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XXI. BETH GELLERT.
Source.-
I have paraphrased the well-known poem of Hon. W. R.
Spencer, "Beth Galert, or the Grave of the Greyhound," first printed
privately as a broadsheet in 1800 when it was composed ("August Ii, 1800,
Dolymalynllyn "is the colophon). It was published in Spencer's Poems, 1811,
pp. 78-86. These dates, it will be seen, are of importance. Spencer states in a
note "The story of this ballad is traditionary in a village at the foot of
Snowdon where Llewellyn the Great had a house. The Greyhound named Gelert was
given him by his father-in-law, King John, in the year 1205, and the place to
this day is called Beth-Gelert, or the grave of Gelert." As a matter of
fact, no trace of the tradition in connection with Bedd Gellert can be found
before Spencer's time. It is not mentioned in Leland's Itinerary, ed.
Hearne, v. p 37 ("Beth Kellarth"), in Pennant's Tour (1770),
ii. 176, or in Bingley's Tour in Wales (1800). Borrow in his Wild
Wales, p.146, gives the legend, but does not profess to derive it from
local tradition.
Parallels
.-The only parallel in Celtdom is that noticed by Croker in
his third volume, the legend of Partholan who killed his wife's grey-hound from
jealousy: this is found sculptured in stone at Ap Brune, co. Limerick. As is
well known, and has been elaborately discussed by Mr. Baring-Gould (Curious
Myths of the Middle Ages, p. 134 seq.), and Mr. W. A. Clouston
(Popular Tales and Fictions, ii 166 , seq.), the story of the man
who rashly slew the dog (ichneumon, weasel, &c.) that had saved his babe
from death, is one of those which have spread from East to West. It is indeed,
as Mr. Clouston points out, still current in India, the land of its birth.
There is little doubt that it is originally Buddhistic : the late Prof. S. Beal
gave the earliest known version from the Chinese translation of the Vinaya
Pitaka in the Academy of Nov. 4, 1882. The conception of an animal
sacrificing itself for the sake of others is peculiarly Buddhistic; the
"hare in the moon " is an apotheosis of such a piece of
self-sacrifice on the part of Buddha (Sasa Jataka). There are two forms
that have reached the West, the first being that of an animal saving men at the
cost of its own life. I pointed out an early instance of this, quoted by a
Rabbi of the second century, in my Fables of Aesop, i. 105. This
concludes with a strangely dose parallel to Gellert ; "They raised a cairn
over his grave, and the place is still called The Dog's Grave." The Culex
attributed to Virgil seems to be another variant of this. The second form
of the legend is always told as a moral apologue against precipitate action,
and originally occurred in The Fables of Bidpai in its hundred
and one forms, all founded on Buddhistic originals (ef Benfey
,Pantschatantra, Einleitung, 201). [It occurs in the same chapter as the story
of La Perrette, which has been traced, after Benfey, by Prof. M. Mitiler in his
Migration of Fables" (Sel. Essays, i. 500-74); exactly the tame
history applies to Geltert.] Thence, according to Benfey, it was inserted in
the Book of Sindibad, another collection of Oriental Apologues framed on
what may be called the Mrs. Potiphar formula. This came to Europe with
the Crusades, and is known in its Western versions as the Seven Sages of
Rome. The Gellert story occurs in all the Oriental and Occidental versions
; e.g., it is the First Master's story in Wynkyn de Worde's (ed. G. L.
Gomme, for the VilIon Society.) From the Seven Sages it was taken into
the particular branch of the Gesta Romanorum current in England and
known as the English Gesta, where it occurs as c. xxxii., "Story of
Folliculus." We have thus traced it to England whence it passed to Wales,
where I have discovered it as the second apologue of "The Fables of Cattwg
the Wise," in the lob MS. published by the Welsh MS. Society, p.561,
"The man who killed his Greyhound." (These Fables, Mr. Nutt informs
me, are a pseudonymous production probably of the sixteenth century.) This
concludes the literary route of the Legend of Gellert from India to Wales:
Buddhistic Vinaya Pitaka - Fables of Bidpai; - Oriental Sindibad
;-Occidental Seven Sages of Rome ; - " English" (Latin), Gesta
Romanorum ;-Welsh, Fables of Cattwg.
