What will, however, occur to everybody to ask, is—What was the origin of such a story? what did it mean, if it had a meaning? Various attempts have been made to interpret this kind of story, but nobody, so far as I know, has found a sure key to its meaning. The best guess I can make has been suggested in a previous chapter, from which it will be seen that the horse fits the Welsh context, so to say, best, the goat less well, and the ass probably least of all: see pp. 433–9 above. Supposing, then, the interpretation of the story established for certain, the question of its origin would still remain. Did it originate among the Celts and the Greeks and other nations who relate it? or has it simply originated among one of those peoples and spread itself to the others? or else have they all inherited it from a common source? If we take the supposition that it originated independently among a variety of people in the distant past, then comes an interesting question as to the conditions under which it arose, and the psychological state of the human race in the distant past. On the other supposition one is forced to ask: Did the Celts get the story from the Greeks, or the Greeks from the Celts, or neither from either, but from a common source? Also when and how did the variations arise? In any case, one cannot help seeing that a story like the one I have instanced raises a variety of profoundly difficult and interesting questions.
Hard as the folklorist may find it to extract tales and legends from the people of Wales at the present day, there is one thing which he finds far more irritating than the taciturnity of the peasant, and that is the hopeless fashion in which some of those who have written about Welsh folklore have deigned to record the stories which were known to them. Take as an instance the following, which occurs in Howells’ Cambrian Superstitions, pp. 103–4:—
‘In Cardiganshire there is a lake, beneath which it is reported that a town lies buried; and in an arid summer, when the water is low, a wall, on which people may walk, extending across the lake is seen, and supposed to appertain to the inundated city or town; on one side is a gigantic rock, which appears to have been split, as there is a very extensive opening in it, which nearly divides it in twain, and which tradition relates was thus occasioned:—Once upon a time there was a person of the name of Pannog, who had two oxen, so large that their like was never known in any part of the world, and of whom it might be said,
They ne’er will look upon their like again.
It chanced one day that one of them (and it appears that they were not endued with a quantum of sense proportionate to their bulk) was grazing near a precipice opposite the rock, and whether it was his desire to commit suicide, or to cool his body by laving in the lake below, one knows not, but certain it is that down he plunged, and was never seen more: his partner searching for him a short time after, and not perceiving any signs of his approach, bellowed almost as loud as the Father of the Gods, who when he spake “Earth to his centre shook”; however, the sound of his bleating [sic] split the opposite rock, which from the circumstance is called Uchain Pannog (Pannog’s Oxen). These oxen were said to be two persons, called in Wales, Nyniaf and Phebiaf, whom God turned into beasts for their sins.
Here it is clear that Mr. Howells found a portion, if not the whole, of his story in Welsh, taken partly from the Kulhwch story, and apparently in the old spelling; for his own acquaintance with the language did not enable him to translate Nynnyaỽ a pheibaỽ into ‘Nynio and Peibio.’ The slenderness of his knowledge of Welsh is otherwise proved throughout his book, especially by the way in which he spells Welsh words: in fact one need not go beyond this very story with its Uchain Pannog. But when he had ascertained that the lake was in Cardiganshire he might have gone a little further and have told his readers which lake it was. It is not one of the lakes which I happen to know in the north of the county—Ỻyn Ỻygad y Rheidol on Plinlimmon, or the lake on Moel y Ỻyn to the north of Cwm Ceulan, or either of the Iwan Lakes which drain into the Merin (or Meri), a tributary of the Mynach, which flows under Pont ar Fynach, called in English the Devil’s Bridge. From inquiry I cannot find either that it is any one of the pools in the east of the county, such as those of the Teifi, or Ỻyn Ferwyn, not far from the gorge known as Cwm Berwyn, mentioned in Edward Richards’ well known lines, p. 43:—
Mae’n bwrw’ ’Nghwm Berwyn a’r cysgod yn estyn,
Gwna heno fy mwthyn yn derfyn dy daith.
It rains in Cwm Berwyn, the shadows are growing,
To-night make my cabin the end of thy journey.