[41] Cadarn and cadr postulate respectively some such early forms as catṛno-s and cadro-s, which according to analogy should become cadarn and cađr. Welsh, however, is not fond of đr; so here begins a bifurcation: (1) retaining the d unchanged cadro-s yields cadr, or (2) dr is made into đr, and other changes set in resulting in the ceir of ceiri, as in Welsh aneirif, ‘numberless,’ from eirif, ‘number,’ of the same origin as Irish áram from *ađ-rim = *ad-rīmā, and Welsh eiliw, ‘species, colour,’ for ađ-liw, in both of which i follows đ combinations; but that is not essential, as shown by cader, cadair, for Old Welsh cateir, ‘a chair,’ from Latin cat[h]edra. The word that serves as our singular, namely cawr, is far harder to explain; but on the whole I am inclined to regard it as of a different origin, to wit, the Goidelic word caur, ‘a giant or hero,’ borrowed. The plural cewri or cawri is formed from the singular cawr, which means a giant, though, associated in the plural with ceiri, it has sometimes to follow suit with that vocable in connoting dress. [↑]
[42] The most important of these are the old Breton kazr, now kaer, ‘beautiful or pretty,’ and old Cornish caer of the same meaning; elsewhere we have, as in Greek, the Doric κέκαδμαι and κεκαδμένος, to be found used in reference to excelling or distinguishing one’s self; also κόσμος, ‘good order, ornament,’ while in Sanskrit there is the theme çad, ‘to excel or surpass.’ The old meaning of ‘beautiful,’ ‘decorated,’ or ‘loudly dressed,’ is not yet lost in the case of ceiri. [↑]
CHAPTER IV
Manx Folklore
Be it remembrid that one Manaman Mack Clere, a paynim, was the first inhabitour of the ysle of Man, who by his Necromancy kept the same, that when he was assaylid or invaded he wold rayse such mystes by land and sea that no man might well fynde owte the ysland, and he would make one of his men seeme to be in nombre a hundred.—The Landsdowne MSS.
The following paper exhausts no part of the subject: it simply embodies the substance of my notes of conversations which I have had with Manx men and Manx women, whose names, together with such other particulars as I could get, are in my possession. I have mostly avoided reading up the subject in printed books; but those who wish to see it exhaustively treated may be directed to Mr. Arthur W. Moore’s book on The Folklore of the Isle of Man, to which may now be added Mr. C. Roeder’s Contributions to the Folklore of the Isle of Man in the Lioar Manninagh for 1897, pp. 129–91.
For the student of folklore the Isle of Man is very fairly stocked with inhabitants of the imaginary order. She has her fairies and her giants, her mermen and brownies, her kelpies and water-bulls.
The water-bull or tarroo ushtey, as he is called in Manx, is a creature about which I have not been able to learn much, but he is described as a sort of bull disporting himself about the pools and swamps. For instance, I was told at the village of Andreas, in the flat country forming the northern end of the island, and known as the Ayre, that there used to be a tarroo ushtey between Andreas and the sea to the west: it was before the ground had been drained as it is now. And an octogenarian captain at Peel related to me how he had once when a boy heard a tarroo ushtey: the bellowings of the brute made the ground tremble, but otherwise the captain was unable to give me any very intelligible description. This bull is by no means of the same breed as the bull that comes out of the lakes of Wales to mix with the farmers’ cattle, for there the result used to be great fertility among the stock, and an overflow of milk and dairy produce, but in the Isle of Man the tarroo ushtey only begets monsters and strangely formed beasts.
The kelpie, or, rather, what I take to be a kelpie, was called by my informants a glashtyn; and Kelly, in his Manx Dictionary, describes the object meant as ‘a goblin, an imaginary animal which rises out of the water.’ One or two of my informants confused the glashtyn with the Manx brownie. On the other hand, one of them was very definite in his belief that it had nothing human about it, but was a sort of grey colt, frequenting the banks of lakes at night, and never seen except at night.