'Of the Wave of Erinn, of Man, and of the North,
And of Britain, of comely hosts, as the fourth.'[1]
Nay, according to another utterance of the same poet,[2] the wild waves when they dash against the shore are chafing to avenge the death of Dylan. Another view no less romantic is the one still known in the Vale of the Conwy, that the noise of the waves crowding into that river is nought but the dying groans of Dylan. Strange as it may seem, and in spite of the Mabinogi describing Dylan as a big yellow-haired boy, the study of Irish parallels leaves one in no doubt that Dylan represents darkness, the darkness that hies away to lurk in the sea. so that his name of Dylan has become a synonym for that of the Ocean. But how, it may be asked, came the sympathy of the poet to be enlisted on the wrong side, and Govannon's deed to be execrated? That is a question which is not easy to answer to one's own satisfaction, and the best thing to do is to point out the parallel story in Irish. It occurs in that of the war between the Tuatha Dé Danann and the Fomori:[3] when the battle of Mag Tured (p. 253) had been going on for some time, the Fomori wondered how the Tuatha Dé continued to be supplied with arms; in order, therefore, to find this out and to procure other information about the enemy, they sent one of their young heroes to visit him. The
- ↑ An Irish instance of the waves of 'the melancholy main' bewailing a death occurs in the Bk of Leinster, l86a; see also the editor's Introd. p. 47a.
- ↑ Poem ix.: see Skene, ij. 145.
- ↑ The MS. I have consulted is in the British Museum, and is numbered Harl. 5280: the portion of the story here in point occurs at folio 68a (57a of an older paging).
