Baring-Gould Sabine
A Book of North Wales
“I remember hearing an instance which happened, I believe, about one hundred and fifty years ago. The ploughing oxen at Bodeon, on April 25th, took fright when at work, and ran over a steep rock and perished in the sea. This being S. Mark the Evangelist’s Day, it was considered that having done work on it was a transgression of a divine ordinance, and to prevent such accident for the future the proprietor of the farm ordered that this festival of S. Mark should be for the future invariably kept a holy day, and that two wax candles should annually on that day be kept burning in the church porch of Llanddwyn, which was the only part of the building that was covered in, as an offering and memorial of this transgression and accident, and as a token that S. Dwynwen’s aid and protection was solicited to prevent such catastrophe any more. This was only discontinued about eighty years ago, i. e. 1720.”
The Penrhyn slate quarries are reached by a branch line from Bangor to Bethesda. The quarrying is carried on upon a vast scale, and the place is interesting to the geologist on account of the presence, in the midst of a great dyke of greenstone, of an eruptive rock which has traversed the beds, and which has been left untouched.
The slates are cut to various sizes. Duchesses are the largest; then come Countesses and Ladies. About the beginning of last century a slate merchant of the name of Docer, going through the quarry with Lord Penrhyn, advised him that the slates should be made of such-and-such a size, and this is the origin of the name of “Docer.” By this time the skill of the quarryman and of the slater found some new plan continually. One wanted to do this, and another that. His lordship failed to please everybody. His lady, seeing him in this plight, and in continual trouble, advised him to call the slates after the names of the degrees in the aristocracy. He took up the suggestion, and called the 24 by 12 slate a Duchess, the 20 by 10 a Countess, and the 16 by 8 a Lady.
This has given occasion to some witty verses by an old Welsh judge, Mr. Leycester, and I venture to quote a few of them, though they have already been enshrined in that most delightful of all handbooks, The Gossiping Guide.
“It has truly been said, as we all must deplore,
That Grenville and Pitt have made peers by the score;
But now, ’tis asserted, unless I have blundered,
There’s a man who makes peeresses here by the hundred.
By the stroke of a hammer, without the King’s aid,
A Lady, or Countess, or Duchess is made.
And where’er they are seen, in a palace or shop,
Their rank they preserve, they are still at the top.
This Countess or Lady, though crowds may be present,
Submits to be dressed by the hands of a peasant,
And you’ll see, when Her Grace is but once in his clutches,
With how little respect he will handle a Duchess.”
An interesting example has been observed in the quarries of the direction in which a seismic wave passes. The slates are arranged in a long series. When a shock of earthquake comes it has been noticed that the slates click, click, click in succession, showing the course taken by the vibration of the earth, from east to west or from north to south.
The quarry presents a busy scene. A horn gives the signal for the blasting. When it sounds, at once the workmen disappear under sheds, till the explosion is over with its consequent rush and rattle of débris.
At Penrhyn died quite recently an old workman, Albert Davies, whose life’s story may be told, as it illustrates the intellectual and especially the theological bent of the Welsh mind. This mind is speculative and disputative, and it exercises itself by choice in political and theologic fields.
Albert Davies in his early years was a collier in South Wales, a member of a Calvinistic Methodist family, and could speak no other tongue but Welsh. From boyhood his great craving was for books, and, above all, for books that treated of sacred matters. In the dinner-hour it is very general for miners, quarrymen, and labourers to argue points of divinity, and Davies became a strong controversialist against the Unitarian and Socinian notions which were gaining ground among his associates. By degrees an idea germinated in his brain that as Calvin, Wesley, Luther, and other great founders had created organisations to maintain and propagate their opinions, so, in all probability, the great Founder of Christianity had formed a corporate body to carry on His teaching unto the end of time. He had never been brought into direct contact with the Church of England, and had an inherited prejudice against it, as purely English, and as representing Saxon domination over Wales, and he could think of no Body that would answer his requirements but the Roman Church. He accordingly took up the study of its teaching and claims, and became convinced that if Christ did found a community, it must be the Catholic Church, which the Roman Body asserted itself to be; and Davies was received into that communion.
After some years, however, his confidence gave way; he found, as he thought, too much credulity, too great demands made on faith; and he took to a study of the Fathers.
Then his faith gave way; he separated from the Roman Communion, and for a while was adrift in his convictions. He left the colliery in which hitherto he had worked, and wandered from place to place in bitterness of spirit, taking up occasional work here and there, unsettled in every way, spiritually as well as temporally.
