XII.
The other day, as I was going to Gwent, I chanced to be in the Golden Valley in Herefordshire, where the names in the churchyards seem largely to imply a Welsh population, though the Welsh language has not been heard there for ages. Among others I noticed Joneses and Williamses in abundance at Abbey Dore, Evanses and Bevans, Morgans, Prossers and Prices, not to mention Sayces—that is to say, Welshmen of English extraction or education—a name which may also be met with in Little England in Pembrokeshire, and probably on other English-Welsh borders. Happening to have to wait for a train at the Abbey Dore station, I got into conversation with the tenants of a cottage hard by, and introduced the subject of the fairies. The old man knew nothing about them, but his wife, Elizabeth Williams, had been a servant girl at a place called Pen Pôch, which she pronounced with the Welsh guttural ch: she said that it is near Ỻandeilo Cressenny in Monmouthshire. It was about forty years ago when she served at Pen Pôch, and her mistress’ name was Evans, who was then about fifty years of age. Now Mrs. Evans was in the habit of impressing on her servant girls’ minds, that, unless they made the house tidy before going to bed, and put everything in its place overnight, the little people—the fairies, she thinks she called them—would leave them no rest in bed at night, but would come and ‘pinch them like.’ If they put everything in its place, and left the house ‘tidy like,’ it would be all right, and ‘nobody would do anything to them like.’ That is all I could get from her without prompting her, which I did at length by suggesting to her that the fairies might leave the tidy servants presents, a shilling ‘on the hearth or the hob like.’ Yes, she thought there was something of that sort, and her way of answering me suggested that this was not the first time she had heard of the shilling. She had never been lucky enough to have had one herself, nor did she know of anybody else that ‘had got it like.’
During a brief but very pleasant sojourn at Ỻanover in May, 1883, I made some inquiries about the fairies, and obtained the following account from William Williams, who now, in his seventieth year, works in Lady Ỻanover’s garden:—‘I know of a family living a little way from here at ——, or as they would now call it in English ——, whose ancestors, four generations ago, used to be kind to Bendith y Mamau, and always welcomed their visits by leaving at night a basinful of bread and milk for them near the fire. It always used to be eaten up before the family got up in the morning. But one night a naughty servant man gave them instead of milk a bowlful of urine[40]. They, on finding it out, threw it about the house and went away disgusted. But the servant watched in the house the following night. They found him out, and told him that he had made fools of them, and that in punishment for his crime there would always be a fool, i.e. an idiot, in his family. As a matter of fact, there was one among his children afterwards, and there is one in the family now. They have always been in a bad way ever since, and they never prosper. The name of the man who originally offended the fairies was ——; and the name of the present fool among his descendants is ——.’ For evident reasons it is not desirable to publish the names.
Williams spoke also of a sister to his mother, who acted as servant to his parents. There were, he said, ten stepping stones between his father’s house and the well, and on every one of these stones his aunt used to find a penny every morning, until she made it known to others, when, of course, the pennies ceased coming. He did not know why the fairies gave money to her, unless it was because she was a most tidy servant.
Another Ỻanover gardener remembered that the fairies used to change children, and that a certain woman called Nani Fach in that neighbourhood was one of their offspring; and he had been told that there were fairy rings in certain fields not far away in Ỻanover parish.
A third gardener, who is sixty-eight years of age, and is likewise in Lady Ỻanover’s employ, had heard it said that servant girls about his home were wont to sweep the floor clean at night, and to throw crumbs of bread about on it before going to bed.
Lastly, Mrs. Gardner of Ty Uchaf Ỻanover, who is ninety years of age, remembers having a field close to Capel Newyđ near Blaen Afon, in Ỻanover Uchaf, pointed out to her as containing fairy rings; and she recollects hearing, when she was a child, that a man had got into one of them. He remained away from home, as they always did, she said, a whole year and a day; but she has forgotten how he was recovered. Then she went on to say that her father had often got up in the night to see that his horses were not taken out and ridden about the fields by Bendith y Mamau; for they were wont to ride people’s horses late at night round the four corners of the fields, and thereby they often broke the horses’ wind. This, she gave me to understand, was believed in the parish of Ỻanover and that part of the country generally. So here we have an instance probably of confounding fairies with witches.
