Welsh Journals

most comely of the Fairy Chiefs of Erin. Now the country called Cualu, genitive Cualann, covered a tract of Ireland reaching from Dublin down as far as Wicklow. For, besides other proofs, Dublin is found called Ath Cliath Cualann,' that is, the Hurdle Ford of Cualu (Revue Geltique, vol. xv, p. 455), and in the other direction St. Patrick on his mission to Ireland is said, in the ancient manuscript called the Book of Armagh, to have put in at InbherDea in the territories of Cualu (in regiones Coolennorum), and the mouth of the Dea is known to be the Vartry river, which empties itself into the sea near the town of Wicklow. That coast must have been fairly convenient for communication with Dyfed. Cualu becomes in Welsh Cwl, for which there is some sort of Welsh tradition-I cannot find my references just now-that it was the part of Ireland from which Matholwch came, who occupies such a great place in the Mabinogi of Branwen. Somewhere, too, in the county of Wicklow, perhaps within the limits of Cualu, was Esgair Oerfel, whither Arthur went to attack Twrch Trwyth and his Boars. After some fighting, they are represented crossing the sea, and landing at Porth Clais at the mouth of the river Alun, below St. David's. Arthur, following them closely, seems to have landed in the same place, but is said to have spent the night at Mynyw, which I suppose means St. David's. This story, what- ever else it may mean, seems based on some tradition as to invasions on the opposite coasts of Wales and Ireland in early times; but whether they are to be regarded chiefly as invasions of Ireland from here, or the reverse, does not seem very clear. The Twrch Trwyth and his Boars suggest to me the ruling family of a tribe whose totem was the wild boar, whose tribes- men were called boars, and whose ancestress was Banba, the lady of the boars, from Irish used by a young pig,' Welsh banw, a young boar.' Banba is used by Irish poets merely as one of the names of ancient Ireland and the story of the advent of the Milesian Celts relates how they found Ireland possessed by three kings, whose wives were Eriu, Banba, and Fodla. The first of these goes with our Iwerddon/ and belongs more especially to Munster and the south-west, where the ancient Iverni lived and possibly Fodla is to be identified with Ulster. The story of Twrch Trwyth seems to me now to settle the position of Banba in the east of Ireland, where we have found Cualu, that is to say, in Leinster. It looks as if the three queens' names reflect a triple division of Ireland in very early times, a sort of division, in fact, at which you would arrive by spreading Munster, Leinster, and Ulster out, so as to cover jointly the whole of the island. There is nothing to connect the