Folk-Lore of West and Mid-Wales

by Jonathan Ceredig Davies

Till Foelallt rock split in two.)

According to another version of the story, it was the ox which survived was the one that bellowed, and not the one that died. According to another story given in Meyrick’s History of Cardiganshire, these two Bannog Oxen were on one occasion used to draw “away a monstrous beaver dead”; but this is only a version of a legend which is to be found in several parts of Wales, and is founded on the older story of Hu Gadarn, or Hu the Mighty, who, with his Bannog Oxen, drew to land the avanc out of Llyn Llion, so that the lake burst out no more to deluge the earth. See “Legend of Llyn y ddau Ychain” in Folk-Lore of North Wales, by the late Rev. E. Owen, page 132.

S^t David’s. Llanddewi-Brefi. Cardiganshire

The two Ychain Bannog of Llanddewi were sometimes called “dau ychain Dewi” (St. David’s two oxen). In a poem written in the Twelfth Century, the Welsh Bard Gwynfardd Brycheiniog alludes to the old tradition as follows:—

“Dau ychan Dewi, deu odidawe,

Dodyssant eu gwar dan garr kynawe,

Dau ychen Dewi ardderchawe oeddynt.”

There used to be preserved at Llanddewi Church a remarkable fragment of a horn called “Madcorn yr Ych Bannog,” that is, the core of the Bannog Ox’s Morn, which, according to tradition, had been kept there as a valuable relic ever since the time of St. David. This horn is now at Llidiardau, Llanilar, kept privately. It has been pronounced by Professor Boyd Dawkins to have belonged to “the great urns (Bos Primigenius) that Charlemagne hunted in the forest of Aachen, and the Monks of St. Galle ate on their feast days.”

When St. David was preaching at Llanddewi at the great Synod, in the year 519, it is said that the ground on which he stood rose up and formed a hillock under his feet. Cressy recounts the miracle in the following words:—“When all the fathers assembled enjoined David to preach, he commanded a child which attended him, and had lately been restored to life by him, to spread a napkin under his feet; and, standing upon it, he began to expound the Gospel and the law to the auditory. All the while that this oration continued, a snow-white dove, descending from Heaven, sate upon his shoulders; and, moreover, the earth, on which he stood raised itself under him till it became a hill, from whence his voice, like a trumpet, was clearly heard and understood by all, both near and far off, on the top of which hill a church was afterwards built, and remains to this day.”