At eve, the primrose path along,
The milkmaid shortens with a song
Her solitary way;
She sees the fairies with their queen
Trip hand-in-hand the circled green,
And hears them raise, at times unseen,
The ear-enchanting lay.
Rev. John Logan: Ode to Spring, 1780.
Fairy Tales and the Ancient Mythology—The Compensations of
Science—Existing Belief in Fairies in Wales—The Faith of Culture—The
Credulity of Ignorance—The Old-Time Welsh Fairyland—The
Fairy King—The Legend of St. Collen and Gwyn ap Nudd—The
Green Meadows of the Sea—Fairies at Market—The Land
of Mystery.
With regard to other divisions of the field of folk-lore,
the views of scholars differ, but in the realm
of faerie these differences are reconciled; it is agreed
that fairy tales are relics of the ancient mythology;
and the philosophers stroll hand in hand harmoniously.
This is as it should be, in a realm about
which cluster such delightful memories of the most
poetic period of life—childhood, before scepticism
has crept in as ignorance slinks out. The knowledge
which introduced scepticism is infinitely more
2]
valuable than the faith it displaced; but, in spite
of that, there be few among us who have not felt
evanescent regrets for the displacement by the foi
scientifique of the old faith in fairies. There was
something so peculiarly fascinating in that old belief,
that ‘once upon a time’ the world was less practical
in its facts than now, less commonplace and humdrum,
less subject to the inexorable laws of gravitation,
optics, and the like. What dramas it has
yielded! What poems, what dreams, what delights!
But since the knowledge of our maturer years
destroys all that, it is with a degree of satisfaction
we can turn to the consolations of the fairy mythology.
The beloved tales of old are ‘not true’—but
at least they are not mere idle nonsense, and
they have a good and sufficient reason for being in
the world; we may continue to respect them. The
wit who observed that the final cause of fairy
legends is ‘to afford sport for people who ruthlessly
track them to their origin,’[1] expressed a grave truth
in jocular form. Since one can no longer rest in
peace with one’s ignorance, it is a comfort to the
lover of fairy legends to find that he need not sweep
them into the grate as so much rubbish; on the
contrary they become even more enchanting in the
crucible of science than they were in their old
character.
Among the vulgar in Wales, the belief in fairies
is less nearly extinct than casual observers would be
likely to suppose. Even educated people who dwell
in Wales, and have dwelt there all their lives, cannot
always be classed as other than casual observers
in this field. There are some such residents who
have paid special attention to the subject, and have
3]
formed an opinion as to the extent of prevalence of
popular credulity herein; but most Welsh people of
the educated class, I find, have no opinion, beyond
a vague surprise that the question should be raised
at all. So lately as the year 1858, a learned writer
in the ‘Archæologia Cambrensis’ declared that ‘the
traveller may now pass from one end of the Principality
to the other, without his being shocked or
amused, as the case may be, by any of the fairy
legends or popular tales which used to pass current
from father to son.’ But in the same periodical,
eighteen years later, I find Mr. John Walter
Lukis (President of the Cardiff Naturalists’ Society),
asserting with regard to the cromlechs, tumuli, and
ancient camps in Glamorganshire: ‘There are
always fairy tales and ghost stories connected with
them; some, though fully believed in by the inhabitants
of those localities, are often of the most absurd
character; in fact, the more ridiculous they are, the
more they are believed in.’[2] My own observation
leads me to support the testimony of the last-named
witness. Educated Europeans generally conceive
that this sort of belief is extinct in their own land,
or, at least their own immediate section of that land.
They accredit such degree of belief as may remain,
in this enlightened age, to some remote part—to
the south, if they dwell in the north; to the north,
if they dwell in the south. But especially they
accredit it to a previous age: in Wales, to last
century, or the middle ages, or the days of King
Arthur. The rector of Merthyr, being an elderly
man, accredits it to his youth. ‘I am old enough
to remember,’ he wrote me under date of January
30th, 1877, ‘that these tales were thoroughly
believed in among country folk forty or fifty years
4]
ago.’ People of superior culture have held this
kind of faith concerning fairy-lore, it seems to me,
in every age, except the more remote. Chaucer
held it, almost five centuries ago, and wrote:[3]
In olde dayes of the Kyng Arthour, ...
Al was this lond fulfilled of fayrie; ...
I speke of many hundrid yer ago;
But now can no man see non elves mo.
Dryden held it, two hundred years later, and said
of the fairies:
I speak of ancient times, for now the swain
Returning late may pass the woods in vain,
And never hope to see the nightly train.
In all later days, other authors have written the
same sort of thing; it is not thus now, say they, but
it was recently thus. The truth, probably, is that
if you will but sink down to the level of common
life, of ignorant life, especially in rural neighbourhoods,
there you will find the same old beliefs
prevailing, in about the same degree to which they
have ever prevailed, within the past five hundred
years. To sink to this level successfully, one must
become a living unit in that life, as I have done in
Wales and elsewhere, from time to time. Then one
will hear the truth from, or at least the true sentiments
of, the class he seeks to know. The practice
of every generation in thus relegating fairy belief
to a date just previous to its own does not apply,
however, to superstitious beliefs in general; for,
concerning many such beliefs, their greater or less
prevalence at certain dates (as in the history of
witchcraft) is matter of well-ascertained fact. I confine
the argument, for the present, strictly to the
domain of faerie. In this domain, the prevalent belief
in Wales may be said to rest with the ignorant, to
5]
be strongest in rural and mining districts, to be
childlike and poetic, and to relate to anywhere
except the spot where the speaker dwells—as to
the next parish, to the next county, to the distant
mountains, or to the shadow-land of Gwerddonau
Llion, the green meadows of the sea.
In Arthur’s day and before that, the people of
South Wales regarded North Wales as pre-eminently
the land of faerie. In the popular
imagination, that distant country was the chosen
abode of giants, monsters, magicians, and all the
creatures of enchantment. Out of it came the
fairies, on their visits to the sunny land of the south.
The chief philosopher of that enchanted region was
a giant who sat on a mountain peak and watched
the stars. It had a wizard monarch called Gwydion,
who possessed the power of changing himself into
the strangest possible forms. The peasant who
dwelt on the shores of Dyfed (Demetia) saw in the
distance, beyond the blue waves of the ocean,
shadowy mountain summits piercing the clouds, and
guarding this mystic region in solemn majesty.
Thence rolled down upon him the storm-clouds
from the home of the tempest; thence streamed up
the winter sky the flaming banners of the Northern
lights; thence rose through the illimitable darkness
on high, the star-strewn pathway of the fairy king.
These details are current in the Mabinogion, those
brilliant stories of Welsh enchantment, so gracefully
done into English by Lady Charlotte Guest,[4] and it
is believed that all the Mabinogion in which these
details were found were written in Dyfed. This
6]
was the region on the west, now covered by Pembroke,
Carmarthen, and Cardigan shires.
More recently than the time above indicated,
special traditions have located fairyland in the Vale
of Neath, in Glamorganshire. Especially does a
certain steep and rugged crag there, called Craig y
Ddinas, bear a distinctly awful reputation as a
stronghold of the fairy tribe.[5] Its caves and
crevices have been their favourite haunt for many
centuries, and upon this rock was held the court of
the last fairies who have ever appeared in Wales.
Needless to say there are men still living who
remember the visits of the fairies to Craig y Ddinas,
although they aver the little folk are no longer seen
there. It is a common remark that the Methodists
drove them away; indeed, there are numberless
stories which show the fairies to have been animated,
when they were still numerous in Wales, by a
cordial antipathy for all dissenting preachers. In
this antipathy, it may be here observed, teetotallers
were included.
The sovereign of the fairies, and their especial
guardian and protector, was one Gwyn ap Nudd.
He was also ruler over the goblin tribe in general.
His name often occurs in ancient Welsh poetry. An
old bard of the fourteenth century, who, led away
by the fairies, rode into a turf bog on a mountain
one dark night, called it the ‘fish-pond of Gwyn ap
Nudd, a palace for goblins and their tribe.’ The association
of this legendary character with the goblin
fame of the Vale of Neath will appear, when it is mentioned
that Nudd in Welsh is pronounced simply
Neath, and not otherwise. As for the fairy queen,
7]
she does not seem to have any existence among
Cambrian goblins. It is nevertheless thought by
Cambrian etymologists, that Morgana is derived from
Mor Gwyn, the white maid; and the Welsh proper
name Morgan can hardly fail to be mentioned in this
connection, though it is not necessarily significant.
The legend of St. Collen, in which Gwyn ap Nudd
figures, represents him as king of Annwn (hell, or
the shadow land) as well as of the fairies.[6] Collen
was passing a period of mortification as a hermit, in
a cell under a rock on a mountain. There he one day
overheard two men talking about Gwyn ap Nudd,
and giving him this twofold kingly character. Collen
cried out to the men to go away and hold their
tongues, instead of talking about devils. For this
Collen was rebuked, as the king of fairyland had an
objection to such language. The saint was summoned
to meet the king on the hill-top at noon, and
after repeated refusals, he finally went there; but he
carried a flask of holy water with him. ‘And when
he came there he saw the fairest castle he had ever
beheld, and around it the best appointed troops, and
numbers of minstrels and every kind of music of
voice and string, and steeds with youths upon them,
the comeliest in the world, and maidens of elegant
aspect, sprightly, light of foot, of graceful apparel,
and in the bloom of youth; and every magnificence
becoming the court of a puissant sovereign. And
he beheld a courteous man on the top of the castle
who bade him enter, saying that the king was
waiting for him to come to meat. And Collen went
into the castle, and when he came there the king
was sitting in a golden chair. And he welcomed
Collen honourably, and desired him to eat, assuring
him that besides what he saw, he should have the
8]
most luxurious of every dainty and delicacy that the
mind could desire, and should be supplied with
every drink and liquor that the heart could wish;
and that there should be in readiness for him every
luxury of courtesy and service, of banquet and of
honourable entertainment, of rank and of presents,
and every respect and welcome due to a man of his
wisdom. “I will not eat the leaves of the trees,”
said Collen. “Didst thou ever see men of better
equipment than these of red and blue?” asked the
king. “Their equipment is good enough,” said
Collen, “for such equipment as it is.” “What kind
of equipment is that?” said the king. Then said
Collen, “The red on the one part signifies burning,
and the blue on the other signifies coldness.”
And with that Collen drew out his flask and threw
the holy water on their heads, whereupon they
vanished from his sight, so that there was neither
castle nor troops, nor men, nor maidens, nor music,
nor song, nor steeds, nor youths, nor banquet, nor
the appearance of anything whatever but the green
hillocks.’
A third form of Welsh popular belief as to the
whereabouts of fairyland corresponds with the
Avalon of the Arthurian legends. The green
meadows of the sea, called in the triads Gwerddonau
Llion, are the
Green fairy islands, reposing,
In sunlight and beauty on ocean’s calm breast.[7]
Many extraordinary superstitions survive with regard
to these islands. They were supposed to be
the abode of the souls of certain Druids, who, not
holy enough to enter the heaven of the Christians,
were still not wicked enough to be condemned to
9]
the tortures of annwn, and so were accorded a place
in this romantic sort of purgatorial paradise. In the
fifth century a voyage was made, by the British
king Gavran, in search of these enchanted islands;
with his family he sailed away into the unknown
waters, and was never heard of more. This voyage
is commemorated in the triads as one of the Three
Losses by Disappearance, the two others being
Merlin’s and Madog’s. Merlin sailed away in a
ship of glass; Madog sailed in search of America;
and neither returned, but both disappeared for ever.
In Pembrokeshire and southern Carmarthenshire
are to be found traces of this belief. There are
sailors on that romantic coast who still talk of the
green meadows of enchantment lying in the Irish
channel to the west of Pembrokeshire. Sometimes
they are visible to the eyes of mortals for a brief
space, when suddenly they vanish. There are
traditions of sailors who, in the early part of the
present century, actually went ashore on the fairy
islands—not knowing that they were such, until they
returned to their boats, when they were filled with
awe at seeing the islands disappear from their sight,
neither sinking in the sea, nor floating away upon
the waters, but simply vanishing suddenly. The
fairies inhabiting these islands are said to have
regularly attended the markets at Milford Haven
and Laugharne. They made their purchases without
speaking, laid down their money and departed,
always leaving the exact sum required, which they
seemed to know, without asking the price of anything.
Sometimes they were invisible, but they
were often seen, by sharp-eyed persons. There was
always one special butcher at Milford Haven upon
whom the fairies bestowed their patronage, instead
of distributing their favours indiscriminately. The
10]
Milford Haven folk could see the green fairy islands
distinctly, lying out a short distance from land; and
the general belief was that they were densely peopled
with fairies. It was also said that the latter went to
and fro between the islands and the shore through
a subterranean gallery under the bottom of the sea.
FAIRIES MARKETING AT LAUGHARNE.
That isolated cape which forms the county of
Pembroke was looked upon as a land of mystery by
the rest of Wales long after it had been settled by
the Flemings in 1113. A secret veil was supposed
to cover this sea-girt promontory; the inhabitants
talked in an unintelligible jargon that was neither
English, nor French, nor Welsh; and out of its misty
darkness came fables of wondrous sort, and accounts
of miracles marvellous beyond belief. Mythology
and Christianity spoke together from this strange
country, and one could not tell at which to be most
amazed, the pagan or the priest.
11]
Classification of Welsh Fairies—General Designation—Habits of the
Tylwyth Teg—Ellyllon, or Elves—Shakspeare’s Use of Welsh
Folk-Lore—Rowli Pugh and the Ellyll—Household Story Roots—The
Ellylldan—The Pooka—Puck Valley, Breconshire—Where
Shakspeare got his Puck—Pwca’r Trwyn—Usual Form of
the Pooka Story—Coblynau, or Mine Fairies—The Knockers—Miners’
Superstitions—Basilisks and Fire Fiends—A Fairy Coal-mine—The
Dwarfs of Cae Caled—Counterparts of the Coblynau—The
Bwbach, or Household Fairy—Legend of the Bwbach and
the Preacher—Bogies and Hobgoblins—Carrying Mortals through
the Air—Counterparts and Originals.
Fairies being creatures of the imagination, it is not
possible to classify them by fixed and immutable
rules. In the exact sciences, there are laws which
never vary, or if they vary, their very eccentricity is
governed by precise rules. Even in the largest
sense, comparative mythology must demean itself
modestly in order to be tolerated in the severe
company of the sciences. In presenting his subjects,
therefore, the writer in this field can only govern
himself by the purpose of orderly arrangement. To
secure the maximum of system, for the sake of the
student who employs the work for reference and
comparison, with the minimum of dullness, for the
sake of the general reader, is perhaps the limit of
a reasonable ambition. Keightley[8] divides into
four classes the Scandinavian elements of popular
belief as to fairies, viz.: 1. The Elves; 2. The
Dwarfs, or Trolls; 3. The Nisses; and 4. The Necks,
12]
Mermen, and Mermaids. How entirely arbitrary
this division is, the student of Scandinavian folk-lore
at once perceives. Yet it is perhaps as satisfactory
as another. The fairies of Wales may be divided
into five classes, if analogy be not too sharply
insisted on. Thus we have, 1. The Ellyllon, or
elves; 2. The Coblynau, or mine fairies; 3. The
Bwbachod, or household fairies; 4. The Gwragedd
Annwn, or fairies of the lakes and streams; and
5. The Gwyllion, or mountain fairies.
The modern Welsh name for fairies is y Tylwyth
Teg, the fair folk or family. This is sometimes
lengthened into y Tylwyth Teg yn y Coed, the
fair family in the wood, or Tylwyth Teg y Mwn,
the fair folk of the mine. They are seen dancing
in moonlight nights on the velvety grass, clad in
airy and flowing robes of blue, green, white, or
scarlet—details as to colour not usually met, I think,
in accounts of fairies. They are spoken of as
bestowing blessings on those mortals whom they
select to be thus favoured; and again are called
Bendith y Mamau, or their mother’s blessing, that
is to say, good little children whom it is a pleasure
to know. To name the fairies by a harsh epithet
is to invoke their anger; to speak of them in flattering
phrase is to propitiate their good offices. The
student of fairy mythology perceives in this propitiatory
mode of speech a fact of wide significance.
It can be traced in numberless lands, and back to
the beginning of human history, among the cloud-hung
peaks of Central Asia. The Greeks spoke
of the furies as the Eumenides, or gracious ones;
Highlanders mentioned by Sir Walter Scott uncover
to the gibbet and call it ‘the kind gallows;’ the
Dayak will not name the small-pox, but calls it ‘the
chief;’ the Laplander calls the bear ‘the old man
13]
with the fur coat;’ in Ammam the tiger is called
‘grandfather;’ and it is thought that the maxim,
‘Speak only good of the dead,’ came originally from
the notion of propitiating the ghost of the departed,[9]
who, in laying off this mortal garb, had become
endowed with new powers of harming his late
acquaintance.
The Ellyllon are the pigmy elves who haunt the
groves and valleys, and correspond pretty closely
with the English elves. The English name was
probably derived from the Welsh el, a spirit, elf, an
element; there is a whole brood of words of this
class in the Welsh language, expressing every
variety of flowing, gliding, spirituality, devilry,
angelhood, and goblinism. Ellyllon (the plural of
ellyll), is also doubtless allied with the Hebrew
Elilim, having with it an identity both of origin and
meaning.[10] The poet Davydd ab Gwilym, in a
humorous account of his troubles in a mist, in the
year 1340, says:
Yr ydoedd ym mhob gobant
Ellyllon mingeimion gant.
There was in every hollow
A hundred wrymouthed elves.
The hollows, or little dingles, are still the places
where the peasant, belated on his homeward way
from fair or market, looks for the ellyllon, but fails
to find them. Their food is specified in Welsh
folk-lore as fairy butter and fairy victuals, ymenyn
tylwyth teg and bwyd ellyllon; the latter the toadstool,
or poisonous mushroom, and the former a
butter-resembling substance found at great depths
in the crevices of limestone rocks, in sinking for
14]
lead ore. Their gloves, menyg ellyllon, are the
bells of the digitalis, or fox-glove, the leaves of
which are well known to be a strong sedative.
Their queen—for though there is no fairy-queen in
the large sense that Gwyn ap Nudd is the fairy-king,
there is a queen of the elves—is none other than the
Shakspearean fairy spoken of by Mercutio, who
comes
In shape no bigger than an agate-stone
On the forefinger of an alderman.[11]
Shakspeare’s use of Welsh folk-lore, it should be
noted, was extensive and peculiarly faithful.
Keightley in his ‘Fairy Mythology’ rates the bard
soundly for his inaccurate use of English fairy
superstitions; but the reproach will not apply as
regards Wales. From his Welsh informant Shakspeare
got Mab, which is simply the Cymric for a
little child, and the root of numberless words signifying
babyish, childish, love for children (mabgar),
kitten (mabgath), prattling (mabiaith), and the like,
most notable of all which in this connection is
mabinogi, the singular of Mabinogion, the romantic
tales of enchantment told to the young in by-gone
ages.
In the Huntsman’s Rest Inn at Peterstone-super-Ely,
near Cardiff, sat a group of humble folk one
afternoon, when I chanced to stop there to rest
myself by the chimney-side, after a long walk
through green lanes. The men were drinking
their tankards of ale and smoking their long clay
pipes; and they were talking about their dogs and
horses, the crops, the hard times, and the prospect
of bettering themselves by emigration to America.
On this latter theme I was able to make myself
15]
interesting, and acquaintance was thereupon easily
established on a friendly footing. I led the conversation
into the domain of folk-lore; and this
book is richer in illustration on many a page, in consequence.
Among others, this tale was told:
On a certain farm in Glamorganshire lived Rowli
Pugh, who was known far and wide for his evil luck.
Nothing prospered that he turned his hand to; his
crops proved poor, though his neighbours’ might be
good; his roof leaked in spite of all his mending;
his walls remained damp when every one else’s walls
were dry; and above all, his wife was so feeble she
could do no work. His fortunes at last seemed so
hard that he resolved to sell out and clear out, no
matter at what loss, and try to better himself in
another country—not by going to America, for there
was no America in those days. Well, and if there
was, the poor Welshman didn’t know it. So as
Rowli was sitting on his wall one day, hard by his
cottage, musing over his sad lot, he was accosted by
a little man who asked him what was the matter.
Rowli looked around in surprise, but before he could
answer the ellyll said to him with a grin, ‘There,
there, hold your tongue, I know more about you
than you ever dreamed of knowing. You’re in
trouble, and you’re going away. But you may stay,
now I’ve spoken to you. Only bid your good wife
leave the candle burning when she goes to bed, and
say no more about it.’ With this the ellyll kicked
up his heels and disappeared. Of course the farmer
did as he was bid, and from that day he prospered.
Every night Catti Jones, his wife,[12] set the candle
out, swept the hearth, and went to bed; and
every night the fairies would come and do her
16]
baking and brewing, her washing and mending,
sometimes even furnishing their own tools and
materials. The farmer was now always clean of
linen and whole of garb; he had good bread and
good beer; he felt like a new man, and worked
like one. Everything prospered with him now as
nothing had before. His crops were good, his barns
17]
were tidy, his cattle were sleek, his pigs the fattest
in the parish. So things went on for three years.
One night Catti Jones took it into her head that she
must have a peep at the fair family who did her
work for her; and curiosity conquering prudence,
she arose while Rowli Pugh lay snoring, and peeped
through a crack in the door. There they were, a
jolly company of ellyllon, working away like mad,
and laughing and dancing as madly as they worked.
Catti was so amused that in spite of herself she fell
to laughing too; and at sound of her voice the
ellyllon scattered like mist before the wind, leaving
the room empty. They never came back any more;
but the farmer was now prosperous, and his bad luck
never returned to plague him.
ROWLI AND THE ELLYLL.
The resemblance of this tale to many he has
encountered will at once be noted by the student of
comparative folk-lore. He will also observe that it
trenches on the domain of another class in my own
enumeration, viz., that of the Bwbach, or household
fairy. This is the stone over which one is constantly
stumbling in this field of scientific research. Mr.
Baring-Gould’s idea that all household tales are
reducible to a primeval root (in the same or a
similar manner that we trace words to their roots),
though most ingeniously illustrated by him, is constantly
involved in trouble of the sort mentioned.
