and used in the Welsh literature of the Middle Ages in the sense of a mound or tumulus, came to be the word for a throne or a judgment-seat: it may also mean a court or tribunal, and Pen yr Orseᵭ, 'the Gorseᵭ Top or Hill,' is not an uncommon name of conspicuous positions in certain parts of the Principality. Some of the ancient gorseᵭs continued long in story to be the seats of supernatural power: take, for example, that known as the gorseᵭ of Arberth, in South Wales, of which it is said in the Mabinogi of Pwyll Prince of Dyved,[1] that no one ever ascended it without receiving wounds and bodily harm, or witnessing some kind of miracle, which the tale hears out by relating how Pwyll repeatedly went up on the gorseᵭ, and how very strange adventures befel him, all of which began from the gorseᵭ.
Similarly, wonderful things are related as happening in Irish story to kings of Tara who chanced to ascend the gorseᵭ[2] of that city in the early morning: in one instance, it is related[3] that Conn the Hundred-fighter, having done so, happened to tread on a stone, which thereupon screamed all over the land. This was followed by a thick fog, out of which rode a fairy prince, who led Conn away to his residence to be informed of the future
- ↑ R. B. Mab. p. 8; Guest, iij. 46.
- ↑ The Irish term used in the story of Echaid Airem (Bk. of the Dun, p. 130b) is sosta, the plural of sossad, 'a station or scat;' but in the story of Conn about to be mentioned in the text, it is rí-ráith, 'a royal ráth or fortification;' for sometimes the ráths, as may still be seen in Ireland, consisted of earth heaped up over rooms previously formed, a kind of work which an outsider still fancies he can trace at Dover, and more fortresses than one on the Rhine.
- ↑ See O'Curry in his MS Mat. p. 618, quoting MS. Harl. 5280 (p. 119) in the British Museum.
