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 again[28].’ 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 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:—
Wy’n hén y dyđ heđy,
Ag yn byw cyn ’y ngeni:
Eriôd ni welas i ferwi
Bwyd i’r fedal mwn cwcwỻ[29] wy iâr.
I call myself old this day,
And living before my birth:
Never have I seen food boiled
For the reapers in an egg-shell.
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:—