The Druid's Rock 209 



rare event of any person being drowned in Bala Lake, they 

 resort thither, the first intimation of one such catastrophe 

 having been given by the birds assembling there. No 

 funeral has every been known to take place at Llanuwchllyn 

 at which one or more pairs of Ravens did not attend, 

 croaking overhead. This information I got from a trades- 

 man while a funeral was actually approaching. On my 

 calling his attention to two Ravens overheard, his reply was : 

 " Yes, indeed, they always come ; they know beforehand 

 when a burial is to be, I think." By most country people 

 they are regarded as birds of ill omen, and they are disliked 

 by all. On one of the hills overlooking the valley, there 

 is a slab of rock lying upon other large stones like a 

 cromlech, though its position seems undoubtedly due to 

 natural, not human agencies. It was formerly known, I 

 was informed, as Craig-y-Druidion, or the Druid's rock ; 

 but it is so commonly used as a perching place by "the 

 bad birds " that the name has now become corrupted into 

 Craig-y-drwg, or the devil's rock, and as such it is now 

 generally known. Another devil's rock, above the Pistyll 

 Dee, is a hugh lump of curiously contorted lava, of which 

 there are several smaller examples round about. It is very 

 clearly marked by cloven hoofs, of many different sizes, the 

 smaller impressions being not larger than might be made by 

 a sheep, while a large dinner-plate would scarcely cover 

 some of the others. A whole crowd of devils would 

 appear to have congregated there at some time to dance, 

 including, without a doubt, the father of all evil. The 

 person who pointed this stone out to me was under the 

 impression (since he had abandoned " the devil theory ") that 

 the marks might be footprints of extinct animals ; but there 

 is clearly nothing of an organic origin about them, while 

 they are, besides, in an igneous rock, in which no such 

 marks could possibly occur. In reality they represent 

 merely the unequal cooling of the heated, or molten rock, 

 some of the softer portions of which have yielded more 

 than others to the disintegrating effects of the atmosphere. 



The Ravens resorting to these stones were looked upon 

 as evil spirits, or at least as holding communion with such. 



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