THE WATERS OF CADER IDRIS 



of temper throw rocks at it, which last may be seen 

 lying here and there in the valleys to this very day. 

 One might fairly say that the Dysynni was born in the 

 gloomy tarn of Llyn-y-cav, which lies almost under 

 the shadow of the precipice. For the rills that feed 

 it are so tiny and so near their source, that in the pro- 

 found silence, which is rarely broken but by the croak 

 of the raven, the call of the curlew, or the bleat of 

 sheep, you can scarcely hear their feeble piping in the 

 drowsiness of high summer. 



Llyn-y-cav is full of smaUish trout. A friend of 

 mine who is tolerably reliable in such matters teUs 

 me he once filled a basket there. Others declare they 

 have toiled all day and caught nothing. But this is 

 the way of tarns, and there are a good many on the 

 Cader range. A mile or two below, after much 

 plashing and plunging down a moorland, rocky bed, 

 the infant Dysynni ripples through some narrow 

 meadows into the beautiful and quite famous little 

 lake of Tal-y-llyn. I take the last epithet to be not 

 amiss, since for the better part of a century the lake has 

 been the resort of fishermen from far and near, not 

 in great numbers for the restricted nature of the ac- 

 commodation, but as numerous in the late spring, at 

 any rate, as the capacity of the old, white-washed 

 farmhouse hostelry upon the shore admits of. When 

 I was a boy, a dear old gentleman and angler, beneath 

 whose roof in the Midlands I spent many a week of 

 many Christmas holidays, used to sing the glories of 

 Tal-y-llyn, and in this case Hterally to sing them. 

 For, being of a cheerful temperament and not very 

 musical, he was fond of humming old and familiar 



lOI 



