Page:Notes and Queries - Series 9 - Volume 12.djvu/429

 9* s. xii. NOV. 28, iocs.] NOTES AND QUERIES.

421

LONDON, SATURDAY, NOVEMBER 28, 1908.

CONTENTS. No. 309.

NOTES : Seion, a Llanpumsaint Tradition, 421 Shake- speariana, 422 Dibdin Bibliography, 423 " Miniature " "Milksop" Children's Games: " Ice Pie " Carlyle and the Talmud Sir Humphrey Gilbert, 425 Shelley Family "Do you ken John Peel?" Dr. D. Duncan, 426 Shakespeare's Scholarship Abraham Lincoln " Lock- step," 427.

QUERIES : Marriage House Glass Manufacture in 1587 Island of Providence Nelson's Sister Anne Sundial Motto 'Book of the Foundations ' Gipsy Queen Breckenridge Family, 428 " Scriptures out of church " Portraits Wanted Arthur as Scottish Christian Name- Flaying Alive Nicholas Bacon of Brussels Topography of Ancient London "So, when at last " Snuffbox -Inscrip- tion, 429 Dickens Reference " Omnium Gatherum : M. E. R. Gowland Candlemas Gills Lord Monteagle's Portrait, 430.

REPLIES : " Serendipity," 430 Jinrikshas " Chape- roned by her father" " Ship "Hotel Charles Kemble Dante Portrait Berkshire and Oxfordshire Parish Regis- ters " Loadberry," 431 Memory Cobden : a Reputed Saying Sham Burials, 432 The Oak, the Ash, and the Ivy Mannings and Tawell, 433 Tambourello Sir Henry Sidney's Heart Envelopes Blackheads Naval Pronun- ciation T. Lloyd, Republican, 434 -School Library of the Seventeenth Century English Cardinals Breaking the Glass at Jewish Weddings Infant Saviour at the Breast Puns, 435 Cushions on the Altar Macaroni : Harp in Southern Italy: the Olive 'Rule Britannia '" Palo de cobrn," 436 Lieut.-Col. Henry Osborn John Gilpin's Route The Wykehamical Word " Toys "Hawthorn, 437 Play at Trin. Coll., Camb. Madame du Deffand's Letters Edwin Lawrence Godkin, 438

NOTES ON BOOKS: -Joyce's 'Social History of Ireland' 'Great Masters' 'The Bride's Mirror' 'The Book of Herbs.'

Notices to Correspondents.

gates,

SEION : AN ANCIENT TRADITION OF LLANPUMSAINT.

THE following legend appeared in the Haul for July, 1849. That it is a genuine local tradition is attested by the editor (David Owen, better known by his ffugenw, " Brutus"), who was a native of the parish of Llanpumsaint. His statement that it is "imperfect" probably means no more than that it does not give the names of the five saints as found in the printed lists of Welsh saints. I have omitted nothing except a few general reflections of a didactic character. Llechseion, I may add, is situated about nine miles, as the crow flies, north of the town of Carmarthen. I will make no comment on the tale at present, further than to note the very precise reference to the broken stone, and the great probability, almost amounting to certainty, that the inscription contained some form of the name of Seion that could not be identified by the uninstructed with " saint."

" This tale of Seion have I heard in my younger days from my parents and aged folk as they bent over the spinning-wheel, who in their turn but repeated what had been handed down by their fore- fathers. They would tell how a man named Seion, a disciple and successor of some of the disciples and

successors of Christ and the Apostles, had come in the early days of Christianity across the seas from some far-off region, and, disembarking at one of the seaports of the land of Dyfed, had journeyed hither and thither through the country, uttering his

message to wit, the Gospel of the power of God

He won the affections of five men, whom he named saints (saint neu seintiau). These, believing in his message, joined him and became his followers and adherents. They clung close together, never going singly on their preaching missions through the land, for fear of the Druids, who, utterly hostile to Christianity, were very numerous at that time perhaps far more so than the Hans and chapels of the present day, if we may judge from the vestiges of their temples and altars scattered up and down

every part of the country Seion and his saints,

in the course of their journeyings, crossed Celer Mountain, and on the south side of that mountain Seion sickened, and his friends and followers did all they could to comfort and cure him, diligently applying such remedies as they knew. Nothing, However, availed, and there, above Duad Well, Seion died. This well is a remarkable one, with a greater force of water in its spring than is commonly the case. With its own waters has it hollowed out the glen, into which no other stream flows. The brook retains the name of the well for miles on its downward course towards the village of Cynwil Elfed and far beyond, till it falls into the river Gwili. From that point the river is Gwili, until it reaches the Towy.

" When Seion died the five saints held, after the fashion of those days, a solemn burial service over their departed leader, with wistful mourning and grief-laden prayer, for the space of time usual under such circumstances, and then they buried him near Duad Well, and placed over the grave a great inscribed stone slab ; and the farm where his grave was dug and the dwelling-house have borne the name of Llechseion unto this day. The stone gradually shifted from its original position, and sank deeply into the ground, for the peaty soil was soft. And now as it sank the earth oegan to hide it ; and so the shepherd lads in the summer season of shepherding would scrape away with their crooks and staves the soil that covered and hid the letter- ing of the stone. In later times, some hundred and forty or hundred and sixty years ago, a big kiln was built on the farm of Llechseion for the purpose of drying corn, and a stonemason was sent with his tools to break up the slab (for it was too heavy to be carried off entire), in order to set it over the furnace of the kiln. In two he intended breaking it, but it broke into five fragments. I had a con- versation about fifty years back with one Evan William, who was then very, very old, and he it was who had carried the fragments of the slab to the kiln. He told me that the inscription was quite plain on some of the pieces at that time. All who knew Evan considered him to be a sensible, straightforward man, and he was very intelligent in matters of history (yn hanesydd rhagorol dda).

" After the burial of Seion, and the days of lament- ing customary in those times were over, the five saints agreed to fare forth once more to preach to the country folk. They turned their eyes towards the east, and nothing but rugged heathery moun- tains faced them everywhere, with no sign of human habitation. They looked towards the west and the south, and still beheld the same forbidding scenery. But when they turned their gaze in a south-westerly