A Man Refusing the Solicitations of the Fairies.
A Pentrevoelas man was coming home one lovely summer’s night, and when within a stone’s throw of his house, he heard in the far distance singing of the most enchanting kind. He stopped to listen to the sweet sounds which filled him with a sensation of deep pleasure. He had not listened long ere he perceived that the singers were approaching. By and by they came to the spot where he was, and he saw that they were marching in single file and consisted of a number of small people, robed in close-fitting grey clothes, and they were accompanied by speckled dogs that marched along two deep like soldiers. When the procession came quite opposite the enraptured listener, it stopped, and the small people spoke to him and earnestly begged him to accompany them, but he would not. They tried many ways, and for a long time, to persuade him to join them, but when they saw they could not induce him to do so they departed, dividing themselves into two companies and marching away, the dogs marching two abreast in front of each company. They sang as they went away the most entrancing music that was ever heard. The man, spell-bound, stood where he was, listening to the ravishing music of the Fairies, and he did not enter his house until the last sound had died away in the far-off distance.
Professor Rhys records a tale much like the preceding. (See his Welsh Fairy Tales, pp. 34, 35.) It is as follows:—“One bright moonlight night, as one of the sons of the farmer who lived at Llwyn On in Nant y Bettws was going to pay his addresses to a girl at Clogwyn y Gwin, he beheld the Tylwyth enjoying themselves in full swing on a meadow
close to Cwellyn 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 got within their circle. Soon some kind of spell passed over him, so that he lost his knowledge of every 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 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 waking from a dream, on the bank where he had seen the Fairy 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 broke his heart, and died in less than a week after coming back.”
Many variants of the legends already related are still extant in Wales. This much can be said of these tales, that it was formerly believed that marriages took place between men and Fairies, and from the tales themselves we can infer that the men fared better in Fairy land than the Fairy ladies did in the country of their earthly husbands. This, perhaps, is what might be expected, if, as we may suppose, the Fair Tribe were supplanted, and overcome, by a stronger, and bolder people, with whom, to a certain extent, the weaker and conquered or subdued race commingled by marriage. Certain striking characteristics of both races are strongly marked in these legends. The one is a smaller and more timid people than the other, and far more
beautiful in mind and person than their conquerors. The ravishing beauty of the Fairy lady forms a prominent feature in all these legends. The Fairies, too, are spoken of as being without religion. This, perhaps, means nothing more than that they differed from their conquerors in forms, or objects of worship. However this might be, it would appear that their conquerors knew but little of that perfect moral teaching which made the Fairies, according to the testimony of Giraldus, truthful, void of ambition, and honest.
It must, however, be confessed, that there is much that is mythical in these legends, and every part cannot well be made to correspond with ordinary human transactions.
It is somewhat amusing to note how modern ideas, and customs, are mixed up with these ancient stories. They undoubtedly received a gloss from the ages which transmitted the tales.
In the next chapter I shall treat of another phase of Fairy Folk-lore, which will still further connect the Fair Race with their conquerors.