File:Wild Wales; its people, language, and scenery (1900) (14781524092).jpg

Identifier: wildwalesitspeop00borrrich (find matches)
Title: Wild Wales; its people, language, and scenery
Year: 1900 (1900s)
Authors: Borrow, George Henry, 1803-1881
Subjects: Wales -- Description and travel
Publisher: New York, G. P. Putnam's Sons London, J. Murray
Contributing Library: University of California Libraries
Digitizing Sponsor: MSN

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till, the hotsun reflected upon its surface, which shone like a polishedblue shield. Near the shore it was shallow, at least nearthat shore upon which I lay. But .farther on, my eye,practised in deciding upon the depths of waters, sawreason to suppose that its depth was very great. As Igazed upon it my mind indulged in strange musings. Ithought of the afanc, a creature which some have sup-posed to be the harmless and industrious beaver, othersthe frightful and destructive crocodile. I wonderedwhether the afanc was the crocodile or the beaver, andspeedily had no doubt that the name was originallyapplied to the crocodile. Oh, who can doubt, thought I, that the word wasoriginally intended for something monstrous and hor-rible? Is there not something horrible in the look andsound of the word afanc, something connected with theopening and shutting of immense jaws, and the swallow-ing of writhing prey? Is not the word a fitting brotherof the Arabic timsah, denoting the dread horny lizard of
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CASCADE ON THE MOOR BETWEEN FESTINIOG AND IJALA. \^To face p. 328. XLVFii.) TfIR AFANC-CROCOniLK 329 the waters ? Moreover, have we not the voice of tradi-tion that the afanc was something monstrous ? Does itnot say that Hu the Mighty, the inventor of husbandry,who brought the Cumry from the summer-country, drewthe old afanc out of the lake of lakes with his fourgigantic oxen ? Would he have had recourse to themto draw out the little harmless beaver ? Oh, surely not.Yet have I no doubt that when the crocodile had dis-appeared from the lands, where the Cumric languagewas spoken, the name afanc was applied to the beaver,probably his successor in the pool, the beaver nowcalled in Cumric Llostlydan, or the broad-tailed, fortraditions voice is strong that the beaver has at onetime been called the afanc. Then I wondered whetherthe pool before me had been the haunt of the afanc, con-sidered both as crocodile and beaver. I saw no reasonto suppose that it had not. If crocodiles, thought I, eve

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