He encounters the obstacle which lies in the path
of all who walk this way. His roots sometimes get
inextricably gnarled and intertwisted with each
other. But some effort of this sort is imperative,
and we must do the best we can with our materials.
Stories of the class of Grimm’s Witchelmänner
(Kinder und Hausmärchen) will be recalled
by the legend of Rowli Pugh as here told. The
German Hausmänner are elves of a domestic turn,
18]
sometimes mischievous and sometimes useful, but
usually looking for some material reward for their
labours. So with the English goblin named by
Milton in ‘L’Allegro,’ which drudges,
To earn his cream-bowl duly set.
The Ellylldan is a species of elf exactly corresponding
to the English Will-o’-wisp, the Scandinavian
Lyktgubhe, and the Breton Sand Yan y Tad.
The Welsh word dan means fire; dan also means
a lure; the compound word suggests a luring elf-fire.
The Breton Sand Yan y Tad (St. John and
Father)[13] is a double ignis fatuus fairy, carrying
at its finger-ends five lights, which spin round like
a wheel. The negroes of the southern seaboard
states of America invest this goblin with an exaggeration
of the horrible peculiarly their own. They
call it Jack-muh-lantern, and describe it as a hideous
creature five feet in height, with goggle-eyes and
huge mouth, its body covered with long hair, and
which goes leaping and bounding through the air
like a gigantic grasshopper. This frightful apparition
is stronger than any man, and swifter than any
horse, and compels its victims to follow it into the
swamp, where it leaves them to die.
Like all goblins of this class, the Ellylldan was,
of course, seen dancing about in marshy grounds,
into which it led the belated wanderer; but, as a
distinguished resident in Wales has wittily said, the
poor elf ‘is now starved to death, and his breath is
taken from him; his light is quenched for ever by
the improving farmer, who has drained the bog;
and, instead of the rank decaying vegetation of the
19]
autumn, where bitterns and snipes delighted to
secrete themselves, crops of corn and potatoes are
grown.’[14]
A poetic account by a modern character, called
Iolo the Bard, is thus condensed: ‘One night,
when the moon had gone down, as I was sitting on
a hill-top, the Ellylldan passed by. I followed it
into the valley. We crossed plashes of water where
the tops of bulrushes peeped above, and where the
lizards lay silently on the surface, looking at us with
an unmoved stare. The frogs sat croaking and
swelling their sides, but ceased as they raised a
melancholy eye at the Ellylldan. The wild fowl,
sleeping with their heads under their wings, made a
low cackle as we went by. A bittern awoke and
rose with a scream into the air. I felt the trail of
the eels and leeches peering about, as I waded
through the pools. On a slimy stone a toad sat
sucking poison from the night air. The Ellylldan
glowed bravely in the slumbering vapours. It rose
airily over the bushes that drooped in the ooze.
When I lingered or stopped, it waited for me, but
dwindled gradually away to a speck barely perceptible.
But as soon as I moved on again, it
would shoot up suddenly and glide before. A bat
came flying round and round us, flapping its wings
heavily. Screech-owls stared silently at us with
their broad eyes. Snails and worms crawled about.
The fine threads of a spider’s web gleamed in the
light of the Ellylldan. Suddenly it shot away from
me, and in the distance joined a ring of its fellows,
who went dancing slowly round and round in a
goblin dance, which sent me off to sleep.’[15]
20]
Pwca, or Pooka, is but another name for the Ellylldan,
as our Puck is another name for the Will-o’-wisp;
but in both cases the shorter term has a more
poetic flavour and a wider latitude. The name
Puck was originally applied to the whole race of
English fairies, and there still be few of the realm
who enjoy a wider popularity than Puck, in spite of
his mischievous attributes. Part of this popularity
is due to the poets, especially to Shakspeare. I
have alluded to the bard’s accurate knowledge of
Welsh folk-lore; the subject is really one of unique
interest, in view of the inaccuracy charged upon him
as to the English fairyland. There is a Welsh
tradition to the effect that Shakspeare received his
knowledge of the Cambrian fairies from his friend
Richard Price, son of Sir John Price, of the priory
of Brecon. It is even claimed that Cwm Pwca, or
Puck Valley, a part of the romantic glen of the
Clydach, in Breconshire, is the original scene of the
‘Midsummer Night’s Dream’—a fancy as light and
airy as Puck himself.[16] Anyhow, there Cwm Pwca
is, and in the sylvan days, before Frere and Powell’s
ironworks were set up there, it is said to have been
as full of goblins as a Methodist’s head is of piety.
And there are in Wales other places bearing like
names, where Pwca’s pranks are well remembered
by old inhabitants. The range given to the popular
21]
fancy in Wales is expressed with fidelity by
Shakspeare’s words in the mouth of Puck:
I’ll follow you, I’ll lead you about a round,
Through bog, through bush, through brake, through brier,
Sometime a horse I’ll be, sometime a hound,
A hog, a headless bear, sometime a fire;
And neigh, and bark, and grunt, and roar, and burn,
Like horse, hound, hog, bear, fire, at every turn.[17]
The various stories I have encountered bear out
these details almost without an omission.
In his own proper character, however, Pwca has
a sufficiently grotesque elfish aspect. It is stated
that a Welsh peasant who was asked to give an
idea of the appearance of Pwca, drew the above
figure with a bit of coal.
22]
A servant girl who attended to the cattle on the
Trwyn farm, near Abergwyddon, used to take food
to ‘Master Pwca,’ as she called the elf. A bowl
of fresh milk and a slice of white bread were the
component parts of the goblin’s repast, and were
placed on a certain spot where he got them. One
night the girl, moved by the spirit of mischief, drank
the milk and ate most of the bread, leaving for
Master Pwca only water and crusts. Next morning
she found that the fastidious fairy had left the
food untouched. Not long after, as the girl was
passing the lonely spot, where she had hitherto left
Pwca his food, she was seized under the arm pits
by fleshly hands (which, however, she could not see),
and subjected to a castigation of a most mortifying
character. Simultaneously there fell upon her ear
in good set Welsh a warning not to repeat her
offence on peril of still worse treatment. This
story ‘is thoroughly believed in there to this
day.’[18]
I visited the scene of the story, a farm near
Abergwyddon (now called Abercarne), and heard a
great deal more of the exploits of that particular
Pwca, to which I will refer again. The most singular
fact of the matter is that although at least a century
has elapsed, and some say several centuries, since
the exploits in question, you cannot find a Welsh
peasant in the parish but knows all about Pwca’r
Trwyn.
The most familiar form of the Pwca story is one
which I have encountered in several localities, varying
so little in its details that each account would
be interchangeable with another by the alteration of
23]
local names.
This form
presents a
peasant who
is returning
home from
his work, or from a fair, when he sees
a light travelling before him. Looking
closer he perceives that it is carried
by a dusky little figure, holding a lantern
or candle at arm’s length over its head.
He follows it for several miles, and
suddenly finds himself on the brink of a
frightful precipice. From far down
below there rises to his ears the sound
of a foaming torrent. At the same
moment the little goblin with the lantern
springs across the chasm, alighting on
the opposite side; raises the light again
24]
high over its head, utters a loud and malicious
laugh, blows out its candle and disappears up the
opposite hill, leaving the awestruck peasant to get
home as best he can.
(TOP) PWCA. (BOTTOM) COBLYNAU.
Under the general title of Coblynau I class the
fairies which haunt the mines, quarries and underground
regions of Wales, corresponding to the
cabalistic Gnomes. The word coblyn has the
double meaning of knocker or thumper and sprite
or fiend; and may it not be the original of goblin?
It is applied by Welsh miners to pigmy fairies which
dwell in the mines, and point out, by a peculiar
knocking or rapping, rich veins of ore. The faith
is extended, in some parts, so as to cover the indication
of subterranean treasures generally, in caves
and secret places of the mountains. The coblynau
are described as being about half a yard in height
and very ugly to look upon, but extremely good-natured,
and warm friends of the miner. Their
dress is a grotesque imitation of the miner’s garb,
and they carry tiny hammers, picks and lamps.
They work busily, loading ore in buckets, flitting
about the shafts, turning tiny windlasses, and pounding
away like madmen, but really accomplishing
nothing whatever. They have been known to
throw stones at the miners, when enraged at being
lightly spoken of; but the stones are harmless.
Nevertheless, all miners of a proper spirit refrain
from provoking them, because their presence brings
good luck.
Miners are possibly no more superstitious than
other men of equal intelligence; I have heard some
25]
of their number repel indignantly the idea that they
are superstitious at all; but this would simply be to
raise them above the level of our common humanity.
There is testimony enough, besides, to support my
own conclusions, which accredit a liberal share of
credulity to the mining class. The Oswestry Advertiser,
a short time ago, recorded the fact that, at
Cefn, ‘a woman is employed as messenger at one
of the collieries, and as she commences her duty
early each morning she meets great numbers of
colliers going to their work. Some of them, we are
gravely assured, consider it a bad omen to meet a
woman first thing in the morning; and not having
succeeded in deterring her from her work by other
means, they waited upon the manager and declared
that they should remain at home unless the woman
was dismissed.’ This was in 1874. In June, 1878,
the South Wales Daily News recorded a superstition
of the quarrymen at Penrhyn, where some thousands
of men refused to work on Ascension Day. ‘This
refusal did not arise out of any reverential feeling,
but from an old and widespread superstition, which
has lingered in that district for years, that if work
is continued on Ascension Day an accident will
certainly follow. A few years ago the agents
persuaded the men to break through the superstition,
and there were accidents each year—a not
unlikely occurrence, seeing the extent of works
carried on, and the dangerous nature of the occupation
of the men. This year, however, the men, one
and all, refused to work.’ These are examples
dealing with considerable numbers of the mining
class, and are quoted in this instance as being more
significant than individual cases would be. Of these
last I have encountered many. Yet I should be
26]
sorry if any reader were to conclude from all this
that Welsh miners are not in the main intelligent,
church-going, newspaper-reading men. They are
so, I think, even beyond the common. Their superstitions,
therefore, like those of the rest of us, must
be judged as ‘a thing apart,’ not to be reconciled
with intelligence and education, but co-existing with
them. Absolute freedom from superstition can
come only with a degree of scientific culture not
yet reached by mortal man.
It can hardly be cause for wonder that the miner
should be superstitious. His life is passed in a
dark and gloomy region, fathoms below the earth’s
green surface, surrounded by walls on which dim
lamps shed a fitful light. It is not surprising that
imagination (and the Welsh imagination is peculiarly
vivid) should conjure up the faces and forms
of gnomes and coblynau, of phantoms and fairy
men. When they hear the mysterious thumping
which they know is not produced by any human
being, and when in examining the place where the
noise was heard they find there are really valuable
indications of ore, the sturdiest incredulity must
sometimes be shaken. Science points out that
the noise may be produced by the action of water
upon the loose stones in fissures and pot-holes of
the mountain limestone, and does actually suggest
the presence of metals.
In the days before a Priestley had caught and
bottled that demon which exists in the shape of
carbonic acid gas, when the miner was smitten dead
by an invisible foe in the deep bowels of the earth
it was natural his awestruck companions should
ascribe the mysterious blow to a supernatural
enemy. When the workman was assailed suddenly
27]
by what we now call fire-damp, which hurled him
and his companions right and left upon the dark
rocks, scorching, burning, and killing, those who
survived were not likely to question the existence
of the mine fiend. Hence arose the superstition—now
probably quite extinct—of basilisks in the
mines, which destroyed with their terrible gaze.
When the explanation came, that the thing which
killed the miner was what he breathed, not what he
saw; and when chemistry took the fire-damp from
the domain of faerie, the basilisk and the fire fiend
had not a leg to stand on. The explanation of the
Knockers is more recent, and less palpable and
convincing.
The Coblynau are always given the form of dwarfs,
in the popular fancy; wherever seen or heard, they
are believed to have escaped from the mines or the
secret regions of the mountains. Their homes
are hidden from mortal vision. When encountered,
either in the mines or on the mountains, they have
strayed from their special abodes, which are as
spectral as themselves. There is at least one
account extant of their secret territory having been
revealed to mortal eyes. I find it in a quaint volume
(of which I shall have more to say), printed at
Newport, Monmouthshire, in 1813.[19] It relates that
one William Evans, of Hafodafel, while crossing
the Beacon Mountain very early in the morning,
passed a fairy coal mine, where fairies were busily
at work. Some were cutting the coal, some carrying
it to fill the sacks, some raising the loads upon the
28]
horses’ backs, and so on; but all in the completest
silence. He thought this ‘a wonderful extra natural
thing,’ and was considerably impressed by it, for
well he knew that there really was no coal mine at
that place. He was a person of ‘undoubted veracity,’
and what is more, ‘a great man in the world—above
telling an untruth.’
That the Coblynau sometimes wandered far from
home, the same chronicler testifies; but on these
occasions they were taking a holiday. Egbert
Williams, ‘a pious young gentleman of Denbighshire,
then at school,’ was one day playing in a field
called Cae Caled, in the parish of Bodfari, with
three girls, one of whom was his sister. Near the
stile beyond Lanelwyd House they saw a company
of fifteen or sixteen coblynau engaged in dancing
madly. They were in the middle of the field, about
seventy yards from the spectators, and they danced
something after the manner of Morris-dancers, but
with a wildness and swiftness in their motions. They
were clothed in red like British soldiers, and wore
red handkerchiefs spotted with yellow wound round
their heads. And a strange circumstance about
them was that although they were almost as big
as ordinary men, yet they had unmistakably the
appearance of dwarfs, and one could call them
nothing but dwarfs. Presently one of them left the
company and ran towards the group near the stile,
who were direfully scared thereby, and scrambled
in great fright to go over the stile. Barbara Jones
got over first, then her sister, and as Egbert
Williams was helping his sister over they saw the
coblyn close upon them, and barely got over when
his hairy hand was laid on the stile. He stood
leaning on it, gazing after them as they ran, with a
29]
grim copper-coloured countenance and a fierce look.
The young people ran to Lanelwyd House and called
the elders out, but though they hurried quickly to
the field the dwarfs had already disappeared.
The counterparts of the Coblynau are found in
most mining countries. In Germany, the Wichtlein
(little Wights) are little old long-bearded men,
about three-quarters of an ell high, which haunt the
mines of the southern land. The Bohemians call
the Wichtlein by the name of Haus-schmiedlein,
little House-smiths, from their sometimes making
a noise as if labouring hard at the anvil. They are
not so popular as in Wales, however, as they predict
misfortune or death. They announce the doom of
a miner by knocking three times distinctly, and
when any lesser evil is about to befall him they are
heard digging, pounding, and imitating other kinds
of work. In Germany also the kobolds are rather
troublesome than otherwise, to the miners, taking
pleasure in frustrating their objects, and rendering
their toil unfruitful. Sometimes they are downright
malignant, especially if neglected or insulted,
but sometimes also they are indulgent to individuals
whom they take under their protection. ‘When a
miner therefore hit upon a rich vein of ore, the
inference commonly was not that he possessed more
skill, industry, or even luck than his fellow-workmen,
but that the spirits of the mine had directed him to
the treasure.’[20]
The intimate connection between mine fairies and
the whole race of dwarfs is constantly met throughout
the fairy mythology; and the connection of
30]
the dwarfs with the mountains is equally universal.
‘God,’ says the preface to the Heldenbuch, ‘gave
the dwarfs being, because the land and the mountains
were altogether waste and uncultivated, and there
was much store of silver and gold and precious
stones and pearls still in the mountains.’ From
the most ancient times, and in the oldest countries,
down to our own time and the new world of America,
the traditions are the same. The old Norse belief
which made the dwarfs the current machinery of
the northern Sagas is echoed in the Catskill Mountains
with the rolling of the thunder among the
crags where Hendrik Hudson’s dwarfs are playing
ninepins.
The Bwbach, or Boobach, is the good-natured
goblin which does good turns for the tidy Welsh
maid who wins its favour by a certain course of
behaviour recommended by long tradition. The
maid having swept the kitchen, makes a good
fire the last thing at night, and having put the
churn, filled with cream, on the whitened hearth,
with a basin of fresh cream for the Bwbach on the
hob, goes to bed to await the event. In the
morning she finds (if she is in luck) that the Bwbach
has emptied the basin of cream, and plied the
churn-dasher so well that the maid has but to give a
thump or two to bring the butter in a great lump.
Like the Ellyll which it so much resembles, the
Bwbach does not approve of dissenters and their
ways, and especially strong is its aversion to total
abstainers.
There was a Bwbach belonging to a certain
estate in Cardiganshire, which took great umbrage
at a Baptist preacher who was a guest in the house,
31]
and who was much fonder of prayers than of good
ale. Now the Bwbach had a weakness in favour of
people who sat around the hearth with their mugs
of cwrw da and their pipes, and it took to pestering
the preacher. One night it jerked the stool from
under the good man’s elbows, as he knelt pouring
forth prayer, so that he fell down flat on his face.
Another time it interrupted the devotions by
jangling the fire-irons on the hearth; and it was
continually making the dogs fall a-howling during
prayers, or frightening the farm-boy by grinning
at him through the window, or throwing the maid
into fits. At last it had the audacity to attack
the preacher as he was crossing a field. The
minister told the story in this wise: ‘I was reading
busily in my hymn-book as I walked on, when a
sudden fear came over me and my legs began
to tremble. A shadow crept upon me from behind,
and when I turned round—it was myself!—my
person, my dress, and even my hymn-book. I
looked in its face a moment, and then fell insensible
to the ground.’ And there, insensible still, they
found him. This encounter proved too much for
the good man, who considered it a warning to him
to leave those parts. He accordingly mounted
his horse next day and rode away. A boy of the
neighbourhood, whose veracity was, like that of all
boys, unimpeachable, afterwards said that he saw
the Bwbach jump up behind the preacher, on the
horse’s back. And the horse went like lightning,
with eyes like balls of fire, and the preacher
looking back over his shoulder at the Bwbach,
that grinned from ear to ear.
32]
The same confusion in outlines which exists
regarding our own Bogie and Hobgoblin gives the
Bwbach a double character, as a household fairy
and as a terrifying phantom. In both aspects it is
ludicrous, but in the latter it has dangerous practices.
To get into its clutches under certain circumstances
is no trifling matter, for it has the power of whisking
people off through the air. Its services are brought
into requisition for this purpose by troubled ghosts
who cannot sleep on account of hidden treasure
they want removed; and if they can succeed in
getting a mortal to help them in removing the
treasure, they employ the Bwbach to transport the
mortal through the air.
This ludicrous fairy is in France represented by
the gobelin. Mothers threaten children with him.
‘Le gobelin vous mangera, le gobelin vous emportera.’[21]
In the English ‘hobgoblin’ we have a
word apparently derived from the Welsh hob, to
hop, and coblyn, a goblin, which presents a hopping
goblin to the mind, and suggests the Pwca (with
which the Bwbach is also confused in the popular
fancy at times), but should mean in English simply
the goblin of the hob, or household fairy. In its
bugbear aspect, the Bwbach, like the English bogie,
is believed to be identical with the Slavonic ‘bog,’
and the ‘baga’ of the Cuneiform Inscriptions, both
of which are names for the Supreme Being, according
to Professor Fiske. ‘The ancestral form of
these epithets’ is found in ‘the old Aryan “Bhaga,”
which reappears unchanged in the Sanskrit of the
33]
Vedas, and has left a memento of itself in the
surname of the Phrygian Zeus “Bagaios.” It seems
originally to have denoted either the unclouded sun,
or the sky of noonday illuminated by the solar rays....
Thus the same name which to the Vedic
poet, to the Persian of the time of Xerxes, and to
the modern Russian, suggests the supreme majesty
of deity, is in English associated with an ugly and
ludicrous fiend, closely akin to that grotesque
Northern Devil of whom Southey was unable to
think without laughing.’[22]
34]
Lake Fairies—The Gwragedd Annwn, or Dames of Elfin-Land—St.
Patrick and the Welshmen; a Legend of Crumlyn Lake—The
Elfin Cow of Llyn Barfog—Y Fuwch Laethwen Lefrith—The
Legend of the Meddygon Myddfai—The Wife of Supernatural
Race—The Three Blows; a Carmarthenshire Legend—Cheese
and the Didactic Purpose in Welsh Folk-Lore—The Fairy Maiden’s
Papa—The Enchanted Isle in the Mountain Lake—Legend of the
Men of Ardudwy—Origin of Water Fairies—Their prevalence in
many Lands.
The Gwragedd Annwn (literally, wives of the lower
world, or hell) are the elfin dames who dwell under
the water. I find no resemblance in the Welsh
fairy to our familiar mermaid, beyond the watery
abode, and the sometimes winning ways. The
Gwragedd Annwn are not fishy of aspect, nor do
they dwell in the sea. Their haunt is the lakes
and rivers, but especially the wild and lonely lakes
upon the mountain heights. These romantic sheets
are surrounded with numberless superstitions, which
will be further treated of. In the realm of faerie
they serve as avenues of communication between
this world and the lower one of annwn, the shadowy
domain presided over by Gwyn ap Nudd, king of
the fairies. This sub-aqueous realm is peopled by
those children of mystery termed Plant Annwn, and
the belief is current among the inhabitants of the
Welsh mountains that the Gwragedd Annwn still
occasionally visit this upper world of ours.[23] The
35]
only reference to Welsh mermaids I have either
read or heard is contained in Drayton’s account of
the Battle of Agincourt. There it is mentioned,
among the armorial ensigns of the counties of
Wales:
As Cardigan, the next to them that went,
Came with a mermaid sitting on a rock.[24]
Crumlyn Lake, near the quaint village of Briton
Ferry, is one of the many in Wales which are a
resort of the elfin dames. It is also believed that a
large town lies swallowed up there, and that the
Gwragedd Annwn have turned the submerged walls
to use as the superstructure of their fairy palaces.