Remarks
.- We have still to connect the legend with Llewelyn and
with Bedd Gelert. But first it may be desirable to point out why it is necessary
to assume that the legend is a legend and not a fact. The saving of an infant's
life by a dog, and the mistaken slaughter of the dog, are not such an
improbable combination as to make it impossible that the same event occurred in
many places. But what is impossible, in my opinion, is that such an event
should have independently been used in different places as the typical instance
of, and warning against, rash action. That the Gellert legend, before it was
localised, was used as a moral apologue in Wales is shown by the fact that it
occurs among the Fables of Cattwg, which are all of that character. It was also
utilised as a proverb: " Yr wy'n edivaru cymmaint a'r Gur a
laddodd ei Vilgi ("I repent as much as the man who slew his
grey-hound"). The fable indeed, from this point of view, seems greatly to
have attracted the Welsh mind, perhaps as of especial value to a proverbially
impetuous temperament. Croker (Fairy Legends of Ireland, vol. iii. p.
165) points out several places where the legend seems to have been localised in
place-names - two places, called "Gwal y Vilast" ("Greyhound's
Couch"), in Carmarthen and Glamorganshire; "Llech y Asp"
("Dog's Stone"), in Cardigan, and another place named in Welsh
"Spring of the Greyhound's Stone.' Mr. Baring-Gould mentions that the
legend is told of an ordinary tombstone, with a knight and a greyhound in
Abergavenny Church; while the Fable of Cattwg is told of a man in Abergarwan.
So widespread and well known was the legend that it was in Richard III's
time adopted as the national crest. In the Warwick Roll, at the Herald's
Office, after giving separate crests for England, Scotland, and Ireland that
for Wales is given a figure as figured in the margin and blazoned "on a
coronet in a cradle or, a greyhound argent for Wales
(see J. R. Planche, Twelve Designs for the Costume of
Shakespeare;s Richard III, 1830, frontispiece). If this Roll is authentic,
the popularity of the legend is thrown back into the fifteenth century. It
still remains to explain how and when this general legend of rash action was
localised and specialised at Bedd Gelert:I believe I have discovered this.
There certainly was a local legend about a dog named Gelert at that place; E.
Jones, in the first edition of his Musical Relicks of the Welsh Bards, 1784,
p.40, gives the following englyn or epigram:
Claddwyd Cylart celfydd (ymlyniad)
Ymlaneau Efionydd
Parod giuio i'w gynyd
Parai'r dydd yr heliai Hwdd;
which he Englishes thus:
The remains of famed Cylart, so faithful and good,
The bounds of the cantred conceal;
Whenever the doe or the stag he pursued
His master was sure of a meal
No reference was made in the first edition to the Gellert legend, but in the
second edition of 1794, p.75, a note was added telling the legend, "There
is a general tradition in North Wales that a wolf had entered the house of
Prince Llewellyn. Soon after the Prince returned home, and, going into the
nursery, he met his dog Kill-hart, all bloody and wagging his tail at
him; Prince Llewellyn, on entering the room found the cradle where his child
lay overturned, and the floor flowing with blood; imagining that the greyhound
had killed the child, he immediately drew his sword and stabbed it ; then,
turning up the cradle, found under it the child alive, and the wolf dead. This
so grieved the Prince, that he erected a tomb over his faithful dog's grave ;
where afterwards the parish church was built and goes by that name - Bedd
Cilhart, or the grave of Kid-hart, in Carnarvonshire. From this
incident is elicited a very common Welsh proverb [that given above which occurs
also in 'The Fables of Cattwg;' it will be observed that it is quite
indefinite.]" " Prince Llewellyn ab Jorwerth married Joan, [natural]
daughter of King John, by Agatha, daughter of Robert Ferrers, Earl of
Derby; and the dog was a present to the prince from his father-in-law about the
year 1205." It was clearly from this note that the Hon. Mr. Spencer got
his account ; oral tradition does not indulge in dates Anno Domini. The
application of the general legend of "the man who slew his greyhound
" to the dog Cylart, was due to the learning of E. Jones, author of the Musical
Relicks. I am convinced of this, for by a lucky chance I am enabled to give
the real legend about Cylart, which is thus given in Carlisle's Topographical
Dictionary of Wales, s.v., "Bedd Celert," published in 1811, the
date of publication of Mr. Spencer's Poems. "Its name, according to
tradition, implies The Grave of Celert, a Greyhound which belonged to
Llywellyn, the last Prince of Wales: and a large Rock is still pointed out as
the monument of this celebrated Dog, being on the spot where it was found dead,
together with the stag which it had pursued from Carnarvon," which is
thirteen miles distant. The cairn was thus a monument of a "record"
run of a greyhound: the englyn quoted by Jones is suitable enough for
this, while quite inadequate to record the later legendary exploits of Gelert.
