I find it best to begin by reproducing a story which has already been placed on record: this appears desirable on account of its being the most complete of its kind, and the one with which shorter ones can most readily be compared. I allude to the legend of the Lady of Ỻyn y Fan Fach in Carmarthenshire, which I take the liberty of copying from Mr. Rees of Tonn’s version in the introduction to The Physicians of Myđvai1, published by the Welsh Manuscript Society, at Ỻandovery, in 1861. There he says that he wrote it down from the oral recitations, which I suppose were in Welsh, of John Evans, tiler, of Myđfai, David Williams, Morfa, near Myđfai, who was about ninety years old at the time, and Elizabeth Morgan, of Henỻys Lodge, near Ỻandovery, who was a native of the same village of Myđfai; to this it may be added that he acknowledges obligations also to Joseph Joseph, Esq., F.S.A., Brecon, for collecting particulars from the old inhabitants of the parish of Ỻanđeusant. The legend, as given by Mr. Rees in English, runs as follows, and strongly reminds one in certain parts of the Story of Undine as given in the German of De la Motte Fouqué, with which it should be compared:—

‘When the eventful struggle made by the Princes of South Wales to preserve the independence of their country was drawing to its close in the twelfth century, [3]there lived at Blaensawđe2 near Ỻanđeusant, Carmarthenshire, a widowed woman, the relict of a farmer who had fallen in those disastrous troubles.

‘The widow had an only son to bring up, but Providence smiled upon her, and despite her forlorn condition, her live stock had so increased in course of time, that she could not well depasture them upon her farm, so she sent a portion of her cattle to graze on the adjoining Black Mountain, and their most favourite place was near the small lake called Ỻyn y Fan Fach, on the north-western side of the Carmarthenshire Fans.

‘The son grew up to manhood, and was generally sent by his mother to look after the cattle on the mountain. One day, in his peregrinations along the margin of the lake, to his great astonishment, he beheld, sitting on the unruffled surface of the water, a lady; one of the most beautiful creatures that mortal eyes ever beheld, her hair flowed gracefully in ringlets over her shoulders, the tresses of which she arranged with a comb, whilst the glassy surface of her watery couch served for the purpose of a mirror, reflecting back her own image. Suddenly she beheld the young man standing on the brink of the lake, with his eyes riveted on her, and unconsciously offering to herself the provision of barley bread and cheese with which he had been provided when he left his home.

‘Bewildered by a feeling of love and admiration for the object before him, he continued to hold out his hand towards the lady, who imperceptibly glided near to him, but gently refused the offer of his provisions. [4]He attempted to touch her, but she eluded his grasp, saying—

and immediately dived under the water and disappeared, leaving the love-stricken youth to return home, a prey to disappointment and regret that he had been unable to make further acquaintance with one, in comparison with whom the whole of the fair maidens of Ỻanđeusant and Myđfai4 whom he had ever seen were as nothing.

On his return home the young man communicated to his mother the extraordinary vision he had beheld. She advised him to take some unbaked dough or “toes” the next time in his pocket, as there must have been some spell connected with the hard-baked bread, or “Bara cras,” which prevented his catching the lady.

‘Next morning, before the sun had gilded with its rays the peaks of the Fans, the young man was at the lake, not for the purpose of looking after his mother’s cattle, but seeking for the same enchanting vision he [5]had witnessed the day before; but all in vain did he anxiously strain his eyeballs and glance over the surface of the lake, as only the ripples occasioned by a stiff breeze met his view, and a cloud hung heavily on the summit of the Fan, which imparted an additional gloom to his already distracted mind.

‘Hours passed on, the wind was hushed, and the clouds which had enveloped the mountain had vanished into thin air before the powerful beams of the sun, when the youth was startled by seeing some of his mother’s cattle on the precipitous side of the acclivity, nearly on the opposite side of the lake. His duty impelled him to attempt to rescue them from their perilous position, for which purpose he was hastening away, when, to his inexpressible delight, the object of his search again appeared to him as before, and seemed much more beautiful than when he first beheld her. His hand was again held out to her, full of unbaked bread, which he offered with an urgent proffer of his heart also, and vows of eternal attachment. All of which were refused by her, saying—

But the smiles that played upon her features as the lady vanished beneath the waters raised within the young man a hope that forbade him to despair by her refusal of him, and the recollection of which cheered him on his way home. His aged parent was made acquainted with his ill-success, and she suggested that his bread should next time be but slightly baked, as most likely to please the mysterious being of whom he had become enamoured.

‘Impelled by an irresistible feeling, the youth left [6]his mother’s house early next morning, and with rapid steps he passed over the mountain. He was soon near the margin of the lake, and with all the impatience of an ardent lover did he wait with a feverish anxiety for the reappearance of the mysterious lady.

‘The sheep and goats browsed on the precipitous sides of the Fan; the cattle strayed amongst the rocks and large stones, some of which were occasionally loosened from their beds and suddenly rolled down into the lake; rain and sunshine alike came and passed away; but all were unheeded by the youth, so wrapped up was he in looking for the appearance of the lady.

‘The freshness of the early morning had disappeared before the sultry rays of the noon-day sun, which in its turn was fast verging towards the west as the evening was dying away and making room for the shades of night, and hope had wellnigh abated of beholding once more the Lady of the Lake. The young man cast a sad and last farewell look over the waters, and, to his astonishment, beheld several cows walking along its surface. The sight of these animals caused hope to revive that they would be followed by another object far more pleasing; nor was he disappointed, for the maiden reappeared, and to his enraptured sight, even lovelier than ever. She approached the land, and he rushed to meet her in the water. A smile encouraged him to seize her hand; neither did she refuse the moderately baked bread he offered her; and after some persuasion she consented to become his bride, on condition that they should only live together until she received from him three blows without a cause,

And if he ever should happen to strike her three such [7]blows she would leave him for ever. To such conditions he readily consented, and would have consented to any other stipulation, had it been proposed, as he was only intent on then securing such a lovely creature for his wife.

‘Thus the Lady of the Lake engaged to become the young man’s wife, and having loosed her hand for a moment she darted away and dived into the lake. His chagrin and grief were such that he determined to cast himself headlong into the deepest water, so as to end his life in the element that had contained in its unfathomed depths the only one for whom he cared to live on earth. As he was on the point of committing this rash act, there emerged out of the lake two most beautiful ladies, accompanied by a hoary-headed man of noble mien and extraordinary stature, but having otherwise all the force and strength of youth. This man addressed the almost bewildered youth in accents calculated to soothe his troubled mind, saying that as he proposed to marry one of his daughters, he consented to the union, provided the young man could distinguish which of the two ladies before him was the object of his affections. This was no easy task, as the maidens were such perfect counterparts of each other that it seemed quite impossible for him to choose his bride, and if perchance he fixed upon the wrong one all would be for ever lost.

‘Whilst the young man narrowly scanned the two ladies, he could not perceive the least difference betwixt the two, and was almost giving up the task in despair, when one of them thrust her foot a slight degree forward. The motion, simple as it was, did not escape the observation of the youth, and he discovered a trifling variation in the mode with which their sandals were tied. This at once put an end to the dilemma, for he, [8]who had on previous occasions been so taken up with the general appearance of the Lady of the Lake, had also noticed the beauty of her feet and ankles, and on now recognizing the peculiarity of her shoe-tie he boldly took hold of her hand.

‘ “Thou hast chosen rightly,” said her father; “be to her a kind and faithful husband, and I will give her, as a dowry, as many sheep, cattle, goats, and horses as she can count of each without heaving or drawing in her breath. But remember, that if you prove unkind to her at any time, and strike her three times without a cause, she shall return to me, and shall bring all her stock back with her.”

‘Such was the verbal marriage settlement, to which the young man gladly assented, and his bride was desired to count the number of sheep she was to have. She immediately adopted the mode of counting by fives, thus:—One, two, three, four, five—One, two, three, four, five; as many times as possible in rapid succession, till her breath was exhausted. The same process of reckoning had to determine the number of goats, cattle, and horses respectively; and in an instant the full number of each came out of the lake when called upon by the father.

‘The young couple were then married, by what ceremony was not stated, and afterwards went to reside at a farm called Esgair Ỻaethdy, somewhat more than a mile from the village of Myđfai, where they lived in prosperity and happiness for several years, and became the parents of three sons, who were beautiful children.

‘Once upon a time there was a christening to take place in the neighbourhood, to which the parents were specially invited. When the day arrived the wife appeared very reluctant to attend the christening, [9]alleging that the distance was too great for her to walk. Her husband told her to fetch one of the horses which were grazing in an adjoining field. “I will,” said she, “if you will bring me my gloves which I left in our house.” He went to the house and returned with the gloves, and finding that she had not gone for the horse jocularly slapped her shoulder with one of them, saying, “go! go!” (dos, dos), when she reminded him of the understanding upon which she consented to marry him:—That he was not to strike her without a cause; and warned him to be more cautious for the future.

‘On another occasion, when they were together at a wedding, in the midst of the mirth and hilarity of the assembled guests, who had gathered together from all the surrounding country, she burst into tears and sobbed most piteously. Her husband touched her on her shoulder and inquired the cause of her weeping: she said, “Now people are entering into trouble, and your troubles are likely to commence, as you have the second time stricken me without a cause.”

‘Years passed on, and their children had grown up, and were particularly clever young men. In the midst of so many worldly blessings at home the husband almost forgot that there remained only one causeless blow to be given to destroy the whole of his prosperity. Still he was watchful lest any trivial occurrence should take place which his wife must regard as a breach of their marriage contract. She told him, as her affection for him was unabated, to be careful that he would not, through some inadvertence, give the last and only blow, which, by an unalterable destiny, over which she had no control, would separate them for ever.

‘It, however, so happened that one day they were together at a funeral, where, in the midst of the mourning and grief at the house of the deceased, she appeared [10]in the highest and gayest spirits, and indulged in immoderate fits of laughter, which so shocked her husband that he touched her, saying, “Hush! hush! don’t laugh.” She said that she laughed “because people when they die go out of trouble,” and, rising up, she went out of the house, saying, “The last blow has been struck, our marriage contract is broken, and at an end! Farewell!” Then she started off towards Esgair Ỻaethdy, where she called her cattle and other stock together, each by name. The cattle she called thus:—

They all immediately obeyed the summons of their mistress. The “little black calf,” although it had been slaughtered, became alive again, and walked off with the rest of the stock at the command of the lady. This happened in the spring of the year, and there were four oxen ploughing in one of the fields; to these she cried:—

Away the whole of the live stock went with the Lady across Myđfai Mountain, towards the lake from whence they came, a distance of above six miles, where they disappeared beneath its waters, leaving no trace behind except a well-marked furrow, which was made by the plough the oxen drew after them into the lake, and [11]which remains to this day as a testimony to the truth of this story.

‘What became of the affrighted ploughman—whether he was left on the field when the oxen set off, or whether he followed them to the lake, has not been handed down to tradition; neither has the fate of the disconsolate and half-ruined husband been kept in remembrance. But of the sons it is stated that they often wandered about the lake and its vicinity, hoping that their mother might be permitted to visit the face of the earth once more, as they had been apprised of her mysterious origin, her first appearance to their father, and the untoward circumstances which so unhappily deprived them of her maternal care.

‘In one of their rambles, at a place near Dôl Howel, at the Mountain Gate, still called “Ỻidiad y Međygon,” The Physicians’ Gate, the mother appeared suddenly, and accosted her eldest son, whose name was Rhiwaỻon, and told him that his mission on earth was to be a benefactor to mankind by relieving them from pain and misery, through healing all manner of their diseases; for which purpose she furnished him with a bag full of medical prescriptions and instructions for the preservation of health. That by strict attention thereto he and his family would become for many generations the most skilful physicians in the country. Then, promising to meet him when her counsel was most needed, she vanished. But on several occasions she met her sons near the banks of the lake, and once she even accompanied them on their return home as far as a place still called “Pant-y-Međygon,” The dingle of the Physicians, where she pointed out to them the various plants and herbs which grew in the dingle, and revealed to them their medicinal qualities or virtues; and the knowledge she imparted to them, [12]together with their unrivalled skill, soon caused them to attain such celebrity that none ever possessed before them. And in order that their knowledge should not be lost, they wisely committed the same to writing, for the benefit of mankind throughout all ages.’

To the legend Mr. Rees added the following notes, which we reproduce also at full length:—

‘And so ends the story of the Physicians of Myđfai, which has been handed down from one generation to another, thus:—

As stated in the introduction of the present work [i.e. the Physicians of Myđvai], Rhiwaỻon and his sons became Physicians to Rhys Gryg, Lord of Ỻandovery and Dynefor Castles, “who gave them rank, lands, and privileges at Myđfai for their maintenance in the practice of their art and science, and the healing and benefit of those who should seek their help,” thus affording to those who could not afford to pay, the best medical advice and treatment gratuitously. Such a truly royal foundation could not fail to produce corresponding effects. So the fame of the Physicians of Myđfai was soon established over the whole country, and continued for centuries among their descendants.

‘The celebrated Welsh Bard, Dafyđ ap Gwilym, who flourished in the following century, and was buried at the Abbey of Tal-y-ỻychau7, in Carmarthenshire, [13]about the year 1368, says in one of his poems, as quoted in Dr. Davies’ dictionary—

Of the above lands bestowed upon the Međygon, there are two farms in Myđfai parish still called “Ỻwyn Ifan Feđyg,” the Grove of Evan the Physician; and “Ỻwyn Meredyđ Feđyg,” the Grove of Meredith the Physician. Esgair Ỻaethdy, mentioned in the foregoing legend, was formerly in the possession of the above descendants, and so was Ty newyđ, near Myđfai, which was purchased by Mr. Holford, of Cilgwyn, from the Rev. Charles Lloyd, vicar of Ỻandefaỻe, Breconshire, who married a daughter of one of the Međygon, and had the living of Ỻandefaỻe from a Mr. Vaughan, who presented him to the same out of gratitude, because Mr. Lloyd’s wife’s father had cured him of a disease in the eye. As Mr. Lloyd succeeded to the above living in 1748, and died in 1800, it is probable that the skilful oculist was John Jones, who is mentioned in the following inscription on a tombstone at present fixed against the west end of Myđfai Church:—

HERE
Lieth the body of Mr. DAVID JONES, of Mothvey, Surgeon,
who was an honest, charitable, and skilful man.
He died September 14th, Anno Dom̃ 1719, aged 61.

JOHN JONES, Surgeon,
Eldest son of the said David Jones, departed this life
the 25th of November, 1739, in the 44th year
of his Age, and also lyes interred hereunder.

These appear to have been the last of the Physicians who practised at Myđfai. The above John Jones resided for some time at Ỻandovery, and was a very eminent surgeon. One of his descendants, named [14]John Lewis, lived at Cwmbran, Myđfai, at which place his great-grandson, Mr. John Jones, now resides.

‘Dr. Morgan Owen, Bishop of Ỻandaff, who died at Glasaỻt, parish of Myđfai, in 1645, was a descendant of the Međygon, and an inheritor of much of their landed property in that parish, the bulk of which he bequeathed to his nephew, Morgan Owen, who died in 1667, and was succeeded by his son Henry Owen; and at the decease of the last of whose descendants, Robert Lewis, Esq., the estates became, through the will of one of the family, the property of the late D. A. S. Davies, Esq., M.P. for Carmarthenshire.

‘Bishop Owen bequeathed to another nephew, Morgan ap Rees, son of Rees ap John, a descendant of the Međygon, the farm of Rhyblid, and some other property. Morgan ap Rees’ son, Samuel Rice, resided at Loughor, in Gower, Glamorganshire, and had a son, Morgan Rice, who was a merchant in London, and became Lord of the Manor of Tooting Graveney, and High Sheriff in the year 1772, and Deputy Lieutenant of the county of Surrey, 1776. He resided at Hill House, which he built. At his death the whole of his property passed to his only child, John Rice, Esq., whose eldest son, the Rev. John Morgan Rice, inherited the greater portion of his estates. The head of the family is now the Rev. Horatio Morgan Rice, rector of South Hill with Callington, Cornwall, and J.P. for the county, who inherited, with other property, a small estate at Loughor. The above Morgan Rice had landed property in Ỻanmadock and Ỻangenith, as well as Loughor, in Gower, but whether he had any connexion with Howel the Physician (ap Rhys ap Ỻywelyn ap Philip the Physician, and lineal descendant from Einion ap Rhiwaỻon), who resided at Cilgwryd in Gower, is not known. [15]

‘Amongst other families who claim descent from the Physicians were the Bowens of Cwmydw, Myđfai; and Jones of Dollgarreg and Penrhock, in the same parish; the latter of whom are represented by Charles Bishop, of Dollgarreg, Esq., Clerk of the Peace for Carmarthenshire, and Thomas Bishop, of Brecon, Esq.

‘Rees Williams of Myđfai is recorded as one of the Međygon. His great-grandson was the late Rice Williams, M.D., of Aberystwyth, who died May 16, 1842, aged 85, and appears to have been the last, although not the least eminent, of the Physicians descended from the mysterious Lady of Ỻyn y Fan8.’

This brings the legend of the Lady of the Fan Lake into connexion with a widely-spread family. There is another connexion between it and modern times, as will be seen from the following statement kindly made to me by the Rev. A. G. Edwards, Warden of the Welsh College at Ỻandovery, since then appointed Bishop of St. Asaph: ‘An old woman from Myđfai, who is now, that is to say in January 1881, about eighty years of age, tells me that she remembers “thousands and thousands of people visiting the Lake of the Little Fan on the first Sunday or Monday in August, and when she was young she often heard old men declare that at that time a commotion took place in the lake, and that its waters boiled, which was taken to herald the approach of the Lake Lady and her Oxen.” ’ The custom of going up to the lake on the first Sunday in August was a very well known one in years gone by, as I have learned from a good many people, and it is corroborated by Mr. Joseph Joseph of Brecon, who kindly writes as follows, in reply to some queries [16]of mine: ‘On the first Sunday in the month of August, Ỻyn y Fan Fach is supposed to be boiling (berwi). I have seen scores of people going up to see it (not boiling though) on that day. I do not remember that any of them expected to see the Lady of the Lake.’ As to the boiling of the lake I have nothing to say, and I am not sure that there is anything in the following statement made as an explanation of the yearly visit to the lake by an old fisherwoman from Ỻandovery: ‘The best time for eels is in August, when the north-east wind blows on the lake, and makes huge waves in it. The eels can then be seen floating on the waves.’

Last summer I went myself to the village of Myđfai, to see if I could pick up any variants of the legend, but I was hardly successful; for though several of the farmers I questioned could repeat bits of the legend, including the Lake Lady’s call to her cattle as she went away, I got nothing new, except that one of them said that the youth, when he first saw the Lake Lady at a distance, thought she was a goose—he did not even rise to the conception of a swan—but that by degrees he approached her, and discovered that she was a lady in white, and that in due time they were married, and so on. My friend, the Warden of Ỻandovery College, seems, however, to have found a bit of a version which may have been still more unlike the one recorded by Mr. Rees of Tonn: it was from an old man at Myđfai last year, from whom he was, nevertheless, only able to extract the statement ‘that the Lake Lady got somehow entangled in a farmer’s “gambo,” and that ever after his farm was very fertile.’ A ‘gambo,’ I ought to explain, is a kind of a cart without sides, used in South Wales: both the name and the thing seem to have come from England, [17]though I cannot find such a word as gambo or gambeau in the ordinary dictionaries.

Among other legends about lake fairies, there are, in the third chapter of Mr. Sikes’ British Goblins, two versions of this story: the first of them differs but slightly from Mr. Rees’, in that the farmer used to go near the lake to see some lambs he had bought at a fair, and that whenever he did so three beautiful damsels appeared to him from the lake. They always eluded his attempts to catch them: they ran away into the lake, saying, Cras dy fara, &c. But one day a piece of moist bread came floating ashore, which he ate, and the next day he had a chat with the Lake Maidens. He proposed marriage to one of them, to which she consented, provided he could distinguish her from her sisters the day after. The story then, so far as I can make out from the brief version which Mr. Sikes gives of it, went on like that of Mr. Rees. The former gives another version, with much more interesting variations, which omit all reference, however, to the Physicians of Myđfai, and relate how a young farmer had heard of the Lake Maiden rowing up and down the lake in a golden boat with a golden scull. He went to the lake on New Year’s Eve, saw her, was fascinated by her, and left in despair at her vanishing out of sight, although he cried out to her to stay and be his wife. She faintly replied, and went her way, after he had gazed at her long yellow hair and pale melancholy face. He continued to visit the lake, and grew thin and negligent of his person, owing to his longing. But a wise man, who lived on the mountain, advised him to tempt her with gifts of bread and cheese, which he undertook to do on Midsummer Eve, when he dropped into the lake a large cheese and a loaf of bread. This he did repeatedly, until at last [18]his hopes were fulfilled on New Year’s Eve. This time he had gone to the lake clad in his best suit, and at midnight dropped seven white loaves and his biggest and finest cheese into the lake. The Lake Lady by-and-by came in her skiff to where he was, and gracefully stepped ashore. The scene need not be further described: Mr. Sikes gives a picture of it, and the story then proceeds as in the other version.

It is a pity that Mr. Rees did not preserve the Welsh versions out of which he pieced together the English one; but as to Mr. Sikes, I cannot discover whence his has been derived, for he seems not to have been too anxious to leave anybody the means of testing his work, as one will find on verifying his references, when he gives any. See also the allusions to him in Hartland’s Science of Fairy Tales, pp. 64, 123, 137, 165, 278.

Since writing the foregoing notes the following communication has reached me from a friend of my undergraduate days at Jesus College, Oxford, Mr. Ỻywarch Reynolds of Merthyr Tydfil. Only the first part of it concerns the legend of Ỻyn y Fan Fach; but as the rest is equally racy I make no apology for publishing it in full without any editing, except the insertion of the meaning of two or three of the Welsh words occurring in it:—

‘Tell Rhŷs that I have just heard a sequel to the Međygon Myđfai story, got from a rustic on Mynyđ y Banwen, between Glynnêđ and Glyntawë, on a ramble recently with David Lewis the barrister and Sidney Hartland the folklorist. It was to the effect that after the disappearance of the forwn, “the damsel,” into the lake, the disconsolate husband and his friends set to work to drain the lake in order to get at her, if possible. They made a great cutting into the bank, when suddenly a huge hairy monster of hideous aspect [19]emerged from the water and stormed at them for disturbing him, and wound up with this threat:—

It was evidently the last braich, “arm,” of a Triban Morgannwg, but this was all my informant knew of it. From the allusion to Tre’ Byrhonđu, it struck me that there was here probably a tale of Ỻyn Safađon, which had migrated to Ỻyn y Fan; because of course there would have to be a considerable change in the “levels” before Ỻyn y Fan and the Sawđe could put Brecon in any great jeopardy9.

‘We also got another tale about a cwmshurwr, “conjurer,” who once lived in Ystradgyrlais (as the rustic pronounced it). The wizard was a dyn ỻaw-harn, “a man with an iron hand”; and it being reported that there was a great treasure hidden in Mynyđ y Drum, the wizard said he would secure it, if he could but get some plucky fellow to spend a night with him there. John Gethin was a plucky fellow (dyn “ysprydol”), and he agreed to join the dyn ỻaw-harn in his diablerie. The wizard traced two rings on the sward touching each other “like a number 8”; he went into one, and Gethin into the other, the wizard strictly charging him on no account to step out of the ring. The ỻaw-harn then proceeded to trafod ’i lyfrau, or “busy himself with his books”; and there soon appeared a monstrous bull, bellowing dreadfully; but the plucky Gethin held his ground, and the bull vanished. Next came a [20]terrible object, a “fly-wheel of fire,” which made straight for poor Gethin and made him swerve out of the ring. Thereupon the wheel assumed the form of the diawl, “devil,” who began to haul Gethin away. The ỻaw-harn seized hold of him and tried to get him back. The devil was getting the upper hand, when the ỻaw-harn begged the devil to let him keep Gethin while the piece of candle he had with him lasted. The devil consented, and let go his hold of Gethin, whereupon the cwmshurwr immediately blew out the candle, and the devil was discomfited. Gethin preserved the piece of candle very carefully, stowing it away in a cool place; but still it wasted away although it was never lighted. Gethin got such a fright that he took to his bed, and as the candle wasted away he did the same, and they both came to an end simultaneously. Gethin vanished—and it was not his body that was put into the coffin, but a lump of clay which was put in to save appearances! It is said that the wizard’s books are in an oaken chest at Waungyrlais farm house to this day.

‘We got these tales on a ramble to see “Maen y Gweđiau,” on the mountain near Coelbren Junction Station on the Neath and Brecon Railway (marked on the Ordnance Map), but we had to turn back owing to the fearful heat.’

Before dismissing Mr. Reynolds’ letter I may mention a story in point which relates to a lake on the Brecon side of the mountains. It is given at length by the Rev. Edward Davies in his Mythology and Rites of the British Druids (London, 1809), pp. 155–7. According to this legend a door in the rock was to be found open once a year—on May-day, as it is supposed—and from that door one could make one’s way to the garden of the fairies, which was an island in the middle of the lake. This paradise of [21]exquisite bliss was invisible, however, to those who stood outside the lake: they could only see an indistinct mass in the centre of the water. Once on a time a visitor tried to carry away some of the flowers given him by the fairies, but he was thereby acting against their law, and not only was he punished with the loss of his senses, but the door has never since been left open. It is also related that once an adventurous person attempted to drain the water away ‘in order to discover its contents, when a terrific form arose from the midst of the lake, commanding him to desist, or otherwise he would drown the country.’ This form is clearly of the same species as that which, according to Mr. Reynolds’ story, threatened to drown the town of Brecon. Subsequent inquiries have elicited more information, and I am more especially indebted to my friend Mr. Ivor James, who, as registrar of the University of Wales, has of late years been living at Brecon. He writes to the following effect:—‘The lake you want is Ỻyn Cwm Ỻwch, and the legend is very well known locally, but there are variants. Once on a time men and boys dug a gully through the dam in order to let the water out. A man in a red coat, sitting in an armchair, appeared on the surface of the water and threatened them in the terms which you quote from Mr. Reynolds. The red coat would seem to suggest that this form of the legend dates possibly from a time since our soldiers were first clothed in red. In another case, however, the spectre was that of an old woman; and I am told that a somewhat similar story is told in connexion with a well in the castle wall in the parish of Ỻanđew, to the north of this town—Giraldus Cambrensis’ parish. A friend of mine is employing his spare time at present in an inquiry into the origin of the lakes of this district, and he tells me that Ỻyn [22]Cwm Ỻwch is of glacial origin, its dam being composed, as he thinks, of glacial débris through which the water always percolates into the valley below. But storm water flows over the dam, and in the course of ages has cut for itself a gully, now about ten feet deep at the deepest point, through the embankment. The story was possibly invented to explain that fact. There is no cave to be seen in the rock, and probably there never was one, as the formation is the Old Red Sandstone; and the island was perhaps equally imaginary.’

That is the substance of Mr. James’ letter, in which he, moreover, refers to J. D. Rhys’ account of the lake in his Welsh introduction to his Grammar, published in London in 1592, under the title Cambrobrytannicæ Cymraecæve Linguæ Institutiones et Rudimenta. There the grammarian, in giving some account of himself, mentions his frequent sojourns at the hospitable residence of a nobleman, named M. Morgan Merêdydh, near y Bugeildy ynn Nyphryn Tabhîda o bhywn Swydh Bhaesybhed, that is, ‘near the Beguildy in the Valley of the Teme within the county of Radnor.’ Then he continues to the following effect:—‘But the latter part of this book was thought out under the bushes and green foliage in a bit of a place of my own called y Clun Hîr, at the top of Cwm y Ỻwch, below the spurs of the mountain of Bannwchdeni, which some call Bann Arthur and others Moel Arthur. Below that moel and in its lap there is a lake of pretty large size, unknown depth, and wondrous nature. For as the stories go, no bird has ever been seen to repair to it or towards it, or to swim on it: it is wholly avoided, and some say that no animals or beasts of any kind are wont to drink of its waters. The peasantry of that country, and especially the shepherds who are wont to frequent these moels and bans, relate many other wonders concerning it and [23]the exceeding strange things beheld at times in connexion with this loch. This lake or loch is called Ỻyn Cwm y Ỻwch10.’

