Celtic Lore & Legend

by Bob Curran

  “Rhag bod anwyd ar fy mab,

  Yn rhodd rhowch arno gob ai dad,

  Rhag bod anwyd ar liwr cann,

  Rhoddwch arni bais ei mam”.

  That is:

  “Oh! Lest my son should suffer cold,

  Him in his father’s coal infold.

  Lest cold should seize my darling fair,

  For her, her mother’s robe prepare”.

  These children and their descendants, they say, were called Pellings; a word corrupted from their mother’s name Penelope.

  Williams proceeds thus with reference to the descendants of this union:

  “The late Thomas Rowlands Esq., of Caeran in Anglesey, the father of the late Lady Bukeley, was a descendant of this lady if it be true that the name Pellings came from her; and there are still living several opulent and respectable people who are known to have sprung from the Pellings. The best blood in my own veins is this Fairy’s.”

  This tale was chronicled in the last century but it is not known whether every particular incident connected therewith was recorded by Williams. Glasynys, the Rev. Owen Wynne Jones, a clergyman, relates a tale in the Brython which he regards as the same tale as that given by Williams, and he says that he heard it scores of times when he was a lad. [Editor’s Note: Glasynys was the pen name used by another celebrated Welsh folklorist and antiquarian: Owen Wynne Jones, who contributed to the Brython, a Welsh journal of history, tradition and folklore, to which Elias Owen alludes.] Glasynys was born in the parish of Rhostryfan in Carnarvonshire in 1827, and as the place of his birth is not far distant from the scene of this legend, he may have heard a different version of Williams’s tale and that too of equal value with Williams’s Possibly, there are not more than from forty to fifty years between the time when that older writer heard the tale and the time when it was heard by the younger man. An octogenarian or even a younger person could have conversed with both Williams and Glasynys. Glasynys tale appears in Professor Rhys’s Welsh Fairy Tales, Cymmrodor, vol iv, p. 188. It originally appeared in the Brython for 1863 p. 193. It is as follows:

  “One fine sunny morning, as the young heir of Ystrad was busied with his sheep on the side of Moel Eilio, he met a very pretty girl, and when he got home he told the folks there of it. A few days afterwards, he met her again, and this happened several times, when he mentioned it to his father, who advised him to seize her when he next met her. The next time he met her he proceeded to do so, but before he could take her away, a little fat old man came to them and begged them to give her back to him, to which the youth would not listen. The little man uttered terrible threats, but he would not yield, so an agreement was made between them that he was to have her to wife until he touched her skin with iron, and great was the joy both of the son and his parents in consequence. They lived together for many years, but once on a time, on the evening of Bettws Fair, the wife’s horse got restive, and somehow as the husband was attending to the horse, the stirrups touched the skin of her bare leg, and that very night, she was taken away from him. She had three or four children and more than one of their descendants, as Glasynys maintains, were known to him at the time he wrote in 1863”.

  No Welsh Taboo story can be complete without the pretty tale of the Van Lake Legend or, as it is called “The Myddfai Legend”. Because of its intrinsic beauty and worth and for sake of comparison with the preceding stories, I will relate this legend. There are various versions. [Editor’s Note: For comparative purposes I have chosen a version to which Elias Owen alludes and recounts in his Notes and which appeared in a volume of the Cambro-Briton in 1821.]

  3. The Myddvai Legend

  “A man who lived in the farmhouse called Esgair-Ileathdy, in the parish of Myddvai in Carmarthenshire, having bought some lambs in a neighbouring fair, brought them to graze near Llyn a Van Voch on the Black Mountains. Whenever he visited the lambs, three most beautiful female figures presented themselves to him from the lake and often made excursions on the boundaries of it. For some time, he pursued and endeavoured to catch them, but always failed; for the enchanting nymphs, and, when they had reached the lake they tauntingly exclaimed:

  Cras dy fara,

  Anhawdd ein dala.

  which, with a little circumlocution, means “For thee, who eatest baked bread, it is difficult to catch us”.

