[31] The words in the original are: Nec carne vescebantur, nec pisce; lacteis plerumque cibariis utentes, et in pultis modum quasi croco confectis. [↑]
[32] Perhaps it is this also that suggested the name Eliodorus, as it were Ἡλιόδωρος; for the original name was probably the medieval Welsh one of Elidyr = Irish Ailithir, ailither, ‘a pilgrim’: compare the Pembrokeshire name Pergrin and the like. It is curious that Elidyr did not occur to Glasynys and prevent him from substituting Elfod, which is quite another name, and more correctly written Elfođ for the earlier El-fođw, found not only as Elbodu but also Elbodug-o, Elbodg, Elbot and Elfod: see p. 117 above. [↑]
[33] For one or two more instances from Wales see Howells, pp. 54–7. Brittany also is a great country for death portents: see A. Le Braz, Légende de la Mort en Basse-Bretagne (Paris, 1893), also Sébillot’s Traditions et Superstitions de la Haute-Bretagne (Paris, 1882), i. pp. 270–1. For Scotland see The Ghost Lights of the West Highlands by Dr. R. C. Maclagan in Folk-Lore for 1897, pp. 203–256, and for the cognate subject of second sight see Dalyell’s Darker Superstitions of Scotland, pp. 466–88. [↑]
[34] Another word for the toeli is given by Silvan Evans as used in certain parts of South Wales, namely, tolaeth or dolath, as to which he mentions the opinion that it is a corruption of tylwyth, a view corroborated by Howells using, p. 31, the plural tyloethod; but it could not be easily explained except as a corruption through the medium of English. Elias Owen, p. 303, uses the word in reference to the hammering and rapping noise attending the joinering of a phantom coffin for a man about to die, a sort of rehearsal well known throughout the Principality to every one who has ears spiritually tuned. Unfortunately I have not yet succeeded in locating the use of the word tolaeth, except that I have been assured by a Carmarthen man that it is current in Welsh there as toleth, and by a native of Pumsant that it is in use from Abergwili up to Ỻanbumsant. [↑]
[35] See, for instance, pp. 200, 221, 228. [↑]
[36] Mrs. Williams-Ellis of Glasfryn writes to me that the place is now called Bwlch Trwyn Swncwl, that it is a gap on the highest part of the road crossing from Ỻanaelhaearn to Pistyỻ, and that it is quite a little mountain pass between bleak heather-covered hillsides, in fact a very lonely spot in the outskirts of the Eifl, and with Carnguwch blocking the horizon in the direction of Cardigan Bay. [↑]
[37] For this I am indebted to Mr. Gwenogvryn Evans’ Report on MSS. in the Welsh Language, i. 585 k. The words were written by Williams about the beginning of the seventeenth century, and his û does not mean w. He was, however, probably thinking of cawr, cewri, and such instances as tawaf, ‘taceo,’ and tau, ‘tacet.’ At all events there is no trace of u in the local pronunciation of the name Tre’r Ceiri. I have heard it also as Tre’ Ceiri without the definite article; but had this been ancient one would expect it softened into Tre’ Geiri. [↑]
[38] See the Oxford Mabinogion, pp. 110, 113, and 27–9, 36–41, 44, also 309, where a Triad explains that the outposts were Anglesey, Man, and Lundy. But the other Triads, i. 3 = iii. 67, make them Orkney, Man, and Wight, for which we have the older authority of Nennius. § 8. The designation Tair Ynys Brydain, ‘The Three Isles of Prydain,’ was known to the fourteenth-century poet, Iolo Goch: see his works edited by Ashton, p. 669. [↑]
[39] For Prydyn in the plural see Skene’s Four Ancient Books of Wales, ii. 209, also 92, where Pryden is the form used. In modern Welsh the two senses of Cymry are distinguished in writing as Cymry and Cymru, but the difference is merely one of spelling and not very ancient. [↑]
[40] So Geoffrey (i. 12–15) brings his Trojans on their way to Britain into Aquitania, where they fight with the Pictavienses, whose king he calls Goffarius Pictus. [↑]