The Welsh and Their Literature

Huw Morris was born in the year 1622, and died in 1709, having lived in six reigns. The place of his birth was Pont y Meibion, in the valley of Ceiriog, in Denbighshire. He was a writer of songs, carols, and elegies, and was generally termed Eos Ceiriog, or the Nightingale of Ceiriog, a title which he occasionally well deserved, for some of his pieces, especially his elegies, are of great beauty and sweetness. Not unfrequently, however, the title of Dylluan Ceiriog, or the Owl of Ceiriog, would be far more applicable, for whenever he thought fit he could screech and hoot most fearfully. He was a loyalist, and some of his strains against the Roundheads are fraught with the bitterest satire. His dirge on Oliver and his men, composed shortly after Monk had declared for Charles II., is a piece quite unique in its way. He lies buried in the graveyard of the beautiful church of Llan Silien, in Denbigshire. The stone which covers his remains is yet to be seen just outside the southern wall, near the porch. The last great poet of Wales was a little swarthy curate; – but this child of immortality, for such he is, must not be disposed of in half a dozen lines. The following account of him is extracted from an unpublished work, called ‘Wild Wales,’ by the author of ‘The Bible in Spain’: —

‘Goronwy, or Gronwy, Owen was born in the year 1722, at a place called Llanfair Mathafrn Eithaf, in Anglesea. He was the eldest of three children. His parents were peasants and so exceedingly poor that they were unable to send him to school. Even, however, when an unlettered child he gave indications that he was visited by the awen or muse. At length the celebrated Lewis Morris chancing to be at Llanfair, became acquainted with the boy, and, struck with its natural talents, determined that he should have all the benefit which education could bestow. He accordingly, at his own expense, sent him to school at Beaumaris, where he displayed a remarkable aptitude for the acquisition of learning. He subsequently sent him to Jesus College, Oxford, and supported him there whilst studying for the Church. At Jesus, Gronwy distinguished himself as a Greek and Latin scholar, and gave proofs of such poetical talent in his native language that he was looked upon by his countrymen of that Welsh college as the rising bard of the age. After completing his collegiate course, he returned to Wales, where he was ordained a minster of the Church in the year 1745. The next seven years of his life were a series of cruel disappointments and pecuniary embarrassments. The grand wish of his heart was to obtain a curacy, and to settle down in Wales. Certainly a very reasonable wish, for, to say nothing of his being a great genius, he was eloquent, highly learned, modest, meek, and of irreproachable morals; yet Gronwy Owen could obtain no Welsh curacy, nor could his friend Lewis Morris, though he exerted himself to the utmost, procure one for him. It was true that he was told that he might go to Llanfair, his native place, and officiate there at a time when the curacy happened to be vacant, and thither he went, glad at heart to get back amongst his old friends, who enthusiastically welcomed him; yet scarcely had he been there three weeks when he received notice from the chaplain of the Bishop of Bangor that he must vacate Llanfair in order to make room for a Mr. John Ellis, a young clergyman of large independent fortune, who was wishing for a curacy under the Bishop of Bangor, Doctor Hutton. So poor Gronwy, the eloquent, the learned, the meek, was obliged to vacate the pulpit of his native place to make room for the rich young clergyman, who wished to be within dining distance of the palace of Bangor. Truly in this world the full shall be crammed, and those who have little shall have the little which they have taken away from them. Unable to obtain employment in Wales, Gronwy sought for it in England, and after some time procured the curacy of Oswestry, in Shropshire, where he married a respectable young woman, who eventually brought him two sons and a daughter. From Oswestry he went to Donnington, near Shrewsbury, where, under a certain Scotchman named Douglas, who was an absentee, and who died Bishop of Salisbury, he officiated as curate and master of a grammar school for a stipend – always grudgingly and contumeliously paid – of three-and-twenty pounds a year. From Donnington he removed to Walton in Cheshire, where he lost his daughter, who was carried off by a fever. His next removal was to Northolt, a pleasant village in the neighbourhood of London. He held none of his curacies long, either losing them from the caprice of his principals, or being compelled to resign them from the parsimony which they practised towards him. In the year 1756 he was living in a garret in London, vainly soliciting employment in his sacred calling, and undergoing with his family the greatest privations. At length his friend Lewis Morris, who had always assisted him to the utmost of his ability, procured him the mastership of a Government school at New Brunswick, in North America, with a salary of three hundred pounds a year. Thither he went with his wife and family, and there he died some time about the year 1780.