Some claim to have seen the towers of beautiful
castles lifting their battlements beneath the surface
of the dark waters, and fairy bells are at times heard
ringing from these towers. The way the elfin dames
first came to dwell there was this: A long, ay, a
very long time ago, St. Patrick came over from
Ireland on a visit to St. David of Wales, just to say
‘Sut yr y’ch chwi?’ (How d’ye do?); and as they were
strolling by this lake conversing on religious topics in
a friendly manner, some Welsh people who had ascertained
that it was St. Patrick, and being angry at
him for leaving Cambria for Erin, began to abuse
him in the Welsh language, his native tongue. Of
course such an insult could not go unpunished, and
St. Patrick caused his villifiers to be transformed
into fishes; but some of them being females, were
converted into fairies instead. It is also related
that the sun, on account of this insolence to so holy
a man, never shed its life-giving rays upon the dark
36]
waters of this picturesque lake, except during one
week of the year. This legend and these magical
details are equally well accredited to various other
lakes, among them Llyn Barfog, near Aberdovey,
the town whose ‘bells’ are celebrated in immortal
song.
Llyn Barfog is the scene of the famous elfin cow’s
descent upon earth, from among the droves of the
Gwragedd Annwn. This is the legend of the origin
of the Welsh black cattle, as related to me in
Carmarthenshire: In times of old there was a
band of elfin ladies who used to haunt the neighbourhood
of Llyn Barfog, a lake among the hills just
back of Aberdovey. It was their habit to make
their appearance at dusk clad all in green, accompanied
by their milk-white hounds. Besides their
hounds, the green ladies of Llyn Barfog were peculiar
in the possession of droves of beautiful milk-white
kine, called Gwartheg y Llyn, or kine of the
lake. One day an old farmer, who lived near
Dyssyrnant, had the good luck to catch one of these
mystic cows, which had fallen in love with the cattle
of his herd. From that day the farmer’s fortune
was made. Such calves, such milk, such butter and
cheese, as came from the milk-white cow never had
been seen in Wales before, nor ever will be seen
again. The fame of the Fuwch Gyfeiliorn (which
was what they called the cow) spread through the
country round. The farmer, who had been poor,
became rich; the owner of vast herds, like the
patriarchs of old. But one day he took it into his
silly noddle that the elfin cow was getting old, and
that he had better fatten her for the market. His
nefarious purpose thrived amazingly. Never, since
beef steaks were invented, was seen such a fat cow
37]
as this cow grew to be. Killing day came, and the
neighbours arrived from all about to witness the
taking-off of this monstrously fat beast. The farmer
had already counted up the gains from the sale of
her, and the butcher had bared his red right arm.
The cow was tethered, regardless of her mournful
lowing and her pleading eyes; the butcher raised
his bludgeon and struck fair and hard between the
eyes—when lo! a shriek resounded through the air,
awakening the echoes of the hills, as the butcher’s
bludgeon went through the goblin head of the elfin
cow, and knocked over nine adjoining men, while
the butcher himself went frantically whirling around
trying to catch hold of something permanent. Then
the astonished assemblage beheld a green lady
standing on a crag high up over the lake, and
crying with a loud voice:
Dere di felen Einion,
Cyrn Cyfeiliorn—braith y Llyn,
A’r foel Dodin,
Codwch, dewch adre.
Come yellow Anvil, stray horns,
Speckled one of the lake,
And of the hornless Dodin,
Arise, come home.
Whereupon not only did the elfin cow arise and
go home, but all her progeny to the third and fourth
generations went home with her, disappearing in the
air over the hill tops and returning nevermore.
Only one cow remained of all the farmer’s herds,
and she had turned from milky white to raven black.
Whereupon the farmer in despair drowned himself
in the lake of the green ladies, and the black cow
became the progenitor of the existing race of Welsh
black cattle.
This legend appears, in a slightly different form,
in the ‘Iolo MSS.,’ as translated by Taliesin Williams,
38]
of Merthyr:[25] ‘The milk-white milch cow gave
enough of milk to every one who desired it; and
however frequently milked, or by whatever number
of persons, she was never found deficient. All
persons who drank of her milk were healed of every
illness; from fools they became wise; and from
being wicked, became happy. This cow went round
the world; and wherever she appeared, she filled
with milk all the vessels that could be found, leaving
calves behind her for all the wise and happy. It
was from her that all the milch cows in the world
were obtained. After traversing through the island
of Britain, for the benefit and blessing of country and
kindred, she reached the Vale of Towy; where,
tempted by her fine appearance and superior condition,
the natives sought to kill and eat her; but just
as they were proceeding to effect their purpose, she
vanished from between their hands, and was never
seen again. A house still remains in the locality,
called Y Fuwch Laethwen Lefrith (The Milk-white
Milch Cow.)’
The legend of the Meddygon Myddfai again introduces
the elfin cattle to our notice, but combines with
them another and a very interesting form of this
superstition, namely, that of the wife of supernatural
race. A further feature gives it its name, Meddygon
meaning physicians, and the legend professing to
give the origin of certain doctors who were renowned
in the thirteenth century. The legend relates that
a farmer in the parish of Myddfai, Carmarthenshire,
having bought some lambs in a neighbouring fair,
led them to graze near Llyn y Fan Fach, on the
Black Mountains. Whenever he visited these
lambs three beautiful damsels appeared to him from
39]
the lake, on whose shores they often made excursions.
Sometimes he pursued and tried to catch
them, but always failed; the enchanting nymphs ran
before him and on reaching the lake taunted him in
these words:
Cras dy fara,
Anhawdd ein dala;
which, if one must render it literally, means:
Bake your bread,
’Twill be hard to catch us;
but which, more poetically treated, might signify:
Mortal, who eatest baken bread,
Not for thee is the fairy’s bed!
One day some moist bread from the lake came
floating ashore. The farmer seized it, and devoured
it with avidity. The following day, to his great
delight, he was successful in his chase, and caught
the nymphs on the shore. After talking a long time
with them, he mustered up the courage to propose
marriage to one of them. She consented to accept
him on condition that he would distinguish her from
her sisters the next day. This was a new and great
difficulty to the young farmer, for the damsels were
so similar in form and features, that he could
scarcely see any difference between them. He
noted, however, a trifling singularity in the strapping
of the chosen one’s sandal, by which he recognized
her on the following day. As good as her word,
the gwraig immediately left the lake and went with
him to his farm. Before she quitted the lake she
summoned therefrom to attend her, seven cows, two
oxen, and one bull. She stipulated that she should
remain with the farmer only until such time as he
should strike her thrice without cause. For some
years they dwelt peaceably together, and she bore
40]
him three sons, who were the celebrated Meddygon
Myddfai. One day, when preparing for a fair in the
neighbourhood, the farmer desired her to go to the
field for his horse. She said she would, but being
rather dilatory, he said to her humorously ‘Dôs,
dôs, dôs,’ i.e., ‘Go, go, go,’ and at the same time
slightly tapped her arm three times with his glove....
The blows were slight—but they were blows.
The terms of the marriage contract were broken,
and the dame departed, summoning with her her
seven cows, her two oxen, and the bull. The oxen
were at that moment ploughing in the field, but they
immediately obeyed her call and dragged the
plough after them to the lake. The furrow, from the
field in which they were ploughing to the margin of
the lake, is still to be seen—in several parts of that
country—at the present day. After her departure,
the gwraig annwn once met her three sons in the
valley now called Cwm Meddygon, and gave them a
magic box containing remedies of wonderful power,
through whose use they became celebrated. Their
names were Cadogan, Gruffydd and Einion, and the
farmer’s name was Rhiwallon. Rhiwallon and his
sons, named as above, were physicians to Rhys
Gryg, Lord of Dynevor, and son of the last native
prince of Wales. They lived about 1230, and dying,
left behind them a compendium of their medical
practice. ‘A copy of their works is in the Welsh
School Library in Gray’s Inn Lane.’[26]
In a more polished and elaborate form this legend
omits the medical features altogether, but substitutes
a number of details so peculiarly Welsh that I cannot
refrain from presenting them. This version relates
41]
that the enamoured farmer had heard of the lake
maiden, who rowed up and down the lake in a
golden boat, with a golden oar. Her hair was long
and yellow, and her face was pale and melancholy.
In his desire to see this wondrous beauty, the farmer
went on New Year’s Eve to the edge of the lake,
and in silence awaited the coming of the first hour
of the new year. It came, and there in truth was
the maiden in her golden boat, rowing softly to and
fro. Fascinated, he stood for hours beholding her,
until the stars faded out of the sky, the moon sank
behind the rocks, and the cold gray dawn drew
nigh; and then the lovely gwraig began to vanish
from his sight. Wild with passion, and with the
thought of losing her for ever, he cried aloud to the
retreating vision, ‘Stay! stay! Be my wife.’ But
the gwraig only uttered a faint cry, and was gone.
Night after night the young farmer haunted the
shores of the lake, but the gwraig returned no more.
He became negligent of his person; his once robust
form grew thin and wan; his face was a map of
melancholy and despair. He went one day to
consult a soothsayer who dwelt on the mountain,
and this grave personage advised him to besiege
the damsel’s heart with gifts of bread and cheese.
This counsel commending itself strongly to his
Welsh way of thinking, the farmer set out upon an
assiduous course of casting his bread upon the
waters—accompanied by cheese. He began on
Midsummer eve by going to the lake and dropping
therein a large cheese and a loaf of bread. Night
after night he continued to throw in loaves and
cheeses, but nothing appeared in answer to his
sacrifices. His hopes were set, however, on the
approaching New Year’s eve. The momentous
night arrived at last. Clad in his best array, and
42]
armed with seven white loaves and his biggest and
handsomest cheese, he set out once more for the
lake. There he waited till midnight, and then slowly
and solemnly dropped the seven loaves into the
43]
water, and with a sigh sent the cheese to keep them
company. His persistence was at length rewarded.
The magic skiff appeared; the fair gwraig guided it
to where he stood; stepped ashore, and accepted
him as her husband. The before-mentioned stipulation
was made as to the blows; and she brought
her dower of cattle. One day, after they had been
four years married, they were invited to a christening.
In the midst of the ceremony the gwraig burst into
tears. Her husband gave her an angry look, and
asked her why she thus made a fool of herself. She
replied, ‘The poor babe is entering a world of sin
and sorrow; misery lies before it. Why should I
rejoice?’ He pushed her pettishly away. ‘I warn
you, husband,’ said the gwraig; ‘you have struck
me once.’ After a time they were bidden to the
funeral of the child they had seen christened. Now
the gwraig laughed, sang, and danced about. The
husband’s wrath again arose, and again he asked her
why she thus made a fool of herself. She answered,
‘The dear babe has escaped the misery that was
before it, and gone to be good and happy for ever.
Why should I grieve?’ Again he pushed her from
him, and again she warned him; he had struck her
twice. Soon they were invited to a wedding; the
bride was young and fair, the groom a tottering,
toothless, decrepit old miser. In the midst of
the wedding feast the gwraig annwn burst into
tears, and to her husband’s question why she
thus made a fool of herself she replied, ‘Truth
is wedded to age for greed, and not for love—summer
and winter cannot agree—it is the diawl’s
compact.’ The angry husband thrust her from him
for the third and last time. She looked at him
with tender love and reproach, and said, ‘The three
blows are struck—husband, farewell!’ He never
44]
saw her more, nor any of the flocks and herds she
had brought him for her dowry.
THE GWRAIG OF THE GOLDEN BOAT.
In its employment of the myth to preach a sermon,
and in its introduction of cheese, this version of the
legend is very Welsh indeed. The extent to which
cheese figures in Cambrian folk-lore is surprising;
cheese is encountered in every sort of fairy company;
you actually meet cheese in the Mabinogion, along
with the most romantic forms of beauty known in
story. And herein again is illustrated Shakspeare’s
accurate knowledge of the Cambrian goblins.
‘Heaven defend me from that Welsh fairy!’ says
Falstaff, ‘lest he transform me to a piece of cheese!’[27]
Bread is found figuring actively in the folk-lore of
every country, especially as a sacrifice to water-gods;
but cheese is, so far as I know, thus honoured
only in Cambria.
Once more this legend appears, this time with a
feature I have nowhere else encountered in fairy
land, to wit, the father of a fairy damsel. The son
of a farmer on Drws Coed farm was one foggy day
looking after his father’s sheep, when crossing a
marshy meadow he beheld a little lady behind some
rising ground. She had yellow hair, blue eyes and
rosy cheeks. He approached her, and asked permission
to converse; whereupon she smiled sweetly
and said to him, ‘Idol of my hopes, you have come
at last!’ They there and then began to ‘keep
company,’ and met each other daily here and there
along the farm meadows. His intentions were
honourable; he desired her to marry him. He was
sometimes absent for days together, no one knew
where, and his friends whispered about that he had
been witched. Around the Turf Lake (Llyn y
45]
Dywarchen) was a grove of trees, and under one of
these one day the fairy promised to be his. The
consent of her father was now necessary. One
moonlight night an appointment was made to meet
in this wood. The father and daughter did not
appear till the moon had disappeared behind the
hill. Then they both came. The fairy father immediately
gave his consent to the marriage, on
one condition, namely, that her future husband
should never hit her with iron. ‘If ever thou dost
touch her flesh with iron she shall be no more thine,
but she shall return to her own.’ They were married—a
good-looking pair. Large sums of money were
brought by her, the night before the wedding, to
Drws Coed. The shepherd lad became wealthy,
had several handsome children, and they were very
happy. After some years, they were one day out
riding, when her horse sank in a deep mire, and by
the assistance of her husband, in her hurry to
remount, she was struck on her knee by the stirrup
of the saddle. Immediately voices were heard
singing on the brow of the hill, and she disappeared,
leaving all her children behind. She and her
mother devised a plan by which she could see her
beloved, but as she was not allowed to walk the
earth with man, they floated a large turf on the lake,
and on this turf she stood for hours at a time
holding converse with her husband. This continued
until his death.[28]
The didactic purpose again appears in the following
legend, which, varying but little in phraseology,
is current in the neighbourhood of a dozen different
mountain lakes: In other days, before the Cymry
had become reconciled to their Saxon foe, on every
46]
New Year’s morning a door was found open in a
rock hard by the lake. Those mortals who had
the curiosity and the resolution to enter this door
were conducted by a secret passage to a small
island in the middle of the lake. Here they found
a most enchanting garden, stored with the choicest
fruits and flowers, and inhabited by the Gwragedd
Annwn, whose beauty could be equalled only by the
courtesy and affability which they exhibited to those
who pleased them. They gathered fruit and flowers
for each of their guests, entertained them with the
most exquisite music, disclosed to them many secrets
of futurity, and invited them to stay as long as they
liked. ‘But,’ said they, ‘the island is secret, and
nothing of its produce must be carried away.’ The
warning being heeded, all went well. But one day
there appeared among the visitors a wicked Welshman,
who, thinking to derive some magical aid
therefrom, pocketed a flower with which he had
been presented, and was about to leave the garden
with his prize. But the theft boded him no good.
As soon as he had touched unhallowed ground the
flower vanished, and he lost his senses. However,
of this abuse of their hospitality the Gwragedd
Annwn took no notice at the time. They dismissed
their guests with their accustomed courtesy, and the
door was closed as usual. But their resentment
was bitter; for though the fairies of the lake and
their enchanted garden undoubtedly occupy the
spot to this day, the door which led to the island
has never been reopened.
In all these legends the student of comparative
folk-lore traces the ancient mythology, however
overlain with later details. The water-maidens of
47]
every land doubtless originally were the floating
clouds of the sky, or the mists of the mountain.
From this have come certain fair and fanciful creations
with which Indo-European folk-lore teems, the
most familiar of which are Undine, Melusina, Nausicaa,
and the classic Muse. In Wales, as in other
lands, the myth has many forms. The dispersion of
dark clouds from the mountains, by the beams of the
rising sun, or the morning breezes, is localized in the
legend of the Men of Ardudwy. These men make
a raid on the maidens of the Vale of Clwyd, and are
pursued and slaughtered by the latter’s fathers and
brothers. The maidens thereupon cast themselves
headlong into the lake, which is thenceforth called
the Maidens’ Lake, or Llyn y Morwynion. In
another legend, the river mist over the Cynwal is
the spirit of a traitress who perished long ago in the
lake. She had conspired with the sea-born pirates
of the North (the ocean storms) to rob her Cambrian
lord of his domains. She was defeated by the aid
of a powerful enchanter (the sun), and fled up the
river to the lake, accompanied by her maidens, who
were drowned with her there.[29]
As the mermaid superstition is seemingly absent
in Wales, so there are no fairy tales of maidens who
lure mortals to their doom beneath the water, as the
Dracæ did women and children, and as the Nymph
of the Lurley did marriageable young men. But it
is believed that there are several old Welsh families
who are the descendants of the Gwragedd Annwn, as
in the case of the Meddygon Myddfai. The familiar
Welsh name of Morgan is sometimes thought to
signify, ‘Born of the Sea.’ Certainly môr in Welsh
48]
means sea, and gân a birth. It is curious, too, that
a mermaid is called in Basse Bretagne ‘Mary
Morgan.’ But the class of stories in which a mortal
marries a water-maiden is large, and while the local
details smack of the soil, the general idea is so like
in lands far remote from each other as to indicate a
common origin in pre-historic times. In Wales,
where the mountain lakes are numerous, gloomy,
lonely, and yet lovely; where many of them, too,
show traces of having been inhabited in ancient
times by a race of lake-dwellers, whose pile-supported
villages vanished ages ago; and where
bread and cheese are as classic as beer and candles,
these particulars are localized in the legend. In the
Faro Islands, where the seal is a familiar yet ever-mysterious
object, with its human-like eyes, and
glossy skin, the wife of supernatural race is a
transformed seal. She comes ashore every ninth
night, sheds her skin, leaves it on the shore, and
dances with her fairy companions. A mortal steals
her sealskin dress, and when day breaks, and her
companions return to their abode in the sea, compels
her to remain and be his wife. Some day he offends
her; she recovers her skin and plunges into the sea.
In China, the superstition appears in a Lew-chewan
legend mentioned by Dr. Dennys,[30] which relates
how a fairy in the guise of a beautiful woman is
found bathing in a man’s well. He persuades her
to marry him, and she remains with him for nine
years, at the end of which time, despite the affection
she has for their two children, she ‘glides upwards
into a cloud’ and disappears.
49]
Mountain Fairies—The Gwyllion—The Old Woman of the Mountain—The
Black Mountain Gwyll—Exorcism by Knife—Occult Intellectual
Powers of Welsh Goats—The Legend of Cadwaladr’s
Goat.
The Gwyllion are female fairies of frightful characteristics,
who haunt lonely roads in the Welsh
mountains, and lead night-wanderers astray. They
partake somewhat of the aspect of the Hecate of
Greek mythology, who rode on the storm, and was
a hag of horrid guise. The Welsh word gwyll is
variously used to signify gloom, shade, duskiness, a
hag, a witch, a fairy, and a goblin; but its special
application is to these mountain fairies of gloomy
and harmful habits, as distinct from the Ellyllon of
the forest glades and dingles, which are more often
beneficent. The Gwyllion take on a more distinct
individuality under another name—as the Ellyllon
do in mischievous Puck—and the Old Woman of
the Mountain typifies all her kind. She is very
carefully described by the Prophet Jones,[31] in the
guise in which she haunted Llanhiddel Mountain
in Monmouthshire. This was the semblance of a
poor old woman, with an oblong four-cornered hat,
ash-coloured clothes, her apron thrown across her
shoulder, with a pot or wooden can in her hand,
such as poor people carry to fetch milk with, always
going before the spectator, and sometimes crying
‘Wow up!’ This is an English form of a Welsh cry
50]
of distress, ‘Wwb!’ or ‘Ww-bwb!’[32] Those who
saw this apparition, whether by night or on a misty
day, would be sure to lose their way, though they
might be perfectly familiar with the road. Sometimes
they heard her cry, ‘Wow up!’ when they
did not see her. Sometimes when they went out
by night, to fetch coal, water, etc., the dwellers near
that mountain would hear the cry very close to
them, and immediately after they would hear it
afar off, as if it were on the opposite mountain, in
the parish of Aberystruth. The popular tradition
in that district was that the Old Woman of the
Mountain was the spirit of one Juan White, who
lived time out of mind in those parts, and was
thought to be a witch; because the mountains were
not haunted in this manner until after Juan White’s
death.[33] When people first lost their way, and saw
her before them, they used to hurry forward and try
to catch her, supposing her to be a flesh-and-blood
woman, who could set them right; but they never
could overtake her, and she on her part never
looked back; so that no man ever saw her face.
She has also been seen in the Black Mountain in
Breconshire. Robert Williams, of Langattock, Crickhowel,
‘a substantial man and of undoubted veracity,’
tells this tale: As he was travelling one night over
part of the Black Mountain, he saw the Old
Woman, and at the same time found he had lost
his way. Not knowing her to be a spectre he
hallooed to her to stay for him, but receiving no
answer thought she was deaf. He then hastened
51]
his steps, thinking to overtake her, but the faster he
ran the further he found himself behind her, at
which he wondered very much, not knowing the
reason of it. He presently found himself stumbling
in a marsh, at which discovery his vexation increased;
and then he heard the Old Woman laughing at him
with a weird, uncanny, crackling old laugh. This
set him to thinking she might be a gwyll; and
when he happened to draw out his knife for some
purpose, and the Old Woman vanished, then he was
sure of it; for Welsh ghosts and fairies are afraid
of a knife.
Another account relates that John ap John, of
Cwm Celyn, set out one morning before daybreak
to walk to Caerleon Fair. As he ascended Milfre
Mountain he heard a shouting behind him as if it
were on Bryn Mawr, which is a part of the Black
Mountain in Breconshire. Soon after he heard the
shouting on his left hand, at Bwlch y Llwyn, nearer
to him, whereupon he was seized with a great fright,
and began to suspect it was no human voice. He
had already been wondering, indeed, what any one
could be doing at that hour in the morning, shouting
on the mountain side. Still going on, he came
up higher on the mountain, when he heard the
shouting just before him, at Gilfach fields, to the
right—and now he was sure it was the Old Woman
of the Mountain, who purposed leading him astray.
Presently he heard behind him the noise of a coach,
and with it the special cry of the Old Woman of the
Mountain, viz., ‘Wow up!’ Knowing very well
that no coach could go that way, and still hearing its
noise approaching nearer and nearer, he became
thoroughly terrified, and running out of the road
threw himself down upon the ground and buried his
52]
face in the heath, waiting for the phantom to pass.
When it was gone out of hearing, he arose; and
hearing the birds singing as the day began to break,
also seeing some sheep before him, his fear went
quite off. And this, says the Prophet Jones, was
‘no profane, immoral man,’ but ‘an honest, peaceable,
knowing man, and a very comely person’ moreover.
