One of the most complete and best known of these lake stories is that of Ỻyn y Fan Fach in the Beacons of Carmarthenshire, called in Welsh Bannau Sir Gaer. The story is so much more circumstantial than all the others, that it has been placed at the beginning of this volume. Next to it may be ranked that of the Ystrad Dyfodwg pool, now known as Ỻyn y Forwyn, the details of which have only recently been unearthed for me by a friend: see pp. 27–30 above. Well, in the Fan Fach legend the lake lady marries a young farmer from Myđfai, on the Carmarthenshire side of the range; and she is to remain his wife so long as he lives without striking her three times without cause. When that happens, she leaves him and calls away with her all her live stock, down to the little black calf in the process of being flayed; for he suddenly dons his hide and hurries away after the rest of the stock into the lake. The three blows without cause seem to belong to a category of very ancient determinants which have been recently discussed, with his usual acumen and command of instances from other lands, by Mr. Hartland, in the chapters on the Swan Maidens in his Science of Fairy Tales. But our South Welsh story allows the three blows only a minimum of force; and in North Wales the determinant is of a different kind, though probably equally ancient: for there the husband must not strike or touch the fairy wife with anything made of iron, a condition which probably points back to the Stone Age. For archæologists are agreed, that before metal, whether iron or bronze, was used in the manufacturing of tools, stone was the universal material for all cutting tools and weapons. But as savages are profoundly conservative in their habits, it is argued that on ceremonial and religious occasions knives of stone continued to be the only ones admissible long after bronze ones had been in common use for ordinary purposes. Take for example the text of Exodus iv. 25, where Zipporah is mentioned circumcising her son with a flint. From instances of the kind one may comprehend the sort of way in which iron came to be regarded as an abomination and a horror to the fairies. The question will be found discussed by Mr. Hartland at length in his book mentioned above: see more especially pp. 305–9.
Such, to my mind, are some of the questions to which the fairies give rise: I now wish to add another turning on the reluctance of the fairies to disclose their names. There is one story in particular which would serve to illustrate this admirably; but it is one which, I am sorry to say, I have never been able to discover complete or coherent in Wales. The substance of it should be, roughly speaking, as follows:—A woman finds herself in great distress and is delivered out of it by a fairy, who claims as reward the woman’s baby. On a certain day the baby will inevitably be taken by the fairy unless the fairy’s true name is discovered by the mother. The fairy is foiled by being in the meantime accidentally overheard exulting, that the mother does not know that his or her name is Rumpelstiltzchen, or whatever it may be in the version which happens to be in question. The best known version is the German one, where the fairy is called Rumpelstiltzchen; and it will be found in the ordinary editions of Grimm’s Märchen. The most complete English version is the East Anglian one published by Mr. Edward Clodd, in his recent volume entitled Tom Tit Tot, pp. 8–16; and previously in an article full of research headed ‘The Philosophy of Rumpelstiltskin,’ in Folk-Lore for 1889, pp. 138–43. It is first to be noted that in this version the fairy’s name is Tom Tit Tot, and that the German and the East Anglian stories run parallel. They agree in making the fairy a male, in which they differ from our Welsh Silly Frit and Silly go Dwt: in what other respect the story of our Silly differed from that of Rumpelstiltzchen and Tom Tit Tot it is, in the present incomplete state of the Welsh one, impossible to say. Here it may be found useful to recall the fragments of the Welsh story: (1) A fairy woman used to come out of Corwrion Pool to spin on fine summer days, and whilst spinning she sang or hummed to herself sìli ffrit, sìli ffrit—it does not rise even to a doggerel couplet: see p. 64 above. (2) A farmer’s wife in Ỻeyn used to have visits from a fairy woman who came to borrow things from her; and one day when the goodwife had lent her a troeỻ bach, or wheel for spinning flax, she asked the fairy to give her name, which she declined to do. She was, however, overheard to sing to the whir of the wheel as follows (p. 229):—
Bychan a wyđa’ hi
Mai Sìli go Dwt
Yw f’enw i.
Little did she know
That Silly go Dwt
Is my name.
This throws some light on Silly Frit, and we know where we are; but the story is inconsequent, and far from representing the original. We cannot, however, reconstruct it quite on the lines of Grimm’s or Clodd’s version. But I happened to mention my difficulty one day to Dr. J. A. H. Murray, when he assured me of the existence of a Scottish version in which the fairy is a female. He learnt it when he was a child, he said, at Denholm, in Roxburghshire; and he was afterwards charmed to read it in Robert Chambers’ Popular Rhymes of Scotland (Edinburgh, 1858), pp. 221–5, whence Mr. Clodd has given an abstract of it in his ‘Philosophy of Rumpelstiltskin.’ Among those popular rhymes the reader will find it as related at length by Nurse Jenny in her inimitable fashion; but the Scotch is so broad, that I think it advisable, at the risk of some havoc to the local colouring, to southronize it somewhat as follows:—
‘I see that you are fond of talks about fairies, children; and a story about a fairy and the goodwife of Kittlerumpit has just come into my mind; but I can’t very well tell you now whereabouts Kittlerumpit lies. I think it is somewhere in the Debatable Ground; anyway I shall not pretend to know more than I do, like everybody nowadays. I wish they would remember the ballad we used to sing long ago:—