Part 3 (1/2)
_Dafydd ab Gwilym_, who is said to have flourished in the fourteenth century, says, in one of his poems, as given in the _Cambro-Briton_, vol.
ii., p. 313, alluding to these physicians:--
”Meddyg, nis gwnai modd y gwnaeth Myddfai, o chai ddyn meddfaeth.”
”A Physician he would not make As Myddvai made, if he had a mead fostered man.”
It would appear, therefore, that these celebrated physicians lived somewhere about the thirteenth century. They are described as Physicians of Rhys Gryg, a prince of South Wales, who lived in the early part of the thirteenth century. Their supposed supernatural origin dates therefore from the thirteenth, or at the latest, the fourteenth century.
I have mentioned _Y Gwylliaid Cochion_, or, as they are generally styled, _Gwylliaid Cochion Mawddwy_, the Red Fairies of Mawddwy, as being of Fairy origin. The Llanfrothen Legend seems to account for a race of men in Wales differing from their neighbours in certain features. The offspring of the Fairy union were, according to the Fairy mother's prediction in that legend, to have red hair and prominent noses. That a race of men having these characteristics did exist in Wales is undoubted.
They were a strong tribe, the men were tall and athletic, and lived by plunder. They had their head quarters at Dinas Mawddwy, Merioneths.h.i.+re, and taxed their neighbours in open day, driving away sheep and cattle to their dens. So unbearable did their depredations become that John Wynn ap Meredydd of Gwydir and Lewis Owen, or as he is called Baron Owen, raised a body of stout men to overcome them, and on Christmas Eve, 1554, succeeded in capturing a large number of the offenders, and, there and then, some hundred or so of the robbers were hung. Tradition says that a mother begged hard for the life of a young son, who was to be destroyed, but Baron Owen would not relent. On perceiving that her request was unheeded, baring her breast she said:--
Y bronau melynion hyn a f.a.gasant y rhai a ddialant waed fy mab, ac a olchant eu dwylaw yn ngwaed calon llofrudd eu brawd.
These yellow b.r.e.a.s.t.s have nursed those who will revenge my son's blood, and will wash their hands in the heart's blood of the murderer of their brother.
According to _Pennant_ this threat was carried out by the murder of Baron Owen in 1555, when he was pa.s.sing through the thick woods of Mawddwy on his way to Montgomerys.h.i.+re a.s.sizes, at a place called to this day _Llidiart y Barwn_, the Baron's Gate, from the deed. Tradition further tells us that the murderers had gone a distance off before they remembered their mother's threat, and returning thrust their swords into the Baron's breast, and washed their hands in his heart's blood. This act was followed by vigorous action, and the banditti were extirpated, the females only remaining, and the descendants of these women are occasionally still to be met with in Montgomerys.h.i.+re and Merioneths.h.i.+re.
For the preceding information the writer is indebted to _Yr Hynafion Cymreig_, pp. 91-94, _Archaeologia Cambrensis_, for 1854, pp. 119-20, _Pennant_, vol. ii, pp. 225-27, ed. Carnarvon, and the tradition was told him by the Revd. D. James, Vicar of Garthbeibio, who likewise pointed out to him the very spot where the Baron was murdered.
But now, who were these _Gwylliaid_? According to the hint conveyed by their name they were of Fairy parentage, an idea which a writer in the _Archaeologia Cambrensis_, vol. v., 1854, p. 119, intended, perhaps, to throw out. But according to _Brut y Tywysogion_, _Myf. Arch_., p. 706, A.D. 1114, Denbigh edition, the _Gwylliaid Cochion Mawddwy_ began in the time of Cadwgan ab Bleddyn ab Cynvyn.
From Williams's _Eminent Welshmen_, we gather that Prince Cadwgan died in 1110, A.D., and, according to the above-mentioned _Brut_, it was in his days that the Gwylliaid commenced their career, if not their existence.
