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
_Athenæum_ 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,