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Java® For Dummies®, 7th Edition
Published by: John Wiley & Sons, Inc., 111 River Street, Hoboken, NJ
07030-5774, www.wiley.com
Copyright © 2017 by John Wiley & Sons, Inc., Hoboken, New Jersey
Published simultaneously in Canada
No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or
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Trademarks: Wiley, For Dummies, the Dummies Man logo, Dummies.com,
Making Everything Easier, and related trade dress are trademarks or
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Library of Congress Control Number: 2017932837
ISBN: 978-1-119-23555-2; 978-1-119-23558-3 (ebk); 978-1-119-23557-6
(ebk)
Java® For Dummies®
To view this book's Cheat Sheet, simply go to
www.dummies.com and search for “Java For
Dummies Cheat Sheet” in the Search box.
Table of Contents
Cover
Introduction
How to Use This Book
Conventions Used in This Book
What You Don’t Have to Read
Foolish Assumptions
How This Book Is Organized
Icons Used in This Book
Beyond the Book
Where to Go from Here

Part 1: Getting Started with Java

Chapter 1: All about Java
What You Can Do with Java
Why You Should Use Java
Getting Perspective: Where Java Fits In
Object-Oriented Programming (OOP)
What’s Next?

Chapter 2: All about Software

Quick-Start Instructions
What You Install on Your Computer

Chapter 3: Using the Basic Building Blocks

Speaking the Java Language
Checking Out Java Code for the First Time
 Understanding a Simple Java Program
And Now, a Few Comments

Part 2: Writing Your Own Java Programs

Chapter 4: Making the Most of Variables and Their
Values
Varying a Variable
Experimenting with JShell
What Happened to All the Cool Visual Effects?
The Atoms: Java’s Primitive Types
The Molecules and Compounds: Reference Types
An Import Declaration
Creating New Values by Applying Operators

Chapter 5: Controlling Program Flow with Decision-

Making Statements
Making Decisions (Java if Statements)
Using Blocks in JShell
Forming Conditions with Comparisons and Logical Operators
Building a Nest
Choosing among Many Alternatives (Java switch Statements)

Chapter 6: Controlling Program Flow with Loops

Repeating Instructions Over and Over Again (Java while Statements)
Repeating a Certain Number of Times (Java for Statements)
Repeating until You Get What You Want (Java do Statements)

Part 3: Working with the Big Picture: Object-Oriented

Programming
Chapter 7: Thinking in Terms of Classes and Objects
Defining a Class (What It Means to Be an Account)
Defining a Method within a Class (Displaying an Account)
Sending Values to and from Methods (Calculating Interest)
Making Numbers Look Good
Hiding Details with Accessor Methods
Barry’s Own GUI Class

Chapter 8: Saving Time and Money: Reusing Existing

 Code
Defining a Class (What It Means to Be an Employee)
Working with Disk Files (a Brief Detour)
Defining Subclasses (What It Means to Be a Full-Time or Part-Time
Employee)
Using Subclasses
Overriding Existing Methods (Changing the Payments for Some
Employees)

Chapter 9: Constructing New Objects

Defining Constructors (What It Means to Be a Temperature)
More Subclasses (Doing Something about the Weather)
A Constructor That Does More

Part 4: Smart Java Techniques

Chapter 10: Putting Variables and Methods Where They
Belong
Defining a Class (What It Means to Be a Baseball Player)
Making Static (Finding the Team Average)
Experiments with Variables
Passing Parameters

Chapter 11: Using Arrays to Juggle Values

Getting Your Ducks All in a Row
Arrays of Objects
Command Line Arguments

Chapter 12: Using Collections and Streams (When

Arrays Aren’t Good Enough)
Understanding the Limitations of Arrays
Collection Classes to the Rescue
Functional Programming

Chapter 13: Looking Good When Things Take

Unexpected Turns
Handling Exceptions
Handle an Exception or Pass the Buck
Finishing the Job with a finally Clause
A try Statement with Resources
 Chapter 14: Sharing Names among the Parts of a Java
Program
Access Modifiers
Classes, Access, and Multipart Programs
Sneaking Away from the Original Code
Protected Access
Access Modifiers for Java Classes

Chapter 15: Fancy Reference Types

Java’s Types
The Java Interface
Abstract Classes
Relax! You’re Not Seeing Double!

Chapter 16: Responding to Keystrokes and Mouse

Clicks
Go On … Click That Button
Responding to Things Other Than Button Clicks
Creating Inner Classes

Chapter 17: Using Java Database Connectivity

Creating a Database and a Table
Putting Data in the Table
Retrieving Data
Destroying Data

Part 5: The Part of Tens

Chapter 18: Ten Ways to Avoid Mistakes
Putting Capital Letters Where They Belong
Breaking Out of a switch Statement
Comparing Values with a Double Equal Sign
Adding Components to a GUI
Adding Listeners to Handle Events
Defining the Required Constructors
Fixing Non-Static References
Staying within Bounds in an Array
Anticipating Null Pointers
 Helping Java Find Its Files

Chapter 19: Ten Websites for Java

This Book’s Website
The Horse’s Mouth
Finding News, Reviews, and Sample Code
Got a Technical Question?

About the Author

Connect with Dummies
End User License Agreement
 Introduction
Java is good stuff. I’ve been using it for years. I like Java because it’s orderly.
Almost everything follows simple rules. The rules can seem intimidating at
times, but this book is here to help you figure them out. So, if you want to use
Java and you want an alternative to the traditional techie, soft-cover book, sit
down, relax, and start reading Java For Dummies, 7th Edition.
How to Use This Book
I wish I could say, “Open to a random page of this book and start writing Java
code. Just fill in the blanks and don’t look back.” In a sense, this is true. You
can’t break anything by writing Java code, so you’re always free to
experiment.
But let me be honest. If you don’t understand the bigger picture, writing a
program is difficult. That’s true with any computer programming language —
not just Java. If you’re typing code without knowing what it’s about and the
code doesn’t do exactly what you want it to do, you’re just plain stuck.
In this book, I divide Java programming into manageable chunks. Each chunk
is (more or less) a chapter. You can jump in anywhere you want — Chapter 5,
Chapter 10, or wherever. You can even start by poking around in the middle
of a chapter. I’ve tried to make the examples interesting without making one
chapter depend on another. When I use an important idea from another
chapter, I include a note to help you find your way around.
In general, my advice is as follows:

If you already know something, don’t bother reading about it.

If you’re curious, don’t be afraid to skip ahead. You can always sneak a
peek at an earlier chapter, if you really need to do so.
Conventions Used in This Book
Almost every technical book starts with a little typeface legend, and Java For
Dummies, 7th Edition, is no exception. What follows is a brief explanation of
the typefaces used in this book:

New terms are set in italics.

If you need to type something that’s mixed in with the regular text, the
characters you type appear in bold. For example: “Type MyNewProject
in the text field.”
You also see this computerese font. I use computerese for Java code,
filenames, web page addresses (URLs), onscreen messages, and other
such things. Also, if something you need to type is really long, it appears
in computerese font on its own line (or lines).
You need to change certain things when you type them on your own
computer keyboard. For instance, I may ask you to type
public class Anyname

which means that you type public class and then some name that you
make up on your own. Words that you need to replace with your own
words are set in italicized computerese.
What You Don’t Have to Read
Pick the first chapter or section that has material you don’t already know and
start reading there. Of course, you may hate making decisions as much as I
do. If so, here are some guidelines that you can follow:

If you already know what kind of an animal Java is and know that you
want to use Java, skip Chapter 1 and go straight to Chapter 2. Believe me,
I won’t mind.
If you already know how to get a Java program running, and you don’t
care what happens behind the scenes when a Java program runs, skip
Chapter 2 and start with Chapter 3.
If you write programs for a living but use any language other than C or
C++, start with Chapter 2 or 3. When you reach Chapters 5 and 6, you’ll
probably find them to be easy reading. When you get to Chapter 7, it’ll be
time to dive in.
If you write C (not C++) programs for a living, start with Chapters 2, 3,
and 4 and just skim Chapters 5 and 6.
If you write C++ programs for a living, glance at Chapters 2 and 3, skim
Chapters 4 through 6, and start reading seriously in Chapter 7. (Java is a
bit different from C++ in the way it handles classes and objects.)
If you write Java programs for a living, come to my house and help me
write Java For Dummies, 8th Edition.

