VII.
Soon afterwards I went to the neighbourhood of Aber Soch and Ỻanengan, where I was lucky enough to find Professor Owen of St. David’s College, Lampeter, since appointed Bishop of St. David’s, on a visit to his native place. He took me round to those of the inhabitants who were thought most likely to have tales to tell; but I found nothing about the fairies except the usual story of their borrowing padeỻ a gradeỻ, and of their changing children. However, one version I heard of the process of recovering the stolen child differs from all others known to me: it was given us by Margaret Edwards, of Pentre Bach, whose age was then eighty-seven. It was to the effect that the mother, who had been given a fairy infant, was to place it on the floor, and that all those present in the house should throw a piece of iron at it. This she thought was done with the view of convincing the Tylwyth Teg of the intention to kill the changeling, and in order to induce them to bring the right child back. The plan was, we are told, always successful, and it illustrates, to my thinking, the supposed efficacy of iron against the fairies.
On the way to Aber Soch I passed by an old-fashioned house which has all the appearance of having once been a place of considerable importance; and on being told that its name is Casteỻmarch, I began thinking of March ab Meirchion mentioned in the Triads. He, I had long been convinced, ought to be the Welsh reflex of Labhraidh Lorc, or the Irish king with horse’s ears; and the corresponding Greek character of Midas with ass’s ears is so well known that I need not dwell on it. So I undertook to question various people in the neighbourhood about the meaning of the name of Casteỻmarch. Most of them analysed it into Casteỻ y March, the ‘Castle of the Steed,’ and explained that the knight of the shire or some other respectable obscurity kept his horses there. This treatment of the word is not very decidedly countenanced by the pronunciation, which makes the name into one word strongly accented on the middle syllable. It was further related to me how Casteỻmarch was once upon a time inhabited by a very wicked and cruel man, one of whose servants, after being very unkindly treated by him, ran away and went on board a man-of-war. Some time afterwards the man-of-war happened to be in Cardigan Bay, and the runaway servant persuaded the captain of the vessel to come and anchor in the Tudwal Roads. Furthermore he induced him to shell his old master’s mansion; and the story is regarded as proved by the old bullets now and then found at Casteỻmarch. It has since been suggested to me that the bullets are evidence of an attack on the place during the Civil War, which is not improbable. But having got so far as to find that there was a wicked, cruel man associated with Casteỻmarch, I thought I should at once hear the item of tradition which I was fishing for; but not so: it was not to be wormed out in a hurry. However, after tiring a very old blacksmith, whose memory was far gone, with my questions, and after he had in his turn tired me with answers of the kind I have already described, I ventured to put it to him at last whether he had never heard some very silly tale about the lord of Casteỻmarch, to the effect that he was not quite like other men. He at once admitted that he had heard it said that he had horse’s ears, but that he would never have thought of repeating such nonsense to me. This is not a bad instance of the difficulty which one has in eliciting this sort of tradition from the people. It is true that, as far as regards Casteỻmarch, nothing, as it happens, would have been lost if I had failed at Aber Soch, for I got the same information later at Sarn Fyỻteyrn; not to mention that after coming back to my books, and once more turning over the leaves of the Brython, I was delighted to find the tale there. It occurs at p. 431 of the volume for 1860. It is given with several other interesting bits of antiquity, and at the end the editor has put ‘Edward Ỻwyd, 1693’; so I suppose the whole comes from letters emanating from the great Lhwyd, for so, or rather Lhuyd, he preferred to write his name. It is to the following effect:—
One of Arthur’s warriors, whose name was March (or Parch) Amheirchion[16], was lord of Casteỻmarch in Ỻeyn. This man had horse’s ears (resembling Midas), and lest anybody should know it, he used to kill every man he sought to shave his beard, for fear lest he should not be able to keep the secret; and on the spot where he was wont to bury the bodies there grew reeds, one of which somebody cut to make a pipe. The pipe would give no other sound than ‘March Amheirchion has horse’s ears.’ When the warrior heard this, he would probably have killed the innocent man on that account, if he had not himself failed to make the pipe produce any other sound. But after hearing where the reed had grown, he made no further effort to conceal either the murders or his ears. This story of Edward Ỻwyd’s clearly goes back to a time when some kind of a pipe was the favourite musical instrument in North Wales, and not the harp.
VIII.
