ove in masses against their
enemies, and finally when the summer country became over-populated led an
immense multitude of his countrymen across many lands to Britain, a
country of forests, in which bears, wolves, and bisons wandered, and of
morasses and pools full of dreadful efync or crocodiles, a country
inhabited only by a few savage Gauls, but which shortly after the arrival
of Hu and his people became a smiling region, forests being thinned,
bears and wolves hunted down, efync annihilated, bulls and bisons tamed,
corn planted and pleasant cottages erected. After his death he was
worshipped as the God of agriculture and war by the Cumry and the Gauls.
The Germans paid him divine honours under the name of Heus, from which
name the province of Hesse in which there was a mighty temple devoted to
him, derived its appellation. The Scandinavians worshipped him under the
name of Odin and Gautr, the latter word a modification of Cadarn or
mighty. The wild Finns feared him as a wizard and honoured him as a
musician under the name of Wainoemoinen, and it is very probable that he
was the wondrous being whom the Greeks termed Odysses. Till a late
period the word Hu amongst the Cumry was frequently used to express
God--Gwir Hu, God knows, being a common saying. Many Welsh poets have
called the Creator by the name of the creature, amongst others Iolo Goch
in his ode to the ploughman:--

"The mighty Hu who lives for ever,
Of mead and wine to men the giver,
The emperor of land and sea,
And of all things that living be
Did hold a plough with his good hand,
Soon as the deluge left the land,
To show to men both strong and weak,
The haughty-hearted and the meek,
Of all the arts the heaven below
The noblest is to guide the plough."

So much for Hu Gadarn or Hu the Mighty, whose name puts one strangely in
mind of the Al Kader Hu or the Almighty He of the Arabians.

I went to see the church. The inside was very rude and plain--a rough
table covered with a faded cloth served for an altar--on the right-hand
side was a venerable-looking chest.

"What is there in that box?" said I to the old sexton who attended me.

"The treasure of the church, sir," he replied in a feeble quaking voice.

"Dear me!" said I, "what does the treasure consist of?"

"You shall see, sir," said he, and drawing a large key out of his pocket
he unlocked the chest and taking out a cup of silver he put it into my