Welsh Folk Tales

by Peter Stevenson

  7

  DREAMS, MEMORIES AND THE OTHERWORLD

  The Story of Guto Bach

  ‘Don’t talk to me, you silly young things – don’t provoke an old man, now upwards of ninety years of age, by saying there were no fairies in Wales … I tell you that fairies were to be seen in the days of my youth by the thousand, and I have seen them myself a hundred times.’

  So said Cobbler Jig – real name, Siôn Tomos Siôn Rhydderch, shoemaker from Aberpergwm – who told this tale:

  Guto Bach, son of Hywel Meredydd Siôn Morgan, looked after his father’s sheep on the Rhos in Y Creunant. Guto was a daydreamer, always wandering off to play on the mountain. Once, he returned with pockets full of pieces of peculiarly white paper the size of crowns, with letters stamped on them. He said they were given to him by the little children on the mountain.

  One day Guto never came home. The whole neighbourhood was in a commotion, his father searched everywhere for him, but all he found were pieces of white paper with letters stamped on them. Time passed, and Guto never returned, until one morning his mother opened the door and there he was, sitting on the doorstep, looking not a day older than when he vanished, dressed in the same clothes, and holding a parcel. He told his mother he had been dancing with the fairies to the playing of a harp, and thought he had only been gone a few hours. His mother took the parcel from him. It contained white paper clothes without seams or stitching. Guto’s mother burned them, and said no more.

  After hearing this story, Cobbler Jig decided he would like to see the fairies for himself. He consulted a gypsy woman who told him to find a four-leaved clover and nine grains of wheat, and meet her at midnight on top of Craig-y-Ddinas. So he met the gypsy as arranged, and she placed the clover and wheat in her book, and washed his eyes with liquid from a phial. When his eyes cleared, he saw thousands of the little folk dressed in white paper clothes, all dancing round in a circle to a score of harps. All night they danced, until at sunrise they gathered in a line on top of the precipice, rolled themselves into balls and tumbled away down the hill and disappeared into the woods. After that Cobbler Jig saw them so often the people of Glynneath took no notice, either of him or the fairies.

  Cobbler Jig was eccentric and jocular. ‘One of the most entertaining persons I ever met with, and to those who understood Welsh, he was certainly a great treat,’ explained Maria Jane Williams when she wrote down his story in 1827. Maria Jane was born in c.1795 at Aberpergwm House in Glynneath. She was known as Llinos (Linnet) for the beauty of her singing, and her playing of the harp and guitar.

  When she was twenty, she began collecting fairy tales from the Vale of Neath, which she sent to an Irish antiquarian, Thomas Crofton Croker, who published them in the second volume of his Fairy Legends and Traditions of Southern Ireland in 1828, with an acknowledgement to ‘the lady to whom the compiler is indebted’. Maria Jane became involved with another Irishman, John Randall, her father’s gardener, with whom she had a child called Fanny – although some suspected Fanny’s father was the rakish Earl of Dunraven, who kept a shooting box on his estate specifically for amorous adventures.

  The Fairies of Pen Llŷn

  John Rhys was a farmer’s son from Ponterwyd, Ceredigion, who became the first professor of Celtic Studies at Oxford University. He spent the summer of 1882 collecting fairy tales on Pen Llŷn, where he met Reverend Robert Hughes of Llanaelhaearn, who had seen the fairies riding ‘wee’ horses along the Pwllheli road one grey morning as he returned from his fiancée’s house. Rhys explained, ‘Story-telling was kept alive in the parish of Llanaelhaearn by the institution known as the pilnos, or peeling nights, when the neighbours met in one another’s houses to spend the long winter evenings dressing hemp and carding wool … When they left these merry meetings they were ready, as Mr Hughes says, to see anything.’

  A Nefyn man was returning from Pwllheli Fair when he stopped at an inn at Efailnewydd. He didn’t remember an inn being there before, but he stabled his horse, enjoyed a few beers, took a bed for the night and slept like a lord. In the morning he found himself lying on a pile of ashes with his horse tied to a fence post, nibbling his hair.

