Volume Nine - Pre-Victorian to the present day - even more aspects - Cefn-y-Wrâch . . .

After this an important personage, with the titles of Sir and Baronet, appears on the scene, and throws a flood of light upon the matter, quitting the stage, however, by referring to a correspondent who rejoices in the non de plume of "Morien," who has to settle this intricate question "for ever and two days more." This luminary comes out in his full splendour, and treats us to a learned disquisition on a gwrach, or swath of hay in the sea, and gwair rhos, making Cefn-y-wrach to mean Gwair rhos ; Quod est demonstratum ! All this is very ludicrous.

One writer makes the phrase mean a "hump-back;" another "an old woman;" a third, " a witch," and the last, but not the least, a swath of "gwair rhos" in the sea! It is strange that neither of these philologists [the study of language in oral and written historical sources] imagined that the word wrach much more naturally meant a mermaid, and that Cefn-y-wrach meant the "hump-back" of a mermaid ! But to be sober.

It will not be disputed that the word, Cefn, literally, means the back of a man, or of any other animal. But figuratively or metaphorically, we use the word to denote a protuberance or elevation in the surface of the land, whether covered with water or not. In this sense it enters the names of many places, such as Cefn Digoll, Cefngarw, Cefn-y-crug, Cefncoed, Cefn Creini, &c. In the formation of the Welsh names of places, a great many parts or members of the human body are descriptively used ; as pen (head), Pen-y-cae ; tal, or talcen (forehead), Tal-y-waun ; genau (mouth), Genau'r glyn ; gwar (neck), Gwar-y-cae ; tor (the belly) - tor-y-mynydd ; troed (foot) - Troed-y-rhiw, &c.

Now in the names of particular spots in seas or channels, the word, cefn designates elevation in the ground, a shoal, or shallow water ; and so it means in the name, Cefn-y-wrach. But what does "Wrach" mean? This is the question which has greatly puzzled the linguists of the Western Mail. Well, gwrach means a fish called the tench, a species of which is found both in salt and fresh water. In ichthyology, [the study of fishes] it is classed as the labrus tinca, being one of genera of the cyprinus. The English, in some localities, call it the wrasse, and also "the old wife." With the Welsh article y, a number of these fish (in the plur. aggr.) are called y-wrach ; just as we say ysgadan (her-rings), gwern (orle), gwenith (wheat), gwenyn (bees), &c., as nouns of multitude ; while, in the singular, or, for one, we say, ysgadenyn, gwernen, gwenithen, gwenynen, &c. In its original form (plur. aggr.), the word is gwarch (wife), y wraig (the wife), &c. The singular name for one of these fish is gwrachen, while, however, the plural gwrachod, is extant.