British Goblins Part 30

FOOTNOTE:

[185] Sir R. C. h.o.a.re's Giraldus, 'Itin. Camb.' ii., 37.

V.

In a certain cavern in Glamorgans.h.i.+re, called the Ogof Cigfrain, or Cavern of the Ravens, is said to be a chest of gold, watched over by two birds of gloomy plumage, in a darkness so profound that nothing can be seen but the fire of their sleepless eyes. To go there with the purpose of disturbing them is to bring on a heaving and rolling of the ground, accompanied by thunder and lightning. A swaggering drover from Brecknocks.h.i.+re, though warned by a 'dark woman' that he had better not try it, sneered that 'a couple of ravens were a fine matter to be afraid of indeed!' and ventured into the cavern, with a long rope about his waist, and a lantern in his hand. Some men who accompanied him (seeing that he was bent on this rash and dangerous emprise,) held the coil of rope, and paid it out as he went further and further in. The result was prompt and simple: the sky cracked with loud bursts of thunder and flashes of lightning, and the drover roared with affright and rushed out of the dark cavern with his hair on end.

No coaxing ever prevailed on him to reveal the terrible sights he had seen; when questioned he would only repeat in Welsh the advice of 'Punch' to those about to marry, viz., 'Peidiwch!'

VI.

In the legend of Castell Coch, instead of a raven it is a pair of huge eagles which watch the treasure. Castell Coch is an easy and pleasant two hours' walk from Cardiff Castle, with which it is vulgarly believed to be connected by a subterranean pa.s.sage. A short time ago--well, to be precise, a hundred years ago, but that is no time at all in the history of Castell Coch, which was a crumbling ruin then as it is now[186]--in or about the year 1780, a reduced lady was allowed to fit up three or four rooms in the ruin as a residence, and to live there with two old servants of her house. One night this lady was awakened from her sleep to receive the visit of a venerable ghost in a full dress-suit of an earlier century, who distressed her by his troubled countenance and vexed her by his eccentric behaviour, for when she spoke to him from the depths of her nightcap he at once got through the wall. He came on subsequent nights so often, and frightened the servants so much by the noise he made--in getting through the wall, of course--that the lady gave up her strange abode, and was glad to pay house rent ever after in other parts. This old ghost was in the flesh proprietor of the castle, it appears, and during the civil wars buried an iron chest full of gold in the subterranean pa.s.sage--which is still there, guarded by two large eagles. A party of gentlemen who somewhere about 1800 attempted to explore the pa.s.sage saw the eagles, and were attacked by the birds of freedom so fiercely that they retreated in disorder. Subsequently they returned with pistols and shot the eagles, which resented this trifling impertinence by tearing the treasure-seekers in a shocking manner. After having recovered from their wounds, the determined Welshmen renewed the attack--this time with silver bullets, which they had got blessed by a good-natured priest. The bullets rattled harmlessly on the feathers of the terrible birds; the ground shook under foot; rain descended in torrents; with their great wings the eagles beat out the gold-hunters' torches, and they barely escaped with their lives.

FOOTNOTE:

[186] It is at present being entirely restored and made habitable by its owner, Lord Bute.

VII.

The shadowy Horror which keeps vigil over these hidden treasures is now a dragon, again a raven or an eagle, again a worm. In the account of the treasure-seeker of Nantyglyn, it is a winged creature of unknown nature, a 'mysterious incubus,' which broods over the chest in the cave. The terrible Crocodile of the Lake, which was drawn from its watery hiding-place by the Ychain Banog, or Prominent Oxen of Hu Gadarn, is also sometimes called a dragon (draig) in those local accounts which survive in the folk-lore of several different districts. It infested the region round about the lake where it lay concealed, and the mighty oxen so strained themselves in the labour of drawing it forth that one of them died and the other rent the mountain in twain with his bellowing. Various legends of Sleeping Warriors appear in Welsh folk-lore, in which the dragon is displaced by a shadowy army of slumbering heroes, lying about in a circle, with their swords and s.h.i.+elds by their sides, guarding great heaps of gold and silver. Now they are Owen Lawgoch and his men, who lie in their enchanted sleep in a cavern on the northern side of Mynydd Mawr, in Carmarthens.h.i.+re; again they are Arthur and his warriors, asleep in a secret ogof under Craig-y-Ddinas, waiting for a day when the Briton and the Saxon shall go to war, when the noise of the struggle will awaken them, and they will reconquer the island, reduce London to dust, and re-establish their king at Caerleon, in Monmouths.h.i.+re.