  Griffith Griffith, a strong devout man from Perth y Celyn, Edern, set off at two in the morning to walk twenty miles to Caernarfon to pay his rent. He was passing through the heather between Llithfaen and Llanaelhaearn at the foot of Tre’r Ceiri when he saw a crowd of little men and women walking towards him, speaking a language neither English nor Welsh. He stood by the ditch to let them pass, and felt no fear. To Griffith, they were the tylwyth teg.

  Alaw Lleyn of Edern, told the story of a woman who lived in a house on the beach at Nefyn, whose daughter disappeared for hours on end. The girl told her mother she had been playing at Pin y Wig, with some children who were much nicer than she was. The woman followed her daughter to the top of the headland where the girl pointed to her friends, and became excited when she saw their father was with them. The woman saw nothing, and forbade her daughter to visit the tylwyth teg again.

  Lowri Hughes of Nefyn told a tale about her Nan, who was milking a cow at Garn Boduan when a dog came sniffing around. Nan kicked it away and it ran off, whining. It returned with a lame fiddler who asked for milk. She refused, so the fiddler began to play, and Nan found herself caught in an everlasting dance with the tylwyth teg, tormented forever by her own cruelty. Lowri’s husband said the tylwyth teg lived beneath a sod on the old earthworks at Porthdinllaen, and were only seen when the weather was misty. The earthworks is now a golf course.

  Elis Bach of Tŷ Canol, Nant Gwrtheyrn, was thought to be a changeling child. His father was a farmer, and all his brothers and sisters were the size of humans but Elis had legs so short his body almost touched the ground. He could run nimbly through the ruins of the Giant’s Town on Tre’r Ceiri, and could easily round up the mountain goats for the Nant livestock markets.

  At one market, Elis saw two men offering to pay over the odds for sheep. His mam invited them in for cawl, while Elis hid in a cupboard and overheard the strangers conspiring to steal all the sheep in the Nant. As the men were herding the stolen sheep up the corkscrew road, Elis followed on a separate path through the trees with his dog, Meg. He lay in wait at a bend in the road, leapt out in front of them, did a weird dance, frightened the lives out of them and chased them off towards Pistyll, while Meg escorted the sheep back down the track to the Nant.

  The tylwyth teg still live under the old earthworks at Porthdinllaen, although you won’t see them: too many golfers.

  Gower Power

  Willie John lived with his mam in a cottage at Llanmadoc on Gower, where he was famous for his home-brewed beer. The cottage was full of buckets and demijohns containing bubbling concoctions and intoxicating experiments with elderberries. One evening Willie’s mam was feeding the hens when she heard a voice, ‘Old lady, favour us with kindness’. It was the Verry Volk, standing next to a bed of primroses. They explained that they wished to reward the villagers for their kindnesses by giving them each a few grains of gold dust, but they needed to borrow a sieve to separate the grains from the nuggets. They pointed to the sieve that Willie used for straining his beer. Mam lent them the sieve and off they went down the path and over Llanmadoc Hill, without a thank you. ‘You’re very welcome,’ she said. Later that night there was a tapping at the door, she opened it to find Willie’s sieve leaning against the wall.

  One Sunday after chapel, Willie strained some hops and brewed a cask of beer. By late summer it was ready, and he settled down in his chair by the fire and took a sup. Soon there was a sparkle in his eye and a twinkle in his toes, and he danced around the room to imaginary fiddles till his trousers fell round his ankles and his mother carried him up to bed. Every night this happened, and after only a very small tankard of beer. This was the strongest ale he had ever brewed, it was indeed. And what’s more, the cask never seemed to empty. It was come-and-come-again beer.

  Soon Willie John’s beer was the talk of North Gower a
nd the pubs of Cheriton and Llangennith emptied as the old farmers came down from the commons, the rowdy cockle girls walked from Penclawdd, and they danced all night to Phil Tanner’s mouth-music. Willie and his mam soon had more money than they ever dreamed of. Then mam got to thinking. A dangerous occupation, thinking. She thought, ‘the Verry Volk must have enchanted the old sieve before they returned it, bless them.’

  Knowing the Verry Volk’s business is to break the spell, and the cask slowly emptied, until the day came when Willie John drank the last drop of the finest beer that Gower had ever tasted. But when Willie’s mam was cleaning the cobwebs from the cellar she found a little bag of gold dust, just enough to buy hops for Willie to brew another batch of beer next year.