After a while he settled as a quarryman at Penrhyn, and here for the first time came in contact with Anglican clergy, and found that the Church of England, while not pretending to be the whole Church, considered herself to be part and parcel of the One Body, with the sacred deposit of faith, orders, and sacraments. This gave him what he wanted, and Albert Davies now found his feet on what he thought was solid ground, and the old argumentative spirit reawoke in him, and the dinner-hour was once more the time for theological dialectics.
So years passed, and old age and ill-health crept on. The quarry work that he could do was ill-paid and precarious. He lived in chronic hunger, and often was too poor to afford himself a fire in winter; for every penny he could spare was spent in the purchase of books. He would read none but such as dealt with theology.
At length he became so ill that he had to be taken into the workhouse. He struggled against the necessity as long as he could, and then submitted, saying, “It is God’s will, and I must accept what He desires.”
In the workhouse he received better food, and comforts such as he had not been accustomed to as a poor and failing quarryman. Any little gratuity offered him he accepted to spend on his beloved books, and in time his library was by no means inconsiderable. After his death, by his express wish, they have been divided between Bangor and Beaumaris libraries.
In the workhouse he died peacefully, and content with his solitary lot. He was a man of rugged exterior, with a head and face singularly like those attributed to Socrates.
Such is the story of one man of the people; it is characteristic of the Welshman, with strong theologic bent, that leads one in this direction, another in that; the mind is active, inquiring, especially in the direction of abstruse studies.
In Penrhyn Castle is preserved the so-called Hirlas Horn. It was discovered among the rubbish, during some alterations and rebuilding of the castle, and had probably fallen from the top of one of the towers from which it had been blown. It bears the arms of Sir Piers Griffiths, Sheriff of Carnarvonshire in 1566, and was used for both drinking and blowing. The name given to it is from the Hirlas horn celebrated by Owen Cyfeiliog, prince of Powys in the twelfth century, in a poem famous wherever the Welsh language is spoken. It was composed immediately after a great victory gained over the English in Maelor.
“Up rose the ruddy dawn of day;
The armies met in dread array,
On Maelor Drefred’s field;
Loud the British clarions sound,
The Saxons gasping on the ground,
The bloody conflict yield.
“Fill, fill the Hirlas horn, my boy!
Nor let the tuneful lips be dry
That warble Owen’s praise,
Whose walls with warlike spoils are hung,
And open wide his gates are flung
In Cambria’s peaceful days.
“This hour we dedicate to joy;
Then fill the Hirlas horn, my boy,
That shineth like the sea!
Whose azure handles, tipt with gold,
Invite the grasp of Britons bold,
The Sons of Liberty.”
The scene is the night after the battle, and the prince passes the horn round to each of his chiefs, and reckons up their gallant deeds. Then, turning to the empty seats of those who have fallen, the princely bard, who does not fail to blow his own trumpet, drinks to the memory of the dead: —
“Pour out the horn, tho’ he desire it not,
And heave a sigh o’er Morgan’s early grave;
Doomed in his clay-cold tenement to rot,
While we revere the memory of the brave.”
From Bethesda a road leads across the mountains to Bettws-y-Coed (the Bead-house in the Wood) by the pretty lake Ogwen. There are a number of picturesque tarns in the neighbourhood – the wildly beautiful Llyn Idwal, Llyn Bochlwyd, Marchlyn Mawr (the Great Lake of the Horse), Ffynnon Llugwy, Llyn Cowlyd, Llyn Eigiau – and several days may well be spent in exploring the beauties of this mountain region, but the explorer must be prepared for vast solitudes and for steep scrambles, and he must take refreshments with him.
A word of caution to anyone visiting Marchlyn. Should he see a horse, however quiet and staid, browsing near, let him not venture to mount it, although the beast seems to invite the weary traveller through the heather to take a seat on its back. No sooner is he in his seat than all its want of spirit is at an end. It flies away with its rider towards the lake, plunges in, and will never be seen again. It is the Ceffyl y Dwfr, the Water-horse, a spirit that lives in the depths, with a special taste for human flesh, which it will munch below when it has its victim at the bottom of the blue water.
