the room where his mother was sitting, two dwarfs pounced on the ball and departed, regarding the boy with contempt and

scorn.

"On recovering from the effects of his fall, confounded with shame, he returned by the usual track to the subterraneous road, but could not find it any more, though he searched for it on the banks of the river for nearly a year."

With this story may be compared that told by William of Newburgh, who died in 1208. He relates that near Woolpit in Suffolk there are deep ancient trenches, and that out of one of these came, in harvest-time, two children, a boy and a girl, whose bodies were of a green colour, and who wore dresses of some unknown stuff. They were caught and taken to the village, where for many months they would eat nothing but beans. The green hue gradually faded off them. The boy soon died. The girl survived, and married a man of Lynn. At first they could speak no English, but when they were able to do so they said that they belonged to S. Martin's Land, an underground world, where, as they were watching their father's sheep, they heard a noise like the pealing of the bells of S. Edmund's Bury monastery. And then all at once they found themselves among the reapers at Woolpit. Their country was a Christian land, and had churches. There was no sun there, only a faint twilight; but beyond a broad river lay a land of light.

These tales of an underground world, found also in Germany, are very curious and puzzling. They have probably some foundation. It is possible that the underground people were the primitive inhabitants, Silurians and others, driven to inhabit caves and recesses of the woods and mountains. The Norse tales of Trolls who lived in huts like tumuli almost certainly refer to Lapps.

Sometimes these remains of an ancient population enticed away children belonging to the superior race which

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had occupied the land later, and sometimes some of their children were caught. Imagination magnified the tales and invested them with marvellous incidents.

To right and left of the Gower headland stretch the tracts of sandy flats and dunes that extend from Porthcawl to Oystermouth on one side, and that fill the lap of Carmarthen Bay and choke Burry inlet on the other. Kenfig, once a town with a castle and municipal body, is now buried under the sands. It has been asserted that for the formation of sand-dunes an essential requisite is an inclined shallow shore, so that the sand can blow readily up the slope. But this is not the case. In many places sand-dunes are formed on the tops of cliffs, but this is because near the bit of high land they cover there is a bay in which the sand lodges, where it whirls into eddies of wind, and whence it is carried on to the high land. At St. David's the dunes lie on land raised above the beach by cliffs, but the source whence they are derived is Porthmawr. Where the rocks rise abruptly from the sea, the shore there cannot be the direct feeder to the elevated sanddunes. They must be supplied, replenished, and given their impulse for a forward march from some near cove where the sand dries between tides.

It is also asserted that dunes are formed by great gales. They generally owe their origin and growth to prevailing steady winds. In commenting on the sand-drifts of Cyprus, Sir Samuel Baker says:—

"Many people upon observing sand-dunes attribute the most distant limit of the sand to the extreme violence of the wind; but this is not the case. It is the steady prevalence of moderately strong winds that causes the extension of sand-drifts. The wind of to-day deposits the sand at a certain distance from the shore. The wind to-morrow starts the accumulated sand from that depôt to form a new deposit about equi-distant; and thus by slow degrees the dunes are formed by a succession of mounds, conveyed onwards by an unchanging force; but the maximum power of a gale would be unable to carry thousands of tons of heavy

sand to form a hill range at the extreme distance from the original base of the material. At Hambantoffe, in the southern district of Ceylon, there is an extraordinary example of this action, where during one monsoon a range of mounds is formed which might be termed hills; when the monsoon changes, these by degrees disappear, and according to the direction in the wind, a range of hills is formed in an exactly opposite direction."

The axis of the sand-waves is at right angles to the force of the wind. These sand-billows march forward surely every year, unless arrested by vegetation. There is, in fact, a constant battle being waged by the herbage against these moving hills; and the planting of Arundo arenaria is a necessity to arrest them, and prevent their overflow of the good pasture and corn land further in. At Kenfig the tenants of the farms that adjoin the sand-waste are compelled by their contracts to plant annually a certain quantity of this useful rush. In the Landes of France and on the Baltic shores of Danzig and Pomerania, the maintenance of zones of pines has to be provided for the same purpose.

The rivers are incessantly engaged in carrying down into the sea the detritus of the mountains and the earth they have filched from the plains, and the ocean in revenge is ever occupied in throwing up over the land, wherever convenient, the chewed rock which it has taken from the cliffs and has mumbled to powder.

The most favourable conditions for the formation of these littoral dunes are where the sea periodically lays bare extensive stretches of sand, which are dried by the sun, whereupon the particles obtain great mobility, and the wind easily transports them to great distances, often with considerable rapidity.

The travelling sand may be arrested by quite a small object, a bush or a large stone, and will gradually grow in dimensions till a hill has been formed. And the banks of sand will at times be cast over the mouth of a stream or

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river and deflect it from its course and form lagoons. Kenfig Pool is created in this way-the drainage of the mainland is arrested and cannot discharge itself into the sea.

The river Adour formerly flowed into the Bay of Biscay at Vieux Boucau, but the sand choked the mouth, then it broke out further south at Cap Breton, and then, that also becoming choked, in the fifteenth century it tore its way directly into the sea at its present mouth, some twenty miles south of its ancient embouchure, leaving its old bed as a chaplet of lagoons buried in forest.

CHAPTER VIII

THE TOWY VALLEY

Carmarthen-Merlin-Sir Richard Steele-The Towy-The coracle-The voyage of S. Brendan-The five pilgrims-Llangendeirne-LlandiloDynevor Castle-Howel Dda and his laws-The tribal system-Llandyfeisant--Careg Cennen-Garn Goch-S. Cadoc-Myddfai-The physicians of Myddfai-Roman roads-Cynwyl Gaio-The gold mines-The five sleepers-Inquisitive Gwen-Inscribed stones-Treble-Mynydd Mallaen-Twm Shôn Cati's Cave-Rees Pritchard and the Welshman's Candle-The Rebecca riots.

LLA

LANDILO is a better centre for a visit to southern Carmarthenshire than is Carmarthen itself. Carmarthen is not in itself an attractive town.

It does not lie on the main artery of traffic. It has a castle pared down to a stump, which has lost all but the bases of its towers, and therefore fails to be picturesque. Nor does the town contain anything else of commanding interest. It is the Roman Moridunum, and it is the reputed birthplace of the prophet Merlin. But Bassaleg by Newport contests with it this honour. Nennius, who is the best authority, gives Campus Electi, which is Maesaleg, now Bassaleg; but Geoffrey of Monmouth says that the place was Carmarthen.

The story is that Vortigern was about to build a castle near Snowdon, but could not lay the foundations, as they sank as fast as laid. Then he inquired of his Druids, and they bade him seek for a child who had no father and sprinkle the ground with its blood. He sent a deputation in quest of such a child, and they came, according to