Page:Notes and Queries - Series 10 - Volume 5.djvu/549

. Y.JUNE 9, 1906.] NOTES AND QUERIES.

45S

warranted by his own practice. Thus, what he intends to be Welsh for " stinking well " (ffynon ddrewllyd), is good Welsh for " Lloyd's town well." His civrw-dda is not only wrong in gender, but implies a calumny on the Principality as well, for the popular English sentiment " It is a shame to rob a poor man of his beer" would fall quite flat on the ears of a Welsh audience. When telling at con- siderable length the story of Twm Shon Catti, he invariably calls the scene of his hero's most famous exploit Ystryd ffyn (" the Street of Staves")* in defiance of the well- known old jingle :

In Ystrad ffin this year There 's loud alarm and fear, The stoutest heart like melting lead For dread that Twm is near.

The following sentence (p. 32) exposes Mr. Bradley's weakness on another and a more important side: "Whenfirst I knew the place, the burly figure of a celebrated pulpit orator of the Methodist persuasion was a

familiar one * Kilsby ' Jones." After that,

one is not surprised to find the Welsh Dis- sentersthe three sects absolutely ignored. At Llangeitho, the Mecca of Methodism, the tourist is independent of vernacular guides, and he cannot go far wrong in his facts. At Lampeter St. David's College is alive and flourishing, and he who runs may read its story and its lesson ; but from Lampeter to Llandyssul is a country over which the Church has no hold, and where Methodism is quite a secondary phase of religious life. But here is found the most unflinching antagonism to the Church, and the entire district is known as the " Black Spot." Can Mr. Bradley, perchance, have heard that term and mis- understood it ? At any rate, it is the very district where he misspells the Welsh for "corpse- candle," talks of "sin eaters" and their "ghoulish" feasts, combines his information about the cyhyraeth (heard, but not seen) and Y Wrach (oftener seen than heard), and creates therefrom the weird monstrosity Cyoewraeth. In my copy of J. Downes's * Mountain Deca- meron ' (i. p. 207) there is a MS. note on this word which may not be inappropriate here : "Quasi ab Austr. abor. 4 coee ' + Angl.-Scot. ' wraith ' ; ?;. A.L. opp. passim. T. L. R's ghost." As a matter of fact, the district is not behind, but in advance of, the rest of Wales in mental culture and enlighten- ment. Out of a score of well-known names that I could readily supply, I need only mention Silvan Evans, Prof. Rhys, and Mr. Gwenogfryn Evans as typical products of this " Black Spot." The name, I may explain, has been bestowed upon the district by the

" orthodox," because it is the heart of the smallest, but most "advanced" of the Three Sects, namely, the Unitarians, whose excel- lent monthly organ Yr Ymofynydd (The Inquirer) is actually published at Llandyssul. But I must hurry on. The tale of Dafydd [Meirig] of Bettws Bledrws, which Mr. Bradley has dumped down at Llandybie, has- nothing whatever to do with that locality. The folk-lore of Llandybie is curiously free from the greed-for-hidden-treasure motif* and there is no trace of such a thing ia the real Owen Lawgoch legend of that parish.

I now come to Mr. Bradley's indebtedness to John Davies. He has the names of the following living persons in his book : Dr. Henry Owen, Miss Braddon, Marie Corelli, and Hall Caine. No one would complain that he does not give the names of the " fair mail-cart driver" of the Vale of Aeron, of the cockney whom he met in Pembrokeshire, or the acquaintance of George Borrow whom he met at Llandpvery. The case of John Davies stands by itself. Half a dozen of the most interesting items in the book are given on his authority ; and from high above Lampeter to far below Llandyssul the references to a "local chronicler," a "local antiquary," &c., can be easily pieced together by the careful reader who knows the ground (and John Davies). There is more than mere "tactless" curiosity in- volved in this matter. When Mr. Bradley relates the romantic tale of the vanished mansion of Maesyfelin (' Millfield "), one would like to know whether he got the very clumsy version of the "Vicar's Curse" from John Davies or from some printed book. In the original the curse is given in the well-known "Vicar's Metre," as follows :

The curse of God on Millfield fall, On tree and twig, on stone and wall : Headlong it hurled Llandovery's pride To meet his death in Towy's tide.

The fact that the curse is in that metre i not improbably the very reason why the tale has been connected with the vicar's son a fact obscured in Mr. Bradley's version. Else- where Mr. Bradley introduces into Vicar Prichard : s meagre biography the old " goat >r story quite a modern "fake" in that con- nexion, for it used to be told of a Sir Philip, a pre-Reformation priest of Aberystruth, in Monmouthshire. J. P. OWEN.

PRISONER SUCKLED BY HIS DAUGHTER (10 th S. iv. 307, 353, 432; v. 31, 132). Although not a reply to the specific question,