28G PROF. T. MCKENNY HUGHES, F.K.S., ON 



Another race we all know in Wales : the short, swarthy, 

 wiry men of Snowdonia, with piercing dark eyes, curly dark 

 hair, small clear-cut, often slightly aquiline, nose. These 

 people are never florid, never fat. On old maps you Avill find 

 their country innrkod Ileriri Mantes; we call them " Gicyr 

 Eryri." If we enquire what tribes in ancient times lived in 

 that part of Wales we find that hei-e Ave are in the heart 

 of the mountain fastnesses of the Ordovices, that powerful 

 race against whom in the north, as against the Silures in 

 the south, the waves of Roman and of Saxon invasion again 

 and again broke in vain. The Ordovices had been forced 

 back from the banks of the Dee and the Clwyd as the Silures 

 had been driven from the Severn and the Wye ; but they 

 were never exterminated, and in all probability we have, 

 in the competition between the Cor Eryri and the champion 

 choir of South Wales, a renewal of the struggles between the 

 Ordovices and Silures carried on through long ages before 

 the Romans ever set foot upon our shores. 



There was another race along the north-west coast of 

 Wales, as we know from history, archseology, place-names and 

 tradition, but of this I cannot say that I can detect any traces 

 at the present time among the people. They have been 

 either extii"patcd or absorbed in the various new-comers along 

 the coast, of whom I have made mention. The geography 

 of ancient history is very obscure, and on this point I will do 

 no more than refer to the ancient maps on which, as the 

 outcome of impression after reading ancient history, a tribe 

 has been located, to which by some the name Cangi has 

 been assigned, but I cannot say much more for it than that 

 it S3ems to be a word unappropriated elsewhere on good 

 evidence and remaining to be applied when a name was 

 wanted. 



Tradition helps us to assure ourselves that there was some 

 tribe there independent of the Ordovices. I remember many 

 years ago telling Sir Lewis ]\Iorris one story of this region 

 which he said he had never heard before and whieh he 

 has since enshrined in song. 



The men of Ardudwy, in the days Avhen marriage by 

 capture prevailed, made a raid into the country of the tribe 

 which lived to the north and carried off each man a maiden. 

 Wedchng ceremonies recalling the old custom of marriage by 

 capture were kept up in Wales till quite ri^ceutly. I have 

 myself seen them in Cardiganshire. The return niareh was 

 necessarily slower, and they were overtaken at the foot of 