The exorcism by knife appears to be a Welsh
notion; though there is an old superstition of wide
prevalence in Europe that to give to or receive
from a friend a knife or a pair of scissors cuts friendship.
I have even encountered this superstition in
America; once an editorial friend at Indianapolis
gave me a very handsome pocket-knife, which
he refused to part with except at the price of one
cent, lawful coin of the realm, asserting that we
should become enemies without this precaution. In
China, too, special charms are associated with
knives, and a knife which has slain a fellow-being is
an invaluable possession. In Wales, according to
Jones, the Gwyllion often came into the houses of
the people at Aberystruth, especially in stormy
weather, and the inmates made them welcome—not
through any love they bore them, but through fear
of the hurts the Gwyllion might inflict if offended—by
providing clean water for them, and taking
especial care that no knife, or other cutting tool,
should be in the corner near the fire, where the
fairies would go to sit. ‘For want of which care
many were hurt by them.’ While it was desirable
to exorcise them when in the open air, it was not
deemed prudent to display an inhospitable spirit
towards any member of the fairy world. The cases
of successful exorcism by knife are many, and
53]
nothing in the realm of faerie is better authenticated.
There was Evan Thomas, who, travelling by night
over Bedwellty Mountain, towards the valley of
Ebwy Fawr, where his house and estate were,
saw the Gwyllion on each side of him, some of them
dancing around him in fantastic fashion. He also
heard the sound of a bugle-horn winding in the air,
and there seemed to be invisible hunters riding by.
He then began to be afraid, but recollected his
having heard that any person seeing Gwyllion may
drive them away by drawing out a knife. So he
drew out his knife, and the fairies vanished directly.
Now Evan Thomas was ‘an old gentleman of such
strict veracity that he’ on one occasion ‘did confess
a truth against himself,’ when he was ‘like to suffer
loss’ thereby, and notwithstanding he ‘was persuaded
by some not to do it, yet he would persist in
telling the truth, to his own hurt.’
Should we find, in tracing these notions back to
their source, that they are connected with Arthur’s
sword Excalibur? If so, there again we touch the
primeval world.
Jones says that the Old Woman of the Mountain
has, since about 1800, (at least in South Wales,)
been driven into close quarters by the light of the
Gospel—in fact, that she now haunts mines—or in
the preacher’s formal words, ‘the coal-pits and
holes of the earth.’
Among the traditions of the origin of the Gwyllion
is one which associates them with goats. Goats are
in Wales held in peculiar esteem for their supposed
occult intellectual powers. They are believed to
be on very good terms with the Tylwyth Teg, and
possessed of more knowledge than their appearance
indicates. It is one of the peculiarities of the
54]
Tylwyth Teg that every Friday night they comb the
goats’ beards to make them decent for Sunday.
Their association with the Gwyllion is related in the
legend of Cadwaladr’s goat: Cadwaladr owned a
very handsome goat, named Jenny, of which he
was extremely fond; and which seemed equally
fond of him; but one day, as if the very diawl
possessed her, she ran away into the hills, with
Cadwaladr tearing after her, half mad with anger
and affright. At last his Welsh blood got so hot,
as the goat eluded him again and again, that he
flung a stone at her, which knocked her over a precipice,
and she fell bleating to her doom. Cadwaladr
made his way to the foot of the crag; the goat was
dying, but not dead, and licked his hand—which so
affected the poor man that he burst into tears, and
sitting on the ground took the goat’s head on his
arm. The moon rose, and still he sat there.
Presently he found that the goat had become transformed
to a beautiful young woman, whose brown
eyes, as her head lay on his arm, looked into his in
a very disturbing way. ‘Ah, Cadwaladr,’ said she,
‘have I at last found you?’ Now Cadwaladr had a
wife at home, and was much discomfited by this
singular circumstance; but when the goat—yn awr
maiden—arose, and putting her black slipper on
the end of a moonbeam, held out her hand to him,
he put his hand in hers and went with her. As
for the hand, though it looked so fair, it felt just like
a hoof. They were soon on the top of the highest
mountain in Wales, and surrounded by a vapoury
company of goats with shadowy horns. These
raised a most unearthly bleating about his ears.
One, which seemed to be the king, had a voice that
sounded above the din as the castle bells of Carmarthen
used to do long ago above all the other
55]
bells in the town. This one rushed at Cadwaladr
and butting him in the stomach sent him toppling
over a crag as he had sent his poor nannygoat.
When he came to himself, after his fall, the morning
sun was shining on him and the birds were singing
over his head. But he saw no more of either his
goat or the fairy she had turned into, from that
time to his death.
56]
Changelings—The Plentyn-newid—The Cruel Creed of Ignorance
regarding Changelings—Modes of Ridding the House of the Fairy
Child—The Legend of the Frugal Meal—Legend of the Place of
Strife—Dewi Dal and the Fairies—Prevention of Fairy Kidnapping—Fairies
caught in the Act by Mothers—Piety as an
Exorcism.
The Tylwyth Teg have a fatal admiration for lovely
children. Hence the abundant folk-lore concerning
infants who have been stolen from their cradles, and
a plentyn-newid (change-child—the equivalent of
our changeling) left in its place by the Tylwyth
Teg. The plentyn-newid has the exact appearance
of the stolen infant, at first; but its aspect speedily
alters. It grows ugly of face, shrivelled of form,
ill-tempered, wailing, and generally frightful. It
bites and strikes, and becomes a terror to the poor
mother. Sometimes it is idiotic; but again it has
a supernatural cunning, not only impossible in a
mortal babe, but not even appertaining to the oldest
heads, on other than fairy shoulders. The veracious
Prophet Jones testifies to a case where he himself
saw the plentyn-newid—an idiot left in the stead
of a son of Edmund John William, of the Church
Valley, Monmouthshire. Says Jones: ‘I saw him
myself. There was something diabolical in his
aspect,’ but especially in his motions. He ‘made
very disagreeable screaming sounds,’ which used
to frighten strangers greatly, but otherwise he was
harmless. He was of a ‘dark, tawny complexion.’
57]
He lived longer than such children usually lived
in Wales in that day, (a not altogether pleasant
intimation regarding the hard lot to which such
children were subjected by their unwilling parents,)
reaching the age of ten or twelve years. But
the creed of ignorance everywhere as regards
changelings is a very cruel one, and reminds us of
the tests of the witchcraft trials. Under the
pretence of proving whether the objectionable baby
is a changeling or not, it is held on a shovel over
the fire, or it is bathed in a solution of the fox-glove,
which kills it; a case where this test was applied
is said to have actually occurred in Carnarvonshire
in 1857. That there is nothing specially Welsh
in this, needs not to be pointed out. Apart from
the fact that infanticide, like murder, is of no
country, similar practices as to changelings have
prevailed in most European lands, either to test
the child’s uncanny quality, or, that being admitted,
to drive it away and thus compel the fairies to
restore the missing infant. In Denmark the mother
heats the oven, and places the changeling on the
peel, pretending to put it in; or whips it severely
with a rod; or throws it into the water. In Sweden
they employ similar methods. In Ireland the
hot shovel is used. With regard to a changeling
which Martin Luther tells of in his ‘Colloquia
Mensalia,’ the great reformer declared to the
Prince of Anhalt, that if he were prince of that
country he would ‘venture homicidium thereon,
and would throw it into the River Moldaw.’ He
admonished the people to pray devoutly to God
to take away the devil, which ‘was done accordingly;
and the second year after the changeling died.’
It is hardly probable that the child was very well
fed during the two years that this pious process
58]
was going on. Its starved ravenous appetite
indeed is indicated in Luther’s description: It
‘would eat as much as two threshers, would laugh
and be joyful when any evil happened in the house,
but would cry and be very sad when all went well.’
A story, told in various forms in Wales, preserves
a tradition of an exceedingly frugal meal which was
employed as a means of banishing a plentyn-newid.
M. Villemarqué, when in Glamorganshire, heard
this story, which he found to be precisely the same
as a Breton legend, in which the changeling utters a
rhymed triad as follows:
Gweliz vi ken guelet iar wenn,
Gweliz mez ken gwelet gwezen.
Gweliz mez ha gweliz gwial,
Gweliz derven e Koat Brezal,
Biskoaz na weliz kemend all.
In the Glamorgan story the changeling was heard
muttering to himself in a cracked voice: ‘I have
seen the acorn before I saw the oak: I have seen
the egg before I saw the white hen: I have never
seen the like of this.’ M. Villemarqué found it
remarkable that these words form in Welsh a rhymed
triad nearly the same as in the Breton ballad, thus:
Gweliz mez ken gwelet derven,
Gweliz vi ken gwelet iar wenn,
Erioez ne wiliz evelhenn.[34]
Whence he concluded that the story and the rhyme
are older than the seventh century, the epoch of the
separation of the Britons of Wales and Armorica.
And this is the story: A mother whose child had
been stolen, and a changeling left in its place, was
advised by the Virgin Mary to prepare a meal for
59]
ten farm-servants in an egg-shell, which would make
the changeling speak. This she did, and the
changeling asked what she was about. She told
him. Whereupon he exclaimed, ‘A meal for ten,
dear mother, in one egg-shell?’ Then he uttered
the exclamation given above, (‘I have seen the
acorn,’ etc.,) and the mother replied, ‘You have
seen too many things, my son, you shall have a
beating.’ With this she fell to beating him, the
child fell to bawling, and the fairy came and took
him away, leaving the stolen child sleeping sweetly
in the cradle. It awoke and said, ‘Ah, mother, I
have been a long time asleep!’
I have encountered this tale frequently among the
Welsh, and it always keeps in the main the likeness
of M. Villemarqué’s story. The following is a
nearly literal version as related in Radnorshire
(an adjoining county to Montgomeryshire), and
which, like most of these tales, is characterised by
the non-primitive tendency to give names of
localities: ‘In the parish of Trefeglwys, near
Llanidloes, in the county of Montgomery, there
is a little shepherd’s cot that is commonly called
the Place of Strife, on account of the extraordinary
strife that has been there. The inhabitants of the
cottage were a man and his wife, and they had born
to them twins, whom the woman nursed with great
care and tenderness. Some months after, indispensable
business called the wife to the house of
one of her nearest neighbours, yet notwithstanding
that she had not far to go, she did not like to leave
her children by themselves in their cradle, even
for a minute, as her house was solitary, and there
were many tales of goblins, or the Tylwyth Teg,
60]
haunting the neighbourhood. However, she went
and returned as soon as she could;’ but on her
way back she was ‘not a little terrified at seeing,
though it was midday, some of the old elves of the
blue petticoat.’ She hastened home in great
apprehension; but all was as she had left it, so
that her mind was greatly relieved. ‘But after
some time had passed by, the good people began
to wonder that the twins did not grow at all, but
still continued little dwarfs. The man would have
it that they were not his children; the woman said
they must be their children, and about this arose
the great strife between them that gave name to
the place. One evening when the woman was
very heavy of heart, she determined to go and
consult a conjuror, feeling assured that everything
was known to him.... Now there was to be a
harvest soon of the rye and oats, so the wise man
said to her, “When you are preparing dinner for the
reapers, empty the shell of a hen’s egg, and boil
the shell full of pottage, and take it out through
the door as if you meant it for a dinner to the
reapers, and then listen what the twins will say;
if you hear the children speaking things above the
understanding of children, return into the house,
take them and throw them into the waves of Llyn
Ebyr, which is very near to you; but if you don’t
hear anything remarkable do them no injury.” And
when the day of the reaping came, the woman did
as her adviser had recommended to her; and as
she went outside the door to listen she heard one
of the children say to the other:
Gwelais fesen cyn gweled derwen;
Gwelais wy cyn gweled iâr;
Erioed ni welais ferwi bwyd i fedel
Mewn plisgyn wy iâr!
61]
Acorns before oak I knew;
An egg before a hen;
Never one hen’s egg-shell stew
Enough for harvest men!
‘On this the mother returned to her house and
took the two children and threw them into the Llyn;
and suddenly the goblins in their blue trousers came
to save their dwarfs, and the mother had her own
children back again; and thus the strife between
her and her husband ended.’[35]
This class of story is not always confined to the
case of the plentyn-newid, as I have said. It is
applied to the household fairy, when the latter, as in
the following instance, appears to have brought a
number of extremely noisy friends and acquaintances
to share his shelter. Dewi Dal was a farmer, whose
house was over-run with fairies, so that he could not
sleep of nights for the noise they made. Dewi
consulted a wise man of Taiar, who entrusted Dewi’s
wife to do certain things, which she did carefully, as
follows: ‘It was the commencement of oat harvest,
when Cae Mawr, or the big field, which it took
fifteen men to mow in a day, was ripe for the
harvesters. “I will prepare food for the fifteen
men who are going to mow Cae Mawr to-morrow,”
said Eurwallt, the wife, aloud. “Yes, do,” replied
Dewi, also aloud, so that the fairies might hear,
“and see that the food is substantial and sufficient
for the hard work before them.” Said Eurwallt,
“The fifteen men shall have no reason to complain
upon that score. They shall be fed according to our
means.” Then when evening was come Eurwallt
prepared food for the harvesters’ sustenance upon
the following day. Having procured a sparrow,
62]
she trussed it like a fowl, and roasted it by the
kitchen fire. She then placed some salt in a nut-shell,
and set the sparrow and the salt, with a small
piece of bread, upon the table, ready for the fifteen
men’s support while mowing Cae Mawr. So when
the fairies beheld the scanty provision made for so
many men, they said “Let us quickly depart from
this place, for alas! the means of our hosts are
exhausted. Who before this was ever so reduced
in circumstances as to serve up a sparrow for the
day’s food of fifteen men?” So they departed upon
that very night. And Dewi Dal and his family
lived, ever afterwards, in comfort and peace.’[36]
The Welsh fairies have several times been detected
in the act of carrying off a child; and in these cases,
if the mother has been sufficiently energetic in her
objections, they have been forced to abandon their
purpose. Dazzy Walter, the wife of Abel Walter,
of Ebwy Fawr, one night in her husband’s absence
awoke in her bed and found her baby was not at her
side. In great fright she sought for it, and caught
it with her hand upon the boards above the bed,
which was as far as the fairies had succeeded in
carrying it. And Jennet Francis, of that same
valley of Ebwy Fawr, one night in bed felt her
infant son being taken from her arms; whereupon
she screamed and hung on, and, as she phrased it,
‘God and me were too hard for them.’ This son
subsequently grew up and became a famous preacher
of the gospel.
JENNET FRANCIS STRUGGLES WITH THE
FAIRIES FOR HER BABY.
There are special exorcisms and preventive measures
to interfere with the fairies in their quest of
infants. The most significant of these, throughout
63]
Cambria, is a general habit of piety. Any pious
exclamation has value as an exorcism; but it will
not serve as a preventive. To this end you must
put a knife in the child’s cradle when you leave it
alone, or you must lay
a pair of tongs across
the cradle. But the
best preventive is baptism;
it is usually the
unbaptised infant that
is stolen. So in Friesland, Germany, it is considered
a protection against the fairies who deal in changelings,
to lay a Bible under the child’s pillow. In
Thuringia it is deemed an infallible preventive to
hang the father’s breeches against the wall. Anything
64]
more trivial than this, as a matter for the consideration
of grave and scholarly men, one could hardly
imagine; but it is in precisely these trivial or seemingly
trivial details that the student of comparative
folk-lore finds his most extraordinary indices. Such
a superstition in isolation would suggest nothing; but
it is found again in Scotland,[37] and other countries,
including China, where ‘a pair of the trousers of
the child’s father are put on the frame of the bedstead
in such a way that the waist shall hang downward
or be lower than the legs. On the trousers
is stuck a piece of red paper, having four words
written upon it intimating that all unfavourable
influences are to go into the trousers instead of
afflicting the babe.’[38]
65]
Living with the Tylwyth Teg—The Tale of Elidurus—Shuï Rhys and
the Fairies—St. Dogmell’s Parish, Pembrokeshire—Dancing with
the Ellyllon—The Legend of Rhys and Llewellyn—Death from
joining in the Fairy Reel—Legend of the Bush of Heaven—The
Forest of the Magic Yew—The Tale of Twm and Iago—Taffy ap
Sion, a Legend of Pencader—The Traditions of Pant Shon Shenkin—Tudur
of Llangollen; the Legend of Nant yr Ellyllon—Polly
Williams and the Trefethin Elves—The Fairies of Frennifawr—Curiosity
Tales—The Fiend Master—Iago ap Dewi—The Original
of Rip van Winkle.
Closely akin to the subject of changelings is that of
adults or well-grown children being led away to live
with the Tylwyth Teg. In this field the Welsh
traditions are innumerable, and deal not only with
the last century or two, but distinctly with the
middle ages. Famed among British goblins are
those fairies which are immortalised in the Tale of
Elidurus. This tale was written in Latin by Giraldus
Cambrensis (as he called himself, after the pedantic
fashion of his day), a Welshman, born at Pembroke
Castle, and a hearty admirer of everything Welsh,
himself included. He was beyond doubt a man of
genius, and of profound learning. In 1188 he made
a tour through Wales, in the interest of the crusade
then in contemplation, and afterwards wrote his
book—a fascinating picture of manners and customs
in Wales in the twelfth century.
The scene of the tale is that Vale of Neath, already
named as a famous centre of fairyland. Elidurus,
when a youth of twelve years, ‘in order to avoid the
severity of his preceptor,’ ran away from school,
66]
‘and concealed himself under the hollow bank of a
river.’ After he had fasted in that situation for
two days, ‘two little men of pigmy stature appeared
to him,’ and said, ‘If you will go with us, we will
lead you into a country full of delights and sports.’
Assenting, Elidurus rose up and ‘followed his guides
through a path at first subterraneous and dark, into
a most beautiful country, but obscure and not illuminated
with the full light of the sun.’ All the days
in that country ‘were cloudy, and the nights extremely
dark.’ The boy was brought before the
king of the strange little people, and introduced to
him in the presence of his Court. Having examined
Elidurus for a long time, the king delivered him to
his son, that prince being then a boy. The men of
this country, though of the smallest stature, were
very well proportioned, fair-complexioned, and wore
long hair. ‘They had horses and greyhounds adapted
to their size. They neither ate flesh nor fish, but
lived on milk-diet, made up into messes with saffron.
As often as they returned from our hemisphere, they
reprobated our ambition, infidelities, and inconstancies;
and though they had no form of public worship,
were, it seems, strict lovers and reverers of truth.
The boy frequently returned to our hemisphere,
sometimes by the way he had gone, sometimes by
others; at first in company, and afterwards alone;
and made himself known only to his mother, to
whom he described what he had seen. Being desired
by her to bring her a present of gold, with which
that country abounded, he stole, whilst at play with
the king’s son, a golden ball with which he used to
divert himself, and brought it in haste to his mother,
but not unpursued; for, as he entered the house of
his father, he stumbled at the threshold;’ the ball
fell, ‘and two pigmies seizing it, departed, showing
67]
the boy every mark of contempt and derision. Notwithstanding
every attempt for the space of a year,
he never again could find the track to the subterraneous
passage.’ He had made himself acquainted
with the language of his late hosts, ‘which was very
conformable to the Greek idiom. When they asked
for water, they said Udor udorum; when they want
salt, they say Halgein udorum.’[39]
Exactly similar to this medieval legend in spirit,
although differing widely in detail, is the modern
story of Shuï Rhys, told to me by a peasant in
Cardiganshire. Shuï was a beautiful girl of seventeen,
tall and fair, with a skin like ivory, hair black
and curling, and eyes of dark velvet. She was but
a poor farmer’s daughter, notwithstanding her beauty,
and among her duties was that of driving up the
cows for the milking. Over this work she used to
loiter sadly, to pick flowers by the way, or chase
the butterflies, or amuse herself in any agreeable
manner that fortune offered. For her loitering she
was often chided; indeed, people said Shuï’s mother
was far too sharp with the girl, and that it was for
no good the mother had so bitter a tongue. After
all the girl meant no harm, they said. But when
one night Shuï never came home till bed-time,
leaving the cows to care for themselves, dame Rhys
took the girl to task as she never had done before.
‘Ysgwaetheroedd, mami,’ said Shuï, ‘I couldn’t
help it; it was the Tylwyth Teg.’ The dame was
aghast at this, but she could not answer it—for well
she knew the Tylwyth Teg were often seen in the
woods of Cardigan. Shuï was at first shy about
talking of the fairies, but finally confessed they were
68]
little men in green coats, who danced around her
and made music on their tiny harps; and they
talked to her in language too beautiful to be repeated;
indeed she couldn’t understand the words,
though she knew well enough what the fairies
meant. Many a time after that Shuï was late;
69]
but now nobody chided her, for fear of offending
the fairies. At last one night Shuï did not come
home at all. In alarm the woods were searched;
there was no sign of her; and never was she seen
in Cardigan again. Her mother watched in the
fields on the Teir-nos Ysprydion, or three nights of
the year when goblins are sure to be abroad; but
Shuï never returned. Once indeed there came back
to the neighbourhood a wild rumour that Shuï Rhys
had been seen in a great city in a foreign land—Paris,
perhaps, or London, who knows? but this
tale was in no way injurious to the sad belief that
the fairies had carried her off; they might take her
to those well-known centres of idle and sinful
pleasure, as well as to any other place.
SHUÏ RHYS AND THE TYLWYTH TEG.
An old man who died in St. Dogmell’s parish,
Pembrokeshire, a short time since (viz., in 1860),
nearly a hundred years old, used to say that that
whole neighbourhood was considered ‘fou.’ It was
a common experience for men to be led astray there
all night, and after marvellous adventures and untellable
trampings, which seemed as if they would
be endless, to find when day broke that they were
close to their own homes. In one case, a man who
was led astray chanced to have with him a number
of hoop-rods, and as he wandered about under the
influence of the deluding phantom, he was clever
enough to drop the rods one by one, so that next
day he might trace his journeyings. When daylight
came, and the search for the hoop-rods was
entered on, it was found they were scattered over
miles upon miles of country. Another time, a St.