Dragon or demon, raven or serpent, eagle or sleeping warriors, the guardian of the underground vaults in Wales where treasures lie is a personification of the baleful influences which reside in caverns, graves, and subterraneous regions generally. It is something more than this, when traced back to its source in the primeval mythology; the dragon which watched the golden apples of Hesperides, and the Payshtha-more, or great worm, which in Ireland guards the riches of O'Rourke, is the same malarious creature which St. Samson drove out of Wales. According to the monkish legend, this pestiferous beast was of vast size, and by its deadly breath had destroyed two districts. It lay hid in a cave, near the river. Thither went St. Samson, accompanied only by a boy, and tied a linen girdle about the creature's neck, and drew it out and threw it headlong from a certain high eminence into the sea.[187] This dreadful dragon became mild and gentle when addressed by the saint; did not lift up its terrible wings, nor gnash its teeth, nor put out its tongue to emit its fiery breath, but suffered itself to be led to the sea and hurled therein.[188] In the 'Mabinogion,' the dragon which fights in Lludd's dominion is mentioned as a plague, whose shriek sounded on every May eve over every hearth in Britain; and it 'went through people's hearts, and so scared them, that the men lost their hue and their strength, and the women their children, and the young men and maidens lost their senses.'[189] 'Whence came the _red_ dragon of Cadwaladr?'

asks the learned Thomas Stephens.[190] 'Why was the Welsh dragon in the fables of Merddin, Nennius, and Geoffrey, described as _red_, while the Saxon dragon was _white_?' The question may remain long unanswered, for the reason that there is no answer outside the domain of fancy, and therefore no reason which could in our day be accepted as reasonable.[191] The Welsh word 'dragon' means equally a dragon and a leader in war. Red was the most honourable colour of military garments among the British in Arthur's day; and Arthur wore a dragon on his helmet, according to tradition.

His haughty helmet, horrid all with gold, Both glorious brightness and great terror bred, For all the crest a dragon did enfold With greedy paws.[192]

But the original dragon was an embodiment of mythological ideas as old as mankind, and older than any written record. The mysterious beast of the boy Taliesin's song, in the marvellous legend of Gwion Bach, is a dragon worthy to be cla.s.sed with the gigantic conceptions of the primeval imagination, which sought by these prodigious figures to explain all the phenomena of nature. 'A noxious creature from the rampart of Satanas,' sings Taliesin; with jaws as wide as mountains; in the hair of its two paws there is the load of nine hundred waggons, and in the nape of its neck three springs arise, through which sea-roughs swim.[193]

FOOTNOTES:

[187] 'Liber Landavensis,' 301.

[188] Ibid., 347.

[189] 'Mabinogion,' 461.

[190] 'Literature of the Kymry,' 25.

[191] Mr. Conway, in his erudite chapter on the Basilisk, appears to think that the red colour of the Welsh dragon, in the legend of Merlin and Vortigern, determines its moral character; that it ill.u.s.trates the evil principle in the struggle between right and wrong, or light and darkness, as black does in the Persian legends of fighting serpents.--'Demonology and Devil-Lore,' p. 369. (London, Chatto and Windus, 1879.)

[192] Spenser, 'Faerie Queene.'

[193] 'Mabinogion,' 484.

VIII.

For the prototype of the dragon-haunted caves and treasure-hills of Wales, we must look to the lightning caverns of old Aryan fable, into which no man might gaze and live, and which were in fact the attempted explanation of thunderstorms, when the clouds appeared torn asunder by the lightning.

Scholars have noted the impressive fact that the ancient Aryan people had the same name for cloud and mountain; in the Old Norse, 'klakkr'

means both cloud and rock, and indeed the English word cloud has been identified with the Anglo-Saxon 'clud,' rock.[194] Equally significant here is the fact that in the Welsh language 'draig' means both lightning and dragon.

Primeval man, ignorant that the cloud was in any way different in structure from the solid mountains whose peaks it emulated in appearance, started back aghast and trembling when with cras.h.i.+ng thunders the celestial rocks opened, displaying for an instant the glowing cavern whose splendour haunted his dreams. From this phenomenon, whose goblins modern science has tamed and taught to run errands along a wire, came a host of glittering legends, the s.h.i.+ning hammer of Thor, the lightning spear of Odin, the enchanted arrow of Prince Ahmed, and the forked trident of Poseidon, as well as the fire-darting dragons of our modern folk-lore.

[Ill.u.s.tration: {THISTLE DECORATION.}]

FOOTNOTE:

[194] Max Muller, 'Rig-Veda,' i. 44. And see Mr. Baring-Gould's 'Curious Myths of the Middle Ages,' etc.