If you want to skip the sidebars and the Technical Stuff icons, please do. In
fact, if you want to skip anything at all, feel free.
Foolish Assumptions
In this book, I make a few assumptions about you, the reader. If one of these
assumptions is incorrect, you’re probably okay. If all these assumptions are
incorrect … well, buy the book anyway:

I assume that you have access to a computer. Here’s the good news:
You can run most of the code in this book on almost any computer. The
only computers that you can’t use to run this code are ancient things that
are more than ten years old (give or take a few years).
I assume that you can navigate through your computer’s common
menus and dialog boxes. You don’t have to be a Windows, Linux, or
Macintosh power user, but you should be able to start a program, find a
file, put a file into a certain directory … that sort of thing. Most of the
time, when you practice the stuff in this book, you’re typing code on the
keyboard, not pointing and clicking the mouse.
On those rare occasions when you need to drag and drop, cut and paste, or
plug and play, I guide you carefully through the steps. But your computer
may be configured in any of several billion ways, and my instructions
may not quite fit your special situation. When you reach one of these
platform-specific tasks, try following the steps in this book. If the steps
don’t quite fit, consult a book with instructions tailored to your system.
I assume that you can think logically. That’s all there is to programming
in Java — thinking logically. If you can think logically, you’ve got it
made. If you don’t believe that you can think logically, read on. You may
be pleasantly surprised.
I make few assumptions about your computer programming
experience (or your lack of such experience). In writing this book, I’ve
tried to do the impossible: I’ve tried to make the book interesting for
experienced programmers yet accessible to people with little or no
programming experience. This means that I don’t assume any particular
programming background on your part. If you’ve never created a loop or
indexed an array, that’s okay.
On the other hand, if you’ve done these things (maybe in Visual Basic,
Python, or C++), you’ll discover some interesting plot twists in Java. The
developers of Java took the best ideas in object-oriented programming,
streamlined them, reworked them, and reorganized them into a sleek,
powerful way of thinking about problems. You’ll find many new, thought-
provoking features in Java. As you find out about these features, many of
them will seem quite natural to you. One way or another, you’ll feel good
about using Java.
How This Book Is Organized
This book is divided into subsections, which are grouped into sections, which
come together to make chapters, which are lumped finally into five parts.
(When you write a book, you get to know your book’s structure pretty well.
After months of writing, you find yourself dreaming in sections and chapters
when you go to bed at night.) The parts of the book are listed here.

Part 1: Getting Started with Java

This part is your complete, executive briefing on Java. It includes some
“What is Java?” material and a jump-start chapter — Chapter 3. In Chapter 3,
you visit the major technical ideas and dissect a simple program.

Part 2: Writing Your Own Java Program

Chapters 4 through 6 cover the fundamentals. These chapters describe the
things that you need to know so that you can get your computer humming
along.
If you’ve written programs in Visual Basic, C++, or any another language,
some of the material in Part 2 may be familiar to you. If so, you can skip
some sections or read this stuff quickly. But don’t read too quickly. Java is a
little different from some other programming languages, especially in the
things that I describe in Chapter 4.

Part 3: Working with the Big Picture: Object-

Oriented Programming
Part 3 has some of my favorite chapters. This part covers the all-important
topic of object-oriented programming. In these chapters, you find out how to
map solutions to big problems. (Sure, the examples in these chapters aren’t
big, but the examples involve big ideas.) In bite-worthy increments, you
discover how to design classes, reuse existing classes, and construct objects.
Have you read any of those books that explain object-oriented programming
in vague, general terms? I’m proud to say that Java For Dummies, 7th
Edition, isn’t like that. In this book, I illustrate each concept with a simple-
yet-concrete program example.
Part 4: Smart Java Techniques
If you’ve tasted some Java and you want more, you can find what you need in
this part of the book. This part’s chapters are devoted to details — the things
that you don’t see when you first glance at the material. After you read the
earlier parts and write some programs on your own, you can dive in a little
deeper by reading Part 4.

Part 5: The Part of Tens

The Part of Tens is a little Java candy store. In the Part of Tens, you can find
lists — lists of tips for avoiding mistakes, for finding resources, and for all
kinds of interesting goodies.
Icons Used in This Book
If you could watch me write this book, you’d see me sitting at my computer,
talking to myself. I say each sentence in my head. Most of the sentences, I
mutter several times. When I have an extra thought, a side comment, or
something that doesn’t belong in the regular stream, I twist my head a little
bit. That way, whoever’s listening to me (usually nobody) knows that I’m off
on a momentary tangent.
Of course, in print, you can’t see me twisting my head. I need some other way
of setting a side thought in a corner by itself. I do it with icons. When you see
a Tip icon or a Remember icon, you know that I’m taking a quick detour.
Here’s a list of icons that I use in this book:

A tip is an extra piece of information — something helpful that the

other books may forget to tell you.

Everyone makes mistakes. Heaven knows that I’ve made a few in my

time. Anyway, when I think people are especially prone to make a
mistake, I mark it with a Warning icon.

Question: What’s stronger than a Tip, but not as strong as a Warning?

Answer: A Remember icon.

“If you don’t remember what such-and-such means, see blah-blah-

blah,” or “For more information, read blahbity-blah-blah.”
 Writing computer code is an activity, and the best way to learn an
activity is to practice it. That's why I've created things for you to try in
order to reinforce your knowledge. Many of these are confidence-
builders, but some are a bit more challenging. When you first start
putting things into practice, you'll discover all kinds of issues,
quandaries, and roadblocks that didn't occur to you when you started
reading about the material. But that's a good thing. Keep at it! Don't
become frustrated. Or, if you do become frustrated, visit this book's
website (www.allmycode.com/JavaForDummies) for hints and solutions.

This icon calls attention to useful material that you can find online.
Check it out!

Occasionally, I run across a technical tidbit. The tidbit may help you
understand what the people behind the scenes (the people who
developed Java) were thinking. You don’t have to read it, but you may
find it useful. You may also find the tidbit helpful if you plan to read
other (more geeky) books about Java.
Beyond the Book
In addition to what you’re reading right now, this book comes with a free
access-anywhere Cheat Sheet containing code that you can copy and paste
into your own Android program. To get this Cheat Sheet, simply go to
www.dummies.com and type Java For Dummies Cheat Sheet in the Search
box.
Where to Go from Here
If you’ve gotten this far, you’re ready to start reading about Java application
development. Think of me (the author) as your guide, your host, your
personal assistant. I do everything I can to keep things interesting and, most
importantly, to help you understand.

If you like what you read, send me a note. My email address, which I
created just for comments and questions about this book, is
[email protected]. If email and chat aren’t your
favorites, you can reach me instead on Twitter (@allmycode) and on
Facebook (www.facebook.com/allmycode). And don’t forget — for the
latest updates, visit this book’s website. The site’s address is
www.allmycode.com/JavaForDummies.
Part 1
Getting Started with Java
IN THIS PART …
Find out about the tools you need for developing Java programs.
Find out how Java fits into today’s technology scene.
See your first complete Java program.
Chapter 1
 All about Java
IN THIS CHAPTER
What Java is
Where Java came from
Why Java is so cool
How to orient yourself to object-oriented programming

Say what you want about computers. As far as I’m concerned, computers are
good for just two simple reasons:

When computers do work, they feel no resistance, no stress, no

boredom, and no fatigue. Computers are our electronic slaves. I have my
computer working 24/7 doing calculations for Cosmology@Home — a
distributed computing project to investigate models describing the
universe. Do I feel sorry for my computer because it’s working so hard?
Does the computer complain? Will the computer report me to the National
Labor Relations Board? No.
I can make demands, give the computer its orders, and crack the whip. Do
I (or should I) feel the least bit guilty? Not at all.
Computers move ideas, not paper. Not long ago, when you wanted to
send a message to someone, you hired a messenger. The messenger got on
his or her horse and delivered your message personally. The message was
on paper, parchment, a clay tablet, or whatever physical medium was
available at the time.
This whole process seems wasteful now, but that’s only because you and I
are sitting comfortably in the electronic age. Messages are ideas, and
physical things like ink, paper, and horses have little or nothing to do with
real ideas; they’re just temporary carriers for ideas (even though people
used them to carry ideas for several centuries). Nevertheless, the ideas
themselves are paperless, horseless, and messengerless.
The neat thing about computers is that they carry ideas efficiently. They
carry nothing but the ideas, a couple of photons, and a little electrical
Another Random Scribd Document
with Unrelated Content
would be the literary form and Ecel, Egel the popular one respectively of
the Goidelic Ecell. A third parallel offers itself in the case of the personal
name Arwyli, borne by one of Echel’s companions: the Arwyl of that name
has its etymological equivalent in the Arwystl- of Arwystli, the name of a
district comprising the eastern slopes of Plinlimmon, and represented now
by the Deanery of Arwystli. So Arwystli challenges comparison with the
Irish Airgialla or Airgéill, anglicized Oriel, which denotes, roughly
speaking, the modern counties of Armagh, Louth, and Monaghan. For here
we have the same prefix ar placed in front of one and the same vocable,
which in Welsh is gwystl, ‘a hostage,’ and in Irish giall, of the same
meaning and origin. The reader will at once think of the same word in
German as geisel, ‘a hostage,’ Old High German gīsal. But the divergence
of sound between Arwystl-i and Arwyl-i arises out of the difference of
treatment of sl in Welsh and Irish. In the Brythonic district of Mid-Wales
we have Arwystli with sl treated in the Brythonic way, while in Arwyli we
have the combination treated in the Goidelic way, the result being left
standing when the speakers of Goidelic in South Wales learnt Brythonic58.