Dogmell’s fisherman was returning home from a
wedding at Moelgrove, and it being very dark, the
70]
fairies led him astray, but after a few hours he had
the good luck (which Sir John Franklin might
have envied him) to ‘discover the North Pole,’ and
by this beacon he was able to steer his staggering
barque to the safe port of his own threshold. It
is even gravely stated that a severe and dignified
clerical person, no longer in the frisky time of life,
but advanced in years, was one night forced to join
in the magic dance of St. Dogmell’s, and keep it
up till nearly daybreak. Specific details in this
instance are wanting; but it was no doubt the
Ellyllon who led all these folk astray, and put a cap
of oblivion on their heads, which prevented them
from ever telling their adventures clearly.
Dancing and music play a highly important part
in stories of this class. The Welsh fairies are most
often dancing together when seen. They seek to
entice mortals to dance with them, and when anyone
is drawn to do so, it is more than probable
he will not return to his friends for a long time.
Edmund William Rees, of Aberystruth, was thus
drawn away by the fairies, and came back at the
year’s end, looking very bad. But he could not
give a very clear account of what he had been
about, only said he had been dancing. This was a
common thing in these cases. Either they were
not able to, or they dared not, talk about their experiences.
Two farm servants named Rhys and Llewellyn
were one evening at twilight returning home from
their work, when Rhys cried out that he heard the
fairy music. Llewellyn could hear nothing, but
Rhys said it was a tune to which he had danced a
hundred times, and would again, and at once. ‘Go
71]
on,’ says he, ‘and I’ll soon catch you up again.’
Llewellyn objected, but Rhys stopped to hear no
more; he bounded away and left Llewellyn to go
home alone, which he did, believing Rhys had
merely gone off on a spree, and would come home
drunk before morning. But the morning came, and
no Rhys. In vain search was made, still no Rhys.
Time passed on; days grew into months; and at
last suspicion fell on Llewellyn, that he had murdered
Rhys. He was put in prison. A farmer learned
in fairy-lore, suspecting how it was, proposed that
he and a company of neighbours should go with
poor Llewellyn to the spot where he had last seen
Rhys. Agreed. Arrived at the spot, ‘Hush,’ cried
Llewellyn, ‘I hear music! I hear the sweet music
of the harps!’ They all listened, but could hear
nothing. ‘Put your foot on mine, David,’ says
Llewellyn to one of the company; his own foot
was on the outward edge of a fairy ring as he
spoke. David put his foot on Llewellyn’s, and so
did they all, one after another; and then they heard
the sound of many harps, and saw within a circle
about twenty feet across, great numbers of little
people dancing round and round. And there was
Rhys, dancing away like a madman! As he came
whirling by, Llewellyn caught him by his smock-frock
and pulled him out of the circle. ‘Where
are the horses? where are the horses?’ cried
Rhys in an excited manner. ‘Horses, indeed!’
sneered Llewellyn, in great disgust; ‘wfft! go home.
Horses!’ But Rhys was for dancing longer, declaring
he had not been there five minutes. ‘You’ve
been there,’ says Llewellyn, ‘long enough to come
near getting me hanged, anyhow.’ They got him
home finally, but he was never the same man
again, and soon after he died.
72]
In the great majority of these stories the hero
dies immediately after his release from the thraldom
of the fairies—in some cases with a suddenness and
a completeness of obliteration as appalling as
dramatic. The following story, well known in Carmarthenshire,
presents this detail with much force:
There was a certain farmer who, while going early
one morning to fetch his horses from the pasture,
heard harps playing. Looking carefully about for
the source of this music, he presently saw a company
of Tylwyth Teg footing it merrily in a corelw.
Resolving to join their dance and cultivate their
acquaintance, the farmer stepped into the fairy ring.
Never had man his resolution more thoroughly
carried out, for having once begun the reel he was
not allowed to finish it till years had elapsed. Even
then he might not have been released, had it not
chanced that a man one day passed by the lonely
spot, so close to the ring that he saw the farmer
dancing. ‘Duw catto ni!’ cried the man, ‘God
save us! but this is a merry one. Hai, holo! man,
what, in Heaven’s name, makes you so lively?’
This question, in which the name of Heaven was
uttered, broke the spell which rested on the farmer,
who spoke like one in a dream: ‘O dyn!’ cried
he, ‘what’s become of the horses?’ Then he
stepped from the fairy circle and instantly crumbled
away and mingled his dust with the earth.
A similar tale is told in Carnarvon, but with the
fairy dance omitted and a pious character substituted,
which helps to indicate the antiquity of this class of
legend, by showing that it was one of the monkish
adoptions of an earlier story. Near Clynog, in Carnarvonshire,
there is a place called Llwyn y Nef,
73]
(the Bush of Heaven,) which thus received its name:
In Clynog lived a monk of most devout life, who
longed to be taken to heaven. One evening, whilst
walking without the monastery by the riverside, he
sat down under a green tree and fell into a deep
reverie, which ended in sleep; and he slept for
thousands of years. At last he heard a voice calling
unto him, ‘Sleeper, awake and be up.’ He awoke.
All was strange to him except the old monastery,
which still looked down upon the river. He went
to the monastery, and was made much of. He
asked for a bed to rest himself on and got it. Next
morning when the brethren sought him, they found
nothing in the bed but a handful of ashes.[40]
So in the monkish tale of the five saints, who
sleep in the cave of Caio, reappears the legend of
Arthur’s sleeping warriors under Craig-y-Ddinas.
PLUCKED FROM THE FAIRY CIRCLE.
A tradition is current in Mathavarn, in the parish
of Llanwrin, and the Cantref of Cyfeillioc, concerning
a certain wood called Ffridd yr Ywen, (the
Forest of the Yew,) that it is so called on account of
a magical yew-tree which grows exactly in the
middle of the forest. Under that tree there is a
fairy circle called The Dancing Place of the Goblin.
There are several fairy circles in the Forest of the
Yew, but the one under the yew-tree in the middle
has this legend connected with it: Many years
ago, two farm-servants, whose names were Twm
and Iago, went out one day to work in the Forest
of the Yew. Early in the afternoon the country
became covered with so dense a mist that the
youths thought the sun was setting, and they
prepared to go home; but when they came to the
74]
yew-tree in the middle of the forest, suddenly they
found all light around them. They now thought it
too early to go home, and concluded to lie down
under the yew-tree and have a nap. By-and-by
Twm awoke, to find his companion gone. He was
much surprised at this, but concluded Iago had
gone to the village on an errand of which they had
been speaking before they fell asleep. So Twm
went home, and to all inquiries concerning Iago,
he answered, ‘Gone to the cobbler’s in the village.’
But Iago was still absent next morning, and now
Twm was cross-questioned severely as to what had
become of his fellow-servant. Then he confessed
that they had fallen asleep under the yew where
the fairy circle was, and from that moment he had
seen nothing more of Iago. They searched the
whole forest over, and the whole country round, for
many days, and finally Twm went to a gwr cyfarwydd
(or conjuror), a common trade in those days,
75]
says the legend. The conjuror gave him this advice:
‘Go to the same place where you and the lad slept.
Go there exactly a year after the boy was lost. Let
it be on the same day of the year and at the same
time of the day; but take care that you do not step
inside the fairy ring. Stand on the border of the
green circle you saw there, and the boy will come
out with many of the goblins to dance. When you
see him so near to you that you may take hold of
him, snatch him out of the ring as quickly as you can.’
These instructions were obeyed. Iago appeared,
dancing in the ring with the Tylwyth Teg, and was
promptly plucked forth. ‘Duw! Duw!’ cried Tom,
‘how wan and pale you look! And don’t you feel
hungry too?’ ‘No,’ said the boy, ‘and if I did,
have I not here in my wallet the remains of my
dinner that I had before I fell asleep?’ But when
he looked in his wallet, the food was not there.
‘Well, it must be time to go home,’ he said, with a
sigh; for he did not know that a year had passed
by. His look was like a skeleton, and as soon as
he had tasted food, he mouldered away.
Taffy ap Sion, the shoemaker’s son, living near
Pencader, Carmarthenshire, was a lad who many
years ago entered the fairy circle on the mountain
hard by there, and having danced a few minutes,
as he supposed, chanced to step out. He was then
astonished to find that the scene which had been
so familiar was now quite strange to him. Here
were roads and houses he had never seen, and in
place of his father’s humble cottage there now stood
a fine stone farm-house. About him were lovely
cultivated fields instead of the barren mountain he
was accustomed to. ‘Ah,’ thought he, ‘this is
76]
some fairy trick to deceive my eyes. It is not ten
minutes since I stepped into that circle, and now
when I step out they have built my father a new
house! Well, I only hope it is real; anyhow, I’ll
go and see.’ So he started off by a path he
knew instinctively, and suddenly struck against a
very solid hedge. He rubbed his eyes, felt the
hedge with his fingers, scratched his head, felt the
hedge again, ran a thorn into his fingers and cried
out, ‘Wbwb! this is no fairy hedge anyhow, nor,
from the age of the thorns, was it grown in a few
minutes’ time.’ So he climbed over it and walked
on. ‘Here was I born,’ said he, as he entered the
farmyard, staring wildly about him, ‘and not a thing
here do I know!’ His mystification was complete
when there came bounding towards him a huge dog,
barking furiously. ‘What dog is this? Get out,
you ugly brute! Don’t you know I’m master here?—at
least, when mother’s from home, for father
don’t count.’ But the dog only barked the harder.
‘Surely,’ muttered Taffy to himself, ‘I have lost
my road and am wandering through some unknown
neighbourhood; but no, yonder is the Careg Hir!’
and he stood staring at the well-known erect stone
thus called, which still stands on the mountain south
of Pencader, and is supposed to have been placed
there in ancient times to commemorate a victory.
As Taffy stood thus looking at the Long Stone, he
heard footsteps behind him, and turning, beheld the
occupant of the farm-house, who had come out to
see why his dog was barking. Poor Taffy was so
ragged and wan that the farmer’s Welsh heart was
at once stirred to sympathy. ‘Who are you, poor
man?’ he asked. To which Taffy answered, ‘I
know who I was, but I do not know who I am now.
I was the son of a shoemaker who lived in this
77]
place, this morning; for that rock, though it is
changed a little, I know too well.’ ‘Poor fellow,’
said the farmer, ‘you have lost your senses. This
house was built by my great-grandfather, repaired by
my grandfather; and that part there, which seems
newly built, was done about three years ago at
my expense. You must be deranged, or have missed
the road; but come in and refresh yourself with
some victuals, and rest.’ Taffy was half persuaded
that he had overslept himself and lost his road, but
looking back he saw the rock before mentioned,
and exclaimed, ‘It is but an hour since I was on
yonder rock robbing a hawk’s nest.’ ‘Where have
you been since?’ Taffy related his adventure.
‘Ah,’ quoth the farmer, ‘I see how it is—you have
been with the fairies. Pray, who was your father?’
‘Sion Evan y Crydd o Glanrhyd,’ was the answer.
‘I never heard of such a man,’ said the farmer,
shaking his head, ‘nor of such a place as Glanrhyd,
either: but no matter, after you have taken a little
food we will step down to Catti Shon, at Pencader,
who will probably be able to tell us something.’
With this he beckoned Taffy to follow him, and
walked on; but hearing behind him the sound of
footsteps growing weaker and weaker, he turned
round, when to his horror he beheld the poor fellow
crumble in an instant to about a thimbleful of black
ashes. The farmer, though much terrified at this
sight, preserved his calmness sufficiently to go at
once and see old Catti, the aged crone he had
referred to, who lived at Pencader, near by. He
found her crouching over a fire of faggots, trying to
warm her old bones. ‘And how do you do the day,
Catti Shon?’ asked the farmer. ‘Ah,’ said old Catti,
‘I’m wonderful well, farmer, considering how old I
am.’ ‘Yes, yes, you’re very old. Now, since you
78]
are so old, let me ask you—do you remember anything
about Sion y Crydd o Glanrhyd? Was there
ever such a man, do you know?’ ‘Sion Glanrhyd?
O! I have some faint recollection of hearing my
grandfather, old Evan Shenkin, Penferdir, relate that
Sion’s son was lost one morning, and they never
heard of him afterwards, so that it was said he was
taken by the fairies. His father’s cot stood somewhere
near your house.’ ‘Were there many fairies
about at that time?’ asked the farmer. ‘O yes;
they were often seen on yonder hill, and I was told
they were lately seen in Pant Shon Shenkin, eating
flummery out of egg-shells, which they had stolen
from a farm hard by.’ ‘Dir anwyl fi!’ cried the
farmer; ‘dear me! I recollect now—I saw them
myself!’
Pant Shon[41] Shenkin, it must be here remarked,
was a famous place for the Carmarthenshire fairies.
The traditions thereabout respecting them are
numerous. Among the strangest is, that a woman
once actually caught a fairy on the mountain near
Pant Shon Shenkin, and that it remained long in
her custody, retaining still the same height and size,
but at last made its escape.
Another curious tradition relates that early one
Easter Monday, when the parishioners of Pencarreg
and Caio were met to play at football, they saw a
numerous company of Tylwyth Teg dancing. Being
so many in number, the young men were not
intimidated at all, but proceeded in a body towards
the puny tribe, who, perceiving them, removed to
79]
another place. The young men followed, whereupon
the little folks suddenly appeared dancing at the
first place. Seeing this, the men divided and
surrounded them, when they immediately became
invisible, and were never more seen there.
Ignorance of what transpired in the fairy circle
is not an invariable feature of legends like those we
have been observing. In the story of Tudur of
Llangollen, preserved by several old Welsh writers,
the hero’s experiences are given with much liveliness
of detail. The scene of this tale is a hollow near
Llangollen, on the mountain side half-way up to the
ruins of Dinas Bran Castle, which hollow is to this
day called Nant yr Ellyllon. It obtained its name,
according to tradition, in this wise: A young man,
called Tudur ap Einion Gloff, used in old times to
pasture his master’s sheep in that hollow. One summer’s
night, when Tudur was preparing to return
to the lowlands with his woolly charge, there suddenly
appeared, perched upon a stone near him, ‘a
little man in moss breeches with a fiddle under his
arm. He was the tiniest wee specimen of humanity
imaginable. His coat was made of birch leaves, and
he wore upon his head a helmet which consisted of
a gorse flower, while his feet were encased in pumps
made of beetle’s wings. He ran his fingers over
his instrument, and the music made Tudur’s hair
stand on end. “Nos da’ch’, nos da’ch’,” said the little
man, which means “Good-night, good-night to you,”
in English. “Ac i chwithau,” replied Tudur; which
again, in English, means “The same to you.” Then
continued the little man, “You are fond of dancing,
Tudur; and if you but tarry awhile you shall behold
some of the best dancers in Wales, and I am the
80]
musician.” Quoth Tudur, “Then where is your
harp? A Welshman even cannot dance without a
harp.” “Oh,” said the little man, “I can discourse
better dance music upon my fiddle.” “Is it a fiddle
you call that stringed wooden spoon in your hand?”
asked Tudur, for he had never seen such an instrument
before. And now Tudur beheld through the
dusk hundreds of pretty little sprites converging
towards the spot where they stood, from all parts
of the mountain. Some were dressed in white, and
some in blue, and some in pink, and some carried
glow-worms in their hands for torches. And so
lightly did they tread that not a blade nor a flower
was crushed beneath their weight, and every one
made a curtsey or a bow to Tudur as they passed,
and Tudur doffed his cap and moved to them in
return. Presently the little minstrel drew his bow
across the strings of his instrument, and the music
produced was so enchanting that Tudur stood transfixed
to the spot.’ At the sound of the sweet melody,
the Tylwyth Teg ranged themselves in groups, and
began to dance. Now of all the dancing Tudur
had ever seen, none was to be compared to that
he saw at this moment going on. He could not
help keeping time with his hands and feet to the
merry music, but he dared not join in the dance, ‘for
he thought within himself that to dance on a
mountain at night in strange company, to perhaps
the devil’s fiddle, might not be the most direct route
to heaven.’ But at last he found there was no resisting
this bewitching strain, joined to the sight of
the capering Ellyllon. ‘“Now for it, then,” screamed
Tudur, as he pitched his cap into the air under the
excitement of delight. “Play away, old devil;
brimstone and water, if you like!” No sooner were
the words uttered than everything underwent a
81]
change. The gorse-blossom cap vanished from the
minstrel’s head, and a pair of goat’s horns branched
out instead. His face turned as black as soot; a
long tail grew out of his leafy coat, while cloven
feet replaced the beetle-wing pumps. Tudur’s heart
was heavy, but his heels were light. Horror was
in his bosom, but the impetus of motion was in his
feet. The fairies changed into a variety of forms.
Some became goats, and some became dogs, some
assumed the shape of foxes, and others that of cats.
It was the strangest crew that ever surrounded a
human being. The dance became at last so furious
that Tudur could not distinctly make out the forms
of the dancers. They reeled around him with such
rapidity that they almost resembled a wheel of fire.
Still Tudur danced on. He could not stop, the
devil’s fiddle was too much for him, as the figure
with the goat’s horns kept pouring it out with
unceasing vigour, and Tudur kept reeling around in
spite of himself. Next day Tudur’s master ascended
the mountain in search of the lost shepherd and his
sheep. He found the sheep all right at the foot of
the Fron, but fancy his astonishment when, ascending
higher, he saw Tudur spinning like mad in the
middle of the basin now known as Nant yr Ellyllon.’
Some pious words of the master broke the charm,
and restored Tudur to his home in Llangollen,
where he told his adventures with great gusto for
many years afterwards.[42]
Polly Williams, a good dame who was born in
Trefethin parish, and lived at the Ship Inn, at
Pontypool, Monmouthshire, was wont to relate that,
when a child, she danced with the Tylwyth Teg.
The first time was one day while coming home from
82]
school. She saw the fairies dancing in a pleasant,
dry place, under a crab-tree, and, thinking they
were children like herself, went to them, when they
induced her to dance with them. She brought
them into an empty barn and they danced there
together. After that, during three or four years,
she often met and danced with them, when going to
or coming from school. She never could hear the
sound of their feet, and having come to know that
they were fairies, took off her ffollachau (clogs), so
that she, too, might make no noise, fearful that the
clattering of her clog-shodden feet was displeasing
to them. They were all dressed in blue and green
aprons, and, though they were so small, she could
see by their mature faces that they were no children.
Once when she came home barefoot, after dancing
with the fairies, she was chided for going to school
in that condition; but she held her tongue about the
fairies, for fear of trouble, and never told of them
till after she grew up. She gave over going with
them to dance, however, after three or four years,
and this displeased them. They tried to coax her
back to them, and, as she would not come, hurt her
by dislocating ‘one of her walking members,’[43]
which, as a euphemism for legs, surpasses anything
charged against American prudery.
Contrasting strongly with this matter-of-fact
account of a modern witness is the glowing description
of fairy life contained in the legend of the
Fairies of Frennifawr. About ten miles south of
Cardigan is the Pembrokeshire mountain called
Frennifawr, which is the scene of this tale: A
shepherd’s lad was tending his sheep on the small
83]
mountains called Frennifach one fine morning in
June. Looking to the top of Frennifawr to note
what way the fog hung—for if the fog on that
mountain hangs on the Pembrokeshire side, there
will be fair weather, if on the Cardigan side, storm—he
saw the Tylwyth Teg, in appearance like
tiny soldiers, dancing in a ring. He set out for
the scene of revelry, and soon drew near the ring
where, in a gay company of males and females, they
were footing it to the music of the harp. Never
had he seen such handsome people, nor any so
enchantingly cheerful. They beckoned him with
laughing faces to join them as they leaned backward
almost falling, whirling round and round with joined
hands. Those who were dancing never swerved from
the perfect circle; but some were clambering over the
old cromlech, and others chasing each other with surprising
swiftness and the greatest glee. Still others
rode about on small white horses of the most beautiful
form; these riders were little ladies, and their dresses
were indescribably elegant, surpassing the sun in
radiance, and varied in colour, some being of bright
whiteness, others the most vivid scarlet. The males
wore red tripled caps, and the ladies a light fantastic
headdress which waved in the wind. All this was
in silence, for the shepherd could not hear the harps,
though he saw them. But now he drew nearer to
the circle, and finally ventured to put his foot in the
magic ring. The instant he did this, his ears were
charmed with strains of the most melodious music
he had ever heard. Moved with the transports this
seductive harmony produced in him, he stepped
fully into the ring. He was no sooner in than he
found himself in a palace glittering with gold and
pearls. Every form of beauty surrounded him, and
every variety of pleasure was offered him. He was
84]
made free to range whither he would, and his every
movement was waited on by young women of the
most matchless loveliness. And no tongue can tell
the joys of feasting that were his! Instead of the
tatws-a-llaeth (potatoes and buttermilk) to which
he had hitherto been accustomed, here were birds
and meats of every choice description, served on
plates of silver. Instead of home-brewed cwrw, the
only bacchic beverage he had ever tasted in real life,
here were red and yellow wines of wondrous
enjoyableness, brought in golden goblets richly
inlaid with gems. The waiters were the most
beautiful virgins, and everything was in abundance.
There was but one restriction on his freedom: he
must not drink, on any consideration, from a certain
well in the garden, in which swam fishes of every
colour, including the colour of gold. Each day new
joys were provided for his amusement, new scenes
of beauty were unfolded to him, new faces presented
themselves, more lovely if possible than those he
had before encountered. Everything was done to
charm him; but one day all his happiness fled in an
instant. Possessing every joy that mortal could
desire, he wanted the one thing forbidden—like Eve
in the garden, like Fatima in the castle; curiosity
undid him. He plunged his hand into the well:
the fishes all disappeared instantly. He put the
water to his mouth: a confused shriek ran through
the garden. He drank: the palace and all vanished
from his sight, and he stood shivering in the night
air, alone on the mountain, in the very place where
he had first entered the ring.[44]
THE FATAL DRAUGHT.
85]
Comment on the resemblances borne by these
tales to the more famous legends of other lands, is
perhaps unnecessary; they will occur to every reader
who is at all familiar with the subject of folk-lore.
To those who are not, it is sufficient to say that these
resemblances exist, and afford still further testimony
to the common origin of such tales in a remote past.