Some time ago I was favoured with a short but interesting tale by Mr. Evan Lloyd Jones, of Dinorwig, near Ỻanberis. Mr. Lloyd Jones, I may here mention, published not long ago, in Ỻais y Wlad (Bangor, North Wales), and in the Drych (Utica, United States of North America), a series of articles entitled Ỻen y Werin yn Sir Gaernarfon, or the Folklore of Carnarvonshire. I happened to see it at a friend’s house, and I found at once that the writer was passionately fond of antiquities, and in the habit of making use of the frequent opportunities he has in the Dinorwig quarries for gathering information as to what used to be believed by the people of Arfon and Anglesey. The tale about to be given relates to a lake called Marchlyn Mawr, or the Great Horse-lake, for there are two lakes called Marchlyn: they lie near one another, between the Fronỻwyd, in the parish of Ỻandegai, and the Elidyr, in the parishes of Ỻanđeiniolen and Ỻanberis. Mr. Lloyd Jones shall tell his tale in his own words:—
Amgylchynir y Marchlyn Mawr gan greigiau erchyỻ yr olwg arnynt; a dywed trađodiad đarfod i un o feibion y Rhiwen[17] unwaith tra yn cynorthwyo dafad oeđ wedi syrthio i’r creigiau i đod ođiyno, đarganfod ogof anferth: aeth i fewn iđi a gwelođ ei bod yn ỻawn o drysorau ac arfau gwerthfawr; ond gan ei bod yn dechreu tywyỻu, a dringo i fynu yn orchwyl anhawđ hyd yn nod yn ngoleu’r dyđ, aeth adref y noswaith honno, a boreu drannoeth ar lasiad y dyđ cychwynnođ eilwaith i’r ogof, ac heb lawer o drafferth daeth o hyd iđi: aeth i fewn, a dechreuođ edrych o’i amgylch ar y trysorau oeđ yno:—Ar ganol yr ogof yr oeđ bwrđ enfawr o aur pur, ac ar y bwrđ goron o aur a pherlau: deaỻođ yn y fan mai coron a thrysorau Arthur oeđynt—nesaođ at y bwrđ, a phan oeđ yn estyn ei law i gymeryd gafael yn y goron dychrynwyd ef gan drwst erchyỻ, trwst megys mil o daranau yn ymrwygo uwch ei ben ac aeth yr hoỻ le can dywyỻed a’r afagđu. Ceisiođ ymbalfalu ođiyno gynted ag y gaỻai; pan lwyđođ i gyrraeđ i ganol y creigiau taflođ ei olwg ar y ỻyn, yr hwn oeđ wedi ei gynhyrfu drwyđo a’i donnau brigwynion yn cael eu ỻuchio trwy đaneđ ysgythrog y creigiau hyd y man yr oeđ efe yn sefyỻ arno; ond tra yr oeđ yn parhau i syỻu ar ganol y ỻyn gwelai gwrwgl a thair o’r benywod prydferthaf y disgynođ ỻygad unrhyw đyn arnynt erioed ynđo yn cael ei rwyfo yn brysur tuag at enau yr ogof. Ond och! yr oeđ golwg ofnadwy yr hwn oeđ yn rhwyfo yn đigon i beri iasau o fraw trwy y dyn cryfaf. Gaỻođ y ỻanc rywfođ đianc adref ond ni fu iechyd yn ei gyfansođiad ar ol hynny, a byđai hyd yn nod crybwyỻ enw y Marchlyn yn ei glywedigaeth yn đigon i’w yrru yn waỻgof.
‘The Marchlyn Mawr is surrounded by rocks terrible to look at, and tradition relates how one of the sons of the farmer of Rhiwen, once on a time, when helping a sheep that had fallen among the rocks to get away, discovered a tremendous cave there; he entered, and saw that it was full of treasures and arms of great value; but, as it was beginning to grow dark, and as clambering back was a difficult matter even in the light of day, he went home that evening, and next morning with the grey dawn he set out again for the cave, when he found it without much trouble. He entered, and began to look about him at the treasures that were there. In the centre of the cave stood a huge table of pure gold, and on the table lay a crown of gold and pearls. He understood at once that they were the crown and treasures of Arthur. He approached the table, and as he stretched forth his hand to take hold of the crown he was frightened by an awful noise, the noise, as it were, of a thousand thunders bursting over his head, and the whole place became as dark as Tartarus. He tried to grope and feel his way out as fast as he could. When he had succeeded in reaching to the middle of the rocks, he cast his eye on the lake, which had been stirred all through, while its white-crested waves dashed through the jagged teeth of the rocks up to the spot on which he stood. But as he continued looking at the middle of the lake he beheld a coracle containing three women, the fairest that the eye of man ever fell on. They were being quickly rowed to the mouth of the cave; but the dread aspect of him who rowed was enough to send thrills of horror through the strongest of men. The youth was able somehow to escape home, but no health remained in his constitution after that, and even the mere mention of the Marchlyn in his hearing used to be enough to make him insane.’
Mr. Lloyd Jones appends to the tale a note to the following effect:—There is a small eminence on the shore of the Marchlyn Mawr, in the parish of Ỻandegai, called Bryn Cwrwgl, or the ‘Hill of the Coracle’; and Ogof y Marchlyn, or the ‘Marchlyn Cave,’ is a name familiar enough to everybody in these neighbourhoods. There were some—unless he ought to say that there still are some—who believed that there was abundance of treasure in the cave. Several young men from the quarries, both of the Cae and of Dinorwig, have been in the midst of the Marchlyn rocks, searching for the cave, and they succeeded in making their way into a cave. They came away, however, without the treasures. One old man, Robert Edwards (Iorwerth Sardis), used to tell him that he and several others had brought ropes from the quarry to go into the cave, but that they found no treasure. So far, I have given the substance of Mr. Jones’ words, to which I would add the following statement, which I have from a native of Dinorwig:—About seventy years ago, when the gentry were robbing the poor of these districts of their houses and of the lands which the latter had enclosed out of the commons, an old woman called Siân William of the Garneđ was obliged to flee from her house with her baby—the latter was known later in life as the Rev. Robert Ellis, of Ysgoldy—in her arms. It was in one of the Marchlyn caves that she found refuge for a day and night. Another kind of tale connected with the Marchlyn Mawr is recorded in the Powys-land Club’s Collections, Hist. and Arch., vol. xv. p. 137, by the Rev. Elias Owen, to the effect that ‘a man who was fishing in the lake found himself enveloped in the clouds that had descended from the hills to the water. A sudden gust of wind cleared a road through the mist that hung over the lake, and revealed to his sight a man busily engaged in thatching a stack. The man, or rather the fairy, stood on a ladder. The stack and ladder rested on the surface of the lake.’