‘He was the last of the great poets of Cambria, and with the exception of Ab Gwilym, the greatest which she has produced. His poems, which for a long time had circulated through Wales in manuscript, were first printed in the year 1819. They are composed in the ancient bardic measures, and were, with one exception, namely, an elegy on the death of his benefactor, Lewis Morris, which was transmitted from the New World, written before he had attained the age of thirty-five. All his pieces are excellent, but his master-work is decidedly the Cywydd y Farn, or Day of Judgment. This poem, which is generally considered by the Welsh as the brightest ornament of their ancient language, was composed at Donnington, a small hamlet in Shropshire, on the north-west spur of the Wrekin, at which place, as has been already said, Gronwy toiled as schoolmaster and curate under Douglas the Scot, for a stipend of three-and-twenty pounds a year.’ [7 - It must be mentioned, however, in justice to Douglas, that in the autobiography of Dr. Carlyle, lately published, we find that ‘John Douglas, who has for some time been Bishop of Salisbury, and who is one of the most able and learned men on that bench, had at this time (1758, some years after Gronwy had left him) but small preferment.’]

The prose literature of Wales is by no means so extensive as the poetical; it, however, comprises much that is valuable and curious on historical, biographical, romantic and moral subjects. The most ancient Welsh prose may probably be found in certain brief compositions, called Triads, which are said to be of Druidic origin. The Triad was used for the commemoration of historical facts or the inculcation of moral duties. It has its name because in it three events are commemorated, or three persons mentioned, if it be historical; three things or three actions recommended or denounced, if it be moral. To give the reader at once a tolerable conception of what the Triad is, we subjoin two or three specimens of this kind of composition. We commence with the historical Triad: —

‘These are the three pillars of the race of the isle of Britain: First, Hu the Mighty, who conducted the nation of the Cumry from the summer country to the island of Britain (bringing them from the continent) across the hazy sea (German Ocean). Second, Prydain, son of Aedd Mawr, the founder of government and rule in the isle of Britain, before whose time there was no such thing as justice except what was obtained by courtesy, nor any law save that of the strongest. Third, Dyfnwal Moelmud, who first reduced to a system the laws, customs, and privileges of his country and nation.

‘The three intruding tribes into the island of Britain are the following: First, the Corranians, who came from the country of Pwyl. Second, the Gwyddelian (silvan, Irish) Fichti (Picts), who came to Alban across the sea of Lochlin (Northern Ocean), and who still exist in Alban by the shore of the sea of Lochlin (from Inverness to Thursoe). Third, the Saxons.. ’

So much for the historical Triad: now for the moral. The following are selected from a curious collection of admonitory sayings, called the ‘Triads of the Cumro, or Welshman:’ —

‘Three things should a Cumro always bear in mind lest he dishonour them: his father, his country, and his name of Cumro.

‘There are three things for which a Cumro should be willing to die: his country, his good name, and the truth wherever it be.

‘Three things are highly disgraceful to a Cumro: to look with one eye, to listen with one ear, and to defend with one hand.

‘Three things it especially behoves a Cumro to choose from his own country: his king, his wife, and his friend.’

After the Triads, the following are the principal prose works of the Welsh: —

1. ‘The Chronicle of the Kings of the Isle of Britain;’ supposed to have been written by Tysilio, in the seventh century. This work, or rather a Latin paraphrase of it by Geoffrey of Monmouth, has supplied our early English historians with materials for those parts of their works which are devoted to the subject of ancient Britain. It brings down British history to the year 660.

2. A continuation of the same to the year 1152, by Caradawg of Llancarvan. It begins thus: “In the year of Christ 660, died Cadwallawn ab Cadfan, King of the Britons, and Cadwaladr his son became king in his place; and, after ten years of peace, the great sickness, which is called the Yellow Plague, came over the whole isle of Britain.”

