Welsh Folk Tales

by Peter Stevenson

  One evening, when the sky above Cardigan Bay was the colour of primrose, violet and campion, Rhysyn was pulling in his nets, singing a song about a girl with spun gold hair, when he saw, sitting on a rock in the mouth of Ogof Deupen, a mermaid. She was brushing long, tangled, red seaweedy hair with a mother-of-pearl comb, the evening sun cast shadows below her ribs, and her tail shone like quicksilver, though it was covered in limpets and goose barnacles.

  Rhysyn was enchanted. He said, ‘Beautiful lady, can I help you?’

  The mermaid turned. ‘Teach me the song that I hear you sing while I watch you fishing. Of the girl with spun gold hair. I love that song.’

  Rhysyn rowed a little closer. ‘Indeed I will teach you the song, but tell me your name?’

  The mermaid said, ‘Morwen, daughter of Nefus, King of the Deeps.’

  Rhysyn sang his song, and such was the beauty of his voice, and the closeness of this dark young man, that her skin flushed rose with embarrassment.

  ‘No more. I will return every evening until l learn your song.’ And she vanished beneath the water.

  Rhysyn was not the kind of man to go falling deeply in love, the occasional flirtation had always been enough, and he was engaged to the buxom Lowri. But he returned the following moonrise, and many moonrises after that, until Morwen learned his song, and it soon became clear that she was entranced by him, and he loved that kind of power over a woman. One evening she declared herself. She invited him to swim with her, arm in arm in the Land of the Deeps.

  He looked at her. A crab dangled from one ear, the shadows beneath her ribs looked as if they had been drawn with charcoal, barnacles and limpets on her tail were moving around unnervingly, so he told her all about Lowri, the maid of Plas Llanina.

  Morwen began to weep and wail, she twisted her red, tangled hair between her fingers, tore it out at the roots, thrashed the water with her tail, causing waves to crash onto the beach at Cei Bach. Then the turbulence of rejection receded. ‘You will regret your decision. My father will avenge this insult.’ And she vanished.

  Rhysyn went home, he became withdrawn and refused to go out fishing. He sat on the shore feeling his nets between his fingers and staring out to sea. Nidan noticed the change in her son. She called Lowri, but he was distant and silent with her, too.

  On the morning of the wedding, the sky was full of primrose, violet and campion, and Rhysyn was sat on the shore, and there she was – Morwen, head and shoulders above the water. ‘Rhysyn, son of Nidan, if you go to the church at Llanina, my father will take your land, from the Rush Fields of Llanon to Ogof Deupen, your mother’s house at Tangeulan, and the lives of you and your bride.’

  And she vanished beneath the waves.

  Rhysyn had to be dragged to the church by his mother. As they walked through the door, the skies outside turned grey, but the moment he saw Lowri, looking so desirable in her white dress, he knew she was the only woman he would ever lose his heart to. A great storm gathered out at sea; it blew the waters of Cardigan Bay over the Rush Fields of Llanon, into the mouth of Ogof Deupen, over the house at Tangeulan, and through the doors of the church. Rhysyn was swept out to sea on a great wave, and as he was dragged down into the depths, a woman with tangled red hair held him in her arms, and as his lungs filled with water, his two legs became one and he swam like a fish.

  All in the church were drowned that day, along with many of the coastal dwellers of Cardigan Bay, their horses and dogs, sheep and pigs. Dolphins swam where people once walked. If you listen, when the sky is full of primrose, violet and campion, just beyond Carreg Ina, you will hear the sound of church bells ringing from beneath the waves, announcing the marriage of Rhysyn and Morwen, as they swim forever, arm in arm, in the Land of the Deeps.

  More Llanina Mermaids

  The old man of Llanina told this tale by his fireside to T. Llew Jones.

  In a mansion on the clifftop at Llanina lived a kindly old man with his three daughters, Branwen, Gwenllian and Nia. Men came in droves to woo them, but they loved each other more than they could ever love a man. One day the three sisters were on the beach when the King of the Deeps saw them and was mesmerised. All through the summer he watched them, until autumn turned to winter and the sisters stayed indoors, warm by their fireside.

  One evening, a storm raged and the wind rattled the latch. Branwen put down her embroidery to see if anyone was there. After a while, she hadn’t returned, yet the door still rattled. Gwenllian put down her spinning and went to look for her sister. After a while she hadn’t returned, so Nia left her harp and went to look for her sisters.