  The Curse of Pantanas

  The farmer at Pantanas hated the fairies, what with all that singing and dancing amongst the wildflowers in his meadows. So he decided to be rid of them. He scythed down the flowers, ploughed up his fields, dug deep into the cold clay and sowed corn. When the fairies found their beautiful home destroyed, they vanished.

  One summer evening when the corn was ripe for harvest, the farmer met a little man dressed in a red coat, who pointed a sword at his nose and said, ‘Revenge!’ That night his corn burned to the ground. The little red man appeared again, waved the sword around his head, and said, ‘Revenge begins!’

  The farmer told him not to be so dramatic, and to speak plainly. The little man explained that cutting down all the flowers and deep-digging the soil was no way to treat the land, and that there would be trouble, not for himself or his children, but for his children’s children’s children. Well, the farmer thought he’d be long beneath the cold clay by then, but he considered his great-grandchildren, and offered the fields back to the fairies. The little man accepted, but said the soil was already so deeply damaged, there would still be revenge. The fairies smoothed out the furrows and sowed seeds of cornflower and corn-cockle, and soon the meadows rang with singing and dancing, and the farmer went to bed with sheep’s wool stuffed in his ears to shut out the racket.

  Time passed, and memories of the curse dimmed. The farmer’s great-grandson lived at Pantanas, a progressive lad called Rhydderch, who had turned the fields back to corn, always haggled a good price for his crop, and tolerated no red poppies or yellow rattle. He was engaged to Gwerfyl, the maid at Pen Craig Daf, and one winter evening, the two families were celebrating when they heard a voice from outside. It said, ‘Revenge is here,’ and a little old woman peered in through the window.

  Rhydderch shouted, ‘Go away, you old hag!’ The little old woman said she had come to explain how to free him from his fate but for this insult he would be cursed forever, and she vanished. Rhydderch laughed and ordered the feasting to continue.

  Later that night, Rhydderch escorted Gwerfyl home to Pen Craig Daf, they kissed, swore undying love, and he set off home into the cold frosty night. He never arrived. They searched the woods, the ditches, the caves and potholes at Raven’s Rift, but Rhydderch had disappeared.

  Time passed, generations were laid in the cold clay, and the curse, the lost boy and the fairies were all forgotten.

  Rhydderch woke up with a headache, as if he’d slept too long. He was lying in a pothole at Raven’s Rift. He remembered dancing with the fairies, and Gwerfyl would be worried about him, maybe angry. He walked to Pan Craig Daf to apologise, but couldn’t find her. He ran across the valley to Pantanas, but no one recognised him. Everything seemed changed. The fields were neatly ploughed, hedges had been uprooted, woods felled, paths closed and ponds drained. There were fences everywhere. He was intrigued.

  An old man asked who he was, and Rhydderch explained. The old man shook his head and said he had a dim memory of his grandfather telling him that a young man had vanished from Pantanas a century before, after dancing with the fairies. Rhydderch began to shake, the man held him by the shoulders, and in that moment he turned to dust and crumbled into the very same cold clay that his great-grandfather had first ploughed all those years ago.

  Crossing the Boundary

  Ifan Gruffydd of Rhos-y-ffordd near Llangefni, was a farmhand, writer, actor and teller of this tale:

  My mother warned me never to go near Peter Green’s cave in Henblas Woods, for it was well known that the fairies lived there, and they stole little children and kept them for a year and a day. I was told never to cross the boundary, and that boundary was the church. No doubt about it. I was scared of the fairies, though I loved to hear stories about them. And the cave was a lonely sort of place, silent and still, though everywhere was quiet in those days, you could hear footsteps half a mile away and know who it was.

  We lived in a village of just a few houses, just Mam and me in this little old cottage. I liked being by myself. One Christmas, I was given a penny pistol, and I was thrilled to bits with it. Armed with my little pistol full of water, I went to the church and across the boundary into the field where the reeds grew as tall as my armpits, and before I knew it, I was at Peter’s cave. There was a little tent at the entrance, and a family of four eating their Christmas dinner. Two big greyhounds lay under a handcart, red tongues hanging like bloody blades over their chops, ears pricking up and flattening, as if they were ready to hunt at their master’s command. I dropped my pistol. It was no use in the face of the fairies.