3. The ‘Code of Howel Da;’ a book consisting of laws, partly framed, partly compiled, by Howel Da, or the Good, who began to reign in the year 940. It is divided into three parts, and contains laws relating to the government of the palace and the family of the prince, laws concerning private property, and laws which relate to private rights and privileges. It is a code which displays much acuteness, good sense, and not a little oddity. Many of Howel’s laws prevailed in Wales as far down as the time of Henry VII.

4. ‘The Life or Biography of Gruffydd ap Cynan.’ This Gruffydd, of whom we have had more than once occasion to speak already, was born in Dublin about the year 1075. He was the son of Cynan, an expatriated prince of Gwynedd, by Raguel, daughter of Anlaf or Olafr, Dano-Irish king of Dublin and the fifth part of Ireland. After a series of the strangest adventures he succeeded in regaining his father’s throne, on which he died after a glorious reign of fifty years. He was the father of Owen Gwynedd, one of the most warlike of the Welsh princes, and was grandsire of that Madoc who, there is considerable reason for supposing, was the first discoverer of the great land in the West. A truly remarkable book is the one above mentioned, which narrates his life. It does full justice to the subject, being written in a style not unworthy of Snorre Sturlesen, or the man who wrote the history of King Sverrer and the Birkebeiners, in the latter part of the Heimskringla. It is a composition of the fifteenth century, but the author is unknown.

5. The Mabinogion, or Juvenile Diversions, a collection of Cumric legends, in substance of unknown antiquity, but in the dress in which they have been handed down to us scarcely older than the fourteenth century. In interest they almost vie with the ‘Arabian Nights,’ with which, however, they have nothing else in common, notwithstanding that all other European tales – those of Russia not excepted – are evidently modifications of, or derived from the same source as the Arabian stories. Of these Cumric legends two translations exist: the first, which was never published, made towards the concluding part of the last century by William Owen, who eventually assumed the name of Owen Pugh, the writer of the immortal Welsh and English Dictionary, and the translator into Welsh of ‘Paradise Lost;’ the second by the fair and talented Lady Charlotte Guest, which first made these strange, glorious stories known to England and all the world.

The sixth and last grand prose work of the Welsh is the ‘Sleeping Bard,’ a moral allegory, written about the beginning of the last century by Elis Wyn, a High-Church Welsh clergyman, a translation of which, by George Borrow, is now before us: —

‘The following translation of the Sleeping Bard,’ says Mr. Borrow, in his preface, ‘has long existed in manuscript. It was made by the writer of these lines in the year 1830, at the request of a little Welsh bookseller of his acquaintance, who resided in the rather unfashionable neighbourhood of Smithfield, and who entertained an opinion that a translation of the work of Elis Wyn would enjoy a great sale, both in England and Wales. On the eve of committing it to the press, however, the Cambrian Briton felt his small heart give way within him: “Were I to print it,” said he, “I should be ruined. The terrible descriptions of vice and torment would frighten the genteel part of the English public out of its wits, and I should to a certainty be prosecuted by Sir James Scarlett. I am much obliged to you for the trouble you have given yourself on my account – but myn Diawl! I had no idea, till I had read him in English, that Elis Wyn had been such a terrible fellow.”

‘Yet there is no harm in the book. It is true that the author is anything but mincing in his expressions and descriptions, but there is nothing in the Sleeping Bard which can give offence to any but the over fastidious. There is a great deal of squeamish nonsense in the world; let us hope, however, that there is not so much as there was. Indeed, can we doubt that such folly is on the decline, when we find Albemarle Street in ‘60 willing to publish a harmless but plain-speaking book which Smithfield shrank from in ’80?’