Careful observation may be expected to add to the number of these

instructive instances. It is, however, not to be supposed that all double
forms of the names in these stories are to be explained in exactly the same
way. Thus, for instance, corresponding to Lug, genitive Loga, we have the
two forms Ỻeu and Ỻew, of which the former alone matches the Irish. But
it is to be observed that Ỻeu remains in some verses59 in the story of Math,
whereas in the prose he appears to be called Ỻew. It is not improbable that
the editing which introduced Ỻew dates comparatively late, and that it was
done by a man who was not familiar with the Venedotian place-names of
which Ỻeu formed part, namely, Dinỻeu and Nantỻeu, now Dinỻe and
Nantỻe. Similarly the two brothers, Gofannon and Amaethon, as they are
called in the Mabinogi of Math and in the Kulhwch story, are found also
called Gofynyon and Amathaon. The former agrees with the Irish form
Goibniu, genitive Goibnenn, whereas Gofannon does not. As to Amaethon
or Amathaon the Irish counterpart has, unfortunately, not been identified.
Gofannon and Amaethon have the appearance of being etymologically
transparent in Welsh, and they have probably been remodelled by the hand
of a literary redactor. There were also two forms of the name of
Manawyđan in Welsh; for by the side of that there was another, namely,
Manawydan, liable to be shortened to Manawyd: both occur in old Welsh
poetry60. But manawyd or mynawyd is the Welsh word for an awl, which is
significant here, as the Mabinogi called after Manawyđan makes him
become a shoemaker on two occasions, whence the Triads style him one of
the Three golden Shoemakers of the Isle of Prydain: see the Oxford
Mabinogion, p. 308.

What has happened in the way of linguistic change in one of our stories, the
Kulhwch, may have happened in others, say in the four branches of the
Mabinogi, namely, Pwyỻ, prince of Dyved; Branwen, daughter of Ỻyr;
Math, son of Mathonwy; and Manawyđan, son of Ỻyr. Some time ago I
endeavoured to show that the principal characters in the Mabinogi of Math,
namely, the sons and daughters of Dôn, are to be identified as a group with
the Tuatha Dé Danann, ‘Tribes of the Goddess Danu or Donu,’ of Irish
legend. I called attention to the identity of our Welsh Dôn with the Irish
Donu, genitive Donann, Gofynion or Gofannon with Goibniu, genitive
Goibnenn, and of Ỻeu or Ỻew with Lug. Since then Professor Zimmer has
gone further, and suggested that the Mabinogion are of Irish origin; but that
I cannot quite admit. They are of Goidelic origin, but they do not come
from the Irish or the Goidels of Ireland: they come rather, as I think, from
this country’s Goidels, who never migrated to the sister island, but remained
here eventually to adopt Brythonic speech. There is no objection, however,
so far as this argument is concerned, to their being regarded as this
country’s Goidels descended either from native Goidels or from early
Goidelic invaders from Ireland, or else partly from the one origin and partly
from the other. This last is perhaps the safest view to accept as a working
hypothesis. Now Professor Zimmer fixes on that of Mathonwy, among other
names, as probably the Welsh adaptation of some such an Irish name as the
genitive Mathgamnai61, now anglicized Mahony. This I am also prepared to
accept in the sense that the Welsh form is a loan from a Goidelic one current
some time or other in this country, and represented in Irish by Mathgamnai.
The preservation of Goidelic th in Mathonwy stamps it as ranking with
Trwyth, Egel, and Arwyli, as contrasted with a form etymologically more
correct, of which we seem to have an echo in the Breton names Madganoe
and Madgone62.

Another name which I am inclined to regard as brought in from Goidelic is

that of Gilvaethwy, son of Dôn: it would seem to involve some such a word
as the Irish gilla, ‘a youth, an attendant or servant,’ and some form of the
Goidelic name Maughteus or Mochta, so that the name Gilla-mochtai meant
the attendant of Mochta. This last vocable appears in Irish as the name of
several saints, but previously it was probably that of some pagan god of the
Goidels, and its meaning was most likely the same as that of the Irish
participial mochta, which Stokes explains as ‘magnified, glorified’: see his
Calendar of Oengus, p. ccxiv, and compare the name Mael-mochta.
Adamnan, in his Vita S. Columbæ, writes the name Maucteus in the
following passage, pref. ii. p. 6:—

Nam quidam proselytus Brito, homo sanctus, sancti Patricii episcopi

discipulus, Maucteus nomine, ita de nostro prophetizavit Patrono, sicuti
nobis ab antiquis traditum expertis compertum habetur.

This saint, who is said to have prophesied of St. Columba and died in the
year 534, is described in his Life (Aug. 19) as ortus ex Britannia63, which,
coupled with Adamnan’s Brito, probably refers him to Wales; but it is
remarkable that nevertheless he bore the very un-Brythonic name of
Mochta or Mauchta64.

To return to the Mabinogion: I have long been inclined to identify Ỻwyd,

son of Kilcoed, with the Irish Liath, son of Celtchar, of Cualu in the present
county of Wicklow. Liath, whose name means ‘grey,’ is described as the
comeliest youth of noble rank among the fairies of Erin; and the only time
the Welsh Ỻwyd, whose name also means ‘grey,’ appears in the
Mabinogion he is ascribed, not the comeliest figure, it is true, or the greatest
personal beauty, but the most imposing disguise of a bishop attended by his
suite: he was a great magician. The name of his father, Kil-coet, seems to
me merely an inexact popular rendering of Celtchar, the name of Liath’s
father: at any rate one fails here to detect the touch of the skilled translator
or literary redactor.65 But the Mabinogi of Manawyđan, in which Ỻwyd
figures, is also the one in which Pryderi king of Dyfed’s wife is called
Kicua or Cigfa, a name which has no claim to be regarded as Brythonic. It
occurs early, however, in the legendary history of Ireland: the Four
Masters, under the year A.M. 2520, mention a Ciocbha as wife of a son of
Parthalon; and the name seems to be related to that of a man called Cioccal,
A.M. 2530. Lastly, Manawyđan, from whom the Mabinogi takes its name,
is called mab Ỻyr, ‘son of Ỻyr,’ in Welsh, and Manannán mac Lir in Irish.
Similarly with his brother Brân, and his sister Branwen, except that she has
not been identified in Irish story. But in Irish literature the genitive Lir, as in
mac Lir, ‘son of Ler,’ is so common, and the nominative so rare, that Lir
came to be treated in late Irish as the nominative too; but a genitive of the
form Lir suggests a nominative-accusative Ler, and as a matter of fact it
occurs, for instance, in the couplet:—

Fer co n-ilur gnim dar ler

Labraid Luath Lam ar Claideb66.

A man of many feats beyond sea,

Labraid swift of Hand on Sword is he.

So it seems probable that the Welsh Ỻyr67 is no other word than the
Goidelic genitive Lir, retained in use with its pronunciation modified
according to the habits of the Welsh language; and in that case68 it forms
comprehensive evidence, that the stories about the Ỻyr family in Welsh
legend were Goidelic before they put on a Brythonic garb.

