undertook to question various people in the neighbourhood about the meaning of the name of Castellmarch. Most of them analysed it into Castelt y March, the 'Castle of the Steed,' and explained that the knight of the shire or some other respectable obscurity kept his horses there. This treatment of the word is not very decidedly countenanced by the pronunciation, which makes the name into one word strongly accented on the middle syllable. It was further related to me how Castellmarch was once upon a time inhabited by a very wicked and cruel man, one of whose servants, after being very unkindly treated by him, ran away and went on board a man-of-war. Some time afterwards the man-of-war happened to be in Cardigan Bay, and the runaway servant persuaded the captain of the vessel to come and anchor in the Tudwal Roads. Furthermore he induced him to shell his old master's mansion; and the story is regarded as proved by the old bullets now and then found at Castellmarch. It has since been suggested to me that the bullets are evidence of an attack on the place during the Civil War, which is not improbable. But having got so far as to find that there was a wicked, cruel man associated with Castellmarch, I thought I should at once hear the item of tradition which I was fishing for; but not so: it was not to be wormed out in a hurry. However, after tiring a very old blacksmith, whose memory was far gone, with my questions, and after he had in his turn tired me with answers of the kind I have already described, I ventured to put it to him at last whether he had never heard some very silly tale about the lord of Castellmarch, to the effect that he was not quite like other men. He at once admitted that he had heard it said that he had horse's ears, but that he would never have thought of repeating such nonsense to me. This is not a bad instance of the

difficulty which one has in eliciting this sort of tradition from the people. It is true that, as far as regards Castellmarch, nothing, as it happens, would have been lost if I had failed at Aber Soch, for I got the same information later at Sarn Fyllteyrn; not to mention that after coming back to my books, and once more turning over the leaves of the Brython, I was delighted to find the tale there. It occurs at p. 431 of the volume for 1860. It is given with several other interesting bits of antiquity, and at the end the editor has put 'Edward ILwyd, 1693'; so I suppose the whole comes from letters emanating from the great Lhwyd, for so, or rather Lhuyd, he preferred to write his name. It is to the following effect:

One of Arthur's warriors, whose name was March (or Parch) Amheirchion', was lord of Castellmarch in ILeyn. This man had horse's ears (resembling Midas), and lest anybody should know it, he used to kill every

'Here the writer seems to have been puzzled by the mh of Amheirchion, and to have argued back to a radical form Parch ; but he was on the wrong tack-Amheirchion comes from Ap-Meirchion, where the p helped to make the m a surd, which, with the syllabic accent on the succeeding vowel, became fixed as mh, while the p disappeared by assimilation. We have, later on, a similar instance in Owen y Mhaxen for Owen Amhacsen = O. ap Macsen. Another instance will be found at the opening of the Mabinogi of Branwen, to wit, in the word prynhawngweith, once on an afternoon,' from prynhawn, afternoon,' for which our dictionaries substitute prydnawn, with the accent on the ultima, though D. ab Gwilym used pyrnhawn, as in poem xl. 30. But the ordinary pronunciation continues to be prynhawn or pyrnháwn, sometimes reduced in Gwyne⋅ to pnawn. Let me add an instance which has reached me since writing the above: In the Archæologia Cambrensis for 1899, pp. 325-6, we have the pedigree of the Ameridiths from the Visitation of Devonshire in 1620: in the course of it one finds that Iuan ap Merydeth has a son Thomas Amerideth, who, knowing probably no Welsh, took to writing his patronymic more nearly as it was pronounced. The line is brought down to Ames Amerideth, who was created baronet in 1639. Amerideth of course = Ap Meredyd, and the present member of the family who writes to the Archæologia Cambrensis spells his patronymic more correctly, Ameridith; but if it had survived in Wales it might have been Amheredy. For an older instance than any of these see the Book of Taliessin, poem xlix (= Skene, ii. 204), where one reads of Beli Amhanogan, 'B. ab Mynogan.'

man he sought to shave his beard, for fear lest he should not be able to keep the secret; and on the spot where he was wont to bury the bodies there grew reeds, one of which somebody cut to make a pipe. The pipe would give no other sound than 'March Amheirchion has horse's ears.' When the warrior heard this, he would probably have killed the innocent man on that account, if he had not himself failed to make the pipe produce any other sound. But after hearing where the reed had grown, he made no further effort to conceal either the murders or his ears. This story of Edward ILwyd's clearly goes back to a time when some kind of a pipe was the favourite musical instrument in North Wales, and not the harp.

VIII.