  In the morning the old man searched the beach for his daughters. A fisherman told him he had seen the golden hair of three girls swirling in the sea in the midst of the storm. The old man wept, for he knew his daughters had been taken by the King of the Deeps and they would be changed into mermaids.

  Beneath the sea, the girls were filled with melancholy and wished only to return to their father. The King saw their sadness and knew he could not keep them. So he offered them their freedom, although they would no longer be of the land or the sea.

  The following morning, the old man was on the beach when three white birds landed on his shoulders. He knew they were his girls, changed by the King of the Deeps into creatures of neither land nor sea, but of the air. And that is how the seagulls first came to New Quay, and the ‘girls’ became ‘gulls’.

  This story was written by T. Llew Jones of Pentre-cwrt, a descendant of the poets of Cilie. He wrote over a hundred books for children, many based on old folk tales, such as the legend of the smuggler Siôn Cwilt, the pirate Barti Ddu, and the trickster Twm Siôn Cati. Often there was more T. Llew than folk tale, yet the tradition has embraced him. Each year the master storyteller’s birthday is celebrated on 11 October – T. Llew Jones Day.

  The Fisherman and the Seal

  There was a fisherman who didn’t like fishing. The seals bit holes in his net to steal his herring, and it took forever to stitch it back together again. He preferred to throw his anchor overboard, lie back in his boat, dangle his feet over the side, and go to sleep.

  One morning, some visitors offered to pay him to fetch them from Newport Sands and ferry them back to Goodwick in time for tea at two o’clock. The fisherman agreed. Taking tourists round the bay sounded far easier than fishing, and he would have time for a nap at lunchtime.

  When he awoke, he could tell from the position of the sun that it was almost two o’clock. He would never be able to get to Newport in time, and the visitors wouldn’t pay him, and he’d have to go fishing instead. He was wondering what to do when he heard a voice.

  ‘What’s the problem?’ There was a seal staring at him.

  ‘I didn’t know seals could talk,’ said the fisherman.

  ‘You don’t know much,’ said the seal, ‘Throw me a rope.’

  The fisherman tied a knot in a rope, threw the knotted end into the sea, the seal picked it up between its teeth, and towed the boat all the way to Newport Sands in time to collect the visitors and take them to Goodwick in time for tea at two. They were delighted, for fishermen were usually late. They gave him a handsome tip and the fisherman gave the seal all the fish he could eat, and never once complained about his nets being bitten.

  5

  CONJURERS, CHARMERS AND CURSERS

  The Dyn Hysbys

  The dyn hysbys was a folk physician, a conjurer, soothsayer, astrologer, surgeon, vet, bonesetter, a specialist who could cure and curse. They used written charms, herbs and potions, incantations, lead bottles, snail water, bloodstones, snakestones, the laying on of hands, and the latest medical techniques. They were farmers, doctors, schoolteachers, tramps, preachers, showmen, shopkeepers and psychologists, and people travelled miles to visit the one they trusted.

  Dicky Davies of Ponterwyd treated sick cattle; Davies of Aberarth removed warts; Griffin Lloyd of Glascwm cured toothache; Siôn Gyfarwydd of Llanbrynmair foretold your death; Vicar Pritchard of Pwllheli laid g
hosts; Stephens of Cwm Glyn staunched bleeding even in a stuck pig; Abe Biddle of Werndew found lost jewels and conjured hornets; Dick Spot from Llanrwst cast charms that left you dancing forever; Old Jenky of Trelleck had the Devil working for him; Dafydd Siôn Evan rode over Llanbadarn Fawr on an enchanted horse; Sir Dafydd Llwyd ordered a bull to gore to death a conjurer from Lampeter; Twm o’r Nant captured a spirit in a tobacco box in Llanfyllin after it had appeared as a boar, a wolf, a dog and a fly; and William Price of Llantrisant was a surgeon, bonesetter, physician, Chartist, nudist and vegetarian, who despised preachers, believed in free love, thought socks were unhygienic, cremated his son Iesu Grist (Jesus Christ) when cremation was illegal, and once cured a man of the drink by persuading him a family of frogs were living in his gut off the beer.