As to the Mabinogion generally, one may say that they are devoted to the
fortunes chiefly of three powerful houses or groups, the children of Dôn,
the children of Ỻyr, and Pwyỻ’s family. This last is brought into contact
with the Ỻyr group, which takes practically the position of superiority.
Pwyỻ’s family belonged chiefly to Dyfed; but the power and influence of
the sons of Ỻyr had a far wider range: we find them in Anglesey, at
Harlech, in Gwales or the Isle of Grasholm off Pembrokeshire, at Aber
Henvelen somewhere south of the Severn Sea, and in Ireland. But the
expedition to Ireland under Brân, usually called Bendigeituran, ‘Brân69 the
Blessed,’ proved so disastrous that the Ỻyr group, as a whole, disappears,
making way for the children of Dôn. These last came into collision with
Pwyỻ’s son, Pryderi, in whose country Manawyđan, son of Ỻyr, had ended
his days. Pryderi, in consequence of Gwydion’s deceit (pp. 69, 501, 525),
makes war on Math and the children of Dôn: he falls in it, and his army
gives hostages to Math. Thus after the disappearance of the sons of Ỻyr, the
children of Dôn are found in power in their stead in North Wales70, and that
state of things corresponds closely enough to the relation between the
Tuatha Dé Danann and the Lir family in Irish legend. There Lir and his
family are reckoned in the number of the Tuatha Dé Danann, but within that
community Lir was so powerful that it was considered but natural that he
should resent a rival candidate being elected king in preference to him. So
the Tuatha Dé took pains to conciliate Lir, as did also their king, who gave
his daughter to Lir to wife, and when she died he gave him another of his
daughters71; and with the treatment of her stepchildren by that deceased
wife’s sister begins one of the three Sorrowful Tales of Erin, known to
English readers as the Fate of the Children of Lir. But the reader should
observe the relative position: the Tuatha Dé remain in power, while the
children of Lir belong to the past, which is also the sequence in the
Mabinogion. Possibly this is not to be considered as having any
significance, but it is to be borne in mind that the Lir-Ỻyr group is
strikingly elemental in its patronymic Lir, Ỻyr. The nominative, as already
stated, was ler, ‘sea,’ and so Cormac renders mac Lir by filius maris. How
far we may venture to consider the sea to have been personified in this
context, and how early, it is impossible to say. In any case it is deserving of
notice that one group of Goidels to this day do not say mac Lir, ‘son of Lir,’
filium maris, but always ‘son of the lir’: I allude to the Gaels of the Isle of
Man, in whose language Manannán mac Lir is always Mannanan mac y
Lir, or as they spell it, Lear; that is to say ‘Mannanan, son of the ler.’
Manxmen have been used to consider Manannan their eponymous hero, and
first king of their island: they call him more familiarly Mannanan beg mac
y Lear, ‘Little Mannanan, son of the ler’. This we may, though no
Manxman of the present day attaches any meaning to the word lir or lear,
interpreted as ‘Little Mannanan, son of the Sea.’ The wanderings at large of
the children of Lir before being eclipsed by the Danann-Dôn group, remind
one of the story of the labours of Hercules, where it relates that hero’s
adventures on his return from robbing Geryon of his cattle. Pomponius
Mela, ii. 5 (p. 50), makes Hercules on that journey fight in the
neighbourhood of Aries with two sons of Poseidon or Neptune, whom he
calls (in the accusative) Albiona and Bergyon. To us, with our more
adequate knowledge of geography, the locality and the men cannot appear
the most congruous, but there can hardly be any mistake as to the two
personal names being echoes of those of Albion and Iverion, Britain and
Ireland.

The whole cycle of the Mabinogion must have appeared strange to the
story-teller and the poet of medieval Wales, and far removed from the world
in which they lived. We have possibly a trace of this feeling in the epithet
hên, ‘old, ancient,’ given to Math in a poem in the Red Book of Hergest,
where we meet with the line72:—

Gan uath hen gan gouannon.

With Math the ancient, with Gofannon.

Similarly in the confused list of heroes which the story-teller of the

Kulhwch (Mabinogion, p. 108) was able to put together, we seem to have
Gofannon, Math’s relative, referred to under the designation of Gouynyon
Hen, ‘Gofynion the Ancient.’ To these might be added others, such as
Gwrbothu Hên, mentioned above, p. 531, and from another source Ỻeu
Hen73, ‘Ỻew the Ancient.’ So strange, probably, and so obscure did some
of the contents of the stories themselves seem to the story-tellers, that they
may be now and then suspected of having effaced some of the features
which it would have interested us to find preserved. This state of things
brings back to my mind words of Matthew Arnold’s, to which I had the
pleasure of listening more years ago than I care to remember. He was
lecturing at Oxford on Celtic literature, and observing ‘how evidently the
mediæval story-teller is pillaging an antiquity of which he does not fully
possess the secret; he is like a peasant,’ Matthew Arnold went on to say,
‘building his hut on the site of Halicarnassus or Ephesus; he builds, but
what he builds is full of materials of which he knows not the history, or
knows by a glimmering tradition merely—stones “not of this building,” but
of an older architecture, greater, cunninger, more majestical. In the
mediæval stories of no Latin or Teutonic people does this strike one as in
those of the Welsh.’ This becomes intelligible only on the theory of the
stories having been in Goidelic before they put on a Welsh dress.

When saying that the Mabinogion and some of the stories contained in the
Kulhwch, such as the Hunting of Twrch Trwyth, were Goidelic before they
became Brythonic, I wish to be understood to use the word Goidelic in a
qualified sense. For till the Brythons came, the Goidels were, I take it, the
ruling race in most of the southern half of Britain, with the natives as their
subjects, except in so far as that statement has to be limited by the fact, that
we do not know how far they and the natives had been amalgamating
together. In any case, the hostile advent of another race, the Brythons,
would probably tend to hasten the process of amalgamation. That being so,
the stories which I have loosely called Goidelic may have been largely
aboriginal in point of origin, and by that I mean native, pre-Celtic and non-
Aryan. It comes to this, then: we cannot say for certain whose creation
Brân, for instance, should be considered to have been—that of Goidels or of
non-Aryan natives. He sat, as the Mabinogi of Branwen describes him, on
the rock of Harlech, a figure too colossal for any house to contain or any
ship to carry. This would seem to challenge comparison with Cernunnos,
the squatting god of ancient Gaul, around whom the other gods appear as
mere striplings, as proved by the monumental representations in point. In
these74 he sometimes appears antlered like a stag; sometimes he is provided
either with three normal heads or with one head furnished with three faces;
and sometimes he is reduced to a head provided with no body, which
reminds one of Brân, who, when he had been rid of his body in
consequence of a poisoned wound inflicted on him in his foot in the
slaughter of the Meal-bag Pavilion, was reduced to the Urđawl Ben,
‘Venerable or Dignified Head,’ mentioned in the Mabinogi of Branwen75.
The Mabinogi goes on to relate how Brân’s companions began to enjoy,
subject to certain conditions, his ‘Venerable Head’s’ society, which involved
banquets of a fabulous duration and of a nature not readily to be surpassed
by those around the Holy Grail. In fact here we have beyond all doubt one
of the heathen originals of which the Grail is a Christian version. But the
multiplicity of faces or heads of the Gaulish divinity find their analogues in
a direction hitherto unnoticed as far as I know, namely, among the Letto-
Slavic peoples of the Baltic sea-board. Thus the image of Svatovit in the
island of Rügen is said to have had four faces76; and the life of Otto of
Bamberg relates77 how that high-handed evangelist proceeded to convert
the ancient Prussians to Christianity. Among other things we are told how
he found at Stettin an idol called Triglaus, a word referring to the three
heads for which the god was remarkable. The saint took possession of the
image and hewed away the body, reserving for himself the three heads,
which are represented adhering together, forming one piece. This he sent as
a trophy to Rome, and in Rome it may be still. Were it perchance to be
found, it might be expected to show a close resemblance to the tricephal of
the Gaulish altar found at Beaune in Burgundy.

Before closing this chapter a word may be permitted as to the Goidelic

element in the history of Wales: it will come again before the reader in a
later chapter, but what has already been advanced or implied concerning it
may here be recapitulated as follows:—

It has been suggested that the hereditary dislike of the Brython for the
Goidel argues their having formerly lived in close proximity to one another:
see p. 473 above.

The tradition that the cave treasures of the Snowdon district belong by right
to the Goidels, means that they were formerly supposed to have hidden
them away when hard pressed by the Brythons: see pp. 471–2 above.

