Before closing this chapter a word may be permitted as to the Goidelic element in the history of Wales: it will come again before the reader in a later chapter, but what has already been advanced or implied concerning it may here be recapitulated as follows:—
It has been suggested that the hereditary dislike of the Brython for the Goidel argues their having formerly lived in close proximity to one another: see p. 473 above.
The tradition that the cave treasures of the Snowdon district belong by right to the Goidels, means that they were formerly supposed to have hidden them away when hard pressed by the Brythons: see pp. 471–2 above.
The sundry instances of a pair of names for a single person or place, one Goidelic (Brythonicized) still in use, and the other Brythonic (suggested by the Goidelic one), literary mostly and obsolete, go to prove that the Goidels were not expelled, but allowed to remain to adopt Brythonic speech.
Evidence of the indebtedness of story-tellers in Wales to their brethren of the same profession in Ireland is comparatively scarce; and almost in every instance of recent research establishing a connexion between topics or incidents in the Arthurian romances and the native literature of Ireland, the direct contact may be assumed to have been with the folklore and legend of the Goidelic inhabitants of Wales, whether before or after their change of language.
Probably the folklore and mythology of the Goidels of Wales and of Ireland were in the mass much the same, though in some instances they reach us in different stages of development: thus in such a case as that of Dôn and Danu (genitive Danann) the Welsh allusions in point refer to Dôn at a conspicuously earlier stage of her rôle than that represented by the Irish literature touching the Tuatha Dé Danann[78].
The common point of view from which our ancestors liked to look at the scenery around them is well illustrated by the fondness of the Goidel, in Wales and Ireland alike, for incidents to explain his place-names. He required the topography—indeed he requires it still, and hence the activity of the local etymologist—to connote story or history: he must have something that will impart the cold light of physical nature, river and lake, moor and mountain, a warmer tint, a dash of the pathetic element, a touch of the human, borrowed from the light and shade of the world of imagination and fancy in which he lives and dreams.
[1] They are produced here in their order as printed at the beginning of the second volume of the Myvyrian Archaiology of Wales, and the series or versions are indicated as i, ii, iii. Version ii will be found printed in the third volume of the Cymmrodor, pp. 52–61, also in the Oxford Mabinogion, pp. 297–308, from the Red Book of Hergest of the fourteenth century. The letter (a, b, c) added is intended to indicate the order of the three parts of the Triad, for it is not the same in all the series. Let me here remark in a general way that the former fondness of the Welsh for Triads was not peculiar to them. The Irish also must have been at one time addicted to this grouping. Witness the Triad of Cleverest Countings, in the Book of the Dun Cow, fol. 58a, and the Triad of the Blemishes of the Women of Ulster, ib. 43b. [↑]
[2] As to the names Drystan (also Trystan) and Essyỻt, see the footnote on p. 480 above. [↑]