This version, which comes very near the English saying, 'the devil take the hindmost,' and means that originally one of the company became a victim in real earnest, is current in Carnarvonshire, where allusions to the cutty black sow are still occasionally made to frighten children. In the upper part of the vale of the Dee, the doggerel takes the following form:
|
Hwch ᵭu gwta |
A cutty black sow |
Here a stile takes the place of the cross-roads, which are apt to figure in English folk-lore; and we have it again in the corresponding but less specific rhyme from my native part of north Cardiganshire, which runs thus:
|
Nos Galan-gaea' |
On November-eve |
Add to this that the Scotch Gaels have formed from the word Samhain, 'All-hallows,' a derivative Samhanach, meaning an All-hallows demon or goblin, supposed to steal babies as well as perpetrate other atrocities then.[1] Now the Irish story makes it clear what all this means, and why the night in question was regarded as the saturnalia of all that was hideous and uncanny in the world of spirits. It had been fixed upon as the time of all others when the Sun-god, whose power had been gradually falling off since the great feast associated with him on the first of August, succumbed to his enemies the powers of darkness and winter. It was their first
- ↑ The Cymmrodor, vi. 176-7: see also the first number of the Scottish Celtic Review, where one should read samhanach for lamhanach in the introductory remarks.