Before dismissing the story of Ỻyn y Fan Fach I wish to append a similar one from the parish of Ystrad Dyfodwg in Glamorganshire. The following is a translation of a version given in Welsh in Cyfaiỻ yr Aelwyd a’r Frythones, edited by Elfed and Cadrawd, and published by Messrs. Williams and Son, Ỻaneỻy. The version in question is by Cadrawd, and it is to the following effect—see the volume for 1892, p. 59:—

‘Ỻyn y Forwyn, “the Damsel’s Pool,” is in the parish of Ystrad Tyfodwg: the inhabitants call it also Ỻyn Nelferch. It lies about halfway between the farm house of Rhonđa Fechan, “Little Rhonđa,” and the Vale of Safrwch. The ancient tradition concerning it is somewhat as follows:—

‘Once on a time a farmer lived at the Rhonđa Fechan: he was unmarried, and as he was walking by the lake early one morning in spring he beheld a young woman of beautiful appearance walking on the other side of it. He approached her and spoke to her: she gave him to understand that her home was in the lake, and that she owned a number of milch cows, that lived with her at the bottom of the water. The farmer fancied her so much that he fell in love with her over head and ears: he asked her on the spot for her hand and heart; and he invited her to come and spend her life with him as his wife at the Rhonđa Fechan. She declined at first, but as he was importunate she consented [24]at last on the following conditions, namely, that she would bring her cattle with her out of the lake, and live with him until he and she had three disputes with one another: then, she said, she and the cattle would return into the lake. He agreed to the conditions, and the marriage took place. They lived very happily and comfortably for long years; but the end was that they fell out with one another, and, when they happened to have quarrelled for the third time, she was heard early in the morning driving the cattle towards the lake with these words:—

And into the lake they went out of sight, and there they live to this day. And some believed that they had heard the voice and cry of Nelferch in the whisper of the breeze on the top of the mountain hard by—many a time after that—as an old story (weđal) will have it.’

From this it will be seen that the fairy wife’s name was supposed to have been Nelferch, and that the piece of water is called after her. But I find that great uncertainty prevails as to the old name of the lake, as I learn from a communication in 1894 from [25]Mr. Ỻewellyn Williams, living at Porth, only some five miles from the spot, that one of his informants assured him that the name in use among former generations was Ỻyn Alfach. Mr. Williams made inquiries at the Rhonđa Fechan about the lake legend. He was told that the water had long since been known as Ỻyn y Forwyn, from a morwyn, or damsel, with a number of cattle having been drowned in it. The story of the man who mentioned the name as Ỻyn Alfach was similar: the maid belonged to the farm of Penrhys, he said, and the young man to the Rhonđa Fechan, and it was in consequence of their third dispute, he added, that she left him and went back to her previous service, and afterwards, while taking the cattle to the water, she sank accidentally or purposely into the lake, so that she was never found any more. Here it will be seen how modern rationalism has been modifying the story into something quite uninteresting but without wholly getting rid of the original features, such as the three disputes between the husband and wife. Lastly, it is worth mentioning that this water appears to form part of a bit of very remarkable scenery, and that its waves strike on one side against a steep rock believed to contain caves, supposed to have been formerly inhabited by men and women. At present the place, I learn, is in the possession of Messrs. Davis and Sons, owners of the Ferndale collieries, who keep a pleasure boat on the lake. I have appealed to them on the question of the name Nelferch or Alfach, in the hope that their books would help to decide as to the old form of it. Replying on their behalf, Mr. J. Probert Evans informs me that the company only got possession of the lake and the adjacent land in 1862, and that ‘Ỻyn y Vorwyn’ is the name of the former in the oldest plan which they have. Inquiries have also been made [26]in the neighbourhood by my friend, Mr. Reynolds, who found the old tenants of the Rhonđa Fechan Farm gone, and the neighbouring farm house of Dyffryn Safrwch supplanted by colliers’ cottages. But he calls my attention to the fact, that perhaps the old name was neither Nelferch nor Alfach, as Elfarch, which would fit equally well, was once the name of a petty chieftain of the adjoining Hundred of Senghenyđ, for which he refers me to Clark’s Glamorgan Genealogies, p. 511. But I have to thank him more especially for a longer version of the fairy wife’s call to her cattle, as given in Glanffrwd’s Plwyf Ỻanwyno, ‘the Parish of Ỻanwynno’ (Pontypriđ, 1888), p. 117, as follows:—

The last lines—slightly mended—may be rendered:

This seems to suggest that the quarrel was about [27]another woman, and that by the time when the fairy came to call her live stock into the lake she had been replaced by another woman who came from the Ty-fry, or the House up Hill12. In that case this version comes closer than any other to the story of Undine supplanted by Bertalda as her knight’s favourite.

Mr. Probert Evans having kindly given me the address of an aged farmer who formerly lived in the valley, my friend, Mr. Ỻywarch Reynolds, was good enough to visit him. Mr. Reynolds shall report the result in his own words, dated January 9, 1899, as follows:—

‘I was at Pentyrch this morning, and went to see Mr. David Evans, formerly of Cefn Colston.

‘The old man is a very fine specimen of the better class of Welsh farmer; is in his eighty-third year; hale and hearty, intelligent, and in full possession of his faculties. He was born and bred in the Rhonđa Fechan Valley, and lived there until some forty years ago. He had often heard the lake story from an old aunt of his who lived at the Maerdy Farm (a short distance north of the lake), and who died a good many years ago, at a very advanced age. He calls the lake “Ỻyn Elferch,” and the story, as known to him, has several points in common with the Ỻyn y Fan legend, which, however, he did not appear to know. He could not give me many details, but the following is the substance of the story as he knows it:—The young farmer, who lived with his mother at the neighbouring farm, one day saw the lady on the bank of the lake, combing her hair, which reached down to her feet. He fell in love at [28]first sight, and tried to approach her; but she evaded him, and crying out, Đali di đim o fi, crâs dy fara! (Thou wilt not catch me, thou of the crimped bread), she sank into the water. He saw her on several subsequent occasions, and gave chase, but always with the same result, until at length he got his mother to make him some bread which was not baked (or not baked so hard); and this he offered to the lady. She then agreed to become his wife, subject to the condition that if he offended her, or disagreed with her three times (ar yr ammod, os byssa fa yn ’i chroesi hi dair gwaith) she would leave him and return into the lake with all her belongings.

‘1. The first disagreement (croes) was at the funeral of a neighbour, a man in years, at which the lady gave way to excessive weeping and lamentation. The husband expressed surprise and annoyance at this excessive grief for the death of a person not related to them, and asked the reason for it; and she replied that she grieved for the defunct on account of the eternal misery that was in store for him in the other world.

‘2. The second “croes” was at the death of an infant child of the lady herself, at which she laughed immoderately; and in reply to the husband’s remonstrance, she said she did so for joy at her child’s escape from this wicked world and its passage into a world of bliss.

‘3. The third “croes” Mr. Evans was unable to call to mind, but equally with the other two it showed that the lady was possessed of preternatural knowledge; and it resulted in her leaving her husband and returning into the lake, taking the cattle, &c., with her. The accepted explanation of the name of the lake was Ỻyn El-ferch13 (= Hela ’r ferch), “because of the young man chasing the damsel” (hela ’r ferch). [29]

‘The following is the cattle-call, as given to me by Mr. Evans’ aged housekeeper, who migrated with the family from Rhonđa Fechan to Pentyrch:

‘Mr. Evans told me that Dyffryn Safrwch was considered to be a corruption of Dyffryn Safn yr Hwch, “Valley of the Sow’s Mouth”; so that the explanation was not due to a minister with whom I foregathered on my tramp near the lake the other day, and from whom I heard it first.’

The similarity between Mr. Evans’ version of this legend and that of Ỻyn y Fan Fach, tends to add emphasis to certain points which I had been inclined to treat as merely accidental. In the Fan Fach legend the young man’s mother is a widow, and here he is represented living with his mother. Here also something [30]depends on the young man’s bread, but it is abruptly introduced, suggesting that a part of the story has been forgotten. Both stories, however, give one the impression that the bread of the fairies was regarded as always imperfectly baked. In both stories the young man’s mother comes to his help with her advice. Mr. Evans’ version ascribes supernatural knowledge to the fairy, though his version fails to support it; and her moralizings read considerably later than those which the Fan legend ascribes to the fairy wife. Some of these points may be brought under the reader’s notice later, when he has been familiarized with more facts illustrative of the belief in fairies.

On returning from South Wales to Carnarvonshire in the summer of 1881, I tried to discover similar legends connected with the lakes of North Wales, beginning with Geirionyđ, the waters of which form a stream emptying itself into the Conwy, near Trefriw, a little below Ỻanrwst. I only succeeded, however, in finding an old man of the name of Pierce Williams, about seventy years of age, who was very anxious to talk about ‘Bony’s’ wars, but not about lake ladies. I was obliged, in trying to make him understand what I wanted, to use the word morforwyn, that is to say in English, ‘mermaid’; he then told me, that in his younger days he had heard people say that somebody had seen such beings in the Trefriw river. But as my questions were leading ones, his evidence is not worth much; however, I feel pretty sure that one who knew the neighbourhood of Geirionyđ better would be able to find some fragments of interesting legends still existing in that wild district. [31]

I was more successful at Ỻanberis, though what I found, at first, was not much; but it was genuine, and to the point. This is the substance of it:—An old woman, called Siân15 Dafyđ, lived at Helfa Fawr, in the dingle called Cwm Brwynog, along the left side of which you ascend as you go to the top of Snowdon, from the village of lower Ỻanberis, or Coed y Đol, as it is there called. She was a curious old person, who made nice distinctions between the virtues of the respective waters of the district: thus, no other would do for her to cure her of the defaid gwyỻtion16, or cancerous warts, which she fancied that she had in her mouth, than that of the spring of Tai Bach, near the lake called Ỻyn Ffynnon y Gwas, though she seldom found it out, when she was deceived by a servant who cherished a convenient opinion of his own, that a drop from a nearer spring would do just as well. Old Siân has been dead over thirty-five years, but I have it, on the testimony of two highly trustworthy brothers, who are of her family, and now between sixty and seventy years of age, that she used to relate to them how a shepherd, once on a time, saw a fairy maiden (un o’r Tylwyth Teg) on the surface of the tarn called Ỻyn Du’r Arđu, and how, from bantering and [32]joking, their acquaintance ripened into courtship, when the father and mother of the lake maiden appeared to give the union their sanction, and to arrange the marriage settlement. This was to the effect that the husband was never to strike his wife with iron, and that she was to bring her great wealth with her, consisting of stock of all kinds for his mountain farm. All duly took place, and they lived happily together until one day, when trying to catch a pony, the husband threw a bridle to his wife, and the iron in that struck her. It was then all over with him, as the wife hurried away with her property into the lake, so that nothing more was seen or heard of her. Here I may as well explain that the Ỻanberis side of the steep, near the top of Snowdon, is called Clogwyn du’r Arđu, or the Black Cliff of the Arđu, at the bottom of which lies the tarn alluded to as the Black Lake of the Arđu, and near it stands a huge boulder, called Maen du’r Arđu, all of which names are curious, as involving the word du, black. Arđu itself has much the same meaning, and refers to the whole precipitous side of the summit with its dark shadows, and there is a similar Arđu near Nanmor on the Merionethshire side of Beđgelert.

One of the brothers, I ought to have said, doubts that the lake here mentioned was the one in old Siân’s tale; but he has forgotten which it was of the many in the neighbourhood. Both, however, remembered another short story about fairies, which they had heard another old woman relate, namely, Mari Domos Siôn, who died some thirty years ago: it was merely to the effect that a shepherd had once lost his way in the mist on the mountain on the land of Caeau Gwynion, towards Cweỻyn17 Lake, and got into a ring [33]where the Tylwyth Teg were dancing: it was only after a very hard struggle that he was able, at length, to get away from them.

To this I may add the testimony of a lady, for whose veracity I can vouch, to the effect that, when she was a child in Cwm Brwynog, from thirty to forty years ago, she and her brothers and sisters used to be frequently warned by their mother not to go far away from the house when there happened to be thick mist on the ground, lest they should come across the Tylwyth Teg dancing, and be carried away to their abode beneath the lake. They were always, she says, supposed to live in the lakes; and the one here alluded to was Ỻyn Dwythwch, which is one of those famous for its torgochiaid or chars. The mother is still living; but she seems to have long since, like others, lost her belief in the fairies.

After writing the above, I heard that a brother to the foregoing brothers, namely, Mr. Thomas Davies, of Mur Mawr, Ỻanberis, remembered a similar tale. Mr. Davies is now sixty-four, and the persons from whom he heard the tale were the same Siân Dafyđ of Helfa Fawr, and Mari Domos Siôn of Tyn18 Gadlas, Ỻanberis: the two women were about seventy years of age when he as a child heard it from them. At my request, a friend of mine, Mr. Hugh D. Jones, of Tyn Gadlas, also a member of this family, which is one of the oldest perhaps in the place, has taken down from Mr. Davies’ mouth all he could remember, word for word, as follows:—

Yn perthyn i ffarm Bron y Fedw yr oeđ dyn ifanc [34]wedi cael ei fagu, nis gwyđent faint cyn eu hamser hwy. Arferai pan yn hogyn fynd i’r mynyđ yn Cwm Drywenyđ a Mynyđ y Fedw ar ochr orỻewinol y Wyđfa i fugeilio, a byđai yn taro ar hogan yn y mynyđ; ac wrth fynychu gweld eu gilyđ aethant yn ffrindiau mawr. Arferent gyfarfod eu gilyđ mewn ỻe neiỻduol yn Cwm Drywenyđ, ỻe’r oeđ yr hogan a’r teulu yn byw, ỻe y byđai pob danteithion, chwareuyđiaethau a chanu dihafal; ond ni fyđai’r hogyn yn gwneyd i fyny a neb ohonynt ond yr hogan.

Diweđ y ffrindiaeth fu carwriaeth, a phan soniođ yr hogyn am iđi briodi, ni wnai ond ar un amod, sef y bywiai hi hefo fo hyd nes y tarawai ef hi a haiarn.

Priodwyd hwy, a buont byw gyda’u gilyđ am nifer o flynyđoeđ, a bu iđynt blant; ac ar đyđ marchnad yn Gaernarfon yr oeđ y gwr a’r wraig yn međwl mynd i’r farchnad ar gefn merlod, fel pob ffarmwr yr amser hwnnw. Awd i’r mynyđ i đal merlyn bob un.

Ar waelod Mynyđ y Fedw mae ỻyn o ryw dri-ugain neu gan ỻath o hyd ac ugain neu đeg ỻath ar hugain o led, ac y mae ar un ochr iđo le têg, fforđ y byđai’r ceffylau yn rhedeg.

Daliođ y gwr ferlyn a rhoes ef i’r wraig i’w đal heb ffrwyn, tra byđai ef yn dal merlyn araỻ. Ar ol rhoi ffrwyn yn mhen ei ferlyn ei hun, taflođ un araỻ i’r wraig i roi yn mhen ei merlyn hithau, ac wrth ei thaflu tarawođ bit y ffrwyn hi yn ei ỻaw. Goỻyngođ y wraig y merlyn, ac aeth ar ei phen i’r ỻyn, a dyna điweđ y briodas.

‘To the farm of Bron y Fedw there belonged a son, who grew up to be a young man, the women knew not how long before their time. He was in the habit of going up the mountain to Cwm Drywenyđ19 and Mynyđ [35]y Fedw, on the west side of Snowdon, to do the shepherding, and there he was wont to come across a lass on the mountain, so that as the result of frequently meeting one another, he and she became great friends. They usually met at a particular spot in Cwm Drywenyđ, where the girl and her family lived, and where there were all kinds of nice things to eat, of amusements, and of incomparable music; but he did not make up to anybody there except the girl. The friendship ended in courtship; but when the boy mentioned that she should be married to him, she would only do so on one condition, namely, that she would live with him until he should strike her with iron. They were wedded, and they lived together for a number of years, and had children. Once on a time it happened to be market day at Carnarvon, whither the husband and wife thought of riding on ponies, like all the farmers of that time. So they went to the mountain to catch a pony each. At the bottom of Mynyđ y Fedw there is a pool some sixty or one hundred yards long by twenty or thirty broad, and on one side of it there is a level space along which the horses used to run. The husband caught a pony, and gave it to the wife to hold fast without a bridle, while he should catch another. When he had bridled his own pony, he threw another bridle to his wife for her to secure hers; but as he threw it, the bit of the bridle struck her on one of her hands. The wife let go the pony, and went headlong into the pool, and that was the end of their wedded life.’

The following is a later tale, which Mr. Thomas Davies heard from his mother, who died in 1832: she would be ninety years of age had she been still living:—

Pan oeđ hi’n hogan yn yr Hafod, Ỻanberis, yr oeđ hogan at ei hoed hi’n cael ei magu yn Cwmglas, [36]Ỻanberis, ac arferai đweyd, pan yn hogan a thra y bu byw, y byđai yn cael arian gan y Tylwyth Teg yn Cwm Cwmglas.

Yr oeđ yn dweyd y byđai ar foreuau niwliog, tywyỻ, yn mynd i le penodol yn Cwm Cwmglas gyda dsygiad o lefrith o’r fuches a thywel glan, ac yn ei rođi ar garreg; ac yn mynd yno drachefn, ac yn cael y ỻestr yn wag, gyda darn deuswỻt neu hanner coron ac weithiau fwy wrth ei ochr.

‘When she was a girl, living at Yr Hafod, Ỻanberis, there was a girl of her age being brought up at Cwmglas in the same parish. The latter was in the habit of saying, when she was a girl and so long as she lived, that she used to have money from the Tylwyth Teg, in the Cwmglas Hollow. Her account was, that on dark, misty mornings she used to go to a particular spot in that Hollow with a jugful of sweet milk from the milking place, and a clean towel, and then place them on a stone. She would return, and find the jug empty, with a piece of money placed by its side: that is, two shillings or half a crown, or at times even more.’

A daughter of that woman lives now at a farm, Mr. Davies observes, called Plas Pennant, in the parish of Ỻanfihangel yn Mhennant, in Carnarvonshire; and he adds, that it was a tale of a kind that was common enough when he was a boy; but many laughed at it, though the old people believed it to be a fact. To this I may as well append another tale, which was brought to the memory of an old man who happened to be present when Mr. Jones and Mr. Davies were busy with the foregoing. His name is John Roberts, and his age is seventy-five: his present home is at Capel Sïon, in the neighbouring parish of Ỻanđeiniolen:—

Yr oeđ ef pan yn hogyn yn gweini yn Towyn Trewern, yn agos i Gaergybi, gyda hen wr o’r enw Owen Owens, oeđ yr adeg honno at ei oed ef yn bresennol. [37]

Yr oeđynt unwaith mewn hen adeilad ar y ffarm; a dywedođ yr hen wr ei fod ef wedi cael ỻawer o arian yn y ỻe hwnnw pan yn hogyn, a buasai wedi cael ychwaneg oni bai ei dad.

Yr oeđ wedi cuđio yr arian yn y ty, ond daeth ei fam o hyd iđynt, a dywedođ yr hanes wrth ei dad. Ofnai ei fod yn fachgen drwg, mai eu ỻadrata yr oeđ. Dywedai ei dad y gwnai iđo đweyd yn mha le yr oeđ yn eu cael, neu y tynnai ei groen tros ei ben; ac aeth aỻan a thorođ wialen bwrpasol at orchwyl o’r fath.

Yr oeđ y bachgen yn gwrando ar yr ymđiđan rhwng ei dad a’i fam, ac yr oeđ yn benderfynol o gadw’r peth yn đirgelwch fel yr oeđ wedi ei rybuđio gan y Tylwyth Teg.

Aeth i’r ty, a dechreuođ y tad ei holi, ac yntau yn gwrthod ateb; ymbiliai a’i dad, a dywedai eu bod yn berffaith onest iđo ef, ac y cai ef ychwaneg os cadwai’r peth yn đirgelwch; ond os dywedai, nad oeđ dim ychwaneg i’w gael. Mođ bynnag ni wrandawai y tad ar ei esgusion na’i resymau, a’r wialen a orfu; dywedođ y bachgen mai gan y Tylwyth Teg yr oeđ yn eu cael, a hynny ar yr amod nad oeđ i đweyd wrth neb. Mawr oeđ edifeirwch yr hen bobl am lađ yr wyđ oeđ yn dodwy.

Aeth y bachgen i’r hen adeilad lawer gwaith ar ol hyn, ond ni chafođ byth ychwaneg o arian yno.

‘When a lad, he was a servant at Towyn Trewern, near Holyhead, to an old man about his own age at present. They were one day in an old building on the farm, and the old man told him that he had had much money in that place when he was a lad, and that he would have had more had it not been for his father. He had hidden the money at home, where his mother found it and told his father of the affair: she feared he was a bad boy, and that it was by theft he got it. His father said that he would make him say where he got it, [38]or else that he would strip him of the skin of his back, at the same time that he went out and cut a rod fit for effecting a purpose of the kind. The boy heard all this talk between his father and his mother, and felt determined to keep the matter a secret, as he had been warned by the Tylwyth Teg. He went into the house, and his father began to question him, while he refused to answer. He supplicatingly protested that the money was honestly got, and that he should get more if he kept it a secret, but that, if he did not, there would be no more to be got. However, the father would give no ear to his excuses or his reasons, and the rod prevailed; so that the boy said that it was from the Tylwyth Teg he used to get it, and that on condition of his not telling anybody. Greatly did the old folks regret having killed the goose that laid the eggs. The boy went many a time afterwards to the old building, but he never found any more money there.’

Through the Rev. Daniel Lewis, incumbent of Bettws Garmon, I was directed to Mr. Samuel Rhys Williams, of the Post Office of that place, who has kindly given me the result of his inquiries when writing on the subject of the antiquities of the neighbourhood for a competition at a literary meeting held there a few years ago. He tells me that he got the following short tale from a native of Drws y Coed, whose name is Margaret Williams. She has been living at Bettws Garmon for many years, and is now over eighty. He does not know whether the story is in print or not, but he is certain that Margaret Williams never saw it, even if it be. He further thinks he has heard it from another person, to wit a man over seventy-seven years [39]of age, who has always lived at Drws y Coed, in the parish of Beđgelert:—

Y mae hanes am fab i amaethwr a breswyliai yn yr Ystrad20, Betws Garmon21, pan yn dychwelyd adref o daith yn hwyr un noswaith, đarfod iđo weled cwmni o’r Tylwyth Teg ynghanol eu hafiaeth a’u glođest. Syfrdanwyd y ỻanc yn y fan gan degwch anghymarol un o’r rhianod hyn, fel y beiđiođ neidio i ganol y cylch, a chymeryd ei eilun gydag ef. Wedi iđi fod yn trigo gydag ef yn ei gartref am ysbaid, cafođ ganđi ađaw bod yn wraig iđo ar amodau neiỻduol. Un o’r amodau hyn ydoeđ, na byđai iđo gyffwrđ ynđi ag un math o haiarn. Bu yn wraig iđo, a ganwyd iđynt đau o blant. Un diwrnod yr oeđ y gwr yn y maes yn ceisio dal y ceffyl; wrth ei weled yn ffaelu, aeth y wraig ato i’w gynorthwyo, a phan oeđ y march yn carlamu heibio goỻyngođ yntau y ffrwyn o’i law, er mwyn ceisio ei atal heibio; a phwy a darawođ ond ei wraig, yr hon a điflannođ yn y fan aỻan o’i olwg?

‘The story goes, that the son of a farmer, who lived at the Ystrad in Bettws Garmon, when returning home from a journey, late in the evening, beheld a company of fairies in the middle of their mirth and jollity. The youth was at once bewildered by the incomparable beauty of one of these ladies, so that he ventured to leap into the circle and take his idol away with him. After she had tarried awhile with him at his home, he prevailed on her, on special conditions, to become his wife. One of these conditions was that he should not touch her with iron of any description. She became [40]his wife, and two children were born to them. One day the husband was in the field trying to catch the horse; seeing him unsuccessful, the wife went to him to help him, and, when the horse was galloping past him, he let go the bridle at him in order to prevent him from passing; but whom should he strike but his wife, who vanished out of his sight on the spot.’

Just as I was engaged in collecting these stories in 1881, a correspondent sent me a copy of the Ystrad tale as published by the late bard and antiquary, the Rev. Owen Wyn Jones, better known in Wales by his bardic name of Glasynys22, in the Brython23 for 1863, p. 193. I will not attempt to translate Glasynys’ poetic prose with all its compound adjectives, but it comes to this in a few words. One fine sunny morning, as the young heir of Ystrad was busied with his sheep on the side of Moel Eilio, he met a very pretty girl, and when he got home he told the folks there of it. A few days afterwards he met her again, and this happened several times, when he mentioned it to his father, who advised [41]him to seize her when he next met her. The next time he met her he proceeded to do so, but before he could take her away, a little fat old man came to them and begged him to give her back to him, to which the youth would not listen. The little man uttered terrible threats, but the heir of Ystrad would not yield, so an agreement was made between them, that the latter was to have the girl to wife until he touched her skin with iron, and great was the joy both of the son and his parents in consequence. They lived together for many years; but once on a time, on the evening of the Bettws Fair, the wife’s horse became restive, and somehow, as the husband was attending to the horse, the stirrup touched the skin of her bare leg, and that very night she was taken away from him. She had three or four children, and more than one of their descendants, as Glasynys maintains, were known to him at the time he wrote in 1863. Glasynys regards this as the same tale which is given by Williams of Ỻandegai, to whom we shall refer later; and he says that he heard it scores of times when he was a lad.

Lastly, I happened to mention these legends last summer among others to the Rev. Owen Davies, curate of Ỻanberis, a man who is well versed in Welsh literature, and thoroughly in sympathy with everything Welsh. Mr. Davies told me that he knew a tale of the sort from his youth, as current in the parishes of Ỻanỻechid and Ỻandegai, near Bangor. Not long afterwards he visited his mother at his native place, in Ỻanỻechid, in order to have his memory of it refreshed; and he also went to the Waen Fawr, on the other side of Carnarvon, where he had the same legend told him with the different localities specified. The following is the Waen Fawr version, of which I give the Welsh as I have had it from Mr. Davies, and as it was [42]related, according to him, some forty years ago in the valley of Nant y Bettws, near Carnarvon:—

Ar brydnawngwaith hyfryd yn Hefin, aeth ỻanc ieuanc gwrol-đewr ac anturiaethus, sef etifeđ a pherchennog yr Ystrad, i lan afon Gwyrfai, heb fod yn nepeỻ o’i chychwyniad o lyn Caweỻyn, ac a ymguđiođ yno mewn dyryslwyn, sef ger y fan y byđai poblach y cotiau cochion—y Tylwyth Teg—yn arfer dawnsio. Yr ydoeđ yn noswaith hyfryd loergannog, heb un cwmwl i gau ỻygaid y Ỻoer, ac anian yn đistaw dawedog, ođigerth murmuriad ỻeđf y Wyrfai, a swn yr awel ysgafndroed yn rhodio brigau deiliog y coed. Ni bu yn ei ymguđfa ond dros ychydig amser, cyn cael difyrru o hono ei olygon a dawns y teulu dedwyđ. Wrth syỻu ar gywreinrwyđ y đawns, y chwim droadau cyflym, yr ymgyniweiriad ysgafn-droediog, tarawođ ei lygaid ar las lodes ieuanc, dlysaf, harđaf, lunieiđiaf a welođ er ei febyd. Yr oeđ ei chwim droadau a ỻedneisrwyđ ei hagweđion wedi tanio ei serch tu ag ati i’r fath rađau, fel ag yr oeđ yn barod i unrhyw anturiaeth er mwyn ei henniỻ yn gydymaith iđo ei hun. O’i ymguđfa dywyỻ, yr oeđ yn gwylio pob ysgogiad er mwyn ei gyfleustra ei hun. Mewn mynud, yn đisymwth đigon, rhwng pryder ac ofn, ỻamneidiođ fel ỻew gwrol i ganol cylch y Tylwyth Teg, ac ymafaelođ a dwylaw cariad yn y fun luniaiđ a daniođ ei serch, a hynny, pan oeđ y Tylwyth dedwyđ yn nghanol nwyfiant eu dawns. Cofleidiođ hi yn dyner garedig yn ei fynwes wresog, ac aeth a hi i’w gartref—i’r Ystrad. Ond diflannođ ei chyd-đawnsyđion fel anadl Gorphennaf, er ei chroch đolefau am gael ei rhyđhau, a’i hymegnion diflino i đianc o afael yr hwn a’i hoffođ. Mewn anwylder mawr, ymđygođ y ỻanc yn dyner odiaethol tu ag at y fun deg, ac yr oeđ yn orawyđus i’w chadw yn ei olwg ac yn ei feđiant. Ỻwyđođ drwy ei dynerwch tu ag ati i gael ganđi ađaw dyfod yn forwyn iđo yn yr Ystrad. A morwyn ragorol oeđ hi. Godrai deirgwaith y swm arferol o laeth ođiar [43]bob buwch, ac yr oeđ yr ymenyn heb bwys arno. Ond er ei hoỻ daerni, nis gaỻai mewn un mođ gael ganđi đyweud ei henw wrtho. Gwnaeth lawer cais, ond yn gwbl ofer. Yn đamweiniol ryw dro, wrth yrru

a hi yn noswaith loergan, efe a aeth i’r man ỻe yr arferai y Tylwyth Teg fyned drwy eu campau yng ngoleuni’r Ỻoer wen. Y tro hwn eto, efe a ymguđiođ mewn dyryslwyn, a chlywođ y Tylwyth Teg yn dywedyd y naiỻ wrth y ỻaỻ—‘Pan oeđym ni yn y ỻe hwn y tro diweđaf, dygwyd ein chwaer Penelope ođiarnom gan un o’r marwolion.’ Ar hynny, dychwelođ y ỻencyn adref, a’i fynwes yn ỻawn o falchder cariad, o herwyđ iđo gael gwybod enw ei hoff forwyn, yr hon a synnođ yn aruthr, pan glywođ ei meistr ieuanc yn ei galw wrth ei henw. Ac am ei bod yn odiaethol dlos, a ỻuniaiđ, yn fywiog-weithgar, a medrus ar bob gwaith, a bod popeth yn ỻwyđo dan ei ỻaw, cynygiođ ei hun iđi yn wr—y celai fod yn feistres yr Ystrad, yn ỻe bod yn forwyn. Ond ni chydsyniai hi a’i gais ar un cyfrif; ond bod braiđ yn bendrist oherwyđ iđo wybod ei henw. Fođ bynnag, gwedi maith amser, a thrwy ei daerineb diflino, cydsyniođ, ond yn amodol. Ađawođ đyfod yn wraig iđo, ar yr amod canlynol, sef, ‘Pa bryd bynnag y tarawai ef hi â haiarn, yr elai ymaith ođi wrtho, ac na đychwelai byth ato mwy.’ Sicrhawyd yr amod o’i du yntau gyda pharodrwyđ cariad. Buont yn cyd-fyw a’u gilyđ yn hapus a chysurus lawer o flynyđoeđ, a ganwyd iđynt fab a merch, y rhai oeđynt dlysaf a ỻunieiđiaf yn yr hoỻ froyđ. Ac yn rhinweđ ei medrusrwyđ a’i deheurwyđ fel gwraig gaỻ, rinweđol, aethant yn gyfoethog iawn—yn gyfoethocach na neb yn yr hoỻ wlad. Heblaw ei etifeđiaeth ei hun—Yr Ystrad, yr oeđ yn ffarmio hoỻ ogleđ-barth Nant y Betws, ac ođi yno i ben yr Wyđfa, ynghyd a hoỻ Gwm Brwynog, yn mhlwyf Ỻanberis. Ond, ryw điwrnod, [44]yn anffortunus đigon aeth y đau i’r đol i đal y ceffyl, a chan fod y ceffylyn braiđ yn wyỻt ac an-nof, yn rhedeg ođi arnynt, taflođ y gwr y ffrwyn mewn gwyỻtineb yn ei erbyn, er ei atal, ac ar bwy y disgynnođ y ffrwyn, ond ar Penelope, y wraig! Diflannođ Penelope yn y fan, ac ni welođ byth mo honi. Ond ryw noswaith, a’r gwynt yn chwythu yn oer o’r gogleđ, daeth Penelope at ffenestr ei ystafeỻ wely, a dywedođ wrtho am gymmeryd gofal o’r plant yn y geiriau hyn:

Ac yna ciliođ, ac ni chlywyd na siw na miw byth yn ei chylch.

