8. Grugyn, one of the Twrch’s offspring, goes to Garth Grugyn in Keredigion with Eli and Trachmyr pursuing him; but what happened to them we are not told in consequence of the omission mentioned above (p. 515) as occurring in the manuscript.
9. Ỻwydawc at bay in an uncertain locality kills Rudvyw Rys[47] and many others.
10. Ỻwydawc goes to Ystrad Yw, where he is met by the Men of Ỻydaw, and he kills Hirpeissawc, king of Ỻydaw, also Ỻygatruđ Emys and Gwrbothu Hên, maternal uncles to Arthur.
By way of notes on these items, I would begin with the last by asking, what is one to make of these Men of Ỻydaw? First of all, one notices that their names are singular: thus Hirpeissawc, ‘Long-coated or Long-robed,’ is a curious name for their king, as it sounds more like an epithet than a name itself. Then Ỻygatruđ (also Ỻysgatruđ, which I cannot understand, except as a scribal error) Emys is also unusual: one would have rather expected Emys Lygatruđ, ‘Emys the Red-eyed.’ As it stands it looks as if it meant the ‘Red-eyed One of Emys.’ Moreover Emys reminds one of the name of Emyr Ỻydaw, the ancestor in Welsh hagiology of a number of Welsh saints. It looks as if the redactor of the Red Book had mistaken an r for an s in copying from a pre-Norman original. That he had to work on such a manuscript is proved by the remaining instance, Gwrbothu Hên, ‘G. the Ancient,’ in which we have undoubtedly a pre-Norman spelling of Gwrfođw: the same redactor having failed to recognize the name, left it without being converted into the spelling of his own school. In the Book of Ỻan Dâv it will be found variously written Gurbodu, Guoruodu, and Guruodu. Then the epithet hên, ‘old or ancient,’ reminds one of such instances as Math Hên and Gofynion Hên, to be noticed a little later in this chapter. Let us now direct the reader’s attention for a moment to the word Ỻydaw, in order to see whether that may not suggest something. The etymology of it is contested, so one has to infer its meaning, as well as one can, from the way in which it is found used. Now it is the ordinary Welsh word for Brittany or Little Britain, and in Irish it becomes Letha, which is found applied not only to Armorica but also to Latium. Conversely one could not be surprised if a Goidel, writing Latin, rendered his own Letha or the Welsh Ỻydaw by Latium, even when no part of Italy was meant. Now it so happens that Ỻydaw occurs in Wales itself, to wit in the name of Ỻyn Ỻydaw, a Snowdonian lake already mentioned, p. 475. It is thus described by Pennant, ii. 339:—‘We found, on arriving at the top, an hollow a mile in length, filled with Ỻyn Ỻydaw, a fine lake, winding beneath the rocks, and vastly indented by rocky projections, here and there jutting into it. In it was one little island, the haunt of black-backed gulls, which breed here, and, alarmed by such unexpected visitants, broke the silence of this sequestered place by their deep screams.’ But since Pennant’s time mining operations[48] have been carried on close to the margin of this lake; and in the course of them the level of the water is said to have been lowered to the extent of sixteen feet, when, in the year 1856, an ancient canoe was discovered there. According to the late Mr. E. L. Barnwell, who has described it in the Archæologia Cambrensis for 1874, pp. 150–1, it was in the possession of Dr. Griffith Griffith of Tal y Treuđyn, near Harlech, who exhibited it at the Cambrian Archæological Association’s meeting at Machynỻeth in 1866[49]. ‘It measures,’ Mr. Barnwell says, ‘nine feet nine inches—a not uncommon length in the Scotch early canoes,—and has been hollowed out of one piece of wood, as is universally the case with these early boats.’ He goes on to surmise that ‘this canoe may have been used to reach the island, for the sake of birds or eggs; or what is not impossible, the island may have been the residence of some one who had reasons for preferring so isolated an abode. It may, in fact, have been a kind of small natural crannog, and, in one sense, a veritable lake-dwelling, access to and from which was easy by means of such a canoe.’ Stokes conjectures Ỻydaw to have meant coast-land, and Thurneysen connects it with the Sanskrit pṛthivī and Old Saxon folda[50], ‘earth’: and, so far as I can see, one is at liberty to assume a meaning that would satisfy Ỻydaw, ‘Armorica,’ and the Ỻydaw of Ỻyn Ỻydaw, ‘the Lake of Ỻydaw,’ namely that it signified land which one had to reach by boat, so that it was in fact applicable to a lake settlement of any kind, in other words, that Ỻydaw on Snowdon was the name of the lake-dwelling. So I cannot help suggesting, with great deference, that the place whence came the Men of Ỻydaw in the story of the hunting of Twrch Trwyth was the settlement in Syfađon lake (p. 73), and that the name of that stronghold, whether it was a crannog or a stockaded islet, was also Ỻydaw. For the power of that settlement over the surrounding country to have extended a few miles around would be but natural to suppose—the distance between the Yw and Ỻyn Syfađon is, I am told, under three miles. Should this guess prove well founded, we should have to scan with renewed care the allusions in our stories to Ỻydaw, and not assume that they always refer us to Brittany.