  And then there was the infamous Dr Harries …

  The Conjurer of Cwrt-y-Cadno

  John Harries was born in 1785, at Cwrt-y-Cadno in the Cothi Valley, Carmarthenshire. He was a cultivated man who dressed like a country squire, tall and well built, with blue wistful eyes. He trained as a physician in London, became a Fellow of the Royal College of Surgeons, and set up a practice in Harley Street with the astrologer ‘Raphael’. When he returned to Cwrt-y-Cadno he opened a surgery specialising in skin diseases and mental illness, and a public house where he learned his customers’ little secrets before they visited the surgery.

  Dr Harries was a cunning man. He married the new-fangled medical techniques, learned in London, with the darker arts of the dyn hysbys. He developed three cures: the water treatment, the herbs treatment and the bleeding treatment (which did indeed employ leeches). The sick and sorrowful travelled from all over Wales to consult him, for he was said to have ‘wonderful power over lunatics’. He could cast spells and lift curses, find lost cattle, tell fortunes, protect you from witchcraft, predict your death, and summon demons from a Book of Spells so powerful that it was padlocked and chained to his desk.

  Not everyone was impressed with the good doctor’s abilities. The newspaper Yr Haul called him a charlatan and quack, and wrote, ‘Because men insist on being foolish, they are left to consult Dr Harries, and go to expense on account of his lies and deceit … he should be arrested and set on a treadmill for a few months, as happens to his fellow deceivers in England.’

  Harries’ reputation was sealed when he informed the police that a missing woman could be found beneath a poisoned tree. She was discovered in a shallow grave at the exact spot, and Harries was charged as an accomplice to murder. At the court in Llandovery he informed the judge, in Welsh, of his innocence, and added, ‘You tell me which hour you came into the world and I will tell you the hour you will depart from it’. The case was dismissed.

  Having predicted the date of his own death in 1839, Harries stayed in bed all day to see if he could avoid the inevitable, only for a fire to break out and in hurrying down a ladder to safety, a rung broke and he fell and broke his neck. As he was carried to the churchyard down a narrow roadway illuminated by flickering candles, the bearers found his coffin suddenly became weightless, as the Devil took his own. His son Henry continued the practice, and when the folklorist, vicar and writer, Jonathan Ceredig Davies, visited Harries’s library in 1905, he found medical books, astrological almanacs, Latin and Greek tomes, but the padlocked Book of Spells had vanished.

  In 2015, I was asked by the National Library of Wales to write a radio script about Dr Harries’s Spell Book, which was in their archive. I was shown a small volume, the size of a school exercise book, bound in black with gold letters on the spine saying, ‘A Book of Incantations’, and a note, ‘Donated by Mr Rhys Davys-Williams, Treforest, 26.8.1935’.

  The first eleven pages contain spells, conjurations, exorcisms, astrological diagrams and incantations designed to summon spirits. There follows lists of patients and their treatments. On 29 June 1814, Griffith, Crygddy Mountain, was prescribed ‘embrocation, cost 1s 6d’. There are also charms, including one for finding lost heifers and another written on the back of a bidding letter for a forthcoming wedding.

  Bound into the volume is a four-page booklet advertising ‘Gowland’s Lotion, prepared by Robert Dickinson of Lincoln’s Inn Fields, for Eruptions of the face and skin; pimples or blotches from surfeit or other cause, efflorescence or redness of the nose, chin, arms; Heats and that species of eruption and redness called Scorbutic Humours’. Also a copy of the ‘Prophetic Almanack, published annually by William Charlton Wright, 65 Paternoster-row, London. 1825. Key signs used in astrological prediction, particulars of eclipses and other phenomena, a batch of celestial treats for every season, timely warnings, wholesome precepts, and poetical vagary.’

  There is an invoice to Dr Harries threatening that ‘adverse means will be resorted to’ for the recovery of a debt. And another from Harries to Mr John Morgan:

  1831. I hope you will not forget coming over to me to settel with me as soon as possible without further delayance. For I cannot wait your opportunity any longer for my Bill, your obedient servant, John Harries.

  This is not the padlocked Spell Book, rather the random papers of an early nineteenth-century country doctor who used both conventional medicine and conjuring. However, the National Library is reputed to have the papers of the last dyn hysbys of Llangurig – unarchived, uncatalogued, scattered around the shelves like ashes at a funeral, ink still wet on the rustling pages, as if endlessly being written by an invisible hand.