For the sake of an occasional reader who does not know Welsh, I add a summary of it in English.

One fine evening in the month of June a brave, adventurous youth, the heir of Ystrad, went to the banks of the Gwyrfai, not far from where it leaves Cweỻyn Lake, and hid himself in the bushes near the spot where the folks of the Red Coats—the fairies—were wont to dance. The moon shone forth brightly without a cloud to intercept her light; all was quiet save where the Gwyrfai gently murmured on her bed, and it was not long before the young man had the satisfaction of seeing the fair family dancing in full swing. As he gazed on the subtle course of the dance, his eyes rested on a damsel, the most shapely and beautiful he had seen from his boyhood. Her agile movements and the charm of her looks inflamed him with love for her, to such a degree that he felt ready for any encounter in order to secure her to be his own. From his hiding place he watched every move for his opportunity; at last, with feelings of anxiety and dread, [45]he leaped suddenly into the middle of the circle of the fairies. There, while their enjoyment of the dance was at its height, he seized her in his arms and carried her away to his home at Ystrad. But, as she screamed for help to free her from the grasp of him who had fallen in love with her, the dancing party disappeared like one’s breath in July. He treated her with the utmost kindness, and was ever anxious to keep her within his sight and in his possession. By dint of tenderness he succeeded so far as to get her to consent to be his servant at Ystrad. And such a servant she turned out to be! Why, she was wont to milk the cows thrice a day, and to have the usual quantity of milk each time, so that the butter was so plentiful that nobody thought of weighing it. As to her name, in spite of all his endeavours to ascertain it, she would never tell it him. Accidentally, however, one moonlight night, when driving two of his cows to the spot where they should graze, he came to the place where the fairies were wont to enjoy their games in the light of the moon. This time also he hid himself in a thicket, when he overheard one fairy saying to another, ‘When we were last here our sister Penelope was stolen from us by a man.’ As soon as he heard this off he went home, full of joy because he had discovered the name of the maid that was so dear to him. She, on the other hand, was greatly astonished to hear him call her by her own name. As she was so charmingly pretty, so industrious, so skilled in every work, and so attended by luck in everything she put her hand to, he offered to make her his wife instead of being his servant. At first she would in no wise consent, but she rather gave way to grief at his having found her name out. However, his importunity at length brought her to consent, but on the condition that he should not [46]strike her with iron; if that should happen, she would quit him never to return. The agreement was made on his side with the readiness of love, and after this they lived in happiness and comfort together for many years, and there were born to them a son and a daughter, who were the handsomest children in the whole country. Owing, also, to the skill and good qualities of the woman, as a shrewd and virtuous wife, they became very rich—richer, indeed, than anybody else in the country around; for, besides the husband’s own inheritance of Ystrad, he held all the northern part of Nant y Bettws, and all from there to the top of Snowdon, together with Cwm Brwynog in the parish of Ỻanberis. But one day, as bad luck would have it, they went out together to catch a horse in the field, and, as the animal was somewhat wild and untamed, they had no easy work before them. In his rashness the man threw a bridle at him as he was rushing past him, but alas! on whom should the bridle fall but on the wife! No sooner had this happened than she disappeared, and nothing more was ever seen of her. But one cold night, when there was a chilling wind blowing from the north, she came near the window of his bedroom, and told him in these words to take care of the children:—

Then she withdrew, and nothing more was heard of her.

In reply to some queries of mine, Mr. O. Davies tells me that Penelope was pronounced in three syllables, Pénĕlôp—so he heard it from his grandfather: he goes on to say that the offspring of the Lake Lady is supposed to be represented by a family called Pellings, [47]which was once a highly respected name in those parts, and that there was a Lady Bulkeley who was of this descent, not to mention that several people of a lower rank, both in Anglesey and Arfon, claimed to be of the same origin. I am not very clear as to how the name got into this tale, nor have I been able to learn anything about the Pellings; but, as the word appears to have been regarded as a corrupt derivative from Penelope, that is, perhaps, all the connexion, so that it may be that it has really nothing whatever to do with the legend. This is a point, however, which the antiquaries of North Wales ought to be able to clear up satisfactorily.

In reply to queries of mine, Mr. O. Davies gave me the following particulars:—‘I am now (June, 1881) over fifty-two years of age, and I can assure you that I have heard the legend forty years ago. I do not remember my father, as he died when I was young, but my grandfather was remarkable for his delight in tales and legends, and it was his favourite pastime during the winter nights, after getting his short black pipe ready, to relate stories about struggles with robbers, about bogies, and above all about the Tylwyth Teg; for they were his chief delight. He has been dead twenty-six years, and he had almost reached eighty years of age. His father before him, who was born about the year 1740, was also famous for his stories, and my grandfather often mentioned him as his authority in the course of his narration of the tales. Both he and the rest of the family used to look at Corwrion, to be mentioned presently, as a sacred spot. When I was a lad and happened to be reluctant to leave off playing at dusk, my mother or grandfather had only to say that ‘the Pellings were coming,’ in order to induce me to come into the house at once: indeed, this announcement had [48]the same effect on persons of a much riper age than mine then was.’

Further, Mr. Davies kindly called my attention to a volume, entitled Observations on the Snowdon Mountains, by Mr. William Williams, of Ỻandegai, published in London in 1802. In that work this tale is given somewhat less fully than by Mr. Davies’ informant, but the author makes the following remarks with regard to it, pp. 37, 40:—‘A race of people inhabiting the districts about the foot of Snowdon, were formerly distinguished and known by the nickname of Pellings, which is not yet extinct. There are several persons and even families who are reputed to be descended from these people …. These children [Penelope’s] and their descendants, they say, were called Pellings, a word corrupted from their mother’s name, Penelope. The late Thomas Rowlands, Esq., of Caerau, in Anglesey, the father of the late Lady Bulkeley, was a descendant of this lady, if it be true that the name Pellings came from her; and there are still living several opulent and respectable people who are known to have sprung from the Pellings. The best blood in my own veins is this fairy’s.’

Lastly, it will be noticed that these last versions do not distinctly suggest that the Lake Lady ran into the lake, that is into Cweỻyn, but rather that she disappeared in the same way as the dancing party by simply becoming invisible like one’s breath in July. The fairies are called in Welsh, Y Tylwyth Teg, or the Fair Family; but the people of Arfon have been so familiarized with the particular one I have called the Lake Lady, that, according to one of my informants, they have invented the term Y Dylwythes Deg, or even Y Dylwythen Deg, to denote her; but it is unknown to the others, so that the extent of its use is not very considerable. [49]

This is, perhaps, the place to give another tale, according to which the man goes to the Lake Maiden’s country, instead of her settling with him at his home. I owe it to the kindness of Mr. William Jones, of Regent Place, Ỻangoỻen, a native of Beđgelert. He heard it from an old man before he left Beđgelert, but when he sent a friend to inquire some time afterwards, the old man was gone. According to Mr. Jones, the details of the tale are, for that reason, imperfect, as some of the incidents have faded from his memory; but such as he can still remember the tale, it is here given in his own words:—

Ryw noson lawn ỻoer ac un o feibion Ỻwyn On yn Nant y Betws yn myned i garu i Glogwyn y Gwin, efe a welođ y Tylwyth yn ymlođestu a dawnsio ei hochr hi ar weirglođ wrth lan Ỻyn Caweỻyn. Efe a nesaođ tuag atynt; ac o dipyn i beth fe’i ỻithiwyd gan bereiđdra swynol eu canu a hoender a bywiogrwyđ eu chwareu, nes myned o hono tu fewn i’r cylch; ac yn fuan fe đaeth rhyw hud drosto, fel y coỻođ adnabyđiaeth o bobman; a chafođ ei hun mewn gwlad harđaf a welođ erioed, ỻe’r oeđ pawb yn treulio eu hamser mewn afiaeth a gorfoleđ. Yr oeđ wedi bod yno am saith mlyneđ, ac eto nid oeđ đim ond megis breuđwyd nos; ond daeth adgof i’w feđwl am ei neges, a hiraeth ynđo am weled ei anwylyd. Feỻy efe a ofynođ ganiatad i đychwelyd adref, yr hyn a rođwyd ynghyd a ỻu o gymdeithion i’w arwain tua’i wlad; ac yn đisymwth cafođ ei hun fel yn deffro o freuđwyd ar y đol, ỻe gwelođ y Tylwyth Teg yn chwareu. Trođ ei wyneb tuag adref; ond wedi myned yno yr oeđ popeth wedi newid, ei rieni wedi meirw, ei frodyr yn ffaelu ei adnabod, a’i gariad wedi priodi un araỻ.—Ar ol y fath gyfnewidiadau efe a dorođ ei galon, ac a fu farw mewn ỻai nag wythnos ar ol ei đychweliad.

‘One bright moonlight night, as one of the sons of the [50]farmer who lived at Ỻwyn On in Nant y Bettws was going to pay his addresses to a girl at Clogwyn y Gwin, he beheld the Tylwyth Teg enjoying themselves in full swing on a meadow close to Cweỻyn Lake. He approached them, and little by little he was led on by the enchanting sweetness of their music and the liveliness of their playing until he had got within their circle. Soon some kind of spell passed over him, so that he lost his knowledge of the place, and found himself in a country, the most beautiful he had ever seen, where everybody spent his time in mirth and rejoicing. He had been there seven years, and yet it seemed to him but a night’s dream; but a faint recollection came to his mind of the business on which he had left home, and he felt a longing to see his beloved one. So he went and asked for permission to return home, which was granted him, together with a host of attendants to lead him to his country; and, suddenly, he found himself, as if waking from a dream, on the bank where he had seen the fair family amusing themselves. He turned towards home, but there he found everything changed: his parents were dead, his brothers could not recognize him, and his sweetheart was married to another man. In consequence of such changes he died broken-hearted in less than a week after coming back.’

The Rev. O. Davies regarded the Ỻanỻechid legend as so very like the one he got about Cweỻyn Lake and the Waen Fawr, that he has not written the former out at length, but merely pointed out the following differences: (1) Instead of Cweỻyn, the lake in the former is the pool of Corwrion, in the parish of Ỻandegai, near Bangor. (2) What the Lake Lady was struck with was [51]not a bridle, but an iron fetter: the word used is ỻyfether, which probably means a long fetter connecting a fore-foot and a hind-foot of a horse together. In Arfon, the word is applied also to a cord tying the two fore-feet together, but in Cardiganshire this would be called a hual, the other word, there pronounced llowethir, being confined to the long fetter. In books, the word is written llywethair, llefethair and llyffethair or llyffethar, which is possibly the pronunciation in parts of North Wales, especially Arfon. This is an interesting word, as it is no other than the English term ‘long fetter,’ borrowed into Welsh; as, in fact, it was also into Irish early enough to call for an article on it in Cormac’s Irish Glossary, where langfiter is described as an English word for a fetter between the fore and the hind legs: in Anglo-Manx it is become lanketer. (3) The field in which they were trying to catch the horse is, in the Ỻanỻechid version, specified as that called Maes Madog, at the foot of the Ỻefn. (4) When the fairy wife ran away, it was headlong into the pool of Corwrion, calling after her all her milch cows, and they followed her with the utmost readiness.

Before going on to mention bits of information I have received from others about the Ỻanỻechid legend, I think it best here to finish with the items given me by Mr. O. Davies, whom I cannot too cordially thank for his readiness to answer my questions. Among other things, he expresses himself to the following effect:— ‘It is to this day a tradition—and I have heard it a hundred times—that the dairy of Corwrion excelled all other dairies in those parts, that the milk was better and more plentiful, and that the cheese and butter were better there than in all the country round, the reason assigned being that the cattle on the farm of Corwrion had mixed with the breed belonging to the fairy, who [52]had run away after being struck with the iron fetter. However that may be, I remember perfectly well the high terms of praise in which the cows of Corwrion used to be spoken of as being remarkable for their milk and the profit they yielded; and, when I was a boy, I used to hear people talk of Tarw Penwyn Corwrion, or “the White-headed Bull of Corwrion,” as derived from the breed of cattle which had formed the fairy maiden’s dowry.’

My next informant is Mr. Hugh Derfel Hughes, of Pendinas, Ỻandegai24, who has been kind enough to give me the version, of which I here give the substance in English, premising that Mr. Hughes says that he has lived about thirty-four years within a mile of the pool and farm house called Corwrion, and that he has refreshed his memory of the legend by questioning separately no less than three old people, who had been bred and born at or near that spot. He is a native of Merioneth, but has lived at Ỻandegai for the last thirty-seven years, his age now being sixty-six. I may add that Mr. Hughes is a local antiquary of great industry and zeal; and that he published a book on the antiquities of the district, under the title of Hynafiaethau Ỻandegai a Ỻanỻechid, that is ‘the Antiquities of Ỻandegai and Ỻanỻechid’ (Bethesda, 1866); but it is out of print, and I have had some trouble to procure a copy:—

‘In old times, when the fairies showed themselves much oftener to men than they do now, they made their home in the bottomless pool of Corwrion, in Upper Arỻechweđ, in that wild portion of Gwyneđ called [53]Arfon. On fine mornings in the month of June these diminutive and nimble folk might be seen in a regular line vigorously engaged in mowing hay, with their cattle in herds busily grazing in the fields near Corwrion. This was a sight which often met the eyes of the people on the sides of the hills around, even on Sundays; but when they hurried down to them they found the fields empty, with the sham workmen and their cows gone, all gone. At other times they might be heard hammering away like miners, shovelling rubbish aside, or emptying their carts of stones. At times they took to singing all the night long, greatly to the delight of the people about, who dearly loved to hear them; and, besides singing so charmingly, they sometimes formed into companies for dancing, and their movements were marvellously graceful and attractive. But it was not safe to go too near the lake late at night, for once a brave girl, who was troubled with toothache, got up at midnight and went to the brink of the water in search of the root of a plant that grows there full of the power to kill all pain in the teeth. But, as she was plucking up a bit of it, there burst on her ear, from the depths of the lake, such a shriek as drove her back into the house breathless with fear and trembling; but whether this was not the doing of a stray fairy, who had been frightened out of her wits at being suddenly overtaken by a damsel in her nightdress, or the ordinary fairy way of curing the toothache, tradition does not tell. For sometimes, at any rate, the fairies busied themselves in doing good to the men and women who were their neighbours, as when they tried to teach them to keep all promises and covenants to which they pledged themselves. A certain man and his wife, to whom they wished to teach this good habit, have never been forgotten. The husband had been behaving as [54]he ought, until one day, as he held the plough, with the wife guiding his team, he broke his covenant towards her by treating her harshly and unkindly. No sooner had he done so, than he was snatched through the air and plunged in the lake. When the wife went to the brink of the water to ask for him back, the reply she had was, that he was there, and that there he should be.

‘The fairies when engaged in dancing allowed themselves to be gazed at, a sight which was wont greatly to attract the young men of the neighbourhood, and once on a time the son and heir of the owner of Corwrion fell deeply in love with one of the graceful maidens who danced in the fairy ring, for she was wondrously beautiful and pretty beyond compare. His passion for her ere long resulted in courtship, and soon in their being married, which took place on the express understanding, that firstly the husband was not to know her name, though he might give her any name he chose; and, secondly, that he might now and then beat her with a rod, if she chanced to misbehave towards him; but he was not to strike her with iron on pain of her leaving him at once. This covenant was kept for some years, so that they lived happily together and had four children, of whom the two youngest were a boy and a girl. But one day as they went to one of the fields of Bryn Twrw in the direction of Pennarđ Gron, to catch a pony, the fairy wife, being so much nimbler than her husband, ran before him and had her hand in the pony’s mane in no time. She called out to her husband to throw her a halter, but instead of that he threw towards her a bridle with an iron bit, which, as bad luck would have it, struck her. The wife at once flew through the air, and plunged headlong into Corwrion Pool. The husband returned [55]sighing and weeping towards Bryn Twrw, “Noise Hill,” and when he had reached it, the twrw, “noise,” there was greater than had ever been heard before, namely that of weeping after “Belenë”; and it was then, after he had struck her with iron, that he first learnt what his wife’s name was. Belenë never came back to her husband, but the feelings of a mother once brought her to the window of his bedroom, where she gave him the following order:—

‘As years and years rolled on a grandson of Belenë’s fell in love with a beautiful damsel who lived at a neighbouring farm house called Tai Teulwriaid, and against the will of his father and mother they married, but they had nothing to stock their land with. So one morning what was their astonishment, when they got up, to see grazing quietly in the field six black cows and a white-headed bull, which had come up out of the lake as stock for them from old grannie Belenë? They served them well with milk and butter for many a long year, but on the day the last of the family died, the six black cows and the white-headed bull disappeared into the lake, never more to be seen.’

Mr. Hughes referred to no less than three other versions, as follows:—(1) According to one account, the husband was ploughing, with the wife leading the team, when by chance he came across her and the accident happened. The wife then flew away like a wood-hen (iar goed) into the lake. (2) Another says that they were in a stable trying to bridle one of the [56]horses, when the misfortune took place through inadvertence. (3) A third specifies the field in front of the house at Corwrion as the place where the final accident took place, when they were busied with the cows and horses.

To these I would add the following traditions, which Mr. Hughes further gives. Sometimes the inhabitants, who seem to have been on the whole on good terms with the fairies, used to heat water and leave it in a vessel on the hearth overnight for the fairies to wash their children in it. This they considered such a kindness that they always left behind them on the hearth a handful of their money. Some pieces are said to have been sometimes found in the fields near Corwrion, and that they consisted of coins which were smaller than our halfpennies, but bigger than farthings, and had a harp on one side. But the tradition is not very definite on these points.

Here also I may as well refer to a similar tale which I got last year at Ỻanberis from a man who is a native of the Ỻanỻechid side of the mountain, though he now lives at Ỻanberis. He is about fifty-five years of age, and remembers hearing in his youth a tale connected with a house called Hafoty’r Famaeth, in a very lonely situation on Ỻanỻechid Mountain, and now represented only by some old ruined walls. It was to the effect that one night, when the man who lived there was away from home, his wife, who had a youngish baby, washed him on the hearth, left the water there, and went to bed with her little one: she woke up in the night to find that the Tylwyth Teg were in possession of the hearth, and busily engaged in washing their children. That is all I got of this tale of a well-known type.

To return to Mr. Hughes’ communications, I would select from them some remarks on the topography of [57]the teeming home of the fairies. He estimated the lake or pool of Corwrion to be about 120 yards long, and adds that it is nearly round; but he thinks it was formerly considerably larger, as a cutting was made some eighty or a hundred years ago to lead water from it to Penrhyn Castle; but even then its size would not approach that ascribed to it by popular belief, according to which it was no less than three miles long. In fact it was believed that there was once a town of Corwrion which was swallowed up by the lake, a sort of idea which one meets with in many parts of Wales, and some of the natives are said to be able to discern the houses under the water. This must have been near the end which is not bottomless, the latter being indicated by a spot which is said never to freeze even in hard winters. Old men remember it the resort of herons, cormorants, and the water-hen (hobi wen). Near the banks there grew, besides the water-lily, various kinds of rushes and sedges, which were formerly much used for making mats and other useful articles. It was also once famous for eels of a large size, but it is not supposed to have contained fish until Lord Penrhyn placed some there in recent years. It teemed, however, with leeches of three different kinds so recently that an old man still living describes to Mr. Hughes his simple way of catching them when he was a boy, namely, by walking bare-legged in the water: in a few minutes he landed with nine or ten leeches sticking to his legs, some of which fetched a shilling each from the medical men of those days. Corwrion is now a farm house occupied by Mr. William Griffiths, a grandson of the late bard Gutyn Peris. When Mr. Hughes called to make inquiries about the legend, he found there the foundations of several old buildings, and several pieces of old querns about the place. He [58]thinks that there belonged to Corwrion in former times, a mill and a fuller’s house, which he seems to infer from the names of two neighbouring houses called ‘Y Felin Hen,’ the Old Mill, and ‘Pandy Tre Garth,’ the Fulling Mill of Tregarth, respectively. He also alludes to a gefail or smithy there, in which one Rhys ab Robert used to work, not to mention that a great quantity of ashes, such as come from a smithy, are found at the end of the lake furthest from the farm house. The spot on which Corwrion stands is part of the ground between the Ogwen and another stream which bears the name of ‘Afon Cegin Arthur,’ or the River of Arthur’s Kitchen, and most of the houses and fields about have names which have suggested various notions to the people there: such are the farms called ‘Coed Howel,’ whence the belief in the neighbourhood that Howel Đa, King of Wales, lived here. About him Mr. Hughes has a great deal to say: among other things, that he had boats on Corwrion lake, and that he was wont to present the citizens of Bangor yearly with 300 fat geese reared on the waters of the same. I am referred by another man to a lecture delivered in the neighbourhood on these and similar things by the late bard and antiquary the Rev. Robert Ellis (Cynđelw), but I have never come across a copy. A field near Corwrion is called ‘Cae Stabal,’ or the Field of the Stable, which contains the remains of a row of stables, as it is supposed, and of a number of mangers where Howel’s horses were once fed. In a neighbouring wood, called ‘Parc y Geỻi’ or ‘Hopiar y Geỻi,’ my informant goes on to say, there are to be seen the foundations of seventeen or eighteen old hut-circles, and near them some think they see the site of an old church. About a mile to the south-east of Corwrion is Pendinas, which Mr. Hughes describes as [59]an old triangular Welsh fortress, on the bank of the Ogwen; and within two stone’s-throws or so of Corwrion on the south side of it, and a little to the west of Bryn Twrw mentioned in the legend, is situated Penarđ Gron, a caer or fort, which he describes as being, before it was razed in his time, forty-two yards long by thirty-two wide, and defended by a sort of rampart of earth and stone several yards wide at the base. It used to be the resort of the country people for dancing, cock-fighting26, and other amusements on Sundays. Near it was a cairn, which, when it was dug into, was found to cover a kistvaen, a pot, and a quern: a variety of tales attaching to it are told concerning ghosts, caves, and hidden treasures. Altogether Mr. Hughes is strongly of opinion that Corwrion and its immediate surroundings represent a spot which at one time had great importance; and I see no reason wholly to doubt the correctness of that conclusion, but it would be interesting to know whether Penrhyn used, as Mr. Hughes suggests, to be called Penrhyn Corwrion; there ought, perhaps, to be no great difficulty in ascertaining this, as some of the Penrhyn estate appears to have been the subject of litigation in times gone by.

Before leaving Mr. Hughes’ notes, I must here give his too brief account of another thing connected with Corwrion, though, perhaps, not with the legends here in question. I allude to what he calls the Lantern Ghost (Ysbryd y Lantar):—‘There used to be formerly,’ he says, ‘and there is still at Corwrion, a good-sized sour apple-tree, which during the winter half of the year used to be lit up by fire. It began slowly and [60]grew greater until the whole seemed to be in a blaze. He was told by an old woman that she formerly knew old people who declared they had seen it. In the same way the trees in Hopiar y Geỻi appeared, according to them, to be also lit up with fire.’ This reminds me of Mr. Fitzgerald’s account of the Irish Bile-Tineadh in the Revue Celtique, iv. 194.

After communicating to me the notes of which the foregoing are abstracts, Mr. Hughes kindly got me a version of the legend from Mr. David Thomas, of Pont y Wern, in the same neighbourhood, but as it contains nothing which I have not already given from Mr. Hughes’ own, I pass it by. Mr. Thomas, however, has heard that the number of the houses making up the town of Corwrion some six or seven centuries ago was about seventy-five; but they were exactly seventy-three according to my next informant, Mr. David Evan Davies, of Treflys, Bethesda, better known by his bardic name of Dewi Glan Ffrydlas. Both these gentlemen have also heard the tradition that there was a church at Corwrion, where there used to be every Sunday a single service, after which the people went to a spot not far off to amuse themselves, and at night to watch the fairies dancing, or to mix with them while they danced in a ring around a glow-worm. According to Dewi Glan Ffrydlas, the spot was the Pen y Bonc, already mentioned, which means, among other things, that they chose a rising ground. This is referred to in a modern rhyme, which runs thus:—

Dewi Glan Ffrydlas has kindly gone to the trouble of giving me a brief, but complete, version of the legend as he has heard it. It will be noticed that the discovering [61]of the fairy’s name is an idle incident in this version: it is brought in too late, and no use is made of it when introduced. This is the substance of his story in English:—‘At one of the dances at Pen y Bonc, the heir of Corwrion’s eyes fell on one of the damsels of the fair family, and he was filled with love for her. Courtship and marriage in due time ensued, but he had to agree to two conditions, namely, that he was neither to know her name nor to strike her with iron. By-and-by they had children, and when the husband happened to go, during his wife’s confinement, to a merry-making at Pen y Bonc, the fairies talked together concerning his wife, and in expressing their feelings of sympathy for her, they inadvertently betrayed the mystery of her name by mentioning it within his hearing. Years rolled on, when the husband and wife went out together one day to catch a colt of theirs that had not been broken in, their object being to go to Conway Fair. Now, as she was swifter of foot than her husband, she got hold of the colt by the mane, and called out to him to throw her a halter, but instead of throwing her the one she asked for, he threw another with iron in it, which struck her. Off she went into the lake. A grandson of this fairy many years afterwards married one of the girls of Corwrion. They had a large piece of land, but no means of stocking it, so that they felt rather distressed in their minds. But lo and behold! one day a white-headed bull came out of the lake, bringing with him six black cows to their land. There never were the like of those cows for milk, and great was the prosperity of their owners, as well as the envy it kindled in their neighbours’ breasts. But when they both grew old and died, the bull and the cows went back into the lake.’

Now I add the other sayings about the Tylwyth Teg, [62]which Dewi Glan Ffrydlas has kindly collected for me, beginning with a blurred story about changelings:—

‘Once on a time, in the fourteenth century, the wife of a man at Corwrion had twins, and she complained one day to a witch, who lived close by, at Tyđyn y Barcud, that the children were not getting on, but that they were always crying day and night. “Are you sure that they are your children?” asked the witch, adding that it did not seem to her that they were like hers. “I have my doubts also,” said the mother. “I wonder if somebody has exchanged children with you,” said the witch. “I do not know,” said the mother. “But why do you not seek to know?” asked the other. “But how am I to go about it?” said the mother. The witch replied, “Go and do something rather strange before their eyes and watch what they will say to one another.” “Well, I do not know what I should do,” said the mother. “Well,” said the other, “take an egg-shell, and proceed to brew beer in it in a chamber aside, and come here to tell me what the children will say about it.” She went home and did as the witch had directed her, when the two children lifted their heads out of the cradle to find what she was doing—to watch and to listen. Then one observed to the other, “I remember seeing an oak having an acorn,” to which the other replied, “And I remember seeing a hen having an egg”; and one of the two added, “But I do not remember before seeing anybody brew beer in the shell of a hen’s egg.” The mother then went to the witch and told her what the twins had said one to the other; and she directed her to go to a small wooden bridge, not far off, with one of the strange children under each arm, and there to drop them from the bridge into the river beneath. The mother went back home again and did as she had been directed. When she reached home [63]this time, she found to her astonishment that her own children had been brought back.’

