The Welsh and Their Literature

George Borrow

George Borrow

The Welsh and Their Literature / from The London Quarterly Review, January 1861, American Edition

Art. II. —The Sleeping Bard; or Visions of the World, Death, and Hell. By Elis Wyn. Translated from the Cambrian British by George Borrow. London, 1860.

The Welsh style themselves Cymry or Cumry, a word which, in their language, means a number of people associated together. [1 - It is but right to state that the learned are divided with respect to the meaning of �Cumro,’ and that many believe it to denote an original inhabitant.] They were the second mass of population which moved from Asia into Europe. They followed and pushed forward the Gael or Gauls; were themselves impelled onward by the Slowaks or Sclavonians, who were themselves hunted, goaded, and pestered by a wild, waspish race of people, whom, for want of a better name, we will call Tatars or Tartars. The Cymry have left their name behind them in various regions far eastward of the one where they now sojourn. The most easterly countries which still bear their name, or modifications thereof, are Cambia, �which is two dayes journey from the head of the great river Bruapo,’ and the Cryme or Crimea. In those parts, and �where Constantinople now is,’ they tarried a considerable time, and increased and multiplied marvellously: and it was whilst tarrying in those regions, which they called collectively Gwlad yr Haf, or the summer country, that an extraordinary man was born amongst them, who was called by Greeks and Romans, hundreds of years after his death, Hesus, but whom the Cymry called, and still do call, Hu or Hee, with the surname of Cadarn, or the Mighty. This Hu or Hesus taught his countrymen the use of the plough, and to a certain extent civilized them. Finding eventually that the summer country was becoming over-populated, he placed himself at the head of a vast multitude and set off towards the west. Hu and his people fought or negotiated their way through various countries possessed by the Gael, till they came to the shore of the sea which separates the great isle of the west from the continent. Hearing that it was only thinly peopled they determined to pass over to it; and put their determination into execution, crossing �the hazy sea,’ at present termed the German Ocean, in boats made of wicker work and skins, similar to but larger than the coracles which the Cymry always carried with them in their long expeditions.

This great island was called Alban, Albyn, or Albion. Alban is a Gaelic or Gaulic word, signifying properly a hill-region. It is to be found under various modifications in different parts of the world, but only where the Gaulic race have at some time sojourned. The word Afghan is merely a modification of Alban, or Alpan; so is Armenia; so is Alp; so is of course Albania. The term was given to the island simply because the cliffs which fronted the continent, where the sea between the two lands was narrowest, were very high and towering. The island at the time of the arrival of the Cymry had, as has already been intimated, a scanty population. This population consisted of Gael or Gauls, a people of cognate race to the Cymry, and speaking a language much the same as theirs, differing from it, however, in some respects. Hu and his people took possession of the best parts of the island, either driving the few Gaels to other districts or admitting them to their confederacy. As the country was in a very wild state, much overgrown with forests in which bears and wolves wandered, and abounding with deep stagnant pools, which were the haunts of the avanc or crocodile, Hu forthwith set about clearing it of some of its horrors, and making it more fit to be the abiding place of civilized beings. He made his people cut down woods and forests, and destroy, as far as was possible, wild beasts and crocodiles. He himself went to a gloomy pool, the haunt of the king of the efync, baited a huge hook attached to a cable, filing it into the pool, and when the monster had gorged the sna