  One day some moist bread from the lake came to shore. The farmer devoured it with great avidity, and on the following day he was successful in his pursuit and caught the fair damsels. After a little conversation with them, he commanded courage sufficient to make a proposal of marriage to one of them. They consented to accept him on the condition that he would distinguish her from her two sisters on the following day. This was a new and very great difficulty to the young farmer, for the fair nymphs were so similar in form and features, that he could scarcely perceive any difference between them. He observed, however, a trifling singularity in the strapping of her sandal by which he recognised her the following day. Some indeed who relate this legend, say that this Lady of the Lake hinted in a private conversation with her swain that upon the day of the trial, she would place herself between her two sisters and that she would turn her right foot a little to the right and by this means, he distinguished her from her sisters. Whatever were the means, the end was secured, he selected her and she immediately left the lake and accompanied him to his farm. Before she quitted, she summoned to attend her from the lake, seven cows, two oxen, and one bull.

  The lady engaged to live with him until such time as he would strike her three times without cause. For some years they lived together in comfort and she bore him three sons, who were the celebrated Meddygon Myddvai.

  One day when preparing for a fair in the neighbourhood, he desired her to go to the field for his horse. She said she would, but being rather dilatory, he said to her humorously, “dos, dos. Dos—i.e. go, go, go” and he slightly touched her on the arm, three times with his glove.

  As she now deemed the terms of her marriage broken, she immediately departed, and summoned with her her seven cows, her two oxen and the bull. The oxen were at that very time ploughing in the field but they immediately obeyed her call and took the plough with them. The furrow from the field in which they were ploughing, to the margin of the lake is to be seen in several parts of that country to the present day.

  After her departure, she once met her two sons in a Cwm, now called Cwm Meddygon (Physicians Combe) and delivered to each of them a bag containing some articles which are unknown but which are supposed to have been some discoveries in medicine.

  The Meddygon Myddvai were Rhiwallon and his sons, Cadwgan, Gruffydd, and Einion. They were the chief physicians of their age, and they wrote about A.D. 1230. A copy of their works is in the Welsh School Library, in Grey’s Inn Lane.

  Such are the Welsh Taboo tales. I will now make a few remarks upon them.

  The age of these legends is worthy of consideration. The legend of Meddygon Myddvai dates from about the thirteenth century. Rhiwallon and his sons, we are told by the writer of the Cambro-Briton wrote about 1230 A.D. but the editor of that publication speaks of a manuscript written by these physicians about the year 1300. Modern experts think that their treatise on medicine in the Red Book of Hengist belongs to the end of the fourteenth century, about 1380 or 1400.

  Dyfydd ab Gwilym, who is said to have flourished in the fourteenth century, says in one of his poems, as given in the Cambro-Briton, vol ii, p 313, alluding to these physicians:

  “Meddyg nis gwnai modd y gwaeth

  Myddfai, o chai ddyn maddfaeth”

  “A Physician he would not make,

  As Myddvai made, if he had a mead fostered man”

  It would appear, therefore, that these celebrated physicians lived somewhere about the thirteenth century. They are describes as the Physicians of Rhys Gryg, a prince of South Wales, who lived in the early part of the thirteenth century. Their supposed supernatural origin dates therefore from the thirteenth or at the latest, the fourteenth cent
ury.

  I have mentioned Y Gwylliaid Cochion, or as they are generally styled, Gwylliaid Cochion Mawddwy, the Red Fairies of Mawddwy as being of Fairy origin. The Llanfrothen Legend [Editor’s Note: There is an ancient story from Llanfrothen in Merionethshire in which a shepherd marries a maiden who emerges from a hill. She lives with him for a number of years and they have several children. When touched with iron, she tells him that she must now depart and return to her former life. He asks what will become of the children without a mother, to which she replies, “Let them be red-headed and big-nosed.”] seems to account for a race of men in Wales differing from their neighbours in certain features. The offspring of the Fairy union were, according to the Fairy mother’s prediction in that legend, to have red hair and prominent noses. That a race of men having these characteristics did exist in Wales is undoubted. They were a strong tribe, the men were tall and athletic, and lived by plunder. They had their head quarters at Dinas Mawddwy, Merionethshire and taxed their neighbours in open day, driving away sheep and cattle to their dens. So unbearable did their depredations become that John Wynn ap Meredydd of Gwydir and Lewis Owen, or as he is called Baron Owen, raised a body of stout men and overcame them on Christmas Eve, 1554, succeeded in capturing a large number of the offenders and, then and there, some hundred or so of the robbers were hung. Tradition says that a mother begged hard for the life of a young son, who was to be destroyed, but Baron Owen would not relent. On perceiving that her request was unheeded, baring her breast, she said:

  “Y bronan melynion hyn a fagasant y rhai a didialant waed fy mab, ac a olchant en dwylaw yu ugwaed calon Ilolrudd en brawd”

  “These yellow breasts have nursed those who will revenge my son’s blood and will wash their hands in the heart’s blood of this murderer of their brother”

  According to Pennant this threat was carried out by the murder of Baron Owen in 1555 when he was passing through the thick woods of Mawddwy on his way to Montgomeryshire Assizes at a place called to this day Llidiart y Barwn, the Baron’s Gate, from the deed. Tradition further tells us that the murderers had gone a distance off before they remembered their mother’s threat and returning thrust their swords into the Baron’s heart and washed their hands in his heart’s blood. This act was followed by vigorous action, and the banditti were extirpated, the females only remaining, and the descendants of these women are occasionally still to be met with in Montgomeryshire and Merionethshire.

  For the preceding information, the writer is indebted to YrHynafion Cmyru rig pp. 91-94, Archaeologia Cambrensis for 1854 pp. 119-20: Pennant vol ii, pp. 225-27. ed. Carnarvon , and the tradition that was told him by the Rev. D. James, Vicar of Garthbeibio, who likewise pointed out to him the very spot where the Baron was murdered.

  But now, who were these Gwylliaid? According to the hint conveyed by their name, they were of Fairy parentage, an idea which the writer in the Archaeologia Cambrensis, vol v 1854 p.119, intended to throw out. But, according to Brut y Tywysogion, Myf. Arch., p. 706 A.D. 1114, Denbigh edition, the Gwylliaid Cochion Mawddwy began in the time of Cadwgan ab Bleddyn ab Cynwyn.

  From William’s Eminent Welshmen, we gather that Prince Cadwgan died in 1110 A.D. and, according to the abovementioned Brut, it was in his days that the Gwylliaid commenced their career if not their existence.

  Unfortunately, for this beginning of the red-headed banditti of Mawddwy, Tacitus states in his Life of Agricola ch. xi that there were in Britain, men with red hair whom he surmises were of German extraction. We must, therefore, look for the commencement of a people of this description long before the twelfth century, and the Llanfrothen legend either dates from remote antiquity or it was some tale that found in its wanderings, a resting place in that locality in ages long past.

  From a legend recorded by Geraldus Cambrensius which shall by and by be given, it would seem that a priest named Elidorus lived among the Fairies in their home in the bowels of the earth, and this would be in the early part of the twelfth century. [Editor’s Note: In another part of his work, Owen refers to a legend from Cambrensius’s “Itinerary through Wales,” which the Archdeacon had learned in 1188 during a visit to St. David’s. The legend, already ancient at the time, relates how a boy, Elidorus, being trained for the priesthood and anxious to escape his rigorous masters, fled into an underground world inhabited by a smaller race of men and women who spoke a language similar to Greek. He lived amongst them for a time, returning occasionally to his own sphere and at last was prevailed upon by friends and family to return permanently and to resume his priestly studies. Cambrensius cites the source of this tale as being David II, former Bishop of St. David’s who died in 1176 and who allegedly had spoken to Elidorius when the priest was in his old age and who also had learned some of the language of the underground world.] The question arises, is the priest’s tale credible, or did he merely relate a story of himself which had been ascribed to some one else in the traditions of the people? If his tale is true, then, there lived even in that late period a remnant of the aborigines of the country, who had their homes in caves. The Myddvai Legend in part corroborates this supposition for the story apparently belongs to the thirteenth century.

