Gwyn, last of the gods of Annwn, has evidently by this time taken over the functions of all the others. He has the hounds which Arawn once had—the _Cwn Annwn_, “dogs of hell”, with the white bodies and the red ears. We hear more of them in folklore than we do of their master, though even their tradition is dying out with the spread of newspapers and railways. We are not likely to find another Reverend Edmund Jones[551] to insist upon belief in them, lest, by closing our minds to such manifest witnesses of the supernatural world, we should become infidels. Still, we may even now find peasants ready to swear that they have heard them sweeping along the hill-sides upon stormy nights, as they pursued the flying souls of unshriven men or unbaptized babes. The tales told of them agree curiously. Their cry is like that of a pack of foxhounds, but softer in tone. The nearer they are to a man, the less loud their voices seem, and the farther off they are, the louder. But they are less often seen than heard, and it has been suggested that the sounds were the cries of migrating bean-geese, which are not unlike those of hounds in chase. The superstition is widely spread. The _Cwn Annwn_ of Wales are called in North Devon the “Yeth” (Heath or Heathen), or “Yell” Hounds, and on Dartmoor, the “Wish” Hounds. In Durham and Yorkshire they are called “Gabriel” Hounds, and they are known by various names in Norfolk, Gloucestershire, and Cornwall. In Scotland it is Arthur who leads the Wild Hunt, and the tradition is found over almost the whole of western Europe.
Not many folk-tales have been preserved in which Gwyn is mentioned by name. His memory has lingered longest and latest in the fairy-haunted Vale of Neath, so close to his “ridge, the Tawë abode ... not the nearest Tawë ... but that Tawë which is the farthest”. But it may be understood whenever the king of the fairies is mentioned. As the last of the greater gods of the old mythology, he has been endowed by popular fancy with the rule of all the varied fairy population of Britain, so far, at least, as it is of Celtic or pre-Celtic origin. For some of the fairies most famous in English literature are Teutonic. King Oberon derives his name, through the French _fabliaux_, from Elberich, the dwarf king of the _Niebelungenlied_,[552] though his queen, Titania, was probably named out of Ovid’s _Metamorphoses_.[553] Puck, another of Shakespeare’s fays, is merely the personification of his race, the “pwccas” of Wales, “pookas” of Ireland, “poakes” of Worcestershire, and “pixies” of the West of England.[554] It is Wales that at the present time preserves the most numerous and diverse collection of fairies. Some of them are beautiful, some hideous; some kindly, some malevolent. There are the gentle damsels of the lakes and streams called Gwragedd Annwn, and the fierce and cruel mountain fairies known as the Gwyllion. There are the household sprites called Bwbachod, like the Scotch and English “brownies”; the Coblynau, or gnomes of the mines (called “knockers” in Cornwall); and the Ellyllon, or elves, of whom the pwccas are a branch.[555] In the North of England the spirits belong more wholly to the lower type. The bogles, brownies, killmoulis, redcaps, and their like seem little akin to the higher, Aryan-seeming fairies. The Welsh bwbach, too, is described as brown and hairy, and the coblynau as black or copper-faced. We shall hardly do wrong in regarding such spectres as the degraded gods of a pre-Aryan race, like the Irish leprechauns and pookas, who have nothing in common with the still beautiful, still noble figures of the Tuatha Dé Danann.