  Well, before I could run for my life, the two children surrounded me. The boy counted the buttons of my coat, and chucked me under the chin. The girl drew her hand across my cheek, and kissed me, and oh, she was pretty. I was very young, but I’d fallen head over heels in love with her. I was terribly scared, but they gave me food, pheasants and hares, chicken and turkey, and I had a roasted Christmas dinner. I was sure Mam was worrying about me, so I stayed.

  Soon enough I was happily playing with the children, and had given over the idea that they were the fairies. I played with them many times, and I loved it there. Dear me! I was fond of Juliana. Her father was a Scot, so people said, who had left home and married a dark girl from the Mediterranean. Juliana had inherited her mother’s crow-black hair, and I had been told it was dangerous to mix with dark girls. Well, it made no difference to me, nobody could stop me going to Peter’s cave.

  One Saturday when I got there, they’d disappeared. Nothing left, only the dried rushes where they’d lain down to sleep, the ashes of the fire where they baked their potatoes, and the paths through the grass where we ran. Well, I was heartbroken. Juliana had gone, and I longed for her. I longed for her until she slipped from my mind completely.

  When I grew up, I wandered the length and breadth of this old world, and found myself in France at the end of the First World War, in a camp in Dunkirk. It was my responsibility to look after the canteen staff who made meals for the soldiers who came on ships from the Middle East to be fed and rested. Then on they’d go to the next battle, and others took their places. It was a crazy place.

  The French locals did a great trade selling things to the soldiers to take home as souvenirs. An old woman and her daughter came up to me and asked me whether they could set up a little shop near the entrance to the tents. Well, I did more than that for them. I lent the old woman a table to put her wares on, and I became very friendly with them. I’d call by for a chat early in the morning around ten, with a cup of tea each and one for myself. And the old woman told me stories, and the girl – oh dear me! – I’d completely fallen in love with her. Day after day we talked. The old lady told me she spoke fifteen languages, and could change from French to English to German, just like that. I told her I could speak one language she couldn’t – ‘Welsh’. And she said, ‘Rwy’n siarad Cymraeg.’

  You see, she had lived in Wales with her late husband, so I asked whereabouts and she took out a postcard, it said, ‘Llanfairpwllgwyngyllgogerychwyrndrobwllllantysiliogogogoch’.

  Well, Christmas Day came and the old lady set up shop. I took them Christmas dinner from the cookhouse, and we chattered away, though the girl was quiet. Then she turned and
looked at me and said, ‘You lived with your mother in the cottage beyond the church.’ I looked at her. Crow-black hair, dark eyes – it was Juliana. They had wandered the world, from one cave to another, one country to another, always being moved on, marginalised and dispossessed, until they found themselves here. At Christmas, just as it was when I last saw her at Peter’s cave.

  Well, when the war ended I came home. I don’t know what happened to Juliana. I should have stayed with her, I know, but I couldn’t decide, I was very young. Maybe I didn’t think. This wasn’t a movie. It was a true story, and a fairytale. There we are. That was my encounter with the fairies.

  8

  GOBLINS, BOGEYS AND PWCAS

  The Ellyll

  The American Consul to Wales, Wirt Sikes, was passing the Huntsman’s Rest at Peterston-super-Ely, near Cardiff, when he encountered a group of men drinking from tankards, smoking clay pipes and discussing emigration to America.

  Sikes, born in Jefferson County, New York, in 1836, was living a bohemian life as a writer, social reformer and independent newspaperman before he was sent to Cardiff by President Ulysses S. Grant. To occupy his time, he began collecting stories of encounters with pwcas and fairies, which he published in 1880 as British Goblins. The men from the Huntsman’s Rest told him this tale:

  Rowli Pugh and Catti Jones lived on a farm in Glamorganshire and they were known for their bad luck. Their crops withered, the roof leaked, the house was damp, their noses dripped, Catti had a weak chest, Rowli’s back ached, they had no money and nothing to laugh at, at all. Their fortune was so bad they decided to sell the farm and go to America.