The work is divided into three parts, devoted to three separate and distinct visions, which the Bard pretends to have seen at three different times in his sleep. In assuming the title of ‘Sleeping Bard’ Elis Wyn committed a kind of plagiarism, as it originated with a certain poet who flourished in the time of the Welsh princes, some nine hundred years before he himself was born, and to this plagiarism he humorously alludes in one of his visions. The visions are described in prose, but each is followed by a piece of poetry containing a short gloss or comment. The prose is graphic and vigorous, almost beyond conception; the poetry wild and singular, each piece composed in a particular measure. Of the measures, two are quite original, to be found nowhere else. The first vision is the Vision of the World. The object of the Bard is to describe the follies, vices, and crimes of the human race, more especially those of the natives of the British Isles. In his sleep he imagines that he is carried away by fairies, and is in danger of perishing owing to their malice, but is rescued by an angel, who informs him that he has been sent by the Almighty with orders to give him a distinct view of the world. The angel, after a little time, presents him with a telescope, through which he sees a city of a monstrous size, with thousands of cities and kingdoms within it; and the great ocean, like a moat, around it; and other seas, like rivers, intersecting it.

This city is, of course, the world. It is divided into three magnificent streets. These streets are called respectively the streets of Pride, Pleasure, and Lucre. In the distance is a cross street, little and mean in comparison with the others, but clean and neat, and on a higher foundation than the other streets, running upwards towards the east, whilst they all sink downwards towards the north. This street is the street of True Religion. The angel conducts him down the three principal streets, and procures him glances into the inside of various houses. The following scene in a cellar of what is called the street of Pleasure, goes far to show that the pen of Elis Wyn, at low description, was not inferior to the pencil of Hogarth: —

‘From thence we went to a place where we heard a terrible noise, a medley of striking, jabbering, crying and laughing, shooting and singing. “Here’s Bedlam, doubtless,” said I. By the time we entered the den the brawling had ceased. Of the company, one was on the ground insensible; another was in a yet more deplorable condition; another was nodding over a hearthful of battered pots, pieces of pipes, and oozings of ale. And what was all this, upon inquiry, but a carousal of seven thirsty neighbours, – a goldsmith, a pilot, a smith, a miner, a chimney-sweeper, a poet, and a parson who had come to preach sobriety, and to exhibit in himself what a disgusting thing drunkenness is! The origin of the last squabble was a dispute which had arisen among them about which of the seven loved a pipe and flagon best. The poet had carried the day over all the rest, with the exception of the parson, who, out of respect for his cloth, had the most votes, being placed at the head of the jolly companions, the poet singing: —

‘O where are there seven beneath the sky
Who with these seven for thirst can vie?
But the best for good ale these seven among
Are the jolly divine and the son of song.’

After showing the Bard what is going on in the interior of the houses of the various streets, and in the streets themselves, the angel conducts him to the various churches of the City of Perdition: to the temple of Paganism, to the mosque of the Turk, and to the synagogue of the Jews; showing and explaining to him what is going on within them. He then takes him to the church of the Papists, which the angel calls, very properly, ‘the church which deceiveth nations.’ Some frightful examples are given of the depravity and cruelty of monks and friars. The dialogue between the confessor and the portly female who had murdered her husband, who was a member of the Church of England, is horrible, but quite in keeping with the principles of Popery; also the discourse which the same confessor holds with the young girl who had killed her child, whose father was a member of the monastery to which the monk belonged. From the Church of Rome they go to the Church of England. It is lamentable to observe what an attached minister of the Church of England describes as going on within the walls of a Church of England temple a hundred and fifty years ago. Would that the description could be called wholly inapplicable at the present time!

“Whereupon he carried me to the gallery of one of the churches in Wales, the people being in the midst of the service, and lo! some were whispering, talking, and laughing, some were looking upon the pretty women, others were examining the dress of their neighbours from top to toe; some were pushing themselves forward and snarling at one another about rank, some were dozing, others were busily engaged in their devotions, but many of these were playing a hypocritical part.”

The angel finally conducts the Bard to the small cross street, that of True Religion, where, of course, everything is widely different from what is found in any of the other streets. In that street there was no fear but of incensing the King, who was ever more ready to forgive than be angry with his subjects, and no sound but that of psalms of praise to the Almighty.

