Welsh Journals

Craig Rhiwarth. ROBERT RICHARDS, M.P. Having known that striking mountain, Craig Rhiwarth, from earliest child- hood it is only natural, perhaps, that I should regard it in a different light from the rest of my colleagues, who took part in the recent excavations at this spot. In the first place, as Mr. Sayce has pointed out, it is the earliest haunt of fairies with which I was privileged to be intimately acquainted. The rings with which the southern slopes of the hill are more or less covered mark the exits from which the fairies emerged when twilight gathered, or mist descended, on the hill, and into which they disappeared again with the emergence of full daylight. The fairy rings were of two kinds-those formed of rushes, or coarse grass, crawcwellt, that are occasionally seen on hill tops and of which there are several on the neighbouring Gribin Hill, and which are of natural formation, and the stone circles which were of much more sinister significance inasmuch as they were obviously somebody's handiwork. The fairy tale period was succeeded by the pseudo historic. The term pre- historic was fortunately (sic !) unknown to me at the time. Rumours gradually began to reach us that the rings had actually, at one time, been occupied by men and women of our own flesh and blood. It was a British village, which, for some unknown reason, the Romans had kindly surrounded, or at any rate defended, in the rear, with a wall. Your rural archaeologist is fortunately not hampered by dates and periods, and there is no incongruity in a British village being sur- rounded by a Roman wall. No one ever doubted its being a British village, and references to it began to appear in Arch. Cam. as well as in Mont. Coll., and when one visited the site, which was pretty frequently, one contemplated the spot with awe and bewilder- ment. One naturally listened very carefully for any evidence of anything being discovered on the site. I only know of three such finds (1) a stone hammer of bastard slate-to use the local term-some 6ins. long, with a groove cut round the middle. This was found in a stream at Pencraig, just at the foot of Craig Rhiwarth, and is, I believe, now in the possession of the Manchester Grammar School. (2) A quern found at the foot of the screes which cover the lower slopes at a point just halfway up the Craig. This was for many years in the possession of the late Dr. J. Kenrick Jones, Llanrhaiadr, and is still, I believe, at Fron- heulog. (3) A bronze socketed axe-so I gather from the testimony of one of