Notes and Queries, Number 19, March 9, 1850 | Page 7

like the voice of a great hound, or a blood-hound."
They are sometimes accompanied by a female fiend, called _Malt y nos_--Mathilda or Malen of the night, a somewhat ubiquitous character, with whom we meet under a complication of names and forms.
Jones of Brecon, who tells us that the cry of the Cron Annwn is as familiar to the inhabitants of Ystrad Fellte and Pont Neath-vaughan [in Glamorganshire] as the watchman's rattle in the purlieus of Covent Garden--for he lived in the days when watchmen and their rattles were yet among the things of this world--considers that to these dogs, and not to a Greek myth, may be referred the hounds, _Fury_, _Silver_, _Tyrant_, &c., with which Prospero hunts his enemies "soundly," in the Tempest. And they must recall to the minds of our readers the _wisk_, _wisked_, or Yesk hounds of Devon, which are described in the _Athen?um_ for March 27. 1847, as well as the Maisne Hellequin of Normandy and Bretagne.
There has been much discussion respecting the signification of the word _Annwn_, which has been increased by the very frequent mistake of writing it _Anwn_, which means, _unknown_, _strange_, and is applied to the people who dwell in the antipodes of the speaker; while Annwn is an adaptation of _annwfn_, a bottomless or _immeasurable pit_, voidless {295} _space_, and also Hell. Thus we find, that when _Pwyl_, or _Reason_, drives these dogs off their track, the owner comes up, and, reproving him, declares that he is a crowned king, lord of Annwn and Pendaran, i.e. chief of thunder. (See _Myth. Ant. Druids_, p. 418.)
This Prince of Darkness is supposed to be the spouse of Andraste, now corrupted into Andras, and equivalent with _Malt y nos_, the Diana or Hecate of the ancient Britons.
These dogs sometimes appear singly, on which occasions they sit by the side of a stream, howling in so unearthly a manner, that the hapless man who finds one in his path usually loses his senses. This seems to have a connection with the "Manthe Doog" of the Isle of Man; but the tradition is not, we suspect, genuine.
Seleucus.
No. 2. _Cyoeraeth or Gwrach-y-rhybin._--Another instance of the grand, though gloomy superstitions of the Cymry, is that of the _Cyoeraeth_, or hag of the mist, an awful being who is supposed to reside in the mountain fog, through which her supernatural shriek is frequently heard. She is believed to be the very personification of ugliness, with torn and dishevelled hair, long black teeth, lank and withered arms and claws, and a most cadaverous appearance; to this some add, wings of a leathery and bat-like substance.
The name _Cy-oer-aeth_, the last two syllables of which signify _cold-grief_, is most descriptive of the sad wail which she utters, and which will, it is said, literally freeze the veins of those who hear it; she is rarely seen, but is heard at a cross-road, or beside a stream--in the latter case she splashes the water with her hands--uttering her lamentation, as if in allusion to the relatives of those about to die. Thus, if a man hears her cry _fy nqwsaig, fy nqwsaig_, &c., his wife will surely die, and he will be heard to mourn in the same strain ere long; and so on with other cases. The cadence of this cry can never be properly caught by any one who has not heard, if not a Cyoeraeth, at least a native of Wales, repeat the strain. When merely an inarticulate scream is heard, it is probable that the hearer himself is the one whose death is fore-mourned.
Sometimes she is supposed to come like the Irish _banshee_, in a dark mist, to the windows of those who have been long ill; when flapping her wings against the pane, she repeats their names with the same prolonged emphasis; and then it is thought that they must die.
It is this hag who forms the torrent beds which seam the mountain side; for she gathers great stones in her cloak to make her ballast, when she flies upon the storm; and when about to retire to her mountain cave, she lets them drop progressively as she moves onwards, when they fall with such an unearthly weight that they lay open the rocky sides of the mountain.
In some parts of South Wales this hag of the mists either loses her sway, or divides it with a more dignified personage, who, in the form of an old man, and under the name of _Brenhin Llwyd_, the _grey king_, sits ever silent in the mist.
Any one who has witnessed the gathering and downward rolling of a genuine mountain fog must fully appreciate the spirit in which men first peopled the cloud with such supernatural beings a those above described; or with those which dimly, yet constantly, pervade the