Next comes a story about a midwife who lived at Corwrion. ‘One of the fairies called to ask her to come and attend on his wife. Off she went with him, and she was astonished to be taken into a splendid palace. There she continued to go night and morning to dress the baby for some time, until one day the husband asked her to rub her eyes with a certain ointment he offered her. She did so, and found herself sitting on a tuft of rushes, and not in a palace. There was no baby: all had disappeared. Some time afterwards she happened to go to the town, and whom should she there see busily buying various wares, but the fairy on whose wife she had been attending. She addressed him with the question, “How are you to-day?” Instead of answering her, he asked, “How do you see me?” “With my eyes,” was the prompt reply. “Which eye?” he asked. “This one,” said the woman, pointing to it; and instantly he disappeared, never more to be seen by her.’ This tale, as will be seen on comparison later, is incomplete, and probably incorrect.

Here is another from Mr. D. E. Davies:—‘One day Guto, the farmer of Corwrion, complained to his wife that he lacked men to mow his hay, when she replied, “Why fret about it? look yonder! There you have a field full of them at it, and stripped to their shirt-sleeves (yn ỻewys eu crysau).” When he went to the spot the sham workmen of the fairy family had disappeared. This same Guto—or somebody else—happened another time to be ploughing, when he heard some person he could not see, calling out to him, “I have got the bins (that is the vice) of my plough broken.” “Bring it to me,” said the driver of Guto’s team, “that I may mend it.” When they finished the furrow, they found the [64]broken vice, with a barrel of beer placed near it. One of the men sat down and mended the vice. Then they made another furrow, and when they returned to the spot they found there a two-eared dish filled to the brim with bara a chwrw, or “bread and beer.” The word vice, I may observe, is an English term, which is applied in Carnarvonshire to a certain part of the plough: it is otherwise called bins, but neither does this seem to be a Welsh word, nor have I heard either used in South Wales.

At times one of the fairies was in the habit, as I was told by more than one of my informants, of coming out of Ỻyn Corwrion with her spinning-wheel (troeỻ bach) on fine summer days and betaking herself to spinning. While at that work she might be heard constantly singing or humming, in a sort of round tune, the words sìli ffrit. So that sìli ffrit Leisa Bèla may now be heard from the mouths of the children in that neighbourhood. But I have not been successful in finding out what Liza Bella’s ‘silly frit’ exactly means, though I am, on the whole, convinced that the words are other than of Welsh origin. The last of them, ffrit, is usually applied in Cardiganshire to anything worthless or insignificant, and the derivative, ffrityn, means one who has no go or perseverance in him: the feminine is ffriten. In Carnarvonshire my wife has heard ffrityn and ffritan applied to a small man and a small woman respectively. Mr. Hughes says that in Merioneth and parts of Powys sìli ffrit is a term applied to a small woman or a female dwarf who happens to be proud, vain, and fond of the attentions of the other sex (benyw fach neu goraches falch a hunanol a fyđai hoff o garu); but he thinks he has heard it made use of with regard to the gipsies, and possibly also to the Tylwyth Teg. The Rev. O. [65]Davies thinks the words sìli ffrit Leisa Bèla to be very modern, and that they refer to a young woman who lived at a place in the neighbourhood, called Bryn Bèla or Brymbèla, ‘Bella’s Hill,’ the point being that this Bella was ahead, in her time, of all the girls in those parts in matters of taste and fashion. This however does not seem to go far enough back, and it is possible still that in Bèla, that is, in English spelling, Bella, we have merely a shortening of some such a name as Isabella or Arabella, which were once much more popular in the Principality than they are now: in fact, I do not feel sure that Leisa Bèla is not bodily a corruption of Isabella. As to sìli ffrit, one might at first have been inclined to render it by small fry, especially in the sense of the French ‘de la friture’ as applied to young men and boys, and to connect it with the Welsh sil and silod, which mean small fish; but the pronunciation of silli or sìli being nearly that of the English word silly, it appears, on the whole, to belong to the host of English words to be found in colloquial Welsh, though they seldom find their way into books. Students of English ought to be able to tell us whether frit had the meaning here suggested in any part of England, and how lately; also, whether there was such a phrase as ‘silly frit’ in use. After penning this, I received the following interesting communication from Mr. William Jones, of Ỻangoỻen:—The term sìli ffrit was formerly in use at Beđgelert, and what was thereby meant was a child of the Tylwyth Teg. It is still used for any creature that is smaller than ordinary. ‘Pooh, a silly frit like that!’ (Pw, rhyw sìli ffrit fel yna!). ‘Mrs. So-and-So has a fine child.’ ‘Ha, do you call a silly frit like that a fine child?’ (Mae gan hon a hon blentyn braf. Ho, a ydych chwi’n galw rhyw sìli ffrit fel hwnna’n [66]braf?) To return to Leisa Bèla and Belenë, it may be that the same person was meant by both these names, but I am in no hurry to identify them, as none of my correspondents knows the latter of them except Mr. Hughes, who gives it on the authority of the bard Gutyn Peris, and nothing further so far as I can understand, whereas Bèla will come before us in another story, as it is the same name, I presume, which Glasynys has spelled Bella in Cymru Fu.

So I wrote in 1881: since then I have ascertained from Professor Joseph Wright, who is busily engaged on his great English Dialect Dictionary, that frit27 is the same word, in the dialects of Cheshire, Shropshire, and Pembrokeshire, as fright in literary English; and that the corresponding verb to frighten is in them fritten, while a frittenin (= the book English frightening) means a ghost or apparition. So sìli ffrit is simply the English silly frit, and means probably a silly sprite or silly ghost, and sìli ffrit Leisa Bèla would mean the silly ghost of a woman called Liza Bella. But the silly frit found spinning near Corwrion Pool will come under notice again, for that fairy belongs to the Rumpelstiltzchen group of tales, and the fragment of a story about her will be seen to have treated Silly Frit as her proper name, which she had not intended to reach the ears of the person of whom she was trying to get the better.

These tales are brought into connexion with the present day in more ways than one, for besides the various accounts of the bwganod or bogies of Corwrion frightening people when out late at night, Mr. D. E. Davies knows a man, who is still living, and who [67]well remembers the time when the sound of working used to be heard in the pool, and the voices of children crying somewhere in its depths, but that when people rushed there to see what the matter was, all was found profoundly quiet and still. Moreover, there is a family or two, now numerously represented in the parishes of Ỻandegai and Ỻanỻechid, who used to be taunted with being the offspring of fairy ancestors. One of these families was nicknamed ‘Simychiaid’ or ‘Smychiaid’; and my informant, who is not yet quite forty, says that he heard his mother repeat scores of times that the old people used to say, that the Smychiaid, who were very numerous in the neighbourhood, were descended from fairies, and that they came from Ỻyn Corwrion. At all this the Smychiaid were wont to grow mightily angry. Another tradition, he says, about them was that they were a wandering family that arrived in the district from the direction of Conway, and that the father’s name was a Simwch, or rather that was his nickname, based on the proper name Simwnt, which appears to have once been the prevalent name in Ỻandegai. The historical order of these words would in that case have been Simwnt, Simwch, Simychiaid, Smychiaid. Now Simwnt seems to be merely the Welsh form given to some such English name as Simond, just as Edmund or Edmond becomes in North Wales Emwnt. The objection to the nickname seems to lie in the fact, which one of my correspondents points out to me, that Simwch is understood to mean a monkey, a point on which I should like to have further information. Pughe gives simach, it is true, as having the meaning of the Latin simia. A branch of the same family is said to be called ‘y Cowperiaid’ or the Coopers, from an ancestor who was either by name or by trade a cooper. [68]Mr. Hughes’ account of the Smychiaid was, that they are the descendants of one Simonds, who came to be a bailiff at Bodysgaỻan, near Deganwy, and moved from there to Coetmor in the neighbourhood of Corwrion. Simonds was obnoxious to the bards, he goes on to say, and they described the Smychiaid as having arrived in the parish at the bottom of a caweỻ, ‘a creel or basket carried on the back,’ when chance would have it that the caweỻ cord snapped just in that neighbourhood, at a place called Pont y Ỻan. That accident is described, according to Mr. Hughes, in the following doggerel, the origin of which I do not know—

Curiously enough, the same caweỻ story used to be said of a widely spread family in North Cardiganshire, whose surname was pronounced Massn and written Mason or Mazon: as my mother was of this family, I have often heard it. The caweỻ, if I remember rightly, was said, in this instance, to have come from Scotland, to which were traced three men who settled in North Cardiganshire. One had no descendants, but the other two, Mason and Peel—I think his name was Peel, but I am only sure that it was not Welsh—had so many, that the Masons, at any rate, are exceedingly numerous there; but a great many of them, owing to some extent, probably, to the caweỻ story, have been silly enough to change their name into that of Jones, some of them in my time. The three men came there probably for refuge in the course of troubles in Scotland, as a Frazer and a Francis did to Anglesey. At any rate, I have never heard it suggested that they were of aquatic origin, but, taking the caweỻ into consideration, and the popular account of [69]the Smychiaid, I should be inclined to think that the caweỻ originally referred to some such a supposed descent. I only hope that somebody will help us with another and a longer caweỻ tale, which will make up for the brevity of these allusions. We may, however, assume, I think, that there was a tendency at one time in Gwyneđ, if not in other parts of the Principality, to believe, or pretend to believe, that the descendants of an Englishman or Scotsman, who settled among the old inhabitants, were of fairy origin, and that their history was somehow uncanny, which was all, of course, duly resented. This helps, to some extent, to explain how names of doubtful origin have got into these tales, such as Smychiaid, Cowperiaid, Pellings, Penelope, Leisa Bèla or Isabella, and the like. This association of the lake legends with intruders from without is what has, perhaps, in a great measure served to rescue such legends from utter oblivion.

As to a church at Corwrion, the tradition does not seem to be an old one, and it appears founded on one of the popular etymologies of the word Corwrion, which treats the first syllable as cor in the sense of a choir; but the word has other meanings, including among them that of an ox-stall or enclosure for cattle. Taking this as coming near the true explanation, it at once suggests itself, that Creuwyryon in the Mabinogi of Math ab Mathonwy is the same place, for creu or crau also meant an enclosure for animals, including swine. In Irish the word is cró, an enclosure, a hut or hovel. The passage in the Mabinogi28 relates to Gwydion returning with the swine he had got by dint of magic and deceit from Pryderi, prince of Dyfed, and runs thus in Lady Charlotte Guest’s translation: ‘So they journeyed on to the highest town of Arỻechweđ, [70]and there they made a sty (creu) for the swine, and therefore was the name of Creuwyryon given to that town.’ As to wyryon or wyrion, which we find made into wrion in Corwrion according to the modern habit, it would seem to be no other word than the usual plural of wyr, a grandson, formerly also any descendant in the direct line. If so, the name of an ancestor must have originally followed, just as one of the places called Bettws was once Betws Wyrion Iđon, ‘the Bettws of Iđon’s Descendants’; but it is possible that wyrion in Creu- or Cor-wyrion was itself a man’s name, though I have never met with it. It is right to add that the name appears in the Record of Carnarvon (pp. 12, 25, 26) as Creweryon, which carries us back to the first half of the fourteenth century. There it occurs as the name of a township containing eight gavels, and the particulars about it might, in the hand of one familiar with the tenures of that time, perhaps give us valuable information as to what may have been its status at a still earlier date.

Here, for the sake of comparison with the Northwalian stories in which the fairy wife runs away from her husband in consequence of his having unintentionally touched or hit her with the iron in the bridle, the fetter, or the stirrup, as on pp. 35, 40, 46, 50, 54, 61. I wish to cite the oldest recorded version, namely from Walter Mapes’ curious miscellany of anecdotes and legends entitled De Nugis Curialium Distinctiones Quinque. Mapes flourished in the latter part of the twelfth century, and in Distinctio ii. 11 of Thomas Wright’s edition, published in the year 1850, one reads the following story, which serves the purpose there of [71]giving the origin of a certain Trinio, of whom Mapes had more to say:—

Aliud non miraculum sed portentum nobis Walenses referunt. Wastinum Wastiniauc secus stagnum Brekeinauc [read Brecheinauc], quod in circuitu duo miliaria tenet, mansisse aiunt et vidisse per tres claras a luna noctes choreas fæminarum in campo avenæ suæ, et secutum eum eas fuisse donec in aqua stagni submergerentur, unam tamen quarta vice retinuisse. Narrabat etiam ille raptor illius quod eas noctibus singulis post submersionem earum murmurantes audisset sub aqua et dicentes, ‘Si hoc fecisset, unam de nobis cepisset,’ et se ab ipsis edoctum quomodo hanc adepta [read -us] sit, quæ et consensit et nupsit ei, et prima verba sua hæc ad virum suum, ‘Libens tibi serviam, et tota obedientiæ devotione usque in diem illum prosilire volens ad clamores ultra Lenem [read Leueni] me freno tuo percusseris.’ Est autem Leueni aqua vicina stagno. Quod et factum est; post plurimæ prolis susceptionem ab eo freno percussa est, et in reditu suo inventam eam fugientem cum prole, insecutus est, et vix unum ex filiis suis arripuit, nomine Triunem Uagelauc.

‘The Welsh relate to us another thing, not so much a miracle as a portent, as follows. They say that Gwestin of Gwestiniog dwelt beside Brecknock Mere, which has a circumference of two miles, and that on three moonlight nights he saw in his field of oats women dancing, and that he followed them until they sank in the water of the mere; but the fourth time they say that he seized hold of one of them. Her captor further used to relate that on each of these nights he had heard the women, after plunging into the mere, murmuring beneath the water and saying, “If he had done so and so, he would have caught one of us,” and that he had been instructed by their own words, [72]as to the manner in which he caught her. She both yielded and became his wife, and her first words to her husband were these: “Willingly will I serve thee, and with whole-hearted obedience, until that day when, desirous of sallying forth in the direction of the cries beyond the Ỻyfni, thou shalt strike me with thy bridle”—the Ỻyfni is a burn near the mere. And this came to pass: after presenting him with a numerous offspring she was struck by him with the bridle, and on his returning home, he found her running away with her offspring, and he pursued her, but it was with difficulty that he got hold even of one of his sons, and he was named Trinio (?) Faglog.’

The story, as it proceeds, mentions Trinio engaged in battle with the men of a prince who seems to have been no other than Brychan of Brycheiniog, supposed to have died about the middle of the fifth century. The battle was disastrous to Trinio and his friends, and Trinio was never seen afterwards; so Walter Mapes reports the fact that people believed him to have been rescued by his mother, and that he was with her living still in the lake. Giraldus calls it lacus ille de Brecheniauc magnus et famosus, quem et Clamosum dicunt, ‘that great and famous lake of Brecknock which they also call Clamosus,’ suggested by the Welsh Ỻyn Ỻefni, so called from the river Ỻefni, misinterpreted as if derived from ỻef ‘a cry.’ With this lake he connects the legend, that at the bidding of the rightful Prince of Wales, the birds frequenting it would at once warble and sing. This he asserts to have been proved in the case of Gruffuđ, son of Rhys, though the Normans were at the time masters of his person and of his territory29. After dwelling on the varying colours of the lake he adds the following statement:—Ad hæc [73]etiam totus ædificiis consertus, culturis egregiis, hortis ornatus et pomeriis, ab accolis quandoque conspicitur, ‘Now and then also it is seen by the neighbouring inhabitants to be covered with buildings, and adorned with excellent farming, gardens, and orchards.’ It is remarkable as one of the few lakes in Wales where the remains of a crannog have been discovered, and while Mapes gives it as only two miles round, it is now said to be about five; so it has sometimes30 been regarded as a stockaded island rather than as an instance of pile dwellings.

In the Brython for 1863, pp. 114–15, is to be found what purports to be a copy of a version of the Legend of Ỻyn Syfađon, as contained in a manuscript of Hugh Thomas’ in the British Museum. It is to the effect that the people of the neighbourhood have a story that all the land now covered by the lake belonged to a princess, who had an admirer to whom she would not be married unless he procured plenty of gold: she did not care how. So he one day murdered and robbed a man who had money, and the princess then accepted the murderer’s suit, but she felt uneasy on account of the reports as to the murdered man’s ghost haunting the place where his body had been buried. So she made her admirer go at night to interview the ghost and lay it. Whilst he waited near the grave he heard a voice inquiring whether the innocent man was not to be avenged, and another replying that it would not be avenged till the ninth generation. The princess and her lover felt safe enough and were married: they multiplied and became numerous, while their town grew to be as it were another Sodom; and the original pair lived on so [74]astonishingly long that they saw their descendants of the ninth generation. They exulted in their prosperity, and one day held a great feast to celebrate it; and when their descendants were banqueting with them, and the gaiety and mirth were at their zenith, ancestors and descendants were one and all drowned in a mighty cataclysm which produced the present lake.

Lastly may be briefly mentioned the belief still lingering in the neighbourhood, to the effect that there is a town beneath the waters of the lake, and that in rough weather the bells from the church tower of that town may be heard ringing, while in calm weather the spire of the church may be distinctly seen. My informant, writing in 1892, added the remark: ‘This story seems hardly creditable to us, but many of the old people believe it.’

I ought to have mentioned that the fifteenth-century poet Lewis Glyn Cothi connects with Syfađon31 Lake an afanc legend; but this will be easier to understand in the light of the more complete one from the banks of the river Conwy. So the reader will find Glyn Cothi’s words given in the next chapter. [75]

In the course of the summer of 18821 I was a good deal in Wales, especially Carnarvonshire, and I made notes of a great many scraps of legends about the fairies, and other bits of folklore. I will now string [198]some of them together as I found them. I began at Trefriw2, in Nant Conwy, where I came across an old man, born and bred there, called Morris Hughes. He appears to be about seventy years of age: he formerly worked as a slater, but now he lives at Ỻanrwst, and tries to earn a livelihood by angling. He told me that fairies came a long while ago to Cowlyd Farm, near Cowlyd Lake, with a baby to dress, and asked to be admitted into the house, saying that they would pay well for it. Their request was granted, and they used to leave money behind them. One day the servant girl accidentally found they had also left some stuff they were in the habit of using in washing their children. She examined it, and, one of her eyes happening to itch, she rubbed it with the finger that had touched the stuff; so when she went to Ỻanrwst Fair she saw the same fairy folks there stealing cakes from a standing, and asked them why they did that. They inquired with what eye she saw them: she put her hand to the eye, and one of the fairies quickly rubbed it, so that she never saw any more of them. They were also very fond of bringing their children to be dressed in the houses between Trefriw and Ỻanrwst; and on the flat land bordering on the Conwy they used to dance, frolic, and sing every moonlight night. Evan Thomas of Sgubor Gerrig used to have money from them. He has been dead, Morris Hughes said, over sixty years: he had on his land a sort of cowhouse where the fairies had shelter, and hence the pay.

Morris, when a boy, used to be warned by his parents [199]to take care lest he should be stolen by the fairies. He knew Thomas Williams of Bryn Syỻty, or, as he was commonly called, Twm Bryn Syỻty, who was a changeling. He was a sharp, small man, afraid of nothing. He met his death some years ago by drowning near Eglwys Fach, when he was about sixty-three years of age. There are relatives of his about Ỻanrwst still: that is, relatives of his mother, if indeed she was his mother (os oeđ hi’n fam iđo fo, ynté). Lastly, Morris had a tale about a mermaid cast ashore by a storm near Conway. She entreated the fishermen who found her to help her back into her native element; and on their refusing to comply she prayed them to place her tail at least in the water. A very crude rhyme describes her dying of exposure to the cold, thus:—

But before expiring, the mermaid cursed the people of Conway to be always poor, and Conway has ever since, so goes the tale, laboured under the curse; so that when a stranger happens to bring a sovereign there, the Conway folk, if silver is required, have to send across the water to Ỻansanffraid for change.

My next informant was John Duncan Maclaren, who was born in 1812, and lives at Trefriw. His father was a Scotsman, but Maclaren is in all other respects a Welshman. He also knew the Sgubor Gerrig people, and that Evan Thomas and Lowri his wife had exceeding great trouble to prevent their son Roger from being carried away by the fairies. For the fairy maids were always trying to allure him away, and he was constantly finding fairy money. The fairy dance, and the playing and singing that accompanied it, used to take place in [200]a field in front of his father’s house; but Lowri would never let her son go out after the sun had gone to his battlements (ar ol i’r haul fyn’d i lawr i gaera). The most dangerous nights were those when the moon shone brightly, and pretty wreaths of mist adorned the meadows by the river. Maclaren had heard of a man, whom he called Siôn Catrin of Tyn Twỻ, finding a penny every day at the pistyỻ or water-spout near the house, when he went there to fetch water. The flat land between Trefriw and Ỻanrwst had on it a great many fairy rings, and some of them are, according to Maclaren, still to be seen. There the fairies used to dance, and when a young man got into one of the rings the fairy damsels took him away; but he could be got out unharmed at the end of a year and a day, when he would be found dancing with them in the same ring: he must then be dexterously touched by some one of his friends with a piece of iron and dragged out at once. This is the way in which a young man whom my notes connect with a place called Bryn Glas was recovered. He had gone out with a friend, who lost him, and he wandered into a fairy ring. He had new shoes on at the time, and his friends brought him out at the end of the interval of a year and a day; but he could not be made to understand that he had been away more than five minutes, until he was asked to look at his new shoes, which were by that time in pieces. Maclaren had also something to say concerning the history and habitat of the fairies. Those of Nant Conwy dress in green; and his mother, who died about sixty-two years ago, aged forty-seven, had told him that they lived seven years on the earth, seven years in the air, and seven years underground. He also had a mermaid tale, like that of Pergrin from Dyfed, p. 163. A fisherman from Ỻandriỻo yn Rhos, between Colwyn and Ỻandudno, had caught [201]a mermaid in his net. She asked to be set free, promising that she would, in case he complied, do him a kindness. He consented, and one fine day, a long while afterwards, she suddenly peeped out of the water near him, and shouted: Siôn Ifan, cwyd dy rwyda’ a thyn tua’r lan, ‘John Evans, take up thy nets and make for the shore.’ He obeyed, and almost immediately there was a terrible storm, in which many fishermen lost their lives. The river Conwy is the chief haunt of the mysterious afanc, already mentioned, p. 130, and Maclaren stated that its name used to be employed within his memory to frighten girls and children: so much was it still dreaded. Perhaps I ought to have stated that Maclaren is very fond of music, and that he told me of a gentleman at Conway who had taken down in writing a supposed fairy tune. I have made inquiries of the latter’s son, Mr. Hennessy Hughes of Conway; but his father’s papers seem to have been lost, so that he cannot find the tune in question, though he has heard of it.

Whilst on this question of music let me quote from the Ỻwyd letter in the Cambrian Journal for 1859, pp. 145–6, on which I have already drawn, pp. 130–3, above. The passage in point is to the following effect:—

‘I will leave these tales aside whilst I go as far as the Ogo Đu, “the Black Cave,” which is in the immediate vicinity of Crigcieth3, and into which the musicians [202]entered so far that they lost their way back. One of them was heard to play on his pipe, and another on his horn, about two miles from where they went in; and the place where the piper was heard is called Braich y Bib, and where the man with the horn was heard is called Braich y Cornor. I do not believe that even a single man doubts but that this is all true, and I know not how the airs called Ffarwel Dic y Pibyđ, “Dick the Piper’s Farewell,” and Ffarwel Dwm Bach, “Little Tom’s Farewell,” had those names, unless it was from the musicians above mentioned. Nor do I know that Ned Puw may not have been the third, and that the air called Ffarwel Ned Puw, “Ned Pugh’s Farewell,” may not have been the last he played before going into the cave. I cannot warrant this to be true, as I have only heard it said by one man, and he merely held it as a supposition, which had been suggested by this air of Ffarwel Dic y Pibyđ.’

A story, however, mentioned by Cynđelw in the Brython for 1860, p. 57, makes Ned Pugh enter the cave of Tal y Clegyr, which the writer in his article identifies with Ness Cliff, near Shrewsbury. In that cave, which was regarded as a wonderful one, he says the musician disappeared, while the air he was playing, Ffarwel Ned Puw, “Ned Pugh’s Farewell,” was retained in memory of him. Some account of the departure of Ned Pugh and of the interminable cave into which he entered, will be found given in a rambling fashion in the Cambrian Quarterly Magazine (London, 1829), vol. i, pp. 40–5, where the minstrel’s Welsh name is given as Iolo ap Huw. There we are told that he was last seen in the twilight of a misty Halloween, and the notes of the tune he was last heard to play are duly given. One of the surmises as to Iolo’s ultimate fate is also recorded, namely, that in the other world he has exchanged his [203]fiddle for a bugle, and become huntsman-in-chief to Gwyn ab Nûđ, so that every Halloween he may be found cheering Cwn Annwn, ‘the Hounds of the Other World,’ over Cader Idris4.

The same summer I fell in with Mr. Morris Evans, of Cerrig Mân, near Amlwch. He is a mining agent on the Gwydir Estate in the Vale of Conwy, but he is a native of the neighbourhood of Parys Mountain, in Anglesey, where he acquired his knowledge of mining. He had heard fairy tales from his grandmother, Grace Jones, of Ỻwyn Ysgaw near Mynyđ Mecheỻ, between Amlwch and Holyhead. She died, nearly ninety years of age, over twenty years ago. She used to relate how she and others of her own age were wont in their youth to go out on bright moonlight nights to a spot near Ỻyn y Bwch. They seldom had to wait there long before they would hear exquisite music and behold a grand palace standing on the ground. The diminutive folks of fairyland would then come forth to dance and frolic. The next morning the palace would be found gone, but the grandmother used to pick up fairy money on the spot, and this went on regularly so long as she did not tell others of her luck. My informant, who is himself a man somewhat over fifty-two, tells me that at a place not far from Ỻyn y Bwch there were [204]plenty of fairy rings to be seen in the grass; and it is in them the fairies were supposed to dance5.

From Ỻanrwst I went up to see the bard and antiquary, Mr. Gethin Jones. His house was prettily situated on the hillside on the left of the road as you approach the village of Penmachno. I was sorry to find that his memory had been considerably impaired by a paralytic stroke from which he had suffered not long before. However, from his room he pointed out to me a spot on the other side of the Machno, called Y Werđon, which means ‘The Green Land,’ or more literally, ‘The Greenery,’ so to say. It was well known for its green, grassy fairy rings, formerly frequented by the Tylwyth Teg; and he said he could distinguish some of the rings even then from where he stood. The Werđon is on the Bennar, and the Bennar is the high ground between Penmachno and Dolwyđelan. The spot in question is on the part nearest to the Conwy Falls. This name, Y Werđon, is liable to be confounded with Iwerđon, ‘Ireland,’ which is commonly treated as if it began with the definite article, so that it is made into Y Werđon and Werđon. The fairy Werđon, in the radical form Gwerđon, not only recalls to my mind the Green Isles called Gwerđonau Ỻïon, but also the saying, common in North Wales, that a person in great anxiety ‘sees Y Werđon.’ Thus, for instance, a man who fails to return to his family at the hour expected, and believes his people to be in great anxiety about him, expresses himself by saying that they will have ‘seen the Werđon on my account’ (mi fyđan’ wedi gwel’d y Werđon am dana’i). Is that Ireland, or is it the land of the fairies, the other world, in fact? [205]If the latter, it might simply mean they will have died of anxiety; but I confess I have not so far been able to decide. I am not aware that the term occurs in any other form of expression than the one I have given; if it had, and if the Werđon were spoken of in some other way, that might possibly clear up the difficulty. If it refers to Ireland, it must imply that sighting Ireland is equivalent to going astray at sea, meaning in this sort of instance, getting out of one’s senses; but the Welsh are not very much given to nautical expressions. It reminds me somewhat of Gerald Griffin’s allusion to the Phantom City, and the penalty paid by those who catch a glimpse of its turrets as the dividing waves expose them for a moment to view on the western coast of Ireland:—

The Fairy Glen above Bettws y Coed is called in Welsh Ffos ‘Nođyn, ‘the Sink of the Abyss’; but Mr. Gethin Jones told me that it was also called Glyn y Tylwyth Teg, which is very probable, as some such a designation is required to account for the English name, ‘the Fairy Glen.’ People on the Capel Garmon side used to see the Tylwyth playing there, and descending into the Ffos or Glen gently and lightly without occasioning themselves the least harm. The Fairy Glen was, doubtless, supposed to contain an entrance to the world below. This reminds one of the name of the pretty hollow running inland from the railway station at Bangor. Why should it be called Nant Uffern, or ‘The Hollow of Hell’? Can it be that there was a supposed entrance to the fairy world somewhere there? In any case, I am quite certain that Welsh place-names involve allusions to the fairies [206]much oftener than has been hitherto supposed; and I should be inclined to cite, as a further example, Moel Eilio6 or Moel Eilian, from the personal name Eilian, to be mentioned presently. Moel Eilian is a mountain under which the fairies were supposed to have great stores of treasure. But to return to Mr. Gethin Jones, I had almost forgotten that I have another instance of his in point. He showed me a passage in a paper which he wrote in Welsh some time ago on the antiquities of Yspyty Ifan. He says that where the Serw joins the Conwy there is a cave, to which tradition asserts that a harpist was once allured by the Tylwyth Teg. He was, of course, not seen afterwards, but the echo of the music made by him and them on their harps is still to be heard a little lower down, under the field called to this day Gweirglođ y Telynorion, ‘The Harpers’ Meadow’: compare the extract from Edward Ỻwyd’s correspondence at p. 202 above.

