See that the little fellow be present paying attention to what thou art doing, but take care not to call his attention to it-his attention must be drawn to it without calling to him-and very probably he will ask what thou wouldst be doing. Thou art to say that it is mixing a pasty for the reapers that thou art. Let me know what he will then say." The woman returned, and on the next day she followed the cunning man's1 advice to the letter: the little fellow stood by her and watched her minutely; presently he asked, "Mother, what are you doing?" Mixing a pasty for the reapers, my boy." "Oh, that is it. I heard from my father-he had heard it from his father and that one from his fatherthat an acorn was before the oak, and that the oak was in the earth; but I have neither heard nor seen anybody

' In Cardiganshire a conjurer is called dyn hysbys, where hysbys (or, in older orthography, hyspys) means 'informed': it is the man who is informed on matters which are dark to others; but the word is also used of factsY mae'r peth yn hysbys, 'the thing is known or manifest.' The word is divisible into hy-spys, which would be in Irish, had it existed in the language, so-scese for an early su-squestia-s, the related Irish words being ad-chiu, 'I see,' pass. preterite ad-chess, 'was seen,' and the like, in which ci and ces have been equated by Zimmer with the Sanskrit verb caksh, 'to see,' from a root quas. The adjective cynnil applied to the dyn hyspys in Glamorgan means now, as a rule, ' economical' or 'thrifty,' but in this instance it would seem to have signified 'shrewd,' 'cunning,' or 'clever,' though it would probably come nearer the original meaning of the word to render it by 'smart,' for it is in Irish conduail, which is found applied to ingenious work, such as the ornamentation on the hilt of a sword. Another term for a wizard or conjurer is gwr cyfarwyd, with which the reader is already familiar. Here cyfarwyd forms a link with the kyvarbyd of the Mabinogion, where it usually means a professional man, especially one skilled in story and history; and what constituted his knowledge was called kyvarbydyt, which included, among other things, acquaintance with boundaries and pedigrees, but it meant most frequently perhaps story; see the (Oxford) Mabinogion, pp. 5, 61, 72, 93. All these terms should, strictly speaking, have gwr-gwr hyspys, gwr cynnil, and gwr cyfarwyd—but for the fact that modern Welsh tends to restrict gwr to signify a husband' or 'a married man,' while dyn, which only signifies a mortal, is made to mean man, and provided with a feminine dynes, 'woman,' unknown to good Welsh literature. Thus the spoken language is in this matter nearly on a level with English and French, which have quite lost the word for vir and ȧvýp.

mixing the pasty for the reapers in an egg-shell." The woman observed that he looked very cross as he spoke, and that it so added to his ugliness that it made him highly repulsive.

'That afternoon the woman went to the cunning man in order to inform him of what the dwarf had said. "Oh," said he, "he is of that old breed; now the next full moon will be in four days-thou must go where the four roads meet above Rhyd y Gloch', at twelve o'clock the night the moon is full. Take care to hide thyself at a spot where thou canst see the ends of the crossroads; and shouldst thou see anything that would excite thee take care to be still and to restrain thyself from giving way to thy feelings, otherwise the scheme will be frustrated and thou wilt never have thy son back." The unfortunate mother knew not what to make of the strange story of the cunning man; she was in the dark as much as ever. At last the time came, and by the appointed hour she had concealed herself carefully behind a large bush close by, whence she could see everything around. She remained there a long time watching; but nothing was to be seen or heard, while the profound and melancholy silence of midnight dominated over all. At last she began to hear the sound of music approaching from afar; nearer and nearer the sweet sound continued to come, and she listened to it with rapt attention. Ere long it was close at hand, and she perceived that it was a procession of Bendith y

1 Rhyd y Gloch means 'the Ford of the Bell,' in allusion, as the story goes, to a silver bell that used in former ages to be at Lanwonno Church. The people of Lanfabon took a liking to it, and one night a band of them stole it; but as they were carrying it across the Taff the moon happened to make her appearance suddenly, and they, in their fright, taking it to be sunrise, dropped the bell in the bed of the river, so that nothing has ever been heard of it since. But for ages afterwards, and even at the present day indeed, nothing could rouse the natives of Lanfabon to greater fury than to hear the moon spoken of as haul ILanfabon,' the sun of ILanfabon.'