The sundry instances of a pair of names for a single person or place, one
Goidelic (Brythonicized) still in use, and the other Brythonic (suggested by
the Goidelic one), literary mostly and obsolete, go to prove that the Goidels
were not expelled, but allowed to remain to adopt Brythonic speech.

Evidence of the indebtedness of story-tellers in Wales to their brethren of

the same profession in Ireland is comparatively scarce; and almost in every
instance of recent research establishing a connexion between topics or
incidents in the Arthurian romances and the native literature of Ireland, the
direct contact may be assumed to have been with the folklore and legend of
the Goidelic inhabitants of Wales, whether before or after their change of
language.

Probably the folklore and mythology of the Goidels of Wales and of Ireland
were in the mass much the same, though in some instances they reach us in
different stages of development: thus in such a case as that of Dôn and
Danu (genitive Danann) the Welsh allusions in point refer to Dôn at a
conspicuously earlier stage of her rôle than that represented by the Irish
literature touching the Tuatha Dé Danann78.

The common point of view from which our ancestors liked to look at the
scenery around them is well illustrated by the fondness of the Goidel, in
Wales and Ireland alike, for incidents to explain his place-names. He
required the topography—indeed he requires it still, and hence the activity
of the local etymologist—to connote story or history: he must have
something that will impart the cold light of physical nature, river and lake,
moor and mountain, a warmer tint, a dash of the pathetic element, a touch
of the human, borrowed from the light and shade of the world of
imagination and fancy in which he lives and dreams.

