Little did she know
That Silly go Dwt
Is my name.
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:—
Bychan a wyđa’ hi
Mai Trwtyn-Tratyn
Yw f’enw i.
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 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’ byr[15]. 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 sod in Dyfed in order to behold the delectable realm of Rhys Đwfn’s Children: see p. 158 above.