The neo-Celtic nations of these islands consist, speaking roughly, of a mixture of the invading Celts with the earlier inhabitants whom the Celts found in possession. These two or more groups of peoples may have been in very different stages of civilization when they first came in contact with one another. They agreed doubtless in many things, and perhaps, among others, in cherishing an inherited reluctance to disclose their names, but the Celts as Aryans were never without the decimal system of counting. Like the French, the Celtic nations of the present day show a tendency, more or less marked, to go further and count by scores instead of by tens. But the Welsh are alone among them in having, in certain instances, gone back from counting by tens to counting by fives, which they do when they count between 10 and 20: for 16, 17, 18, and 19 are in Welsh 1 on 15, 2 on 15, 3 on 15, and 4 on 15 respectively; and similarly with 13 and 14[19]. We have seen how the lake fairy reckoned by fives (pp. 8, 418) all the live stock she was to have as her dowry; and one otherwise notices that the fairies deal invariably in the simplest of numbers. Thus if you wish, for example, to find a person who has been led away by them, ten to one you have to go ‘this day next year’ to the spot where he disappeared. Except in the case of the alluring light of the full moon, it is out of the question to reckon months or weeks, though it is needless to say that to reckon the year correctly would have been in point of fact far more difficult; but nothing sounds simpler than ‘this day next year.’ In that simple arithmetic of the fairies, then, we seem to have a trace of a non-Aryan race, that is to say, probably of some early inhabitants of these islands.
Unfortunately, the language of those inhabitants has died out, so that we cannot appeal to its numerals directly; and the next best course to adopt is to take as a sort of substitute for their language that of possible kinsmen of a pre-Celtic race in this country. Now the students of ethnology, especially those devoted to the investigation of skulls and skins, tell us that we have among us, notably in Wales and Ireland, living representatives of a dark-haired, long-skulled race of the same description as one of the types which occur, as they allege, among the Basque populations of the Pyrenees. We turn accordingly to Basque, and what do we find? Why, that the first five numerals in that language are bat, bi, iru, lau, bost, all of which appear to be native; but when we come to the sixth numeral we have sei, which looks like an Aryan word borrowed from Latin, Gaulish, or some related tongue. The case is much the same with ‘seven,’ for that is in Basque zazpi, which is also probably an Aryan loan-word. Basque has native words, zortzi and bederatzi, for eight and nine, but they are longer than the first five, and appear to be of a later formation affecting, in common with sei and zazpi, the termination i. I submit, therefore, that here we have evidence of the former existence of a people in the West of Europe who at one time only counted as far as five. Some of the early peoples of the British Isles may have been on the same level, so that our notions about the fairies have probably been derived, to a greater or less extent, from ideas formed by the Celts concerning those non-Celtic, non-Aryan natives of whose country they took possession.
As regards my appeal to the authority of craniology, I have to confess that it is made with a certain amount of reservation, since the case is far less simple than it looks at first sight. Thus, in August, 1891, the Cambrian Archæological Association, including among them Professor Sayce, visited the south-west of Ireland. During our pleasant excursions in Kerry, the question of race was one of our constant topics; and Professor Sayce was reminded by what he saw in Ireland of his visit to North Africa, especially the hilly regions of the country inhabited by the Berbers. Among other things, he used to say that if a number of Berbers from the mountains were to be brought to an Irish village and clad as Irishmen, he felt positive that he should not be able to tell them from the Irishmen themselves, such as we saw on our rambles in Kerry. This struck me as all the more remarkable, since his reference was to fairly tall, blue-eyed men whose hair could not be called black. On the other hand, owing perhaps to ignorance and careless ways of looking at things around me, I am a little sceptical as to the swarthy long-skulls: they did not seem to meet us at every turn in Ireland; and as for Wales, which I know as well as most people do, I cannot in my ignorance of craniology say with any confidence that I have ever noticed vast numbers of that type. I should like, however, to see the heads of some of the singers whom I have noticed at our Eisteđfodau at Cardiff, Aberdare, and Swansea, placed under the hands of an experienced skull-man. For I have long suspected that we cannot regard as of Aryan origin the vocal talent so general in Wales, and so conspicuous in our choirs of working people as to astonish all the great musicians who have visited our national festival. Beyond all doubt, race has not a little to do with the artistic feelings: a short-skull may be as unmusical, for example, as I am; but has anybody in this country ever known a narrow long-skull to be the reverse of unmusical? or has any one ever considered how few clergymen of the tall, fair-haired, blue-eyed type have been converted to the ritualistic and æsthetic movement in the Church of England?