CHAPTER VI
SNOWDON
Beauty of shape of Snowdon – Vortigern retreated to it – Story of his castle – Merlin – S. Germanus – The last Llewelyn – Dolbadarn – Owen and David – Treachery – David Gam – Topography of the Snowdon district – Glacial action – The great red sea – Llanberis – Church rights a family matter – Married clergy – Beddgelert – The legend of the hound – Whence it came and how it grew – Capel Curig – Curig visits Brittany
SNOWDON is a topic to be approached with hesitation and reluctance, because it has been so much and so well written about that it is not easy to describe the mountain without a sense of falling behind others who have done the work superlatively well. It is therefore advisable to touch only on such topics as have been passed over by other writers, or not dealt with fully by them.
Snowdon compared with the Alps is of course inconsiderable, so far as altitude goes; so is Pilatus, but Snowdon shares with this latter the supreme beauty of shape, and it surpasses Pilatus in that it does not stand near giants as those of the Oberland. And hugeness is not of the essence of beauty. No one looking on Snowdon can deny that it is a mountain in its majesty, and that in form it is absolutely perfect.
Snowdon, or Eryri as it is called by the Welsh, has served as a fastness to which the hard-pressed princes of Gwynedd could retreat before the overwhelming power of England. It was an impregnable stronghold, and the Norman or English could not penetrate to it, and could only hope to starve into surrender those who took refuge there. It could not be approached through broad valleys. It is reached only by ravines. It was possible at any time for those sheltering in its recesses to collect unobserved and swoop down on a town or castle where the defenders were few. To Snowdon Gwrtheyrn Gwrtheneu, or Vortigern, retreated before the angry and resentful British, who laid upon him the blame of calling in the aid of the Jutes and Saxons, although he had only so done as the mouthpiece of their general council.
Nennius tells a strange story of the founding by him of a castle in Snowdon.
The History of the Britons that passes under the name of Nennius was composed in Alclud, or Dumbarton, about the year 679. It was re-edited by one Nennius in or about 796, and it underwent a second redaction by Samuel in Buallt, or Builth, later again, about 810.
The story of Vortigern and his castle in Snowdon is compounded of two distinct legends that have been clumsily put together. It is to this effect. Vortigern desired to erect a residence for himself in Eryri, but met with difficulties over the foundations. He consulted his Druids, and they recommended him to bury under the wall a fatherless child whose parentage was unknown. The laying of the foundations with a human victim was a common form of pagan superstition. The reason for selecting a child of unknown parentage was to avoid the risk of a blood-feud, should one be taken from a tribe of which he was an acknowledged member. After some seeking, a brat was discovered that answered the requirements, and he was brought before Vortigern, where he announced to the king that the real reason why his foundations gave way was that they were laid in a swamp, and that in the swamp were two reptiles engaged in incessant conflict. Then he proceeded to declare that these creatures symbolised the Briton and the Saxon, that although the latter seemed to prevail, in the end the Briton would obtain the mastery and expel the other from the land.
The story goes on, with curious inconsequence, to relate that the boy informed Vortigern that he was named Ambrose, and was the son of a Roman consul; and then taking a high hand he ordered the king to depart and leave the fortress and the better portion of his kingdom to himself, and Vortigern meekly submitted. But the story gets still further tangled up, for Ambrose is made to be one with Merlin the prophet and enchanter.
Now, although the story as it reads is in a muddle, it is possible to disentangle the threads, and, moreover, to restore a substratum of truth that has been disturbed by the importation of foreign matter. The incident of the reptiles and the prophecy must be eliminated as belonging to a legend of Merlin. Vortigern, it would seem, after popular feeling had turned against him, fell back on the pagan party, which was still strong in country places, whereas the Romano-British towns were wholly Christian. That he actually did have recourse to the pagan practice of burying a child alive under the foundations of his castle, or of sprinkling them with its blood, is probable enough under the circumstances. The practice did not die out for some time. From this fortress Vortigern was obliged to withdraw through the defection of his followers, and it was seized by Ambrose, who was at the head of the opposed faction. He had been raised to lead the revolt because descended from one of the Roman emperors – in fact, from Maximus, who had married Elen.
Ambrose was supported by S. Germanus, who excommunicated Vortigern and called down the vengeance of Heaven on his head.
The palace of Vortigern is now called Dinas Emrys, or that of Ambrose, and it rises above Llyn Dinas – some mounds indicate the site – on the summit of an insulated hill surrounded by woods. It would be most interesting to explore this spot with pick and spade – not in quest of the child’s bones under the foundation-stone, nor of the reptiles, but in the hopes of finding personal ornaments and weapons of the period of Vortigern and Ambrose, for such are most scanty and rare in our museums.
