To the bogie!
Meanwhile she screamed for help, but none came for some time; when, however, he heard the servant men getting up, he took to his heels as hard as he could; and nothing was heard of him for some time. But at the end of two years he was found to be at another farm in the neighbourhood, called Hafod yr Ynys, where he at once became great friends with the servant girl: for she fed him like a young chicken, by giving him a little bread and milk all the time. So he worked willingly and well for her in return for his favourite food. More especially, he used to spin and wind the yarn for her; but she wished him in time to show his face, or to tell her his name: he would by no means do either. One evening, however, when all the men were out, and when he was spinning hard at the wheel, she deceived him by telling him that she was also going out. He believed her; and when he heard the door shutting, he began to sing as he plied the wheel:—
Hi warđa’n iawn pe gwypa hi,
Taw Gwarwyn-a-throt yw’m enw i.
How she would laugh, did she know
That Gwarwyn-a-throt is my name!
‘Ha! ha!’ said the maid at the bottom of the stairs; ‘I know thy name now.’ ‘What is it, then?’ he asked. She replied, ‘Gwarwyn-a-throt’; and as soon as she uttered the words he left the wheel where it was, and off he went. He was next heard of at a farmhouse not far off, where there happened to be a servant man named Moses, with whom he became great friends at once. He did all his work for Moses with great ease. He once, however, gave him a good beating for doubting his word; but the two remained together afterwards for some years on the best possible terms: the end of it was that Moses became a soldier. He went away to fight against Richard Crookback, and fell on the field of Bosworth. The bogie, after losing his friend, began to be troublesome and difficult to live with. He would harass the oxen when they ploughed, and draw them after him everywhere, plough and all; nor could any one prevent them. Then, when the sun set in the evening he would play his pranks again, and do all sorts of mischief about the house, upstairs, and in the cowhouses. So the farmer was advised to visit a wise man (dyn cynnil), and to see if he could devise some means of getting rid of the bogie. He called on the wise man, who happened to be living near Caerleon on the Usk; and the wise man, having waited till the moon should be full, came to the farmer’s house. In due time the wise man, by force of manœuvring, secured the bogie by the very long nose which formed the principal ornament of his face, and earned for him the name of Bwca’r Trwyn, ‘the Bogie of the Nose.’ Whilst secured by the nose, the bogie had something read to him out of the wise man’s big book; and he was condemned by the wise man to be transported to the banks of the Red Sea for fourteen generations, and to be conveyed thither by ‘the upper wind’ (yr uwchwynt). No sooner had this been pronounced by the cunning man than there came a whirlwind which made the whole house shake. Then came a still mightier wind, and as it began to blow the owner of the big book drew the awl out of the bogie’s nose; and it is supposed that the bogie was carried away by that wind, for he never troubled the place any more.
Another version of the story seems to have been current, which represented the bogie as in no wise to blame[43]: but I attach some importance to the foregoing tale as forming a link of connexion between the Rumpelstiltzchen group of fairies, always trying to get hold of children; the brownie kind, ever willing to serve in return for their simple keep; and the troublesome bogie, that used to haunt Welsh farm houses and delight in breaking crockery and frightening the inmates out of their wits. In fact, the brownie and the bogie reduce themselves here into different humours of the same uncanny being. Their appearance may be said to have differed also: the bogie had a very long nose, while the brownie of Blednoch had only ‘a hole where a nose should have been.’ But one of the most remarkable points about the brownie species is that the Lincolnshire specimen was a small creature, ‘a weeny bit of a fellow’—which suggests a possible community of origin with the banshee of the Irish, and also of the Welsh: witness the wee little woman in the story of the Curse of Pantannas (pp. 188–9), who seems to come up out of the river. All alike may perhaps be said to suggest various aspects of the dead ancestor or ancestress; but Bwca’r Trwyn is not to be severed from the fairy woman in the Pennant Valley, who undertakes some of the duties, not of a dairymaid, as in other cases mentioned, but those of a nurse. Her conduct on being offered a gown is exactly that of the brownie similarly placed: see p. 109 above. But she and Bwca’r Trwyn are unmistakably fairies who take to domestic service, and work for a time willingly and well in return for their food, which, as in the case of other fairies, appears to have been mostly milk.
