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THE ELEGY OF THE WARRIORS OF MORWYNION.
The lake of Morwynion or of ‘Virgins’—for such is the import of its appellation—is situated in one of the most romantic districts of Merionethshire. But it owes its poetical celebrity and its name to one of those ancient fragments of Cambrian mythology called ‘Mabinogion.’ The lady of a Cambrian chieftain, so runs the legend, had conspired with a stranger to deprive her lord of his dominions and his life. The latter, having escaped by the aid of a powerful enchanter, was returning homeward in his company, when the catastrophe ensued to which the lake owes its designation. “Flower Aspect”—such was the name of the perfidious princess—“heard of their coming, and taking her maidens along with her, and seeking the mountain through the Cynval river, proceeded towards a court that was on the mountain; and they perceived not their way for fear, but went with their faces backwards, and thus they noticed nothing until they fell into the lake and were all drowned except Flower Aspect herself[1].” Flower Aspect was changed by the magician into an owl.
The subject of the following poem is an incursion into the vale in which the lake is situated, by one of those bands of Scandinavian freebooters, who, under the name of Norsemen, were long the terror of the shores of Great Britain, and of all the western coasts of Europe. The origin and habits of these freebooters are eloquently explained in the following passage from Sharon Turner’s History of the Anglo-Saxons: “The sea-kings of the North were a race of beings whom Europe beheld with horror. Without a yard of territorial
- ↑ Cambrian Quarterly Magazine, vol. i. p. 425.