That the name Ỻydaw did on occasion refer to the region of Ỻyn Syfađon admits of indirect proof as follows:—The church of Ỻangorse on its banks is dedicated to a Saint Paulinus, after whom also is called Capel Peulin, in the upper course of the Towy, adjacent to the Cardiganshire parish of Ỻanđewi Brefi. Moreover, tradition makes Paulinus attend a synod in 519 at Ỻanđewi Brefi, where St. David distinguished himself by his preaching against Pelagianism. Paulinus was then an old man, and St. David had been one of his pupils at the Ty Gwyn, ‘Whitland,’ on the Taf, where Paulinus had established a religious house[51]; and some five miles up a tributary brook of the Taf is the church of Ỻandysilio, where an ancient inscription mentions a Paulinus. These two places, Whitland and Ỻandysilio, were probably in the cymwd of Peuliniog, which is called after a Paulinus, and through which we have just followed the hunt of Twrch Trwyth (p. 512). Now the inscription to which I have referred reads[52], with ligatures:—
CLVTORIGI
FILI PAVLINI
MARINILATIO
This probably means ‘(the Monument) of Clutorix, son of Paulinus from Latium in the Marsh’; unless one ought rather to treat Marini as an epithet to Paulini. In either case Latio has probably to be construed ‘of or from Latium’: compare a Roman inscription found at Bath (Hübner’s No. 48), which begins with C. Murrius. | C. F. Arniensis | Foro. Iuli. Modestus[53], and makes in English, according to Mr. Haverfield, ‘Gaius Murrius Modestus, son of Gaius, of the tribe Arniensis, of the town Forum Iulii.’ The easiest way to explain the last line as a whole is probably to treat it as a compound with the qualifying word deriving its meaning, not from mare, ‘the sea,’ but from the Late Latin mara, ‘a marsh or bog.’ Thus Marini-Latium would mean ‘Marshy Latium,’ to distinguish it from Latium in Italy, and from Letha or Ỻydaw in the sense of Brittany, which was analogously termed in Medieval Irish Armuirc Letha[54], that is the Armorica of Letha. This is borne out by the name of the church of Paulinus, which is in Welsh Ỻan y Gors, anglicized Ỻangorse, ‘the Church of the Marsh or Bog,’ and that is exactly the meaning of the name given it in the Taxatio of Pope Nicholas, which is that of Ecclesia de Mara. In other terms, we have in the qualified Latium of the inscription the Latium or Letha which came to be called in Welsh Ỻydaw. It is, in my opinion, from that settlement as their head quarters, that the Men of Ỻydaw sallied forth to take part in the hunt in Ystrad Yw, where the boar Ỻwydog was killed.
The idea that the story of Twrch Trwyth was more or less topographical is not a new one. Lady Charlotte Guest, in her Mabinogion, ii. 363–5, traces the hunt through several places called after Arthur, such as Buarth Arthur, ‘Arthur’s Cattle-pen,’ and Bwrđ Arthur, ‘Arthur’s Table,’ besides others more miscellaneously named, such as Twyn y Moch, ‘the Swine’s Hill,’ near the source of the Amman, and Ỻwyn y Moch, ‘the Swine’s Grove,’ near the foot of the same eminence. But one of the most remarkable statements in her note is the following:—‘Another singular coincidence may be traced between the name of a brook in this neighbourhood, called Echel, and the Echel Forđwyttwỻ who is recorded in the tale as having been slain at this period of the chase.’ I have been unable to discover any clue to a brook called Echel, but one called Egel occurs in the right place; so I take it that Lady Charlotte Guest’s informants tacitly identified the name with that of Echel. Substantially they were probably correct, as the Egel, called Ecel in the dialect of the district, flows into the upper Clydach, which in its turn falls into the Tawe near Pont ar Dawe. As the next pool mentioned is Ỻwch Tawe, I presume it was some water or other which drained into the Tawe in this same neighbourhood. The relative positions of Ỻwch Ewin, the Egel, and Ỻwch Tawe as indicated above offer no apparent difficulty. The Goidelic name underlying that of Echel was probably some such a one as Eccel or Ecell; and Ecell occurs, for instance, in the Book of the Dun Cow, fo. 80b, as the name of a noble or prince. In rendering this name into Welsh as Echel, due regard was had for the etymological equivalence of Goidelic cc or c to Welsh ch, but the unbroken oral tradition of a people changing its language by degrees from Goidelic to Welsh was subject to no such influence, especially in the matter of local names; so the one here in question passed into Welsh as Eccel, liable only to be modified into Egel. In any case, one may assume that the death of the hero Echel was introduced to account for the name of the brook Egel. Indications of something similar in the linguistic sense occur in the part of the narrative relating the death of Grugyn, at Garth Grugyn. This boar is pursued by two huntsmen called Eli and Trachmyr, the name of the former of whom reminds one of Garth Eli, in the parish of Ỻanđewi Brefi. Possibly the original story located at Garth Eli the death of Eli, or some other incident in which Grugyn was concerned; but the difficulty here is that the exact position of Garth Grugyn is still uncertain.
Lastly, our information as to the hunting of Twrch Trwyth is not exclusively derived from the Kulhwch, for besides an extremely obscure poem about the Twrch in the Book of Aneurin, a manuscript of the thirteenth century, we have one item given in the Mirabilia associated with the Historia Brittonum of Nennius, § 73, and this carries us back to the eighth century. It reads as follows:—
Est aliud mirabile in regione quæ dicitur Buelt. Est ibi cumulus lapidum, et unus lapis superpositus super congestum, cum vestigio canis in eo. Quando venatus est porcum Troit, impressit Cabal, qui erat canis Arthuri militis, vestigium in lapide, et Arthur postea congregavit congestum lapidum sub lapide in quo erat vestigium canis sui, et vocatur Carn Cabal. Et veniunt homines et tollunt lapidem in manibus suis per spacium diei et noctis, et in crastino die invenitur super congestum suum.