bryn Mawr College, U.S.: see the Romania, xxviii. 214-31. One of Miss Harper's parallels, mentioned by M. Paris at p. 220, comes from Campbell: it is concerning a prince who receives from his stepmother a magic shirt which converts itself into a serpent coiled round his neck, and of which he is rid by the help of a woman acting in much the same way as Tegau. We have an echo of this in the pedigrees in the Jesus College MS. 20: see the Cymmrodor, viii. 88, where one reads of G6ga6n keneu menrud a vu neidyr vl6ydyn am y vonégyl, 'Gwgon the whelp of Menrud (?) who was a year with a snake round his neck'-his pedigree is also given. In M. Paris' suggested reconstruction of the story (p. 228) from the different versions, he represents the maiden who is to induce the serpent to leave the man on whom it has fastened, as standing in a vessel filled with milk, while the man stands in a vessel filled with vinegar. The heroine exposes herself to the reptile, which relinquishes his present victim to seize on one of the woman's breasts. Now the appropriateness of the milk is explained by the belief that snakes are inordinately fond of milk, and that belief has, I presume, a foundation in fact: at any rate I am reminded of its introduction into the plot of more than one English story, such as Stanley Weyman's book From the Memoirs of a Minister of France (London, 1895), p. 445, and A. Conan Doyle's Adventures of Sherlock Holmes (London, 1893), pp. 199-209. In Wales, however, it is to a woman's milk that one's interest attaches: I submit two references which will explain what I mean. The first of them is to Owen's Welsh Folk-Lore, p. 349, where he says that 'traditions of flying snakes were once common in all parts of Wales,' and adds as follows:-'The traditional origin of these imaginary creatures was that they were snakes, which by having drunk the milk of a woman, and by having eaten of bread consecrated for the Holy Communion, became transformed into winged serpents or dragons.' The other is to the Brython for 1861, p. 190, where one reads in Welsh to the following effect :- If a snake chances to have an opportunity to drink of a woman's milk it is certain to become a gwiber. When a woman happens to be far from her child, and her breasts are full and beginning to give her pain, she sometimes milks them on the ground in order to ease them. To this the peasantry in parts of Cardiganshire have a strong objection, lest a snake should come there and drink the milk, and so become a gwiber.' The word gwiher is used in the Welsh Bible for a viper, but the editor of the Brython explains, that in our folklore it means a huge kind of snake or dragon that has grown wings and has its body cased in hard scales: for a noted instance in point he refers the reader to the first number of the Brython, p. 3. It is believed still all over Wales that snakes may, under favourable circumstances, develop wings: in fact, an Anglesey man strongly wished, to my knowledge, to offer to the recent Welsh Land Commission, as evidence of the wild and neglected state of a certain farm, that the gorse had grown so high and the snakes so thriven in it that he had actually seen one of the latter flying right across a wide road which separated two such gorse forests as he described: surprised and hurt to find that this was not accepted, he inferred that the Commissioners knew next to nothing about their business.

Pp. 148, 170. With the spell of security' by catching hold of grass may perhaps be compared a habit which boys in Cardiganshire have of suddenly

picking up a blade of grass when they want a truce or stoppage in a sort of game of tig or touchwood. The grass gives the one who avails himself of it immunity for a time from attack or pursuit, so as to allow him to begin the game again just where it was left off.

P. 228. Bodermud would probably be more correctly written Bodermyd, and analysed possibly into Bod-Dermyd, involving the name which appears in Irish as Diarmait and Dermot.

P. 230. Since this was printed I have been assured by Mr. Thomas Prichard of Lwydiarth Esgob, in Anglesey, that the dolur byr is more commonly called clwy' byr, and that it is the disease known in English as 'black quarter.'

Pp. 259, 268. I am assured on the part of several literary natives of Glamorgan that they do not know dâr for daear, 'ground, earth.' Such nega tive evidence, though proving the literary form daear to prevail now, is not to be opposed to the positive statement, sent by Mr. Hughes (p. 173) to me, as to the persistence in his neighbourhood of dâr and clâr (for claear, ‘lukewarm'), to which one may add, as unlikely to be challenged by anybody, the case of hårn for haearn, 'iron.' The intermediate forms have to be represented as daer, claer, and haern, which explain exactly the gaem of the Book of St. Chad, for which modern literary Welsh has gaeaf, 'winter': see the preface to the Book of ILan Dâv, p. xlv.

