[29] See the Itinerarium Kambriæ, i. 2 (pp. 33–5), and Celtic Britain, p. 64. [↑]
[30] As for example in the Archæologia Cambrensis for 1870, pp. 192–8; see also 1872, pp. 146–8. [↑]
[31] Howells has also an account of Ỻyn Savadhan, as he writes it: see his Cambrian Superstitions, pp. 100–2, where he quaintly says that the story of the wickedness of the ancient lord of Syfađon is assigned as the reason why ‘the superstitious little river Lewenny will not mix its water with that of the lake.’ Lewenny is a reckless improvement of Mapes’ Leueni (printed Lenem); and Giraldus’ Clamosum implies an old spelling Ỻefni, pronounced the same as the later spelling Ỻyfni, which is now made into Ỻynfi or Ỻynvi: the river so called flows through the lake and into the Wye at Glasbury. As to Safađan or Syfađon, it is probably of Goidelic origin, and to be identified with such an Irish name as the feminine Samthann: see Dec. 19 in the Martyrologies. To keep within our data, we are at liberty to suppose that this was the name of the wicked princess in the story, and that she was the ancestress of a clan once powerful on and around the lake, which lies within a Goidelic area indicated by its Ogam inscriptions. [↑]
CHAPTER II
The Fairies’ Revenge
In th’olde dayes of the king Arthour,
Of which that Britons speken greet honour,
Al was this land fulfild of fayerye.
The elf-queen, with hir joly companye,