After this digression I wish only to point out that the Welsh bogie’s name, Gwarwyn-a-throt, treated as Welsh, could only mean white-necked and (or with) a trot; for a throt could only mean ‘and (or with) a trot.’ So it is clear that a throt is simply the equivalent of a-Trot, borrowed from such an English combination as Trit-a-Trot, and that it is idle to translate Gwarwyn-a-throt. Now trot and twt are not native Welsh words; and the same remark applies to Trwtyn Tratyn, and of course to Sìli ffrit and Sìli go Dwt. Hence it is natural to infer that either these names have in the Welsh stories merely superseded older ones of Welsh origin, or else that there was no question of name in the Welsh stories till they had come under English influence. The former conjecture seems the more probable of the two, unless one should rather suppose the whole story borrowed from English sources. But it is of no consequence here as regards the reluctance of fairies to disclose their names; for we have other instances to which the reader may turn, on pp. 45, 87–8, 97 above. One of them, in particular, is in point here: see pp. 54, 61. It attaches itself to the Pool of Corwrion in the neighbourhood of Bangor; and it relates how a man married a fairy on the express condition that he was neither to know her name nor to touch her with iron, on pain of her instantly leaving him. Of course in the lapse of years the conditions are accidentally violated by the luckless husband, and the wife flies instantly away into the waters of the pool: her name turned out to be Belene.
Thus far of the unwillingness of the fairies to tell their names: I must now come to the question, why that was so. Here the anthropologist or the student of comparative folklore comes to our aid; for it is an important part of his business to compare the superstitions of one people with those of another; and in the case of superstitions which have lost their meaning among us, for instance, he searches for a parallel among other nations, where that parallel forms part of living institutions. In this way he hopes to discover the key to his difficulties. In the present case he finds savages who habitually look at the name as part and parcel of the person[44]. These savages further believe that any part of the person, such as a hair off one’s head or the parings of one’s nails, if they chanced to be found by an enemy, would give that enemy magical power over their lives, and enable him to injure them. Hence the savage tendency to conceal one’s name. I have here, as the reader will perceive, crowded together several important steps in the savage logic; so I must try to illustrate them, somewhat more in detail, by reference to some of the survivals of them after the savage has long been civilized. To return to Wales, and to illustrate the belief that possession of a part of one’s person, or of anything closely identified with one’s person, gives the possessor of it power over that person, I need only recall the Welsh notion, that if one wished to sell one’s self to the devil one had merely to give him a hair of one’s head or the tiniest drop of one’s blood, then one would be for ever his for a temporary consideration. Again, if you only had your hair cut, it must be carefully gathered and hidden away: by no means must it be burnt, as that might prove prejudicial to your health. Similarly, you should never throw feathers into the fire; for that was once held, as I infer, to bring about death among one’s poultry: and an old relative of mine, Modryb Mari, ‘Aunt Mary,’ set her face against my taste for toasted cheese. She used to tell me that if I toasted my cheese, my sheep would waste away and die: strictly speaking, I fancy this originally meant only the sheep from whose milk the cheese had been made. But I was not well versed enough in the doctrines of sympathetic magic to reply, that it did not apply to our cheese, which was not made from sheep’s milk. So her warning used to frighten me and check my fondness for toasted cheese, a fondness which I had doubtless quite innocently inherited, as anybody will see who will glance at one of the Hundred Mery Talys, printed by John Rastell in the sixteenth century, as follows:—‘I fynde wrytten amonge olde gestes, howe God mayde Saynt Peter porter of heuen, and that God of hys goodnes, sone after his passyon, suffered many men to come to the kyngdome of Heuen with small deseruynge; at whyche tyme there was in heuen a great companye of Welchemen, whyche with their crakynge and babelynge troubled all the other. Wherfore God sayde to Saynte Peter that he was wery of them, and that he wolde fayne haue them out of heuen. To whome Saynte Peter sayd: Good Lorde, I warrente you, that shall be done. Wherfore Saynt Peter wente out of heuen gates and cryed wyth a loud voyce Cause bobe[45], that is as moche to saye as rosted chese, whiche thynge the Welchemen herynge, ranne out of Heuen a great pace. And when Saynt Peter sawe them all out, he sodenly wente into Heuen, and locked the dore, and so sparred all the Welchemen out. By this ye may se, that it is no wysdome for a man to loue or to set his mynde to moche upon any delycate or worldely pleasure, wherby he shall lose the celestyall and eternall ioye.’