Mr. Gethin Jones also spoke to me of the lake called Ỻyn Pencraig, which was drained in hopes of finding lead underneath it, an expectation not altogether doomed to disappointment, and he informed me that its old name was Ỻyn Ỻifon; so the moor around it was called Gwaen Ỻifon. It appears to have been a large lake, but only in wet weather, and to have no deep bed. The names connected with the spot are now Nant Gwaen Ỻifon and the Gwaith (or Mine) of Gwaen Ỻifon: they are, I understand, within the township of Trefriw. The name Ỻyn Ỻifon is of great interest when taken in connexion with the Triadic account of the cataclysm called the Bursting of Ỻyn Ỻiƒon. Mr. Gethin Jones, however, believed himself that Ỻyn [207]Ỻïon was no other than Bala Lake, through which the Dee makes her way.

One day in August of the same year, I arrived at Dinas Station, and walked down to Ỻandwrog in order to see Dinas Dinỻe, and to ascertain what traditions still existed there respecting Caer Arianrhod, Ỻew Ỻawgyffes, Dylan Eilton, and other names that figure in the Mabinogi of Math ab Mathonwy. I called first on the schoolmaster, and he kindly took me to the clerk, Hugh Evans, a native of the neighbourhood of Ỻangefni, in Anglesey. He had often heard people talk of some women having once on a time come from Tregar Anthreg to Cae’r ’Loda’, a place near the shore, to fetch food or water, and that when they looked back they beheld the town overflowed by the sea: the walls can still be seen at low water. Gwennan was the name of one of the women, and she was buried at the place now called Beđ Gwennan, or Gwennan’s Grave. He had also heard the fairy tales of Waen Fawr and Nant y Bettws, narrated by the antiquary, Owen Williams of the former place. For instance, he had related to him the tale of the man who slept on a clump of rushes, and thought he was all the while in a magnificent mansion; see p. 100, above. Now I should explain that Tregar Anthreg is to be seen at low water from Dinas Dinỻe as a rock not far from the shore. The Caranthreg which it implies is one of the modern forms to which Caer Arianrhod has been reduced; and to this has been prefixed a synonym of caer, namely, tref, reduced to tre’, just as Carmarthen is frequently called Tre’ Gaerfyrđin. Cae’r ’Loda’ is explained as Cae’r Aelodau’, ‘The Field of the Limbs’; but I am sorry to say that I forgot to [208]note the story explanatory of the name. It is given, I think, to a farm, and so is Beđ Gwennan likewise the name of a farm house. The tenant of the latter, William Roberts, was at home when I visited the spot. He told me the same story, but with a variation: three sisters had come from Tregan Anrheg to fetch provisions, when their city was overflowed. Gwen fled to the spot now called Beđ Gwennan, Elan to Tyđyn Elan, or Elan’s Holding, and Maelan to Rhos Maelan, or Maelan’s Moor; all three are names of places in the immediate neighbourhood.

From Dinas Dinỻe I was directed across Lord Newborough’s grounds at Glynỻifon to Pen y Groes Station; but on my way I had an opportunity of questioning several of the men employed at Glynỻifon. One of these was called William Thomas Solomon, an intelligent middle-aged man, who works in the garden there. He said that the three women who escaped from the submerged city were sisters, and that he had learned in his infancy to call them Gwennan bi Dôn, Elan bi Dôn, and Maelan bi Dôn. Lastly, the name of the city, according to him, was Tregan Anthrod. I had the following forms of the name that day:—Tregar Anrheg, Tregar Anthreg, Tregan Anrheg, Tregan Anthreg, and Tregan Anthrod. All these are attempts to reproduce what might be written Tre’-Gaer-Arianrhod. The modification of nrh into nthr is very common in North Wales, and Tregar Anrheg seems to have been fashioned on the supposition that the name had something to do with anrheg, ‘a gift.’ Tregan Anthrod is undoubtedly the Caer Arianrhod, or ‘fortress of Arianrhod,’ in the Mabinogi, and it is duly marked as such in a map of Speede’s at the spot where it should be. Now the Arianrhod of the Mabinogi of Math could hardly be called a lady of rude virtue, and it is the idea in the [209]neighbourhood that the place was inundated on account of the wickedness of the inhabitants. So it would appear that Gwennan, Elan, and Maelan, Arianrhod’s sisters, were the just ones allowed to escape. Arianrhod was probably drowned as the principal sinner in possession; but I did not find, as I expected, that the crime which called for such an expiation was in this instance that of playing cards on Sunday. In fact, this part of the legend does not seem to have been duly elaborated as yet.

I must now come back to Solomon’s bi Dôn, which puzzles me not a little. Arianrhod was daughter of Dôn, and so several other characters in the same Mabinogi were children of Dôn. But what is bi Dôn? I have noticed that all the Welsh antiquaries who take Don out of books invariably call that personage Dòn or Donn with a short o, which is wrong, and this has saved me from being deceived once or twice: so I take it that bi Dôn is, as Solomon asserted, a local expression of which he did not know the meaning. I can only add, in default of a better explanation, that bi Dôn recalled to my mind what I had shortly before heard on my trip from Aberdaron to Bardsey Island. My wife and I, together with two friends, engaged, after much eloquent haggling, a boat at the former place, but one of the men who were to row us insinuated a boy of his, aged four, into the boat, an addition which did not exactly add to the pleasures of that somewhat perilous trip amidst incomprehensible currents. But the Aberdaron boatmen always called that child bi Donn, which I took to have been a sort of imitation of an infantile pronunciation of ‘baby John,’ for his name was John, which Welsh infants as a rule first pronounce Donn: I can well remember the time when I did. This, applied to Gwennan bi Dôn, would imply that Solomon heard it as a piece of nursery lore when he was a child, [210]and that it meant simply—Gwennan, baby or child of Dôn. Lastly, the only trace of Dylan I could find was in the name of a small promontory, called variously by the Glynỻifon men Pwynt Maen Tylen, which was Solomon’s pronunciation, and Pwynt Maen Dulan. It is also known, as I was given to understand, as Pwynt y Wig: I believe I have seen it given in maps as Maen Dylan Point.

Solomon told me the following fairy tale, and he was afterwards kind enough to have it written out for me. I give it in his own words, as it is peculiar in some respects:—

Mi’r oeđ gwr a gwraig yn byw yn y Garth Dorwen7 ryw gyfnod maith yn ol, ag aethant i Gaer’narfon i gyflogi morwyn ar đyđ ffair G’langaeaf, ag yr oeđ yn arferiad gan feibion a merched y pryd hynny i’r rhai oeđ yn sefyỻ aỻan am lefyđ aros yn top y maes presennol wrth boncan las oeđ yn y fan y ỻe saif y Post-office presennol; aeth yr hen wr a’r hen wraig at y fan yma a gwelent eneth lan a gwaỻt melyn yn sefyỻ ’chydig o’r neiỻdu i bawb araỻ; aeth yr hen wraig ati a gofynnođ i’r eneth oeđ arni eisiau ỻe. Atebođ fod, ag feỻy cyflogwyd yr eneth yn đioed a daeth i’w ỻe i’r amser penodedig. Mi fyđai yn arferiad yr adeg hynny o nyđu ar ol swper yn hirnos y gauaf, ag fe fyđai y forwyn yn myn’d i’r weirglođ i nyđu wrth oleu y ỻoer; ag fe fyđai tylwyth teg yn dwad ati hi i’r weirglođ i ganu a dawnsio. A ryw bryd yn y gwanwyn pan esdynnođ y dyđ diangođ Eilian gyd a’r tylwythion teg i ffwrđ, ag ni welwyd ’mo’ni mwyach. Mae y cae y gwelwyd hi điwethaf yn cael ei alw hyd y dyđ heđyw yn Gae Eilian a’r weirglođ yn Weirglođ y Forwyn. Mi’r oeđ hen [211]wraig y Garth Dorwen yn arfer rhoi gwrageđ yn eu gwlâu, a byđai pawb yn cyrchu am dani o bob cyfeiriad; a rhyw bryd dyma wr boneđig ar ei geffyl at y drws ar noswaith loergan ỻeuad, a hithau yn glawio ’chydig ag yn niwl braiđ, i ’nol yr hen wreigan at ei wraig; ag feỻy aeth yn sgil y gwr dïarth ar gefn y march i Ros y Cowrt. Ar ganol y Rhos pryd hynny ’r oeđ poncan ỻed uchel yn debyg i hen amđiffynfa a ỻawer o gerrig mawrion ar ei phen a charneđ fawr o gerrig yn yr ochor ogleđol iđi, ag mae hi i’w gwel’d hyd y dyđ heđyw dan yr enw Bryn y Pibion. Pan gyrhaeđasan’ y ỻe aethan’ i ogo’ fawr ag aethan’ i ’stafeỻ ỻe’r oeđ y wraig yn ei gwely, a’r ỻe crandia’ a welođ yr hen wraig yrioed. Ag fe roth y wraig yn ei gwely ag aeth at y tan i drin y babi; ag ar ol iđi orphen dyna y gwr yn dod a photel i’r hen wraig i hiro ỻygaid y babi ag erfyn arni beidio a’i gyffwr’ a’i ỻygaid ei hun. Ond ryw fođ ar ol rhoi y botel heibio fe đaeth cosfa ar lygaid yr hen wraig a rhwbiođ ei ỻygaid â’r un bys ag oeđ wedi bod yn rhwbio ỻygaid y baban a gwelođ hefo ’r ỻygad hwnnw y wraig yn gorfeđ ar docyn o frwyn a rhedyn crinion mewn ogo’ fawr o gerrig mawr o bob tu iđi a ’chydig bach o dan mewn rhiw gornel, a gwelođ mai Eilian oeđ hi, ei hen forwyn, ag hefo’r ỻygad araỻ yn gwel’d y ỻe crandia’ a welođ yrioed. Ag yn mhen ychydig ar ol hynny aeth i’r farchnad i Gaer’narfon a gwelođ y gwr a gofynnođ iđo—‘Pa sud mae Eilian?’ ‘O y mae hi yn bur đa,’ međai wrth yr hen wraig: ‘a pha lygad yr ydych yn fy ngwel’d?’ ‘Hefo hwn,’ međai hithau. Cymerođ babwyren ag a’i tynođ aỻan ar unwaith.

‘An old man and his wife lived at the Garth Dorwen in some period a long while ago. They went to Carnarvon to hire a servant maid at the Allhallows’8 fair; [212]and it was the custom then for young men and women who stood out for places to station themselves at the top of the present Maes, by a little green eminence which was where the present Post-office stands. The old man and his wife went to that spot, and saw there a lass with yellow hair, standing a little apart from all the others; the old woman went to her and asked her if she wanted a place. She replied that she did, and so she hired herself at once and came to her place at the time fixed. In those times it was customary during the long winter nights that spinning should be done after supper. Now the maid servant would go to the meadow to spin by the light of the moon, and the Tylwyth Teg used to come to her to sing and dance. But some time in the spring, when the days had grown longer, Eilian escaped with the Tylwyth Teg, so that she was seen no more. The field where she was last seen is to this day called Eilian’s Field, and the meadow is known as the Maid’s Meadow. The old woman of Garth Dorwen was in the habit of putting women to bed, and she was in great request far and wide. Some time after Eilian’s escape there came a gentleman on horseback to the door one night when the moon was full, while there was a slight rain and just a little mist, to fetch the old woman to his wife. So she rode off behind the stranger on his horse, and came to Rhos y Cowrt. Now there was at that time, in the centre of the rhos, somewhat of a rising ground that looked like an old fortification, with many big stones on the top, and a large cairn of stones on the northern side: it is to be seen there to this day, and it goes by the name of Bryn y Pibion, but I have never visited the spot. When they [213]reached the spot, they entered a large cave, and they went into a room where the wife lay in her bed; it was the finest place the old woman had seen in her life. When she had successfully brought the wife to bed, she went near the fire to dress the baby; and when she had done, the husband came to the old woman with a bottle of ointment9 that she might anoint the baby’s eyes; but he entreated her not to touch her own eyes with it. Somehow after putting the bottle by, one of the old woman’s eyes happened to itch, and she rubbed it with the same finger that she had used to rub the baby’s eyes. Then she saw with that eye how the wife lay on a bundle of rushes and withered ferns in a large cave, with big stones all round her, and with a little fire in one corner; and she saw also that the lady was only Eilian, her former servant girl, whilst, with the other eye, she beheld the finest place she had ever seen. Not long afterwards the old midwife went to Carnarvon to market, when she saw the husband, and said to him, “How is Eilian?” “She is pretty well,” said he to the old woman, “but with what eye do you see me?” “With this one,” was the reply; and he took a bulrush and put her eye out at once.’

That is exactly the tale, my informant tells me, as he heard it from his mother, who heard it from an old woman who lived at Garth Dorwen when his mother was a girl, about eighty-four years ago, as he guessed it to have been; but in his written version he has omitted one thing which he told me at Glynỻifon, namely, that, when the servant girl went out to the fairies to spin, an enormous amount of spinning used to be done. [214]I mention this as it reminds me of the tales of other nations, where the girl who cannot spin straw into gold is assisted by a fairy, on certain conditions which are afterwards found very inconvenient. It may be guessed that in the case of Eilian the conditions involved her becoming a fairy’s wife, and that she kept to them. Lastly, I should like the archæologists of Carnarvonshire to direct their attention to Bryn y Pibion; for they might be expected to come across the remains there of a barrow or of a fort.

The same summer I happened to meet the Rev. Robert Hughes, of Uwchlaw’r Ffynnon, near Ỻanaelhaearn, a village on which Tre’r Ceiri, or the Town of the Keiri, looks down in its primitive grimness from the top of one of the three heights of the Eifl, or Rivals as English people call them. The district is remarkable for the longevity of its inhabitants, and Mr. Hughes counted fifteen farmers in his immediate neighbourhood whose average age was eighty-three; and four years previously the average age of eighteen of them was no less than eighty-five. He himself was, when I met him, seventy-one years of age, and he considered that he represented the traditions of more than a century and a half, as he was a boy of twelve when one of his grandfathers died at the age of ninety-two: the age reached by one of his grandmothers was all but equal, while his father died only a few years ago, after nearly reaching his ninety-fifth birthday.

Story-telling was kept alive in the parish of Ỻanaelhaearn by the institution known there as the pilnos, or [215]peeling night, when the neighbours met in one another’s houses to spend the long winter evenings dressing hemp and carding wool, though I guess that a pilnos was originally the night when people met to peel rushes for rushlights. When they left these merry meetings they were ready, as Mr. Hughes says, to see anything. In fact, he gives an instance of some people coming from a pilnos across the mountain from Nant Gwrtheyrn to Ỻithfaen, and finding the fairies singing and dancing with all their might: they were drawn in among them and found themselves left alone in the morning on the heather. Indeed, Mr. Hughes has seen the fairies himself: it was on the Pwỻheli road, as he was returning in the grey of the morning from the house of his fiancée when he was twenty-seven. The fairies he saw came along riding on wee horses: his recollection is that he now and then mastered his eyes and found the road quite clear, but the next moment the vision would return, and he thought he saw the diminutive cavalcade as plainly as possible. Similarly, a man of the name of Solomon Evans, when, thirty years ago, making his way home late at night through Glynỻifon Park, found himself followed by quite a crowd of little creatures, which he described as being of the size of guinea pigs and covered with red and white spots. He was an ignorant man, who knew no better than to believe to the day of his death, some eight or nine years ago, that they were demons. This is probably a blurred version of a story concerning Cwn Annwn, ‘Hell hounds,’ such as the following, published by Mr. O. M. Edwards in his Cymru for 1897, p. 190, from Mr. J. H. Roberts’ essay mentioned above at p. 148:—‘Ages ago as a man who had been engaged on business, not the most creditable in the world, was returning in the depth of night across Cefn Creini, and thinking in a downcast frame of mind [216]over what he had been doing, he heard in the distance a low and fear-inspiring bark; then another bark, and another, and then half a dozen and more. Ere long he became aware that he was being pursued by dogs, and that they were Cwn Annwn. He beheld them coming: he tried to flee, but he felt quite powerless and could not escape. Nearer and nearer they came, and he saw the shepherd with them: his face was black and he had horns on his head. They had come round him and stood in a semicircle ready to rush upon him, when he had a remarkable deliverance: he remembered that he had in his pocket a small cross, which he showed them. They fled in the greatest terror in all directions, and this accounts for the proverb, Mwy na’r cythraul at y groes (Any more than the devil to the cross).’ That is Mr. Roberts’ story; but several allusions have already been made to Cwn Annwn. It would be right probably to identify them in the first instance with the pack with which Arawn, king of Annwn, is found hunting by Pwyỻ, king of Dyfed, when the latter happens to meet him in Glyn Cuch in his own realm. Then in a poem in the Black Book of Carmarthen we find Gwyn ab Nûđ with a pack led by Dormarth, a hound with a red snout which he kept close to the ground when engaged in the chase; similarly in the story of Iolo ab Huw the dogs are treated as belonging to Gwyn. But on the whole the later idea has more usually been, that the devil is the huntsman, that his dogs give chase in the air, that their quarry consists of the souls of the departed, and that their bark forebodes a death, since they watch for the souls of men about to die. This, however, might be objected to as pagan; so I have heard the finishing touch given to it in the neighbourhood of Ystrad Meurig, by one who, like Mr. Pughe, explained that it is the souls only of notoriously wicked men and well-known evil livers. [217]With this limitation the pack10 seems in no immediate danger of being regarded as poaching.

To return to Ỻanaelhaearn, it is right to say that good spirits too, who attend on good Calvinists, are there believed in. Morris Hughes, of Cwm Corryn, was the first Calvinistic Methodist at Ỻanaelhaearn; he was great-grandfather to Robert Hughes’ wife; and he used to be followed by two pretty little yellow birds. He would call to them, ‘Wryd, Wryd!’ and they would come and feed out of his hand, and when he was dying they came and flapped their wings against his window. This was testified to by John Thomas, of Moelfre Bach, who was present at the time. Thomas died some twenty-five years ago, at the age of eighty-seven. I have heard this story from other people, but I do not know what to make of it, though I may add that the little birds are believed to have been angels. In Mr. Rees’ Welsh Saints, pp. 305–6, Gwryd is given as the name of a friar who lived about the end of the twelfth century, and has been commemorated on November 1; and the author adds a note referring to the Cambrian Register for 1800, vol. iii. p. 221, where it is said that Gwryd relieved the bard Einion ab Gwalchmai of some oppression, probably mental, which had afflicted him for seven years. Is one to suppose that Gwryd sent two angels in the form of little birds to protect the first Ỻanaelhaearn Methodist? The call ‘Wryd, Wryd,’ would seem to indicate that the name was not originally Gwryd, but Wryd, to be identified possibly with the Pictish name Uoret in an inscription at St. Vigean’s, near Arbroath, and to be distinguished [218]from the Welsh word gwryd, ‘valour,’ and from the Welsh name Gwriad, representing what in its Gaulish form was Viriatus. We possibly have the name Wryd in Hafod Wryd, a place in the Machno Valley above Bettws y Coed; otherwise one would have expected Hafod y Gwryd, making colloquially, Hafod Gwryd.

Mr. Hughes told me a variety of things about Nant Gwrtheyrn, one of the spots where the Vortigern story is localized. The Nant is a sort of a cul de sac hollow opening to the sea at the foot of the Eifl. There is a rock there called Y Farches, and the angle of the sea next to the old castle, which seems to be merely a mound, is called Y Ỻynclyn, or ‘The Whirlpool’; and this is perhaps an important item in the localizing of Vortigern’s city there. I was informed by Mr. Hughes that the grave of Olfyn is in this Nant, with a razed church close by: both are otherwise quite unknown to me. Coming away from this weird spot to the neighbourhood of Celynnog, one finds that the Pennarđ of the Mabinogi of Math is now called Pennarth, and has on it a well-known cromlech. Of course, I did not leave Mr. Hughes without asking him about Caer Arianrhod, and I found that he called it Tre’ Gaer Anrheg: he described it as a stony patch in the sea, and it can, he says, be reached on foot when the ebb is at its lowest in spring and autumn. The story he had heard about it when he was a boy at school with David Thomas, better known by his bardic name of Dafyđ Đu Eryri, was the following:—

‘Tregaer Anrheg was inhabited by a family of robbers, and among other things they killed and robbed a man at Glyn Iwrch, near the further wall of Glynnỻifon Park: this completed the measure of their lawlessness. There was one woman, however, living with them at Tregaer Anrheg, who was not related to them, and as she went out one evening with [219]her pitcher to fetch water, she heard a voice crying out, Dos i ben y bryn i wel’d rhyfeđod, that is, Go up the hill to see a wonder. She obeyed, and as soon as she got to the top of the hill, whereby was meant Dinas Dinỻe, she beheld Tregaer Anrheg sinking in the sea.’

As I have wandered away from the fairies I may add the following curious bit of legend which Mr. Hughes gave me:—‘When St. Beuno lived at Celynnog, he used to go regularly to preach at Ỻanđwyn on the opposite side of the water, which he always crossed on foot. But one Sunday he accidentally dropped his book of sermons into the water, and when he had failed to recover it a gylfin-hir, or curlew, came by, picked it up, and placed it on a stone out of the reach of the tide. The saint prayed for the protection and favour of the Creator for the gylfin-hir: it was granted, and so nobody ever knows where that bird makes its nest.’

One day in August of the same summer I went to have another look at the old inscribed stone at Gesail Gyfarch11, near Tremadoc, and, instead of returning the same way, I walked across to Criccieth Station; but on my way I was directed to call at a farm house called Ỻwyn y Mafon Uchaf, where I was to see Mr. Edward Ỻewelyn, a bachelor then seventy-six years of age. He is a native of the neighbourhood, and has always lived in it; moreover, he has now been for some time blind. He had heard a good many fairy tales. Among others he mentioned John Roberts, a slater from the [220]Garn, that is Carn Dolbenmaen, as having one day, when there was a little mist and a drizzling rain, heard a crowd of fairies talking together in great confusion, near a sheepfold on Ỻwytmor Mountain; but he was too much afraid to look at them. He also told me of a man at Ystum Cegid, a farm not far off, having married a fairy wife on condition that he was not to touch her with any kind of iron on pain of her leaving him for ever. Then came the usual accident in catching a horse in order to go to a fair at Carnarvon, and the immediate disappearance of the wife. At this point Mr. Ỻewelyn’s sister interposed to the effect that the wife did once return and address her husband in the rhyme, Os byđ anwyd ar fy mab, &c.: see pp. 44, 55 above. Then Mr. Ỻewelyn enumerated several people who are of this family, among others a girl, who is, according to him, exactly like the fairies. This made me ask what the fairies are like, and he answered that they are small unprepossessing creatures, with yellow skin and black hair. Some of the men, however, whom he traced to a fairy origin are by no means of this description. The term there for men of fairy descent is Belsiaid, and they live mostly in the neighbouring parish of Pennant, where it would never do for me to go and collect fairy tales, as I am told; and Mr. Ỻewelyn remembers the fighting that used to take place at the fairs at Penmorfa if the term Belsiaid once began to be heard. Mr. Ỻewelyn was also acquainted with the tale of the midwife that went to a fairy family, and how the thieving husband had deprived her of the use of one eye. He also spoke of the fairies changing children, and how one of these changelings, supposed to be a baby, expressed himself to the effect that he had seen the acorn before the oak, and the egg before the chick, but never anybody who brewed ale in an egg-shell: see p. 62 above. As to [221]modes of getting rid of the changelings, a friend of Mr. Ỻewelyn’s mentioned the story that one was once dropped into the Glaslyn river, near Beđgelert. The sort of children the fairies liked were those that were unlike their own; that is, bairns whose hair was white, or inclined to yellow, and whose skin was fair. He had a great deal to say of a certain Elis Bach of Nant Gwrtheyrn, who used to be considered a changeling. With the exception of this changing of children the fairies seemed to have been on fairly good terms with the inhabitants, and to have been in the habit of borrowing from farm houses a padeỻ and gradeỻ for baking. The gradeỻ is a sort of round flat iron, on which the dough is put, and the padeỻ is the patella or pan put over it: they are still commonly used for baking in North Wales. Well, the fairies used to borrow these two articles, and by way of payment to leave money on the hob at night. All over Ỻeyn the Tylwyth are represented as borrowing padeỻ a gradeỻ. They seem to have never been very strong in household furniture, especially articles made of iron. Mr. Ỻewelyn had heard that the reason why people do not see fairies nowadays is that they have been exorcised (wedi eu hoffrymu) for hundreds of years to come.

About the same time I was advised to try the memory of Miss Jane Williams, who lives at the Graig, Tremadoc: she was then, as I was told, seventy-five, very quick-witted, but by no means communicative to idlers. The most important information she had for me was to the effect that the Tylwyth Teg had been exorcised away (wedi ’ffrymu) and would not be back in our day. When she was about twelve she served at the Geỻi between Tremadoc and Pont Aberglaslyn. Her master’s name was Siôn Ifan, and his wife was a native of the neighbourhood of Carnarvon; she had many tales to [222]tell them about the Tylwyth, how they changed children, how they allured men to the fairy rings, and how their dupes returned after a time in a wretched state, with hardly any flesh on their bones. She heard her relate the tale of a man who married a fairy, and how she left him; but before going away from her husband and children she asked the latter by name which they would like to have, a dirty cow-yard (buches fudur) or a clean cow-yard (buches lân). Some gave the right answer, a dirty cow-yard, but some said a clean cow-yard: the lot of the latter was poverty, for they were to have no stock of cattle. The same question is asked in a story recorded by the late Rev. Elias Owen, in his Welsh Folk-lore, p. 8212: his instance belongs to the neighbourhood of Pentrevoelas, in Denbighshire.

When I was staying at Pwỻheli the same summer, I went out to the neighbouring village of Four Crosses, and found a native of the place, who had heard a great many curious things from his mother. His name was Lewis Jones: he was at the time over eighty, and he had formerly been a saddler. Among other things, his mother often told him that her grandmother had frequently been with the fairies, when the latter was a child. She lived at Plâs Du, and once she happened to be up near Carn Bentyrch when she saw them. She found them resembling little children, and playing in a brook that she had to cross. She was so delighted with them, and stayed so long with them, that a search was made for her, when she was found in the company of the fairies. Another time, they met her as [223]she was going on an errand across a large bog on a misty day, when there was a sort of a drizzle, which one might call either dew or rain, as it was not decidedly either, but something between the two, such as the Welsh would call gwlithlaw, ‘dew-rain.’ She loitered in their company until a search was made for her again. Lewis Jones related to me the story of the midwife—he pronounced it in Welsh ‘midwaith’—who attended on a fairy. As in the other versions, she lost the sight of one eye in consequence of her discovering the gentleman fairy thieving; but the fair at which this happened was held in this instance at Nefyn. He related also how a farmer at Pennant had wedded a fairy called Bella. This tale proceeded like the other versions, and did not even omit the fighting at Penmorfa: see pp. 89, 93, 220. He had likewise the tale about the two youths who had gone out to fetch some cattle, and came, while returning about dusk, across a party of fairies dancing. The one was drawn into the circle, and the other was suspected at length of having murdered him, until, at the suggestion of a wizard, he went to the same place at the end of a year and a day: then he found him dancing, and managed to get him out. He had been reduced to a mere skeleton, but he inquired at once if the cattle he was driving were far ahead. Jones had heard of a child changed by the fairies when its mother had placed it in some hay while she worked at the harvest. She discovered he was not her own by brewing in an egg-shell, as usual. Then she refused to take any notice of him, and she soon found her own baby returned; but the latter looked much the worse for its sojourn in the land of the Tylwyth Teg.

My informant described to me Elis Bach of Nant Gwrtheyrn, already mentioned, p. 221, who died somewhat more than forty years ago. His father was a [224]farmer there, and his children, both boys and girls, were like ordinary folks, excepting Elis, who was deformed, his legs being so short that his body seemed only a few inches from the ground when he walked. His voice was also small and squeaky. However, he was very sharp, and could find his way among the rocks pretty well when he went in quest of his father’s sheep and goats, of which there used to be plenty there formerly. Everybody believed Elis to have been a changeling, and one saying of his is still remembered in that part of the country. When strangers visited Nant Gwrtheyrn, a thing which did not frequently happen, and when his parents asked them to their table, and pressed them to eat, he would squeak out drily, Buta ‘nynna buta’r cwbwl, that is to say, ‘Eating that means eating all we have.’