Unfortunately for this beginning of the red-headed banditti of Mawddwy, Tacitus states in his Life of Agricola, ch. xi., that there were in Britain men with red hair who he surmises were of German extraction. We must, therefore, look for the commencement of a people of this description long before the twelfth century, and the Llanfrothen legend either dates from remote antiquity, or it was a tale that found in its wanderings a resting place in that locality in ages long past.
From a legend recorded by _Giraldus Cambrensis_, which shall by and by be given, it would seem that a priest named Elidorus lived among the Fairies in their home in the bowels of the earth, and this would be in the early part of the twelfth century. The question arises, is the priest's tale credible, or did he merely relate a story of himself which had been ascribed to some one else in the traditions of the people? If his tale is true, then, there lived even in that late period a remnant of the aborigines of the country, who had their homes in caves. The Myddvai Legend in part corroborates this supposition, for that story apparently belongs to the thirteenth century.
It is difficult to fix the date of the other legends here given, for they are dressed in modern garbs, with, however, trappings of remote times.
Probably all these tales have reached, through oral tradition, historic times, but in reality they belong to that far-off distant period, when the prehistoric inhabitants of this island dwelt in Lake-habitations, or in caves. And the marriage of Fairy ladies, with men of a different race, intimates that the more ancient people were not extirpated, but were amalgamated with their conquerors.
Many Fairy tales in Wales are a.s.sociated with lakes. Fairy ladies emerge from lakes and disappear into lakes. In the oriental legend Pururavas came upon his absconding wife in a lake. In many Fairy stories lakes seem to be the entrance to the abodes of the Fairies. Evidently, therefore, those people were lake-dwellers. In the lakes of Switzerland and other countries have been discovered vestiges of Lake-villages belonging to the Stone Age, and even to the Bronze Age. Perhaps those that belong to the Stone Age are the most ancient kind of human abodes still traceable in the world. In Ireland and Scotland these kinds of dwellings have been found. I am not in a position to say that they have been discovered in Wales; but some thirty years ago Mr. Colliver, a Cornish gentleman, told the writer that whilst engaged in mining operations near Llyn Llydaw he had occasion to lower the water level of that lake, when he discovered embedded in the mud a canoe formed out of the trunk of a single tree. He saw another in the lake, but this he did not disturb, and there it is at the present day. The late Professor Peter of Bala believed that he found traces of Lake-dwellings in Bala Lake, and the people in those parts have a tradition that a town lies buried beneath its waters--a tradition, indeed, common to many lakes. It is not therefore unlikely that if the lakes of Wales are explored they will yield evidences of lake-dwellers, and, however unromantic it may appear, the Lady of the Van Lake was only possibly a maiden s.n.a.t.c.hed from her watery home by a member of a stronger race.
In these legends the lady does not seem to evince much love for her husband after she has left him. Possibly he did not deserve much, but towards her children she shows deep affection. After the husband is deserted, the children are objects of her solicitation, and they are visited. The Lady of the Van Lake promised to meet her son whenever her counsel or aid was required. A like trait belongs to the Homeric G.o.ddesses. Thetis heard from her father's court far away beneath the ocean the terrible sounds of grief that burst from her son Achilles on hearing of the death of his dear friend Patroclus, and quickly ascended to earth all weeping to learn what ailed her son. These Fairy ladies also show a mother's love, immortal though they be.
The children of these marriages depart not with their mother, they remain with the father, but she takes with her her dowry. Thus there are many descendants of the Lady of the Van Lake still living in South Wales, and as Professor Rhys remarks--”This brings the legend of the Lady of the Van Lake into connection with a widely spread family;” and, it may be added, shows that the Celts on their advent to Wales found it inhabited by a race with whom they contracted marriages.
The manner in which the lady is seized when dancing in the Ystrad Legend calls to mind the strategy of the tribe of Benjamin to secure wives for themselves of the daughters of s.h.i.+loh according to the advice of the elders who commanded them,--”Go and lie in wait in the vineyards; and see, and behold, if the daughters of s.h.i.+loh come out to dance in dances, then come ye out of the vineyards, and catch you everyone his wife of the daughters of s.h.i.+loh, and go to the land of Benjamin,” Judges, ch. xxi.
