the teeming home of the fairies. He estimated the lake or pool of Corwrion to be about 120 yards long, and adds that it is nearly round; but he thinks it was formerly considerably larger, as a cutting was made some eighty or a hundred years ago to lead water from it to Penrhyn Castle; but even then its size would not approach that ascribed to it by popular belief, according to which it was no less than three miles long. In fact it was believed that there was once a town of Corwrion which was swallowed up by the lake, a sort of idea which one meets with in many parts of Wales, and some of the natives are said to be able to discern the houses under the water. This must have been near the end which is not bottomless, the latter being indicated by a spot which is said never to freeze even in hard winters. Old men remember it the resort of herons, cormorants, and the water-hen (hobi wen). Near the banks there grew, besides the water-lily, various kinds of rushes and sedges, which were formerly much used for making mats and other useful articles. It was also once famous for eels of a large size, but it is not supposed to have contained fish until Lord Penrhyn placed some there in recent years. It teemed, however, with leeches of three different kinds so recently that an old man still living describes to Mr. Hughes his simple way of catching them when he was a boy, namely, by walking bare-legged in the water in a few minutes he landed with nine or ten leeches sticking to his legs, some of which fetched a shilling each from the medical men of those days. Corwrion is now a farm house occupied by Mr. William Griffiths, a grandson of the late bard Gutyn Peris. When Mr. Hughes called to make inquiries about the legend, he found there the foundations of several old buildings, and several pieces of old querns about the place. He thinks that there belonged to Corwrion in former times, a mill and a fuller's house, which he seems to infer from the names of two neighbouring houses called 'Y Felin Hen,' the Old Mill, and 'Pandy Tre Garth,' the Fulling Mill of Tregarth, respectively. He also alludes to a gefail or smithy there, in which one Rhys ab Robert used to work, not to mention that a great quantity of ashes, such as come from a smithy, are found at the end of the lake furthest from the farm house. The spot on which Corwrion stands is part of the ground between the Ogwen and another stream which bears the name of 'Afon Cegin Arthur,' or the River of Arthur's Kitchen, and most of the houses and fields about have names which have suggested various notions to the people there: such are the farms called 'Coed Howel,' whence the belief in the neighbourhood that Howel Da, King of Wales, lived here. About him Mr. Hughes has a great deal to say: among other things, that he had boats on Corwrion lake, and that he was wont to present the citizens of Bangor yearly with 300 fat geese reared on the waters of the same. I am referred by another man to a lecture delivered in the neighbourhood on these and similar things by the late bard and antiquary the Rev. Robert Ellis (Cyndelw), but I have never come across a copy. A field near Corwrion is called 'Cae Stabal,' or the Field of the Stable, which contains the remains of a row of stables, as it is supposed, and of a number of mangers where Howel's horses were once fed. In a neighbouring wood, called 'Parc y Getti' or 'Hopiar y Getti,' my informant goes on to say, there are to be seen the foundations of seventeen or eighteen old hutcircles, and near them some think they see the site of an old church. About a mile to the south-east of Corwrion is Pendinas, which Mr. Hughes describes as an old triangular Welsh fortress, on the bank of the Ogwen; and within two stone's-throws or so of Corwrion on the south side of it, and a little to the west of Bryn Twrw mentioned in the legend, is situated Penard Gron, a caer or fort, which he describes as being, before it was razed in his time, forty-two yards long by thirty-two wide, and defended by a sort of rampart of earth and stone several yards wide at the base. It used to be the resort of the country people for dancing, cock-fighting1, and other amusements on Sundays. Near it was a cairn, which, when it was dug into, was found to cover a kistvaen, a pot, and a quern: a variety of tales attaching to it are told concerning ghosts, caves, and hidden treasures. Altogether Mr. Hughes is strongly of opinion that Corwrion and its immediate surroundings represent a spot which at one time had great importance; and I see no reason wholly to doubt the correctness of that conclusion, but it would be interesting to know whether Penrhyn used, as Mr. Hughes suggests, to be called Penrhyn Corwrion; there ought, perhaps, to be no great difficulty in ascertaining this, as some of the Penrhyn estate appears to have been the subject of litigation in times. gone by. Before leaving Mr. Hughes' notes, I must here give his too brief account of another thing connected with Corwrion, though, perhaps, not with the legends here in question. I allude to what he calls the Lantern Ghost (Ysbryd y Lantar):-'There used to be formerly,' he says, and there is still at Corwrion, a good-sized sour apple-tree, which during the winter half of the year used to be lit up by fire. It began slowly and I remember seeing a similar mound at ILanfyrnach, in Pembrokeshire; and the last use made of the hollow on the top of this also is supposed to have been for cock-fights. grew greater until the whole seemed to be in a blaze. He was told by an old woman that she formerly knew old people who declared they had seen it. In the same way the trees in Hopiar y Getti appeared, according to them, to be also lit up with fire.' This reminds me of Mr. Fitzgerald's account of the Irish Bile-Tineadh in the Revue Celtique, iv. 194. After communicating to me the notes of which the foregoing are abstracts, Mr. Hughes kindly got me a version of the legend from Mr. David Thomas, of Pont y Wern, in the same neighbourhood, but as it contains nothing which I have not already given from Mr. Hughes' own, I pass it by. Mr. Thomas, however, has heard that the number of the houses making up the town of Corwrion some six or seven centuries ago was about seventy-five; but they were exactly seventy-three according to my next informant, Mr. David Evan Davies, of Treflys, Bethesda, better known by his bardic name of Dewi Glan Ffrydlas. Both these gentlemen have also heard the tradition that there was a church at Corwrion, where there used to be every Sunday a single service, after which the people went to a spot not far off to amuse themselves, and at night to watch the fairies dancing, or to mix with them while they danced in a ring around a glow-worm. According to Dewi Glan Ffrydlas, the spot was the Pen y Bonc, already mentioned, which means, among other things, that they chose a rising ground. This is referred to in a modern rhyme, which runs thus: A'r Tylwyth Teg yn dawnsio'n sionc With the fairies nimbly dancing round Dewi Glan Ffrydlas has kindly gone to the trouble of giving me a brief, but complete, version of the legend as he has heard it. It will be noticed that the discover ing of the fairy's name is an idle incident in this version : it is brought in too late, and no use is made of it when introduced. This is the substance of his story in English:-'At one of the dances at Pen y Bonc, the heir of Corwrion's eyes fell on one of the damsels of the fair family, and he was filled with love for her. Courtship and marriage in duetime ensued, but he had to agree to two conditions, namely, that he was neither to know her name nor to strike her with iron. By-andby they had children, and when the husband happened to go, during his wife's confinement, to a merry-making at Pen y Bonc, the fairies talked together concerning his wife, and in expressing their feelings of sympathy for her, they inadvertently betrayed the mystery of her name by mentioning it within his hearing. Years rolled on, when the husband and wife went out together one day to catch a colt of theirs that had not been broken in, their object being to go to Conway Fair. Now, as she was swifter of foot than her husband, she got hold of the colt by the mane, and called out to him to throw her a halter, but instead of throwing her the one she asked for, he threw another with iron in it, which struck her. Off she went into the lake. A grandson of this fairy many years afterwards married one of the girls of Corwrion. They had a large piece of land, but no means of stocking it, so that they felt rather distressed in their minds. But lo and behold! one day a whiteheaded bull came out of the lake, bringing with him six black cows to their land. There never were the like of those cows for milk, and great was the prosperity of their owners, as well as the envy it kindled in their neighbours' breasts. But when they both grew old and died, the bull and the cows went back into the lake.' Now I add the other sayings about the Tylwyth Teg, |