Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 15, 1904.djvu/377

 Correspondence. 349

Kentchurch, D.D., Provincial of the Franciscans, an Oxford pro- fessor, and a Welsh bard whose poems are yet extant in seven- teenth century MSS. He lived in the fifteenth century, and having scientific knowledge, could hardly fail (any more than his brother Bacon) to get credit for magical powers. Some of the feats attributed to him are obviously gigantic, and have no doubt been transferred to him from some forgotten giant. Such is his jumping off the Sugarloaf Mountain, near Abergavenny, on to the Skyrrid (the Sgiryd Fawr). His " heel-mark " in the latter moun- tain is an extensive pre-historic landslip, and is usually ascribed to the earthquake which took place at the Crucifixion. The Sgiryd Fawr was always regarded as sacred and mysterious. More than one Monmouthshire parish church was built on a mound formed of earth brought from this mountain ; and it was the custom at the burial of Catholics, right down to the early nine- teenth century, to sprinkle on the coffin earth brought from the chapel of Saint Michael, which stood on the slope near the land- slip. Saint Michael's, or the Holy Mountain, were other names for the Great Sgiryd.

The belief (p. 86) that if one kills an adder and holds it over fire its four legs will come out, reminds one of the Jewish tradition that the serpent had legs and walked before Adam's fall. I have heard this belief referred to a " race-memory " of antediluvian reptiles.

The Book of Baglan, a celebrated A\'elsh MS. of Gwentian pedigrees, written 1607, twice mentions a certain giant, "Gigas Orgo " or " Giginn Orgo," to whom it attributes the first building of Abergavenny Castle. I cannot explain the word Giginn unless it be some obsolete Welsh word for giant, but in any case the combination " Giginn Orgo " involves a radical form Gorgo, in which one is much inclined to recognise the Guorguol or Werwolf of Arthur and Gorlago7i (see Mr. Nutt's notes, p. 61). I may add that Orgo is the only giant I have met with in the folklore of Monmouthshire.

John Hobson Matthews.

Monmouth.