He told me further that the servant girls used formerly to take care to bring a supply of water indoors at the approach of night, that the fairies might find plenty in which to bathe their children, for fear that they might use the milk instead, if water was wanting. Moreover, when they had been baking, they took care to leave the fairies both padeỻ and gradeỻ, that they might do their baking in the night. The latter used to pay for this kindness by leaving behind them a cake of fairy bread and sometimes money on the hob. I have, however, not been able to learn anything about the quality or taste of this fairy food.

He had also a great deal to say about the making of bonfires about the beginning of winter. A bonfire was always kindled on the farm called Cromlech on the eve of the Winter Calends or Nos Galan Gaeaf, as it is termed in Welsh; and the like were to be seen in abundance towards Ỻithfaen, Carnguwch, and Ỻanaelhaearn, as well as on the Merioneth side of the bay. [225]Besides fuel, each person present used to throw into the fire a small stone, with a mark whereby he should know it again. If he succeeded in finding the stone on the morrow, the year would be a lucky one for him, but the contrary if he failed to recover it. Those who assisted at the making of the bonfire watched until the flames were out, and then somebody would raise the usual cry, when each ran away for his life, lest he should be found last. This cry, which is a sort of equivalent, well known over Carnarvonshire, of the English saying, ‘The devil take the hindmost,’ was in the Welsh of that county—

that is to say, ‘May the black sow without a tail seize the hindmost.’

The cutty black sow is often alluded to nowadays to frighten children in Arfon, and it is clearly the same creature that is described in some parts of North Wales as follows:— [226]

In Cardiganshire this is reduced to the words:—

Welsh people speak of only three Calends—Calan-mai, or the first of May; Calan-gaeaf, the Calends of Winter, or Allhallows; and Y Calan, or The Calends par excellence, that is to say, the first day of January, which last is probably not Celtic but Roman. The other two most certainly are, and it is one of their peculiarities that all uncanny spirits and bogies are at liberty the night preceding each of them. The Hwch đu gwta is at large on Allhallows’ Eve, and the Scottish Gaels have the name ‘Samhanach’ for any Allhallows’ demon, formed from the word Samhain, Allhallows. The eve of the first of May may be supposed to have been the same, as may be gathered from the story of Rhiannon’s baby and of Teyrnon’s colt, both of which were stolen by undescribed demons that night—I allude to the Mabinogi of Pwyỻ, Prince of Dyfed.

At Nefyn, in Ỻeyn14, I had some stories about the Tylwyth Teg from Lowri Hughes, the widow of John [227]Hughes, who lives in a cottage at Pen Isa’r Dref, and is over seventy-four years of age. An aunt of hers, who knew a great many tales, had died about six years before my visit, at the advanced age of ninety-six. She used to relate to Lowri how the Tylwyth were in the habit of visiting Singrug, a house now in ruins on the land of Pen Isa’r Dref, and how they had a habit of borrowing a padeỻ and gradeỻ for baking: they paid for the loan of them by giving their owners a loaf. Her grandmother, who died not long ago at a very advanced age, remembered a time when she was milking in a corner of the land of Carn Bodüan, and how a little dog came to her and received a blow from her that sent it rolling away. Presently, she added, the dog reappeared with a lame man playing on a fiddle; but she gave them no milk. If she had done so, there was no knowing, she said, how much money she might have got. But, as it was, such singing and dancing were indulged in by the Tylwyth around the lame fiddler that she ran away as fast as her feet could carry her. Lowri’s husband had also seen the Tylwyth at the break of day, near Madrun Mill, where they seem to have been holding a sort of conversazione; but presently one of them observed that he had heard the voice of the hen’s husband, and off they went instantly then. The fairies were in the habit also of dancing and singing on the headland across which lie the old earthworks called Dinỻaen. When they had played and enjoyed themselves enough, they used to lift a certain bit of sod and descend to their own land. My informant had also heard the midwife story, and she was aware that the fairies changed people’s children; in fact, she mentioned to me a farm house not far off where there was a daughter of this origin then, not to mention that she knew all about Elis Bach. Another woman whom I [228]met near Porth Dinỻaen said, that the Dinỻaen fairies were only seen when the weather was a little misty.

At Nefyn, Mr. John Williams (Alaw Ỻeyn) got from his mother the tale of the midwife. It stated that the latter lost the sight of her right eye at Nefyn Fair, owing to the fairy she there recognized, pricking her eye with a green rush. During my visit to Aberdaron, my wife and I went to the top of Mynyđ Anelog, and on the way up we passed a cottage, where a very illiterate woman told us that the Tylwyth Teg formerly frequented the mountain when there was mist on it; that they changed people’s children if they were left alone on the ground; and that the way to get the right child back was to leave the fairy urchin without being touched or fed. She also said that, after baking, people left the gradeỻ for the fairies to do their baking: they would then leave a cake behind them as pay. As for the fairies just now, they have been exorcised (wedi’ffrymu) for some length of time. Mrs. Williams, of Pwỻ Defaid, told me that the rock opposite, called Clip y Gylfinir, on Bodwyđog mountain, a part of Mynyđ y Rhiw, was the resort of the Tylwyth Teg, and that they revelled there when it was covered with mist; she added that a neighbouring farm, called Bodermud Isa’, was well known at one time as a place where the fairies came to do their baking. But the most remarkable tale I had in the neighbourhood of Aberdaron was from Evan Williams, a smith who lives at Yr Arđ Las, on Rhos Hirwaen. If I remember rightly, he is a native of Ỻaniestin, and what he told me relates to a farmer’s wife who lived at the Nant, in that parish. Now this old lady was frequently visited by a fairy who used to borrow padeỻ a gradeỻ from her. These she used to get, and she returned them with a loaf borne on her head in acknowledgement. But one day she came to [229]ask for the loan of her troeỻ bach, or wheel for spinning flax. When handing her this, the farmer’s wife wished to know her name, as she came so often, but she refused to tell her. However, she was watched at her spinning, and overheard singing to the whir of the wheel:—

This explains to some extent the sìli ffrit sung by a Corwrion fairy when she came out of the lake to spin: see p. 64 above. At first I had in vain tried to make out the meaning of that bit of legend; but since then I have also found the Ỻaniestin rhyme a little varied at Ỻanberis: it was picked up there, I do not exactly know how, by my little girls this summer. The words as they have them run thus:—

Here, instead of Sìli go Dwt or Sìli ffrit, the name is Trwtyn-Tratyn, and these doggerels at once remind one of the tale of Rumpelstiltzchen; but it is clear that we have as yet only the merest fragments of the whole, though I have been thus far unable to get any more. So one cannot quite say how far it resembled the tale of Rumpelstiltzchen: there is certainly one difference, which is at once patent, namely, that while the German Rumpelstiltzchen was a male fairy, our Welsh Sìli ffrit or Sìli go Dwt is of the other sex. Probably, in the Ỻaniestin tale, the borrowing for baking had nothing to do with the spinning, for all fairies in Ỻeyn borrow a padeỻ and a gradeỻ, while they do not usually appear to spin. Then may we suppose that the spinning was in this instance done for the farmer’s wife on conditions which she was able to evade by discovering the fairy [230]helper’s name? At any rate one expects a story representing the farmer’s wife laid under obligation by the fairy, and not the reverse. I shall have an opportunity of returning to this kind of tale in chapter x.

The smith told me another short tale, about a farmer who lived not long ago at Deunant, close to Aberdaron. The latter used, as is the wont of country people, to go out a few steps in front of his house every night to —— before going to bed; but once on a time, while he was standing there, a stranger stood by him and spoke to him, saying that he had no idea how he and his family were annoyed by him. The farmer asked how that could be, to which the stranger replied that his house was just below where they stood, and if he would only stand on his foot he would see that what he said was true. The farmer complying, put his foot on the other’s foot, and then he could clearly see that all the slops from his house went down the chimney of the other’s house, which stood far below in a street he had never seen before. The fairy then advised him to have his door in the other side of his house, and that if he did so his cattle would never suffer from the clwy’ byr15. The result was that the farmer obeyed, and had his door walled up and another made in the other side of the house: ever after he was a most prosperous man, and nobody was so successful as he in rearing stock in all that part of the country. To place the whole thing beyond the possibility of doubt, Evan Williams assured me that he had often seen the farmer’s house with the front door in the back. I mention this strange story in order to compare it, in the matter of standing on the fairy’s foot, with that of standing with one’s foot just inside a fairy ring. Compare also standing on a particular [231]sod in Dyfed in order to behold the delectable realm of Rhys Đwfn’s Children: see p. 158 above.

Soon afterwards I went to the neighbourhood of Aber Soch and Ỻanengan, where I was lucky enough to find Professor Owen of St. David’s College, Lampeter, since appointed Bishop of St. David’s, on a visit to his native place. He took me round to those of the inhabitants who were thought most likely to have tales to tell; but I found nothing about the fairies except the usual story of their borrowing padeỻ a gradeỻ, and of their changing children. However, one version I heard of the process of recovering the stolen child differs from all others known to me: it was given us by Margaret Edwards, of Pentre Bach, whose age was then eighty-seven. It was to the effect that the mother, who had been given a fairy infant, was to place it on the floor, and that all those present in the house should throw a piece of iron at it. This she thought was done with the view of convincing the Tylwyth Teg of the intention to kill the changeling, and in order to induce them to bring the right child back. The plan was, we are told, always successful, and it illustrates, to my thinking, the supposed efficacy of iron against the fairies.

On the way to Aber Soch I passed by an old-fashioned house which has all the appearance of having once been a place of considerable importance; and on being told that its name is Casteỻmarch, I began thinking of March ab Meirchion mentioned in the Triads. He, I had long been convinced, ought to be the Welsh reflex of Labhraidh Lorc, or the Irish king with horse’s ears; and the corresponding Greek character of Midas with ass’s ears is so well known that I need not dwell on it. So I [232]undertook to question various people in the neighbourhood about the meaning of the name of Casteỻmarch. Most of them analysed it into Casteỻ y March, the ‘Castle of the Steed,’ and explained that the knight of the shire or some other respectable obscurity kept his horses there. This treatment of the word is not very decidedly countenanced by the pronunciation, which makes the name into one word strongly accented on the middle syllable. It was further related to me how Casteỻmarch was once upon a time inhabited by a very wicked and cruel man, one of whose servants, after being very unkindly treated by him, ran away and went on board a man-of-war. Some time afterwards the man-of-war happened to be in Cardigan Bay, and the runaway servant persuaded the captain of the vessel to come and anchor in the Tudwal Roads. Furthermore he induced him to shell his old master’s mansion; and the story is regarded as proved by the old bullets now and then found at Casteỻmarch. It has since been suggested to me that the bullets are evidence of an attack on the place during the Civil War, which is not improbable. But having got so far as to find that there was a wicked, cruel man associated with Casteỻmarch, I thought I should at once hear the item of tradition which I was fishing for; but not so: it was not to be wormed out in a hurry. However, after tiring a very old blacksmith, whose memory was far gone, with my questions, and after he had in his turn tired me with answers of the kind I have already described, I ventured to put it to him at last whether he had never heard some very silly tale about the lord of Casteỻmarch, to the effect that he was not quite like other men. He at once admitted that he had heard it said that he had horse’s ears, but that he would never have thought of repeating such nonsense to me. This is not a bad instance of the [233]difficulty which one has in eliciting this sort of tradition from the people. It is true that, as far as regards Casteỻmarch, nothing, as it happens, would have been lost if I had failed at Aber Soch, for I got the same information later at Sarn Fyỻteyrn; not to mention that after coming back to my books, and once more turning over the leaves of the Brython, I was delighted to find the tale there. It occurs at p. 431 of the volume for 1860. It is given with several other interesting bits of antiquity, and at the end the editor has put ‘Edward Ỻwyd, 1693’; so I suppose the whole comes from letters emanating from the great Lhwyd, for so, or rather Lhuyd, he preferred to write his name. It is to the following effect:—

One of Arthur’s warriors, whose name was March (or Parch) Amheirchion16, was lord of Casteỻmarch in Ỻeyn. This man had horse’s ears (resembling Midas), and lest anybody should know it, he used to kill every [234]man he sought to shave his beard, for fear lest he should not be able to keep the secret; and on the spot where he was wont to bury the bodies there grew reeds, one of which somebody cut to make a pipe. The pipe would give no other sound than ‘March Amheirchion has horse’s ears.’ When the warrior heard this, he would probably have killed the innocent man on that account, if he had not himself failed to make the pipe produce any other sound. But after hearing where the reed had grown, he made no further effort to conceal either the murders or his ears. This story of Edward Ỻwyd’s clearly goes back to a time when some kind of a pipe was the favourite musical instrument in North Wales, and not the harp.

Some time ago I was favoured with a short but interesting tale by Mr. Evan Lloyd Jones, of Dinorwig, near Ỻanberis. Mr. Lloyd Jones, I may here mention, published not long ago, in Ỻais y Wlad (Bangor, North Wales), and in the Drych (Utica, United States of North America), a series of articles entitled Ỻen y Werin yn Sir Gaernarfon, or the Folklore of Carnarvonshire. I happened to see it at a friend’s house, and I found at once that the writer was passionately fond of antiquities, and in the habit of making use of the frequent opportunities he has in the Dinorwig quarries for gathering information as to what used to be believed by the people of Arfon and Anglesey. The tale about to be given relates to a lake called Marchlyn Mawr, or the Great Horse-lake, for there are two lakes called Marchlyn: they lie near one another, between the Fronỻwyd, in the parish of Ỻandegai, and the Elidyr, in the parishes of [235]Ỻanđeiniolen and Ỻanberis. Mr. Lloyd Jones shall tell his tale in his own words:—

Amgylchynir y Marchlyn Mawr gan greigiau erchyỻ yr olwg arnynt; a dywed trađodiad đarfod i un o feibion y Rhiwen17 unwaith tra yn cynorthwyo dafad oeđ wedi syrthio i’r creigiau i đod ođiyno, đarganfod ogof anferth: aeth i fewn iđi a gwelođ ei bod yn ỻawn o drysorau ac arfau gwerthfawr; ond gan ei bod yn dechreu tywyỻu, a dringo i fynu yn orchwyl anhawđ hyd yn nod yn ngoleu’r dyđ, aeth adref y noswaith honno, a boreu drannoeth ar lasiad y dyđ cychwynnođ eilwaith i’r ogof, ac heb lawer o drafferth daeth o hyd iđi: aeth i fewn, a dechreuođ edrych o’i amgylch ar y trysorau oeđ yno:—Ar ganol yr ogof yr oeđ bwrđ enfawr o aur pur, ac ar y bwrđ goron o aur a pherlau: deaỻođ yn y fan mai coron a thrysorau Arthur oeđynt—nesaođ at y bwrđ, a phan oeđ yn estyn ei law i gymeryd gafael yn y goron dychrynwyd ef gan drwst erchyỻ, trwst megys mil o daranau yn ymrwygo uwch ei ben ac aeth yr hoỻ le can dywyỻed a’r afagđu. Ceisiođ ymbalfalu ođiyno gynted ag y gaỻai; pan lwyđođ i gyrraeđ i ganol y creigiau taflođ ei olwg ar y ỻyn, yr hwn oeđ wedi ei gynhyrfu drwyđo a’i donnau brigwynion yn cael eu ỻuchio trwy đaneđ ysgythrog y creigiau hyd y man yr oeđ efe yn sefyỻ arno; ond tra yr oeđ yn parhau i syỻu ar ganol y ỻyn gwelai gwrwgl a thair o’r benywod prydferthaf y disgynođ ỻygad unrhyw đyn arnynt erioed ynđo yn cael ei rwyfo yn brysur tuag at enau yr ogof. Ond och! yr oeđ golwg ofnadwy yr hwn oeđ yn rhwyfo yn đigon i beri iasau o fraw trwy y dyn cryfaf. Gaỻođ y ỻanc rywfođ đianc adref ond ni fu [236]iechyd yn ei gyfansođiad ar ol hynny, a byđai hyd yn nod crybwyỻ enw y Marchlyn yn ei glywedigaeth yn đigon i’w yrru yn waỻgof.

‘The Marchlyn Mawr is surrounded by rocks terrible to look at, and tradition relates how one of the sons of the farmer of Rhiwen, once on a time, when helping a sheep that had fallen among the rocks to get away, discovered a tremendous cave there; he entered, and saw that it was full of treasures and arms of great value; but, as it was beginning to grow dark, and as clambering back was a difficult matter even in the light of day, he went home that evening, and next morning with the grey dawn he set out again for the cave, when he found it without much trouble. He entered, and began to look about him at the treasures that were there. In the centre of the cave stood a huge table of pure gold, and on the table lay a crown of gold and pearls. He understood at once that they were the crown and treasures of Arthur. He approached the table, and as he stretched forth his hand to take hold of the crown he was frightened by an awful noise, the noise, as it were, of a thousand thunders bursting over his head, and the whole place became as dark as Tartarus. He tried to grope and feel his way out as fast as he could. When he had succeeded in reaching to the middle of the rocks, he cast his eye on the lake, which had been stirred all through, while its white-crested waves dashed through the jagged teeth of the rocks up to the spot on which he stood. But as he continued looking at the middle of the lake he beheld a coracle containing three women, the fairest that the eye of man ever fell on. They were being quickly rowed to the mouth of the cave; but the dread aspect of him who rowed was enough to send thrills of horror through the strongest of men. The youth was able somehow to escape home, [237]but no health remained in his constitution after that, and even the mere mention of the Marchlyn in his hearing used to be enough to make him insane.’

Mr. Lloyd Jones appends to the tale a note to the following effect:—There is a small eminence on the shore of the Marchlyn Mawr, in the parish of Ỻandegai, called Bryn Cwrwgl, or the ‘Hill of the Coracle’; and Ogof y Marchlyn, or the ‘Marchlyn Cave,’ is a name familiar enough to everybody in these neighbourhoods. There were some—unless he ought to say that there still are some—who believed that there was abundance of treasure in the cave. Several young men from the quarries, both of the Cae and of Dinorwig, have been in the midst of the Marchlyn rocks, searching for the cave, and they succeeded in making their way into a cave. They came away, however, without the treasures. One old man, Robert Edwards (Iorwerth Sardis), used to tell him that he and several others had brought ropes from the quarry to go into the cave, but that they found no treasure. So far, I have given the substance of Mr. Jones’ words, to which I would add the following statement, which I have from a native of Dinorwig:—About seventy years ago, when the gentry were robbing the poor of these districts of their houses and of the lands which the latter had enclosed out of the commons, an old woman called Siân William of the Garneđ was obliged to flee from her house with her baby—the latter was known later in life as the Rev. Robert Ellis, of Ysgoldy—in her arms. It was in one of the Marchlyn caves that she found refuge for a day and night. Another kind of tale connected with the Marchlyn Mawr is recorded in the Powys-land Club’s Collections, Hist. and Arch., vol. xv. p. 137, by the Rev. Elias Owen, to the effect that ‘a man who was fishing in the lake found himself enveloped in the clouds that had descended [238]from the hills to the water. A sudden gust of wind cleared a road through the mist that hung over the lake, and revealed to his sight a man busily engaged in thatching a stack. The man, or rather the fairy, stood on a ladder. The stack and ladder rested on the surface of the lake.’

Mr. E. S. Roberts, of Ỻandysilio School, near Ỻangoỻen (p. 138), has sent me more bits of legends about the fairies. He heard the following from Mr. Thomas Parry, of Tan y Coed Farm, who had heard it from his father, the late Evan Parry, and the latter from Thomas Morris, of Eglwyseg, who related it to him more than once:—Thomas Morris happened to be returning home from Ỻangoỻen very late on one Saturday night in the middle of the summer, and by the time he reached near home the day had dawned, when he saw a number of the Tylwyth Teg with a dog walking about hither and thither on the declivity of the Eglwyseg Rocks, which hung threateningly overhead. When he had looked at them for some minutes, he directed his steps towards them; but as they saw him approaching they hid themselves, as he thought, behind a large stone. On reaching the spot, he found under the stone a hole by which they had made their way into their subterranean home. So ends the tale as related to Mr. Roberts. It is remarkable as representing the fairies looking rather like poachers; but there are not wanting others which speak of their possessing horses and greyhounds, as all gentlemen were supposed to.

One of Mr. Roberts’ tales is in point: he had it from Mr. Hugh Francis18, of Holyhead House, Ruthin, [239]and the latter heard it from Robert Roberts, of Amlwch, who has now been dead about thirty years:—About 105 years ago there lived in the parish of Ỻandyfrydog, near Ỻannerch y Međ, in Anglesey, a man named Ifan Gruffyđ, whose cow happened to disappear one day. Ifan Gruffyđ was greatly distressed, and he and his daughter walked up and down the whole neighbourhood in search of her. As they were coming back in the evening from their unsuccessful quest, they crossed the field called after the Dyfrydog thief, Cae Ỻeidr Dyfrydog, where they saw a great number of little men on ponies quickly galloping in a ring. They both drew nigh to look on; but Ifan Gruffyđ’s daughter, in her eagerness to behold the little knights more closely, got unawares within the circle in which their ponies galloped, and did not return to her father. The latter now forgot all about the loss of the cow, and spent some hours in searching for his daughter; but at last he had to go home without her, in the deepest sadness. A few days afterwards he went to Mynađwyn to consult John Roberts, who was a magician of no mean reputation. That ‘wise man’ told Ifan Gruffyđ to be no longer sad, since he could get his daughter back at the very hour of the night of the anniversary of the time when he lost her. He would, in fact, then see her riding round in the company of the Tylwyth Teg whom he had seen on that memorable night. The father was to go there accompanied by four stalwart men, who were to aid him in the rescue of his daughter. He was to tie a strong rope round his waist, and by means of this his friends were to pull him out of the circle when he entered to seize his daughter. He went to the spot, [240]and in due time he beheld his daughter riding round in great state. In he rushed and snatched her, and, thanks to his friends, he got her out of the fairy ring before the little men had time to think of it. The first thing Ifan’s daughter asked him was, if he had found the cow, for she had not the slightest reckoning of the time she had spent with the fairies.

Whilst I am about it, I may as well go through Mr. Roberts’ contributions. The next is also a tale related to him by Mr. Hugh Francis, and, like the last, it comes from Anglesey. Mr. Francis’ great-grandfather was called Robert Francis, and he had a mill at Aberffraw about 100 years ago; and the substance of the following tale was often repeated in the hearing of Mr. Roberts’ informant by his father and his grandfather:—In winter Robert Francis used to remain very late at work drying corn in his kiln. As it was needful to keep a steady fire going, he used to go backwards and forwards from the house, looking after it not unfrequently until it was two o’clock in the morning. Once on a time he happened to leave a cauldron full of water on the floor of the kiln, and great was his astonishment on returning to find two little people washing themselves in the water. He abstained from entering to disturb them, and went back to the house to tell his wife of it. ‘Oh,’ said she, ‘they are fairies.’ He presently went back to the kiln and found that they were gone. He fancied they were man and wife. However, they had left the place very clean, and to crown all, he found a sum of money left by them to pay him, as he supposed, for the water and the use of the kiln. The ensuing night many more fairies came to the kiln, for the visitors of the previous night had brought their children with them; and the miller found them busy bathing them and looking very comfortable in the warm room where they were. The pay that night [241]was also more considerable than the night before, as the visitors were more numerous. After this the miller never failed to leave a vessel full of water in the kiln every night, and the fairies availed themselves of it for years, until, in fact, they took offence at the miller telling the neighbours of the presents of money which had been left him in the kiln. Thenceforth no fairies were known to frequent the kiln belonging to the Aberffraw mill.

The last tale communicated to me by Mr. Roberts is the following, which he elicited from Margaret Davies, his housekeeper, by reading to her some of the fairy legends published in the Cymmrodor a short while ago—probably the Corwrion series, one of which bears great resemblance to hers. Mrs. Davies, who is sixty-one years of age, says that when her parents, Edward and Ann Williams, lived at Rhoslydan, near Bryneglwys, in Yale, some seventy-five years ago, the servant man happened one day in the spring to be ploughing in a field near the house. As he was turning his team back at one end of the field, he heard some one calling out from the other end, Y mae eisieu hoelen yn y pìl, or ‘The peel wants a nail’; for pìl is the English peel, a name given to a sort of shovel provided with a long handle for placing loaves in an oven, and for getting them out again. When at length the ploughman had reached the end of the field whence he guessed the call to have proceeded, he there saw a small peel, together with a hammer and a nail, under the hedge. He saw that the peel required a nail to keep it together, and as everything necessary for mending it were there ready to hand, he did as it had been suggested. Then he followed at the plough-tail until he came round again to the same place, and there he this time saw a cake placed for him on the spot where he had previously [242]found the peel and the other things, which had now disappeared. When the servant related this to his master, he told him at once that it was one of the Tylwyth Teg of that locality that had called out to him. With this should be compared the story of the man who mended a fairy’s plough vice: see p. 64 above.

Early this year I had occasion to visit the well-known Hengwrt Library at Peniarth, and during my stay there Mr. Wynne very kindly took me to see such of the Ỻanegryn people as were most likely to have somewhat to say about the fairies. Many of the inhabitants had heard of them, but they had no long tales about them. One man, however, told me of a William Pritchard, of Pentre Bach, near Ỻwyngwryl, who died at sixty, over eighty years ago, and of a Rhys Williams, the clerk of Ỻangelynin, how they were going home late at night from a cock-fight at Ỻanegryn, and how they came across the fairies singing and dancing on a plot of ground known as Gwastad Meirionyđ, ‘the Plain of Merioneth,’ on the way from Ỻwyngwryl to Ỻanegryn. It consists, I am told by Mr. Robert Roberts of Ỻanegryn, of no more than some twenty square yards, outside which one has a good view of Cardigan Bay and the heights of Merioneth and Carnarvonshire, while from the Gwastad itself neither sea nor mountain is visible. On this spot, then, the belated cockfighters were surrounded by the fairies. They swore at the fairies and took to their heels, but they were pursued as far as Clawđ Du. Also I was told that Elen Egryn, the authoress, some sixty years ago, of some poetry called Telyn Egryn, had also seen fairies in her youth, when she used to go up the hills to look [243]after her father’s sheep. This happened near a little brook, from which she could see the sea when the sun was in the act of sinking in it; then many fairies would come out dancing and singing, and also crossing and re-crossing the little brook. It was on the side of Rhiwfelen, and she thought the little folks came out of the brook somewhere. She had been scolded for talking about the fairies, but she firmly believed in them to the end of her life. This was told me by Mr. W. Williams, the tailor, who is about sixty years of age; and also by Mr. Rowlands, the ex-bailiff of Peniarth, who is about seventy-five. I was moreover much interested to discover at Ỻanegryn a scrap of kelpie story, which runs as follows, concerning Ỻyn Gwernen, situated close to the old road between Dolgeỻey and Ỻanegryn:—

As a man from the village of Ỻanegryn was returning in the dusk of the evening across the mountain from Dolgeỻey, he heard, when hard by Ỻyn Gwernen, a voice crying out from the water:—

As the villager went on his way a little distance, what should meet him but a man of insane appearance, and with nothing on but his shirt. As he saw the man making full pelt for the waters of the lake, he rushed at him to prevent him from proceeding any further. But as to the sequel there is some doubt: one version makes the villager conduct the man back about a mile from the lake to a farm house called Dyffrydan, which was on the former’s way home. Others seem to think that the man in his shirt rushed irresistibly into the lake, and this I have no doubt comes nearer the end of the story in its original form. Lately I have heard a part of a similar story about Ỻyn Cynnwch, which has already been mentioned, p. 135, above. My informant [244]is Miss Lucy Griffith, of Glynmalden, near Dolgeỻey, a lady deeply interested in Welsh folklore and Welsh antiquities generally. She obtained her information from a Dolgeỻey ostler, formerly engaged at the Ship Hotel, to the effect that on Gwyl Galan, ‘the eve of New Year’s Day,’ a person is seen walking backwards and forwards on the strand of Cynnwch Lake, crying out:—

The ostler stated also that lights are to be seen on Cader Idris on the eve of New Year’s Day, whatever that statement may mean. The two lake stories seem to suggest that the Lake Spirit was entitled to a victim once a year, whether the sacrifice was regarded as the result of accident or design. By way of comparison, one may mention the notion, not yet extinct, that certain rivers in various parts of the kingdom regularly claim so many victims: for some instances at random see an article by Mr. J. M. Mackinlay, on Traces of River Worship in Scottish Folklore, a paper published in the Proceedings of the Society of Antiquaries of Scotland, 1895–6, pp. 69–76. Take for example the following rhyme:—

Or this:—

In the neighbourhood of Ystrad Meurig, between the Teifi and the Ystwyth basins, almost everybody can [245]relate tales about the fairies, but not much that is out of the ordinary run of such stories elsewhere. Among others, Isaac Davies, the smith living at Ystrad Meurig, had heard a great deal about fairies, and he said that there were rings belonging to them in certain fields at Tan y Graig and at Ỻanafan. Where the rings were, there the fairies danced until the ground became red and bare of grass. The fairies were, according to him, all women, and they dressed like foreigners, in short cotton dresses reaching only to the knee-joint. This description is somewhat peculiar, as the idea prevalent in the country around is, that the fairy ladies had very long trains, and that they were very elegantly dressed; so that it is a common saying there, that girls who dress in a better or more showy fashion than ordinary look like Tylwyth Teg, and the smith confessed he had often heard that said. Similarly Howells, pp. 113, 121–2, finds the dresses of the fairies dancing on the Freni, in the north-east of Pembrokeshire, represented as indescribably elegant and varying in colour; and those who, in the month of May, used to frequent the prehistoric encampment of Moeđin19 or Moyđin—from which a whole cantred takes its name in Central Cardiganshire—as fond of appearing in green; while blue petticoats are said, he says, to have prevailed in the fairy dances in North Wales20.