As it seems to me that the bulk of the Welsh people would have to be described as short-skulls, it would be very gratifying to see those who are wont to refer freely to the dark-complexioned long-skulls of Wales catch a respectable number of specimens. I trust there are plenty to be found; and of course I do not care how they are taken, whether it be by an instantaneous process of photography or in the meshes of some anthropometric sportsman, like Dr. Beddoe. Let them be secured anyhow, so that one may rest assured that the type is still numerically safe, and be able to judge with one’s own eyes how heads long and swarthy look on the shoulders of living Welshmen. We might then be in a position also to compare with them the prevalent description of fairy changelings; for when the fairies steal nice, blond babies, they usually place in their stead their own aged-looking brats with short legs, sallow skins, and squeaky voices. Unfortunately for me, all the adult changelings of whom I happen to have heard any account had died some years before I began to turn my attention to the population of Faery, with the exception, perhaps, of one whose name I obtained under the seal of secrecy. It was that of the wife of a farmer living near Nefyn, in West Carnarvonshire. It was whispered that she was a changeling, so I am inclined to regard her as no other than one of the representatives of the same aboriginal stock to which one might conjecture some of her neighbours also to belong; she ought to be an extreme specimen of the type. It is to be hoped that the photographer and his anthropometric brother have found her out in time and in good humour; but it is now many years since I heard of her.
To return again to the fairies, some of them are described as more comely and good-looking than the rest (pp. 83, 250), but the fairy women are always pictured as fascinating, though their offspring as changelings are as uniformly presented in the light of repulsive urchins; but whole groups of the fairy population are sometimes described as being as ugly of face as they were thievish in disposition—those, for instance, of Ỻanfabon, in Glamorganshire (p. 262). There is one district, however, which is an exception to the tenor of fairy physiognomy: it is that of the Pennant neighbourhood, in Carnarvonshire, together with the hills and valleys, roughly speaking, from Cwm Straỻyn to Ỻwytmor and from Drws y Coed to Dolbenmaen. The fairies of that tract are said to have been taller than the others, and characterized by light or even flaxen hair, together with eyes of clear blue: see pp. 89, 93–7, 105–8. Nor is that all, for we are told that they would not let a person of dark complexion come near them (p. 96). The other fairies, when kidnapping, it is true, preferred the blond infants of other people to their own swarthy brats, which, perhaps, means that it was a policy of their people to recruit itself with men of the superior physique of the more powerful population around them. The supposed fairy ancestress of the people of the Pennant Valley bears, in the stories in point, such names as Penelope, Bella, Pelisha, and Sibi, while her descendants are still taunted with their descent—a quarrel which, within living memory, used to be fought out with fists at the fairs at Penmorfa and elsewhere. This seems to indicate a comparatively late settlement[20] in the district of a family or group of families from without, and an origin, therefore, somewhat similar to that of the Simychiaid and Cowperiaid (p. 67) of a more eastern portion of the same county, rather than anything deserving to be considered with the rest of the annals of Faery. Passing by this oasis, then, such snap-shot photographs as I have been able to take, so to speak, of fairyland cleared of the glamour resting on its landscape, seem to disclose to the eye a swarthy