  It is difficult to fix the date of the other legends here given, for they are dressed in modern garb with, however, trappings of remote times. Probably all these tales have reached, through oral tradition, historic times but in reality they belong to that far-off distant period when the prehistoric inhabitants of this island dwelt in Lake-habitations, or in caves. And the marriage of Fairy ladies, with men of a different race, intimate that the more ancient people were not extirpated but were amalgamated with their conquerors.

  The Tale of Connal

  As Christianity began to spread across the Celtic world, the ancient tales began to adapt in order to include elements of the new faith. Many of these old stories concerned the deeds of mighty heroes of times long past and of their battles against monsters and giants. Some of them would later form the basis of well-known fairy tales such as “Jack the Giant Killer,” which is the adaptation of an old tale from Cornwall where giants and monstrous men were believed to be plentiful.

  Scotland, too, has several legends of these monstrous ogres, usually living in the Western Highlands and who were defeated by ancient Scottish kings and heroes. According to extremely ancient travelers’ tales, a race of huge and mighty men lived along the coasts of Argyll and Kintyre and in the North Antrim area of Ireland who preyed on passing ships, luring them to their doom on the rocks with fires and torches, which the sailors mistook for signals. According to these same stories, these giants were cannibals who quickly devoured those who survived the shipwrecks. For example, it was said that three great cannibal sisters dwelt in the coastal Ballypatrick Forest, near the present-day town of Ballycastle in North Antrim, devouring those who were washed up on the beaches below or who passed by their huge stone house beside a trail that led through the forest to the clifftops beyond. They were slain by a Highland hero (different names are given for him, and in some cases more than one hero is mentioned) who came from the Mull of Kintyre to accomplish the deed. In some variants of the tale, they were slain by a bishop, emphasising the power of the Church over the pagan past and bringing Christian elements into the story.

  The following story comes from the Western Highlands. It is part of a series of folktales collected there by J. F. Campbell from a number of old people whom he interviewed. Two sources are given for it. Campbell notes a Hector Urquart, whom he spoke to on June 27, 1859, but the actual story was recited by Kenneth MacLennan, aged 70, from Turnaig, Pool Ewe in Ross-shire, who was able to repeat the story, which he’d heard when only a young boy. It is probably a remnant of a number of ancient hero stories from the Highland Celtic tradition that have been given some passing and superficial Christian elements. According to the notes, the tale was originally recited in Scots Gaelic and the translation is Campbell’s own.

  Story by J.F. Campbell

  There was a king o
ver Eirinn once, who was named King Cruachan, and he had a son who was called Connal MacRigh Cruachan. The mother of Connal died, and the father married another woman. She was for finishing Connal, so that his kingdom might belong to her own posterity. He had a foster mother, and it was in the house of his foster-mother that he made his home. He and his eldest brother were right-hand of each other [Editor’s Note: They were close.]; and the mother was vexed because Connal was so fond of her big son. There was a bishop in the place, and he died; and he desired that his gold and silver should be placed beside him in the grave. Connal was at the bishop’s burying, and he saw a great bag of gold being placed at the bishop’s head and a bag of silver at his feet, in the grave. Connal said to his five foster-brothers that they would go in search of the bishop’s gold and when they reached the grave, Connal asked them which they would rather; go down into the grave, or hold up the flagstone. They said that they would hold up the flag. Connal went down and whatever the squealing was that they heard, they let go the flag and took to their soles home. Here he was, in the grave, on top of the bishop. When the five of the foster brothers reached the house, their mother was somewhat more sorrowful for Connal than she would have been for the five. At the end of seven mornings, there went a company of young lads to take the gold out of the bishops grave, and when they reached the grave, they threw the flag to the side of the further wall; Connal stirred below, and when he stirred they went, and they left each arm and dress that they had. Connal arose and he took with him the gold, and arms and dress, and he reached his foster mother with them. They were all merry and lighthearted as long as the gold and silver lasted.