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?
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