Let her wear my petticoat.
‘As years and years rolled on a grandson of Belenë’s fell in love with a beautiful damsel who lived at a neighbouring farm house called Tai Teulwriaid, and against the will of his father and mother they married, but they had nothing to stock their land with. So one morning what was their astonishment, when they got up, to see grazing quietly in the field six black cows and a white-headed bull, which had come up out of the lake as stock for them from old grannie Belenë? They served them well with milk and butter for many a long year, but on the day the last of the family died, the six black cows and the white-headed bull disappeared into the lake, never more to be seen.’
Mr. Hughes referred to no less than three other versions, as follows:—(1) According to one account, the husband was ploughing, with the wife leading the team, when by chance he came across her and the accident happened. The wife then flew away like a wood-hen (iar goed) into the lake. (2) Another says that they were in a stable trying to bridle one of the horses, when the misfortune took place through inadvertence. (3) A third specifies the field in front of the house at Corwrion as the place where the final accident took place, when they were busied with the cows and horses.
To these I would add the following traditions, which Mr. Hughes further gives. Sometimes the inhabitants, who seem to have been on the whole on good terms with the fairies, used to heat water and leave it in a vessel on the hearth overnight for the fairies to wash their children in it. This they considered such a kindness that they always left behind them on the hearth a handful of their money. Some pieces are said to have been sometimes found in the fields near Corwrion, and that they consisted of coins which were smaller than our halfpennies, but bigger than farthings, and had a harp on one side. But the tradition is not very definite on these points.
Here also I may as well refer to a similar tale which I got last year at Ỻanberis from a man who is a native of the Ỻanỻechid side of the mountain, though he now lives at Ỻanberis. He is about fifty-five years of age, and remembers hearing in his youth a tale connected with a house called Hafoty’r Famaeth, in a very lonely situation on Ỻanỻechid Mountain, and now represented only by some old ruined walls. It was to the effect that one night, when the man who lived there was away from home, his wife, who had a youngish baby, washed him on the hearth, left the water there, and went to bed with her little one: she woke up in the night to find that the Tylwyth Teg were in possession of the hearth, and busily engaged in washing their children. That is all I got of this tale of a well-known type.
To return to Mr. Hughes’ communications, I would select from them some remarks on the topography of the teeming home of the fairies. He estimated the lake or pool of Corwrion to be about 120 yards long, and adds that it is nearly round; but he thinks it was formerly considerably larger, as a cutting was made some eighty or a hundred years ago to lead water from it to Penrhyn Castle; but even then its size would not approach that ascribed to it by popular belief, according to which it was no less than three miles long. In fact it was believed that there was once a town of Corwrion which was swallowed up by the lake, a sort of idea which one meets with in many parts of Wales, and some of the natives are said to be able to discern the houses under the water. This must have been near the end which is not bottomless, the latter being indicated by a spot which is said never to freeze even in hard winters. Old men remember it the resort of herons, cormorants, and the water-hen (hobi wen). Near the banks there grew, besides the water-lily, various kinds of rushes and sedges, which were formerly much used for making mats and other useful articles. It was also once famous for eels of a large size, but it is not supposed to have contained fish until Lord Penrhyn placed some there in recent years. It teemed, however, with leeches of three different kinds so recently that an old man still living describes to Mr. Hughes his simple way of catching them when he was a boy, namely, by walking bare-legged in the water: in a few minutes he landed with nine or ten leeches sticking to his legs, some of which fetched a shilling each from the medical men of those days. Corwrion is now a farm house occupied by Mr. William Griffiths, a grandson of the late bard Gutyn Peris. When Mr. Hughes called to make inquiries about the legend, he found there the foundations of several old buildings, and several pieces of old querns about the place. He thinks that there belonged to Corwrion in former times, a mill and a fuller’s house, which he seems to infer from the names of two neighbouring houses called ‘Y Felin Hen,’ the Old Mill, and ‘Pandy Tre Garth,’ the Fulling Mill of Tregarth, respectively. He also alludes to a gefail or smithy there, in which one Rhys ab Robert used to work, not to mention that a great quantity of ashes, such as come from a smithy, are found at the end of the lake furthest from the farm house. The spot on which Corwrion stands is part of the ground between the Ogwen and another stream which bears the name of ‘Afon Cegin Arthur,’ or the River of Arthur’s Kitchen, and most of the houses and fields about have names which have suggested various notions to the people there: such are the farms called ‘Coed Howel,’ whence the belief in the neighbourhood that Howel Đa, King of Wales, lived here. About him Mr. Hughes has a great deal to say: among other things, that he had boats on Corwrion lake, and that he was wont to present the citizens of Bangor yearly with 300 fat geese reared on the waters of the same. I am referred by another man to a lecture delivered in the neighbourhood on these and similar things by the late bard and antiquary the Rev. Robert Ellis (Cynđelw), but I have never come across a copy. A field near Corwrion is called ‘Cae Stabal,’ or the Field of the Stable, which contains the remains of a row of stables, as it is supposed, and of a number of mangers where Howel’s horses were once fed. In a neighbouring wood, called ‘Parc y Geỻi’ or ‘Hopiar y Geỻi,’ my informant goes on to say, there are to be seen the foundations of seventeen or eighteen old hut-circles, and near them some think they see the site of an old church. About a mile to the south-east of Corwrion is Pendinas, which Mr. Hughes describes as an old triangular Welsh fortress, on the bank of the Ogwen; and within two stone’s-throws or so of Corwrion on the south side of it, and a little to the west of Bryn Twrw mentioned in the legend, is situated Penarđ Gron, a caer or fort, which he describes as being, before it was razed in his time, forty-two yards long by thirty-two wide, and defended by a sort of rampart of earth and stone several yards wide at the base. It used to be the resort of the country people for dancing, cock-fighting[26], and other amusements on Sundays. Near it was a cairn, which, when it was dug into, was found to cover a kistvaen, a pot, and a quern: a variety of tales attaching to it are told concerning ghosts, caves, and hidden treasures. Altogether Mr. Hughes is strongly of opinion that Corwrion and its immediate surroundings represent a spot which at one time had great importance; and I see no reason wholly to doubt the correctness of that conclusion, but it would be interesting to know whether Penrhyn used, as Mr. Hughes suggests, to be called Penrhyn Corwrion; there ought, perhaps, to be no great difficulty in ascertaining this, as some of the Penrhyn estate appears to have been the subject of litigation in times gone by.
Before leaving Mr. Hughes’ notes, I must here give his too brief account of another thing connected with Corwrion, though, perhaps, not with the legends here in question. I allude to what he calls the Lantern Ghost (Ysbryd y Lantar):—‘There used to be formerly,’ he says, ‘and there is still at Corwrion, a good-sized sour apple-tree, which during the winter half of the year used to be lit up by fire. It began slowly and grew greater until the whole seemed to be in a blaze. He was told by an old woman that she formerly knew old people who declared they had seen it. In the same way the trees in Hopiar y Geỻi appeared, according to them, to be also lit up with fire.’ This reminds me of Mr. Fitzgerald’s account of the Irish Bile-Tineadh in the Revue Celtique, iv. 194.
After communicating to me the notes of which the foregoing are abstracts, Mr. Hughes kindly got me a version of the legend from Mr. David Thomas, of Pont y Wern, in the same neighbourhood, but as it contains nothing which I have not already given from Mr. Hughes’ own, I pass it by. Mr. Thomas, however, has heard that the number of the houses making up the town of Corwrion some six or seven centuries ago was about seventy-five; but they were exactly seventy-three according to my next informant, Mr. David Evan Davies, of Treflys, Bethesda, better known by his bardic name of Dewi Glan Ffrydlas. Both these gentlemen have also heard the tradition that there was a church at Corwrion, where there used to be every Sunday a single service, after which the people went to a spot not far off to amuse themselves, and at night to watch the fairies dancing, or to mix with them while they danced in a ring around a glow-worm. According to Dewi Glan Ffrydlas, the spot was the Pen y Bonc, already mentioned, which means, among other things, that they chose a rising ground. This is referred to in a modern rhyme, which runs thus:—
A’r Tylwyth Teg yn dawnsio’n sionc
O gylch magïen Pen y Bonc.