The second section is a Vision of Death in his palace below. The author’s aim in this vision is less apparent than in the preceding one. Perhaps, however, he wished to impress upon people’s minds the awfulness of dying in an unrepentant state, from the certainty, in that event, of the human soul being forthwith cast headlong down the precipice of destruction. The Bard is carried away by sleep to chambers where some people are crying, others screaming, some talking deliriously, some uttering blasphemies in a feeble tone, others lying in great agony with all the signs of dying men, and some yielding up the ghost after uttering ‘a mighty shout.’ He is then conducted to a kind of limbo or Hades, where he meets with his prototype the Sleeping Bard of old and two other Welsh poets, one of whom is Taliesin, who is represented as watching the caldron of the witch Cridwen, even as he watched it in his boyhood. From thence he is hurried to the palace of Death, where he sees the King of Terrors swallowing flesh and blood, who, after a time, places himself on a terrific throne, and proceeds to pass judgment on various prisoners newly arrived. They are dealt with in an awful but very summary manner. It is to be remarked that all the souls introduced in this vision are those of bad people, with the exception of those of the poets which the Bard meets in limbo. A dark intimation, however, is given that there is another court or palace, where Death presides under a far different form, and where he pronounces judgment over the souls of the good. There is much in this vision which it is very difficult to understand. The gloss, or commentary, called ‘Death the Great,’ abounds with very fine poetry.

The last Vision, that of Hell, is the longest of the three. The Bard is carried in his sleep by the same angel who in his first vision had shown him the madness and vanity of the world, to the regions of eternal horror and woe, where he beholds the lost undergoing tortures proportionate to the crimes which they had committed on earth. After wandering from nook to nook, the Bard and his guide at last come to the court before the palace of the hellish regions, where, amidst thousands of horrible objects, the Bard perceives two feet of enormous magnitude, reaching to the roof of the whole infernal firmament, and inquires of his companion what those horrible things may be, but is told to be quiet for the present, as on his return he will obtain a full view of the monster to whom they belong, and is then conducted into the palace of Lucifer, who is about to hold a grand council. The Arch-Fiend is described as seated on a burning throne in a vast hall, the roof of which is of glowing steel. Around him are his potentates on thrones of fire, and above his head is a huge fist, holding a very frightful thunderbolt, towards which he occasionally casts uneasy glances. In the midst of the palace is a gulf, of yet more horrible and frightful aspect than hell itself, which is continually opening and closing, and which, the angel says, is the month of ‘Unknown’ or extremest hell, to which the devils and the damned are to be hurled for ever on the last day. The council is held in order to devise measures for the farther extension of the kingdom of Lucifer. The Arch-Fiend, in a speech which he makes, boasts that three parts of the world have already been brought to acknowledge his sway, chiefly through the instrumentality of his three daughters – Pleasure, Pride, and Lucre; and he hopes that eventually the whole world will be brought to do the same. He is particularly desirous that Britain should be subject to him, and requests the advice of his counsellors as to the best means to be employed in order to accomplish his wish. Various infernal potentates then arise and give him their advice, each of whom is a personification of some crime, vice, or folly. The debate is frequently interrupted by the sound of war; for, as the angel observes, there is continual war in hell. There is at one time a terrible disturbance and outbreak, arising from a dispute between the Papists, the Mahometans, and the bloody-minded Roundheads, as to which has done most service to the cause of hell, – the Koran, the Creed of Rome, or the Solemn League and Covenant. Lucifer is only able to quell this disturbance – during which Mahomet and Pope Julius assault each other tooth and nail – by causing his old picked soldiers, the champions of hell, to tear the combatants from each other. Amidst interruptions like these the debate proceeds. Each of the personified crimes and vices in succession – amongst whom are Mammon, Pride, Inconsiderateness, Wantonness, and the Demon of Tobacco– offers to go to Britain and do his best to further the views of his master. Lucifer, however, after listening to them all and acknowledging the peculiar merit of each, says that none of them is of sufficient power to be relied upon in the present emergency, but that he has a darling friend, who, with their co-operation, is equal to the enterprise. The friend turns out to be Ease – pleasant Ease – on whose merits he expatiates with great eloquence, and with whom he requests them to co-operate. ‘Go with her,’ says he, ‘and keep everybody in his sleep and his rest, in prosperity and comfort, abundance and carelessness, and then you will see the poor honest man, as soon as he shall drink of the alluring cup of Ease, become a perverse, proud, untractable churl; the industrious labourer change into a careless waggish rattler; and every other person become just as you would desire him.. Follow her to Britain,’ he says in conclusion, ‘and be as obedient to her as to our own royal Majesty’!

