Môr-gathod, morgwn ac esgidiau brain

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Pan oedd John Jones o Gellilyfdy, yr ysgrifydd o sir y Fflint, yn garcharor yn y Fflyd yn Llundain tua 1630, ac yn disgwyl derbyn llawysgrifau gan gyfeillion i’w copïo, aeth ati i roi trefn ar restrau o eiriau y bu’n eu casglu ers troad y ganrif. Mewn cwta dwy flynedd llanwodd dri llyfr gyda geiriau dan amrywiol benawdau, ac yn y trydydd un ceir rhestrau’n ymwneud â byd natur. Rhestrodd enwau coed a phlanhigion o bob math, adar gwyllt a dof, anifeiliaid, pryfed mân (sef anifeiliaid bychan fel llyffantod, nadroedd, malwod ac ati) yna pryfed ehedawl, dyfrawl neu ymlusgawl (sef yr hyn y byddem ni’n eu galw’n bryfed heddiw).

O dan y pennawd Pysg eu henwau a physgota casglodd dros gant a hanner o enwau pysgod a physgod chregyn, gan ychwanegu disgrifiad difyr o sawl un ohonynt. Mae nifer o’r enwau bellach yn anhysbys, ond mae eraill yn gyfarwydd, er na ellir bod yn gwbl sicr bob tro mai’r un yw’r pysgodyn dan sylw â’r pysgodyn rydym ni’n ei adnabod gyda’r un enw heddiw.

Soniwyd y tro diwethaf am yr abad, sef math o forgi neu siarc, y Rhina squatina. Mae John Jones yn rhoi cryn sylw i’r morgwn: cŵn coegion yw ei enw amdanynt. ‘Ffals’ neu ‘gwag’ yw ystyr arferol coeg – cneuen goeg ydi cneuen wag, fel yn y dywediad cneuen goeg sy galetaf. Yn yr Oesoedd Canol gallai coeg hefyd ddisgrifio person ‘dall’ neu un a chanddo ryw fath o nam ar ei lygad: Maredudd Goeg, er enghraifft, oedd enw mab dall yr Arglwydd Rhys o Ddeheubarth. Tybed ai cyfeirio at ryw nodwedd ar lygaid y morgwn a wna’r elfen coeg yn y cyfuniad ci coeg? Gwelaf o rai ffynonellau fod trydydd amrant pŵl gan nifer ohonynt, a allai beri iddynt edrych fel pe baent yn ddall.

Meddai John Jones:

Cŵn coegion yw yr henw cyffredin ar yr holl gŵn bysgod sydd yn magu yn y môr, ac y maent yn bwrw oddi wrthynt ac ohonynt beth a elwir esgid y frân, o’r hon y mae yr holl gŵn yn dyfod.

Mae’n rhaid mai’r mermaid’s purse yw esgid y frân, sef y cwdyn du caled yn dal wyau’r morgwn a’r môr-gathod a welir wedi sychu ar hyd y traethau yn y gaeaf. Ni lwyddais i ddod o hyd i unrhyw enghraifft arall o’r ffurf esgid y frân am y cwdyn hwn – pwrs y fôr-forwyn, term diweddar wedi ei gyfieithu o’r Saesneg, a geir yng Ngeiriadur Prifysgol Cymru ac yng Ngeiriadur yr Academi. O 1700 y daw’r dystiolaeth gynharaf am mermaid’s purse yn Saesneg, ond o tua’r un cyfnod (1688) ceir enw arall amdano, sef y crow-purse – a’r elfen crow, fel yr elfen brân yn yr enw Cymraeg, yn cyfeirio at liw du’r cwdyn wyau pan fydd wedi sychu ar y traeth.

O ran y mathau o gŵn coegion mae John Jones yn enwi’r cadell fantach fel y banw o’r cwn coegion (sef y pysgodyn benyw, a mantach yn cyfleu’r ffaith ei bod yn ddiddanned neu ag ychydig iawn o ddannedd); a’r gwryw, meddai, yw’r ci pigog. Yna rhestrir y ci brych, y penci brych a’r ci glas i gyd fel aelodau o rywogaeth y cŵn coegion.

Disgrifia’r morgath fel a thornback, gan esbonio:

pedwar rhywogaeth morcath y sydd, sef cath felen, bila gwyn, clwt y torddu, cath bigog – a honno yw’r iawn thornback.