Mamau going somewhere or other. They were hundreds in point of number, and about the middle of the procession she beheld a sight that pierced her heart and made the blood stop in her veins-walking between four of the Bendith she saw her own dear little child. She nearly forgot herself altogether, and was on the point of springing into the midst of them violently to snatch him from them if she could; but when she was on the point of leaping out of her hiding place for that purpose, she thought of the warning of the cunning man, that any disturbance on her part would frustrate all, so that she would never get her child back. When the procession had wound itself past, and the sound of the music had died away in the distance, she issued from her concealment and directed her steps homewards. Full of longing as she was for her son before, she was much more so now; and her disgust at the little dwarf who claimed to be her son had very considerably grown, for she was now certain in her mind that he was one of the old breed. She knew not how to endure him for a moment longer under the same roof with her, much less his addressing her as "mother." However, she had enough restraining grace to behave becomingly towards the ugly little fellow that was with her in the house. On the morrow she went without delay to the "wise man" to relate what she had witnessed the previous night, and to seek further advice. The cunning man expected her, and as she entered he perceived by her looks that she had seen something that had disturbed her. She told him what she had beheld at the cross-roads, and when he had heard it he opened a big book which he had; then, after he had long pored over it, he told her, that before she could get her child back, it was necessary for her to find a black hen without a single white feather, or one of any other

colour than black: this she was to place to bake before a wood1 fire with its feathers and all intact. Moreover, as soon as she placed it before the fire, she was to close every hole and passage in the walls except one, and not to look very intently after the crimbil until the hen was done enough and the feathers had fallen off it every one: then she might look where he was.

'Strange as the advice of the wise man sounded, she resolved to try it; so she went the next day to search among the hens for one of the requisite description; but to her disappointment she failed to find one. She then walked from one farm house to another in her search; but fortune appeared to scowl at her, as she seemed to fail in her object. When, however, she was nearly disheartened, she came across the kind of hen she wanted at a farm at the end of the parish. She bought it, and after returning home she arranged the fire and killed the hen, which she placed in front of the bright fire burning on the hearth. Whilst watching the hen baking she altogether forgot the crimbil; and she fell into a sort of swoon, when she was astonished by the sound of music outside the house, similar to the music she had heard a few nights before at the crossroads. The feathers had by this time fallen off the hen, and when she came to look for the crimbil he had disappeared. The mother cast wild looks about the house, and to her joy she heard the voice of her lost son calling to her from outside. She ran to meet him, and embraced him fervently. But when she asked him where he had been so long, he had no account in the world to give but that he had been listening to pleasant music. He was very thin and worn in appearance when he was restored. Such is the story of the Lost Child.'

Let me remark as to the urchin's exclamation con1 It was peat fires that were usual in those days even in Glamorgan.

cerning the cooking done in the egg-shell, that Mr. Hughes, as the result of further inquiry, has given me what he considers a more correct version; but it is no less inconsequent, as will be seen :

Mi glywais gan fy nhad ac yntau gan ei dad, a hwnnw gan ei dad yntau, Fod mesen cyn derwen a'i phlannu mwn dâr:

Ni chlywais yn unman am gymysg y bastai yn masgal wy iâr.

I heard from my father and he from his father, and that one from his father, That the acorn exists before the oak and the planting of it in the ground: Never anywhere have I heard of mixing the pasty in the shell of a hen's egg.

In Dewi Glan Ffrydlas' story from the Ogwen Valley, in Carnarvonshire, p. 62 above, it is not the cooking of a pasty but the brewing of beer in an egg-shell. However what is most remarkable is that the egg-shell is similarly used in stories from other lands. Mr. Hartland cites one from Mecklenburg and another from Scandinavia. He also mentions stories in which the imp measures his own age by the number of forests which he has seen growing successively on the same soil, the formula being of the following kind: 'I have seen the Forest of Ardennes burnt seven times,' 'Seven times have I seen the wood fall in Lessö Forest,' or 'I am so old, I was already in the world before the Kamschtschen Wood (in Lithuania) was planted, wherein great trees grew, and that is now laid waste again. From these and the like instances it is clear that the Welsh versions here in question are partially blurred, as the fairy child's words should have been to the effect that he was old enough to remember the oak when it was yet but an acorn; and an instance of this explicit kind is given by Howells - it comes from ILandrygarn in Anglesey see p. 139, where his words run thus: 'I can remember yon oak an acorn, but I never saw in my life people brewing in an egg-shell before.' I may add

1 See Hartland's Science of Fairy Tales, pp. 112-6.