Then comes the finale: —

‘At this moment the huge bolt was shaken, and Lucifer and his chief counsellors were struck to the vortex of extremest hell, and oh! how horrible it was to see the throat of Unknown opening to receive them! “Well!” said the Angel, “we will now return; but you have not seen anything in comparison with the whole which is within the bounds of Destruction, and if you had seen the whole, it is nothing to the inexpressible misery which exists in Unknown, for it is not possible to form an idea of the world in extremest hell.” And at that word the celestial messenger snatched me up to the firmament of the accursed kingdom of darkness by a way I had not seen, whence I obtained, from the palace along all the firmament of the black and hot Destruction, and the whole land of forgetfulness, even to the walls of the city of Destruction, a full view of the accursed monster of a giantess, whose feet I had seen before. I do not possess words to describe her figure. But I can tell you that she was a triple-faced giantess, having one very atrocious countenance turned towards the heavens, barking, snorting, and vomiting accursed abomination against the celestial King; another countenance, very fair, towards the earth, to entice men to tarry in her shadow; and another, the most frightful countenance of all, turned towards Hell to torment it to all eternity. She is larger than the entire earth, and is yet daily increasing, and a hundred times more frightful than the whole of hell. She caused hell to be made, and it is she who fills it with inhabitants. If she were removed from hell, hell would become paradise; and if she were removed from the earth, the little world would become heaven; and if she were to go to heaven, she would change the regions of bliss into utter hell. There is nothing in all the universe, except herself, that God did not create. She is the mother of the four female deceivers of the city of Destruction; she is the mother of Death; she is the mother of every evil and misery; and she has a fearful hold on every living man: her name is Sin. “He who escapes from her hook, for ever blessed is he,” said the angel. Thereupon he departed, and I could hear his voice saying, “Write down what thou hast seen, and he who shall read it carefully, shall never have reason to repent.”

The above is an outline of the work of Elis Wyn – an extraordinary work it is. In it there is a singular mixture of the sublime and the coarse, of the terrible and ludicrous, of religion and levity, of the styles of Milton, of Bunyan, and of Quevedo. There is also much in it that is Welsh, and much that may be said emphatically to belong to Elis Wyn alone. The book is written in the purest Cambrian, and from the time of its publication has enjoyed extensive popularity in Wales. It is, however, said that the perusal of it has not unfrequently driven people mad, especially those of a serious and religious turn. The same thing is said in Spain of the ‘Life of Ignatius Loyola.’ Peter Williams, in ‘Lavengro,’ the Welsh preacher who was haunted with the idea that he had committed the sin against the Holy Ghost, is frequently mentioning the work of Elis Wyn. Amongst other things, he says that he took particular delight in its descriptions of the torments of hell. We have no doubt that many an Englishman, of honest Welsh Peter’s gloomy temperament, when he reads the work in its present dress will experience the same kind of fearful joy.

The translation is accompanied by notes explanatory of certain passages of the original beyond the comprehension of the common reader. These notes are good, as far as they go, but they are not sufficiently numerous, as many passages relating to ancient manners and customs – perfectly intelligible, no doubt, to the translator – must, for want of proper notes, remain dark and mysterious to his readers. In the Vision of Hell, a devil, who returns from the world to which he has been despatched, and who gives an account of his mission, says that he had visited two young maidens in Wales who were engaged in turning the shift. Not a few people – ladies, amongst the rest – will be disposed to ask what is meant by turning the shift. Mr. Borrow gives elsewhere the following explanation: ‘It was the custom in Britain in ancient times for the young maiden who wished to see her future lover to sit up by herself at Hallowmass Eve, wash out her smock, shift, or chemise, call it which of the three you please, place it on a linen-horse before the fire, and watch it whilst drying, leaving the door of the room open, in the belief that exactly as the clock began to strike twelve the future bridegroom would look in at the door, and remain visible till the twelfth stroke had ceased to sound.’

