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

The last name in the final triplet of the poem which I have attempted to translate is Kinran, which is otherwise unknown as a Welsh name; but I am inclined to identify it with that of one of the three who escaped the catastrophe in the Irish legend. The name there is Curnán, which was borne by the idiot of the family, who, like many later idiots, was at the same time a prophet. For he is represented as always prophesying that the waters were going to burst forth, and as advising his friends to prepare boats. So he may be set, after a fashion, over against our Seithenhin synhuir vann, ‘S. of the feeble mind.’ But one might perhaps ask why I do not point out an equivalent in Irish for the Welsh Seithennin, as his name is now pronounced. The fact is that no such equivalent occurs in the Irish story in question, nor exactly, so far as I know, in any other.

That is what I wrote when penning these notes; but it has occurred to me since then, that there is an Irish name, an important Irish name, which looks as if related to Seithenhin, and that is Setanta Beg, ‘the little Setantian,’ the first name of the Irish hero Cúchulainn. The nt, I may point out, makes one suspect that Setanta is a name of Brythonic origin in Irish; and I have been in the habit of associating it with that of the people of the Setantii19, placed by Ptolemy on the coast of what is now Lancashire. Whether any legend has ever been current about a country submerged on the coast of Lancashire I cannot say, but the soundings would make such a legend quite comprehensible. I remember, however, reading somewhere as to the Plain of Muirthemhne, of which Cúchulainn, our Setanta Beg, had special charge, that it was so called because it had once been submarine and become since the converse, so to say, of Seithennin’s country. The latter is beneath Cardigan Bay, while the other fringed the opposite side of the sea, consisting as it did of the level portion of County Louth. On the whole, I am not altogether indisposed to believe that we have here traces of an ancient legend of a wider scope than is represented by the Black Book triplets, which I have essayed to translate. I think that I am right in recognizing that legend in the Mabinogi of Branwen, daughter of Ỻyr. There we read that, when Brân and his men crossed from Wales to Ireland, the intervening sea consisted merely of two navigable rivers, called Ỻi and Archan.

These are not all the questions which such stories suggest; for Seithennin is represented in later Welsh literature as the son of one Seithyn, associated with Dyfed; and the name Seithyn leads off to the coast of Brittany. For I learn from a paper by the late M. le Men, in the Revue Archéologique for 1872 (xxiii. 52), that the Île de Sein is called in Breton Enez-Sun, in which Sun is a dialectic shortening of Sizun, which is also met with as Seidhun. That being so, one would seem to be right in regarding Sizun as nearly related to our Seithyn. That is not all—the tradition reminds one of the Welsh legend: M. le Men refers to the Vie du P. Maunoir by Boschet (Paris, 1697) p. 126, and adds that, in his own time, the road ending on the Pointe du Raz opposite the Île de Sein passed ‘pour être l’ancien chemin qui conduisait à la ville d’Is (Kaer-a-Is, la ville de la partie basse).’ It is my own experience, that nobody can go about much in Brittany without hearing over and over again about the submerged city of Is. There is no doubt that we have in these names distant echoes of an inundation story, once widely current in both Britains and perhaps also in Ireland. With regard to Wales we have an indication to that effect in the fact, that Gwyđno, to whom the inundated region is treated as having belonged, is associated not only with Cardigan Bay, but also with the coast of North Wales, especially the part of it situated between Bangor and Ỻandudno21.

Adjoining it is supposed to lie submerged a once fertile district called Tyno Helig, a legend about which will come under notice later. This brings the inundation story nearer to the coast where Ptolemy in the second century located the Harbour of the Setantii, about the mouth of the river Ribble, and in their name we seem to have some sort of a historical basis for that of the drunken Seithennin22. I cannot close these remarks better than by appending what Professor Boyd Dawkins has recently said with regard to the sea between Britain and Ireland:—

‘It may be interesting to remark further that during the time of the Iberian dominion in Wales, the geography of the seaboard was different to what it is now. A forest, containing the remains of their domestic oxen that had run wild, and of the indigenous wild animals such as the bear and the red deer, united Anglesey with the mainland, and occupied the shallows of Cardigan Bay, known in legend as “the lost lands of Wales.” It extended southwards from the present sea margin across the estuary of the Severn, to Somerset, Devon, and Cornwall. It passed northwards across the Irish Sea off the coast of Cheshire and Lancashire, and occupied Morecambe Bay with a dense growth of oak, Scotch fir, alder, birch, and hazel. It ranged seawards beyond the ten-fathom line, and is to be found on most shores beneath the sand-banks and mud-banks, as for example at Rhyl and Cardiff. In Cardigan Bay it excited the wonder of Giraldus de Barri23.’

