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

However, upon a matter of such a moment (?), and of such vast public interest as the signification of the phrase Cefn-y-Wrach, it behoves me not to ask your readers to rely upon my own dictum, but rather hasten to cite authorities ; otherwise I may be pooh-poohed by the champions of "Gwair Rhos," "Hunch-backs," and "Witches."

Now, Iolo Fardd Glas, in his Cyneirlyfr, says - "Gwrach y mor - sea tench." Richards, in his Dictionary, says - "Gwrachen s.f. (plur. gwrachod), sea tench fish, R. M." Dr. Owen Pughe, in his standard Dictionary of the Welsh Language, says, (inter alia), - Gwrach-y-wrach, the wrasse, a fish so called Gwrachen and ysgretan, the tench ; gwrachen y mor, the sea tench, or wrasse ; gwrachen Fair, a yellow kind of wrasse ; gwrachen fraith, or cleriach gwimon, a spotted wrasse." Again, Jones in his English and Welsh Dictionary, translates "tench" into gwrachen, ysgretan, &c. Barclay writes : "Wrasse, the name of a fish, otherwise called the sea tench, the old wife. It abounds on the shores of Wales and Cornwall." Webster writes : "Wrasse, prickly spined fishes, some of which exhibit vivid colours." A writer in the Encycl. Brit, under the word, writes : "Wrasse, or old wife, in ichthyology," &c. "Penant, in his British Zoology, states that he saw a species of the labus (tinca, tench, wrach, wrasse, &c.,) taken about the Giant's Causeway, in Ireland, of a most beautiful vivid green, spotted with scarlet ; and others at Bandooran, in the county of Sligo, of a pale green. To this genus belongs the fish called by the English, " the old wife." (Ib. infr. labrus.) Many other proofs could be adduced that the same fish is meant by "y wrach" as by tench, wrasse and old wife ; but let those just given suffice, for the nonce. It may, however, be observed that the fact of the term, "wrach" being part of the name of a spot in the sea, renders it more probable that such a term means a fish, than either a witch or a bundle of hay ! And this probability is strengthened by the fact that another fish - the fresh-water tench, (gobio Fluventilis) known as the Miller's Thumb, Bull Head, and Fresh-water Devil, which has a red circle about the eyes, is also called Gwrachen penbwla (See the Welsh authorities already cited, and Best's Art of Angling, p.77.)

The tench, in ancient times, does not appear to have been of much account ; and even to this day, the Germans hold it in contempt, calling it a shoemaker. It is now-a-days, however, held in high esteem. It is taken in the Thames, in the Gloucestershire rivers, in the ponds and dams of Southamptonshire, &c. It weighs from four to five pounds ; but sometimes fish of a much larger size are caught.