1 They are produced here in their order as printed at the beginning of the second volume
of the Myvyrian Archaiology of Wales, and the series or versions are indicated as i, ii, iii.
Version ii will be found printed in the third volume of the Cymmrodor, pp. 52–61, also in
the Oxford Mabinogion, pp. 297–308, from the Red Book of Hergest of the fourteenth
century. The letter (a, b, c) added is intended to indicate the order of the three parts of the
Triad, for it is not the same in all the series. Let me here remark in a general way that the
former fondness of the Welsh for Triads was not peculiar to them. The Irish also must have
been at one time addicted to this grouping. Witness the Triad of Cleverest Countings, in the
Book of the Dun Cow, fol. 58a, and the Triad of the Blemishes of the Women of Ulster, ib.
43b. ↑
2 As to the names Drystan (also Trystan) and Essyỻt, see the footnote on p. 480
above. ↑
3 This was meant to explain the unusual term gỽrdueichyat, also written gỽrdueichat,
gỽrueichyat, and gwrddfeichiad. This last comes in the modern spelling of iii. 101, where
this clause is not put in the middle of the Triad but at the end. ↑
4 The editor of this version seems to have supposed Pendaran to have been a place in
Dyfed! But his ignorance leaves us no evidence that he had a different story before him. ↑
5 This word is found written in Mod. Welsh Annwfn, but it has been mostly superseded
by the curtailed form Annwn, which appears twice in the Mabinogi of Math. These words
have been studied by M. Gaidoz in Meyer and Stern’s Zeitschrift für Celtische Philologie,
i. 29–34, where he equates Annwfn with the Breton anauon, which is a plural used
collectively for the souls of the departed, the other world. His view, however, of these
interesting words has since been mentioned in the same Zeitschrift, iii. 184–5, and opposed
in the Annales de Bretagne, xi. 488. ↑
6 Edited by Professor Kuno Meyer (London, 1892): see for instance pp. 76–8. ↑
7 See Windisch’s Irische Texte, p. 256, and now the Irish Text Society’s Fled Bricrend,
edited with a translation by George Henderson, pp. 8, 9. ↑
8 Windisch, ibid. pp. 99–105. ↑
9 See the Oxford Mabinogion, p. 196, and Guest’s trans., i. 302, where the Welsh words
a golỽython o gic meluoch are rendered ‘and collops of the flesh of the wild boar,’ which
can hardly be correct; for the mel in mel-uoch, or mel-foch in the modern spelling, is the
equivalent of the Irish melg, ‘milk.’ So the word must refer either to a pig that had been fed
on cows’ milk or else a sucking pig. The former is the more probable meaning, but one is
not helped to decide by the fact, that the word is still sometimes used in books by writers
who imagine that they have here the word mel, ‘honey,’ and that the compound means pigs
whose flesh is as sweet as honey: see Dr. Pughe’s Dictionary, where melfoch is rendered
‘honey swine,’ whatever that may mean. ↑
10 Windisch’s Irische Texte, p. 133, where laith lemnacht = Welsh ỻaeth ỻefrith, ‘sweet
milk.’ ↑
11 Coỻfrewi was probably, like Gwenfrewi, a woman’s name: this is a point of some
importance when taken in connexion with what was said at p. 326 above as to Gwydion
and Coỻ’s magic. ↑
12 This reminds one of Geoffrey of Monmouth’s Henvinus, whom he makes into dux
Cornubiæ and father of Cunedagius or Cuneđa: see ii. 12, 15. Probably Geoffrey’s
connecting such names as those of Cuneđa and Dyfnwal Moelmud (ii. 17) with Cornwall is
due to the fact, that the name of the Dumnonia of the North had been forgotten long before
that of the Dumnonia to be identified with Devon and Cornwall. ↑
13 See the Oxford Mabinogion, p. 104, and the Oxford Bruts, p. 292. ↑
14 See the Oxford Bruts, pp. 299, 317, 345–6, 348, 384. I learn from Prof. Anwyl that
Casteỻ Penweđig is still remembered at Ỻanfihangel Genau’r Glyn as the old name of
Casteỻ Gwaỻter in that parish. ↑
15 See his note in Owen’s Pembrokeshire, p. 237, where he also notices Aber Tarogi, and
the editor’s notes to p. 55. ↑
16 Mergaed for Mengwaed hardly requires any explanation; and as to Breat or rather
Vreat, as it occurs in mutation, we have only to suppose the original carelessly written
Vrēac for Vrēach, and we have the usual error of neglecting the stroke indicating the n, and
the very common one of confounding c with t. This first-mentioned name should possibly
be analysed into Mengw-aed or Menw-aed for an Irish Menb-aed, with the menb, ‘little,’
noticed at p. 510 below; in that case one might compare such compounds of Aed as Beo-
aed and Lug-aed in the Martyrology of Gorman. Should this prove well founded the Mod.
Welsh transcription of Menwaed should be Menwaeđ. I have had the use of other versions
of the Triads from MSS. in the Peniarth collection; but they contribute nothing of any great
importance as regards the proper names in the passages here in question. ↑
17 See the Oxford Mabinogion, pp. 41, 98, and Guest’s trans., iii. 313. ↑
18 See Geoffrey’s Historia Regum Britanniæ, vi. 19, viii. 1, 2; also Giraldus, Itinerarium
Kambriæ, ii. 8 (p. 133). ↑
19 Itinerarium Kambriæ, ii. 9 (p. 136). ↑
20 Menw’s name is to be equated with the Irish word menb, ‘little, small,’ and connected
with the Welsh derivative di-fenw-i, ‘belittling or reviling’: it will be seen that he takes the
form of a bird, and his designation Menw fab Teirgwaeđ might perhaps be rendered ‘Little,
son of Three-Cries.’ ↑
21 Identified by Professor Kuno Meyer in the Transactions of the Cymmrodorion Society,
1895–6, p. 73, with a place in Leinster called Sescenn Uairbeóil, ‘the Marsh of Uairbhél,’
where Uairbhél may possibly be a man’s name, but more likely that of a pass or gap
described as Cold-mouth: compare the Slack or Sloc in the Isle of Man, called in Manx
‘the big Mouth of the Wind.’ The Irish name comes near in part to the Welsh Esgeir Oervel
or Oerfel, which means ‘the mountain Spur of cold Weather.’ ↑
22 The word used in the text is ystyr, which now means ‘meaning or signification’; but it
is there used in the sense of ‘history,’ or of the Latin ‘historia,’ from which it is probably
borrowed. ↑
23 In the original his designation is Gwrhyr Gwalstawt Ieithoeđ, and the man so called is
in the Kulhwch credited with the mastery of all languages, including those of certain birds
and quadrupeds. Gwalstawt, found written also gwalstot, is the Anglo-Saxon word
wealhstód, ‘an interpreter,’ borrowed. The name Gwrhyr is possibly identical with that of
Ferghoir, borne by the Stentor of Fionn mac Cumhaill’s following. Ferghoir’s every shout
is said to have been audible over three cantreds. Naturally one who was to parley with a
savage host had good reason to cultivate a far-reaching voice, if he wished to be certain of
returning to his friends. For more about it see the footnote at p. 489 of my Hibbert
Lectures. ↑
24 The original has Pelumyawc, p. 138, and the name occurs in the (Red Book) Bruts, p.
355, as Pelunyawc, and p. 411, as Pelunea(wc) between the commots of Amgoed and
Velfrey. The identification here suggested comes from Mr. Phillimore, who has seen that
Peuliniawc must be a derivative from the name Paulinus, that is of the Paulinus, probably,
who is mentioned in an ancient inscription at Ỻandysilio. There are other churches called
after Tysilio, so this one used to be distinguished as Ỻandysilio yn Nyfed, that is,
Ỻandysilio-in-Dyfed; but the pronunciation was much the same as if it had been written
Ỻandysilio yn Yfed, meaning ‘Ỻandysilio a-drinking,’ ‘whereof arose a merrye jest,’ as
George Owen tells us in his Pembrokeshire, p. 9. It is now sometimes called Ỻandysilio’r
Gynffon, or ‘Ỻandysilio of the Tail,’ from the situation of a part of the parish on a strip, as
it were a tail, of Carmarthenshire land running into Pembrokeshire. ↑
25 This Aber Towy appears to have been a town with a harbour in 1042, for we read in
Brut y Tywysogion of a cruel engagement fought there between Gruffyđ ab Ỻewelyn and
Howel ab Edwin, who, with Irish auxiliaries, tried to effect a landing. Not long ago a
storm, carrying away the accumulation of sand, laid bare a good deal of the site. It is to be
hoped that excavations will be made soon on the spot. ↑
26 See the Transactions of the Cymmrodorion, 1894–5, pp. 146–7. There are a good
many clyns about South Wales, but our etymologists are careful to have them in most cases
written glyn, ‘a glen.’ Our story, however, shows that the word came under the influence of
glyn long ago, for it should be, when accented, clûn, corresponding to Irish cluain, ‘a
meadow.’ We have it as clun in Clun Kein in the Black Book, p. 34b, where I guess it to
mean the place now called Cilcain, ‘Kilken’ in Flintshire, which is accented on the first
syllabic; and we have had it in y Clun Hir, ‘the Long Meadow,’ mentioned above at p. 22. ↑
27 Cas Ỻychwr, ‘Loughor Castle,’ is supposed to involve in its Ỻychwr, Ỻwchwr, or
Loughor, the name of the place in the Antoninus Itinerary, 484, 1, to wit Leucarum; but the
guttural spirant ch between vowels in Ỻychwr argues a phonetic process which was
Goidelic rather than Brythonic. ↑
28 Ỻwydawc Gouynnyat would seem to mean Ỻwydawc the Asker or Demander, and the
epithet occurs also in the Kulhwch in the name Gaỻcoyt Gouynynat (Mabinogion, 106), to
be read doubtless G. Gouynnyat, ‘G. who asks or demands’: possibly one should rather
compare with Go-uynnyat the word tra-mynyat, ‘a wild boar’: see Williams’ Seint Greal,
pp. 374, 381. However, the epithets in the Twrch Trwyth story do not count so far as
concerns the place-names derived. ↑
29 Other instances of the like shortening occur in words like cefnder, ‘a cousin,’ for
cefnderw, and arđel, ‘to own,’ for arđelw. As to Amman, it enters, also, into a group of
Glamorganshire place-names: witness Aber Amman and Cwm Amman, near Aberdare. ↑
30 It should perhaps be looked for near Brechfa, where there is a Hafod Grugyn, and, as I
am told, a Garth also which is, however, not further defined. For it appears that both
Brechfa and Cayo, though now in Carmarthenshire, once belonged to Keredigion: see
Owen’s Pembrokeshire, p. 216. But perhaps another spot should be considered: J. D. Rhys,
the grammarian (p. 22 above), gives in the Peniarth MS. 118 a list of caers or castles called