Of the notes which Mr. Borrow has given, the most important is certainly that which relates to Taliesin, who, in the Vision of Death, is described as sitting in Hades, watching a caldron which is hanging over a fire, and is continually going bubble, bubble. We give it nearly entire: —

‘Taliesin lived in the sixth century. He was a foundling, discovered in his infancy lying in a coracle on a salmon weir, in the domain of Elphin, a prince of North Wales, who became his patron. During his life he arrogated to himself a supernatural descent and understanding, and for at least a thousand years after his death he was regarded by the descendants of the ancient Britons as a prophet or something more. The poems which he produced procured for him the title of “Bardic King.” They display much that is vigorous and original, but are disfigured by mysticism and extravagant metaphor. When Elis Wyn represents him as sitting by a cauldron in Hades, he alludes to a wild legend concerning him, to the effect that he imbibed awen or poetical genius whilst employed in watching “the seething pot” of the sorceress Cridwen, which legend has much in common with one of the Irish legends about Fin Macoul, which is itself nearly identical with one in the Edda describing the manner in which Sigurd Fafnisbane became possessed of supernatural wisdom.’

It is curious enough that the legend about deriving wisdom from sucking the scalded finger should be found in Wales, Ireland, and Scandinavia. But so it is, and Mr. Borrow is clearly entitled to the credit of having been the first to point out to the world this remarkable fact. In his work called the ‘Romany Rye,’ published some years ago, a story is related containing parts of the early history of the Irish mythic hero Fion Mac Comhail, [8 - In a late number of the Transactions of the Dublin Ossianic Society – a most admirable institution – there is an account of the early life of Fin ma Coul, in which the burnt finger is mentioned; but that number did not appear till more than a year subsequent to the publication of the ‘Romany Rye,’ and contains not the slightest allusion either to Fafnisbane, i. e. the slayer of Fafnir, or Taliesin – to the Eddacal or the Cumric legend.] or Fin Mac Coul, in which there is an account of his burning his thumb whilst smoothing the skin of a fairy salmon which is broiling over a fire, and deriving supernatural knowledge from thrusting his thumb into his mouth and sucking it; and Mr. Borrow tells the relater of that legend, his amusing acquaintance Murtagh, that the same tale is told in the Edda of Sigurd, the Serpent-Killer, with the difference that Sigurd burns his finger, not whilst superintending the broiling of a salmon, but whilst roasting the heart of Fafnir, the man-serpent, whom he had slain.

Here, in his note on Taliesin, he shows that the same thing in substance is said of the ancient Welsh bard. Of the three versions of the legend, the one of which Sigurd Fafnisbane is the hero is probably the most original, and is decidedly the most poetical.

notes

1

It is but right to state that the learned are divided with respect to the meaning of ‘Cumro,’ and that many believe it to denote an original inhabitant.

2

Yehen banog: humped or bunched oxen, probably buffaloes. Banog is derived from ban – a prominence, protuberance, or peak.

3

Above we have given what we believe to be a plain and fair history of Hu Gadarn; but it is necessary to state, that after his death he was deified, and was confounded with the Creator, the vivifying power and the sun, and mixed up with all kinds of myths and legends. Many of the professedly Christian Welsh bards when speaking of the Deity have called Him Hu, and ascribed to the Creator the actions of the creature. Their doing so, however, can cause us but little surprise when we reflect that the bards down to a very late period cherished a great many druidical and heathen notions, and frequently comported themselves in a manner more becoming heathens than Christian men. Of the confounding of what is heavenly with what is earthly we have a remarkable instance in the ode of Iolo Goch to the ploughman, four lines of which, slightly modified, we have given above. In that ode the ploughman is confounded with the Eternal, and the plough with the rainbow: —

‘The Mighty Hu who reigns for ever,
Of mead and song to men the giver,
The emperor of land and sea
And of all things which living be,
Did hold a plough with his good hand,
Soon as the deluge left the land,
To show to men, both strong and weak,
The haughty hearted and the meek,