Another showed me a spot on the other side of the Teifi, where the Tylwyth Teg had a favourite spot for [246]dancing; and at the neighbouring village of Swyđ Ffynnon, another meadow was pointed out as their resort on the farm of Dôl Bydyë. According to one account I had there, the fairies dressed themselves in very long clothes, and when they danced they took hold of one another’s enormous trains. Besides the usual tales concerning men enticed into the ring and retained in Faery for a year and a day, and concerning the fairies’ dread of pren cerdingen or mountain ash, I had the midwife tale in two or three forms, differing more or less from the versions current in North Wales. For the most complete of them I am indebted to one of the young men studying at the Grammar School, Mr. D. Ỻedrodian Davies. It used to be related by an old woman who died some thirty years ago at the advanced age of about 100. She was Pàli, mother of old Rachel Evans, who died seven or eight years ago, when she was about eighty. The latter was a curious character, who sometimes sang masweđ, or rhymes of doubtful propriety, and used to take the children of the village to see fairy rings. She also used to see the Tylwyth, and had many tales to tell of them. But her mother, Pàli, had actually been called to attend at the confinement of one of them. The beginning of the tale is not very explicit; but, anyhow, Pàli one evening found herself face to face with the fairy lady she was to attend upon. She appeared to be the wife of one of the princes of the country. She was held in great esteem, and lived in a very grand palace. Everything there had been arranged in the most beautiful and charming fashion. The wife was in her bed with nothing about her but white, and she fared sumptuously. In due time, when the baby had been born, the midwife had all the care connected with dressing it and serving its mother. Pàli could see or hear nobody in the whole place but [247]the mother and the baby. She had no idea who attended on them, or who prepared all the things they required, for it was all done noiselessly and secretly. The mother was a charming person, of an excellent temper and easy to manage. Morning and evening, as she finished washing the baby, Pàli had a certain ointment given her to rub the baby with. She was charged not to touch it but with her hand, and especially not to put any near her eyes. This was carried out for some time, but one day, as she was dressing the baby, her eyes happened to itch, and she rubbed them with her hand. Then at once she saw a great many wonders she had not before perceived; and the whole place assumed a new aspect to her. She said nothing, and in the course of the day she saw a great deal more. Among other things, she observed small men and small women going in and out, following a variety of occupations. But their movements were as light as the morning breeze. To move about was no trouble to them, and they brought things into the room with the greatest quickness. They prepared dainty food for the confined lady with the utmost order and skill, and the air of kindness and affection with which they served her was truly remarkable. In the evening, as she was dressing the baby, the midwife said to the lady, ‘You have had a great many visitors to-day.’ To this she replied, ‘How do you know that? Have you been putting the ointment to your eyes?’ Thereupon she jumped out of bed, and blew into her eyes, saying, ‘Now you will see no more.’ She never afterwards could see the fairies, however much she tried, nor was the ointment entrusted to her after that day. According, however, to another version which I heard, she was told, on being found out, not to apply the ointment to her eyes any more. She promised she would not; but [248]the narrator thought she broke that promise, as she continued to see the fairies as long as she lived.

Mr. D. Ỻ. Davies has also a version like the North Wales ones. He obtained it from a woman of seventy-eight at Bronnant, near Aberystwyth, who had heard it from one of her ancestors. According to her, the midwife went to the fair called Ffair Rhos, which was held between Ystrad Meurig and Pont Rhyd Fendigaid21. There she saw a great many of the Tylwyth very busily engaged, and among others the lady she had been attending upon. That being so, she walked up to her and saluted her. The fairy lady angrily asked how she saw her, and spat in her face, which had the result of putting an end for ever to her power of seeing her or anybody of her race.

The same aged woman at Bronnant has communicated to Mr. D. Ỻ. Davies another tale which differs from all those of the same kind that I happen to know of. On a certain day in spring the farmer living at —— (Mr. Davies does not remember the name of the farm) lost his calves; and the servant man and the servant girl went out to look for them, but as they were both crossing a marshy flat, the man suddenly missed the girl. He looked for her, and as he could not see her he concluded that she was playing a trick on him. [249]However, after much shouting and searching about the place, he began to think that she must have found her way home, so he turned back and asked if the girl had come in, when he found to his surprise that nobody had seen her come back. The news of her being lost caused great excitement in the country around, since many suspected that he had for some reason put an end to her life: some accounted for it in this way, and some in another. But as nothing could be found out about her, the servant man was taken into custody on the charge of having murdered her. He protested with all his heart, and no evidence could be produced that he had killed the girl. Now, as some had an idea that she had gone to the fairies, it was resolved to send to ‘the wise man’ (Y dyn hysbys). This was done, and he found out that the missing girl was with the fairies: the trial was delayed, and he gave the servant man directions of the usual kind as to how to get her out. She was watched at the end of the period of twelve months and a day coming round in the dance in the fairy ring at the place where she was lost, and she was successfully drawn out of the ring; but the servant man had to be there in the same clothes as he had on when she left him. As soon as she was released and saw the servant she asked about the calves. On the way home she told her master, the servant man, and the others, that she would stay with them until her master should strike her with iron, but they went their way home in great joy at having found her. One day, however, when her master was about to start from home, and whilst he was getting the horse and cart ready, he asked the girl to assist him, which she did willingly; but as he was bridling the horse, the bit touched the girl and she disappeared instantly, and was never seen from that day forth.

I cannot explain this story, unless we regard it as [250]made up of pieces of two different stories which had originally nothing to do with one another; consistency, however, is not to be expected in such matters. Mr. D. Ỻ. Davies has kindly given me two more tales like the first part of the one I have last summarized, also one in which the missing person, a little boy sent by his mother to fetch some barm for her, comes home of himself after being away a year or more playing with the Tylwyth Teg, whom he found to be very nice, pleasant people; they had been exceedingly kind to him, and they even allowed him to take the bottle with the barm home at the last. This was somewhere between Swyđ Ffynnon and Carmarthen.

Mr. D. Ỻ. Davies finds, what I have not found anywhere else, that it was a common idea among the old people in Cardiganshire, that once you came across one of the fairies you could not easily be rid of him; since the fairies were little beings of a very devoted nature. Once a man had become friendly with one of them, the latter would be present with him almost everywhere he went, until it became a burden to him. However, popular belief did not adopt this item of faith without another to neutralize it if necessary: so if one was determined to get rid of the fairy companion, one had in the last resort only to throw a piece of rusty iron at him to be quit of him for ever. Nothing was a greater insult to the fairies. But though they were not difficult to make friends of, they never forgave those who offended them: forgiveness was not an element in their nature. The general account my informant gives of the outward appearance of the fairies as he finds them in the popular belief, is that they were a small handsome race, and that their women dressed gorgeously in white, while the men were content with garments of a dark grey colour, usually including knee-breeches. As [251]might be expected, the descriptions differ very much in different neighbourhoods, and even in different tales from the same neighbourhood: this will surprise no one. It was in the night they came out, generally near water, to sing and dance, and also to steal whatever took their fancy; for thieving was always natural to them; but no one ever complained of it, as it was supposed to bring good luck.

Mr. Richard L. Davies, teacher of the Board School at Ystalyfera, in the Tawë Valley, has been kind enough to write out for me a budget of ideas about the Cwm Tawë Fairies, as retailed to him by a native who took great delight in the traditions of his neighbourhood, John Davies (Shôn o’r Bont), who was a storekeeper at Ystalyfera. He died an old man about three years ago. I give his stories as transmitted to me by Mr. Davies, but the reader will find them a little hazy now and then, as when the fairies are made into ordinary conjurer’s devils:—

Rhywbeth rhyfeđ yw yr hen Gasteỻ yna (gan olygu Craig Ynys Geinon): yr wyf yn cofio yr amser pan y byđai yn đychryn gan bobl fyned yn agos ato—yn enwedig y nos: yr oeđ yn dra pheryglus rhag i đyn gael ei gymeryd at Bendith eu Mamau. Fe đywedir fod wmređ o’r rheiny yna, er na wn i pa le y maent yn cadw. ’R oeđ yr hen bobl yn arferol o đweyd fod pwỻ yn rhywle bron canol y Casteỻ, tua ỻathen o led, ac yn bump neu chwech ỻath o đyfnder, a charreg tua thair tynneỻ o bwysau ar ei wyneb e’, a bod fforđ dan y đaear ganđynt o’r pwỻ hynny bob cam i ogof Tan yr Ogof, bron blaen y Cwm (yn agos i balas Adelina Patti, sef Casteỻ Craig y Nos), mai yno y maent yn treulio eu [252]hamser yn y dyđ, ac yn dyfod lawr yma i chwareu eu pranciau yn y nos.

Mae ganđynt, međe nhw, ysgol aur, o un neu đwy ar hugain o ffyn; ar hyd honno y maent yn tramwy i fyny ac i lawr. Mae ganđynt air bach, a dim ond i’r blaenaf ar yr ysgol đywedyd y gair hynny, mae y garreg yn codi o honi ei hunan; a gair araỻ, ond i’r olaf wrth fyned i lawr ei đywedyd, mae yn cauad ar eu hol.

Dywedir i was un o’r ffermyđ cyfagos wrth chwilio am wningod yn y graig, đygwyđ dyweyd y gair pan ar bwys y garreg, iđi agor, ac iđo yntau fyned i lawr yr ysgol, ond am na wyđai y gair i gauad ar ei ol, fe adnabu y Tylwyth wrth y draught yn diffođ y canwyỻau fod rhywbeth o le, daethant am ei draws, cymerasant ef atynt, a bu gyda hwynt yn byw ac yn bod am saith mlyneđ; ymhen y saith mlyneđ fe điangođ a ỻon’d ei het o guineas ganđo.

Yr oeđ efe erbyn hyn wedi dysgu y đau air, ac yn gwybod ỻawer am eu cwtches nhw. Fe đywedođ hwn y cwbl wrth ffarmwr o’r gymdogaeth, fe aeth hwnnw drachefn i lawr, ac yr oeđ rhai yn dyweyd iđo đyfod a thri ỻon’d cawnen halen o guineas, hanner guineas, a darnau saith-a-chwech, ođiyno yr un diwrnod. Ond fe aeth yn rhy drachwantus, ac fel ỻawer un trachwantus o’i flaen, bu ei bechod yn angeu iđo.

Canys fe aeth i lawr y bedwaređ waith yngwyỻ y nos, ond fe đaeth y Tylwyth am ei ben, ac ni welwyd byth o hono. Dywedir fod ei bedwar cwarter e’ yn hongian mewn ystafeỻ o dan y Casteỻ, ond pwy fu yno i’w gwel’d nhw, wn i đim.

Mae yn wir ei wala i’r ffarmwr crybwyỻedig fyned ar goỻ, ac na chlybuwyd byth am dano, ac mor wir a hynny i’w dylwyth đyfod yn abl iawn, bron ar unwaith yr amser hynny. A chi wyđoch gystal a finnau, eu bod nhw yn dywedyd fod ffyrđ tanđaearol ganđynt i ogofau [253]Ystrad Feỻte, yn agos i Benderyn. A dyna y Garn Goch ar y Drum (Onỻwyn yn awr) maent yn dweyd fod canoeđ o dyneỻi o aur yn stôr ganđynt yno; a chi glywsoch am y stori am un o’r Gethings yn myned yno i glođio yn y Garn, ac iđo gael ei drawsffurfio gan y Tylwyth i olwyn o dân, ac iđo fethu cael ỻonyđ ganđynt, hyd nes iđo eu danfon i wneyd rhaff o sand!

Fe fu gynt hen fenyw yn byw mewn ty bychan gerỻaw i Ynys Geinon, ac yr oeđ hi yn gaỻu rheibo, međe nhw, ac yr oeđ sôn ei bod yn treulio saith diwrnod, saith awr, a saith mynyd gyda y Tylwyth Teg bob blwyđyn yn Ogof y Casteỻ. Yr oeđ y gred yn ỻed gyffredinol ei bod hi yn cael hyn a hyn o aur am bob plentyn a aỻai hi ladrata iđynt hwy, a dodi un o’i hen grithod hwy yn ei le: ’doeđ hwnnw byth yn cynyđu. Y fforđ y byđai hi yn gwneyd oeđ myned i’r tŷ dan yr esgus o ofyn cardod, a hen glogyn ỻwyd-đu mawr ar ei chefn, ac o dan hwn, un o blant Bendith y Mamau; a bob amser os byđai plentyn bach gwraig y tŷ yn y caweỻ, hi gymerai y swyđ o siglo y caweỻ, a dim ond i’r fam droi ei chefn am fynyd neu đwy, hi daflai y ỻedrith i’r caweỻ, ai ymaith a’r plentyn yn gyntaf byth y gaỻai hi. Fe fu plentyn gan đyn o’r gym’dogaeth yn lingran am flynyđau heb gynyđu dim, a barn pawb oeđ mai wedi cael ei newid gan yr hen wraig yr oeđ; fe aeth tad y plentyn i fygwth y gwr hysbys arni: fe đaeth yr hen wraig yno am saith niwrnod i esgus bađo y bachgen bach mewn dwfr oer, a’r seithfed bore cyn ei bod yn oleu, hi a gas genad i fyned ag ef dan rhyw bistyỻ, međe hi, ond međai’r cym’dogion, myned ag ef i newid a wnaeth. Ond, beth bynag, fe weỻođ y plentyn fel cyw yr wyđ o hynny i maes. Ond gorfu i fam e’ wneyd cystal a ỻw wrth yr hen wraig, y gwnai ei dwco mewn dwfr oer bob bore dros gwarter blwyđyn, ac yn mhen y chwarter hynny ’doeđ dim brafach plentyn yn y Cwm. [254]

‘That is a wonderful thing, that old castle there, he would say, pointing to the Ynys Geinon Rock. I remember a time when people would be terrified to go near it, especially at night. There was considerable danger that one might be taken to Bendith eu Mamau. It is said that there are a great many of them there, though I know not where they abide. The old folks used to say that there was a pit somewhere about the middle of the Castle, about a yard wide and some five or six yards deep, with a stone about three tons in weight over the mouth of it, and that they had a passage underground from that pit all the way to the cave of Tan yr Ogof, near the top of the Cwm, that is, near Adelina Patti’s residence at Craig y Nos Castle: there, it was said, they spent their time during the day, while they came down here to play their tricks at night. They have, they say, a gold ladder of one or two and twenty rungs, and it is along that they pass up and down. They have a little word; and it suffices if the foremost on the ladder merely utters that word, for the stone to rise of itself; while there is another word, which it suffices the hindmost in going down to utter so that the stone shuts behind him. It is said that a servant from one of the neighbouring farms, when looking for rabbits in the rock, happened to say the word as he stood near the stone, that it opened for him, and that he went down the ladder; but that because he was ignorant of the word to make it shut behind him, the fairies discovered by the draught putting out their candles that there was something wrong. So they found him out and took him with them. He remained living with them for seven years, but at the end of the seven years he escaped with his hat full of guineas. He had by this time learnt the two words, and got to know a good deal about the hiding places of their treasures. He told everything to [255]a farmer in the neighbourhood, so the latter likewise went down, and some used to say that he brought thence thrice the fill of a salt-chest of guineas, half-guineas, and seven-and-sixpenny pieces in one day. But he got too greedy, and like many a greedy one before him his crime proved his death; for he went down the fourth time in the dusk of the evening, when the fairies came upon him, and he was never seen any more. It is said that his four quarters hang in a room under the Castle; but who has been there to see them I know not. It is true enough that the above-mentioned farmer got lost, and that nothing was heard respecting him; and it is equally true that his family became very well to do almost at once at that time. You know as well as I do that they say, that the fairies have underground passages to the caves of Ystradfeỻte, near Penderyn. There is the Garn Goch also on the Drum (now called Onỻwyn); they say there are hundreds of tons of gold accumulated by them there, and you have heard the story about one of the Gethings going thither to dig in the Garn, and how he [sic] was transformed by the fairies into a wheel of fire, and that he could get no quiet from them until he sent them to manufacture a rope of sand!’—A more intelligible version of this story has been given at pp. 19–20 above.

‘There was formerly an old woman living in a small house near Ynys Geinon; and she had the power of bewitching, people used to say: there was a rumour that she spent seven days, seven hours, and seven minutes with the fairies every year in the cave at the Castle. It was a pretty general belief that she got such and such a quantity of gold for every child she could steal for them, and that she put one of those old urchins of theirs in its place: the latter never grew at all. The way she used to do it was to enter people’s houses [256]with the excuse of asking for alms, having a large dark-grey old cloak on her back, and the cloak concealed one of the children of Bendith eu Mamau. Whenever she found the little child of the good woman of the house in its cradle, she would take upon herself to rock the cradle, so that if the mother only turned her back for a minute or two, she would throw the sham child into the cradle and hurry away as fast as she could with the baby. A man in the neighbourhood had a child lingering for years without growing at all, and it was the opinion of all that it had been changed by the old woman. The father at length threatened to call in the aid of “the wise man,” when the old woman came there for seven days, pretending that it was in order to bathe the little boy in cold water; and on the seventh day she got permission to take him, before it was light, under a certain spout of water: so she said, but the neighbours said it was to change him. However that was, the boy from that time forth got on as fast as a gosling. But the mother had all but to take an oath to the old woman, that she would duck him in cold water every morning for three months, and by the end of that time there was no finer infant in the Cwm.’

Mr. Davies has given me some account also of the annual pilgrimage to the Fan mountains to see the Lake Lady: these are his words on the subject—they recall pp. 15–16 above:—

‘It has been the yearly custom (for generations, as far as I can find) for young as well as many people further advanced in years to make a general excursion in carts, gambos, and all kinds of vehicles, to Ỻyn y Fan, in order to see the water nymph (who appeared on one day only, viz. the first Sunday in August). This nymph was said to have the lower part of her body resembling that of a dolphin, while the upper part was that of a [257]beautiful lady: this anomalous form appeared on the first Sunday in August (if the lake should be without a ripple) and combed her tresses on the reflecting surface of the lake. The yearly peregrination to the abode of the Fan deity is still kept up in this valley—Cwmtawë; but not to the extent that it used to formerly.’

Mr. Craigfryn Hughes has sent me another tale about the fairies: it has to do with the parish of Ỻanfabon, near the eastern border of Glamorganshire. Many traditions cluster round the church of Ỻanfabon, beginning with its supposed building by Saint Mabon, but which of the Mabons of Welsh legend he was, is not very certain. Not very far is a place called Pant y Dawns, or the Dance Hollow, in allusion to the visits paid to the spot by Bendith y Mamau, as the fairies are there called. In the same neighbourhood stand also the ruins of Casteỻ y Nos, or the Castle of the Night22, which tradition represents as uninhabitable because it had been built of stones from Ỻanfabon Church, and on account of the ghosts that used to haunt it. However, one small portion of it was usually tenanted formerly by a ‘wise man’ or by a witch. In fact, the whole country round Ỻanfabon Church teemed with fairies, ghosts, and all kinds of uncanny creatures:—

Mewn amaethdy ag syđ yn aros yn y plwyf a elwir y Berth Gron, trigiannai gweđw ieuanc a’i phlentyn [258]bychan. Yr oeđ wedi coỻi ei gwr, a’i hunig gysur yn ei hamđifadrwyđ a’i hunigrwyđ oeđ Gruff, ei mab. Yr oeđ ef yr amser hwn ođeutu tair blwyđ oed, ac yn blentyn braf ar ei oedran. Yr oeđ y plwyf, ar y pryd, yn orlawn o ‘Fendith y Mamau’; ac, ar amser ỻawn ỻoer, byđent yn cadw dynion yn effro a’u cerđoriaeth hyd doriad gwawr. Rhai hynod ar gyfrif eu hagrwch oeđ ‘Bendith’ Ỻanfabon, ac yr un mor hynod ar gyfrif eu castiau. Ỻadrata plant o’r caweỻau yn absenoldeb eu mamau, a denu dynion trwy eu swyno a cherđoriaeth i ryw gors afiach a diffaith, a ymđangosai yn gryn đifyrrwch iđynt. Nid rhyfeđ fod y mamau beunyđ ar eu gwyliadwriaeth rhag ofn coỻi eu plant. Yr oeđ y weđw o dan sylw yn hynod ofalus am ei mab, gymaint nes tynnu rhai o’r cymydogion i đywedyd wrthi ei bod yn rhy orofalus, ac y byđai i ryw anlwc orđiwes ei mab. Ond ni thalai unrhyw sylw i’w dywediadau. Ymđangosai fod ei hoỻ hyfrydwch a’i chysur ynghyd a’i gobeithion yn cydgyfarfod yn ei mab. Mođ bynnag, un diwrnod, clywođ ryw lais cwynfannus yn codi o gymydogaeth y beudy; a rhag bod rhywbeth wedi digwyđ i un o’r gwartheg rhedođ yn orwyỻt tuag yno, gan adael y drws heb ei gau, a’i mab bychan yn y ty. Ond pwy a fedr đesgrifio ei gofid ar ei gwaith yn dyfod i’r ty wrth weled eisiau ei mab? Chwiliođ bob man am dano, ond yn aflwyđiannus. Ođeutu machlud haul, wele lencyn bychan yn gwneuthur ei ymđangosiad o’i blaen, ac yn dywedyd, yn groyw, ‘Mam!’ Edrychođ y fam yn fanwl arno, a dywedođ o’r diweđ, ‘Nid fy mhlentyn i wyt ti!’ ‘Ië, yn sicr,’ atebai y bychan.

Nid ymđangosai y fam yn fođlon, na’i bod yn credu mai ei phlentyn hi ydoeđ. Yr oeđ rhywbeth yn sisial yn barhaus wrthi mai nid ei mab hi ydoeđ. Ond beth bynnag, bu gyda hi am flwyđyn gyfan, ac nid ymđangosai ei fod yn cynyđu dim, tra yr oeđ Gruff, ei mab hi, yn [259]blentyn cynyđfawr iawn. Yr oeđ gwr bychan yn myned yn fwy hagr bob dyđ hefyd. O’r diweđ penderfynođ fyned at y ‘dyn hysbys,’ er cael rhyw wybodaeth a goleuni ar y mater. Yr oeđ yn digwyđ bod ar y pryd yn trigfannu yn Nghasteỻ y Nos, wr ag oeđ yn hynod ar gyfrif ei ymwybyđiaeth drwyadl o ‘gyfrinion y faỻ.’ Ar ol iđi osod ei hachos ger ei fron, ac yntau ei holi, sylwođ, ‘Crimbil ydyw, ac y mae dy blentyn di gyd a’r hen Fendith yn rhywle; ond i ti đilyn fy nghyfarwyđiadau i yn ffyđlon a manwl, fe adferir dy blentyn i ti yn fuan. Yn awr, ođeutu canol dyđ y foru, tor ŵy yn y canol, a thafl un hanner ymaith ođiwrthyt, a chadw y ỻaỻ yn dy law, a dechreu gymysg ei gynwysiad yn ol a blaen. Cofia fod y gwr bychan gerỻaw yn gwneuthur sylw o’r hyn ag a fyđi yn ei wneuthur. Ond cofia di a pheidio galw ei sylw—rhaid enniỻ ei sylw at y weithred heb ei alw: ac odid fawr na ofynna i ti beth fyđi yn ei wneuthur. A dywed wrtho mai cymysg pastai’r fedel yr wyt. A rho wybod i mi beth fyđ ei ateb.’

Dychwelođ y wraig, a thrannoeth dilynođ gyfarwyđyd y ‘dyn cynnil’ i’r ỻythyren. Yr oeđ y gwr bychan yn sefyỻ yn ei hymyl, ac yn sylwi arni yn fanwl. Ym mhen ychydig, gofynnođ, ‘Mam, beth ’i ch’i ’neuthur?’ ‘Cymysg pastai’r fedel, machgen i.’ ‘O feỻy. Mi glywais gan fy nhad, fe glywođ hwnnw gan ei dad, a hwnnw gan ei dad yntau, fod mesen cyn derwen, a derwen mewn dâr23; ond ni chlywais i na gweled neb yn un man yn cymysg pastai’r fedel mewn masgal ŵy iar.’ Sylwođ y wraig ei fod yn edrych yn hynod o sarug arni pan yn siarad, ac yr oeđ hynny yn ychwanegu at ei hagrwch, nes ei wneuthur yn wrthun i’r pen.

Y prydnawn hwnnw aeth y wraig at y ‘dyn cynnil’ [260]er ei hysbysu o’r hyn a lefarwyd gan y còr. ‘O,’ ebai hwnnw, ‘un o’r hen frid ydyw!’ ‘Yn awr, byđ y ỻawn ỻoer nesaf ym mhen pedwar diwrnod; mae yn rhaid i ti fyned i ben y pedair heol syđ yn cydgyfarfod wrth ben Rhyd y Gloch; am đeuđeg o’r gloch y nos y byđ y ỻeuad yn ỻawn. Cofia guđio dy hun mewn man ag y cei lawn olwg ar bennau y croesffyrđ, ac os gweli rywbeth a bair i ti gynhyrfu, cofia fod yn ỻonyđ, ac ymatal rhag rhođi ffrwyn i’th deimladau, neu fe đistrywir y cynỻun, ac ni chei dy fab yn ol byth.’

Nis gwyđai y fam anffodus beth oeđ i’w đeaỻ wrth ystori ryfeđ y ‘dyn cynnil.’ Yr oeđ mewn cymaint o dywyỻwch ag erioed. O’r diweđ daeth yr amser i ben; ac ar yr awr apwyntiedig yr oeđ yn ymguđio yn ofalus tu cefn i lwyn mawr yn ymyl, o ba le y caffai olwg ar bob peth o gylch. Bu am hir amser yno yn gwylio heb đim i’w glywed na’i weled—dim ond distawrwyđ dwfn a phruđglwyfus yr hanner nos yn teyrnasu. O’r diweđ clywai sain cerđoriaeth yn dynesu ati o hirbeỻ. Nês, nês yr oeđ y sain felusber yn dyfod o hyd; a gwrandawai hithai gyda dyđordeb arni. Cyn hir yr oeđ yn ei hymyl, a deaỻođ mai gorymdaith o ‘Fendith y Mamau’ oeđynt yn myned i rywle. Yr oeđynt yn gannoeđ mewn rhif. Tua chanol yr orymdaith canfyđođ olygfa ag a drywanođ ei chalon, ac a berođ i’w gwaed sefyỻ yn ei rhedwelïau. Yn cerđed rhwng pedwar o’r ‘Bendith’ yr oeđ ei phlentyn bychan anwyl ei hun. Bu bron a ỻwyr anghofio ei hun, a ỻamu tuag ato er ei gipio ymaith ođiarnynt trwy drais os gaỻai. Ond pan ar neidio aỻan o’i hymguđfan i’r diben hwnnw međyliođ am gynghor y ‘dyn cynnil,’ sef y byđai i unrhyw gynhyrfiad o’i heiđo đistrywio y cwbl, ac na byđai iđi gael ei phlentyn yn ol byth.

Ar ol i’r orymdaith đirwyn i’r pen, ac i sain eu cerđoriaeth đistewi yn y peỻder, daeth aỻan o’i hymguđfan, [261]gan gyfeirio ei chamrau tua ’i chartref. Os oeđ yn hiraethol o’r blaen ar ol ei mab, yr oeđ yn ỻawer mwy erbyn hyn; a’i hadgasrwyđ at y còr bychan oeđ yn hawlio ei fod yn fab iđi wedi cynyđu yn fawr iawn, waith yr oeđ yn sicr yn awr yn ei međwl mai un o’r hen frid ydoeđ. Nis gwyđai pa fođ i’w ođef am fynud yn hwy yn yr un ty a hi, chwaithach gođef iđo alw ‘mam’ arni hi. Ond beth bynnag, cafođ đigon o ras ataliol i ymđwyn yn weđaiđ at y gwr bychan hagr oeđ gyda hi yn y tŷ. Drannoeth aeth ar ei hunion at y ‘dyn cynnil’ i adrođ yr hyn yr oeđ wedi bod yn ỻygad dyst o hono y noson gynt, ac i ofyn am gyfarwyđyd peỻach. Yr oedd y ‘gwr cynnil’ yn ei disgwyl, ac ar ei gwaith yn dyfod i’r ty adnabyđođ wrthi ei bod wedi gweled rhywbeth oeđ wedi ei chyffroi. Adrođođ wrtho yr hyn ag oeđ wedi ei ganfod ar ben y croesffyrđ; ac wedi iđo glywed hynny, agorođ lyfr mawr ag oeđ ganđo, ac wedi hir syỻu arno hysbysođ hi ‘fod yn angenrheidiol iđi cyn cael ei phlentyn yn ol gael iâr đu heb un plufyn gwyn nac o un ỻiw araỻ arni, a’i ỻađ; ac ar ol ei ỻadd, ei gosod o flaen tan coed, pluf a chwbl, er ei phobi. Mor gynted ag y buasai yn ei gosod o flaen y tan, iđi gau pob twỻ a mynedfa yn yr adeilad ond un, a pheidio a dal sylw manwl ar ol y ‘crimbil,’ hyd nes byđai y iâr yn đigon, a’r pluf i syrthio ymaith oddiarni bob un, ac yna i edrych ym mha le yr oeđ ef.