Tybed ai’r thornback ray (Raja clavata) yw’r gath bigog (cf. GPC morcath bigog), ac ai’r blonde ray yw’r gath felen? Byddai’n braf cael rhagor o wybodaeth am glwt y torddu (?pysgodyn sy’n edrych fel clwtyn ac iddo fol tywyll) a’r bila gwyn.

Nodiadau

• Daw’r llun o esgid y frân / pwrs y fôr-forwyn (wedi ei addasu) o https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Mermaidpurse.jpg

• Rwy’n paratoi golygiad o eirfâu John Jones, a byddwn yn ddiolchgar o dderbyn unrhyw wybodaeth am y geiriau a drafodir yma.

Cats, dogs and crows

When John Jones of Gellilyfdy, the scribe from Flintshire, was incarcerated in the Fleet, London, in around 1630, and awaiting the arrival of manuscripts from friends to copy, he resumed work on wordlists that he had been collecting since the turn of the century. In just two years he filled three books with words under various headings, the third of which contains lists relating to the natural world. For example, he listed the names of trees, various kinds of plants, wild and domesticated birds, small animals such as lizards, snakes and snails, etc., and ‘flying’, ‘aquatic’ and ‘crawling’ insects.

Under the heading ‘Fish, their names and fishing’, he collected over a hundred and fifty names of fish and shellfish, adding short and interesting definitions to many entries. Many of the names are unidentifiable, others are known, but still we cannot be completely sure in each instance that the name we know today corresponds to the fish John Jones had in mind.

In the last post I discussed the abad ‘abbot’, probably the angel shark, Rhina squatina. John Jones pays particular attention to the dogfish or small sharks: he calls them cŵn coegion. Coeg usually means ‘false’ or ‘empty’ – for example cneuen goeg refers to an empty nut, as in the old saying cneuen goeg sy galetaf ‘the empty nut is the hardest’. In the Middle Ages coeg could also describe a blind person, or one with some sort of deformity in his eye: for instance the blind son of the Lord Rhys of Deheubarth was known as Maredudd Goeg. Is it possible, therefore, that coeg in the name ci coeg refers to a feature of the dogfish’s eyes? I see from some sources that dogfish have a third translucent eyelid which could give them the appearance of being blind.

John Jones says:

Cŵn coegion yw yr henw cyffredin ar yr holl gŵn bysgod sydd yn magu yn y môr, ac y maent yn bwrw oddi wrthynt ac ohonynt beth a elwir esgid y frân, o’r hon y mae yr holl gŵn yn dyfod.

Cŵn coegion is the general name for all dogfish that are reared in the sea, and they cast from them, and from within them, something that is called esgid y frân, from which all the dogs come.

From the description we can infer that esgid y frân ‘crow’s shoe’ refers to the mermaid’s purse, the tough, black, dried egg cases of sharks and rays that are often found washed up on our beaches in winter. I have been unable to find any other instances of the name esgid y frân – the modern term pwrs y fôr-forwyn, given in the University of Wales Dictionary and Geiriadur yr Academi, is a direct translation of the English mermaid’s purse. The Oxford English Dictionary gives 1700 as the date of the earliest evidence for mermaid’s purse, and interestingly, from about the same period (1688) comes another name for it, the crow-purse – with the element crow, like the Welsh brân, referring to the blackness of the dried pouches.

John Jones names the cadell fantach as the female of the dogfish (y banw o’r cwn coegion, with the element mantach meaning ‘toothless’ or ‘with very few teeth’), and the male, he says, is the ci pigog (‘spiny dog’). The ci brych (‘spotted dog’), penci brych (probably ‘spotted nursehound’) and ci glas (‘blue’ or ‘grey dog’) are also ‘of the species of dogfish’ (o rywogaeth y cŵn coegion).

He further describes the morcath (‘skate’ or ‘ray’, lit. ‘sea cat’) as a thornback, explaining:

pedwar rhywogaeth morcath y sydd, sef cath felen, bila gwyn, clwt y torddu, cath bigog – a honno yw’r iawn thornback.

there are four species of rays, namely cath felen, bila gwyn, clwt y torddu, cath bigog – and the last one is the correct thornback.

Can the cath bigog be identified with the thornback ray (Raja clavata, GPC morcath bigog), and the cath felen with the blonde ray? But what about clwt y torddu (?a black-bellied fish shaped like a piece of cloth), and the bila gwyn, which is presumably of a light colour?

