stories contained in the Kulhwch, such as the Hunting of Twrch Trwyth, were Goidelic before they became Brythonic, I wish to be understood to use the word Goidelic in a qualified sense. For till the Brythons came, the Goidels were, I take it, the ruling race in most of the southern half of Britain, with the natives as their subjects, except in so far as that statement has to be limited by the fact, that we do not know how far they and the natives had been amalgamating together. In any case, the hostile advent of another race, the Brythons, would probably tend to hasten the process of amalgamation. That being so, the stories. which I have loosely called Goidelic may have been largely aboriginal in point of origin, and by that I mean native, pre-Celtic and non-Aryan. It comes to this, then we cannot say for certain whose creation Brân, for instance, should be considered to have been-that of Goidels or of non-Aryan natives. He sat, as the Mabinogi of Branwen describes him, on the rock of Harlech, a figure too colossal for any house to contain or any ship to carry. This would seem to challenge comparison with Cernunnos, the squatting god of ancient Gaul, around whom the other gods appear as mere striplings, as proved by the monumental representations in point. In these1 he sometimes appears antlered like a stag; sometimes he is provided either with three normal heads or with one head furnished with three faces; and sometimes he is reduced to a head provided with no body, which reminds one of Brân, who, when he had been rid of his body in consequence of a poisoned wound inflicted on him in his foot in the slaughter of the Meal-bag Pavilion, was reduced to the Urdawl Ben, 'Venerable or Dignified 1 See Bertrand's Religion des Gaulois, pp. 314-9, 343-5, and especially the plates. Head,' mentioned in the Mabinogi of Branwen'. The Mabinogi goes on to relate how Brân's companions began to enjoy, subject to certain conditions, his 'Venerable Head's' society, which involved banquets of a fabulous duration and of a nature not readily to be surpassed by those around the Holy Grail. In fact here we have beyond all doubt one of the heathen originals of which the Grail is a Christian version. But the multiplicity of faces or heads of the Gaulish divinity find their analogues in a direction hitherto unnoticed as far as I know, namely, among the LettoSlavic peoples of the Baltic sea-board. Thus the image of Svatovit in the island of Rügen is said to have had four faces 2; and the life of Otto of Bamberg relates 3 how that high-handed evangelist proceeded to convert the ancient Prussians to Christianity. Among other things we are told how he found at Stettin an idol called Triglaus, a word referring to the three heads for which the god was remarkable. The saint took possession of the image and hewed away the body, reserving for himself the three heads, which are represented adhering together, forming one piece. This he sent as a trophy to Rome, and in Rome it may be still. Were it perchance to be found, it might be expected to show a close resemblance to the tricephal of the Gaulish altar found at Beaune in Burgundy. Before closing this chapter a word may be permitted as to the Goidelic element in the history of Wales: it will come again before the reader in a later chapter, 1 The Oxford Mabinogion, pp. 40–3; Guest's Mabinogion, iii. 124-8. 'See Louis Leger's Cyrille et Méthode (Paris, 1868), p. 22. See Pertz, Monumenta Germaniæ Historica Scriptorum, xii. 794. The whole passage is worth quoting; it runs thus: Erat autem simulacrum triceps, quod in uno corpore tria capita habens Triglaus vocabatur; quod solum accipiens, ipsa capitella sibi cohærentia, corpore comminuto, secum inde quasi pro tropheo asportavit, et postea Romam pro argumento conversionis illorum transmisit, but what has already been advanced or implied concerning it may here be recapitulated as follows: It has been suggested that the hereditary dislike of the Brython for the Goidel argues their having formerly lived in close proximity to one another: see P. 473 above. The tradition that the cave treasures of the Snowdon district belong by right to the Goidels, means that they were formerly supposed to have hidden them away when hard pressed by the Brythons: see PP. 471-2 above. The sundry instances of a pair of names for a single person or place, one Goidelic (Brythonicized) still in use, and the other Brythonic (suggested by the Goidelic one), literary mostly and obsolete, go to prove that the Goidels were not expelled, but allowed to remain to adopt Brythonic speech. Evidence of the indebtedness of story-tellers in Wales to their brethren of the same profession in Ireland is comparatively scarce; and almost in every instance of recent research establishing a connexion between topics or incidents in the Arthurian romances and the native literature of Ireland, the direct contact may be assumed to have been with the folklore and legend of the Goidelic inhabitants of Wales, whether before or after their change of language. Probably the folklore and mythology of the Goidels of Wales and of Ireland were in the mass much the same, though in some instances they reach us in different stages of development: thus in such a case as that of Don and Danu (genitive Danann) the Welsh allusions in point refer to Dôn at a conspicuously earlier stage of her rôle than that represented by the Irish literature touching the Tuatha Dé Danann 1. 1 See The Welsh People, pp. 56-7. The common point of view from which our ancestors liked to look at the scenery around them is well illustrated by the fondness of the Goidel, in Wales and Ireland alike, for incidents to explain his place-names. He required the topography-indeed he requires it still, and hence the activity of the local etymologist-to connote story or history: he must have something that will impart the cold light of physical nature, river and lake, moor and mountain, a warmer tint, a dash of the pathetic element, a touch of the human, borrowed from the light and shade of the world of imagination and fancy in which he lives and dreams. CHAPTER X DIFFICULTIES OF THE FOLKLORIST For priests, with prayers and other godly gear, And, where they played their merry pranks before, THE attitude of the Kymry towards folklore and popular superstitions varies according to their training and religious views; and I distinguish two classes of them in this respect. First of all, there are those who appear to regret the ebb of the tide of ancient beliefs. They maintain that people must have been far more interesting when they believed in the fairies; and they rave against Sunday schools and all other schools for having undermined the ancient superstitions of the peasantry: it all comes, they say, of over-educating the working classes. Of course one may occasionally wish servant maids still believed that they might get presents from the fairies for being neat and tidy; and that, in the contrary case of their being sluts, they would be pinched black and blue during their sleep by the little people there may have been some utility in beliefs of that kind. But, if one takes an impartial view of the surroundings in which this kind of mental condition was possible, no sane man could say that the superstitious beliefs of our ancestors conduced on the whole to their happiness. Fancy a state of mind in which this sort of thing is possible:-A member of |