The rape of the Sabine women, who were seized by the followers of Romulus on a day appointed for sacrifice and public games, also serves as a precedent for the action of those young Welshmen who captured Fairy wives whilst enjoying themselves in the dance.
It is a curious fact, that a singular testimony to wife s.n.a.t.c.hing in ancient times is indicated by a custom once general, and still not obsolete in South Wales, of a feigned attempt on the part of the friends of the young woman about to get married to hinder her from carrying out her object. The Rev. Griffith Jones, Vicar of Mostyn, informed the writer that he had witnessed such a struggle. The wedding, he stated, took place at Tregaron, Cardigans.h.i.+re. The friends of both the young people were on horseback, and according to custom they presented themselves at the house of the young woman, the one to escort her to the church, and the other to hinder her from going there. The friends of the young man were called ”_Gwyr shegouts_.” When the young lady was mounted, she was surrounded by the _gwyr shegouts_, and the cavalcade started. All went on peaceably until a lane was reached, down which the lady bolted, and here the struggle commenced, for her friends dashed between her and her husband's friends and endeavoured to force them back, and thus a.s.sist her to escape. The parties, Mr. Jones said, rode furiously and madly, and the struggle presented a cavalry charge, and it was not without much apparent danger that the opposition was overcome, and the lady ultimately forced to proceed to the church, where her future husband was anxiously awaiting her arrival. This strange custom of ancient times and obscure origin is suggestive of the way in which the stronger party procured wives in days of old.
Before the marriage of the Fairy lady to the mortal takes place, the father of the lady appears on the scene, sometimes as a supplicant, and at others as a consenting party to the inevitable marriage, but never is he depicted as resorting to force to rescue his daughter. This pusillanimity can only be reasonably accounted for by supposing that the ”little man” was physically incapable of encountering and overcoming by brute force the aspirant to the hand of his daughter. From this conduct we must, I think, infer that the Fairy race were a weak people bodily, unaccustomed and disinclined to war. Their safety and existence consisted in living in the inaccessible parts of the mountains, or in lake dwellings far removed from the habitations of the stronger and better equipped race that had invaded their country. In this way they could, and very likely did, occupy parts of Wales contemporaneously with their conquerors, who, through marriage, became connected with the mild race, whom they found in possession of the land.
In the Welsh legends the maid consents to wed her capturer, and remain with him until he strikes her with _iron_. In every instance where this stipulation is made, it is ultimately broken, and the wife departs never to return. It has been thought that this implies that the people who immediately succeeded the Fair race belonged to the Iron Age, whilst the fair aborigines belonged to the Stone or Bronze age, and that they were overcome by the superior arms of their opponents, quite as much as by their greater bodily strength. Had the tabooed article been in every instance _iron_, the preceding supposition would have carried with it considerable weight, but as this is not the case, all that can be said positively is, that the conquerors of the Fair race were certainly acquainted with iron, and the blow with iron that brought about the catastrophe was undoubtedly inflicted by the mortal who had married the Fairy lady. Why iron should have been tabooed by the Fairy and her father, must remain an open question. But if we could, with reason, suppose, that that metal had brought about their subjugation, then in an age of primitive and imperfect knowledge, and consequent deep superst.i.tion, we might not be wrong in supposing that the subjugated race would look upon iron with superst.i.tious dread, and ascribe to it supernatural power inimical to them as a race. They would under such feelings have nothing whatever to do with iron, just as the benighted African, witnessing for the first time the effects of a gun shot, would, with dread, avoid a gun. By this process of reasoning we arrive at the conclusion that the Fairy race belonged to a period anterior to the Iron Age.
With one remark, I will bring my reflections on the preceding legends to an end. Polygamy apparently was unknown in the distant times we are considering. But the marriage bond was not indissoluble, and the initiative in the separation was taken by the woman.