for Dinỻeu, of which more anon. All this is by no means to be wondered at, as the scribe was most likely a native of South Wales; at any rate, the Red Book was probably written at the monastery of Strata Florida, in north Cardiganshire, and one at least of the scribes had a native's acquaintance with Aberystwyth and its immediate neighbourhood.[1] It is not altogether improbable that the change of the name Lleu into Llew, which cannot be phonologically accounted for, was similarly originated by the mistake of some scribe or story-teller who was a stranger to the district where the hero's name was familiar. Once the example was set, the name Llew, as coinciding with ỻew, meaning a lion, might be expected to hold its own ground against the older name Lleu, which either conveyed no sense to the story-teller's mind, or no sense that struck him or his listeners as fitting the character of his hero, such as they would conceive it to have been.
But whatever the time and the cause of the change of Lleu's name to Llew may have been, it exercised some influence on one of the stories about the Sun-god, as it helped to give its form to a portion of the romance of Owein ab Urien, whom we have to mention later as playing a role corresponding in several respects to that of Cúchulainn. Owein, in the course of his wanderings near the utmost limits of the inhabited world, happened to pass near a wood, when he heard a loud howl proceeding from it. On hearing it repeated he drew near, and found a great knoll in the wood, and in the side of the
- ↑ I allude more especially to the entry under the year 1113 in Brut y Tywysogion (London, 1860), pp. 130-3.
