The dream about 'the wide streets and costly buildings of that now silent city' seems to have its counterpart on the western coast of Erin--somewhere, let us say, off the cliffs of Moher [12], in County Clare--witness Gerald Griffin's lines, to which a passing allusion has already been made, p. 205:--
A story I heard on the cliffs of the West, That oft, through the breakers dividing, A city is seen on the ocean's wild breast, In turreted majesty riding. But brief is the glimpse of that phantom so bright: Soon close the white waters to screen it.
The allusion to the submarine chimes would make it unpardonable to pass by unnoticed the well-known Welsh air called Clychau Aberdyfi, 'The Bells of Aberdovey,' which I have always suspected of taking its name from fairy bells [13]. This popular tune is of unknown origin, and the words to which it is usually sung make the bells say un, dau, tri, pedwar, pump, chwech, 'one, two, three, four, five, six'; and I have heard a charming Welsh vocalist putting on saith, 'seven,' in her rendering of the song. This is not to be wondered at, as her instincts must have rebelled against such a commonplace number as six in a song redolent of old-world sentiment. But our fairy bells ought to have stopped at five: this would seem to have been forgotten when the melody and the present words were wedded together. At any rate our stories seem to suggest that fairy counting did not go beyond the fingering of one hand. The only Welsh fairy represented counting is made to do it all by fives: she counts un, dau, tri, pedwar, pump; un, dau, tri, pedwar, pump, as hard as her tongue can go. For on the number of times she can repeat the five numerals at a single breath depends the number of the live stock of each kind, which are to form her dowry: see p. 8 above, and as to music in fairy tales, see pp. 202, 206, 292.
Now that a number of our inundation stories have been passed in review in this and the previous chapter, some room may be given to the question of their original form. They separate themselves, as it will have been seen, into at least two groups: (1) those in which the cause of the catastrophe is ethical, the punishment of the wicked and dissolute; and (2) those in which no very distinct suggestion of the kind is made. It is needless to say that everything points to the comparative lateness of the fully developed ethical motive; and we are not forced to rest content with this theoretical distinction, for in more than one of the instances we have the two kinds of story. In the case of Llyn Tegid, the less known and presumably the older story connects the formation of the lake with the neglect to keep the stone door of the well shut, while the more popular story makes the catastrophe a punishment for wicked and riotous living: compare pp. 377, 408, above. So with the older story of Cantre'r Gwaelod, on which we found the later one of the tipsy Seithennin as it were grafted, p. 395. The keeping of the well shut in the former case, as also in that of Ffynnon Gywer, was a precaution, but the neglect of it was not the cause of the ensuing misfortune. Even if we had stories like the Irish ones, which make the sacred well burst forth in pursuit of the intruder who has gazed into its depths, it would by no means be of a piece with the punishment of riotous and lawless living. Our comparison should rather be with the story of the Curse of Pantannas, where a man incurred the wrath of the fairies by ploughing up ground which they wished to retain as a green sward; but the threatened vengeance for that act of culture did not come to pass for a century, till the time of one, in fact, who is not charged with having done anything to deserve it. The ethics of that legend are, it is clear, not easy to discover, and in our inundation stories one may trace stages of development from a similarly low level. The case may be represented thus: a divinity is offended by a man, and for some reason or other the former wreaks his vengeance, not on the offender, but on his descendants. This minimum granted, it is easy to see, that in time the popular conscience would fail to rest satisfied with the cruel idea of a jealous divinity visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children. One may accordingly distinguish the following stages:--