Page:Notes and Queries - Series 10 - Volume 5.djvu/180

 NOTES AND QUERIES. [io* s. v. FKB. 21, igoe.

is not Llandybie Welsh at all, for the inhabitants never drop the final / in ogof. The spot is known in the neighbourhood as Ogof y Ddinas, Ogof Cilyrychen, or Ogof Llandybie, but never Ogo'r Ddinas, and it is not " on the banks of the Cennin " (Cennen). Nor could the Cardiganshire " Dafydd of Bettws Bledrws" have ever driven his cattle 'down south through Llandybie on their way to London. There is also a legendary reason for the rock not being on the banks of the Cennen. As that little river (which, by the way, owes most of its waters in slack times to a contribution from the Llwchwr, falling into it between Carreg Cennen Castle and the ancient Ed wardian mansion now farm house of Cwrt Bryn y Beirdd (Bard's Hill Court) approaches the Vale of Llandybie, it turns abruptly northwards "against the sun," having been doomed so to do by a witch. As the only instance of that par- ticular superstition I have been able to discover in Wales, it is perhaps worth noting.

I need not repeat the cave legend, but there are two points in it which have, I think, hitherto escaped notice. The first is that at Dyllgoed Ucha' once lived an O\ven, who was the owner of the land which is now the bed of Llynllech Owen lake ; that he was -on intimate terms with the daughter of a .gentleman named Arthur who lived at Pantycastell ; and that Owen Lawgoch of Cilyrychen Cave, Craig y Ddinas, was a son of theirs. (See Job Davies's paper on Llyn- 'llech Owen in Y Diwygiwr of July, 1863.) The other point is that in 1813 ten human skeletons were found by the limestone quarry - men in the same rock it is not quite clear whether in a natural cave or in an arti- ficially excavated one. When L. L. Dillwyn, >8ome weeks after the find, visited the spot, the cave had been destroyed, and the remains had disappeared buried, according to what he was told, in Llandeilo Churchyard. (See his 'History of Swansea.') One of the skulls, however, seems to have been preserved, and it is now, I believe, at Oxford. I do not know whether the exact spot of the find was in Llandeilo or Llandybie parish ; it was oertainly considerably nearer the latter than the former parish church. As, according to the contemporary account, " all the bones were of a larger calibre than those of the present day, and the skulls were of a very large size and thickness," it is highly pro- bable that these remains were secretly smuggled into rather than regularly buried in any churchyard. Some forty years ago Llandybie Churchyard was enlarged, and

that on the side facing the quarries in ques- tion. In a very deep grave that was dug in 1865, partly within the old yard and partly under where the old enclosing wall had been, some very large bones were found, as to which thegravediggers were doubtful whether they were human or not. That fact has made me suspicious of the real final resting- place of the skeletons described by Dillwyn. I need not add that Mr. Bradley knows nothing of these things ; his "impressions" go but a very little way beyond those of a camera. He, of course, believes in the '"sin-eater," both name and function, as a thoroughly well-established Welsh institu- tion. That was to be expected, for even careful investigators quite fail to grasp the significance of the fact that Aubrey himself, the inventor of the term, admits that the name by which this forlorn wreckage of pre- Reformation times was known among his neighbours was "Old Sire" (Hen Syr), an ecclesiastical term of respectful import, which lingered on in Wales down to the last century.

Mr. Bradley makes a very pretty remark about George Borrow (p. 139) ; but it is a pity that he has not tried to emulate that wonderful man in one trait that is con- spicuous in ' Wild Wales ' I mean his care- ful naming and describing of the chance companions of his hurried tour. Now Mr. Bradley stayed for some weeks at or near Lampeter, and had for his guide, philosopher, and but Mr. Bradley is not Borrow, there- fore I must not say friend a "local genea- logist/' Of him Mr. Bradley speaks as follows: "I know one working-man well who has not only a good collection of curious old Welsh books, but is recognized as about the best judge of them in his county." Yet Mr. Bradley will not trouble to introduce the name of this perfect specimen of the poor, but indefatigable Welsh student and book-lover into his pages. By a most curious coinci- dence, while actually reading this Lampeter and Llandyssul part of the work, I received by post a printed " List of Books, all re- lating to Wales, now offered for Sale by John Davies, 5, St. Thomas Street, Lampeter the whole of the Collection, numbering over 1,000." This list runs to sixteen pages and contains 236 items, so that the whole of this working-man's collection will require a cata- logue of over sixty-four pages. Now, John Davies is Mr. Bradley 's local genealogist de- scribed above. Had he been the companion of Borrow for as many hours as he was Mr. Bradley's for weeks, John Davies would have been sure of a special niche in the 'Wild