I have not the means at my command of going at length into the folklore of Gwent, so I will merely mention where the reader may find a good deal about it. I have already introduced the name of the credulous old Christian, Edmund Jones of the Tranch: he published at Trefecca in the year 1779 a small volume entitled, A Geographical, Historical, and Religious Account of the Parish of Aberystruth in the County of Monmouth, to which are added Memoirs of several Persons of Note who lived in the said Parish. In 1813, by which time he seems to have left this world for another, where he expected to understand all about the fairies and their mysterious life, a small volume of his was published at Newport, bearing the title, A Relation of Apparitions of Spirits in the County of Monmouth and the Principality of Wales, with other notable Relations from England, together with Observations about them, and Instructions from them, designed to confute and to prevent the Infidelity of denying the Being and Apparition of Spirits, which tends to Irreligion and Atheism. By the late Rev. Edmund Jones, of the Tranch. Naturally those volumes have been laid under contribution by Mr. Sikes, though the tales about apparitions in them are frequently of a ghastly nature, and sometimes loathsome: on the whole, they remind me more than anything else I have ever read of certain Breton tales which breathe fire and brimstone: all such begin to be now out of fashion in Protestant countries. I shall at present only quote a passage of quite a different nature from the earlier volume, p. 72—it is an interesting one, and it runs thus:—‘It was the general opinion in times past, when these things were very frequent, that the fairies knew whatever was spoken in the air without the houses, not so much what was spoken in the houses. I suppose they chiefly knew what was spoken in the air at night. It was also said that they rather appeared to an uneven number of persons, to one, three, five, &c.; and oftener to men than to women. Thomas William Edmund, of Havodavel, an honest pious man, who often saw them, declared that they appeared with one bigger than the rest going before them in the company.’ With the notion that the fairies heard everything uttered out of doors may be compared the faculty attributed to the great magician king, Math ab Mathonwy, of hearing any whisper whatsoever that met the wind: see the Oxford Mabinogion, p. 60, and Guest’s Mabinogion, iii. 219; see also respectively pp. 94, 96, and pp. 308, 310, as to the same faculty belonging to the fairy people of the Corannians, and the strange precautions taken against them by the brothers Ỻûđ and Ỻevelys.
[1] These were held, so far as I can gather from the descriptions usually given of them, exactly as I have seen a kermess or kirchmesse celebrated at Heidelberg, or rather the village over the Neckar opposite that town. It was in 1869, but I forget what saint it was with whose name the kermess was supposed to be connected: the chief features of it were dancing and beer drinking. It was by no means unusual for a Welsh Gwyl Fabsant to bring together to a rural neighbourhood far more people than could readily be accommodated; and in Carnarvonshire a hurriedly improvised bed is to this day called gwely g’l’absant, as it were ‘a bed (for the time) of a saint’s festival.’ Rightly or wrongly the belief lingers that these merry gatherings were characterized by no little immorality, which made the better class of people set their faces against them. [↑]
[2] Since the editing of this volume was begun I have heard that it is intended to publish the Welsh collection which Mr. Jones has made: so I shall only give a translation of the Edward Ỻwyd version of the afanc story: see section v. of this chapter. [↑]
[3] This word is not in Welsh dictionaries, but it is Scotch and Manx Gaelic, and is possibly a remnant of the Goidelic once spoken in Gwyneđ. [↑]
[4] Our charlatans never leave off trying to make this into Tryfaen so as to extract maen, ‘stone,’ from it. They do not trouble themselves to find out whether it ever was Tryfaen or not: in fact they rather like altering everything as much as they can. [↑]
[5] Ystrádỻyn, with the accent on the penult, is commonly pronounced Stráỻyn, and means ‘the strand of the lake,’ and the hollow is named after it Cwm Stráỻyn, and the lake in it Ỻyn Cwm Stráỻyn, which literally means ‘the Lake of the Combe of the Strand of the Lake’—all seemingly for the luxury of forgetting the original name of the lake, which I have never been able to ascertain. [↑]
[6] So Mr. Jones puts it: I have never heard of any other part of the Principality where the children are usually baptized before they are eight days old. [↑]
[7] I cannot account for this spelling, but the ll in Bellis is English ll, not the Welsh ỻ, which represents a sound very different from that of l. [↑]
[8] Where not stated otherwise, as in this instance, the reader is to regard this chapter as written in the latter part of the year 1881. [↑]
[9] See Giraldus’ Itinerarium Kambriæ, i. 8 (pp. 75–8); some discussion of the whole story will be found in chapter iii of this volume. [↑]