The legend last given embodies the curiosity feature
which is familiar through the story of Bluebeard,
86]
but has its root in the story of Psyche. She was
forbidden to look upon her husband Eros, the god
of love; she disobeyed the injunction, and the
beautiful palace in which she had dwelt with
him vanished in an instant, leaving her alone in a
desolate spot. Ages older than the Psyche story,
however, is the legend embodying the original
Aryan myth. The drop of oil which falls upon the
shoulder of the sleeping prince and wakes him,
revealing Psyche’s curiosity and destroying her happiness,
is paralleled among the Welsh by the magic
ointment in the legend of the Fiend Master. This
legend, it may be premised, is also familiar to both
France and Germany, where its details differ but
little from those here given: A respectable young
Welshwoman of the working class, who lived with
her parents, went one day to a hiring fair. Here she
‘was addressed by a very noble-looking gentleman
all in black, who asked her if she would be a nursemaid,
and undertake the management of his children.
She replied that she had no objection; when
he promised her immense wages, and said he would
take her home behind him, but that she must, before
they started, consent to be blindfolded. This done,
she mounted behind him on a coal-black steed, and
away they rode at a great rate. At length they
dismounted, when her new master took her by the
hand and led her on, still blindfolded, for a considerable
distance. The handkerchief was then
removed, when she beheld more grandeur than she
had ever seen before; a beautiful palace lighted up
by more lights than she could count, and a number
of little children as beautiful as angels; also many
noble-looking ladies and gentlemen. The children
her master put under her charge, and gave her a
box containing ointment, which she was to put on
87]
their eyes. At the same time he gave her strict
orders always to wash her hands immediately after
using the ointment, and be particularly careful never
to let a bit of it touch her own eyes. These
injunctions she strictly followed, and was for some
time very happy; yet she sometimes thought it odd
that they should always live by candle-light; and
she wondered, too, that grand and beautiful as the
palace was, such fine ladies and gentlemen as were
there should never wish to leave it. But so it was;
no one ever went out but her master. One morning,
while putting the ointment on the eyes of the
children, her own eye itched, and forgetting the
orders of her master she touched one corner of it
with her finger which was covered with ointment.
Immediately, with the vision of that corner of her
eye, she saw herself surrounded by fearful flames;
the ladies and gentlemen looked like devils, and
the children appeared like the most hideous imps of
hell. Though with the other parts of her eyes she
beheld all grand and beautiful as before, she could
not help feeling much frightened at all this; but
having great presence of mind she let no one see
her alarm. However, she took the first opportunity
of asking her master’s leave to go and see her
friends. He said he would take her, but she must
again consent to be blindfolded. Accordingly a
handkerchief was put over her eyes; she was again
mounted behind her master, and was soon put
down in the neighbourhood of her own house. It
will be believed that she remained quietly there, and
took good care not to return to her place; but
very many years afterwards, being at a fair, she
saw a man stealing something from a stall, and with
one corner of her eye beheld her old master pushing
his elbow. Unthinkingly she said, “How are you
88]
master? how are the children?” He said, “How
did you see me?” She answered, “With the corner
of my left eye.” From that moment she was blind
of her left eye, and lived many years with only her
right.’[45] An older legend preserving this mythical
detail is the story of Taliesin. Gwion Bach’s eyes
are opened by a drop from Caridwen’s caldron
falling upon his finger, which he puts in his mouth.
A Carmarthenshire tradition names among those
who lived for a period among the Tylwyth Teg no
less a person than the translator into Welsh of
Bunyan’s ‘Pilgrim’s Progress.’ He was called
Iago ap Dewi, and lived in the parish of Llanllawddog,
Carmarthenshire, in a cottage situated in
the wood of Llangwyly. He was absent from the
neighbourhood for a long period, and the universal
belief among the peasantry was that Iago ‘got out
of bed one night to gaze on the starry sky, as he
was accustomed (astrology being one of his favourite
studies), and whilst thus occupied the fairies (who
were accustomed to resort in a neighbouring
wood), passing by, carried him away, and he
dwelt with them seven years. Upon his return
he was questioned by many as to where he had
been, but always avoided giving them a reply.’
The wide field of interest opened up in tales of
this class is a fascinating one to the students of
fairy mythology. The whole world seems to be
the scene of such tales, and collectors of folk-lore
in many lands have laid claim to the discovery of
89]
‘the original’ on which the story of Rip van Winkle
is based. It is an honour to American genius, to
which I cannot forbear a passing allusion, that of
all these legends, none has achieved so wide a fame
as that which Washington Irving has given to our
literature, and Joseph Jefferson to our stage. It
is more than probable that Irving drew his inspiration
from Grimm, and that the Catskills are
indebted to the Hartz Mountains of Germany for
their romantic fame. But the legends are endless
in which occur this unsuspected lapse of time
among supernatural beings, and the wandering back
to the old home to find all changed. In Greece,
it is Epimenides, the poet, who, while searching for
a lost sheep, wanders into a cave where he slumbers
forty-seven years. The Gaelic and Teutonic legends
are well known. But our wonder at the vitality
of this myth is greatest when we find it in both
China and Japan. In the Japanese account a
young man fishing in his boat on the ocean is
invited by the goddess of the sea to her home
beneath the waves. After three days he desires
to see his old mother and father. On parting she
gives him a golden casket and a key, but begs him
never to open it. At the village where he lived
he finds that all is changed, and he can get no trace
of his parents until an aged woman recollects having
heard of their names. He finds their graves a
hundred years old. Thinking that three days could
not have made such a change, and that he was
under a spell, he opens the casket. A white
vapour rises, and under its influence the young
man falls to the ground. His hair turns grey, his
form loses its youth, and in a few moments he
dies of old age. The Chinese legend relates how
two friends wandering amongst the ravines of their
90]
native mountains in search of herbs for medicinal
purposes, come to a fairy bridge where two maidens
of more than earthly beauty are on guard. They
invite them to the fairy land which lies on the
other side of the bridge, and the invitation being
accepted, they become enamoured of the maidens,
and pass what to them seems a short though
blissful period of existence with the fairy folk. At
length they desire to revisit their earthly homes
and are allowed to return, when they find that
seven generations have lived and died during their
apparently short absence, they themselves having
become centenarians.[46] In China, as elsewhere, the
legend takes divers forms.
91]
Fairy Music—Birds of Enchantment—The Legend of Shon ap Shenkin—Harp-Music
in Welsh Fairy Tales—Legend of the Magic Harp—Songs
and Tunes of the Tylwyth Teg—The Legend of Iolo ap
Hugh—Mystic Origin of an old Welsh Air.
In those rare cases where it is not dancing which
holds the victim of Tylwyth Teg in its fatal fascination,
the seducer is music. There is a class of
stories still common in Wales, in which is preserved
a wondrously beautiful survival of the primitive
mythology. In the vast middle ground between
our own commonplace times and the pre-historic
ages we encounter more than once the lovely legend
of the Birds of Rhiannon, which sang so sweetly that
the warrior knights stood listening entranced for
eighty years. This legend appears in the Mabinogi
of ‘Branwen, daughter of Llyr,’ and, as we read it
there, is a medieval tale; but the medieval authors
of the Mabinogion as we know them were working
over old materials—telling again the old tales which
had come down through unnumbered centuries from
father to son by tradition. Cambrian poets of an
earlier age often allude to the birds of Rhiannon;
they are mentioned in the Triads. In the Mabinogi,
the period the warriors listened is seven years.
Seven men only had escaped from a certain battle
with the Irish, and they were bidden by their dying
chief to cut off his head and bear it to London and
bury it with the face towards France. Various were
92]
the adventures they encountered while obeying this
injunction. At Harlech they stopped to rest, and
sat down to eat and drink. ‘And there came three
birds, and began singing unto them a certain song,
and all the songs they had ever heard were
unpleasant compared thereto; and the birds seemed
to them to be at a great distance from them over
the sea, yet they appeared as distinct as if they
were close by; and at this repast they continued
seven years.’[47] This enchanting fancy reappears in
the local story of Shon ap Shenkin, which was
related to me by a farmer’s wife near the reputed
scene of the legend. Pant Shon Shenkin has
already been mentioned as a famous centre for
Carmarthenshire fairies. The story of Taffy ap
Sion and this of Shon ap Shenkin were probably
one and the same at some period in their career,
although they are now distinct. Shon ap Shenkin
was a young man who lived hard by Pant Shon
Shenkin. As he was going afield early one fine
summer’s morning he heard a little bird singing, in
a most enchanting strain, on a tree close by his path.
Allured by the melody he sat down under the tree
until the music ceased, when he arose and looked
about him. What was his surprise at observing
that the tree, which was green and full of life when
he sat down, was now withered and barkless!
Filled with astonishment he returned to the farm-house
which he had left, as he supposed, a few
minutes before; but it also was changed, grown
older, and covered with ivy. In the doorway stood
an old man whom he had never before seen; he at
once asked the old man what he wanted there.
‘What do I want here?’ ejaculated the old man,
reddening angrily; ‘that’s a pretty question! Who
93]
are you that dare to insult me in my own house?’
‘In your own house? How is this? where’s my
father and mother, whom I left here a few minutes
since, whilst I have been listening to the charming
94]
music under yon tree, which, when I rose, was
withered and leafless?’ ‘Under the tree!—music!
what’s your name?’ ‘Shon ap Shenkin.’ ‘Alas,
poor Shon, and is this indeed you!’ cried the old
man. ‘I often heard my grandfather, your father,
speak of you, and long did he bewail your absence.
Fruitless inquiries were made for you; but old Catti
Maddock of Brechfa said you were under the power
of the fairies, and would not be released until the
last sap of that sycamore tree would be dried up.
Embrace me, my dear uncle, for you are my uncle—embrace
your nephew.’ With this the old man
extended his arms, but before the two men could
embrace, poor Shon ap Shenkin crumbled into dust
on the doorstep.
SHON AP SHENKIN RETURNS HOME.
The harp is played by Welsh fairies to an extent
unknown in those parts of the world where the
harp is less popular among the people. When any
instrument is distinctly heard in fairy cymmoedd
it is usually the harp. Sometimes it is a fiddle,
but then on close examination it will be discovered
that it is a captured mortal who is playing it; the
Tylwyth Teg prefer the harp. They play the
bugle on specially grand occasions, and there is
a case or two on record where the drone of the
bagpipes was heard; but it is not doubted that the
player was some stray fairy from Scotland or elsewhere
over the border. On the top of Craig-y-Ddinas
thousands of white fairies dance to the
music of many harps. In the dingle called Cwm
Pergwm, in the Vale of Neath, the Tylwyth Teg
make music behind the waterfall, and when they
go off over the mountains the sounds of their harps
are heard dying away as they recede. The story
which presents the Cambrian equivalent of the
95]
Magic Flute substitutes a harp for the (to Welshmen)
less familiar instrument. As told to me this
story runs somewhat thus: A company of fairies
which frequented Cader Idris were in the habit of
going about from cottage to cottage in that part of
Wales, in pursuit of information concerning the
degree of benevolence possessed by the cottagers.
Those who gave these fairies an ungracious welcome
were subject to bad luck during the rest of
their lives, but those who were good to the little
folk became the recipients of their favour. Old
Morgan ap Rhys sat one night in his own chimney
corner making himself comfortable with his pipe
and his pint of cwrw da. The good ale having
melted his soul a trifle, he was in a more jolly mood
than was natural to him, when there came a little
rap at the door, which reached his ear dully through
the smoke of his pipe and the noise of his own
voice—for in his merriment Morgan was singing a
roystering song, though he could not sing any better
than a haw—which is Welsh for a donkey. But
Morgan did not take the trouble to get up at sound
of the rap; his manners were not the most refined;
he thought it was quite enough for a man on
hospitable purposes bent to bawl forth in ringing
Welsh, ‘Gwaed dyn a’i gilydd! Why don’t you
come in when you’ve got as far as the door?’ The
welcome was not very polite, but it was sufficient.
The door opened, and three travellers entered,
looking worn and weary. Now these were the
fairies from Cader Idris, disguised in this manner
for purposes of observation, and Morgan never
suspected they were other than they appeared.
‘Good sir,’ said one of the travellers, ‘we are worn
and weary, but all we seek is a bite of food to put
in our wallet, and then we will go on our way.’
96]
‘Waw, lads! is that all you want? Well, there,
look you, is the loaf and the cheese, and the knife
lies by them, and you may cut what you like, and
fill your bellies as well as your wallet, for never
shall it be said that Morgan ap Rhys denied bread
and cheese to a fellow creature.’ The travellers
proceeded to help themselves, while Morgan continued
to drink and smoke, and to sing after his
fashion, which was a very rough fashion indeed.
As they were about to go, the fairy travellers
turned to Morgan and said, ‘Since you have been
so generous we will show that we are grateful. It
is in our power to grant you any one wish you may
have; therefore tell us what that wish may be.’
‘Ho, ho!’ said Morgan, ‘is that the case? Ah,
I see you are making sport of me. Wela, wela, the
wish of my heart is to have a harp that will play
under my fingers no matter how ill I strike it; a
harp that will play lively tunes, look you; no
melancholy music for me!’ He had hardly spoken,
when to his astonishment, there on the hearth
before him stood a splendid harp, and he was alone.
‘Waw!’ cried Morgan, ‘they’re gone already.’
Then looking behind him he saw they had not
taken the bread and cheese they had cut off, after
all. ‘’Twas the fairies, perhaps,’ he muttered, but
sat serenely quaffing his beer, and staring at the
harp. There was a sound of footsteps behind him,
and his wife came in from out doors with some
friends. Morgan feeling very jolly, thought he
would raise a little laughter among them by displaying
his want of skill upon the harp. So he
commenced to play—oh, what a mad and capering
tune it was! ‘Waw!’ said Morgan, ‘but this is a
harp. Holo! what ails you all?’ For as fast as
he played his neighbours danced, every man,
97]
woman, and child of them all footing it like mad
creatures. Some of them bounded up against the
roof of the cottage till their heads cracked again;
others spun round and round, knocking over the
furniture; and, as Morgan went on thoughtlessly
playing, they began to pray to him to stop before
they should be jolted to pieces. But Morgan found
the scene too amusing to want to stop; besides, he
was enamoured of his own suddenly developed
skill as a musician; and he twanged the strings
and laughed till his sides ached and the tears rolled
down his cheeks, at the antics of his friends. Tired
out at last he stopped, and the dancers fell exhausted
on the floor, the chairs, the tables, declaring the
diawl himself was in the harp. ‘I know a tune
worth two of that,’ quoth Morgan, picking up the
harp again; but at sight of this motion all the company
rushed from the house and escaped, leaving
Morgan rolling merrily in his chair. Whenever
Morgan got a little tipsy after that, he would get
the harp and set everybody round him to dancing;
and the consequence was he got a bad name, and
no one would go near him. But all their precautions
did not prevent the neighbours from being
caught now and then, when Morgan took his revenge
by making them dance till their legs were broken,
or some other damage was done them. Even
lame people and invalids were compelled to dance
whenever they heard the music of this diabolical
telyn. In short, Morgan so abused his fairy gift
that one night the good people came and took it
away from him, and he never saw it more. The
consequence was he became morose, and drank
himself to death—a warning to all who accept
from the fairies favours they do not deserve.
98]
The music of the Tylwyth Teg has been variously
described by people who claim to have heard it;
but as a rule with much vagueness, as of a sweet
intangible harmony, recalling the experience of
Caliban:
The isle is full of noises;
Sounds, and sweet airs, that give delight, and hurt not.
Sometimes a thousand twangling instruments
Will hum about mine ears.[48]
One Morgan Gwilym, who saw the fairies by
Cylepsta Waterfall, and heard their music dying
away, was only able to recall the last strain, which
he said sounded something like this:
[Listen.]
Edmund Daniel, of the Arail, ‘an honest man
and a constant speaker of truth,’ told the Prophet
Jones that he often saw the fairies after sunset
crossing the Cefn Bach from the Valley of the
Church towards Hafodafel, leaping and striking in
the air, and making a serpentine path through the
air, in this form:
The fairies were seen and heard by many persons
in that neighbourhood, and sometimes by several
persons together. They appeared more often by
night than by day, and in the morning and evening
more often than about noon. Many heard their
music, and said of it that it was low and pleasant;
but that it had this peculiarity: no one could ever
99]
learn the tune. In more favoured parts of the
Principality, the words of the song were distinctly
heard, and under the name of the ‘Cân y Tylwyth
Teg’ are preserved as follows:
Dowch, dowch, gyfeillion mân,
O blith marwolion byd,
Dowch, dowch, a dowch yn lân.
Partowch partowch eich pibau cân,
Gan ddawnsio dowch i gyd,
Mae yn hyfryd heno i hwn.
One is reluctant to turn into bald English this
goblin song, which in its native Welsh is almost as
impressive as ‘Fi Fo Fum.’ Let it suffice that the
song is an invitation to the little ones among the
dead of earth to come with music and dancing to
the delights of the night revel.
In the legend of Iolo ap Hugh, than which no
story is more widely known in Wales, the fairy
origin of that famous tune ‘Ffarwel Ned Pugh’ is
shown. It is a legend which suggests the Enchanted
Flute fancy in another form, the instrument here
being a fiddle, and the victim and player one under
fairy control. In its introduction of bread and
cheese and candles it smacks heartily of the soil.
In North Wales there is a famous cave which is
said to reach from its entrance on the hillside
‘under the Morda, the Ceiriog, and a thousand
other streams, under many a league of mountain,
marsh and moor, under the almost unfathomable wells
that, though now choked up, once supplied Sycharth,
the fortress of Glyndwrdwy, all the way to Chirk
Castle.’ Tradition said that whoever went within
five paces of its mouth would be drawn into it and
lost. That the peasants dwelling near it had a
thorough respect for this tradition, was proved by
100]
the fact that all around the dangerous hole ‘the
grass grew as thick and as rank as in the wilds of
America or some unapproached ledge of the Alps.’
Both men and animals feared the spot: ‘A fox, with
a pack of hounds in full cry at his tail,’ once turned
short round on approaching it, ‘with his hair all
bristled and fretted like frostwork with terror,’ and
ran into the middle of the pack, ‘as if anything
earthly—even an earthly death—was a relief to his
supernatural perturbations.’ And the dogs in
pursuit of this fox all declined to seize him, on
account of the phosphoric smell and gleam of his
coat. Moreover, ‘Elias ap Evan, who happened
one fair night to stagger just upon the rim of the
forbidden space,’ was so frightened at what he saw
and heard that he arrived at home perfectly sober,
‘the only interval of sobriety, morning, noon, or
night, Elias had been afflicted with for upwards of
twenty years.’ Nor ever after that experience—concerning
which he was wont to shake his head
solemnly, as if he might tell wondrous tales an’ he
dared—could Elias get tipsy, drink he never so
faithfully to that end. As he himself expressed it,
‘His shadow walked steadily before him, that at one
time wheeled around him like a pointer over bog
and stone.’ One misty Hallow E’en, Iolo ap Hugh,
the fiddler, determined to solve the mysteries of the
Ogof, or Cave, provided himself with ‘an immense
quantity of bread and cheese and seven pounds of
candles,’ and ventured in. He never returned; but
long, long afterwards, at the twilight of another
Hallow E’en, an old shepherd was passing that—as
he called it—‘Land-Maelstrom of Diaboly,’ when he
heard a faint burst of melody dancing up and down
the rocks above the cave. As he listened, the music
gradually ‘moulded itself in something like a tune,
101]
though it was a tune the shepherd had never heard
before.’ And it sounded as if it were being played
by some jolting fiend, so rugged was its rhythm, so
repeated its discordant groans. Now there appeared
at the mouth of the Ogof a figure well-known to the
shepherd by remembrance. It was dimly visible;
but it was Iolo ap Hugh, one could see that at once.
He was capering madly to the music of his own
fiddle, with a lantern dangling at his breast.
‘Suddenly the moon shone full on the cave’s yellow
mouth, and the shepherd saw poor Iolo for a single
moment—but it was distinctly and horribly. His
face was pale as marble, and his eyes stared fixedly
and deathfully, whilst his head dangled loose and
unjointed on his shoulders. His arms seemed to
keep his fiddlestick in motion without the least
sympathy from their master. The shepherd saw him
a moment on the verge of the cave, and then, still
capering and fiddling, vanish like a shadow from his
sight;’ but the old man was heard to say he seemed
as if he slipped into the cave in a manner quite
different from the step of a living and a willing man;
‘he was dragged inwards like the smoke up the
chimney, or the mist at sunrise.’ Years elapsed;
‘all hopes and sorrows connected with poor Iolo
had not only passed away, but were nearly forgotten;
the old shepherd had long lived in a parish
at a considerable distance amongst the hills. One
cold December Sunday evening he and his fellow-parishioners
were shivering in their seats as the
clerk was beginning to light the church, when a
strange burst of music, starting suddenly from
beneath the aisle, threw the whole congregation
into confusion, and then it passed faintly along to
the farther end of the church, and died gradually
away till at last it was impossible to distinguish it
102]
from the wind that was careering and wailing
through almost every pillar of the old church.’ The
shepherd immediately recognised this to be the tune
Iolo had played at the mouth of the Ogof. The
parson of the parish—a connoisseur in music—took
it down from the old man’s whistling; and to this
day, if you go to the cave on Hallow eve and put
your ear to the aperture, you may hear the tune
‘Ffarwel Ned Pugh’ as distinctly as you may hear
the waves roar in a sea-shell. ‘And it is said that
in certain nights in leap-year a star stands opposite
the farther end of the cave, and enables you to
view all through it and to see Iolo and its other
inmates.’[49]
[Listen.]
103]
Fairy Rings—The Prophet Jones and his Works—The Mysterious
Language of the Tylwyth Teg—The Horse in Welsh Folk-Lore—Equestrian
Fairies—Fairy Cattle, Sheep, Swine, etc.—The Flying
Fairies of Bedwellty—The Fairy Sheepfold at Cae’r Cefn.
The circles in the grass of green fields, which
are commonly called fairy rings, are numerous in
Wales, and it is deemed just as well to keep out
of them, even in our day. The peasantry no
longer believe that the fairies can be seen dancing
there, nor that the cap of invisibility will fall on
the head of one who enters the circle; but they
do believe that the fairies, in a time not long
gone, made these circles with the tread of their
tripping feet, and that some misfortune will probably
befall any person intruding upon this forbidden
ground. An old man at Peterstone-super-Ely told
me he well remembered in his childhood being
warned by his mother to keep away from the fairy
rings. The counsel thus given him made so deep
an impression on his mind, that he had never in his
life entered one. He remarked further, in answer
to a question, that he had never walked under a
ladder, because it was unlucky to walk under a
ladder. This class of superstitions is a very large
one, and is encountered the world over; and the
fairy rings seem to fall into this class, so far as
present-day belief in Wales is concerned.
