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NOTES AND QUERIES. 



[2nd s. NO 115., Mar. 13. '58. 



This custom appears to have fallen into disuse 

 in Wales, owing, perhaps, to the spread of Calvinis- 

 tic sectarianism, the spirit of which is opposed to 

 folk-lore^ as something vain and frivolous, if not 

 heathenish and immoral. To this cause may pro- 

 bably be ascribed the disuse of many old comme- 

 morative customs, and the oblivion of many 

 traditions among the peasantry of Wales during 

 the last eighty years ; for it can scarcely be ex- 

 pected that he who is ever looking forward to the 

 battle of Armageddon, should care to remember 

 Cadgamlan, or that a mental vision, dazzled by the 

 splendours of the New Jerusalem, should dwell 

 upon the fading glories of Old Troy. 



On reading the passage in Drych y Prif Oesoedd, 

 which refers to the Caerdroia, I immediately re- 

 cognised a custom familiarly known to me from 

 boyhood. On the extensive grassy plains of 

 Burgh and RocklifF Marshes contiguous to the 

 Solway Sands in Cumberland, the herdsmen at 

 the present day are in the habit of cutting this 

 labyrinthine figure, which they also call " the walls 

 of Troy." _ 



If, as it is asserted, astronomy originated among 

 the shepherds and herdsmen of the Chaldaean 

 plains, whose tranquil, loitering life in the open air 

 disposed them to contemplate the heavens, perhaps 

 we might expect to find shepherds and herdsmen 

 everywhere evincing a similar exalted taste ; and 

 certainly at first sight this delineation of the walls 

 of Troy does present the appearance of some mys- 

 tic hieroglyphic emblem, like the serpent biting 

 his tail, or the section of an onion, in which the 

 Egyptian visionaries saw a type of the spheres. 

 But the herdsmen of Eockliff Marsh, unlike the 

 Chaldaeans and Egyptians, are neither star-gazers 

 nor visionaries, and I think I can vouch for their 

 being as little versed in classical literature as in 

 commentaries on the Prophets and the Revelation. 

 Those whom I remember were distinguished 

 neither for piety, nor the opposite quality. They 

 were lazy mortals, not troubling their heads with 

 recollections of the past or aspirations after the 

 future, but quite absorbed in the present ; and ad- 

 dicted above all things to lying on their backs, 

 basking in the sun on Sundays as well as on week 

 days, the nature of their employment placing them 

 under the necessity of absenting themselves from 

 church. 



But for this, I have no doubt they would have 

 gone to worship where their fathers had gone 

 before them, and listened (except when they fell 

 asleep) to the sermons of the Reverend Jeremiah 

 Reed (for fifty years incumbent of the parish), as 

 fully convinced of the orthodoxy of the reverend 

 gentleman's doctrine as was that worthy prototype 

 of Dominie Sampson himself of his own unrivalled 

 pronunciation of the English language. So far 

 were they from professing any veneration for 

 places or persons of classical celebrity, that I am 



persuaded they would have maintained that Car- 

 lisle (on Whitsaturday fair-day) was quite as fine 

 a city as any Troy or Jerusalem, either old or 

 new, in the heavens above, on the earth beneath, 

 or in the waters under the earth. In short, they 

 cut the figure as they had seen it cut by others, 

 when tired of lying on their backs, merely because 

 they had nothing else to do, and named it as they 

 had heard it named without knowing or caring 

 what it meant. 



As a new edition of the Drych y Prif Oesoedd 

 is at present in the press, and as the editor is de- 

 sirous of obtaining some farther particulars con- 

 cerning the Caerdroia, perhaps some of the readers 

 of " N. & Q." may be able to furnish information 

 on the following points : — 



1. Is the custom of cutting the " walls of Troy " 

 on the turf known in other parts of the United 

 Kingdom ; and if so, is it general throughout the 

 country, or confined to those districts which we 

 know to have been the seat of Cymric principali- 

 ties, or at least inhabited by a Cymric population 

 during the period between the Saxon and Nor- 

 man conquests ; viz., the territories of the Strath- 

 Clyde Britons, comprising the south-west of Scot- 

 land, from the Solway to the Frith of Clyde ; the 

 Cumbrian principality, represented by Cumber- 

 land, Westmoreland, and those parts of Lancashire 

 omitted in the Doomsday Book ; and the counties 

 of Cornwall and Devonshire ? If it be of Cymric 

 origin, it may also be expected to prevail in Here- 

 fordshire, Shropshire, and the parts of Yorkshire 

 and Lancashire bordering on the Lake district. 



2. Is the custom known in Bretagne ? 



3. Is there any allusion in classical or mediaeval 

 authors to the fact, or the fable, of the walls of 

 Troy being built in the form of a labyrinth, or is 

 there any tradition to that effect among the mo- 

 dern Greeks in the neighbourhood of the Troad 

 or elsewhere ? I think not, although I never put 

 the question. During the year 1855, which I 

 passed in Greece, the Trojan war was a frequent 

 topic of conversation among the Greeks, owing to 

 the resemblance which they saw between that 

 event and the siege of Sebastopol, then in pro- 

 gress. They spoke of the situation and siege of 

 Troy, and generally concluded by asserting, with 

 an air of triumph, " that the Russians were not to 

 be caught napping, and were not such fools as to 

 admit the wooden horse within the citadel;" but 

 I never heard them allude to labyrinthine walls. 

 The figure is, I think, known to most schoolboys 

 (at least it is so in Cumberland), although the 

 practice of cutting it on the turf may not be so 

 common. If no tradition respecting the labyrin- 

 thine form of the walls is to be found elsewhere, 

 it would seem to be an after-thought of pure 

 Cymric origin, suggested by the similarity between 

 Caerdroia, the city of Troy, and Caer y troiau, the 

 city of windings or turnings. I have not the 



