Mar. 9. 1850.] 
NOTES AND QUERIES. 
space, and also Hell. Thus we find, that when 
Pwyl, or Reason, drives these dogs off their track, 
the owner comes up, and, reproving him, declares 
that he is a crowned king, Lord of Annwn and 
Pendaran, i.e. chief of thunder. (See Myth. Ant. 
Druids, p. 418.) 
This Prince of Darkness is supposed to be the 
spouse of Andraste, now corrupted into Andras, 
and equivalent with Malt y nos, the Diana or 
Hecate of the ancient Britons. 
These dogs sometimes appear singly, on which 
occasions they sit by the side of a stream, howling 
in so unearthly a manner, that the hapless man 
who finds one in his path usually loses his senses. 
This seems to have a connection with the “ Manthe 
Doog” of the Isle of Man; but the tradition is 
not, we suspect, genuine. SELEvCUS. 
No. 2. Cyoeraeth or Gwrach-y-rhybin.—Another 
instance of the grand, though gloomy superstitions 
of the Cymry, is that of the Cyoeraeth, or hag of 
the mist, an awful being who is supposed to reside 
in the mountain fog, through which her super- 
natural shriek is frequently heard. She is believed 
to be the very personification of ugliness, with 
torn and dishevelled hair, long black teeth, lank 
and withered arms and claws, and a most ca- 
dayverous appearance ; to this some add, wings of 
a leathery and bat-like substance. 
The name Cy-oer-aeth, the last. two syllables of 
which signify cold-grief, is most descriptive of the 
sad wail which she utters, and which will, it is 
said, literally freeze the veins of those who hear 
it; she is rarely seen, but is heard at a cross-road, 
or beside a stream — in the Jatter case she splashes 
the water with her hands — uttering her lamenta- 
tion, as if in allusion to the relatives of those about 
to die. Thus, if a man hears her cry fy nqwsaig, 
Sy nqwsaig, &c., his wife will surely die, and he 
will be heard to mourn in the same strain ere 
long; and so on with other cases, The cadence 
of this cry can never be properly caught by any 
one who has not heard, if not a Cyoeraeth, at 
least a native of Wales, repeat the strain. When 
merely an inarticulate scream is heard, it is pro- 
bable that the hearer himself is the one whose 
death is fore-mourned. 
Sometimes she is supposed to come like the 
Trish banshee, in a dark mist, to the windows of 
those who have been long ill; when flapping her 
wings against the pane, she repeats their names 
with the same prolonged emphasis; and then it is 
thought that they must die. 
It is this hag who forms the torrent beds which 
seam the mountain side; for she gathers great 
stones in her cloak to make her ballast, when she 
flies upon the storm; and when about to retire to 
her mountain cave, she lets them drop pro- 
gressively as she moves onwards, when they fall 
with such an unearthly weight that they lay open 
the rocky sides of the mountain. 
295 
In some parts of South Wales this hag of the 
mists either loses her sway, or divides it with a more 
dignified personage, who, in the form of an old 
man, and under the name of Brenhin Llwyd, the 
grey king, sits ever silent in the mist. 
Any one who has witnessed the gathering and 
downward rolling of a genuine mountain fog must 
fully appreciate the spirit in which men first peopled 
the cloud with such supernatural beings as those 
above described ; or with those which dimly, yet 
constantly, pervade the much-admired Legend of 
Montrose. SELEvcus. 
WILLIAM BASSE AND HIS POEMS. 
I regret that Iam unable to offer any informa- 
tion in answer to “ Mr. P. Corrrer’s” inquiry (No. 
13. p. 200.) respecting the existence of a perfect 
or imperfect copy of a poem by William Basse on 
the Death of Prince Henry, printed at Oxford by 
Joseph Barnes, 1613, and am only aware of such 
a poem from the slight mention of it by Sir Harris 
Nicolas in his beautiful edition of Walton’s Com- 
plete Angler, p. 422. But as the possessor of the 
4to. MS. volume of poems by Basse, called Poly- 
hymnia, formerly belonging to Mr. Heber, I feel 
greatly interested in endeavouring to obtam some 
further biographical particulars of Basse, — of 
whom, although personally known to Isaac Walton, 
the author of one or two printed volumes of poems, 
and of the excellent old songs of “the Hunter in 
his Career” and “Tom of Bedlam,” and worthy of 
having his verses on Shakspeare inserted among 
his collected poems, yet the notices we at present 
possess are exceedingly slight. We learn from 
Anth. Wood, in his Ath. Oxon., vol. iv. p. 222., 
that Basse was a native of Moreton, near Thame 
in Oxfordshire, and was for some time a retainer 
of Sir Richard Wenman, Knt., afterwards Viscount 
Wenman, in the peerage of Ireland. He seems 
also to have been attached to the noble family of 
Norreys of Ricot in Oxfordshire, which is not 
far from Thame; and addressed some verses to 
Francis Lord Norreys, Earl of Berkshire, from 
which I quote one or two stanzas, and in the last 
of which there is an allusion to the [plainness of 
the] author’s personal appearance : — 
“ O true nobilifie, and rightly grac’d 
With all the jewels that on thee depend, 
Where goodnesse doth w*t® greatnesse live embrae’d, 
And outward stiles, om inward worth attend. 
Where ample lands, in ample hands are plac'd 
And aneient deeds, with ancient eoats descend : 
Where noble bloud combin'd with noble spirit 
Forefathers fames, doth with their formes inherit. 
«« Where ancestors examples are perus’d 
Not in large tomes, or costly tombs alone, 
But in their heires: and bemg dayly us’d 
Are (like theif robes) more honourable growne, 