Jones found in englyn devoted to an exploit of a dog named
Cylart, and chose to interpret it in his second edition, 1794, as the exploit
of a greyhound with which all the world (in Wales) were acquainted. Mr. Spencer
took the legend from Jones (the reference to the date 1205 proves that),
enshrined it in his somewhat banal verses, which were lucky enough to be
copied into several reading-books, and thus became known to all
English-speaking folk.
It remains only to explain why Jones connected the legend with Llewelyn.
Llewelyn had historical connection with Bedd Gellert, which was the seat of an
Augustinian abbey, one of the oldest in Wales. An inspeximus of Edward I. given
in Dugdale, Monast. Angi., ed. pr. ii. 1ooa, quotes as the earliest
charter of the abbey "Cartam Lewelini magni." The name of the abbey
was "Beth Kellarth"; the name is thus given by Leland, l.c., and
as late as 1794 an engraving at the British Museum is entitled " Beth
Kelert," while Carlisle gives it as "Beth Celert." The place was
thus named after the abbey, not after the cairn or rock. This is confirmed by
the fact of which Prof. Rhys had informed me, that the collocation of letters rt
is un-Welsh. Under these circumstances it is not impossible, I think, that
the earlier legend of the marvellous run of " Cylart from Carnarvon was
due to the etymologising fancy of some English-speaking Welshman who
interpreted the name as Killhart, so that the simpler legend would be only a
folk-etymology.
But whether Kellarth, Kelert, Cylart, Gelert or GeIlert ever existed and run
a hart from Carnarvon to Bedd Gellert or no, there can be little doubt after
the preceding that he was not the original hero of the fable of "the man
that slew his greyhound," which came to Wales from Buddhistic India
through channels which are perfectly traceable. It was Edward Jones who first
raised him to that proud position, and William Spencer who securely installed
him there, probably for all time. The legend is now firmly established at Bedd
Gellert, There is said to be an ancient air, "Bedd Gelert," " as
sung by the Ancient Britons"; it is given in a pamphlet published at
Carnarvon in the "fifties," entitled Gellert's Grave; or,
Llewellyn's Rashness: a Ballad, by the Hon. W R. Spencer, to
which is added that ancient Welsh air, "Bedd Gelert," as sung
by the Ancient Britons. The air is from R. Roberts' "Collection of
Welsh Airs," but what connection it has with the legend I have been unable
to ascertain. This is probably another case of adapting one tradition to
another. It is almost impossible to distinguish paloeozoic and cainozoic strata
in oral tradition. According to Murray's Guide to N Wales, p.125, the
only authority for the cairn now shown is that of the landlord of the Goat Inn,
"who felt compelled by the cravings of tourists to invent a grave."
Some old men at Bedd Gellert, Prof. Rhys informs me, are ready to testify that
they saw the cairn laid. They might almost have been present at the birth of
the legend, which, if my affiliation of it is correct, is not yet quite 100
years old.
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