THE CORACLE.
Having seen this boat of ancient Britain on those Welsh rivers where it has been wont to float since the commencement of the historic period—having seen a Welsh fisherman ferry his wife over the Towy in a coracle, we will endeavour to describe this antique relic and to relate a few leading facts of its history. Before the subjugation of the British, this boat of theirs was probably found in all parts of England; it is now confined to Wales, the last stronghold of the British after the arrival of the Saxons—or English, as they are now called. It is found, in fact, only in a few parts of Wales; and in the course of this short narrative we shall not ramble far in other regions, though it may be interesting to mention that boats exactly similar in structure to the coracle of Wales are frequently used in many parts of India for the purpose of crossing the rivers of that great country; and this forms one of those obscure links which Mr Borrow loved to dilate upon in his Wild Wales, a book of wonderful attraction both to the learned and to travellers and tourists. Joining all the links together into a connected chain, and taking language into account, the evidence is strong that the Welsh, or ancient British, were originally emigrants from India.
The antiquity of this queer little ark—for it is more ark than boat in shape—is undoubted. Herodotus describes the common boats of the Euphrates as having been in all respects similar in pattern and construction to the coracles of Wales. The materials for making these simple, home-built vessels were naturally such as the particular country might afford. In India they were made of wicker, covered with skins; and on the Euphrates they were of willow, covered with hides. In the salmon-fishing season, almost any day except Sunday from April till the end of August, coracles may still be observed on the rivers Towy and Teivy, having remained there unaltered from the time when the attention of Cæsar was attracted by them during his campaign in Britain. A fisherman still slings his boat over his back, and carries it home in that position; and on reaching his dwelling, he sets it erect against the house-wall, and leaves it there till he again goes fishing, when he carries it back to the water. An old Welsh adage runs, ‘A man’s load is his coracle;’ and in former times, when this old-fashioned boat was covered with raw hides, the load must have been a heavy one. The hides, however, have now been discarded for a light covering made of waterproof canvas. The shape of the coracle remains unaltered. It is the broadest of boats in proportion to its length, hence it moves through the water under the alternate stroke of the paddle with a motion like the waddling of a duck.
The time arrived, as it usually does to men of genius, when Cæsar turned the idea of the coracle to good account. Ptolemy had destroyed his bridges, and the only boats that could have saved him were such as he could build quickly of any common materials which might come to hand. He remembered the coracle, which he had seen in Britain built of hazel, or willow, or any kind of rods that were capable of being woven so as to form a framework for the covering of skins. Cæsar immediately proceeded to construct his boats; and by means of a number of coracles of large size, but rapidly constructed, his army successfully crossed the river, which had stopped and endangered its march.
A Welsh coracle for one passenger upsets so easily that a stroke from a salmon’s tail is said to be more than the cranky little boat can bear without being overturned. One person forms a full freight for a coracle of the usual size, besides the one who uses the paddle; and that person being the oarsman’s wife, he places her cautiously in the stern, and declines a second passenger.
When there are two persons to be ferried over, one of them is usually taken across first, and the other is left on the bank, and brought over afterwards. During the voyage, certain precautions must be observed, which are well understood by all persons accustomed to this kind of navigation. But we remember on one occasion, when an English lady, a tourist, was in the act of crossing the river below Cardigan, some of her friends having already crossed, while others watched behind—for her precautions before setting out had been elaborate. She had no sooner reached the middle of the stream than she rose suddenly to her feet, and the next moment was capsized and sprawling in the water. It is a ‘rule of the road’ never to stand up in a coracle.
This ancient boat possesses mythological as well as historical interest, since it was first used symbolically in some of the curious mystical rites of the Druids. Among the traditions of Bardism was that of the bursting of the ‘lake of waters,’ when all mankind were drowned except a single pair, who escaped to Wales in a naked vessel—that is, a ship without sails. According to the Triads, this ark of Wales contained a male and female of all living creatures including the parents of the Cymry, or Welsh people. This human couple were in due time deified, the Noah of the Cymry sharing this honour with his wife. His symbol was an ox; hers, a cow. A Bardish and very singular rite of sacrifice to one of these deities took place, curiously enough, at the very spot where the largest number of coracles is now stationed, a boat of this kind being used in the ceremony. At the mouth of the Teivy, in Cardigan Bay, where the coracles are now used in trawling and setting nets for the salmon-fishing, three miles below Cardigan, at the little fishing village of St Dogmels, the sacrifice was celebrated. At the appointed time, the Druids, clad in their emblematic white robes, and the Bards in robes of sky-blue, assembled at the spot, when the victim was placed in the coracle and the frail boat was turned adrift.
The coracle figured also on the important occasion of the probation of a Bard, when it was used by the neophyte, or probationer, in his passage to and from the island of Sarn Badrig, off the coast of Carnarvonshire. In rough weather this would be an impossible feat. Probably the Gwyddnaw (priest of the ship) selected a suitable day for this occasion. Having brought the novice to the shore, the usual confession was pronounced by him in these words: ‘Though I love the sea-beach, I dread the open sea; a billow may come undulating over a stone!’ The priest then spoke as follows, to reassure the novice: ‘To the brave, to the magnanimous, to the amiable, to the generous, who boldly embarks, the landing-place of the Bards will prove the harbour of life.’
We will only add to this brief account of the coracle, or river-boat of ancient Britain, that the name is derived from corwg, a ship.