[10] Dr. Moore explains this to be cabbages and potatoes, pounded and mixed with butter or lard. [↑]
[11] It would be interesting to know what has become of this letter and others of Ỻwyd’s once in the possession of the canon, for it is not to be supposed that the latter ever took the trouble to make an accurate copy of them any more than he did of any other MSS. [↑]
[12] There is also a Sarn yr Afanc, ‘the Afanc’s Stepping Stones,’ on the Ogwen river in Nant Ffrancon: see Pennant’s Tours in Wales, iii. 101. [↑]
[13] The oxen should accordingly have been called Ychain Pannog; but the explanation is not to be taken seriously. These oxen will come under the reader’s notice again, to wit in chapter x. [↑]
[14] The lines are copied exactly as given at p. 189 (I. vi. 25–30) of The Poetical Works of Lewis Glyn Cothi, edited for the Cymmrodorion by Gwaỻter Mechain and Tegid, and printed at Oxford in the year 1837. [↑]
[15] This, I should say, must be a mistake, as it contradicts all the folklore which makes the rowan an object of dread to the fairies. [↑]
[16] See Choice Notes from ‘Notes and Queries’ (London, 1859), p. 147. [↑]
[17] It is more likely that it is a shortening of Ỻyn y Barfog, meaning the Lake of the Bearded One, Lacus Barbati as it were, the Bearded One being somebody like the hairy monster of another lake mentioned at p. 18 above, or him of the white beard pictured at p. 127. [↑]
[18] So far from afanc meaning a crocodile, an afanc is represented in the story of Peredur as a creature that would cast at every comer a poisoned spear from behind a pillar standing at the mouth of the cave inhabited by it; see the Oxford Mabinogion, p. 224. The corresponding Irish word is abhac, which according to O’Reilly means ‘a dwarf, pigmy, manikin; a sprite.’ [↑]
[19] I should not like to vouch for the accuracy of Mr. Pughe’s rendering of this and the other Welsh names which he has introduced: that involves difficult questions. [↑]
[20] The writer meant the river known as Dyfi or Dovey; but he would seem to have had a water etymology on the brain. [↑]
[21] This involves the name of the river called Disynni, and Diswnwy embodies a popular etymology which is not worth discussing. [↑]
[22] It would, I think, be a little nearer the mark as follows:—
Come thou, Einion’s Yellow One,
Stray-horns, the Particoloured Lake Cow,
And the Hornless Dodin:
Arise, come home.
But one would like to know whether Dodin ought not rather to be written Dodyn, to rhyme with Ỻyn. [↑]
[23] Hywel’s real name is William Davies, Tal y Bont, Cardiganshire. As adjudicator I became acquainted with several stories which Mr. Davies has since given me permission to use, and I have to thank him for clues to several others. [↑]
[24] Or Ỻech y Deri, as Mr. Williams tells me in a letter, where he adds that he does not know the place, but that he took it to be in the Hundred of Cemmes, in North-west Pembrokeshire. I take Ỻech y Derwyđ to be fictitious; but I have not succeeded in finding any place called by the other name either. [↑]
[25] Perhaps the more usual thing is for the man returning from Faery to fall into dust on the spot: see later in this chapter the Curse of Pantannas, which ends with an instance in point, and compare Howells, pp. 142, 146. [↑]
[26] B. Davies, that is, Benjamin Davies, who gives this tale, was, as I learn from Gwynionyđ, a native of Cenarth. He was a schoolmaster for about twelve years, and died in October, 1859, at Merthyr, near Carmarthen: he describes him as a good and intelligent man. [↑]
[27] This is ordinarily written Cenarth, the name of a parish on the Teifi, where the three counties of Cardigan, Pembroke, and Carmarthen meet. [↑]
[28] The name Ỻan Dydoch occurs in the Bruts, A.D. 987 and 1089, and is the one still in use in Welsh; but the English St. Dogmael’s shows that it is derived from that of Dogfael’s name when the mutation consonant f or v was still written m. In Welsh the name of the saint has been worn down to Dogwel, as in St. Dogwell’s near Fishguard, and Ỻanđogwel in Ỻanrhuđlad parish in Anglesey: see Reece’s Welsh Saints, p. 211. It points back to an early Brythonic form Doco-maglos, with doco of the same origin as Latin dux, dŭcis, ‘a leader,’ and maglo-s = Irish māl, ‘a lord or prince.’ Dogfael’s name assumes in Ỻan Dydoch a Goidelic form, for Dog-fael would have to become in Irish Doch-mhāl, which, cut down to Doch with the honorific prefix to, has yielded Ty-doch; but I am not clear why it is not Ty-đoch. Another instance of a Goidelic form of a name having the local preference in Wales to this day offers itself in Cyfelach and Ỻan Gyfelach in Glamorganshire. The Welsh was formerly Cimeliauc (Reece, p. 274). Here may also be mentioned St. Cyngar, otherwise called Docwinnus (Reece, p. 183), but the name occurs in the Liber Landavensis in the genitive both as Docunn-i and Docguinni, the former of which seems easily explained as Goidelic for an early form of Cyngar, namely Cuno-caros, from which would be formed To-chun or Do-chun. This is what seems to underlie the Latin Docunnus, while Docguinni is possibly a Goidelic modification of the written Docunni, unless some such a name as Doco-vindo-s has been confounded with Docunnus. In one instance the Book of Ỻan Dâv has instead of Abbas Docunni or Docguinni, the shorter designation, Abbas Dochou (p. 145), which one must not unhesitatingly treat as Dochon, seeing that Dochou would be in later book Welsh Dochau, and in the dialect of the district Docha; and that this occurs in the name of the church of Ỻandough near Cardiff, and Ỻandough near Cowbridge. The connexion of a certain saint Dochdwy with these churches does not appear at all satisfactorily established, but more light is required to help one to understand these and similar church names. [↑]
