Before Brianne - The Upper Towy

Brook names, generally, are charming. Very small streams' names are sometimes of mediaeval or more recent coinage, associated with a property, a place of work or a playground nick-named by children. Others that are straightforwardly descriptive, especially in Wales, define their own topography. Sometimes they identify themselves by a distinguishing feature - a stallion's tail-like waterfall, a helmet-shaped hill, the exploding sound the water makes, a spirited ford, the metal-ore in its gravels, or peculiar coloured waters. Those that have personal names attached to them, such as Owen, Llywelyn or Gerwyn, curiously, are often ones that tell us least about themselves. All they allow is speculation about unrecorded history.
Flowing eastward, though inclined southerly, Towy's narrow headwaters begin a downward dash to be joined by anonymous cousins, emptying out of the regimented lines of dark trees and cascading from slopes where sheep graze.

Nant Crug-yr-wyn, a little stream from the Hillock of the Lambs, is the first stream to be named.
Nant Rhydlyd is a rusty brook,
Loyw is a bright one;
Melyn, the one that runs yellow out of clay.
Tadarn's origins are obscure.
Ergyd must give off the noise of a shot, an explosion;
Maesnant, runs from a Field;
Neuadd, from a Hall, long lost from the landscape;
Pant-y-clwydau is a dip where sheep were enfolded with hurdles or gates.
There are streams named after an Ox (Ych), a bullock, (Bustach), a sow, (Hwch) and stallions, (Meirch and Stalwyn). A she-wolf left her mark on Nant-y-fleiddast. Wolves were extinct after the fifteenth century. At Lletygleiswn water emerged from the land like the whey.
Nant-y-bont, is brook that had a bridge;
Hirnant is a long brook - another with a bridge;
Gerwyn's stream descends his very own stairway from Dolgoch. Nearby, is a black, shadowed valley - Cwmdu.
Llywelyn tantalisingly recalls Wales's last reigning native prince. Then they meet the Hafdre nant - the summer-home brook - whose confluence with its neighbouring stream forms an isthmus, a triangle, which gives the Tryfal its name, just as Nant-yr-Helm was prosaicly, indeed poetically, named after a peculiar rick- or helmet-shaped hillock.
After Nant-stalwyn larger drainages discharge into the Towy, in what once was more densely populated terrain.
The Bastach, presumably, is usually shallow. The Fannog descends from the heights.
The Craflwyn brook comes from a site where garlic grew - a grove of it; and its neighbour, Nant Cwm Bys, comes out of a finger-like vale, or a valley for honey-bees.
Nant Gwrach commemorates a haunt where some hag, or witch, cast her spell.
Trawsnant cuts across country and the Gorast was the lair of another wolf or wild-dog bitch, possibly a small one. Their conjugation is now obscured and lost under the fathoms of Llyn Brianne.

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