Er mor rhyfeđ oeđ cyfarwyđyd y ‘gwr,’ penderfynođ ei gynnyg; a thrannoeth aeth i chwilio ym mhlith y ieir oeđ yno am un o’r desgrifiad angenrheidiol; ond er ei siomedigaeth methođ a chael yr un. Aeth o’r naiỻ ffermdy i’r ỻaỻ i chwilio, ond ymđangosai ffawd fel yn gwgu arni—waith methođ a chael yr un. Pan ym mron digaloni gan ei haflwyđiant daeth ar draws un mewn amaethdy yng nghwr y plwyf a phrynođ hi yn đioedi. Ar ol dychwelyd adref gosodođ y tan mewn trefn, a [262]ỻađođ yr iâr, gan ei gosod o flaen y tan disglaer a losgai ar yr alch. Pan yn edrych arni yn pobi, anghofiođ y ‘crimbil’ yn hoỻol, ac yr oeđ wedi syrthio i rywfath o bruđlewyg, pryd y synnwyd hi gan sain cerđoriaeth y tu aỻan i’r ty, yn debyg i’r hyn a glywođ ychydig nosweithiau cyn hynny ar ben y croesffyrđ. Yr oeđ y pluf erbyn hyn wedi syrthio ymaith ođiar y iâr, ac erbyn edrych yr oeđ y ‘crimbil’ wedi diflannu. Edrychai y fam yn wyỻt o’i deutu, ac er ei ỻawenyđ clywai lais ei mab coỻedig yn galw arni y tu aỻan. Rhedođ i’w gyfarfod, gan ei gofleidio yn wresog; a phan ofynođ ym mha le yr oeđ wedi bod cyhyd, nid oeđ ganđo gyfrif yn y byd i’w rođi ond mai yn gwrando ar ganu hyfryd yr oeđ wedi bod. Yr oeđ yn deneu a threuliedig iawn ei weđ pan adferwyd ef. Dyna ystori ‘Y Plentyn Coỻedig.’

‘At a farm house still remaining in the parish of Ỻanfabon, which is called the Berth Gron, there lived once upon a time a young widow and her infant child. After losing her husband her only comfort in her bereavement and solitary state was young Griff, her son. He was about three years old and a fine child for his age. The parish was then crammed full of Bendith y Mamau, and when the moon was bright and full they were wont to keep people awake with their music till the break of day. The fairies of Ỻanfabon were remarkable on account of their ugliness, and they were equally remarkable on account of the tricks they played. Stealing children from their cradles during the absence of their mothers, and luring men by means of their music into some pestilential and desolate bog, were things that seemed to afford them considerable amusement. It was no wonder then that mothers used to be daily on the watch lest they should lose their children. The widow alluded to was remarkably careful about her son, so much so, that it made some of the neighbours say that she was [263]too anxious about him and that some misfortune would overtake her child. But she paid no attention to their words, as all her joy, her comfort, and her hopes appeared to meet together in her child. However, one day she heard a moaning voice ascending from near the cow-house, and lest anything had happened to the cattle, she ran there in a fright, leaving the door of the house open and her little son in the cradle. Who can describe her grief on her coming in and seeing that her son was missing? She searched everywhere for him, but it was in vain. About sunset, behold a little lad made his appearance before her and said to her quite distinctly, “Mother.” She looked minutely at him, and said at last, “Thou art not my child.” “I am truly,” said the little one. But the mother did not seem satisfied about it, nor did she believe it was her child. Something whispered to her constantly, as it were, that it was not her son. However, he remained with her a whole year, but he did not seem to grow at all, whereas Griff, her son, was a very growing child. Besides, the little fellow was getting uglier every day. At last she resolved to go to the “wise man,” in order to have information and light on the matter. There happened then to be living at Casteỻ y Nos, “Castle of the Night,” a man who was remarkable for his thorough acquaintance with the secrets of the evil one. When she had laid her business before him and he had examined her, he addressed the following remark to her: “It is a crimbil24, and thy own child is with those old Bendith somewhere or other: if thou wilt follow my directions faithfully and minutely thy child will be restored to thee soon. Now, about noon to-morrow cut an egg through the middle; throw the one half away from thee, but keep the other in thy hand, and proceed to mix it backwards and forwards. [264]See that the little fellow be present paying attention to what thou art doing, but take care not to call his attention to it—his attention must be drawn to it without calling to him—and very probably he will ask what thou wouldst be doing. Thou art to say that it is mixing a pasty for the reapers that thou art. Let me know what he will then say.” The woman returned, and on the next day she followed the cunning man’s25 advice to the letter: the little fellow stood by her and watched her minutely; presently he asked, “Mother, what are you doing?” “Mixing a pasty for the reapers, my boy.” “Oh, that is it. I heard from my father—he had heard it from his father and that one from his father—that an acorn was before the oak, and that the oak was in the earth; but I have neither heard nor seen anybody [265]mixing the pasty for the reapers in an egg-shell.” The woman observed that he looked very cross as he spoke, and that it so added to his ugliness that it made him highly repulsive.

‘That afternoon the woman went to the cunning man in order to inform him of what the dwarf had said. “Oh,” said he, “he is of that old breed; now the next full moon will be in four days—thou must go where the four roads meet above Rhyd y Gloch26, at twelve o’clock the night the moon is full. Take care to hide thyself at a spot where thou canst see the ends of the cross-roads; and shouldst thou see anything that would excite thee take care to be still and to restrain thyself from giving way to thy feelings, otherwise the scheme will be frustrated and thou wilt never have thy son back.” The unfortunate mother knew not what to make of the strange story of the cunning man; she was in the dark as much as ever. At last the time came, and by the appointed hour she had concealed herself carefully behind a large bush close by, whence she could see everything around. She remained there a long time watching; but nothing was to be seen or heard, while the profound and melancholy silence of midnight dominated over all. At last she began to hear the sound of music approaching from afar; nearer and nearer the sweet sound continued to come, and she listened to it with rapt attention. Ere long it was close at hand, and she perceived that it was a procession of Bendith y [266]Mamau going somewhere or other. They were hundreds in point of number, and about the middle of the procession she beheld a sight that pierced her heart and made the blood stop in her veins—walking between four of the Bendith she saw her own dear little child. She nearly forgot herself altogether, and was on the point of springing into the midst of them violently to snatch him from them if she could; but when she was on the point of leaping out of her hiding place for that purpose, she thought of the warning of the cunning man, that any disturbance on her part would frustrate all, so that she would never get her child back. When the procession had wound itself past, and the sound of the music had died away in the distance, she issued from her concealment and directed her steps homewards. Full of longing as she was for her son before, she was much more so now; and her disgust at the little dwarf who claimed to be her son had very considerably grown, for she was now certain in her mind that he was one of the old breed. She knew not how to endure him for a moment longer under the same roof with her, much less his addressing her as “mother.” However, she had enough restraining grace to behave becomingly towards the ugly little fellow that was with her in the house. On the morrow she went without delay to the “wise man” to relate what she had witnessed the previous night, and to seek further advice. The cunning man expected her, and as she entered he perceived by her looks that she had seen something that had disturbed her. She told him what she had beheld at the cross-roads, and when he had heard it he opened a big book which he had; then, after he had long pored over it, he told her, that before she could get her child back, it was necessary for her to find a black hen without a single white feather, or one of any other [267]colour than black: this she was to place to bake before a wood27 fire with its feathers and all intact. Moreover, as soon as she placed it before the fire, she was to close every hole and passage in the walls except one, and not to look very intently after the crimbil until the hen was done enough and the feathers had fallen off it every one: then she might look where he was.

‘Strange as the advice of the wise man sounded, she resolved to try it; so she went the next day to search among the hens for one of the requisite description; but to her disappointment she failed to find one. She then walked from one farm house to another in her search; but fortune appeared to scowl at her, as she seemed to fail in her object. When, however, she was nearly disheartened, she came across the kind of hen she wanted at a farm at the end of the parish. She bought it, and after returning home she arranged the fire and killed the hen, which she placed in front of the bright fire burning on the hearth. Whilst watching the hen baking she altogether forgot the crimbil; and she fell into a sort of swoon, when she was astonished by the sound of music outside the house, similar to the music she had heard a few nights before at the cross-roads. The feathers had by this time fallen off the hen, and when she came to look for the crimbil he had disappeared. The mother cast wild looks about the house, and to her joy she heard the voice of her lost son calling to her from outside. She ran to meet him, and embraced him fervently. But when she asked him where he had been so long, he had no account in the world to give but that he had been listening to pleasant music. He was very thin and worn in appearance when he was restored. Such is the story of the Lost Child.’

Let me remark as to the urchin’s exclamation concerning [268]the cooking done in the egg-shell, that Mr. Hughes, as the result of further inquiry, has given me what he considers a more correct version; but it is no less inconsequent, as will be seen:—

In Dewi Glan Ffrydlas’ story from the Ogwen Valley, in Carnarvonshire, p. 62 above, it is not the cooking of a pasty but the brewing of beer in an egg-shell. However what is most remarkable is that the egg-shell is similarly used in stories from other lands. Mr. Hartland cites one from Mecklenburg and another from Scandinavia. He also mentions stories in which the imp measures his own age by the number of forests which he has seen growing successively on the same soil, the formula being of the following kind: ‘I have seen the Forest of Ardennes burnt seven times,’ ‘Seven times have I seen the wood fall in Lessö Forest,’ or ‘I am so old, I was already in the world before the Kamschtschen Wood (in Lithuania) was planted, wherein great trees grew, and that is now laid waste again28.’ From these and the like instances it is clear that the Welsh versions here in question are partially blurred, as the fairy child’s words should have been to the effect that he was old enough to remember the oak when it was yet but an acorn; and an instance of this explicit kind is given by Howells—it comes from Ỻandrygarn in Anglesey—see p. 139, where his words run thus: ‘I can remember yon oak an acorn, but I never saw in my life people brewing in an egg-shell before.’ I may add [269]that I have been recently fortunate enough to obtain from Mr. Ỻywarch Reynolds another kind of estimate of the fairy urchin’s age. He writes that his mother remembers a very old Merthyr woman who used to tell the story of the egg-shell cookery, but in words differing from all the other versions known to him, thus:—

As to the urchin’s statement that he was old and had lived before, it is part of a creed of which we may have something to say in a later chapter. At this point let it suffice to call attention to the same idea in the Book of Taliessin, poem ix:—

Before closing this chapter, I wish to touch on the question of the language of the fairies, though fairy tales hardly ever raise it, as they usually assume the fairies to speak the same language as the mortals around them. There is, however, one well-known exception, namely, the story of Eliodorus, already mentioned, p. 117, as recorded by Giraldus Cambrensis, who relates how Eliodorus, preferring at the age of twelve to play the truant to undergoing a frequent beating by his teacher, fasted two days in hiding in the hollow of a river bank, and how he was then accosted by two little men who [270]induced him to follow them to a land of sports and other delights. There he remained long enough to be able, years later, to give his diocesan, the second Menevian bishop named David30, a comprehensive account of the people and realm of Faery. After Eliodorus had for some time visited and revisited that land of twilight, his mother desired him to bring her some of the gold of the fairies. So one day he tried to bring away the gold ball with which the fairy king’s son used to play; but he was not only unsuccessful, but subjected to indignities also, and prevented from evermore finding his way back to fairyland. So he had to go again to school and to the studies which he so detested; but in the course of time he learned enough to become a priest; and when, stricken in years, he used to be entreated by Bishop David to relate this part of his early history, he never could be got to unfold his tale without shedding tears. Among other things which he said of the fairies’ mode of living, he stated that they ate neither flesh nor fish, but lived for the most part on various kinds of milk food cooked after the fashion of stirabout, flavoured as it were with saffron31. But one of the most curious portions of Eliodorus’ yarn was that relating to the language of the fairies; for he pretended to have learnt it and to have found it to resemble his own Britannica Lingua, ‘Brythoneg, or Welsh.’ In the words instanced Giraldus perceived a similarity to Greek32, which he accounted [271]for by means of the fabulous origin of the Welsh from the Trojans and the supposed sojourn made in Greece by those erring Trojans on their way to Britain. Giraldus displays quite a pretty interest in comparative philology, and talks glibly of the Lingua Britannica; but one never feels certain that he knew very much more about it than the author of the Germania, the first to refer to it under that name. Tacitus, however, had the excuse that he lived at a distance and some eleven centuries before the advent of Gerald the Welshman.

Giraldus’ words prove, on close examination, to be of no help to us on the question of language; but on the other hand I have but recently begun looking out for stories bearing on it. It is my impression that such are not plentiful; but I proceed to subjoin an abstract of a phantom funeral tale in point from Ystên Sioned (Aberystwyth, 1882), pp. 8–16. Ystên Sioned, I ought to explain, consists of a number of stories collected and edited in Welsh by the Rev. Chancellor Silvan Evans, though he has not attached his name to it:—The harvest of 1816 was one of the wettest ever known in Wales, and a man and his wife who lived on a small farm in one of the largest parishes in the Hundred of Moeđin (see p. 245 above) in the Demetian part of Cardiganshire went out in the evening of a day which had been comparatively dry to make some reaped corn into sheaves, as it had long been down. It was a beautiful night, with the harvest moon shining brightly, and the field in which they worked had the parish road passing along one of its sides, without a hedge or a ditch to separate it from [272]the corn. When they had been busily at work binding sheaves for half an hour or more, they happened to hear the hum of voices, as if of a crowd of people coming along the road leading into the field. They stopped a moment, and looking in the direction whence the sounds came, they saw in the light of the moon a number of people coming into sight and advancing in their direction. They bent then again to their work without thinking much about what they had seen and heard; for they fancied it was some belated people making for the village, which was about a mile off. But the hum and confused sounds went on increasing, and when the two binders looked up again, they beheld a large crowd of people almost opposite and not far from them. As they continued looking on they beheld quite clearly a coffin on a bier carried on the shoulders of men, who were relieved by others in turns, as usual in funeral processions in the country. ‘Here is a funeral,’ said the binders to one another, forgetting for the moment that it was not usual for funerals to be seen at night. They continued looking on till the crowd was right opposite them, and some of them did not keep to the road, but walked over the corn alongside of the bulk of the procession. The two binders heard the talk and whispering, the noise and hum as if of so many real men and women passing by, but they did not understand a word that was said: not a syllable could they comprehend, not a face could they recognize. They kept looking at the procession till it went out of sight on the way leading towards the parish church. They saw no more of them, and now they began to feel uneasy and went home leaving the corn alone as it was; but further on the funeral was met by a tailor at a point in the road where it was narrow and bounded by a fence (clawđ) on either side. The procession filled the road [273]from hedge to hedge, and the tailor tried to force his way through it, but such was the pressure of the throng that he was obliged to get out of their way by crossing the hedge. He also failed to understand a word of the talk which he heard. In about three weeks after this sham funeral33, there came a real one down that way from the upper end of the parish.

Such, in brief, is the story so charmingly told by Silvan Evans, which he got from the mouths of the farmer and his wife, whom he considered highly honest and truthful persons, as well as comparatively free from superstition. The last time they talked to him about the incident they were very advanced in years, and both died within a few weeks of one another early in the year 1852. Their remains, he adds, lie in the churchyard towards which they had seen the toeli slowly making its way. For toeli is the phonetic spelling in Ystên Sioned of the word which is teulu in North Cardiganshire and in North Wales, for Old Welsh toulu. The word now means ‘family,’ though literally it should mean ‘house-army’ or ‘house-troops,’ and it is practically a synonym for tylwyth, ‘family or household,’ literally ‘house-tribe.’ Now the toeli or toulu is such an important institution in Demetian Cardiganshire and some parts of Dyfed proper, that the word has been confined to the phantom, and for the word family in its ordinary significations one has there to have recourse to the non-dialect form teulu34. In North Cardiganshire and North Wales the [274]toeli is called simply a clađedigaeth, ‘burial,’ or anglađ, ‘funeral’; in the latter also cynhebrwng is a funeral. I may add that when I was a child in the neighbourhood of Ponterwyd, on the upper course of the Rheidol, hardly a year used to pass without somebody or other meeting a phantom funeral. Sometimes one got entangled in the procession, and ran the risk of being carried off one’s feet by the throng. There is, however, one serious difference between our phantom funerals and the Demetian toeli, namely, that we recognize our neighbours’ ghosts as making up the processions, and we have no trouble in understanding their talk. At this point a question of some difficulty presents itself as to the toeli, namely, what family does it mean?—is it the family and friends of the departed on his way to the grave, or does it mean the family in the sense of Tylwyth Teg, ‘Fair Family,’ as applied to the fairies? I am inclined to the latter view, but I prefer thinking that the distinction itself does not penetrate very deeply, seeing that a certain species of the Tylwyth Teg, or fairies, may, in point of origin, be regarded as deceased friends and ancestors of the tylwyth, in the ordinary sense of the word. In fact all this kind of rehearsal of events seems to have been once looked at as friendly to the men and women whom it concerned. This will be seen, for instance, in the Demetian account of the [275]canwyỻ gorff, or corpse candle, as granted through the intercession of St. David to the people of his special care, as a means of warning each to get ready in time for his death; that is to say, to prevent death finding him unprepared. It is hard to guess why it was assumed that the canwyỻ gorff was unknown in other parts of Wales. One or two instances in point occur in Owen’s Welsh Folklore, pp. 298–301; and I have myself heard of them being seen in Anglesey, while they were quite well known to members of Mrs. Rhys’ mother’s family, who lived in the parish of Waen Fawr, in the neighbourhood of Carnarvon. Nor does it appear that phantom funerals were at all confined to South Wales. Proof to the contrary is supplied to some extent in Owen’s Folklore, p. 301; but there is no doubt that in recent times the belief in them, as well as in the canwyỻ gorff, has been more general and more vivid in South Wales than in North Wales, especially Gwyneđ.

I have not been fortunate enough to come across anything systematic or comprehensive on the origin and meaning of ghostly rehearsals like the Welsh phantom funeral or coffin making. But the subject is an interesting one which deserves the attention of our leading folklore philosophers, as does also the cognate one of second sight, by which it is widely overlapped.

Quite recently—at the end of 1899 in fact—I received three brief stories, for which I am indebted to the further kindness of Alaw Ỻeyn (p. 228), who lives at Bynhadlog near Edern in Ỻeyn, and two out of the three touch on the question of language. But as the three belong to one and the same district, I give the substance of all in English as follows:—

(1) There were at a small harbour belonging to Nefyn some houses in which several families formerly lived; the houses are there still, but nobody lives in them now. [276]There was one family there to which a little girl belonged: they used to lose her for hours every day; so her mother was very angry with her for being so much away. ‘I must know,’ said she, ‘where you go for your play.’ The girl answered that it was to Pin y Wig, ‘The Wig Point,’ which meant a place to the west of the Nefyn headland: it was there, she said, she played with many children. ‘Whose children?’ asked the mother. ‘I don’t know,’ she replied; ‘they are very nice children, much nicer than I am.’ ‘I must know whose children they are,’ was the reply; and one day the mother went with her little girl to see the children: it was a distance of about a quarter of a mile to Pin y Wig, and after climbing the slope and walking a little along the top they came in sight of the Pin. It is from this Pin that the people of Pen yr Aỻt got water, and it is from there they get it still. Now after coming near the Pin the little girl raised her hands with joy at the sight of the children. ‘O mother,’ said she, ‘their father is with them to-day: he is not with them always, it is only sometimes that he is.’ The mother asked the child where she saw them. ‘There they are, mother, running down to the Pin, with their father sitting down.’ ‘I see nobody, my child,’ was the reply, and great fear came upon the mother: she took hold of the child’s hand in terror, and it came to her mind at once that they were the Tylwyth Teg. Never afterwards was the little girl allowed to go to Pin y Wig: the mother had heard that the Tylwyth Teg exchanged people’s children.

Such is the first story, and it is only remarkable, perhaps, for its allusion to the father of the fairy children.

(2) There used to be at Edern an old woman who occupied a small farm called Glan y Gors: the same family lives there still. One day this old woman had gone to a fair at Criccieth, whence she returned through [277]Pwỻheli. As she was getting above Gors Geirch, which was then a turbary and a pretty considerable bog, a noise reached her ears: she stopped and heard the sound of much talking. By-and-by she beheld a great crowd of men and women coming to meet her. She became afraid and stepped across the fence to let them go by. There she remained a while listening to their chatter, and when she thought that they had gone far enough she returned to the road and began to resume her way home. But before she had gone many steps she heard the same sort of noise again, and saw again the same sort of crowd coming; so she recrossed the fence in great fear, saying to herself, ‘Here I shall be all night!’ She remained there till they also had gone, and she wondered what they could be, and whether they were people who had been to visit Plas Madrun—afterwards, on inquiry, she found that no such people had been there that day. Now the old woman was near enough to the passers-by to hear them talking (clebran) and chattering (bregliach), but not a word could she understand of what they uttered: it was not Welsh and she did not think that it was English—it is, however, not supposed that she knew English. She related further that the last crowd shouted all together to the other crowd in advance of them Wi, and that the latter replied Wi Wei or something like that.

This account Alaw Ỻeyn has got, he says, from a great-granddaughter of the old woman, and she heard it all from her father, Barđ Ỻechog, who always had faith in the fairies, and believed that they will come again to be seen of men and women. For he thought that they had their periods, a belief which I have come across elsewhere, and more especially in Carnarvonshire35. Now what are we to make of such a story? I recollect [278]reading somewhere of a phantom wedding in Scotland, but in Wales we seem to have nothing more closely resembling this than a phantom funeral. Nevertheless what the old woman of Glan y Gors thought she saw looks by no means unlike a Welsh wedding marching on foot, especially when, as I have seen done, one party tried—seemingly in good earnest—to escape the other and to take the bride away from it. Moreover, that the figures making up the two crowds in her story are to be regarded as fairies is rendered probable by the next story, which describes the phantoms therein expressly as little men and little women.

(3) The small farm of Perth y Celyn in Edern used to be held by an old man named Griffith Griffiths. In his best days he stood six foot, and he has left behind him a double reputation for bodily strength and great piety. My informant can well remember him walking to chapel with the aid of his two sticks. The story goes that one day, when he was in his prime, he set out from Perth y Celyn at two in the morning to walk to Carnarvon to pay his rent: there was no talk in those days of a carriage for anybody. After passing through Nefyn and Pistyỻ, he came in due time to Bwlch Trwyn Swncwl36: he writes this name also Bwlch Drws Wncwl, with the suggestion that it ought to be Bwlch Drws Encil, and that the place must have been of importance in the wars of the ancient Kymry. The high-road, he goes on to say, runs through the Bwlch, and as Griffith was entering this gap what should he hear but a great deal of talking. He stopped and [279]listened, when to his surprise he saw coming towards him, devoid of all fear, a crowd of little men and little women. They talked aloud, but he could not understand a single word they said: he thought that it was neither Welsh nor English. They passed by him on the road, but he moved aside to the ditch lest they should knock against him; but no feeling of fear came upon him. The old man believed them to have been the Tylwyth Teg.

In the story of the Moeđin funeral the language of the toeli was not intelligible to the farmer and his wife, or to the tailor, and here in two stories from Ỻeyn we have it clearly stated that it was neither Welsh nor, probably, English. Since the fairies are always represented as old-fashioned in their ways, it is quite possible that they were once regarded as talking a more ancient language of the country. Which was it? An early version of these legends might perhaps have supplied the answer, and told us that it was Gwyđelig or Goidelic, if not an earlier idiom, to wit that of the Aborigines before they learnt Goidelic from the Celts of the first wave of Aryan invasion, whether it was in the region of the Eifl or in the Demetian half of Keredigion. As to the former it is worthy of note that when Griffith had reached Bwlch Trwyn Swncwl he was in the outskirts of the Eifl Mountains, on one of whose heights, not very far off, is the extensive prehistoric fortress of Tre’r Ceiri, or the Town of the Keiri, a vocable which may be provisionally rendered by ‘giants.’ In any case it dissociates that stronghold from the Brythonic people of Wales. We shall find, however, that a Goidel, or Pict, buried in a cairn on Snowdon, is known as Rhita Gawr, ‘Rhita the Giant’; and it is possible that in the Keiri of Tre’r Ceiri we have no other race than that of mixed Goidels and Picts whom the encroaching Brythons [280]found in possession of the west of our island. Nay, one may say that this is rendered probable by the use made of the word ceiri in medieval Welsh: thus in some poetry composed by a certain Dafyđ Offeiriad, and copied by Thomas Williams of Trefriw, we have a line alluding to Britain in the words:—

Here Ynys y Ceûri inevitably recalls the fact that Britain is called Ynys y Kedyrn, or Island of the Mighty, in the Mabinogion, and also, in effect, in the story of Kulhwch and Olwen. But such stories as these, which enabled Geoffrey to say, i. 16, when he introduced his banal brood of Trojans, that up to that time Britain had only been inhabited by a few giants, are the legends, as will be pointed out later, of the Brythonicized Goidels of Wales. So one may infer that their ancestors had given this country the name of the Island of the Mighty, unless it should prove more accurate to suppose them to have somehow derived the term from the Aborigines.

This last surmise is countenanced by the fact that in the Kulhwch story, the British Isles as a group are called Islands of the Mighty. The words are Teir ynys y kedyrn ae their rac ynys; that is, the Three Islands of the Mighty and their Three outpost Islands. That is not all, for in the same story the designation is varied thus: Teir ynys prydein ae their rac ynys38, or [281]Prydain’s Three Islands and Prydain’s Three outpost Islands; and the substantial antiquity of the designation ‘the Islands of Prydain,’ is proved by its virtual identity with that used by ancient Greek authors like Ptolemy, who calls both Britain and Ireland a νῆσος Πρετανική, where Pretanic and Prydain are closely related words. Now our Prydain had in medieval Welsh the two forms Prydein and Prydyn. But some time or other there set in a tendency to desynonymize them, so as to make Ynys Prydein, ‘the Picts’ Island,’ mean Great Britain, and Prydyn mean the Pictland of the North. But just as Cymry meant the plural Welshmen and the singular Wales, so Prydyn meant Picts39 and the country of the Picts. Now the plural Prydyn has its etymological Goidelic equivalent in the vocable Cruithni, which is well known to have meant the Picts or the descendants of the Picti of Roman historians. Further, this last name cannot be severed from that of the Pictones40 in Gaul, and it is usually supposed to have referred to their habit of tattooing themselves. At all events this agrees with the apparent meaning of the names Prydyn and Cruithni, from pryd and cruth, the words in Welsh and Irish respectively for form or shape, the designation being supposed to refer to the forms or pictures of various animals punctured on the skins of the Picts. So much as to the practical identity of the terms Prydyn, Cruithni, and the Greeks’ Pretanic; but how could [282]Cedyrn and Prydein correspond in the terms Ynys y Kedyrn and Ynys Prydein? This one is enabled to understand by means of ceûri or ceiri as a middle term. Now cadarn means strong or valiant, and makes the plural cedyrn; but there is another Welsh word cadr41 which has also the meaning of valiant or powerful, and may have yielded some such a medieval form as ceidyr in the plural. Now this cadr is proved by its cognates42 not to have always had the meaning of valiant or strong: its original signification was more nearly ‘fine, beautiful, or beautified.’ Thus what seems to have happened is, that cadarn, ‘strong, powerful, mighty,’ influenced the meaning of cadr, ‘beautiful,’ and eventually usurped its place in the name of the island, which from being Ynys y Ceidyr became Ynys y Cedyrn. But the former meant the ‘Island of the fine or beautiful men,’ which was closely enough the meaning also of the words Prydain, Cruithni, and Picts, as names of a people who delighted to beautify their persons by tattooing their [283]skins and making themselves distingué in that savage fashion. That is not all, for on examination it turns out that the word ceiri, which has been treated up to this point as meaning giants, is but a double, so to say, of the word cadr in the plural, both as to etymology and original meaning of beautiful. It is a word in constant use in Carnarvonshire, where it is ironically applied to pretentious men fond of showing themselves off, especially in the matter of clothes. ’D ydi nhw ’n geiri! ‘Aren’t they swells!’ Dyna i ch’i gawr! ‘There’s a fine fellow for you!’ and so also with the feminine cawres. Of course the cawr of standard Welsh is familiar enough in the sense of giant to Carnarvonshire people, so the meaning can be best ascertained in the case of the plural ceiri, which they hardly ever meet with in print; and, so far as I have been able to ascertain, by ceiri they mean—in an ironical sense it is true—fine fellows, with reference not to great stature or strength but to their get-up. Thus one arrives at the true interpretation of the name Tre’r Ceiri as the Town of the Prydyn or Cruithni; that is to say, the Town of the Picts or the Aborigines, who showed themselves off decorated with pictures. So far also from Ynys y Ceiri being an echo of Ynys y Cedyrn, it turns out to be really the more original of the two. Such names, when they are closely examined, are apt to prove old beyond all hastily formed expectation. [284]