Merlin, or, as the Welsh call him, Myrddin or Merddin, was the son of Morfryn, and he was actually engaged in conflict against his own brother-in-law Rhydderch Hael in the north of Britain; Rhydderch being the leader of the Christian Britons, Merlin threw himself into the opposed party, which was pagan, headed by Gwenddolew, and was defeated in a great battle at Arderydd, now Arthuret, in 573.
To Snowdon twice retreated Llewelyn, the last Prince of Wales of the House of Cunedda.
If it served the Welsh princes as a refuge, it was also of use to them as a prison, in which they could hold their most dangerous adversaries, and the tower of Dolbadarn at the foot of Llyn Peris was their gaol. The most noted of those who were there confined was Owen the Red, brother of Llewelyn ab Gruffydd. On the death of David, son of Llewelyn the Great, in 1246, the Welsh of Gwynedd chose the brothers Owen and Llewelyn as joint kings to rule over them and lead them against the English. It was an injudicious choice, for in Wales in a royal family a man’s worst foes were those of his own household, and the electors might have foreseen that these brothers would ere long fly at each other’s throat. The two princes had a brother David, who was dissatisfied at being left out in the cold, and he hasted to the court of King Henry III. to obtain his assistance against his successful brothers. The King was delighted to have an excuse for fomenting fratricidal war in Wales, and he flattered and encouraged David, who began to intrigue with Owen against Llewelyn. Suddenly, in 1255, these two brothers raised the standard of revolt, but Llewelyn was on his guard, and he captured both of them and slew many of their followers.
Owen, as the more dangerous, was sent to Dolbadarn, and was immured there for twenty years; but David was liberated in 1258, as he feigned the profoundest contrition.
But David only waited his opportunity, and he entered into a secret arrangement with Owen, prince of Powys, to murder his brother Llewelyn, so that he might secure the crown of Gwynedd. In order to further this plot, David recommended Llewelyn to invite the prince of Powys to a great banquet at Aberffraw, to be followed by hunting parties in Môn. This was in 1275. Llewelyn, unsuspecting treachery, agreed. Prince Owen arrived, but his retinue, on which he relied for obtaining the mastery of the palace, in the confusion consequent on the murder, was detained by bad weather and the impassability of the roads. David was alarmed. He suspected that Owen of Powys purposed betraying him, and he took to flight.
Llewelyn, perplexed at the disappearance of David, questioned Owen, who made full confession of the plot. The conspirators intended to have surrounded the bedroom of Llewelyn in the night, and to have assassinated him in his sleep.
The Prince of Wales, on learning all particulars, cited David to appear before him and answer to the charge of high treason; but David declined to attend, and, collecting a body of armed men, fell on and ravaged portions of his brother’s territory, and when Llewelyn marched to chastise him he fled to the court of Edward I., who received him favourably.
In 1277 Edward invaded Wales, and was greatly assisted by David, who knew the country and the people, and was able to foment jealousies among the Welsh chieftains, and cripple Llewelyn in his resistance to the advance of the invader, by detaching them from his allegiance. Owen the Red from his prison contrived to send to Edward his best wishes for his success.
Llewelyn was now obliged to take refuge in Snowdon, and was forced to come to terms with Edward, and by these terms he was compelled to release Owen. After this we hear little more of this red-haired fox, and it is probable that his long captivity had broken his health.
Now the false and fickle David deserted Edward, and went over to the side of Llewelyn, actuated, not by patriotism, but by self-interest.
In 1282 King Edward again invaded Wales, but his advance was checked at Conway. He accordingly sent a fleet to effect the subjugation of Anglesey, and to form that a base for operations against Llewelyn in Snowdon. Having succeeded in this, Edward exclaimed exultantly, “Now I have plucked the finest feather out of Llewelyn’s tail.”
Llewelyn, hard pressed in Snowdon, left that stronghold to be defended by David, whilst he hastened south to rally the Welsh under the prince of Dynevor. He fell into an ambush, as has been already related, and was killed. David was captured, and hanged, drawn, and quartered. Another prisoner detained in Dolbadarn was David Gam of Brecon, who tried to assassinate Owen Glyndwr. But about him more when we come to Machynlleth.
