The Boncath KiteAuthor(s): Bertram LloydSource: Folklore, Vol. 55, No. 4 (Dec., 1944), pp. 166-167Published by: Taylor & Francis, Ltd. on behalf of Folklore Enterprises, Ltd.Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/1257796 .

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166 Collectanea

spat on them. They sang and danced round the village with the fouled name of Oti. A day was appointed for his trial. On the appointed day all the elders collected together. He was found guilty and sentence of death was passed. His funeral ceremony which took place before he was killed was full of thrill. After the whole town had fully enjoyed themselves they got ready to kill the knave. A mill stone was hung on the neck of each of the culprits and they were dragged to the seaside where they were drowned.

A. T. C. NWAPA

THE BONCATH KITE

THE following amusing old Welsh song was sung and written down for me by a middle-aged woman in Cardiganshire in June 1924. She was a native of Boncath, a Pembrokeshire border-village, where the lines were still current as a nursery-rhyme in her childhood some forty years ago. Freni fawr, it may be noted, is a big hill (an outlier of the Precelly range) close to the village of Boncath.

I have not found this rhyme recorded elsewhere, and my informant had no knowledge of its provenance. It is presumably pretty old for it is, to say the least, unlikely that it would have been composed and popularly sung in a Welsh village after the introduction of Methodism, with its rigid Sabbatarianism. Moreover in the old days a Kite rather than a Buzzard would have been the more likely bird to carry off a hen and chickens. And though the name of the village-Boncath-also means Buzzard in Welsh, the Buzzard is rarely distinguished from the Kite by the natives.

A tiny remnant of these grand and once well-known birds still nest in Wales-owing to the well-organized efforts of the egg-collecting frater- nity or Oologists, a very tiny remnant!

In north Wales the Buzzard is called Barcud; but in Cardiganshire and the south where Kites still exist, I have found it used for Kite as well. Naturally enough the natives, not being interested enough to distinguish, will often use the same word indiscriminately for both species of bird.

Mi roes y iar i ori Ar ben y Freni Fawr A deg o wyan dani A deg a ddaeth i lawr. Dydd Seil mi s ir eglwys A Barcud aeth a hwy Tra'n berchen giar a chywion Ni f i'r eglwys mwy.

Translation I placed my hen to sit On the top of Freni Fawr With ten eggs under her And ten were duly hatched.

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Collectanea 167 On Sunday I went to church A kite took them away. Whilst I own a hen with chicks I will never go to church again.

BERTRAM LLOYD

THE SWASTIKA

TWILIGHT OF A UNIVERSAL SYMBOL

IN the present century national sentiments have, in many countries, been focussed on a symbol and this is particularly true of the major enemy belligerents in the second world war. The Italian fascio, the Japanese rising sun and the German swastika have all become associated with the national ideologies. The popularity of the symbol is probably related to its adaptability, it can be incorporated into the national flag and also utilised in many ways as a national marking separate from the flag.

Soon we shall see the suppression and disappearance of the most notorious of these symbols-the swastika. But before casting it into the darkness, which is its due, it is interesting to reflect how the Nazis have probably altered for all time mankind's attitude and feeling towards this peculiar and historic symbol. For strange as it may seem the swa- stika has a place in the history or ancient history of most peoples either as a charm, sign of good luck or in some cases as a religious symbol. These facts might have influenced the Nazis when they chose the swastika as their symbol, although they appear to have been introduced to it via. the ex-Baltic soldiers of the Great War who brought the design home from Finland. Many of these veterans joined the Nationalist corps built up to oppose the post-war German republican Government and they used the swastika as their badge. Thus the symbol was already associated with a form of extreme nationalism even before it was adopted by the Nazis.

The name " swastika ", by which the symbol is universally known, is a Sanskrit word which has only comparatively recently come into general use. It was known in Anglo-Saxon England as the Fylfot-fower foot or four foot. Earlier anthropologists thought that the symbol was of Aryan origin and that its wide use was related to the dispersal of Aryan peoples throughout Europe and Asia. This idea has been exploited by Hitler's propagandists; but they have not mentioned that the symbol is also known to have had an early existence in America long before there was any historic connection between the Old and the New World.

Positive evidence of the origin and early migrations of the symbol is now lost in the mists of antiquity: it has been found in most parts of the world and in cultures dating back to the Bronze Age. Paleolithic and Neolithic examples are not known but it may have been employed in decorative work only to disappear along with most of the products and implements of these periods. The anthropologist can with certainty however ascribe to the swastika a pre- historic origin. Throughout Western Europe from the Mediterranean Sea to the Arctic Ocean the symbol was used in the Bronze Age as a common decorative device on

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