hysicians:--

"Meddyg, nis gwnai modd y gwnaeth
Myddfai, o chai ddyn meddfaeth."

"A Physician he would not make
As Myddvai made, if he had a mead fostered man."

It would appear, therefore, that these celebrated physicians lived
somewhere about the thirteenth century. They are described as Physicians
of Rhys Gryg, a prince of South Wales, who lived in the early part of the
thirteenth century. Their supposed supernatural origin dates therefore
from the thirteenth, or at the latest, the fourteenth century.

I have mentioned _Y Gwylliaid Cochion_, or, as they are generally styled,
_Gwylliaid Cochion Mawddwy_, the Red Fairies of Mawddwy, as being of
Fairy origin. The Llanfrothen Legend seems to account for a race of men
in Wales differing from their neighbours in certain features. The
offspring of the Fairy union were, according to the Fairy mother's
prediction in that legend, to have red hair and prominent noses. That a
race of men having these characteristics did exist in Wales is undoubted.
They were a strong tribe, the men were tall and athletic, and lived by
plunder. They had their head quarters at Dinas Mawddwy, Merionethshire,
and taxed their neighbours in open day, driving away sheep and cattle to
their dens. So unbearable did their depredations become that John Wynn
ap Meredydd of Gwydir and Lewis Owen, or as he is called Baron Owen,
raised a body of stout men to overcome them, and on Christmas Eve, 1554,
succeeded in capturing a large number of the offenders, and, there and
then, some hundred or so of the robbers were hung. Tradition says that a
mother begged hard for the life of a young son, who was to be destroyed,
but Baron Owen would not relent. On perceiving that her request was
unheeded, baring her breast she said:--

Y bronau melynion hyn a fagasant y rhai a ddialant waed fy mab, ac a
olchant eu dwylaw yn ngwaed calon llofrudd eu brawd.

These yellow breasts have nursed those who will revenge my son's
blood, and will wash their hands in the heart's blood of the murderer
of their brother.

According to _Pennant_ this threat was carried out by the murder of Baron
Owen in 1555, when he was passing through the thick woods of Mawddwy on
his way to Montgomeryshire Assizes, at a place called to this day
_Llidiart y Barwn_, the Baron's Gate, from the deed. Tradition further
tells us that the murderers had gone a distance off before they
remembered their mother'