Some time ago I was favoured with a short but interesting tale by Mr. Evan Lloyd Jones, of Dinorwig, near ILanberis. Mr. Lloyd Jones, I may here mention, published not long ago, in Lais y Wlad (Bangor, North Wales), and in the Drych (Utica, United States of North America), a series of articles entitled Len y Werin yn Sir Gaernarfon, or the Folklore of Carnarvonshire. I happened to see it at a friend's house, and I found at once that the writer was passionately fond of antiquities, and in the habit of making use of the frequent opportunities he has in the Dinorwig quarries for gathering information as to what used to be believed by the people of Arfon and Anglesey. The tale about to be given relates to a lake called Marchlyn Mawr, or the Great Horse-lake, for there are two lakes called Marchlyn: they lie near one another, between the Frontlwyd, in the parish of ILandegai, and the Elidyr, in the parishes of

ILanđeiniolen and ILanberis. Mr. Lloyd Jones shall tell his tale in his own words :

Amgylchynir y Marchlyn Mawr gan greigiau erchytt yr olwg arnynt; a dywed tradodiad darfod i un o feibion y Rhiwen1 unwaith tra yn cynorthwyo dafad oed wedi syrthio i'r creigiau i dod odiyno, darganfod ogof anferth: aeth i fewn idi a gwelod ei bod yn llawn o drysorau ac arfau gwerthfawr; ond gan ei bod yn dechreu tywyttu, a dringo i fynu yn orchwyl anhawa hyd yn nod yn ngoleu'r dyd, aeth adref y noswaith honno, a boreu drannoeth ar lasiad y dyd cychwynnođ eilwaith i'r ogof, ac heb lawer o drafferth daeth o hyd idi: aeth i fewn, a dechreuod edrych o'i amgylch ar y trysorau oed yno:-Ar ganol yr ogof yr oed bwrd enfawr o aur pur, ac ar y bwrd goron o aur a pherlau: deallod yn y fan mai coron a thrysorau Arthur oedynt -nesaod at y bwrd, a phan oed yn estyn ei law i gymeryd gafael yn y goron dychrynwyd ef gan drwst erchyll, trust megys mil o daranau yn ymrwygo uwch ei ben ac aeth yr hott le can dywytted a'r afagdu. Ceisiod ymbalfalu odiyno gynted ag y gattai; pan lwydod i gyrraed i ganol y creigiau taflod ei olwg ar y llyn, yr hwn oed wedi ei gynhyrfu drwydo a'i donnau brigwynion yn cael eu tluchio trwy daned ysgythrog y creigiau hyd y man yr oed efe yn sefylt arno; ond tra yr oed yn parhau i syttu ar ganol y ttyn gwelai gwrwgl a thair o'r benywod prydferthaf y disgynod tygad unrhyw dyn arnynt erioed yno yn cael ei rwyfo yn brysur tuag at enau yr ogof. Ond och! yr oed golwg ofnadwy yr hwn oed yn rhwyfo yn digon i beri iasau o fraw trwy y dyn cryfaf. Gattod y tanc rywfoot dianc adref ond ni fu

1 This is pronounced Rhiwan, though probably made up of Rhiw-wen, for it is the tendency of the Gwyndodeg to convert e and ai of the unaccented ultima into a, and so with e in Glamorgan; see such instances as Cornwan and casag, p. 29 above. It is possibly a tendency inherited from Goidelic, as Irish is found to proceed in the same way.

iechyd yn ei gyfansodiad ar ol hynny, a bydai hyd yn nod crybwytt enw y Marchlyn yn ei glywedigaeth yn digon i'w yrru yn wattgof.

'The Marchlyn Mawr is surrounded by rocks terrible to look at, and tradition relates how one of the sons of the farmer of Rhiwen, once on a time, when helping a sheep that had fallen among the rocks to get away, discovered a tremendous cave there; he entered, and saw that it was full of treasures and arms of great value; but, as it was beginning to grow dark, and as clambering back was a difficult matter even in the light of day, he went home that evening, and next morning with the grey dawn he set out again for the cave, when he found it without much trouble. He entered, and began to look about him at the treasures that were there. In the centre of the cave stood a huge table of pure gold, and on the table lay a crown of gold and pearls. He understood at once that they were the crown and treasures of Arthur. He approached the table, and as he stretched forth his hand to take hold of the crown he was frightened by an awful noise, the noise, as it were, of a thousand thunders bursting over his head, and the whole place became as dark as Tartarus. He tried to grope and feel his way out as fast as he could. When he had succeeded in reaching to the middle of the rocks, he cast his eye on the lake, which had been stirred all through, while its white-crested waves dashed through the jagged teeth of the rocks up to the spot on which he stood. But as he continued looking at the middle of the lake he beheld a coracle containing three women, the fairest that the eye of man ever fell on. They were being quickly rowed to the mouth of the cave; but the dread aspect of him who rowed was enough to send thrills of horror through the strongest of men. The youth was able somehow to escape home,