[29] This name which may have come from Little England below Wales, was once not uncommon in South Cardiganshire, as Mr. Williams informs me, but it is now mostly changed as a surname into Davies and Jones! Compare the similar fortunes of the name Mason mentioned above, p. 68. [↑]
[30] I have not succeeded in discovering who the writer was, who used this name. [↑]
[31] This name as it is now written should mean ‘the Gold’s Foot,’ but in the Demetian dialect aur is pronounced oer, and I learn from the rector, the Rev. Rhys Jones Lloyd, that the name has sometimes been written Tref Deyrn, which I regard as some etymologist’s futile attempt to explain it. More importance is to be attached to the name on the communion cup, dating 1828, and reading, as Mr. Lloyd kindly informs me, Poculum Eclyseye de Tre-droyre. Beneath Droyre some personal name possibly lies concealed. [↑]
[32] Y Ferch o Gefn Ydfa (‘The Maid of Cefn Ydfa’), by Isaac Craigfryn Hughes, published by Messrs. Daniel Owen, Howell & Co., Cardiff, 1881. [↑]
[33] In a letter dated February 9, 1899, he states, however, that as regards folklore the death of his father at the age of seventy-six, in the year 1889, had been a great loss to him; for he adds that he was perfectly familiar with the traditions of the neighbourhood and had associated with older men. Among the latter he had been used to talk with an old man whose father remembered Cromwell passing on his way to destroy the Iron Works of Pant y Gwaith, where the Cavaliers had had a cannon cast, which was afterwards used in the engagement at St. Fagan’s. [↑]
[34] This term is sometimes represented as being Bendith eu Mamau, ‘their Mother’s Blessing,’ as if each fairy were such a delightful offspring as to constitute himself or herself a blessing to his or her mother; but I have not found satisfactory evidence to the currency of Bendith eu Mamau, or, as it would be pronounced in Glamorgan, Béndith ĭ Máma. On the whole, therefore, perhaps one may regard the name as pointing back to the Celtic goddesses known in Gaul in Roman times as the Mothers. [↑]
[35] On Pen Craig Daf Mr. Hughes gives the following note:—It was the residence of Dafyđ Morgan or ‘Counsellor Morgan,’ who, he says, was executed on Kennington Common for taking the side of the Pretender. He had retreated to Pen y Graig, where his abode was, in order to conceal himself; but he was discovered and carried away at night. Here follows a verse from an old ballad about him:—
Dafyđ Morgan ffel a ffol,
Fe aeth yn ol ei hyder:
Fe neidod naid at rebel haid
Pan drođ o blaid Pretender.
Taffy Morgan, sly and daft,
He did his bent go after:
He leaped a leap to a rebel swarm,
To arm for a Pretender.
[36] A tòn is any green field that is used for grazing and not meant to be mown, land which has, as it were, its skin of grassy turf unbroken for years by the plough. [↑]
[37] On this Mr. Hughes has a note to the effect that the whole of one milking used to be given in Glamorgan to workmen for assistance at the harvest or other work, and that it was not unfrequently enough for the making of two cheeses. [↑]
[38] Since this was first printed I have learnt from Mr. Hughes that the first cry issued from the Black Cauldron in the Taff (o’r Gerwyn Đu ar Daf), which I take to be a pool in that river. [↑]
[39] The Fan is the highest mountain in the parish of Merthyr Tydfil, Mr. Hughes tells me: he adds that there was on its side once a chapel with a burial ground. Its history seems to be lost, but human bones have, as he states, been frequently found there. [↑]
[40] The above, I am sorry to say, is not the only instance of this nasty trick associating itself with Gwent, as will be seen from the story of Bwca’r Trwyn in chapter x. [↑]
CHAPTER III
Fairy Ways and Words
Heavens defend me from that Welsh fairy!
Shakespeare.
In the previous chapters, the fairy lore of the Principality was hastily skimmed without any method; and I fear that, now I have to reproduce some of the things which I gleaned somewhat later, there will be, if possible, still less method. The general reader, in case he chances on these pages, will doubtless feel that, as soon as he has read a few of the tales, the rest seem to be familiar to him, and exceedingly tiresome. It may be, however, presumed that all men anxious to arrive at an idea as to the origin among us of the belief in fairies, will agree that we should have as large and exhaustive a collection as possible of facts on which to work. If we can supply the data without stint, the student of anthropology may be trusted in time to discover their value for his inductions, and their place in the history of the human race.