Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 4, 1893.djvu/71

 Rh within his memory. A well, bearing the remarkable name of Ffyunon Gwynedd, or the Well of Gwynedd, is situated near Mynydd Mawr, in the parish of Abererch, and it used to be consulted in the same way for a different purpose. When it was desired to discover whether an ailing person would recover, a garment of his would be thrown into the well, and according to the side on which it sunk it was known whether he would live or die. All these items are based on Myrddin Fardd's answers to my questions, or on the notes which he gave me to peruse.

The next class of wells to claim our attention consists of what I may call magic wells, of which few are mentioned in connection with Wales; but the legends about them are very curious. One of them is in Myrddin Fardd's neighbourhood, and I questioned him a good deal on the subject: it is called Ffyunon Grassi, or Grace's Well, and it occupies, according to him, a few square feet—he has measured it himself—of the south-east corner of the Lake of Glasfryn Uchaf, in the parish of Llangybi. It appears that it was walled in, and that the stone forming its eastern side has several holes in it, which were intended to let water enter the well and not issue from it. It had a door or cover on its surface; and it was necessary to keep the door always shut, except when water was being drawn. Through somebody's negligence, however, it was once on a time left open: the consequence was that the water of the well flowed out and formed the Glasfryn pool, which is so considerable as to be navigable for small boats. Grassi is supposed in the locality to have been the name of the owner of the well, or at any rate of a woman who had something to do with it. Grassi, or Grace, however, can only be a name which a modern version of the legend has introduced. It probably stands for an older name given to the person in charge of the well, the one, in fact, who neglected to shut the door; but though this name must be comparatively modern, the story, as a whole, does