placing the beast by the side of the knight as his companion and ally. Add to these sundry points of contact between the stories mentioned, the verse cited as placing the grave of Mabon, the Welsh equivalent of the Apollo Maponos of the Celts of antiquity (pp. 21, 27-9) at Nantỻe, where Lleu was at last discovered by Gwydion, and one will hardly be able to avoid concluding, that we here have related stories, handed down to us in a fragmentary form which leaves it impossible to ascertain in what exact way they were related to one another. At the point which we have reached, one of the chief things wanting is evidence that Owein was at any time called Llew or Lleu. We have evidence, on the other hand, that Lleu was represented as a wild beast; in fact, that is the only form with which he is invested by the folk-lore of modern Snowdonia. The following is the substance of what I have been able to learn about him:—
The road from Carnarvon to the romantic village of Beᵭgelert passes pretty close to a lake called Llyn y Gadair, the Lake of the Seat; and there is a story current in that part of the country that a long while ago a little knoll between the lake and the road was the seat of a strange beast called the Aurwrychyn, or the Gold-bristle: in fact, the name of the lake in full is explained to have been Llyn Cadair yr Aurwrychyn, 'the Lake of the Gold-bristle's Seat.' He is said to have been in form somewhat like an ox; but he was covered with gold bristles, and he appeared one mass of brilliant gold, so that when the sun shone on him nobody could look at him. One day, however, a hunter's hounds, chasing the red deer, came across Gold-bristle and pursued him across through the pass called Drws y Coed, which opens into the
