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. [↑]