Notes

• The image of the mermaid’s purse (adapted) comes from: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Mermaidpurse.jpg

• I am preparing an edition of John Jones’s wordlists, and would be very grateful for any information about the words that I’ve discussed here.

Yr Abad a'r Fôr-forwyn

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O gwmpas y flwyddyn 1621, ac yntau ar y pryd dan glo yng ngharchar Castell Llwydlo, aeth yr ysgrifydd enwog, John Jones o Gellilyfdy, ati i roi trefn ar enwau am bysgod a chregyn y môr yr oedd wedi bod yn eu casglu ers dechrau’r ganrif. Diweddarodd y rhestr eto pan oedd yng ngharchar y Fleet yn Llundain yn 1633, gan ychwanegu rhagor o bysgod at ei gasgliad. Mae’r rhestr, a’r wybodaeth a geir ynddi, yn awgrymu bod ganddo gryn ddiddordeb mewn pysgod a’u harferion.

Y pysgodyn cyntaf a enwir ganddo yw’r ABAD, a dyma sut y mae’n ei ddisgrifio yn 1621 (fi piau’r atalnodi):

math ar bysc yn y mor ar y sydd ynddo dri rhywogaeth bysc. Y penn blaen iddo sydd asgelloc val morkath, ac a blas morkath arno, ac rhaid yw ei gweirio val morkath y’w vwytta. Y rhan ganol iddo sydd debic i ganol mulwel, ac y sydd a blas mulwel arno, ac a ddylir ei gweirio val mulwel y’w vwyta. A[’r] rhan ol iddo sydd debic i gi glas, ac y sydd a blas ki glas arno ac a ddylir ei gweirio val ki glas y’w vwyta, ac a vag y rai ievaink yn ei groth val moelrhon neu lamhidydd.

[cweirio = cyweirio, paratoi; morcath = ‘skate, ray’; mulwel = penfras, ‘cod’; ci glas = ‘dogfish’; moelrhon = morlo; llamhidydd = ‘porpoise’]

Ychydig dros ganrif yn ddiweddarach, tua dechrau’r 1740au, prynodd Lewis Morris, yr hynafiaethydd o Fôn, gopi o gyfrol fawr Francis Willughby ar bysgod, De Historia Piscium (1686). Wrth iddo ddarllen drwyddo’n fanwl, ychwanegodd nifer o sylwadau ar y dalennau darluniadol yng nghefn y gyfrol, gan dynnu ar ei wybodaeth ei hun am hanes y pysgod a’u henwau yng Nghymru. O ddiddordeb arbennig yw’r sylw canlynol sydd ganddo ar y ddalen sy’n darlunio’r Squatina Salu:

The Monkfish or Angelfish in wales Called Maelgi. They are found in Plenty about Sarn y Bwch and in Barmouth Bay. They are generally of ye Size of a Man, and are delicious Eating. Said to have 3 sorts of Fish on it, a Ray, a Salmon & a Sturgeon. They have often their Heads above water, and I suppose gave the first rise to ye story of ye Meremaid. They take them in nets with mashes 10 Inches or a foot square.

Mae’n debygol iawn mai’r un pysgodyn sydd gan John Jones a Lewis Morris mewn golwg, er nad ydynt yn gwbl gytûn am union natur y tair rhan – y naill yn cynnwys morcath, mulwel a chi glas, a’r llall yn cynnwys morcath, eog a stwrsiwn. O ran yr enw Abad y mae John Jones yn ei roi ar y pysgodyn hwn, mae’n ddiddorol bod H. E Forrest, yn ei gyfrol ar The Vertebrate Fauna of North Wales (1907), yn cofnodi’r enw Abbot am yr Angelfish, y Rhina squatina: yr Abad felly.

Esbonnir yn yr Oxford English Dictionary (dan y gair monk, n.1), fod yr elfen monk yn digwydd mewn enwau anifeiliaid ‘whose form suggests the cowled or tonsured figure of a monk’. Mae’n debygol fod yr enw Abad yn cyfleu’r un syniad, ac mae’r llun isod yn sicr yn atgoffa rhywun o abid mynach neu abad, gyda’i lewys llac.

Ffynonellau

• Gallwch weld sylwadau Lewis Morris ar gyfrol Francis Willughby, De Historia Piscium (llawysgrif LlGC 24052E), ar wefan Llyfrgell Genedlaethol Cymru: http://hdl.handle.net/10107/4627942. Ewch i dudalen 224 i weld y ddalen a drafodir yma.

