As I Was Gazing On The Prospect An Old Man Driving A Peat Cart Came
From The Direction In Which I Was Going.
I asked him the name of
the ravine and he told me it was Ceunant Coomb or hollow-dingle
coomb.
I asked the name of the brook, and he told me that it was
called the brook of the hollow-dingle coomb, adding that it ran
under Pont Newydd, though where that was I knew not. Whilst he was
talking with me he stood uncovered. Yes, the old peat driver stood
with his hat in his hand whilst answering the questions of the
poor, dusty foot-traveller. What a fine thing to be an Englishman
in Wales!
In about an hour I came to a wild moor; the moor extended for miles
and miles. It was bounded on the east and south by immense hills
and moels. On I walked at a round pace, the sun scorching me sore,
along a dusty, hilly road, now up, now down. Nothing could be
conceived more cheerless than the scenery around. The ground on
each side of the road was mossy and rushy - no houses - instead of
them were neat stacks, here and there, standing in their blackness.
Nothing living to be seen except a few miserable sheep picking the
wretched herbage, or lying panting on the shady side of the peat
clumps. At length I saw something which appeared to be a sheet of
water at the bottom of a low ground on my right. It looked far off
- "Shall I go and see what it is?" thought I to myself. "No,"
thought I. "It is too far off" - so on I walked till I lost sight
of it, when I repented and thought I would go and see what it was.
So I dashed down the moory slope on my right, and presently saw the
object again - and now I saw that it was water. I sped towards it
through gorse and heather, occasionally leaping a deep drain. At
last I reached it. It was a small lake. Wearied and panting I
flung myself on its bank and gazed upon it.
There lay the lake in the low bottom, surrounded by the heathery
hillocks; there it lay quite still, the hot sun reflected upon its
surface, which shone like a polished blue shield. Near the shore
it was shallow, at least near that shore upon which I lay. But
farther on, my eye, practised in deciding upon the depths of
waters, saw reason to suppose that its depth was very great. As I
gazed upon it my mind indulged in strange musings. I thought of
the afanc, a creature which some have supposed to be the harmless
and industrious beaver, others the frightful and destructive
crocodile. I wondered whether the afanc was the crocodile or the
beaver, and speedily had no doubt that the name was originally
applied to the crocodile.
"Oh, who can doubt," thought I, "that the word was originally
intended for something monstrous and horrible? Is there not
something horrible in the look and sound of the word afanc,
something connected with the opening and shutting of immense jaws,
and the swallowing of writhing prey? Is not the word a fitting
brother of the Arabic timsah, denoting the dread horny lizard of
the waters? Moreover, have we not the voice of tradition that the
afanc was something monstrous? Does it not say that Hu the Mighty,
the inventor of husbandry, who brought the Cumry from the summer-
country, drew the old afanc out of the lake of lakes with his four
gigantic oxen? Would he have had recourse to them to draw out the
little harmless beaver? Oh, surely not. Yet have I no doubt that
when the crocodile had disappeared from the lands, where the Cumric
language was spoken, the name afanc was applied to the beaver,
probably his successor in the pool, the beaver now called in Cumric
Llostlydan, or the broad-tailed, for tradition's voice is strong
that the beaver has at one time been called the afanc." Then I
wondered whether the pool before me had been the haunt of the
afanc, considered both as crocodile and beaver. I saw no reason to
suppose that it had not. "If crocodiles," thought I, "ever existed
in Britain, and who shall say that they have not, seeing that there
remains have been discovered, why should they not have haunted this
pool? If beavers ever existed in Britain, and do not tradition and
Giraldus say that they have, why should they not have existed in
this pool?
"At a time almost inconceivably remote, when the hills around were
covered with woods, through which the elk and the bison and the
wild cow strolled, when men were rare throughout the lands and
unlike in most things to the present race - at such a period - and
such a period there has been - I can easily conceive that the
afanc-crocodile haunted this pool, and that when the elk or bison
or wild cow came to drink of its waters the grim beast would
occasionally rush forth, and seizing his bellowing victim, would
return with it to the deeps before me to luxuriate at his ease upon
its flesh. And at a time less remote, when the crocodile was no
more, and though the woods still covered the hills, and wild cattle
strolled about, men were more numerous than before, and less unlike
the present race, I can easily conceive this lake to have been the
haunt of the afanc-beaver, that he here built cunningly his house
of trees and clay, and that to this lake the native would come with
his net and his spear to hunt the animal for his precious fur.
Probably if the depths of that pool were searched relics of the
crocodile and the beaver might be found, along with other strange
things connected with the periods in which they respectively lived.
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