When the moon’s at three-quarters it’s at it again,
And it rains, besides, mostly between!”
The Dee is said to flow through the lake without mingling its waters—a tradition that may be gently set aside. It rises on the flank of Aran Benllyn, and already receives two tributaries before it joins Bala Lake at its head. At Llanuwchllyn, near to the spot at which the three little streams become one, it has grown important enough to be crossed by a rude stone bridge of two arches.
Photo: Catherall & Pritchard, Eastgate Row, Chester.
DENBIGH (p. [227]).
Drayton speaks of Bala Lake as Pimblemere. That is a name signifying “the lake of the five parishes.” Llyn Tegid, the lake of beauty, is the favourite Welsh designation. And a very beautiful lake it is, though with less majesty of surroundings than one would expect to find at such a height, in such a country, where, as George Borrow says, everything is “too grand for melancholy.” It was the largest sheet of water in Wales until Lake Vyrnwy was made, its length being about four and a half miles by about a mile in average breadth. In the Welsh mind it has filled so large a place that there is a tradition of how the bursting of the banks of Bala Lake caused the Deluge. A feature that has always attracted much attention is the influence of a south-west wind in driving its waters outward into the Dee. Thus, for example, writes Tennyson, speaking of Enid’s nursing of Geraint:—
“Her constant motion round him, and the breath