P. 290. It ought to have been pointed out that the fairies, whose food and drink it is death to share, represent the dead.

P. 291. For Conla read Connla or Condla: the later form is Colla. The Condla in question is called Condla Rúad in the story, but the heading to it has Ectra Condla Chaim, 'the Adventure of C. the Dear One.'

P. 294. I am now inclined to think that butch was produced out of the northern pronunciation of witch by regarding its w as a mutation consonant and replacing it, as in some other instances, by b as the radical.

P. 308. With the Manx use of rowan on May-day compare a passage to the following effect concerning Wales-I translate it from the faulty Welsh in which it is quoted by one of the competitors for the folklore prize at the Liverpool Eistedfod, 1900: he gave no indication of its provenance :-Another bad papistic habit which prevails among some Welsh people is that of placing some of the wood of the rowan tree (coed cerðin or criafol) in their corn lands (Hafyrieu) and their fields on May-eve (Nos Glamau) with the idea that such a custom brings a blessing on their fields, a proceeding which would better become atheists and pagans than Christians. P. 325. In the comparison with the brownie the fairy nurse in the Pennant Valley has been overlooked: see p. 109.

P. 331, line 1. For I. 42-3 read ii. 42-3.

Pp. 377, 395. With the story of Ffynnon Gywer and the other fairy wells, also with the wells which have been more especially called sacred in this volume, compare the following paragraph from Martin's Description of the Western Islands of Scotland (London, 1703), pp. 229-30: it is concerning

Gigay, now more commonly written Gigha, the name of an island near the west coast of Kintyre :-'There is a well in the north end of this isle called Toubir-more, i. e. a great well, because of its effects, for which it is famous among the islanders; who together with the inhabitants use it as a Catholicon for diseases. It's covered with stone and clay, because the natives fancy that the stream that flows from it might overflow the isle; and it is always opened by a Diroch, i. e. an inmate, else they think it would not exert its vertues. They ascribe one very extraordinary effect to it, and 'tis this; that when any foreign boats are wind-bound here (which often happens) the master of the boat ordinarily gives the native that lets the water run a piece of money, and they say that immediately afterwards the wind changes in favour of those that are thus detain'd by contrary winds. Every stranger that goes to drink of the water of this well, is accustomed to leave on its stone cover a piece of money, a needle, pin, or one of the prettiest varieated stones they can find.' Last September I visited Gigha and saw a well there which is supposed to be the one to which Martin refers. It is very insignificant and known now by a name pronounced Tobar a viac, possibly for an older Mo-Bheac: in Scotch Gaelic Beac, written Beathag, is equated with the name Sophia. The only tradition now current about the well is that emptying it used to prove the means of raising a wind or even of producing great storms, and this appears to have been told Pennant : see his Tour in Scotland and Voyage to the Hebrides, MDCCLXXII (Chester, 1774), p. 226:-'Visit the few wonders of the isle: the first is a little well of a most miraculous quality, for in old times, if ever the chieftain lay here windbound, he had nothing more to do than cause the well to be cleared, and instantly a favorable gale arose. But miracles are now ceased.'

P. 378. A similar rhyme is current in the neighbourhood of Dolgelley, as Miss Lucy Griffith informs me, as follows:

Dolgette dol a gottir,

Daear a'i tunc, dw'r 'n 'i tle.

DolgeHey, a dale to be lost;

Earth will swallow it, and water take its place.

P. 394. With regard to wells killing women visiting them, I may mention a story, told me the other day by Professor Mahaffy after a friend whose name he gave, concerning the inhabitants of one of the small islands on the coast of Mayo-I understood him to say off the Mullet. It was this: all the men and boys, having gone fishing, were prevented by rough weather from returning as soon as they intended, and the women left alone suffered greatly from want of water, as not one of them would venture to go to the well. By-and-by, however, one of them gave birth to a boy, whereupon another of them carried the baby to the well, and ventured to draw water.

P. 418. As to Clychau Aberdyfi I am now convinced that the chwech and saith are entirely due to the published versions, the editors of which seem to have agreed that they will have as much as possible for their money, so to say. I find that Mrs. Rhys learnt in her childhood to end the words with pump, and that she cannot now be brought to sing the melody in any other way I have similar testimony from a musical lady from the neighbourhood of Wrexham ; and, doubtless, more evidence of the same sort could be got. P. 443. For Lywelyn ab Gruffyd read Lywelyn ab Iorwerth.