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So evil spirits cannot penetrate a circle drawn around him by one who invokes them. So, too, the sign of the cross is an efficient protection against them; and it is therefore made upon churches and altars at the time of consecration. But the stipulation made by the lady of Corwrion was twofold. Not only was her bridegroom to forbear striking her with iron, but he was not even to know her name.
The other two are, however, worth some consideration. In the account of Wastin of Wastiniog we are told that he was forbidden to strike his wife with the bridle. Let us compare this prohibition with that of the fairy of "the bottomless pool of Corwrion," in Upper Arllechwedd, Carnarvonshire, who wedded the heir of the owner of Corwrion.
Whatever he may have thought of these valuable directions, they hardly seem to us sufficient to have brought the lady up from "the bottomless pool of Corwrion" to utter. There is more sense in the mother's song in a Kaffir tale. This woman was not of purely supernatural origin. Married to a chief by whom she was greatly beloved, it was noticed that she never went out of doors by day.
The wife at once flew through the air, and plunged headlong into Corwrion Lake. The perusal of this saga will raise a suspicion that the original form of the taboo in Wastin's case was a prohibition against striking with iron, and that the prohibition was eventually infringed by means of a bridle.
But we need not go so far afield; for if we compare the taboo in the story of Corwrion with the other stories I have cited from the same county, we shall have no difficulty in satisfying ourselves as to its meaning.
They tell us that when the fairy bride of Corwrion quitted her unlucky husband, she at once flew through the air and plunged into the lake; and one account significantly describes her as flying away like a wood-hen. Can it have been many generations since she was spoken of as actually changing into a bird? We may now pass to wholly different types of the tradition.
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