Celtic Folklore: Welsh and Manx (Volume 1 of 2)

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12 The Ty-fry is a house said to be some 200 years old, and situated about two miles from Rhonđa Fechan: more exactly it is about one-fourth of a mile from the station of Ystrad Rhonđa, and stands at the foot of Mynyđ yr Eglwys on the Treorky side. It is now surrounded by the cottages of colliers, one of whom occupies it. For this information I have to thank Mr. Probert Evans. ↑

13 It is to be borne in mind that the sound of h is uncertain in Glamorgan pronunciation, whether the language used is Welsh or English. The pronunciation indicated, however, by Mr. Evans comes near enough to the authentic form written Elfarch. ↑

14 In the Snowdon district of Gwyneđ the call is drwi, drwi, drŵ-i bach, while in North Cardiganshire it is trwi, trwi, trw-e fach, also pronounced sometimes with a surd r, produced by making the breath cause both lips to vibrate—tR′wi, tR′wi, which can hardly be distinguished from pR′wi, pR′wi. For the more forcibly the lips are vibrated the more difficult it becomes to start by closing them to pronounce p: so the tendency with R′ is to make the preceding consonant into some kind of a t. ↑

15 This is the Welsh form of the borrowed name Jane, and its pronunciation in North Cardiganshire is Si̯ân, with si̯ pronounced approximately like the ti of such French words as nation and the like; but of late years I find the si̯ made into English sh under the influence, probably, to some extent of the English taught at school. This happens in North Wales, even in districts where there are still plenty of people who cannot approach the English words fish and shilling nearer than fiss and silling. Si̯ôn and Si̯ân represent an old importation of English John and Jane, but they are now considered old-fashioned and superseded by John and Jane, which I learned to pronounce Dsi̯òn and Dsi̯ên, except that Si̯ôn survives as a family name, written Shone, in the neighbourhood of Wrexham. ↑

16 This term dafad (or dafaden), ‘a sheep,’ also used for ‘a wart,’ and dafad (or dafaden) wyỻt, literally ‘a wild sheep,’ for cancer or epithelioma, raises a question which I am quite unable to answer: why should a wart have been likened to a sheep? ↑

17 The name is probably a shortening of Caweỻyn, and that perhaps of Caweỻ-lyn, ‘Creel or Basket Lake.’ Its old name is said to have been Ỻyn Tarđenni. ↑

18Tyn is a shortening of tyđyn, which is not quite forgotten in the case of Tyn Gadlas or Tyn Siarlas (for Tyđyn Siarlys), ‘Charles’ Tenement,’ in the immediate neighbourhood. Similarly the Anglesey Farm of Tyn yr Onnen used at one time to be Tyđyn yr Onnen in the books of Jesus College, Oxford, to which it belongs. ↑

19 That is the pronunciation which I have learnt at Ỻanberis, but there is another, which I have also heard, namely Derwenyđ. ↑

20Ystrad is the Welsh corresponding to Scotch strath, and it is nearly related to the English word strand. It means the flat land near a river. ↑

21Betws (or Bettws) Garmon seems to mean Germanus’s Bede-hūs or House of Prayer, but Garmon can hardly have come down in Welsh from the time of the famous saint in the fifth century, as it would then have probably yielded Gerfon and not Garmon: it looks as if it had come through the Goidelic of this country. ↑

22 One of the rare merits of our Welsh bards is their habit of assuming permanent noms de plume, by means of which they prevent a number of excellent native names from falling into utter oblivion in the general chaos of Anglo-Hebrew ones, such as Jones, Davies, and Williams, which cover the Principality. Welsh place-names have similarly been threatened by Hebrew names of chapels, such as Bethesda, Rehoboth, and Jerusalem, but in this direction the Jewish mania has only here and there effected permanent mischief. ↑

23 The Brython was a valuable Welsh periodical published by Mr. Robert Isaac Jones, at Tremadoc, in the years 1858–1863, and edited by the Rev. Chancellor Silvan Evans, who was then the curate of Ỻangïan in Ỻeyn: in fact he was curate for fourteen years! His excellent work in editing the Brython earned for him his diocesan’s displeasure, but it is easier to imagine than to describe how hard it was for him to resign the honorarium of £24 derived from the Brython when his stipend as a clergyman was only £92, at the same time that he had dependent on him a wife and six children. However much some people affect to laugh at the revival of the national spirit in Wales, we have, I think, got so far as to make it, for some time to come, impossible for a Welsh clergyman to be snubbed on account of his literary tastes or his delight in the archæology of his country. ↑

24 This parish is called after a saint named Tegái or Tygái, like Tyfaelog and Tysilio, and though the accent rests on the final syllable nothing could prevent the grammarian Huw Tegai and his friends from making it into Tégai in Huw’s name. ↑

25 For can they now usually put Ann, and Mr. Hughes remembers hearing it so many years ago. ↑

26 I remember seeing a similar mound at Ỻanfyrnach, in Pembrokeshire; and the last use made of the hollow on the top of this also is supposed to have been for cock-fights. ↑

27 My attention has also been called to freit, frete, freet, fret, ‘news, inquiry, augury,’ corresponding to Anglo-Saxon freht, ‘divination.’ But the disparity of meaning seems to stand in the way of our ffrit being referred to this origin. ↑

28 The Oxford Mabinogion, p. 63; Guest, iii. 223. ↑

29 See the Itinerarium Kambriæ, i. 2 (pp. 33–5), and Celtic Britain, p. 64. ↑

30 As for example in the Archæologia Cambrensis for 1870, pp. 192–8; see also 1872, pp. 146–8. ↑

31 Howells has also an account of Ỻyn Savadhan, as he writes it: see his Cambrian Superstitions, pp. 100–2, where he quaintly says that the story of the wickedness of the ancient lord of Syfađon is assigned as the reason why ‘the superstitious little river Lewenny will not mix its water with that of the lake.’ Lewenny is a reckless improvement of Mapes’ Leueni (printed Lenem); and Giraldus’ Clamosum implies an old spelling Ỻefni, pronounced the same as the later spelling Ỻyfni, which is now made into Ỻynfi or Ỻynvi: the river so called flows through the lake and into the Wye at Glasbury. As to Safađan or Syfađon, it is probably of Goidelic origin, and to be identified with such an Irish name as the feminine Samthann: see Dec. 19 in the Martyrologies. To keep within our data, we are at liberty to suppose that this was the name of the wicked princess in the story, and that she was the ancestress of a clan once powerful on and around the lake, which lies within a Goidelic area indicated by its Ogam inscriptions. ↑