To understand the topography of the Snowdon district we must conceive of Snowdon itself as shaped much like a star-fish with the radiating arms curved, and little lakes lying in the hollows between the ridges. The entire mass, however, forms a rude triangle with its base at Llyn Dinas and Llyn Gwynant and the pass of Bwlch-y-Gwyddel, the neck that attaches Snowdon to the stately mountain mass of Moel Siabod. North of Llyn Padarn and Llanberis is again a great mountain bulk.
The geology of Snowdon is too complicated for the unscientific eye to understand and unravel, but broadly it may be described as eruptive matter breaking through the Cambrian slates. These slates are the best in England, though their purple tinge is unpleasant to the eye, and the silvery grey is far more grateful. The slate quarries find employment for armies of workmen, but are detrimental to the beauty of the scenery, the mountain-sides being sliced and hacked and hewn into, and over the hideous piles of débris it will take thousands of years for the grass to grow.
Even the uninitiated eye will soon be able to detect the traces of glacial action in scored rocks as the great ice rivers moved over them, scratching them with the stones embodied in the frozen stream, in the fragmentary moraines, and in the eratic blocks.
Once, in that cold remote age, the sea, a red sea, swept from the mouth of the Dee over Cheshire, Staffordshire, Herefordshire, to the estuary of the Severn. Wales was a great mountainous island with glaciers rolling down the valleys, discharging their mighty rivers of ice into it. The Wrekin stood up above the waters, and the waves leaped about it. The great rollers from the north plunged and shivered into foam against Wenlock Edge. The swirls formed the pools that are now still basins full of carp around Ellesmere; it deposited its salt in the beds whence the brine is pumped at Droitwich and in Cheshire. Rafts of ice broken off from the glacier, descending the valleys of the Dee, the Severn, and the Wye, drifted about till they melted, tilted, and discharged their burdens of stone, brought from the Welsh mountains, over the sea bed, so that now these are found strewn around Birmingham and Bromley, scattered over the Clent and Lickey Hills.
Snowdon, unhappily, is fond of wearing his cloud-cap, that Tarn-Kappe of Northern mythology which was supposed to make him invisible who donned it. In the Niebelungen Lied, one of the four greatest epic poems the world has produced, when Gunther, the Burgundian king, goes to court, Brunehild of Iceland, the virago, informs him she will have none but such as can overmaster her in hurling and in leaping. Siegfried dons the mist-cap, and puts his hand behind that of Gunther to assist him in casting the spear and pitching the stone, and he takes him in his arms to leap, and so wins the bride for Gunther. And dear old Snowdon with his mist-cap on has baffled the forces of Norman and English again and again as he hugged to his heart the gallant but outnumbered Welsh. It was not the rugged heights or the impenetrable ravines alone that bewildered and held back the invader, but the cap of cloud which Snowdon drew over the refugees who clung to him for safety. Standing forward, and looking over the western sea, Snowdon attracts the vapours, and they are fortunate who, ascending it, can see from its summit the glorious panorama of tossed mountain ridges and jewelled lakes surrounding it.
And now a few words relative to those places whence the visitor to Snowdon will explore this beautiful neighbourhood.
Llanberis, much given over to slate quarrying, takes its name from a certain Peris, “Cardinal of Rome,” of whom scarcely anything but the name is known, not even his pedigree,2 and that means a great deal, or rather did so, till the Normans came into Wales and upset the ecclesiastical order there.
Achau y Saint was the Who’s Who of the Welsh Church. Now when an ecclesiastic founded a church and obtained land around it, constituting what we may call his parish, that church and parish became the hereditary property of his family. It was accordingly of first importance to establish who he was, and who were his blood relations. Thenceforth every pater-familias of his family had rights to land in the benefice, be he layman or cleric. All the land in the parish belonged to the family of the saint. To establish a right to land in it a man had to prove his descent; consequently, next to fixing the pedigree of the founder came the preservation of the genealogies of the descendants.