population of short stumpy men occupying the most inaccessible districts of our country. They appear to have cared more for soap than clothing[21], and they lived on milk taken once a day, when they could get it. They probably fished and hunted, and kept domestic animals, including, perhaps, the pig; but they depended largely on what they could steal at night or in misty weather. Their thieving, however, was not resented, as their visits were believed to bring luck and prosperity (p. 251). Their communities formed as it were islands, owing to the country round about them having been wrested from them by later comers of a more warlike disposition and provided with better weapons. But the existence of the scattered groups of the fairies was in no danger of coming to a violent end: they were safe in consequence of the superstitious beliefs of their stronger neighbours, who probably regarded them as formidable magicians, powerful, among other things, to cause or to cure disease as they pleased. Such, without venturing to refresh my memory by perusing what has been written about dwarf races in other parts of the world, are the impressions made on my mind in the course of analysing and sifting the folklore materials crowded into this volume. That applies, of course, in so far only as regards the fairies in their character of a real people as distinguished from them as creatures of the imagination. But, as I have no wish to earn the displeasure of my literary friends, let me hasten to say that I acknowledge the latter, the creatures of the imagination, to be the true fairies, the admiration of one’s childhood and the despair of one’s later years: the other folk—the aborigines whom I have been trying to depict—form only a sort of substratum, a kind of background to the fairy picture, which I should be the last man to wish to mar.
It is needless to say that we have no trace of any fairies approaching the minute dimensions of Shakespeare’s Queen Mab; for, after all, our fairies are mostly represented as not extravagantly unlike other people in personal appearance—not so unlike, in fact, that other folk might not be mistaken for them now and then as late as the latter part of the fifteenth century. Witness the following passage from Sir John Wynne’s History of the Gwydir Family, p. 74:—
‘Haveing purchased this lease, he removed his dwelling to the castle of Dolwyđelan, which at that time was in part thereof habitable, where one Howell ap Jevan ap Rys Gethin, in the beginning of Edward the Fourth his raigne, captaine of the countrey and an outlaw, had dwelt. Against this man David ap Jenkin rose, and contended with him for the sovreignety of the countrey; and being superiour to him, in the end he drew a draught for him, and took him in his bed at Penanmen with his concubine, performing by craft, what he could not by force, and brought him to Conway Castle. Thus, after many bickerings betweene Howell and David ap Jenkin, he being too weake, was faigne to flie the countrey, and to goe to Ireland, where he was a yeare or thereabouts. In the end he returned in the summer time, haveing himselfe, and all his followers clad in greene, who, being come into the countrey, he dispersed here and there among his friends, lurking by day, and walkeing in the night for feare of his adversaries; and such of the countrey as happened to have a sight of him and his followers, said they were the fairies, and soe ran away.’
But what has doubtless helped, above all other things, to perpetuate the belief in the existence of fairies may be said to be the popular association with them of the circles in the grass, commonly known in English as fairy rings. This phenomenon must have answered for ages the purpose for our ancestors, practically speaking, of ocular demonstration, as it still does no doubt in many a rustic neighbourhood.
