United States or Kosovo ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Hence, where the adventures of Tawhaki, the mythical New Zealander, are incredible, the legend of the origin of the Physicians of Myddfai from the Lady of the Lake may still be gravely accepted.
If, then, there were a family at Myddfai celebrated for their leechcraft, and possessed of lands and influence, as we know was the fact, their hereditary skill would seem to an ignorant peasantry to demand a supernatural origin; and their wealth and material power would not refuse the additional consideration which a connection with the legend of the neighbouring pool would bring them.
See my article on the "Meddygon Myddfai," entitled "Old Welsh Folk Medicine," "Y Cymmrodor," vol. ix. p. 227. A certain German family used to excuse its faults by attributing them to a sea-fay who was reckoned among its ancestors; Birlinger, "Aus Schwaben," vol. i. p. 7, quoting the "Zimmerische Chronik." Namely, her husband's father, whose name she was not permitted by etiquette to utter.
The negative evidence of the "Meddygon Myddfai," therefore, tends to show that the connection of the Van Pool story with the Physicians is of comparatively recent date. Elsewhere we have seen her sisters the totems of clans, the goddesses of nations, the parents of great families and renowned personages.
This recension of the work is much later in date than the former. A portion of it cannot be older than the end of the fifteenth century; and the manuscript from which it was printed was probably the result of accretions extending over a long period of time, down to the year 1743, when it was copied "from the book of John Jones, Physician of Myddfai, the last lineal descendant of the family."
Dec. i. c. 15. Brauns, p. 138; White, vol. ii. p. 141; Vernaleken, p. 294; Schneller, p. 23; Ortoli, p. 284. "The Physicians of Myddfai Meddygon Myddfai," translated by John Pughe, Esq., F.R.C.S., and edited by Rev. John Williams ab Ithel, M.A. , p. xxi. "Cambro-Briton," vol. ii. p. 315; Sikes, p. 40. Mr. Sikes gives no authority for the third version.
Yet it contains no reference to the legend of the Van Pool. The volume in question includes a transcript of another manuscript of the work, which is ascribed in the colophon to Howel the Physician, who, writing in the first person, claims to be "regularly descended in the male line from the said Einion, the son of Rhiwallon, the physician of Myddfai, being resident in Cilgwryd, in Gower."
A collection of medical recipes purporting to be this very work still exists in a manuscript preserved at Jesus College, Oxford, which is now in course of publication by Professor Rhys and Mr. An edition of the "Meddygon Myddfai," as this collection is called, was published by the Welsh MSS. Society thirty years ago, with an English translation.
Word Of The Day