It did not in the least matter whether they were in Holy Orders or not, they had hereditary rights in the benefice. If among them there were one, two, or even a dozen, who were clerics, all these clerics were co-rectors – that is to say, they had their rights to land in the parish as kinsmen of the saintly founder. What they received in their clerical capacity were surplice dues. Gerald the Welshman, who lived in the twelfth century, speaks of it as an “infamous custom.” No doubt it did not work well. There was no responsible priest with the cure of souls. Some one or other of the tribe who was in sacred orders celebrated divine service and administered the sacraments, but all went on in a hugger-mugger way. Gerald speaks of parishes with several rectors. Even bishoprics passed from father to son. Archbishop Peckham, in his visitation in 1284, complained that this custom was ruinous to the well-being of the Church. As all the householders of an ecclesiastical tribe lived on the proceeds of the benefice, there was scarcely enough coming in to the share of the actual priest who ministered, to support him. The principle of co-ownership in land prevailed in the secular tribes, and it extended to the ecclesiastical tribes as well, that is to say, to those of the saint’s kin living about the church on Church lands. Gerald says: —
“The Church has almost as many parsons or parties as there are principal men in the parish, and the sons, after the decease of their fathers, succeed to the ecclesiastical benefices, not by election, but by hereditary right; and if a bishop should dare to presume to appoint or to institute anyone else, the people would most certainly revenge the injury on the institution or the instituted.”
It was probably to get rid of this mischievous custom that the Norman conquerors and the English barons who occupied castles in Wales turned such benefices as they could lay their hands on into vicarages under monasteries. Then the abbots or priors appointed some of their monks to minister in these parishes, and these men were entirely detached from all family ties in the place, and could attend to its spiritual charge and to that only. But till this new order of things came in – and it came in slowly and by degrees, and was forced on a reluctant people – the genealogies of the saints and of their kin were preserved with the utmost care. People were much more anxious to remember their pedigrees than the stories of the lives of the founders. The pedigrees were the title deeds to the enjoyment of valuable rights to land and other endowments.
In the Latin Church a saint was remembered for what he had done, for his holy life; in the Celtic Church all that was nothing – he was valued for the land he had acquired, and which he transmitted to his posterity.
In the Welsh Church, saints, bishops, abbots, clergy, as a rule, were married, and took care to transmit their benefices parcelled up among their sons. When the Latin ecclesiastics condescended to write the lives of the Celtic saints they suppressed this fact. Thus Gildas the historian, Abbot of Ruys, and a reformer of the Irish Church after the reaction to paganism that followed the death of Patrick and his devoted band, was a married man, and the father of some half a dozen children. He had two biographers. Neither says a word about this; each asserts that from boyhood he was “crucified to the world and the world to him”; that he “scorned transitory things,” and lived a life of severe self-abnegation. His son Cenydd, or Keneth, was a hermit in Gower, and he also had wife and family. But those terrible genealogies, so carefully preserved by the Welsh, tell us facts not quite in harmony with the statements of these “Lives,” just as parish registers and the wills in probate courts make sad havoc of some of the pedigrees of our gentle families as given in “Burke” and in county histories.
Beddgelert is visited annually by a crowd of tourists, who drop a tear on the grave of Llewelyn’s faithful hound. Who Celer was, who has given a name to the place, is not known. Llewelyn may have had a dog called Kill-hart, as we shall see presently, that was true and dear to him, and the beast may have been buried here – that is possible enough; but the story of the death of Gelert, killed by his master in mistake, is not true – it is an importation. The full legend as connected with Beddgelert appears first of all in Jones’s Musical Relicks of the Welsh Bards (ed. 1794, p. 75) about a dog, Cylart, at Beddgelert. Then came Spencer’s poem, Beth-Gelert, or the Grave of the Greyhound, which was first printed privately as a broadsheet in 1800, when it was composed. He says: “The story of this ballad is traditionary in a village at the foot of Snowdon, where Llewelyn the Great had a house. The greyhound named Gelert was given him by his father-in-law, King John, in the year 1205.” This is taken straight out of the note of Jones, date and all. We may well inquire what was Jones’s authority. The legend had found its way into Wales at least in the sixteenth century, for there is an englyn, in a MS. written in that century, to Llewelyn’s hound, Kilhart, “when it was buried at Beddgelert”; and the legend occurs as one of the pseudonymous Allegories, or Fables of Catwg Ddoeth, in the Iolo MSS., written about the same century, and, as all the other documents there, in the South Welsh dialect. It is there entitled, “The Man who killed his Greyhound.” It is therein connected with a man “who formerly lived at Abergarwan.” The tale – infant in cradle, a greyhound, a wolf – is given complete, and one of the popular sayings it gave currency to – “As sorry as the man who killed his greyhound” – is found in most collections of Welsh proverbs. As to the allegories of Catwg Ddoeth, the collection was itself an importation from the popular mediæval volume The Sayings of Cato the Wise, and it was foisted on S. Cadog of Llancarfan.
