Welsh Folk Tales

by Peter Stevenson

  So the woman filled an eggshell with puddin’ and put it on to boil. She heard singing from the cowshed:

  We have lived long in this world.

  We were born at the beginning of time,

  long before the acorn grew.

  Yet we never saw a harvest supper fit inside an eggshell.

  Something is wrong in this house,

  we will not stay beneath this roof.

  And the fairies vanished. Forever.

  And that’s how you get rid of the fairies, according to David Tomos Bowen’s mother, and she should know.

  The Hiring Fair

  An old couple from Garth Dorwen, Penygroes, were weary with age. The old man’s feet throbbed from standing on the hillside with his mangy sheep, and the old woman’s back ached from milking her scrawny cows and scrubbing the dairy. They knew this could go on no longer.

  So, on Calen Gaeaf, the first day of winter, dressed in their Sunday best, she in bonnet and shawl, he in bowler and waistcoat, they walked to the November Hiring Fair in Caernarfon. They strode up and down the line of young job seekers, all scrubbed faces and shining shoes, until they saw a small girl with thin red lips and raven black hair, who was twirling a penknife between her fingers. She told them her name was Elin and she was as strong as a carthorse and nimble as a mountain goat. A coin changed hands, and she was told to start work at first light the following morning. She followed them to the farm, walking three steps behind, clutching a sprig of rowan.

  In the morning, Elin lit a roaring fire, milked the cattle, churned the butter, scrubbed the farmyard and placed a pot of salt-porridge to simmer on the hearth. In the evening she made cawl and fresh baked bread, sang songs and told tales. When the moon shone, she collected the coarse wool the sheep rubbed onto brambles, she carded it, dyed it, sat at her spinning wheel and wove bundles of warm blankets for bony old shoulders. By winter’s end, the old couple had grown to love this dark girl who slept with a sprig of rowan on her pillow and an iron penknife by her side. She was the daughter they never had.

  When the blackthorn bloomed and the days lengthened, Elin took her spinning wheel into the meadow and never returned. ‘The tylwyth teg have taken her,’ thought the old woman, ‘they always do.’ Soon, their backs ached and feet throbbed once more.

  One evening a tall elegant man came to Garth Dorwen, saying he was from Rhos-y-Cwrt, and had heard the old woman knew the arts of the midwife, so she was to come with him, for his wife was in labour. His piercing eyes stared into the old woman’s soul and she knew she could not refuse. He led her through fields and woods she had known since childhood, until they came to Rhos-y-Cwrt. He ushered her inside and showed her a scarlet bedchamber where a golden-haired lady was lying on a scarlet-draped four-poster bed, screaming.

  She delivered the lady of a beautiful baby with golden curling locks. The man told her she was to stay for a month and care for his child, and she would want for nothing for the remainder of her mortal days. She could not refuse. He gave her an ointment to rub into the baby’s skin, but warned her never to get it into her own eye.

  A month almost passed, and she was rubbing the ointment into the baby’s skin, when her left eye itched, she scratched it, and the ointment brushed her eye. In that moment, everything changed. Through her right eye she saw a scarlet-draped bedchamber, through her left it was a miserable dank cave, the four-poster bed was a mattress of rushes, and the golden-haired lady was raven-haired Elin.

  Elin had run away from an arranged marriage to the tylwyth teg. She protected herself with a sprig of rowan and an iron penknife, until one night she was so tired after a hard day, she forgot the rowan and fell asleep. He had swept her away and laid her in his bed.

  Elin told the old woman to say nothing, and her husband would be true to his word.

  A month passed, the old woman returned home to find fresh milk, bread and cheese on her doorstep every day, the dairy scrubbed till it shone, and a fire blazing in the hearth. And so it was forever and a day.

  Eleven months passed, and the November Fair rolled into Caernarfon. Prices were high, and word was that the tylwyth teg were there. They were, for the old woman saw Elin’s husband spearing fruit from the stalls with a sword. Without a thought, she ran to him and asked after Elin and the baby. ‘She is quite well,’ replied the man. ‘Through which eye do you see me?’ As the old woman raised her left hand, he took his sword, plucked out her eye, placed it in his sack, and vanished.

  The old woman never saw the tylwyth teg again, but she still had her memory and she never forgot Elin, the raven-haired girl who slept with a sprig of rowan on her pillow and an iron penknife by her side.

  The Baby Farmer

  Cadi was a tall red-haired girl from Ynys Môn, who loved to dance with the fairies. They came through her keyhole at night, made a noise like the wind and danced a corelw around her room. They left her money, though she had never seen them, and felt she never should.

  Cadi saved her money, and soon she had enough to get married. She chose a man as tall as herself, and they had a fine spindly child. One night at the fair, she told her husband how the fairies left her money. When they returned home, she tucked her baby snugly in his cradle, kissed him and went to bed. Next morning, she found a tiny wrinkled creature in the cradle, and she knew her own child had been taken. The fairies never came again, and she was left penniless to raise the wrinkled child. And she knew she should never have talked of fairy money.

  Cadi became a baby farmer. She had so many babies, she couldn’t count them all on her fingers. Yet poor as she was, she always dressed them well. All apart from her firstborn fairy child, who walked around in the filthiest of rags.

  One day, Cadi went to the woods to gather sticks for the fire and she found a piece of gold. She knew it was fairy money and she mustn’t speak of it. So she spent some of it on fine clothes for her children, hid the rest in the pot dog on the mantlepiece, and said not-a-word to her husband.

  One day, a man knocked at her door, and told her she may be eligible for poor relief. She closed the door on him, rounded up her well-dressed children and hid them in the crog loft. She opened the door and showed the man her filthy firstborn and said she was oh-so-very-poor that she couldn’t afford to dress her babies in anything better than rags. After the man left, Cadi went to the crog loft to fetch her precious ones, but they had vanished, gone to live with the fairies, never to be seen again.

