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"Now, if I was a false guide I might bid you stoop and drink, saying that these were the sources of the Severn; but I am a true cyfarwydd, and therefore tell you not to drink, for these pools are not the sources of the Hafren, no more than the spring below. The ffynnon of the Severn is higher up the nant. Don't fret, however, but follow me, and we shall be there in a minute."
"'Hafren a Wy yn hyfryd eu wedd A Rheidol vawr ei anrhydedd. Good rhyme, sir, that. I wish you would put it into Saesneg." "I am afraid I shall make a poor hand of it," said I; "however, I will do my best: "'Oh pleasantly do glide along the Severn and the Wye; But Rheidol's rough, and yet he's held by all in honour high. "Very good rhyme that, sir! though not so good as the pennill Cymraeg.
Follow me, and I will presently show you the real ffynnon of the Hafren." I followed him up a narrow and very steep dingle. Presently we came to some beautiful little pools of water in the turf, which was here remarkably green. "These are very pretty pools, an't they, master?" said my companion.
Passing round this crag we came to a fountain surrounded with rushes, out of which the brook, now exceedingly small, came murmuring. "The crag above," said my guide, "is called Crag y Cefyl, or the Rock of the Horse, and this spring at its foot is generally called the ffynnon of the Hafren. However, drink not of it, master; for the ffynnon of the Hafren is higher up the nant.
"Here you see, sir," said the man, "the Bridge of the Offeiriad, called so, it is said, because the popes used to pass over it in the old time; and here you have the Rheidol, which, though not so smooth nor so well off for banks as the Hafren and the Gwy, gets to the sea before either of them, and, as the pennill says, is quite as much entitled to honour:
"Plynlimmon is a famed hill," said I; "I suppose it is very high." "Yes!" said he, "it is high; but it is not famed because it is high, but because the three grand rivers of the world issue from its breast, the Hafren, the Rheidol, and the Gwy." Night was now coming rapidly on, attended with a drizzling rain. I inquired if we were far from Pont Erwyd.
This river was for many years the boundary between Cambria and Loegria, or Wales and England; it was called in British Hafren, from the daughter of Locrinus, who was drowned in it by her step-mother; the aspirate being changed, according to the Latin idiom, into S, as is usual in words derived from the Greek, it was termed Sarina, as hal becomes SAL; hemi, SEMI; hepta, SEPTEM.
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