104]
Allusion has been made in the preceding pages to
the Prophet Jones, and as some account of this personage
is imperatively called for in a work treating
of Welsh folk-lore, I will give it here, before citing
his remarks respecting fairy circles. Edmund Jones,
‘of the Tranch,’ was a dissenting minister, noted in
Monmouthshire in the first years of the present century
for his fervent piety and his large credulity with
regard to fairies and all other goblins. He was
for many years pastor of the congregation of Protestant
Dissenters at the Ebenezer Chapel, near
Pontypool, and lived at a place called ‘The Tranch,’
near there. He wrote and published two books, one
an ‘Account of the Parish of Aberystruth,’ printed
at Trevecca; the other a ‘Relation of Apparitions
of Spirits in the County of Monmouth and the
Principality of Wales,’ printed at Newport; and they
have been referred to by most writers on folk-lore
who have attempted any account of Welsh superstitions
during the past half-century; but the books
are extremely rare, and writers who have quoted
from them have generally been content to do so at
second-hand. Keightley,[50] quoting from the ‘Apparitions,’
misprints the author’s name ‘Edward Jones
of the Tiarch,’ and accredits the publication to ‘the
latter half of the eighteenth century,’ whereas it was
published in 1813. Keightley’s quotations are taken
from Croker, who himself had never seen the book,
but heard of it through a Welsh friend. It is not in
the library of the British Museum, and I know of
but a few copies in Wales; the one I saw is at Swansea.
The author of these curious volumes was called
the Prophet Jones, because of his gift of prophecy—so
105]
a Welshman in Monmouthshire told me. In my
informant’s words, ‘He was noted in his district for
foretelling things. He would, for instance, be asked
to preach at some anniversary, or quarterly meeting,
and he would answer, “I cannot, on that day; the
rain will descend in torrents, and there will be no
congregation.” He would give the last mite he
possessed to the needy, and tell his wife, “God will
send a messenger with food and raiment at nine
o’clock to-morrow.” And so it would be.’ He was
a thorough-going believer in Welsh fairies, and full
of indignant scorn toward all who dared question
their reality. To him these phantoms were part and
parcel of the Christian faith, and those who disbelieved
in them were denounced as Sadducees and
infidels.
With regard to the fairy rings, Jones held that the
Bible alludes to them, Matt. xii. 43: ‘The fairies
dance in circles in dry places; and the Scripture saith
that the walk of evil spirits is in dry places.’ They
favour the oak-tree, and the female oak especially,
partly because of its more wide-spreading branches
and deeper shade, partly because of the ‘superstitious
use made of it beyond other trees’ in the days of the
Druids. Formerly, it was dangerous to cut down a
female oak in a fair dry place. ‘Some were said to
lose their lives by it, by a strange aching pain which
admitted of no remedy, as one of my ancestors did;
but now that men have more knowledge and faith,
this effect follows not.’ William Jenkins was for a
long time the schoolmaster at Trefethin church, in
Monmouthshire, and coming home late in the evening,
as he usually did, he often saw the fairies under
an oak within two or three fields from the church.
He saw them more often on Friday evenings than
106]
any other. At one time he went to examine the
ground about this oak, and there he found the
reddish circle wherein the fairies danced, ‘such as
have often been seen under the female oak, called
Brenhin-bren.’ They appeared more often to an
uneven number of persons, as one, three, five, &c.;
and oftener to men than to women. Thomas
William Edmund, of Hafodafel, ‘an honest pious
man, who often saw them,’ declared that they
appeared with one bigger than the rest going before
them in the company. They were also heard talking
together in a noisy, jabbering way; but no one
could distinguish the words. They seemed, however,
to be a very disputatious race; insomuch,
indeed, that there was a proverb in some parts of
Wales to this effect: ‘Ni chytunant hwy mwy na
Bendith eu Mamau,’ (They will no more agree
than the fairies).
This observation respecting the mysterious language
used by fairies recalls again the medieval
story of Elidurus. The example of fairy words
there given by Giraldus is thought by the learned
rector of Llanarmon[51] to be ‘a mixture of Irish and
Welsh. The letter U, with which each of the
words begins, is, probably, no more than the representative
of an indistinct sound like the E mute of
the French, and which those whose language and
manners are vulgar often prefix to words indifferently.
If, then, they be read dor dorum, and halgein
dorum, dor and halgein are nearly dwr (or, as it is
pronounced, door) and halen, the Welsh words for
water and salt respectively. Dorum therefore is
equivalent to “give me,” and the Irish expression for
“give me” is thorum; the Welsh dyro i mi. The
107]
order of the words, however, is reversed. The order
should be thorum dor, and thorum halen in Irish,
and in Welsh dyro i mi ddwr, and dyro i mi halen,
but was, perhaps, reversed intentionally by the narrator,
to make his tale the more marvellous.’[52]
The horse plays a very active part in Welsh fairy
tales. Not only does his skeleton serve for Mary
Lwyds[53] and the like, but his spirit flits. The
Welsh fairies seem very fond of going horseback.
An old woman in the Vale of Neath told Mrs.
Williams, who told Thomas Keightley, that she had
seen fairies to the number of hundreds, mounted
on little white horses, not bigger than dogs, and
riding four abreast. This was about dusk, and the
fairy equestrians passed quite close to her, in fact
less than a quarter of a mile away. Another old
woman asserted that her father had often seen the
fairies riding in the air on little white horses; but
he never saw them come to the ground. He heard
their music sounding in the air as they galloped by.
There is a tradition among the Glamorgan peasantry
of a fairy battle fought on the mountain between
Merthyr and Aberdare, in which the pigmy combatants
were on horseback. There appeared to be
two armies, one of which was mounted on milk-white
steeds, and the other on horses of jet-black.
They rode at each other with the utmost fury, and
their swords could be seen flashing in the air like
so many penknife blades. The army on the white
horses won the day, and drove the black-mounted
force from the field. The whole scene then disappeared
in a light mist.
108]
In the agricultural districts of Wales, the fairies
are accredited with a very complete variety of
useful animals; and Welsh folk-lore, both modern
and medieval, abounds with tales regarding cattle,
sheep, horses, poultry, goats, and other features of
rural life. Such are the marvellous mare of Teirnyon,
which foaled every first of May, but whose colt
was always spirited away, no man knew whither;
the Ychain Banog, or mighty oxen, which drew the
water-monster out of the enchanted lake, and by
their lowing split the rocks in twain; the lambs of
St. Melangell, which at first were hares, and ran
frightened under the fair saint’s robes; the fairy
cattle which belong to the Gwraig Annwn; the
fairy sheep of Cefn Rhychdir, which rose up out of
the earth and vanished into the sky; even fairy
swine, which the haymakers of Bedwellty beheld
flying through the air. To some of these traditions
reference has already been made; others will be
mentioned again. Welsh mountain sheep will run
like stags, and bound from crag to crag like wild
goats; and as for Welsh swine, they are more
famed in Cambrian romantic story than almost any
other animal that could be named. Therefore the
tale told by Rev. Roger Rogers, of the parish of
Bedwellty, sounds much less absurd in Wales than
it might elsewhere. It relates to a very remarkable
and odd sight, seen by Lewis Thomas Jenkin’s two
daughters, described as virtuous and good young
women, their father a substantial freeholder; and
seen not only by them but by the man-servant and
the maid-servant, and by two of the neighbours,
viz., Elizabeth David, and Edmund Roger. All
these six people were on a certain day making hay
109]
in a field called Y Weirglodd Fawr Dafolog, when
they plainly beheld a company of fairies rise up out
of the earth in the shape of a flock of sheep; the
same being about a quarter of a mile distant, over a
hill, called Cefn Rhychdir; and soon the fairy flock
went out of sight, as if they vanished in the air.
Later in the day they all saw this company of fairies
again, but while to two of the haymakers the fairies
appeared as sheep, to others they appeared as
greyhounds, and to others as swine, and to others as
naked infants. Whereupon the Rev. Roger remarks:
‘The sons of infidelity are very unreasonable not to
believe the testimonies of so many witnesses.’[54]
The Welsh sheep, it is affirmed, are the only
beasts which will eat the grass that grows in the
fairy rings; all other creatures avoid it, but the
sheep eat it greedily—hence the superiority of
Welsh mutton over any mutton in the wide world.
The Prophet Jones tells of the sheepfold of the
fairies, which he himself saw—a circumstance to be
accorded due weight, the judicious reader will at
once perceive, because as a habit Mr. Jones was
not specially given to seeing goblins on his own
account. He believes in them with all his heart,
but it is usually a friend or acquaintance who has
seen them. In this instance, therefore, the exception
is to be noted sharply. He thus tells the tale:
‘If any think I am too credulous in these relations,
and speak of things of which I myself have had no
experience, I must let them know they are mistaken.
For when a very young boy, going with my aunt,
early in the morning, but after sun-rising, from
Hafodafel towards my father’s house at Pen-y-Llwyn,
110]
at the end of the upper field of Cae’r Cefn,
... I saw the likeness of a sheepfold, with the
door towards the south, ... and within the fold
a company of many people. Some sitting down,
and some going in, and coming out, bowing their
heads as they passed under the branch over the
door.... I well remember the resemblance
among them of a fair woman with a high-crown hat
and a red jacket, who made a better appearance
than the rest, and whom I think they seemed to
honour. I still have a pretty clear idea of her white
face and well-formed countenance. The men wore
white cravats.... I wondered at my aunt, going
before me, that she did not look towards them, and
we going so near them. As for me, I was loth to
speak until I passed them some way, and then told
my aunt what I had seen, at which she wondered,
and said I dreamed.... There was no fold in
that place. There is indeed the ruins of some
small edifice in that place, most likely a fold, but so
old that the stones are swallowed up, and almost
wholly crusted over with earth and grass.’
This tale has long been deemed a poser by the
believers in Cambrian phantoms; but there is something
to be said on the side of doubt. Conceding
that the Reverend Edmund Jones, the dissenting
minister, was an honest gentleman who meant to
tell truth, it is still possible that Master Neddy
Jones, the lad, could draw a long bow like another
boy; and that having seen, possibly, some gypsy
group (or possibly nothing whatever) he embellished
his tale to excite wonderment, as boys do. Telling
a fictitious tale so often that one at last comes to
believe it oneself, is a well-known mental phenomenon.
111]
The only other instance given by the Prophet
Jones as from the depths of his own personal
experience, is more vague in its particulars than the
preceding, and happened when he had presumably
grown to years of discretion. He was led astray, it
appears, by the Old Woman of the Mountain, on
Llanhiddel Bryn, near Pontypool—an eminence with
which he was perfectly well acquainted, and which
‘is no more than a mile and a half long and about
half a mile broad.’ But as a result of his going
astray, he came to a house where he had never been
before; and being deeply moved by his uncanny
experience, ‘offered to go to prayer, which they
admitted.... I was then about twenty-three
years of age and had begun to preach the everlasting
gospel. They seemed to admire that a person
so young should be so warmly disposed; few young
men of my age being religious in this country then.
Much good came into this house and still continues
in it.... So the old hag got nothing by leading
me astray that time.’
112]
Piety as a Protection from the Seductions of the Tylwyth Teg—Various
Exorcisms—Cock-crowing—The Name of God—Fencing
off the Fairies—Old Betty Griffith and her Eithin Barricade—Means
of Getting Rid of the Tylwyth Teg—The Bwbach of the
Hendrefawr Farm—The Pwca’r Trwyn’s Flitting in a Jug of Barm.
The extreme piety of his daily walk and conversation
may have been held as an explanation why the
Prophet Jones saw so few goblins himself, and consequently
why most of his stories of the fairies are
related as coming from other people. The value of a
general habit of piety, as a means of being rid of
fairies, has already been mentioned. The more
worldly exorcisms, such as the production of a black-handled
knife, or the turning one’s coat wrongside out,
are passed over by the Prophet as trivial; but by the
student of comparative folk-lore, they are not deemed
unimportant. The last-mentioned exorcism, by the
way, is current among the Southern negroes of the
United States. The more spiritual exorcisms are
not less interesting than the others, however. First
among these is ranked the pronunciation of God’s
name; but the crowing of a cock is respectfully mentioned,
in connection with the story of our Saviour.
Jones gives many accounts which terminate in the
manner of the following: Rees John Rosser, born at
Hendy, in the parish of Llanhiddel, ‘a very religious
young man,’ went one morning very early to feed
the oxen in a barn called Ysgubor y Llan, and having
113]
fed them lay himself upon the hay to rest. While
he lay there he heard the sound of music approaching,
and presently a large company of fairies came into
the barn. They wore striped clothes, some in gayer
colours than the others, but all very gay; and they
all danced to the music. He lay there as quiet as
he could, thinking they would not see him, but he
was espied by one of them, a woman, who brought
a striped cushion with four tassels, one at each
corner of it, and put it under his head. After some
time the cock crew at the house of Blaen y Cwm,
hard by, upon which they appeared as if they were
surprised and displeased; the cushion was hastily
whisked from under his head, and the fairies vanished.
‘The spirits of darkness do not like the crowing of
the cock, because it gives notice of the approach of
day, for they love darkness rather than light....
And it hath been several times observed that these
fairies cannot endure to hear the name of God.’
A modern Welsh preacher (but one whose opinions
contrast most decidedly with those of Jones)
observes: ‘The cock is wonderfully well versed in
the circumstances of the children of Adam; his
shrill voice at dawn of day is sufficient intimation to
every spirit, coblyn, wraith, elf, bwci, and apparition
to flee into their illusive country for their lives,
before the light of day will show them to be an
empty nothingness, and bring them to shame and
reproach.’[55] Shakspeare introduces this superstition
in Hamlet:
Ber. It was about to speak, when the cock crew.
Hor. And then it started like a guilty thing
Upon a fearful summons.[56]
But the opinion that spirits fly away at cock-crow
114]
is of extreme antiquity. It is mentioned by the
Christian poet Prudentius (fourth century) as a
tradition of common belief.[57] As for the effect of
the name of God as an exorcism, we still encounter
this superstition, a living thing in our own day,
and in every land where modern ‘spiritualism’ finds
believers. The mischief produced at ‘spiritual
seances’ by ‘bad spirits’ is well-known to those who
have paid any attention to this subject. The late
Mr. FitzHugh Ludlow once related to me, with
dramatic fervour, the result of his attempts to
exorcise a bad spirit which was in possession of a
female ‘medium,’ by trying to make her pronounce
the name of Christ. She stumbled and stammered
over this test in a most embarrassing way, and finally
emerged from her trance with the holy name unspoken;
the bad spirit had fled. This was in New
York, in 1867. Like many others who assert their
unbelief in spiritualism, Mr. Ludlow was intensely
impressed by this phenomenon.
Students of comparative folk-lore class all such
manifestations under a common head, whether related
of fairies or spirit mediums. They trace their origin
to the same source whence come the notions of propitiating
the fairies by euphemistic names. The use
of such names as Jehovah, the Almighty, the Supreme
Being, etc., for the terrible and avenging God of the
Jewish theology, being originally an endeavour to
avoid pronouncing the name of God, it is easy to see
the connection with the exorcising power of that name
upon all evil spirits, such as fairies are usually held
to be. Here also, it is thought, is presented the
ultimate source of that horror of profane language
which prevails among the Puritanic peoples of
England and America. The name of the devil is
115]
similarly provided with euphemisms, some of which—such
as the Old Boy—are not of a sort to offend
that personage’s ears; and until recently the word
devil was deemed almost as offensive as the word
God, when profanely used.
A popular protection from the encroachments of
fairies is the eithin, or prickly furze, common in
Wales. It is believed that the fairies cannot penetrate
a fence or hedge composed of this thorny
shrub. An account illustrating this, and otherwise
curious in its details, was given in 1871 by a
prominent resident of Anglesea:[58] ‘One day, some
thirty years ago, Mrs. Stanley went to one of the
old houses to see an old woman she often visited.
It was a wretched hovel; so unusually dark when
she opened the door, that she called to old Betty
Griffith, but getting no answer she entered the
room. A little tiny window of one pane of glass
at the further side of the room gave a feeble light.
A few cinders alight in the miserable grate also
gave a glimmer of light, which enabled her to see
where the bed used to be, in a recess. To her
surprise she saw it entirely shut out by a barricade
of thick gorse, so closely packed and piled up that
no bed was to be seen. Again she called Betty
Griffith; no response came. She looked round the
wretched room; the only symptom of life was a
plant of the Wandering Jew (Saxifraga tricolor),
so called by the poor people, and dearly loved to
grace their windows. It was planted in a broken
jar or teapot on the window, trailing its long tendrils
around, with here and there a new formed plant
seeming to derive sustenance from the air alone.
116]
As she stood, struck with the miserable poverty of
the human abode, a faint sigh came from behind
the gorse. She went close and said, “Betty, where
are you?” Betty instantly recognised her voice,
and ventured to turn herself round from the wall.
Mrs. Stanley then made a small opening in the
gorse barricade, which sadly pricked her fingers;
she saw Betty in her bed and asked her, “Are you
not well? are you cold, that you are so closed up?”
“Cold! no. It is not cold, Mrs. Stanley; it is the
Tylwyth Teg; they never will leave me alone,
there they sit making faces at me, and trying to
come to me.” “Indeed! oh how I should like to
see them, Betty.” “Like to see them, is it? Oh,
don’t say so.” “Oh but Betty, they must be so
pretty and good.” “Good? they are not good.”
By this time the old woman got excited, and Mrs.
Stanley knew she should hear more from her about
the fairies, so she said, “Well, I will go out; they
never will come if I am here.” Old Betty replied
sharply, “No, do not go. You must not leave me.
I will tell you all about them. Ah! they come and
plague me sadly. If I am up they will sit upon the
table; they turn my milk sour and spill my tea;
then they will not leave me at peace in my bed, but
come all round me and mock at me.” “But Betty,
tell me what is all this gorse for? It must have
been great trouble for you to make it all so close.”
“Is it not to keep them off? They cannot get
through this, it pricks them so bad, and then I get
some rest.” So she replaced the gorse and left old
Betty Griffith happy in her device for getting rid of
the Tylwyth Teg.’
A common means of getting rid of the fairies is
to change one’s place of residence; the fair folk
117]
will not abide in a house which passes into new
hands. A story is told of a Merionethshire farmer
who, being tormented beyond endurance by a
Bwbach of a mischievous turn, reluctantly resolved
to flit. But first consulting a wise woman at
Dolgelley, he was advised to make a pretended
flitting, which would have the same effect; he need
only give out that he was going to move over the
border into England, and then get together his cattle
and his household goods, and set out for a day’s
drive around the Arenig. The fairy would surely
quit the house when the farmer should quit it, and
especially would it quit the premises of a born Cymro
who avowed his purpose of settling in the foreign
land of the Sais. So then he could come back to
his house by another route, and he would find the
obnoxious Bwbach gone. The farmer did as he
was told, and set out upon his journey, driving his
cattle and sheep before him, and leading the cart
upon which his furniture was piled, while his wife
and children trudged behind. When he reached
Rhyd-y-Fen, a ford so called from this legend,
they met a neighbour, who exclaimed, ‘Holo, Dewi,
are you leaving us for good?’ Before the farmer
could answer there was a shrill cry from inside the
churn on the cart, ‘Yes, yes, we are flitting from
Hendrefawr to Eingl-dud, where we’ve got a new
home.’ It was the Bwbach that spoke. He was
flitting with the household goods, and the farmer’s
little plan to be rid of him was a complete failure.
The good man sighed as he turned his horses about
and went back to Hendrefawr by the same road he
had come.
The famous Pwca of the Trwyn Farm, in
Mynyddyslwyn parish, came there from his first
118]
abode, at Pantygasseg, in a jug of barm. One of the
farm-servants brought the jug to Pantygasseg, and as
she was being served with the barm in the jug, the
Pwca was heard to say, ‘The Pwca is going
away now in this jug of barm, and he’ll never come
back;’ and he was never heard at Pantygasseg again.
Another story tells that a servant let fall a ball of
yarn, over the ledge of the hill whose base is washed
by the two fishponds between Hafod-yr-Ynys and
Pontypool, and the Pwca said, ‘I am going in this
ball, and I’ll go to the Trwyn, and never come
back,’—and directly the ball was seen to roll down
the hillside, and across the valley, ascending the
hill on the other side, and trundling along briskly
across the mountain top to its new abode.
119]
Fairy Money and Fairy Gifts in General—The Story of Gitto Bach,
or Little Griffith—The Penalty of Blabbing—Legends of the
Shepherds of Cwm Llan—The Money Value of Kindness—Ianto
Llewellyn and the Tylwyth Teg—The Legend of Hafod Lwyddog—Lessons
inculcated by these Superstitions.
‘This is fairy gold, boy, and ’twill prove so,’ says
the old shepherd in ‘Winter’s Tale;’ sagely adding,
‘Up with it, keep it close; home, home, the next
way. We are lucky, boy, and to be so still, requires
nothing but secrecy.’[59] Here we have the traditional
belief of the Welsh peasantry in a nut-shell. Fairy
money is as good as any, so long as its source is
kept a profound secret; if the finder relate the particulars
of his good fortune, it will vanish. Sometimes—especially
in cases where the money has been
spent—the evil result of tattling consists in there
being no further favours of the sort. The same
law governs fairy gifts of all kinds. A Breconshire
legend tells of the generosity of the Tylwyth Teg in
presenting the peasantry with loaves of bread, which
turned to toadstools next morning; it was necessary
to eat the bread in darkness and silence to avoid
this transformation. The story of Gitto Bach, a
familiar one in Wales, is a picturesque example.
Gitto Bach (little Griffith), a good little farmer’s boy
of Glamorganshire, used often to ramble to the top
of the mountain to look after his father’s sheep.
120]
On his return he would show his brothers and sisters
pieces of remarkably white paper, like crown pieces,
with letters stamped upon them, which he said were
given to him by the little children with whom he
played on the mountain. One day he did not
return. For two years nothing was heard of him.
