s of the air," are spirit hounds, who
hunt the souls of the dead; or, as occasionally said, they foretell, by
their expectant cries, the approaching death of some man of evil deeds.
Few have ever pretended to see them; for few, we presume, would linger
until they dawned on the sight; but they are described by Taliesin, and
in the _Mabinogion_, as being of a clear shining white, with red ears;
colouring which confirms the author of the _Mythology of the Ancient
Druids_ in the idea that these dogs were "a mystical transformation of
the Druids with their white robes and red tiaras." Popular superstition,
however, which must always attribute ugliness to an object of fear,
deems that they are either jet black, with eyes and teeth of fire, or of
a deep red, and dripping all over with gore. "The nearer," says the Rev.
Edmund Jones, "they are to a man, the _less_ their voice is, and the
farther the louder, sometimes swelling like the voice of a great hound,
or a blood-hound."

They are _sometimes_ accompanied by a female fiend, called _Malt y
nos_--Mathilda or Malen of the night, a somewhat ubiquitous character,
with whom we meet under a complication of names and forms.

Jones of Brecon, who tells us that the cry of the Cron Annwn is as
familiar to the inhabitants of Ystrad Fellte and Pont Neath-vaughan [in
Glamorganshire] as the watchman's rattle in the purlieus of Covent
Garden--for he lived in the days when watchmen and their rattles were
yet among the things of this world--considers that to these dogs, and
not to a Greek myth, may be referred the hounds, _Fury_, _Silver_,
_Tyrant_, &c., with which Prospero hunts his enemies "soundly," in the
_Tempest_. And they must recall to the minds of our readers the _wisk_,
_wisked_, or _Yesk_ hounds of Devon, which are described in the
_Athenaeum_ for March 27. 1847, as well as the _Maisne Hellequin_ of
Normandy and Bretagne.

There has been much discussion respecting the signification of the word
_Annwn_, which has been increased by the very frequent mistake of
writing it _Anwn_, which means, _unknown_, _strange_, and is applied to
the people who dwell in the antipodes of the speaker; while _Annwn_ is
an adaptation of _annwfn_, a _bottomless_ or _immeasurable pit_,
_voidless_ {295} _space_, and also Hell. Thus we find, that when _Pwyl_,
or _Reason_, drives these dogs off their track, the owner comes up, and,
reproving him, declares that he is a crowned king, lord of Annwn and
Pend