To return to fairy wells, I have to confess that I cannot decide what may be precisely the meaning of the notion of a well with a woman set carefully to see that the door or cover of the well is kept shut. It will occur, however, to everybody to compare the well which Undine wished to have kept shut, on account of its affording a ready access from her subterranean country to the residence of her refractory knight in his castle above ground. And in the case of the Glasfryn Lake, the walling and cover that were to keep the spring from overflowing were, according to the story, not water-tight, seeing that there were holes made in one of the stones. This suggests the idea that the cover was to prevent the passage of some such full-grown fairies as those with which legend seems to have once peopled all the pools and tarns of Wales. But, in the next place, is the maiden in charge of the well to be regarded as priestess of the well? The idea of a priesthood in connexion with wells in Wales is not wholly unknown.

I wish, however, before discussing these instances, to call attention to one or two Irish ones which point in another direction. Foremost may be mentioned the source of the river Boyne, which is now called Trinity Well, situated in the Barony of Carbury, in County Kildare. The following is the Rennes Dindsenchas concerning it, as translated by Dr. Stokes, in the Revue Celtique, xv. 315–6:—‘Bóand, wife of Nechtán son of Labraid, went to the secret well which was in the green of Síd Nechtáin. Whoever went to it would not come from it without his two eyes bursting, unless it were Nechtán himself and his three cup-bearers, whose names were Flesc and Lám and Luam. Once upon a time Bóand went through pride to test the well’s power, and declared that it had no secret force which could shatter her form, and thrice she walked withershins round the well. (Whereupon) three waves from the well break over her and deprive her of a thigh [? wounded her thigh] and one of her hands and one of her eyes. Then she, fleeing her shame, turns seaward, with the water behind her as far as Boyne-mouth, (where she was drowned).’ This is to explain why the river is called Bóand, ‘Boyne.’ A version to the same effect in the Book of Leinster, fol. 191a, makes the general statement that no one who gazed right into the well could avoid the instant ruin of his two eyes or otherwise escape with impunity. A similar story is related to show how the Shannon, in Irish Sinann, Sinand, or Sinend, is called after a woman of that name.

It occurs in the same Rennes manuscript, and the following is Stokes’ translation in the Revue Celtique, xv. 457:—‘Sinend, daughter of Lodan Lucharglan son of Ler out of Tir Tairngire (Land of Promise, Fairyland), went to Connla’s Well, which is under sea, to behold it. That is a well at which are the hazels and inspirations (?) of wisdom, that is, the hazels of the science of poetry, and in the same hour their fruit and their blossom and their foliage break forth, and these fall on the well in the same shower, which raises on the water a royal surge of purple. Then the salmon chew the fruit, and the juice of the nuts is apparent on their purple bellies. And seven streams of wisdom spring forth and turn there again. Now Sinend went to seek the inspiration, for she wanted nothing save only wisdom. She went with the stream till she reached Linn Mna Feile, “the Pool of the Modest Woman,” that is Bri Ele—and she went ahead on her journey; but the well left its place, and she followed it24 to the banks of the river Tarr-cáin, “Fair-back.” After this it overwhelmed her, so that her back (tarr) went upwards, and when she had come to the land on this side (of the Shannon) she tasted death. Whence Sinann and Linn Mna Feile and Tarr-cain.’

In these stories the reader will have noticed that the foremost punishment on any intruder who looked into the forbidden well was the instant ruin of his two eyes. One naturally asks why the eyes are made the special objects of the punishment, and I am inclined to think the meaning to have originally been that the well or spring was regarded as the eye of the divinity of the water. Should this prove well founded it looks natural that the eyes, which transgressed by gazing into the eye of the divinity, should be the first objects of that divinity’s vengeance. This is suggested to me by the fact that the regular Welsh word for the source of a river is ỻygad, Old Welsh licat, ‘eye,’ as for instance in the case of Licat Amir mentioned by Nennius, § 73; of Ỻygad Ỻychwr, ‘the source of the Loughor river’ in the hills behind Carreg Cennen Castle; and of the weird lake in which the Rheidol25 rises near the top of Plinlimmon: it is called Ỻyn Ỻygad y Rheidol, ‘the Lake of the Rheidol’s Eye.’ By the way, the Rheidol is not wholly without its folklore, for I used to be told in my childhood, that she and the Wye and the Severn sallied forth simultaneously from Plinlimmon one fine morning to run a race to the sea. The result was, one was told, that the Rheidol won great honour by reaching the sea three weeks before her bigger sisters. Somebody has alluded to the legend in the following lines:—