after giants, and among them is that of Grugyn in the parish, he says, of ‘Ỻan Hilar.’ I
have, however, not been able to hear of any trace of the name there, though I should guess
the spot to have been Pen y Casteỻ, called in English Castle Hill, the residence of Mr.
Loxdale in the parish of Ỻanilar, near Aberystwyth. ↑
31 I have re-examined the passage, and I have no doubt that the editors were wrong in
printing Gregyn: the manuscript has Grugyn, which comes in the last line of column 841.
Now besides that the line is in part somewhat faint, the scribe has evidently omitted
something from the original story, and I guess that the lacuna occurs in the first line of the
next column after the words y ỻas, ‘was killed,’ which seem to end the story of Grugyn. ↑
32 Those who have discovered an independent Welsh appellative wy meaning water are
not to be reasoned with. The Welsh wy only means an egg, while the meaning of Gwy as
the name of the Wye has still to be discovered. ↑
33 This name also occurs in a passage quoted in Jones’ Brecknock, ii. 501, from a Carte
MS. which he treats as relating to the year 1234: the MS. is said to be at the Bodleian,
though I have not succeeded in tracing it. But Jones gives Villa de Ystraddewi, and speaks
of a chapel of St. John’s of Stradtewi, which must have been St. John’s Church, at
Tretower, one of the ecclesiastical districts of Cwm Du: see also p. 497. The name is
probably to be treated as Strad or Strat d’Ewe. ↑
34 A river may in Welsh be briefly called after anybody or anything. Thus in North
Cardiganshire there is a stream called Einon, that is to say ‘Einion’s river,’ and the flat land
on both sides of it is called Ystrad Einon, which looks as if one might translate it Einion’s
Strath, but it means the Strath of Einion’s river, or of the stream called Einon, as one will at
once see from the upper course of the water being called Blaen Einon, which can only
mean the upper course of the Einon river. So here yw is in English ‘yew,’ but Ystrad Yw
and Ỻygad Yw have to be rendered the Strath of the Yew burn and the Eye of the Yew burn
respectively. It is moreover felt by the Welsh-speaking people of the district that yw is the
plural of ywen, ‘a single yew,’ and as there is only one yew at the source somebody had the
brilliant idea of making the name right by calling it Ywen, and this has got into the maps as
Ewyn, as though it were the Welsh word for foam. Who began it I cannot say, but
Theophilus Jones has it in his History of the County of Brecknock, published in 1809.
Nevertheless the name is still Yw, not Ywen or Ewyn, in the Welsh of the district, though
Lewis gives it as Ywen in his article on Ỻanvihangel-Cwm-Du. ↑
35 For exact information as to the Gaer, the Yw, and Ỻygad Yw, I am indebted chiefly to
the courtesy of Lord Glanusk, the owner of that historic strath, and to the Rector of
Ỻansantffread, who made a special visit to Ỻygad Yw for me; also to Mr. Francis Evans,
of the Farmers’ Arms at the Bwlch, who would be glad to change the name Ỻygad Yw into
Ỻygad dan yr Ywen, ‘the Source beneath the Yew-tree,’ partly on account of the position
‘of the spring emanating under the but of the yew tree,’ and partly because there is only a
single yew there. Theophilus Jones complained a century ago that the Gaer in Ystrad Yw
had not attracted the attention it deserved; and I have been greatly disappointed to find that
the Cambrian Archæological Association has had nothing to say of it. At any rate, I have
tried the Index of its proceedings and found only a single mention of it. The whole district
is said to teem with antiquities, Celtic, Roman, and Norman. ↑
36 Theophilus Jones, in his Brecknockshire, ii. 502, describes Miarth or Myarth as a
‘very extensive’ camp, and proceeds as follows:—‘Another British camp of less extent is
seen on a knoll on Pentir hill, westward of the Rhiangoỻ and the parish church of Cwmdu,
above a wood called Coed y Gaer, and nearly opposite to the peak or summit called Cloch
y Pibwr, or the piper’s call.’ This would probably be more accurately rendered the Piper’s
Rock or Stone, with cloch treated as the Goidelic word for a stone rather than the
Brythonic word for a bell: how many more clochs in our place-names are Goidelic? ↑
37 The Twrch would seem to have crossed somewhere opposite the mouth of the Wye, let
us say not very far from Aust; but he escapes to Cornwall without anything happening to
him, so we are left without any indication whether the story originally regarded Kernyw as
including the Penrhyn Awstin of the Coỻ story given at p. 503. ↑
38 For this suggestion I am indebted to the Rev. Dr. Gaster in the Cymmrodorion’s
Transactions for 1894–5, p. 34, and also for references in point to M. Cosquin’s Contes
Populaires de la Lorraine, i. 134, 141, 152. Compare also such Gaelic stories as that of the
Bodach Glas, translated by Mrs. Mackellar, in the Celtic Magazine, xii. 12–6, 57–64. ↑
39 In some native Welsh words we have an option between a prefix ym and am, an option
arising out of the fact that originally it was neither ym nor am, but m̥ , for an earlier m̥ bi, of
the same origin as Latin ambi and Greek ἀμφί, ‘around, about.’ The article, its meaning in
the combination in banbh being forgotten, would fall under the influence of the analogy of
the prefix, now am or ym, so far as the pronunciation was concerned. ↑
40 Possibly the benwic was thrown in to correct the reckoning when the redactor
discovered, as he thought, that he had one too many to account for: it has been pointed out
that he had forgotten that one had been killed in Ireland. ↑
41 It is just possible, however, that in an older version it was named, and that the place
was no other than the rock just above Ystrad Yw, called Craig Lwyd or, as it is said to be
pronounced, Craig Ỻwyd. If so, Ỻwyd would seem to have been substituted for the
dissyllable Ỻwydog: compare the same person called Ỻwyt and Ỻwydeu in the
Mabinogion, pp. 57, 110, 136. ↑
42 The name is well known in that of Ỻanrhaiadr yn Mochnant, ‘Ỻanrhaiadr in
Mochnant,’ in the north of Montgomeryshire. ↑
43 Between Colwyn Bay and Ỻandudno Junction, on the Chester and Holyhead line of
railway. ↑
44 I have discussed some of the traces of the Goidels in Wales in the Arch. Camb. for
1895, pp. 18–39, 264–302; 1899, pp. 160–7. ↑
45 In fact the genitive Grúcind occurs in the Book of Leinster, fo. 359a. ↑
46 The sort of question one would like to ask in that district is, whether there is a spot
there called Beđ y Rhyswyr, Carn y Rhyswyr, or the like. The word rhyswr is found applied
to Arthur himself in the Life of Gruffyđ ab Cynan, as the equivalent probably of the Latin
Arthur Miles (p. 538 below): see the Myvyrian Archaiology, ii. 590. Similarly the soldiers
or champions of Christ are called rysỽyr crist in the Welsh Life of St. David: see the
Elucidarium and other Tracts (in the Anecdota Oxoniensia), p. 118. ↑
47 Rudvyw Rys would be in Modern Welsh Rhuđfyw Rys, and probably means Rhuđfyw
the Champion or Fighter, as Rhys is likely to have been synonymous with rhyswr. The
corresponding Irish name was Russ or Ross, genitive Rossa, and it appears to come from
the same origin as Irish ross, ‘a headland, a forest,’ Welsh rhos, ‘moorland, uncultivated
ground.’ The original meaning was presumably ‘exposed or open and untilled land’; and
Stokes supposes the word to stand for an early (p)ro-sto- with sto of the same origin as
Latin sto, ‘I stand,’ and as the English word stand itself. In that case Ros, genitive Rossa,
Welsh Rhys, would mean one who stands out to fight, a προστάτης, so to say. But not only
are these words of a different declension implying a nominative Ro-stus, but the Welsh one
must have been once accented Ro-stús on the ending which is now lost, otherwise there is
no accounting for the change of the remaining vowel into y. Other instances postulating an
early Welsh accentuation of the same kind are very probably ỻyg, ‘a fieldmouse,’ Irish
luch, ‘a mouse’; pryd, ‘form,’ Irish cruth; pryf, ‘a worm,’ Irish cruim; so also with ych, ‘an
ox,’ and nyth, ‘a nest,’ Irish nett, genitive nitt, derived by Stokes from nizdo-, which,
however, must have been oxytone, like the corresponding Sanskrit nīdhá. There is one very
interesting compound of rhys, namely the saint’s name Rhwydrys, as it were Rēdo-rostus to
be compared with Gaulish Eporēdo-rīx, which is found in Irish analysed into rí
Eochraidhi, designating the fairy king who was father to Étáin: see Windisch’s Irische
Texte, p. 119. Bledrws, Bledrus, as contrasted with Bledrys, Bledris, postulate Goidelic
accentuation, while one has to treat Bledruis as a compromise between Bledrws and
Bledris, unless it be due to misreading a Bledruif (Book of Ỻan Dâv, pp. 185, 221–2, and
Arch. Camb. for 1875, p. 370). The Goidelic accent at an early date moved to first
syllables, hence cruth (with its vowel influenced by the u̯ of a stem qu̯ r̥ t) under the stress
accent, became, when unstressed, cridh (from a simplified stem cr̥ t) as in Noicride (also
Nóicrothach, Windisch, ibid., pp. 259, 261, 266) and Luicridh (Four Masters, A.D. 748),
Luccraid, genitive Luccraide (Book of Leinster, 359f), Luguqurit- in Ogam. ↑
48 These operations cannot have been the first of the kind in the district, as a writer in the
Archæologia Cambrensis for 1862, pp. 159–60, in extracting a note from the Proceedings
of the Society of Antiquaries (series II, vol. i. p. 10) relative to the discovery of the canoe,
adds a statement based on the same volume, p. 161, to the effect that ‘within half a mile of
Ỻyn Ỻydaw there are the remains of a British town, not marked in the ordnance map,
comprising the foundations of numerous circular dwellings. In some of them quantities of
the refuse of copper smeltings were found. This town should be visited and examined with
care by some of the members of our Association.’ This was written not far short of forty
years ago; but I am not aware that the Association has done anything positive as yet in this
matter. ↑
49 According to Jenkins’ Beđ Gelert, p. 300, the canoe was subsequently sold for a
substantial price, and nobody seems to know what has eventually become of it. It is to be
