Page:Notes and Queries - Series 12 - Volume 4.djvu/119

 12 s. iv. APRIL, IRIS.] NOTES AND QUERIES.

how to build a ' blind boat ' as it had been originally invented by Lord Kuki."

From these records the so-called " blind boat " would seem to have been a con trivance nothing comparable with the twentieth -century submarines, but assuredly nobody would grumble should we term it an unrefined submarine from its capability of being propelled in the submerged con- dition.

In Capt. John Saris' s ' Journal of the Voyage to Japan in 1613,' in Rundall' ' Memorials of the Empire of Japon in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries,' London, 1850, p. 60, there occurs this passage :

" About eight or tenne leagxies on this side the straights of Xemina-Segue [Shimonoseki], wo found a greate towne, where there lay in a docke a juncke of eight hundred or a thousand tunnes oi burthen, sheathed all with yron, with a guarc appointed to keep her from firing and treachery She was built in a very homely fashion, much like that which describes Noah's arke unto us. The naturals told us, that she served to transporl souldiers into any of the Island*, if rebellion or wnrre shoulde happen."

This positive evidence, furnished by an Englishman of great integrity, that the Japanese early in the seventeenth century had displayed their inventive power in the construction of a rudimentary ironclad, naturally impels me to harbour no doubt respecting the Japanese of that time having possessed an unrefined submarine of their own creation.

Before closing I may note here that, according to the Rev. T. F. Becker (' The Mythology of the Dyaks,' in the Journal of the Indian Archipelago and Eastern Asia, vol. iii. No. 2, p. 103, Singapore, 1849), the Dyaks believe that

" the spirit Tempon-tellon (' proprietor of Tellon,' a slave) is principally the protector of the dead ; all souls are given into his care by the priests on the Tiwas (feast of the dead), and he conducts the Bame by his slave Tellon in an iron ship (' benama') to the ' lewu lian ' (habitation of the souls). . . . The vessel is of iron, as Baganja the priest here says, in order to prevent it from being some- times consumed by the flames when passing along the hill, and to bring in that way the passengers in safety to the place of their destination. It might be inferred from this, that the construction of iron vessels seems to have been known to the Dyaks earlier than to the civilized Europeans."

I reproduce this opinion simply as a curiosity. The Dyaks' iron ship has ob- viously been a never realized figment, quite unfit to be compared in any way with the rudimentary ironclad of the Japanese ac- tually seen at Shimonoseki by Saris.

KUMAGUSU MlNAKATA. Tanabe, Kii, Japan.

SWIXE IN BBITAIN (12 S. iv. 16). Gwydion ab Don was a mythical personage, Charles I. Elton, ' Origins of English History,' 2nd ed., p. 277, says :

" The gods of Britain suffered the common fate of their kind, and were changed into kings and champions, or degraded into giants and en- chanters " ;

and then at p. 278 :

" There seem to have been three principal families, the children 'of ' D6n ' and ' Nudd ' and .' Lir,' whose worship was common to the British and Irish tribes. The first group consisted of the heavenly powers whose homes were set in the stars and constellations. Gwydion son of Don is celebrated in the Welsh household tales and in the poems ascribed to Taliessin. He is the great magician, ' the master of illusion and phantasy' who changed the forms of men,trecs r and animals. His home was the Milky Way, which was known as the Castle of Gwydion."

Reference should also be made to John Rhys's Hibbert Lectures on ' Celtic Heathen- dom.' At p. 89 he states that the Irish name of the goddess was Danu or Donu, genitive Danann or Donann, and that in Welsh her name takes the form of Don, and that the gods descended from her were- accordingly called the children of Don, amongst whom is Gwydion son of Don. At p. 242, in the chapter devoted to the Culture Hero, ho treats of Gwydion son of D6n at length, and he gives the story (which is to- be found in the ' Mabinogion ') of Gwydion obtaining a number of swine from Pryderi, King of Dyved. The latter, who was the son of Pwyll, Head of Hades, had been presented from Hades with a species of animals never before met with in this country, viz. swine. Pryderi was reluctant to part with the pigs, but Gwydion, by magic, produced twelve horses and twelve greyhounds, all of whose appointments were profusely ornamented with gold. These were- too tempting for Pryderi, who readily ex- changed the swine for the horses and grey- hounds. Gwydion made off in all haste with his booty to his own country in North Wales,, for the charm he had worked would last only twenty-four hours, when the horses and hounds would again become the fungus out of which they were made. Gwydion and his men barely succeeded in reaching his own strongholds ere Pryderi and his army arrived" in pursuit of them. From this ensued a war which proved disastrous to Pryderi, who was slain in single combat by Gwydion. Rhys adds that

Gwydion's obtaining some of the swine of the Head of Hades is alluded to in the Book of Taliessin, a manuscript of the thirteenth century, a manner implying that it was considered a-