To return to the Irish legends, I may mention that Eugene O’Curry has a good deal to say of the mysterious nuts and ‘the salmon of knowledge,’ the partaking of which was synonymous with the acquisition of knowledge and wisdom: see his Manners and Customs of the Ancient Irish, ii. 142–4. He gives it as his opinion that Connla’s Well was situated somewhere in Lower Ormond; but the locality of this Helicon, with the seven streams of wisdom circulating out of it and back again into it, is more intelligible when regarded as a matter of fairy geography. A portion of the note appended to the foregoing legend by Stokes is in point here: he traces the earliest mention of the nine hazels of wisdom, growing at the heads of the chief rivers of Ireland, to the Dialogue of the Two Sages in the Book of Leinster, fol. 186b, whence he cites the poet Néde mac Adnai saying whence he had come, as follows:—a caillib .i. a nói collaib na Segsa … a caillib didiu assa mbenaiter clessa na súad tanacsa, ‘from hazels, to wit, from the nine hazels of the Segais … from hazels out of which are obtained the feats of the sages, I have come.’ The relevancy of this passage will be seen when I add, that Segais was one of the names of the mound in which the Boyne rises; so it may be safely inferred that Bóand’s transgression was of the same nature as that of Sinand, to wit, that of intruding on sacred ground in quest of wisdom and inspiration which was not permitted their sex: certain sources of knowledge, certain quellen, were reserved for men alone.

Before I have done with the Irish instances I must append one in the form it was told me in the summer of 1894: I was in Meath and went to see the remarkable chambered cairns on the hill known as Sliabh na Caillighe, ‘the Hag’s Mountain,’ near Oldcastle and Lough Crew. I had as my guide a young shepherd whom I picked up on the way. He knew all about the hag after whom the hill was called except her name: she was, he said, a giantess, and so she brought there, in three apronfuls, the stones forming the three principal cairns. As to the cairn on the hill point known as Belrath, that is called the Chair Cairn from a big stone placed there by the hag to serve as her seat when she wished to have a quiet look on the country round. But usually she was to be seen riding on a wonderful pony she had: that creature was so nimble and strong that it used to take the hag at a leap from one hill-top to another. However, the end of it all was that the hag rode so hard that the pony fell down, and that both horse and rider were killed. The hag appears to have been Cailleach Bhéara, or Caillech Bérre, ‘the Old Woman of Beare,’ that is, Bearhaven, in County Cork26. Now the view from the Hag’s Mountain is very extensive, and I asked the shepherd to point out some places in the distance.

Among other things we could see Lough Ramor, which he called the Virginia Water, and more to the west he identified Lough Sheelin, about which he had the following legend to tell:—A long, long time ago there was no lake there, but only a well with a flagstone kept over it, and everybody would put the flag back after taking water out of the well. But one day a woman who fetched water from it forgot to replace the stone, and the water burst forth in pursuit of the luckless woman, who fled as hard as she could before the angry flood. She continued until she had run about seven miles—the estimated length of the lake at the present day. Now at this point a man, who was busily mowing hay in the field through which she was running, saw what was happening and mowed the woman down with his scythe, whereupon the water advanced no further. Such was the shepherd’s yarn, which partly agrees with the Boyne and Shannon stories in that the woman was pursued by the water, which only stopped where she died. On the other hand, it resembles the Ỻyn Ỻech Owen legend and that of Lough Neagh in placing to the woman’s charge only the neglect to cover the well. It looks as if we had in these stories a confusion of two different institutions, one being a well of wisdom which no woman durst visit without fatal vengeance overtaking her, and the other a fairy well which was attended to by a woman who was to keep it covered, and who may, perhaps, be regarded as priestess of the spring.