• Ceir gwybodaeth bellach am John Jones o Gellilyfdy, a Lewis Morris yn ‘Y Bywgraffiadur Cymreig’:

• https://bywgraffiadur.cymru/article/c-JONE-JOH-1578

• https://bywgraffiadur.cymru/article/c-MORR-LEW-1701

• Mae disgrifiad John Jones o’r Abad (1621) i’w weld yn llawysgrif Llyfrgell Genedlaethol Cymru, Peniarth 308ii, 443–5.

The Abbot and the Mermaid

In around 1621, when the eminent Welsh scribe John Jones of Gellilyfdy was incarcerated in Ludlow Castle prison, he decided to sort the names of fish and shellfish that he had been collecting since the beginning of the century. He would update this list again in the Fleet prison, London, in 1633, adding more items to his collection. The list, and the information contained in it, suggests that Jones was particularly interested in fish and their habits.

The first fish to be named is the ABAD (‘abbot’), and this is how he described it in 1621:

math ar bysc yn y mor ar y sydd ynddo dri rhywogaeth bysc. Y penn blaen iddo sydd asgelloc val morkath, ac a blas morkath arno, ac rhaid yw ei gweirio val morkath y’w vwytta. Y rhan ganol iddo sydd debic i ganol mulwel, ac y sydd a blas mulwel arno, ac a ddylir ei gweirio val mulwel y’w vwyta. A[’r] rhan ol iddo sydd debic i gi glas, ac y sydd a blas ki glas arno ac a ddylir ei gweirio val ki glas y’w vwyta, ac a vag y rai ievaink yn ei groth val moelrhon neu lamhidydd.

a sort of sea fish that contains three types of fish. The front part has fins similar to a ray, it tastes like a ray, and one must prepare it like a ray for eating. The middle part is similar to the middle of a cod, and it tastes like cod, and needs to be prepared like cod for eating. The rear part is similar to a dogfish and it tastes like a dogfish and needs to be prepared like a dogfish for eating. It nurtures its young in its womb like a seal or a porpoise.

Just over a century later, in the early 1740s, the antiquarian Lewis Morris of Anglesey bought a copy of Francis Willughby’s large volume on fish, De Historia Piscium (1686). As he read through it carefully, Morris added notes drawing on his own knowledge of fish in Wales and their Welsh names. These comments are particularly abundant on the pages containing illustrations of fish towards the end of the volume. Of particular interest is the following note he has on the page depicting the Squatina Salu:

The Monkfish or Angelfish in wales Called Maelgi. They are found in Plenty about Sarn y Bwch and in Barmouth Bay. They are generally of ye Size of a Man, and are delicious Eating. Said to have 3 sorts of Fish on it, a Ray, a Salmon & a Sturgeon. They have often their Heads above water, and I suppose gave the first rise to ye story of ye Meremaid. They take them in nets with mashes 10 Inches or a foot square.

It is very likely that John Jones and Lewis Morris both have the same fish in mind, although they are not entirely in agreement about the exact nature of its three parts – the former’s consisting of a ray, cod and dogfish, and the latter’s of a ray, salmon and sturgeon. As for John Jones’s name for it, Abad, it is interesting that H.E. Forrest, in his volume The Vertebrate Fauna of North Wales (1907), records the name Abbot for the Angelfish or Rhina Squatina.

According to the Oxford English Dictionary (under monk, n.1), the element monk is found in the names of animals ‘whose form suggests the cowled or tonsured figure of a monk’. The word Abbot probably conveyed the same idea, and the image below certainly does remind one of a a habit worn by a monk or an abbot, with its loose sleeves.

Sources

• For Lewis Morris’s additions to Francis Willughby’s De Historia Piscium (NLW 24052E), see http://hdl.handle.net/10107/4627942 on the National Library of Wales's website. Go to page 224 to see the items discussed here.

• For further information about John Jones of Gellilyfdy and Lewis Morris, see ‘The Dictionary of Welsh Biography’:

• https://biography.wales/article/s-JONE-JOH-1578

• https://biography.wales/article/s-MORR-LEW-1701

• John Jones’s description of the Abad (1621) can be seen in the National Library of Wales manuscript, Peniarth 308ii, 443–5.