If This Secluded Gorge Or Valley Is Connected With A Remarkable
Historical Event It Is Also Associated With One Of The Wildest
Tales Of Mythology.
Here according to old tradition died one of
the humped oxen of the team of Hu Gadarn.
Distracted at having
lost its comrade, which perished from the dreadful efforts which it
made along with the others in drawing the afanc hen or old
crocodile from the lake of lakes, it fled away from its master, and
wandered about, till coming to the glen now called that of Llan
Ddewi Brefi, it fell down and perished after excessive bellowing,
from which noise the place probably derived its name of Brefi, for
Bref in Cumbric signifies a mighty bellowing or lowing. Horns of
enormous size, said to have belonged to this humped ox or bison,
were for many ages preserved in the church.
Many will exclaim who was Hu Gadarn? Hu Gadarn in the Gwlad yr Haf
or summer country, a certain region of the East, perhaps the
Crimea, which seems to be a modification of Cumria, taught the
Cumry the arts of civilised life, to build comfortable houses, to
sow grain and reap, to tame the buffalo and the bison, and turn
their mighty strength to profitable account, to construct boats
with wicker and the skins of animals, to drain pools and morasses,
to cut down forests, cultivate the vine and encourage bees, make
wine and mead, frame lutes and fifes and play upon them, compose
rhymes and verses, fuse minerals and form them into various
instruments and weapons, and to move in masses against their
enemies, and finally when the summer country became over-populated
led an immense multitude of his countrymen across many lands to
Britain, a country of forests, in which bears, wolves, and bisons
wandered, and of morasses and pools full of dreadful efync or
crocodiles, a country inhabited only by a few savage Gauls, but
which shortly after the arrival of Hu and his people became a
smiling region, forests being thinned, bears and wolves hunted
down, efync annihilated, bulls and bisons tamed, corn planted and
pleasant cottages erected.
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