The most common name for the fairies in Welsh is y Tylwyth Teg, ‘the Fair or Beautiful Family’; but in South Cardiganshire we have found them called Plant Rhys Đwfn, ‘the Children of Rhys the Deep’ (pp. 151, 158), while in Gwent and Morgannwg they are more usually known as Bendith y Mamau, ‘the Blessing of the Mothers’ (p. 174). Our fourteenth century poet, D. ab Gwilym, uses the first-mentioned term, Tylwyth Teg, in poem xxxix, and our prose literature has a word corr, cor in the sense of a dwarf, and corres for a she dwarf. The old Cornish had also cor, which in Breton is written korr[22], with a feminine korrez, and among the other derivatives one finds korrik, ‘a dwarf, a fairy, a wee little sorcerer,’ and korrigez or korrigan, ‘a she dwarf, a fairy woman, a diminutive sorceress.’ The use of these words in Breton recalls the case of the cor, called Rhuđlwm or else Eiđilig, teaching his magic to Coỻ, son of Coỻfrewi: see pp. 326, 503, 505. Then we have uncanny dwarfs in the romances, such, for example, as the rude cor in the service of Edern ab Nuđ, as described in French in Chrétien’s romance of Erec et Enide and in Welsh in that of Gereint vab Erbin, also the cor and corres who figure in the story of Peredur. The latter had belonged to that hero’s father and mother till the break-up of the family, when the dwarfs went to Arthur’s Court, where they lived a whole year without speaking to anybody. When, however, Peredur made his rustic appearance there, they hailed him loudly as the chief of warriors and the flower of knighthood, which brought on them the wrath of Cai, on whom they were eventually avenged by Peredur. In the case[23] of both Edern and Peredur we find the dwarfs loyally interested in the fortunes of their masters and their masters’ friends. With them also the shape-shifting Menw, though not found placed in the same unfavourable light, is probably to be ranged, as one may gather from his name and his rôle of wizard scout for Arthur’s men (p. 510). In the like attachment on the part of the fairies, which was at times liable to develop into devotedness of an embarrassing nature (p. 250), we seem to have one of the germs of the idea of a household fairy or banshee, as illustrated by the case of the ugly wee woman in the Pantannas legend (p. 188); and it seems natural to regard the interested voices in the Kenfig legend, and other stories of the same kind (p. 452), as instances of amalgamating the idea of a fairy with that of an ancestral person.
At all events, we have obtained something to put by the side of the instances already noticed of the fairy girl who gives, against her will at first, her services in the dairy of her captor (pp. 45, 87); of the other fairy who acts as a nurse for a family in the Pennant Valley, till she is asked to dress better (p. 109); and of Bwca’r Trwyn who works willingly and well, both at the house and in the field, till he has tricks played on him (pp. 593–6). To make this brief survey complete, one has to mention the fairies who used to help Eilian with her spinning (pp. 211–3), and not to omit those who were found to come to the rescue of a woman in despair and to assist her on the condition of getting her baby. The motive here is probably not to be confounded with that of the fairies who stealthily exchanged babies: the explanation seems in this case to be that the fairies, or some of the fairies, were once regarded as cannibals, which is countenanced by such a story as that of Canrig Bwt, ‘Canrig the Stumpy.’ At Ỻanberis the latter is said to have lived beneath the huge stone called y Gromlech, ‘the Dolmen,’ opposite Cwmglas and near the high-road to the Pass. When the man destined to dispatch her came, she was just finishing her dinner off a baby’s flesh. There are traces of a similar story in another district, for a writer who published in the year 1802 uses the following words:—‘There was lately near Cerrig y Drudion, in Merionethshire, a subterraneous room composed of large stones, which was called Carchar Cynric Rwth, i. e. “The Prison of Cynric Rwth,” which has been taken notice of by travellers.’ Cynric Rwth may be rendered ‘Cynric the Greedy or Broad-mouthed.’ A somewhat similar ogress is located by another story on the high ground at Bwlch y Rhiw Felen, on the way from Ỻangoỻen to Ỻandegla, and she is represented by the local tradition as contemporary with Arthur[24]. I am inclined to think the Cwmglas cromlech natural rather than artificial; but I am, however, struck by the fact that the fairies are not unfrequently located on or near ancient sites, such as seem to be Corwrion (pp. 57, 526), the margin of Ỻyn Irđyn (pp. 148, 563), Bryn y Pibion (pp. 212–4), Dinỻaen (p. 227), Carn Bodüan (p. 227), on which there are, I am told, walls and hut foundations similar to those which I have recently seen on Carn Fadrun in the same district, Moeđin camp (p. 245), and, perhaps, Ynys Geinon Rock and the immediate vicinity of Craig y Nos, neither of which, however, have I ever visited (p. 254). Local acquaintance with each fairy centre would very possibly enable one to produce a list that would be suggestive.