that is to say, the first Sunday in that month. For then crowds of people early in the morning made their way up the mountains called the Beacons, both from the side of Carmarthenshire and Glamorgan: their destination used to be the neighbourhood of the Little Van Lake, out of whose waters they expected in the course of the day to see the Lady of the Lake make her momentary appearance. A similar shifting from the first of August to the first Sunday in that month has, I imagine, taken place in the Isle of Man. For though the solstice used to be, in consequence probably of Scandinavian influence, the day of institutional significance in the Manx summer, enquiries I have made in different parts of the island go to show that middle-aged people now living remember, that when they were children their parents used to ascend the mountains very early on the first Sunday in August (Old Style), and that in some districts at least they were wont to bring home bottles full of water from wells noted for their healing virtues. In a word, the memory of living Manxmen retains enough to show that the day was once of great importance, though I have not been able to find anything to connect its associations with Lug and the Lugnassad except the name Lhuanys for the first day of August. The story of the Lady of the Little Van Lake, whom the Welsh pilgrims used till recently to go forth to see, is too long to be given here,[1] and also too modern, in the form we have it, to clear up the details of the myth of which it forms a part. Suffice it to say that she may be regarded as belonging to the numerous
- ↑ The whole is given as the first of my Welsh Fairy Tales in the Cymmrodor, iv. 163—179; but see also vi. 203-4.