If we try to interpret the Cantre’r Gwaelod story from these two points of view we have to note the following matters:—Though it is not said that the moruin, or damsel, had a lid or cover on the well, the word golligaut or helligaut, ‘did let run,’ implies some such an idea as that of a lid or door; for opening the sluices, in the sense of the later version, seems to me out of the question. In two of the Englynion she is cursed for the action implied, and if she was the well minister or well servant, as I take finaun wenestir to mean, we might perhaps regard her as the priestess of that spring. On the other hand, the prevailing note in the other Englynion is the traha, ‘presumption, arrogance, insolence, pride,’ which forms the burden of four out of five of them. This would seem to point to an attitude on the part of the damsel resembling that of Bóand or Sinand when prying into the secrets of wells which were tabu to them. The seventh Englyn alludes to wines, and its burden is gormođ, ‘too much, excess, extravagance,’ whereby the poet seems to lend countenance to some such a later story as that of Seithennin’s intemperance.

Lastly, the question of priest or priestess of a sacred well has been alluded to once or twice, and it may be perhaps illustrated on Welsh ground by the history of Ffynnon Eilian, or St. Elian’s Well, which has been mentioned in another context, p. 357 above. Of that well we read as follows, s. v. Ỻandriỻo, in the third edition of Lewis’ Topographical Dictionary of Wales:—‘Fynnon Elian, … even in the present age, is frequently visited by the superstitious, for the purpose of invoking curses upon the heads of those who have grievously offended them, and also of supplicating prosperity to themselves; but the numbers are evidently decreasing. The ceremony is performed by the applicant standing upon a certain spot near the well, whilst the owner of it reads a few passages of the sacred Scriptures, and then, taking a small quantity of water, gives it to the former to drink, and throws the residue over his head, which is repeated three times, the party continuing to mutter imprecations in whatever terms his vengeance may dictate.’ Rice Rees, in his Essay on the Welsh Saints (London, 1836), p. 267, speaks of St. Elian as follows: ‘Miraculous cures were lately supposed to be performed at his shrine at Ỻanelian, Anglesey; and near to the church of Ỻanelian, Denbighshire, is a well called Ffynnon Elian, which is thought by the peasantry of the neighbourhood to be endued with miraculous powers even at present.’

Foulkes, s. v. Elian, in his Enwogion Cymru, published in Liverpool in 1870, expresses the opinion that the visits of the superstitious to the well had ceased for some time. The last person supposed to have had charge of the well was a certain John Evans, but some of the most amusing stories of the shrewdness of the caretaker refer to a woman who had charge of the well before Evans’ time. A series of articles on Ffynnon Eilian appeared in 1861 in a Welsh periodical called Y Nofelyđ, printed by Mr. Aubrey at Ỻanerch y Međ, in Anglesey. The articles in question were afterwards published, I am told, as a shilling book, which I have not seen, and they dealt with the superstition, with the history of John Evans, and with his confessions and conversion. I have searched in vain for any account in Welsh of the ritual followed at the well. When Mrs. Silvan Evans visited the place, the person in charge of the well was a woman, and Peter Roberts, in his Cambrian Popular Antiquities, published in London in 1815, alludes to her or a predecessor of hers in the following terms, p. 246:—‘Near the Well resided some worthless and infamous wretch, who officiated as priestess.’ He furthermore gives one to understand that she kept a book in which she registered the name of each evil wisher for a trifling sum of money. When this had been done, a pin was dropped into the well in the name of the victim. This proceeding looks adequate from the magical point of view, though less complicated than the ritual indicated by Lewis.

This latter writer calls the person who took charge of the well the owner; and I have always understood that, whether owner or not, he or she used to receive gifts, not only for placing in the well the names of men who were to be cursed, but also from those men for taking their names out again, so as to relieve them from the malediction. In fact, the trade in curses seems to have been a very thriving one: its influence was powerful and widespread.

Here there is, I think, very little doubt that the owner or guardian of the well was, so to say, the representative of an ancient priesthood of the well. That priesthood dated its origin probably many centuries before a Christian church was built near the well, and coming down to later times we have unfortunately no sufficient data to show how the right to such priesthood was acquired, whether by inheritance or otherwise; but we know that a woman might have charge of St. Elian’s Well.

