ii. 56b:—Drystan son of Taỻwch with the swine of March ab Meirchion while the swineherd went on a message to Essyỻt. Arthur and March and Cai and Bedwyr came all four to him, but obtained from Drystan not even as much as a single porker, whether by force, by fraud, or by theft.
iii. 101c:—The third was Trystan son of Taỻwch, who guarded the swine of March son of Meirchion while the swineherd had gone on a message to Essyỻt to bid her appoint a meeting with Trystan. Now Arthur and Marcheỻ and Cai and Bedwyr undertook to go and make an attempt on him, but they proved unable to get possession of as much as one porker either as a gift or as a purchase, whether by fraud, by force, or by theft.
In this story the well-known love of Drystan and Essyỻt is taken for granted; but the whole setting is so peculiar and so unlike that of the story of Tristan and Iselt or Iseut in the romances, that there is no reason to suppose it in any way derived from the latter.
The next portion of the Triad runs thus:—
1 30b:—And Pryderi son of Pwyỻ of Annwvyn who guarded the swine of Pendaran of Dyfed in the Glen of the Cuch in Emlyn.
ii. 56a:—Pryderi son of Pwyỻ Head of Annwn with the swine of Pendaran of Dyfed his foster father. The swine were the seven brought away by Pwyỻ Head of Annwn and given by him to Pendaran of Dyfed his foster father; and the Glen of the Cuch was the place where they were kept. The reason why Pryderi is called a mighty swineherd is that no one could prevail over him either by fraud or by force[3].
iii. 101a:—The first was Pryderi son of Pwyỻ of Pendaran in Dyfed[4], who guarded his father’s swine while he was in Annwn, and it was in the Glen of the Cuch that he guarded them.
The history of the pigs is given, so to say, in the Mabinogion. Pwyỻ had been able to strike up a friendship and even an alliance with Arawn king of Annwvyn[5] or Annwn, which now means Hades or the other world; and they kept up their friendship partly by exchanging presents of horses, greyhounds, falcons, and any other things calculated to give gratification to the receiver of them. Among other gifts which Pryderi appears to have received from the king of Annwn were hobeu or moch, ‘pigs, swine,’ which had never before been heard of in the island of Prydain. The news about this new race of animals, and that they formed sweeter food than oxen, was not long before it reached Gwyneđ; and we shall presently see that there was another story which flatly contradicts this part of the Triad, namely to the effect that Gwydion, nephew of Math king of Gwyneđ and a great magician, came to Pryderi’s court at Rhuđlan, near Dolau Bach or Highmead on the Teifi in what is now the county of Cardigan, and obtained some of the swine by deceiving the king. But, to pass by that for the present, I may say that Dyfed seems to have been famous for rearing swine; and at the present day one affects to believe in the neighbouring districts that the chief industry in Dyfed, more especially in South Cardiganshire, consists in the rearing of parsons, carpenters, and pigs. Perhaps it is also worth mentioning that the people of the southern portion of Dyfed are nicknamed by the men of Glamorgan to this day Moch Sir Benfro, ‘the Pigs of Pembrokeshire.’
But why so much importance attached to pigs? I cannot well give a better answer than the reader can himself supply if he will only consider what rôle the pig plays in the domestic economy of modern Ireland. But, to judge from old Irish literature, it was even more so in ancient times, as pigs’ meat was so highly appreciated, that under some one or other of its various names it usually takes its place at the head of all flesh meats in Irish stories. This seems the case, for instance, in the medieval story called the Vision of MacConglinne[6]; and, to go further back, to the Feast of Bricriu for instance, one finds it decidedly the case with the Champion’s Portion[7] at that stormy banquet. Then one may mention the story of the fatal feast on Mac-Dáthó’s great swine[8], where that beast would have apparently sufficed for the braves both of Connaught and Ulster had Conall Cernach carved fair, and not given more than their share to his own Ultonian friends in order to insult the Connaught men by leaving them nothing but the fore-legs. It is right, however, to point out that most of the stories go to show, that the gourmands of ancient Erin laid great stress on the pig being properly fed, chiefly on milk and the best kind of meal. It cannot have been very different in ancient Wales; for we read in the story of Peredur that, when he sets out from his mother’s home full of his mother’s counsel, he comes by-and-by to a pavilion, in front of which he sees food, some of which he proceeds to take according to his mother’s advice, though the gorgeously dressed lady sitting near it has not the politeness to anticipate his wish. It consisted, we are told, of two bottles of wine, two loaves of white bread, and collops of a milk-fed pig’s flesh[9]. The home of the fairies was imagined to be a land of luxury and happiness with which nothing could compare in this world. In this certain Welsh and Irish stories agree; and in one of the latter, where the king of the fairies is trying to persuade the queen of Ireland to elope with him, we find that among the many inducements offered her are fresh pig, sweet milk, and ale[10]. Conversely, as the fairies were considered to be always living and to be a very old-fashioned and ancient people, it was but natural to suppose that they had the animals which man found useful, such as horses, cattle, and sheep, except that they were held to be of superior breeds, as they are represented, for instance, in our lake legends. Similarly, it is natural enough that other stories should ascribe to them also the possession of herds of swine; and all this prior to man’s having any. The next step in the reasoning would be that man had obtained his from the fairies. It is some tradition of this kind that possibly suggested the line taken by the Pwyỻ story in the matter of the derivation of the pig from Annwn: see the last chapter.
The next story in the Triad is, if possible, wilder still: it runs as follows:—