  Silver John the Bonesetter

  John Lloyd was a farmer in the Harley Valley, who became a specialist in curing his sick animals. He used splints to set the broken legs of his sheep, he manipulated the knee joints of his cows, and applied herbal poultices to his poor pigs. When a miller’s son broke his leg, John set the bone. The miller offered to pay, but John refused, so the miller gave him two silver buttons.

  From that day, he began to treat people, yet he never took money for his services, only two silver buttons which he sewed onto his coat and waistcoat. On high days and holidays, he strode out dressed in his finest, with silver shoe buckles, a silver walking stick and a silver snuff box, until he shone more brightly than the moon, earning himself the name Silver John.

  At Michaelmas 1733, his horse and gambo returned from the fair in Builth Wells without him. The following spring, Mary, daughter of the landlord from the Fforest Inn, was skating on Llyn Heilyn, when she slipped, fell face down and screamed. Staring up at her from below the ice were the frozen eyes of Silver John. When the ice melted, he was dragged from the water. All the silver buttons had been stripped from his coat.

  His murderer was never found, but the children of Builth Wells sang this chilling song:

  Silver John is dead and gone, so they came home a singin’,

  Radnor boys pulled out his eyes, and set the bells a-ringin’.

  He is buried on the slopes of Great Greigiau, near Niblett’s Quarry, in a grave where the grass grows bright green. His family, the Lloyds of Baynham continued to practise as bonesetters until the 1950s, when one of them held a surgery at the Horse and Jockey in Knighton, where he sold the family cure-all, Lloyd’s Oil.

  John ‘Bonesetter’ Reese, son of a Rhymney miner, had been taught the skills of manipulation by an ironworker called Tom Jones. When he emigrated to Ohio in 1887, he treated the mill workers and miners of Youngstown, who needed to be fit enough for work or they wouldn’t be paid. He became chiropractor to the Pittsburgh Pirates where he was known as the ‘Baseball Doctor’, the ancestor of the most renowned bonesetter of all, Dr Leonard ‘Bones’ McCoy of the starship Enterprise …

  The Cancer Curers of Cardigan

  In 1907, national newspapers carried reports of two elderly brothers in Cardigan who could cure cancer. The town was flooded with sick people looking for hope, causing consternation amongst those who were terrified of catching something contagious. Soon, they came from all over the world to the Welsh Lourdes to consult John and Daniel Evans of Pen-y-banc, Ferwig.

  John was born in 183
5 and Daniel three years later, the sons of a shipwright, who supplemented their small income as farmers, carpenters and shipbuilders by concocting herbal remedies. They collected plants from the hedgerows and woodlands, and invented an oil to treat skin blemishes, which they claimed could loosen the tentacle grip of cancer from healthy tissue. They kept the oil in small bottles, and applied it with a brush, before squeezing the last drops back into the bottle. If anyone complained about hygiene, they were told to bring their own brush, which the brothers cleaned to avoid anyone stealing a sample of their secret recipe for scientific analysis. They treated everyone the same, rich or poor, and never charged, allowing people to pay only if they could afford to. Soon, they developed a reputation for successfully treating cases that defeated conventional doctors.

  When some of their seriously ill patients died, the press and medical authorities turned on the Evans brothers, saying they were mixing arsenic and chloride of zinc with their herbs. However, John and Daniel continued to treat everyone who visited them, and turned down huge sums of money for their recipe, including £45,000 from a grateful American they had cured. John died in 1913 and Daniel in 1919, and the recipe was passed on to John’s son, David Rees Evans, who continued the family tradition of medical herbalism.

  Old Gruff

  The author Marguerite Evans had developed writer’s block, which she blamed on finding a pile of muddy potato peelings between her bedsheets after a disagreement with her cook. So her husband, the author Caradoc Evans, drove her to a whitewashed cottage at the end of a rutted track near Llangurig, to visit his friend Evan Griffiths. Old Gruff was a farmer, tall, burly, dignified, clean-shaven, white-haired, with twinkling blue eyes, a tweed coat and a Welsh flannel shirt open at the neck. When he wasn’t riding up the mountain on his pony, he liked to sit in a high-backed stick chair with his fingers touching a mysterious blue stone that he used as a doorstop. For Old Gruff was a dyn hysbys.