Let me cite another instance, which I unexpectedly discovered some years ago in the course of a ramble in quest of early inscriptions. Among other places which I visited was Ỻandeilo Ỻwydarth, near Maen Clochog, in the northern part of Pembrokeshire. This is one of the many churches bearing the name of St. Teilo in South Wales: the building is in ruins, but the churchyard is still used, and contains two of the most ancient post-Roman inscriptions in the Principality. If you ask now for ‘Ỻandeilo’ in this district, you will be understood to be inquiring after the farm house of that name, close to the old church; and I learnt from the landlady that her family had been there for many generations, though they have not very long been the proprietors of the land. She also told me of St. Teilo’s Well, a little above the house: she added that it was considered to have the property of curing the whooping-cough. I asked if there was any rite or ceremony necessary to be performed in order to derive benefit from the water. Certainly, I was told: the water must be lifted out of the well and given to the patient to drink by some member of the family. To be more accurate, I ought to say that this must be done by somebody born in the house. Her eldest son, however, had told me previously, when I was busy with the inscriptions, that the water must be given to the patient by the heir, not by anybody else. Then came my question how the water was lifted, or out of what the patient had to drink, to which I was answered that it was out of the skull. ‘What skull?’ said I. ‘St.

Teilo’s skull,’ was the answer. ‘Where do you get the saint’s skull?’ I asked. ‘Here it is,’ was the answer, and I was given it to handle and examine. I know next to nothing about skulls; but it struck me that it was the upper portion of a thick, strong skull, and it called to my mind the story of the three churches which contended for the saint’s corpse. That story will be found in the Book of Ỻan Dâv, pp. 116–7, and according to it the contest became so keen that it had to be settled by prayer and fasting. So, in the morning, lo and behold! there were three corpses of St. Teilo—not simply one—and so like were they in features and stature that nobody could tell which were the corpses made to order and which the old one. I should have guessed that the skull which I saw belonged to the former description, as not having been much thinned by the owner’s use of it; but this I am forbidden to do by the fact that, according to the legend, this particular Ỻandeilo was not one of the three contending churches which bore away in triumph a dead Teilo each. The reader, perhaps, would like to take another view, namely, that the story has been edited in such a way as to reduce a larger number of Teilos to three, in order to gratify the Welsh weakness for triads.

Since my visit to the neighbourhood I have been favoured with an account of the well as it is now current there. My informant is Mr. Benjamin Gibby of Ỻangolman Mill, who writes mentioning, among other things, that the people around call the well Ffynnon yr Ychen, or the Oxen’s Well, and that the family owning and occupying the farm house of Ỻandeilo have been there for centuries. Their name, which is Melchior (pronounced Melshor), is by no means a common one in the Principality, so far as I know; but, whatever may be its history in Wales, the bearers of it are excellent Kymry. Mr. Gibby informs me that the current story solves the difficulty as to the saint’s skull as follows:—The saint had a favourite maid servant from the Pembrokeshire Ỻandeilo: she was a beautiful woman, and had the privilege of attending on the saint when he was on his death-bed. As his end was approaching he gave his maid a strict and solemn command that in a year’s time from the day of his burial at Ỻandeilo Fawr, in Carmarthenshire, she was to take his skull to the other Ỻandeilo, and to leave it there to be a blessing to coming generations of men, who, when ailing, would have their health restored by drinking water out of it. So the belief prevailed that to drink out of the skull some of the water of Teilo’s Well ensured health, especially against the whooping-cough.

The faith of some of those who used to visit the well was so great in its efficacy, that they were wont to leave it, he says, with their constitutions wonderfully improved; and he mentions a story related to him by an old neighbour, Stifyn Ifan, who has been dead for some years, to the effect that a carriage, drawn by four horses, came once, more than half a century ago, to Ỻandeilo. It was full of invalids coming from Pen Clawđ, in Gower, Glamorganshire, to try the water of the well. They returned, however, no better than they came; for though they had drunk of the well, they had neglected to do so out of the skull. This was afterwards pointed out to them by somebody, and they resolved to make the long journey to the well again. This time they did the right thing, we are told, and departed in excellent health.

Such are the contents of Mr. Gibby’s Welsh letter; and I would now only point out that we have here an instance of a well which was probably sacred before the time of St. Teilo: in fact, one would possibly be right in supposing that the sanctity of the well and its immediate surroundings was one of the causes why the site was chosen by a Christian missionary. But consider for a moment what has happened: the well paganism has annexed the saint, and established a belief ascribing to him the skull used in the well ritual. The landlady and her family, it is true, neither believe in the efficacy of the well, nor take gifts from those who visit the well; but they continue, out of kindness, as they put it, to hand the skull full of water to any one who perseveres in believing in it. In other words, the faith in the well continues in a measure intact, while the walls of the church have long fallen into utter decay. Such is the great persistence of some primitive beliefs; and in this particular instance we have a succession which seems to point unmistakably to an ancient priesthood of a sacred spring.