CHAPTER LIII.
The Dylluan--The Oldest Creatures.
Much rain fell about the middle of the month; in the intervals of the showers I occasionally walked by the banks of the river which speedily became much swollen; it was quite terrible both to the sight and ear near the "Robber's Leap;" there were breakers above the higher stones at least five feet high and a roar around almost sufficient "to scare a hundred men." The pool of Lingo was strangely altered; it was no longer the quiet pool which it was in summer, verifying the words of the old Welsh poet that the deepest pool of the river is always the stillest in the summer and of the softest sound, but a howling turbid gulf, in which branches of trees, dead animals and rubbish were whirling about in the wildest confusion.

The nights were generally less rainy than the days, and sometimes by the pallid glimmer of the moon I would take a stroll along some favourite path or road.

One night as I was wandering slowly along the path leading through the groves of Pen y Coed I was startled by an unearthly cry--it was the shout of the dylluan or owl, as it flitted over the tops of the trees on its nocturnal business.
Oh, that cry of the dylluan! what a strange wild cry it is; how unlike any other sound in nature! a cry which no combination of letters can give the slightest idea of.

What resemblance does Shakespear's to-whit-to-whoo bear to the cry of the owl?
none whatever; those who hear it for the first time never know what it is, however accustomed to talk of the cry of the owl and to-whit-to-whoo.

A man might be wandering through a wood with Shakespear's owl-chorus in his mouth, but were he then to hear for the first time the real shout of the owl he would assuredly stop short and wonder whence that unearthly cry could proceed.
Yet no doubt that strange cry is a fitting cry for the owl, the strangest in its habits and look of all birds, the bird of whom by all nations the strangest tales are told.