Rhag ofn twm Sion Catti.”
(In Ystradffin a doleful sound
Pervades the hollow hills around;
The very stones with terror melt,
Such tear of Twm Shion Catti’s felt.)
This cave, which is near Ystradffin, on the borders of Carmarthenshire and Cardiganshire, was once, says tradition, the stronghold of Twm Shion Catti, or to give him his proper name Thomas Jones. This Thomas Jones, or Twm Shion Catti, lived at Tregaron in the time of Queen Elizabeth. It seems that he had been in his younger days a freebooter, but reformed and became a celebrated bard, antiquary and a genealogist. The legends which have gathered round the name of this eminent man, are still retained in the memory of the people in Cardiganshire and Carmarthenshire, and the late Mr. T. J. L. Prichard, of Llandovery, made him the hero of a most popular romance, into whose book the stories have been introduced, and embellished.
OWEN LAWGOCH’S CAVE.
This cave is in the limestone rock of Dinas, Llandebie, in Carmarthenshire, respecting which there is a story that a great warrior named Owen Lawgoch and his men fell asleep in it, but who are some day to awake and sally forth. A version of the legend is given in the Brython for 1858, page 179, by the late Gwynionydd, and an English translation of the same story is given by Sir John Rhys in his “Celtic Folk-Lore.”
“Not the least of the wonders of imagination wont to exercise the minds of the old people was the story of Owen Lawgoch. One sometimes hears sung in the fairs the words:—