Meantime other children occasionally got like
crown-pieces of paper from the mountains. One
morning when Gitto’s mother opened the door there
he sat—the truant!—dressed exactly as he was
when she saw him last, two years before. He had
a little bundle under his arm. ‘Where in the world
have you been all this time?’ asked the mother,
‘Why, it’s only yesterday I went away!’ quoth
Gitto. ‘Look at the pretty clothes the children gave
me on the mountain, for dancing with them to the
music of their harps.’ With this he opened his
bundle, and showed a handsome dress; and behold,
it was only paper, like the fairy money.
But usually, throughout Wales, it is simply a discontinuance
of fairy favour which follows blabbing.
A legend is connected with a bridge in Anglesea, of
a lad who often saw the fairies there, and profited
by their generosity. Every morning, while going to
fetch his father’s cows from pasture, he saw them,
and after they were gone he always found a groat
on a certain stone of Cymmunod Bridge. The boy’s
having money so often about him excited his father’s
suspicion, and one Sabbath day he cross-questioned
the lad as to the manner in which it was obtained.
Oh, the meddlesomeness of fathers! Of course the
poor boy confessed that it was through the medium
of the fairies, and of course, though he often went
after this to the field, he never found any money on
121]
the bridge, nor saw the offended Tylwyth Teg again.
Through his divulging the secret their favour was
lost.
Jones tells a similar story of a young woman
named Anne William Francis, in the parish of
Bassalleg, who on going by night into a little grove of
wood near the house, heard pleasant music, and saw
a company of fairies dancing on the grass. She took
a pail of water there, thinking it would gratify them.
The next time she went there she had a shilling
given her, ‘and so had for several nights after,
until she had twenty-one shillings.’ But her mother
happening to find the money, questioned her as to
where she got it, fearing she had stolen it. At first
the girl would not tell, but when her mother ‘went
very severe on her,’ and threatened to beat her, she
confessed she got the money from the fairies. After
that they never gave her any more. The Prophet
adds: ‘I have heard of other places where people
have had money from the fairies, sometimes silver
sixpences, but most commonly copper coin. As they
cannot make money, it certainly must be money lost
or concealed by persons.’ The Euhemerism of this is
hardly like the wonder-loving Jones.
In the legends of the two shepherds of Cwm Llan
and their experience with the fairies, the first deals
with the secrecy feature, while the second reproduces
the often-impressed lesson concerning the money
value of kindness. The first is as follows: One
evening a shepherd, who had been searching for his
sheep on the side of Nant y Bettws, after crossing
Bwlch Cwm Llan, espied a number of little people
singing and dancing, and some of the prettiest damsels
he ever set eyes on preparing a feast. He went to
122]
them and partook of the meal, and thought he had
never tasted anything to equal those dishes. When
it became dusk they pitched their tents, and the
shepherd had never seen before such beautiful things
as they had about them there. They provided him
with a soft feather-bed and sheets of the finest linen,
and he retired, feeling like a prince. But on the
morrow, lo and behold! his bed was but a bush of
bulrushes, and his pillow a tuft of moss. He however
found in his shoes some pieces of silver, and afterwards,
for a long time, he continued to find once a
week a piece of silver placed between two stones
near the spot where he had lain. One day he
divulged his secret to another, and the weekly coin
was never placed there again.
There was another shepherd near Cwm Llan, who
heard some strange noise in a crevice of a rock, and
turning to see what it was, found there a singular
creature who wept bitterly. He took it out and saw
it to be a fairy child, but whilst he was looking at it
compassionately, two middle-aged men came to him
and thanked him courteously for his kindness, and on
leaving him presented him with a staff as a token of
remembrance of the occasion. The following year
every sheep he possessed bore two ewe lambs. They
continued to thus breed for years to come; but one
very dark and stormy night, having stayed very late
in the village, in crossing the river that comes down
from Cwm Llan, there being a great flood sweeping
everything before it, he dropped his staff into the
river and saw it no more. On the morrow he found
that nearly all his sheep and lambs, like his staff, had
been swept away by the flood. His wealth had
departed from him in the same way as it came—with
the staff which he had received from the guardians
of the fairy child.
123]
A Pembrokeshire Welshman told me this story as
a tradition well known in that part of Wales. Ianto
Llewellyn was a man who lived in the parish of
Llanfihangel, not more than fifty or eighty years
ago, and who had precious good reason to believe in
the fairies. He used to keep his fire of coal balls
burning all night long, out of pure kindness of heart,
in case the Tylwyth Teg should be cold. That
they came into his kitchen every night he was well
aware; he often heard them. One night when they
were there as usual, Ianto was lying wide awake and
heard them say, ‘I wish we had some good bread
and cheese this cold night, but the poor man has
only a morsel left; and though it’s true that would
be a good meal for us, it is but a mouthful to him,
and he might starve if we took it.’ At this Ianto
cried out at the top of his voice, ‘Take anything I’ve
got in my cupboard and welcome to you!’ Then he
turned over and went to sleep. The next morning,
when he descended into the kitchen, he looked in
his cupboard, to see if by good luck there might be
a bit of crust there. He had no sooner opened the
cupboard door than he cried out, ‘O’r anwyl! what’s
this?’ for there stood the finest cheese he had ever
seen in his life, with two loaves of bread on top of
it. ‘Lwc dda i ti!’ cried Ianto, waving his hand
toward the wood where he knew the fairies lived;
‘good luck to you! May you never be hungry or
penniless!’ And he had not got the words out of
his mouth when he saw—what do you think?—a
shilling on the hob! But that was the lucky shilling.
Every morning after this, when Ianto got up, there
was the shilling on the hob—another one, you mind,
for he’d spent the first for beer and tobacco to go
124]
with his bread and cheese. Well, after that, no man
in the parish was better supplied with money than
Ianto Llewellyn, though he never did a stroke of
work. He had enough to keep his wife in ease and
comfort, too, and he got the name of Lucky Ianto.
And lucky he might have been to the day of his death
but for the curiosity of woman. Betsi his wife was
determined to know where all this money came from,
and gave the poor man no peace. ‘Wel, naw wfft!’
she cried—which means in English, ‘Nine shames
on you’—‘to have a bad secret from your own dear
wife!’ ‘But you know, Betsi, if I tell you I’ll never
get any more money.’ ‘Ah,’ said she, ‘then it’s the
fairies!’ ‘Drato!’ said he—and that means ‘Bother
it all’—‘yes—the fairies it is.’ With that he thrust
his hands down in his breeches pockets in a sullen
manner and left the house. He had had seven shillings
in his pockets up to that minute, and he went
feeling for them with his fingers, and found they were
gone. In place of them were some pieces of paper
fit only to light his pipe. And from that day the
fairies brought him no more money.
The lesson of generosity is taught with force and
simplicity in the legend of Hafod Lwyddog, and the
necessity for secrecy is quite abandoned. Again it
is a shepherd, who dwelt at Cwm Dyli, and who
went every summer to live in a cabin by the Green
Lake (Llyn Glas) along with his fold. One morning
on awaking from sleep he saw a good-looking damsel
dressing an infant close by his side. She had very
little in which to wrap the babe, so he threw her an
old shirt of his own, and bade her place it about the
child. She thanked him and departed. Every night
thereafter the shepherd found a piece of silver placed
125]
in an old clog in his cabin. Years and years this
good luck continued, and Meirig the shepherd became
immensely wealthy. He married a lovely girl, and
went to the Hafod Lwyddog to live. Whatever
he undertook prospered—hence the name Hafod
Lwyddog, for Lwydd means prosperity. The fairies
paid nightly visits to the Hafod. No witch or evil
sprite could harm this people, as Bendith y Mamau
was poured down upon the family, and all their
descendants.[60]
The thought will naturally occur that by fostering
belief in such tales as some of the foregoing, roguery
might make the superstition useful in silencing inquiry
as to ill-gotten gains. But on the other hand the
virtues of hospitality and generosity were no doubt
fostered by the same influences. If any one was
favoured by the fairies in this manner, the immediate
explanation was, that he had done a good turn to
them, generally without suspecting who they were.
The virtues of neatness, in young girls and servants,
were encouraged by the like notions; the belief
that a fairy will leave money only on a clean-kept
hob, could tend to nothing more directly. It was
also made a condition of pleasing the Tylwyth Teg
that the hearth should be carefully swept and the
pails left full of water. Then the fairies would come
at midnight, continue their revels till daybreak,
sing the well-known strain of ‘Toriad y Dydd,’ or
‘The Dawn,’ leave a piece of money on the hob,
and disappear. Here is seen a precaution against
fire in the clean-swept hearth and the provision of
filled water-pails. That the promised reward did not
always arrive, was not evidence it would never arrive;
and so the virtue of perseverance was also fostered.
126]
Superstitions of this class are widely prevalent
among Aryan peoples. The ‘Arabian Nights’ story
of the old rogue whose money turned to leaves will
be recalled. In Danish folk-lore, the fairy money
bestowed on the boors turns sometimes to pebbles,
and sometimes grows hot and burns their fingers,
so that they drop it, when it sinks into the earth.
[Listen.]
127]
Origins of Welsh Fairies—The Realistic Theory—Legend of the
Baron’s Gate—The Red Fairies—The Trwyn Fairy a Proscribed
Nobleman—The Theory of hiding Druids—Colour in Welsh
Fairy Attire—The Green Lady of Caerphilly—White the favourite
Welsh Hue—Legend of the Prolific Woman—The Poetico-Religious
Theory—The Creed of Science.
Concerning the origin of the Tylwyth Teg, there
are two popular explanations, the one poetico-religious
in its character, the other practical and realistic.
Both are equally wide of the truth, the true origin of
fairies being found in the primeval mythology; but
as my purpose is to avoid enlarging in directions
generally familiar to the student, I have only to
present the local aspects of this, as of the other
features of the subject.
The realistic theory of the origin of the Tylwyth
Teg must be mentioned respectfully, because among
its advocates have been men of culture and good
sense. This theory presumes that the first fairies
were men and women of mortal flesh and blood,
and that the later superstitions are a mere echo of
tales which first were told of real beings. In quasi-support
of this theory, there is a well-authenticated
tradition of a race of beings who, in the middle of
the sixteenth century, inhabited the Wood of the
Great Dark Wood (Coed y Dugoed Mawr) in
Merionethshire, and who were called the Red
Fairies. They lived in dens in the ground, had
fiery red hair and long strong arms, and stole sheep
128]
and cattle by night. There are cottages in Cemmaes
parish, near the Wood of the Great Dark Wood,
with scythes in the chimneys, which were put there
to keep these terrible beings out. One Christmas
eve a valiant knight named Baron Owen headed
a company of warriors who assailed the Red Fairies,
and found them flesh and blood. The Baron hung
a hundred of them; but spared the women, one of
whom begged hard for the life of her son. The
Baron refused her prayer, whereupon she opened
her breast and shrieked, ‘This breast has nursed
other sons than he, who will yet wash their hands
in thy blood, Baron Owen!’ Not very long thereafter,
the Baron was waylaid at a certain spot by
the sons of the ‘fairy’ woman, who washed their
hands in his warm and reeking blood, in fulfilment
of their mother’s threat. And to this day that spot
goes by the name of Llidiart y Barwn (the Baron’s
Gate); any peasant of the neighbourhood will tell
you the story, as one told it to me. There is of
course no better foundation for the fairy features of
it than the fancies of the ignorant mind, but the
legend itself is—very nearly in this shape—historical.
The beings in question were a band of outlaws, who
might naturally find it to their interest to foster
belief in their supernatural powers.
The so-called Pwca’r Trwyn, which haunted the
farm-house in the parish of Mynyddyslwyn, is sometimes
cited as another case in which a fairy was
probably a being of flesh and blood; and if this be
true, it of course proves nothing but the adoption
of an ancient superstition by a proscribed Welsh
nobleman. There is a tradition that this fairy had
a name, and that this name was ‘yr Arglwydd
129]
Hywel,’ which is in English ‘Lord Howell.’ And
it is argued that this Lord, in a contest with the
forces of the English king, was utterly worsted,
and driven into hiding; that his tenants at Pantygasseg
and the Trwyn Farm, loving their Lord,
helped to hide him, and to disseminate the belief
that he was a household fairy, or Bwbach. It is
related that he generally spoke from his own room
in this farm-house, in a gentle voice which ‘came
down between the boards’ into the common room
beneath. One day the servants were comparing
their hands, as to size and whiteness, when the
fairy was heard to say, ‘The Pwca’s hand is the
fairest and smallest.’ The servants asked if the
fairy would show its hand, and immediately a plank
overhead was moved and a hand appeared, small,
fair and beautifully formed, with a large gold ring
on the little finger.
Curiously interesting is the hypothesis concerning
the realistic origin of the Tylwyth Teg, which was
put forth at the close of the last century by several
writers, among them the Rev. Peter Roberts, author
of the ‘Collectanea Cambrica.’ This hypothesis
precisely accounts for the fairies anciently as being
the Druids, in hiding from their enemies, or if not
they, other persons who had such cause for living
concealed in subterraneous places, and venturing
forth only at night. ‘Some conquered aborigines,’
thought Dr. Guthrie; while Mr. Roberts fancied
that as the Irish had frequently landed hostilely
in Wales, ‘it was very possible that some small
bodies of that nation left behind, or unable to return,
and fearing discovery, had hid themselves in caverns
during the day, and sent their children out at night,
fantastically dressed, for food and exercise, and thus
130]
secured themselves.’ But there were objections to
this presumption, and the Druidical theory was the
favourite one. Says Mr. Roberts: ‘The fairy
customs appeared evidently too systematic, and too
general, to be those of an accidental party reduced
to distress. They are those of a consistent and
regular policy instituted to prevent discovery, and
to inspire fear of their power, and a high opinion of
their beneficence. Accordingly tradition notes, that
to attempt to discover them was to incur certain
destruction. “They are fairies,” says Falstaff: “he
that looks on them shall die.” They were not to be
impeded in ingress or egress; a bowl of milk was to
be left for them at night on the hearth; and, in
return, they left a small present in money when
they departed, if the house was kept clean; if not,
they inflicted some punishment on the negligent,
which, as it was death to look on them, they were
obliged to suffer, and no doubt but many unlucky
tricks were played on such occasions. Their general
dress was green, that they might be the better concealed;
and, as their children might have betrayed
their haunts, they seem to have been suffered to go
out only in the night time, and to have been entertained
by dances on moonlight nights. These
dances, like those round the Maypole, have been
said to be performed round a tree; and on an
elevated spot, mostly a tumulus, beneath which was
probably their habitation, or its entrance. The
older persons, probably, mixed as much as they
dared with the world; and, if they happened to be
at any time recognised, the certainty of their vengeance
was their safety. If by any chance their
society was thinned, they appear to have stolen
children, and changed feeble for strong infants.
The stolen children, if beyond infancy, being brought
131]
into their subterraneous dwellings, seem to have had
a soporific given them, and to have been carried to
a distant part of the country; and, being there
allowed to go out merely by night, mistook the
night for the day, and probably were not undeceived
until it could be done securely. The regularity and
generality of this system shows that there was a
body of people existing in the kingdom distinct from
its known inhabitants, and either confederated, or
obliged to live or meet mysteriously; and their
rites, particularly that of dancing round a tree,
probably an oak, as Herne’s, etc., as well as their
character for truth and probity, refer them to a
Druidic origin. If this was the case, it is easy to
conceive, as indeed history shows, that, as the
Druids were persecuted by the Romans and Christians,
they used these means to preserve themselves
and their families, and whilst the country was thinly
peopled, and thickly wooded, did so successfully;
and, perhaps, to a much later period than is
imagined: till the increase of population made it
impossible. As the Druidical was one of the most
ancient religions, so it must have been one of the
first persecuted, and forced to form a regular plan of
security, which their dwelling in caves may have
suggested, and necessity improved.’
It will be observed that one of the points in this
curious speculation rests on the green dress of the
fairies. I do not call attention to it with any Quixotic
purpose of disputing the conclusion it assists; it is
far more interesting as one feature of the general
subject of fairies’ attire. The Welsh fairies are
described with details as to colour in costume not
commonly met with in fairy tales, a fact to which I
132]
have before alluded. In the legend of the Place of
Strife, the Tylwyth Teg encountered by the women
are called ‘the old elves of the blue petticoat.’
A connection with the blue of the sky has here
been suggested. It has also been pointed out
that the sacred Druidical dress was blue. The
blue petticoat fancy seems to be local to North
Wales. In Cardiganshire, the tradition respecting
an encampment called Moyddin, which the fairies
frequented, is that they were always in green
dresses, and were never seen there but in the
vernal month of May. There is a Glamorganshire
goblin called the Green Lady of Caerphilly,
the colour of whose dress is indicated by her title.
She haunts the ruin of Caerphilly Castle at night,
wearing a green robe, and has the power of turning
herself into ivy and mingling with the ivy
growing on the wall. A more ingenious mode of
getting rid of a goblin was perhaps never invented.
The fairies of Frennifawr, in Pembrokeshire, were
on the contrary gorgeous in scarlet, with red caps,
and feathers waving in the wind as they danced.
But others were in white, and this appears to be the
favourite hue of modern Welsh fairy costume, when
the Tylwyth Teg are in holiday garb. These various
details of colour are due to the fervour of the Welsh
fancy, of course, and perhaps their variety may in
part be ascribed to a keener sense of the fitness of
things among moderns than was current in earlier
times. White, to the Welsh, would naturally be
the favourite colour for a beautiful creature, dancing
in the moonlight on the velvet sward. The most
popular pet name for a Welsh lass is to-day exactly
what it has been for centuries, viz., Gwenny, the diminutive
of Gwenllian (Anglicised into Gwendoline)—a
name which means simply white linen; and the white
133]
costume of the favourite fairies undoubtedly signifies
a dress of white linen. This fabric, common as it is
in our day, was in ancient times of inestimable value.
In the Mabinogion, linen is repeatedly particularised
in the gorgeous descriptions of fabled splendour in
princely castles—linen, silk, satin, velvet, gold-lace,
and jewels, are the constantly-recurring features of
sumptuous attire. In his account of the royal tribes
of Wales, Yorke mentions that linen was so rare in
the reign of Charles VII. of France (i.e., in the fifteenth
century) ‘that her majesty the queen could
boast of only two shifts of that commodity.’ The
first cause of the fairies’ robes being white is evidently
to be discerned here; and in Wales the
ancient sentiment as to whiteness remains. The
Welsh peasantry, coarsely and darkly clad themselves,
would make white a purely holiday colour,
and devise some other hue for such commoner
fairies as the Bwbach and his sort:
The coarse and country fairy,
That doth haunt the hearth and dairy.[61]
So the Bwbach is usually brown, often hairy;
and the Coblynau are black or copper-coloured in
face as well as dress.
A local legend of the origin of fairies in Anglesea
mingles the practical and the spiritual in this manner:
‘In our Saviour’s time there lived a woman whose
fortune it was to be possessed of nearly a score of
children, ... and as she saw our blessed Lord
approach her dwelling, being ashamed of being so
prolific, and that He might not see them all, she
concealed about half of them closely, and after his
departure, when she went in search of them, to her
134]
great surprise found they were all gone. They never
afterwards could be discovered, for it was supposed
that as a punishment from heaven for hiding what
God had given her, she was deprived of them; and
it is said these her offspring have generated the
race called fairies.’[62]
The common or popular theory, however, is in
Wales the poetico-religious one. This is, in a
word, the belief that the Tylwyth Teg are the souls
of dead mortals not bad enough for hell nor good
enough for heaven. They are doomed to live on
earth, to dwell in secret places, until the resurrection
day, when they will be admitted into paradise.
Meantime they must be either incessantly toiling or
incessantly playing, but their toil is fruitless and
their pleasure unsatisfying. A variation of this
general belief holds these souls to be the souls of
the ancient Druids, a fancy which is specially impressive,
as indicating the duration of their penance,
and reminds us of the Wandering Jew myth. It is
confined mainly to the Coblynau, or dwellers in
mines and caves. Another variation considers the
fairies bad spirits of still remoter origin—the same
in fact who were thrown over the battlements of
heaven along with Satan, but did not fall into hell—landed
on the earth instead, where they are permitted
to tarry till doomsday as above. A detail
of this theory is in explanation of the rare appearance
of fairies nowadays; they are refraining from
mischief in view of the near approach of the judgment,
with the hope of thus conciliating heaven.
The Prophet Jones, in explaining why the fairies
have been so active in Wales, expounds the poetico-religious
theory in masterly form. After stating that
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some in Monmouthshire were so ignorant as to think
the fairies happy spirits, because they had music and
dancing among them, he proceeds to assert, in the
most emphatic terms, that the Tylwyth Teg are
nothing else, ‘after all the talking about them,’ but
the disembodied spirits of men who lived and died
without the enjoyment of the means of grace and
salvation, as Pagans and others, and whose punishment
therefore is far less severe than that of those
who have enjoyed the means of salvation. ‘But
some persons may desire to know why these fairies
have appeared in Wales more than in some other
countries? to which I answer, that I can give no
other reason but this, that having lost the light of
the true religion in the eighth and ninth centuries of
Christianity, and received Popery in its stead, it
became dark night upon them; and then these
spirits of darkness became more bold and intruding;
and the people, as I said before, in their great ignorance
seeing them like a company of children in dry
clean places, dancing and having music among them,
thought them to be some happy beings, ... and
made them welcome in their houses.... The Welsh
entered into familiarity with the fairies in the time
of Henry IV., and the evil then increased; the
severe laws of that prince enjoining, among other
things, that they were not to bring up their children
to learning, etc., by which a total darkness came upon
them; which cruel laws were occasioned by the
rebellion of Owen Glandwr, and the Welsh which
joined with him; foolishly thinking to shake off the
Saxon yoke before they had repented of their sins.’
Whatever their locally accepted causes of being
may be, it is beyond any question that in the fairy
folk-lore of Wales, as of other lands, are to be found
the débris of ancient mythology—scintillant
136]
fragments of those magic constellations which glow in
the darkness of primeval time, grand and majestic
as the vast Unknown out of which they were evolved
by barbaric fancy. Through the aid of modern
scientific research, ‘those ages which the myths of
centuries have peopled with heroic shadows’[63] are
brought nearer to us, and the humble Welsh Tylwyth
Teg may reach back and shake hands with the
Olympian gods.
“The humble ‘Tylwyth Teg’ shake hands with the Olympian Gods”
137]
