I bant gorís Moel Bentyrch,
Mewn gobaith mai hen Gybi
Glodfawr syđ yn ỻwyđaw’r ỻi.
Some folks, worthless[4] folks, visit
A hollow below Moel Bentyrch,
In hopes that ancient Kybi
Of noble fame blesses the flood.
The spot is not far from where Myrđin Farđ lives; and he mentioned, that adjoining the well is a building which was probably intended for the person in charge of the well: it has been tenanted within his memory. Not only for this but also for several of the foregoing items of information am I indebted to Myrđin; and now I come to Mrs. Williams-Ellis, of Glasfryn Uchaf, who tells me that one day not long ago, she met at Ỻangybi a native who had not visited the place since his boyhood: he had been away as an engineer in South Wales nearly all his life, but had returned to see an aged relative. So the reminiscences of the place filled his mind, and, among other things, he said that he remembered very well what concern there was one day in the village at a mischievous person having taken a very large eel out of the well. Many of the old people, he said, felt that much of the virtue of the well was probably taken away with the eel. To see it coiling about their limbs when they went into the water was a good sign: so he gave one to understand. As a sort of parallel I may mention that I have seen the fish living in Ffynnon Beris, not far from the parish church of Ỻanberis. It is jealously guarded by the inhabitants, and when it was once or twice taken out by a mischievous stranger he was forced to put it back again. However, I never could get the history of this sacred fish, but I found that it was regarded as very old[5]. I may add that it appears the well called Ffynnon Fair, ‘Mary’s Well,’ at Ỻanđwyn, in Anglesey, used formerly to have inhabiting it a sacred fish, whose movements indicated the fortunes of the love-sick men and maidens who visited there the shrine of St. Dwynwen[6]. Possibly inquiry would result in showing that such sacred fish have been far more common once in the Principality than they are now.
The next class of wells to claim our attention consists of what I may call fairy wells, of which few are mentioned in connexion with Wales; but the legends about them are of absorbing interest. One of them is in Myrđin Farđ’s neighbourhood, and I questioned him a good deal on the subject: it is called Ffynnon Grassi, or Grace’s Well, and it occupies, according to him, a few square feet—he has measured it himself—of the south-east corner of the lake of Glasfryn Uchaf, in the parish of Ỻangybi. It appears that it was walled in, and that the stone forming its eastern side has several holes in it, which were intended to let water enter the well and not issue from it. It had a door or cover on its surface; and it was necessary to keep the door always shut, except when water was being drawn. Through somebody’s negligence, however, it was once on a time left open: the consequence was that the water of the well flowed out and formed the Glasfryn Lake, which is so considerable as to be navigable for small boats. Grassi is supposed in the locality to have been the name of the owner of the well, or at any rate of a lady who had something to do with it. Grassi, or Grace, however, can only be a name which a modern version of the legend has introduced. It probably stands for an older name given to the person in charge of the well; to the one, in fact, who neglected to shut the door; but though the name must be comparatively modern, the story, as a whole, does not appear to be at all modern, but very decidedly the contrary.
So I wrote in 1893; but years after my conversation with Myrđin Farđ, my attention was called to the fact that the Glasfryn family, of which the Rev. J. C. Williams-Ellis is the head, have in their coat of arms a mermaid, who is represented in the usual way, holding a comb in her right hand and a mirror in her left. I had from the first expected to find some kind of Undine or Liban story associated with the well and the lake, though I had abstained from trying the risky effects of leading questions; but when I heard of the heraldic mermaid I wrote to Mr. Williams-Ellis to ask whether he knew her history. His words, though not encouraging as regards the mermaid, soon convinced me that I had not been wholly wrong in supposing that more folklore attached to the well and lake than I had been able to discover. Since then Mrs. Williams-Ellis has taken the trouble of collecting on the spot all the items of tradition which she could find: she communicated them to me in the month of March, 1899, and the following is an abstract of them, preceded by a brief description of the ground:—