and as pedantry has had a hand in naming him, we may render Merlinus Ambrosius into English as 'the Divine or Immortal One of the Stronghold of the Sea.' Carmarthen enters into another legend which represents that town built by a princess called Elen Lüyᵭawg, or Elen Mistress of a Host: that is but another way of describing the Lady of the Lake constructing a house of glass or some still more pellucid material to be Merlin's prison. It is also remarkable that Elen is represented as causing to be built the highest fortress in Arvon, wherein we seem to have a reference to Dinas Emrys, the spot from which Merlin Emrys expelled Vortigern.
The Elen I have referred to is a personage of no merely incidental interest, and her story is essential to the theory of the identity of Aengus the Mac Óc with our Merlin Emrys. The name Elen still belongs to mythology in Wales: thus in Arvon, for instance, Arianrhod (p. 90) is said to have had three sisters who lived with her in her castle in the sea. They were named Gwen or Gwennan, Maelan and Elen;[1] all appear, like Arianrhod, to have belonged to the class of goddesses associated with the dawn. So also with an Elen said by Geoffrey to have been ravished on Mont St. Michel by the Spanish giant to whom a passing reference has already been made (p. 91). That incident is to be interpreted to mean the dawn passing into the gloaming, and finally losing itself in the darkness of night, a view corroborated by the fact that she is treated as sister of
- ↑ See my Fairy Tales in the Cymmrodor, vi. 162-3. In Arvon the mythic name Elen becomes, according to rule, Elan; while the ordinary name Ellen, much used in Wales, is pronounced in Arvon Elin, whenever E'linor, of which it is a shortened form, is not preferred.
