The names in these lines present great difficulties: first comes that of Mererid, which is no other word than Margarita, ‘a pearl,’ borrowed; but what does it here mean? Margarita, besides meaning a pearl, was used in Welsh, e.g. under the form Marereda[18], as the proper name written in English Margaret. That is probably how it is to be taken here, namely, as the name given to the negligent guardian of the fairy well. It cannot very well be, however, the name belonging to the original form of the legend; and we have the somewhat parallel case of Ffynnon Grassi, or Grace’s Well; but what old Celtic name that of Mererid has replaced in the story, I cannot say. In the next place, nobody has been able to identify Caer Kenedyr, and I have nothing to say as to Mor Maurhidic, except that a person of that name is mentioned in another of the Englynion of the Graves. It runs thus in the Black Book, fol. 33a:—
Bet mor maurhidic diessic unben.
post kinhen kinteic.
mab peredur penwetic.
The grave of Mor the Grand, … prince,
Pillar of the … conflict,
Son of Peredur of Penweđig.
The last name in the final triplet of the poem which I have attempted to translate is Kinran, which is otherwise unknown as a Welsh name; but I am inclined to identify it with that of one of the three who escaped the catastrophe in the Irish legend. The name there is Curnán, which was borne by the idiot of the family, who, like many later idiots, was at the same time a prophet. For he is represented as always prophesying that the waters were going to burst forth, and as advising his friends to prepare boats. So he may be set, after a fashion, over against our Seithenhin synhuir vann, ‘S. of the feeble mind.’ But one might perhaps ask why I do not point out an equivalent in Irish for the Welsh Seithennin, as his name is now pronounced. The fact is that no such equivalent occurs in the Irish story in question, nor exactly, so far as I know, in any other.
That is what I wrote when penning these notes; but it has occurred to me since then, that there is an Irish name, an important Irish name, which looks as if related to Seithenhin, and that is Setanta Beg, ‘the little Setantian,’ the first name of the Irish hero Cúchulainn. The nt, I may point out, makes one suspect that Setanta is a name of Brythonic origin in Irish; and I have been in the habit of associating it with that of the people of the Setantii[19], placed by Ptolemy on the coast of what is now Lancashire. Whether any legend has ever been current about a country submerged on the coast of Lancashire I cannot say, but the soundings would make such a legend quite comprehensible. I remember, however, reading somewhere as to the Plain of Muirthemhne, of which Cúchulainn, our Setanta Beg, had special charge, that it was so called because it had once been submarine and become since the converse, so to say, of Seithennin’s country. The latter is beneath Cardigan Bay, while the other fringed the opposite side of the sea, consisting as it did of the level portion of County Louth. On the whole, I am not altogether indisposed to believe that we have here traces of an ancient legend of a wider scope than is represented by the Black Book triplets, which I have essayed to translate. I think that I am right in recognizing that legend in the Mabinogi of Branwen, daughter of Ỻyr. There we read that, when Brân and his men crossed from Wales to Ireland, the intervening sea consisted merely of two navigable rivers, called Ỻi and Archan. The story-teller adds words to the effect, that it is only since then the sea has multiplied its realms[20] between Ireland and Ynys y Kedyrn, or the Isle of the Keiri, a name which has already been discussed: see pp. 279–83.
These are not all the questions which such stories suggest; for Seithennin is represented in later Welsh literature as the son of one Seithyn, associated with Dyfed; and the name Seithyn leads off to the coast of Brittany. For I learn from a paper by the late M. le Men, in the Revue Archéologique for 1872 (xxiii. 52), that the Île de Sein is called in Breton Enez-Sun, in which Sun is a dialectic shortening of Sizun, which is also met with as Seidhun. That being so, one would seem to be right in regarding Sizun as nearly related to our Seithyn. That is not all—the tradition reminds one of the Welsh legend: M. le Men refers to the Vie du P. Maunoir by Boschet (Paris, 1697) p. 126, and adds that, in his own time, the road ending on the Pointe du Raz opposite the Île de Sein passed ‘pour être l’ancien chemin qui conduisait à la ville d’Is (Kaer-a-Is, la ville de la partie basse).’ It is my own experience, that nobody can go about much in Brittany without hearing over and over again about the submerged city of Is. There is no doubt that we have in these names distant echoes of an inundation story, once widely current in both Britains and perhaps also in Ireland. With regard to Wales we have an indication to that effect in the fact, that Gwyđno, to whom the inundated region is treated as having belonged, is associated not only with Cardigan Bay, but also with the coast of North Wales, especially the part of it situated between Bangor and Ỻandudno[21]. Adjoining it is supposed to lie submerged a once fertile district called Tyno Helig, a legend about which will come under notice later. This brings the inundation story nearer to the coast where Ptolemy in the second century located the Harbour of the Setantii, about the mouth of the river Ribble, and in their name we seem to have some sort of a historical basis for that of the drunken Seithennin[22]. I cannot close these remarks better than by appending what Professor Boyd Dawkins has recently said with regard to the sea between Britain and Ireland:—