hoped this is not correct. ↑
50 See Holder’s Alt-celtischer Sprachschatz, s. v. Litavia. ↑
51 For these notes I am indebted to Williams’ Dictionary of Eminent Welshmen, and to
Rees’ Welsh Saints, pp. 187, 191; for our Paulinus is not yet recognized in the Dictionary of
Christian Biography. His day was Nov. 22. ↑
52 There are two other inscriptions in South Wales which contain the name Paulinus, one
on a stone found in the neighbourhood of Port Talbot in Glamorgan, reading Hic iacit
Cantusus Pater Paulinus, which seems to imply that Paulinus set up the stone to the
memory of a son of his named Cantusus. The other, found on the site of the extinct church
of Ỻanwrthwl, near Dolau Cothi in Carmarthenshire, is a remarkable one in a kind of
hexameter to the following effect:—
Servatur fidæi patrieque semper amator
Hic Paulinus iacit cultor pientisimus æqui.
Whether we have one or two or three Paulini in these inscriptions I cannot say. Welsh
writers, however, have made the name sometimes into Pawl Hên, ‘Paul the Aged,’ but, so
far as I can see, without rhyme or reason. ↑
53 Since I chanced on this inscription my friend Professor Lindsay of St. Andrews has
called my attention to Plautus’ Asinaria, 499 (II. iv. 92), where one reads, Periphanes
Rhodo mercator dives, ‘Periphanes a wealthy merchant of Rhodes’; he finds also
Æsculapius Epidauro (Arnobius, 278. 18), and elsewhere Nepos Philippis and Priscus
Vienna. ↑
54 See Stokes’ Patrick, pp. 16, 412. ↑
55 This will give the reader some idea of the pre-Norman orthography of Welsh, with l
for the sound of ỻ and b for that of v. ↑
56 The softening of Cafaỻ to Gafaỻ could not take place after the masculine corn, ‘a
horn’; but it was just right after the feminine carn, ‘a cairn.’ So here corn is doubtless a
colloquial corruption; and so is probably the t at the end, for as ỻt has frequently been
reduced to ỻ, as in cyfaiỻ, ‘a friend,’ from the older cyfaiỻt, in Medieval Irish comalta, ‘a
foster brother or sister,’ the language has sometimes reversed the process, as when one
hears hoỻt for hoỻ, ‘all,’ or reads fferyỻt, ‘alchemist, chemist,’ for fferyỻ from Vergilius.
The Nennian orthography does not much trouble itself to distinguish between l and ỻ, and
even when Carn Cabal was written the pronunciation was probably Carn Gavaỻ, the
mutation being ignored in the spelling, which frequently happens in the case even of Welsh
people who never fail to mutate their consonants in speaking. Lastly, though it was a dog
that was called Cafaỻ, it is remarkable that the word has exactly the form taken by caballus
in Welsh: for cafaỻ, as meaning some sort of a horse, see Silvan Evans’ Geiriadur. ↑
57 An instance or two of Trwyd will be found in a note by Silvan Evans in Skene’s Four
Ancient Books of Wales, ii. 393. ↑
58 For more about these names and kindred ones, see a note of mine in the Arch.
Cambrensis, 1898, pp. 61–3. ↑
59 See my Hibbert Lectures, pp. 398–401. ↑
60 See the Black Book of Carmarthen in Evans’ facsimile, p. 47b; Thomas Stephens’
Gododin, p. 146; Dent’s Malory, preface, p. xxvi; and Skene’s Four Ancient Books of
Wales, ii. 51, 63, 155. ↑
61 See the Göttingische gelehrte Anzeigen for 1890, p. 512. ↑
62 See De Courson’s Cartulaire de l’abbaye de Redon, pp. 163, 186. ↑
63 See Reeves’ note to the passage just cited in his edition of Adamnan’s Vita, pp. 6, 7. ↑
64 Here possibly one might mention likewise Gilmin Troetu or Troedđu, ‘Gilmin of the
Black Foot,’ the legendary ancestor (p. 444) of the Wynns of Glyn Ỻifon, in
Carnarvonshire. So the name might be a shortening of some such a combination as Gilla-
min, ‘the attendant of Min or Men,’ a name we have also in Mocu-Min, ‘Min’s Kin,’ a
family or sept so called more than once by Adamnan. Perhaps one would also be right in
regarding as of similar origin the name of Gilberd or Gilbert, son of Cadgyffro, who is
mentioned in the Kulhwch, and in the Black Book, fo. 14b: at any rate I am not convinced
that the name is to be identified with the Gillebert of the Normans, unless that was itself
derived from Celtic. But there is a discrepancy between Gilmin, Gilbert, with unmutated m
and b, and Gilvaethwy with its mutation consonant v. In all three, however, Gil, had it been
Welsh, would probably have appeared as Giỻ, as indicated by the name Giỻa in the
Kulhwch (Oxford Mabinogion, p. 110), in which we seem to have the later form of the old
name Gildas. Compare such Irish instances as Fiachna and Cera, which seem to imply
stems originally ending in -asa-s (masculine) and -asā (feminine); and see the Journal of
the Royal Society of Antiquaries of Ireland, 1899, P. 402. ↑
65 An article in the Rennes Dindṡenchas is devoted to Liath: see the Rev. Celtique, xvi.
78–9. As to Celtchar, genitive Celtchair, the name would seem to have meant ‘him who is
fond of concealment.’ The Mabinogi form of the Welsh name is Ỻwyt uab kil coet, which
literally meant ‘Ỻ. son of (him of) the Retreat of the Wood.’ But in the Twrch Trwyth story,
under a slightly different form of designation, we appear to have the same person as
Ỻwydeu mab kelcoet and Ỻwydeu mab kel coet, which would seem to mean ‘Ỻ. son of
(him of) the Hidden Wood.’ It looks as if the bilingual story-teller of the language transition
had not been able to give up the cel of Celtchar at the same time that he rendered celt by
coet, ‘wood or trees,’ as if identifying it with cailt: witness the Medieval Irish caill, ‘a
wood or forest,’ dative plural cailtib, derivative adjective caillteamhuil, ‘silvester’; and see
Windisch’s Irische Texte, p. 410, s. v. caill. ↑
66 Windisch’s Irische Texte, p. 217, and the Book of the Dun Cow, fo. 47b. ↑
67 There has been a good deal of confusion as to the name Ỻyr: thus for instance, the
Welsh translations of Geoffrey of Monmouth make the Leir of his Latin into Ỻyr, and the
personage intended is represented as the father of three daughters named Gonerilla, Regan,
and Cordeilla or Cordelia. But Cordelia is probably the Creurđilad of the Black Book, p.
49b, and the Creiđylat of the Kulhwch story (the Oxford Mabinogion, pp. 113, 134), and
her father was Ỻûd Ỻawereint (= Irish Nuada Airgetlám) and not Ỻyr. Then as to the Leir
of Geoffrey’s Latin, that name looks as if given its form on the strength of the legr- of
Legraceaster, the Anglo-Saxon name of the town now called Leicester, of which William
of Malmesbury (Gesta Pontificum, § 176) says, Legrecestra est civitas antiqua in
Mediterraneis Anglis, a Legra fluvio præterfluente sic vocata. Mr. Stevenson regards Legra
as an old name of the Soar, and as surviving in that of the village of Leire, spelled Legre in
Domesday. It seems to point back to a Legere or Ligere, which recalls Liger, ‘the Loire.’ ↑
68 I say in that case, as this is not quite conclusive; for Welsh has an appellative ỻyr,
‘mare, æquor,’ which may be a generalizing of Ỻyr; or else it may represent an early lerio-
s from lero-s (see p. 549 below), and our Ỻyr may possibly be this and not the Irish
genitive Lir retained as Ỻyr. That, however, seems to me improbable on the whole. ↑
69 Here it is relevant to direct the reader’s attention to Nutt’s Legend of the Holy Grail, p.
28, where, in giving an abstract of the Petit saint Graal, he speaks of the Brân of that
romance, in French Bron, nominative Brons, as having the keeping of the Grail and
dwelling ‘in these isles of Ireland.’ ↑
70 The Dôn and Ỻyr groups are not brought into conflict or even placed in contact with
one another; and the reason seems to be that the story-teller wanted to introduce the sons of
Beli as supreme in Britain after the death of Brân. Beli and his sons are also represented in
Maxen’s Dream as ruling over Britain when the Roman conqueror arrives. What is to be
made of Beli may be learnt from The Welsh People, pp. 41–3. ↑
71 These things one learns about Lir from the story mentioned in the text as the ‘Fate of
the Children of Lir,’ as to which it is right, however, to say that no ancient manuscript
version is known: see M. d’Arbois dc Jubainville’s Essai d’un Catalogue de la Litérature
épique de l’Irlande, p. 8. ↑
72 See Skene’s Four Ancient Books of Wales, ii. 303, also 108–9, where the fragment of
the poem as given in the Book of Taliessin is printed. The line here quoted has been
rendered in vol. i. 286, ‘With Matheu and Govannon,’ which places the old pagan
Gofannon in rather unexpected company. A few lines later in the poem mention is made of
a Kaer Gofannon: where was that? Skene, in a note on it (ii. 452), says that ‘In an old list
of the churches of Linlithgow, printed by Theiner, appears Vicaria de Gumanyn. The place
meant is probably Dalmeny, on the Firth of Forth, formerly called Dumanyn.’ This is
interesting only as showing that Gumanyn is probably to be construed Dumanyn, and that
Dalmeny represents an ancient Dún Manann in a neighbourhood where one already has
Clach Manann, ‘the stone of Manau,’ and Sliabh Manann, ‘Mountain of Manau’ now
respectively Clackmannan and Slamannan, in what Nennius calls Manau Guotodin. ↑
73 This occurred unrecognized and, therefore, unaltered by the scribe of the Nennian
Pedigree no. xvi in the Cymmrodor, ix. 176, as he found it written in an old spelling,
Louhen. map. Guid gen. map. Caratauc. map. Cinbelin, where Caradog is made father of
Gwydion; for in Guid-gen we seem to have the compound name which suggested
Gwydion. This agrees with the fact that the Mabinogi of Math treats Gwydion as the father
of Ỻew Ỻawgyffes; but the pedigree itself seems to have been strangely put together. ↑
74 See Bertrand’s Religion des Gaulois, pp. 314–9, 343–5, and especially the plates. ↑
75 The Oxford Mabinogion, pp. 40–3; Guest’s Mabinogion, iii. 124–8. ↑
76 See Louis Leger’s Cyrille et Méthode (Paris, 1868), p. 22. ↑
77 See Pertz, Monumenta Germaniæ Historia Scriptorum, xii. 794. The whole passage is
worth quoting; it runs thus: Erat autem simulacrum triceps, quod in uno corpore tria capita
habens Triglaus vocabatur; quod solum accipiens, ipsa capitella sibi cohærentia, corpore
comminuto, secum inde quasi pro tropheo asportavit, et postea Romam pro argumento
conversionis illorum transmisit. ↑
78 See The Welsh People, pp. 56–7. ↑
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