  10

  DEATH, SIN-EATERS AND VAMPIRES

  Poor Polly

  David Siôn, a servant from Ystradfellte had heard more portents of death than most people; the groans of the cyhyraeth (banshee), the howling of the cŵn annwn (hellhounds), and the chirping of the aderyn gorff (corpse bird). One night he and a friend were crossing a bridge on their way home when they saw a light coming to meet them. It was a canwyll gorff (corpse candle). It hovered over the stream and they saw a face reflected in the water. It was young Polly Siôn Rhys Siôn, a seamstress who worked with them at Ystradfellte. She was wearing the corpse candle on her ring finger, shielding it from the wind. ‘Oh, not Polly,’ they thought, ‘she’s far too young to have business in the graveyard.’ Yet a week later, poor Polly was carried over the same bridge towards her burying ground.

  Welsh Wake Amusements

  A wicked old farmer from Dolranog near Mynydd Carningli was lying in his coffin in the parlour usually reserved for visiting vicars. He had refused the minister’s last request to repent, and died with a smile on his face. At his gwylnos, there was dancing to harp and fiddle, while his two nephews sang rowdy songs. In the past they would have raised the coffin on their shoulders and danced round with it, to let the dead join in the celebration, then tied a rope around the corpse’s ankles and dragged him up the chimney feet first. But the old farmer wasn’t one to dance. He didn’t like flowers, either.

  Before midnight, they heard the sound of galloping hooves, closer and closer, until the door burst open and a blast of icy wind blew out all the can
dles. You could have heard a needle drop on a sheep’s fleece. Then the door slammed shut and the hooves were heard again, fainter and fainter. They lit the candles and continued singing and dancing till the early hours.

  Before they left, the old man’s two nephews went into the parlour to pay their last respects. The coffin was empty. They looked round the room but there was no sign of the corpse. So they filled the coffin with stones and nailed on the lid, and made a pact never to tell a soul that the Devil had taken their uncle, and no one would have ever known, if I had not told you.

  The Fasting Girls

  In 1770, Thomas Pennant, the curious traveller, visited forty-seven-year-old Mary Thomas of Tyddyn Bach, Llangelynin, near Tywyn.

  Mary was seven when she contracted scarlet fever. She was seized with inflammations and swellings every spring and autumn. She could not bear to be touched on the left side, and her pain was relieved only by the application of a sheep’s skin freshly taken from the animal. Her parents took her to Holywell for a cure, but when she was twenty-seven, the fever struck again, more violently this time, and for over two years she ate nothing.

  When she recovered, she thought she had been asleep for only a day. She asked for food but couldn’t keep anything down, other than water smeared on her lips. She took the sacrament, after which she managed a few drops of wine and a little bread and a nut-kernel of egg. Pennant described:

  Her eyes weak, her voice low, deprived of the use of her lower extremities, and quite bedridden; her pulse rather strong, her intellects clear and sensible … she takes for her daily subsistence a bit of bread, weighing about two penny-weights seven grains, and drinks a wine glass of water: sometimes a spoonful of wine, but frequently abstains whole days from food and liquids. She sleeps very indifferently: the ordinary functions of nature are very small, and very seldom performed.

  Following Pennant’s visit, news spread of the miracle girl. She was visited by George III’s brother, Prince William Henry of Gloucester, and a nobleman who donated goods worth £50. Some locals suspected she was performing for the tourists, and filling her belly after dark. Others said it was gweledigaeth, ‘trance’. When she was in her mid-eighties, visitors described her as a mere skeleton, with a brown complexion and jet-black eyes, an unusually large head, leathery skin and sucking soup through a hollow goose quill, arms nothing more than skin and bone; the muscles of her legs wasted away, though her memory was sharp, and she could hear conversations a considerable distance away.

  By 1812 she had moved to a cottage at Friog near Dolgellau, cared for by her neighbours and surviving on bread dipped in beer. She baked her own bread in a pot on a tripod, kneading it while she lay in bed. She died in 1813, aged around ninety.

  By the 1860s, fasting girls like Mollie Fancher, the Brooklyn Enigma, had become newspaper celebrities. Sarah Jacob was born in May 1857 near Llanfihangel-ar-Arth, Carmarthenshire, the daughter of a church deacon. When she was nine, Sarah fell ill with scarlet fever, and as she recovered she lay in bed, wrote poetry, read her Bible and refused food. She became a local curiosity; folk came to visit her. She seemed healthy enough – big wide eyes, plump rosy cheeks, red lips, flowers and ribbons in her hair, ‘like a lily amongst thorns,’ said one perceptive visitor.

  Yet she never ate or drank. They said her sister passed her food when they kissed, like a mother bird would feed her fledgling. Her friends said she never ate much anyway. The vicar wrote to the newspapers about the miracle girl who was living on air. Visitors caught the train on the newly opened railway line, bringing gifts of money and flowers, hoping to find cures for their ailments or to witness the freak show. By 1869 she had lived for two years without food or drink.

  Guy’s Hospital in London organised an experiment. Nurses watched Sarah round the clock, with instructions not to give her food unless she asked. She didn’t, and just over a week later she died. Her parents were convicted of manslaughter; her father Evan served a year’s hard labour in Swansea Gaol, her mother Hannah six months, and soon the story of the Welsh Fasting Girl was forgotten.

  Evan Bach Meets Death

  When Evan was sixty, Death came to visit. Evan told Death it was foolishly soon, that he had plenty to occupy him, his garden needed digging, there was the dog to feed, and Mrs Morgan would be inconsolable, but Death said he had set his mind on a man of sixty.

  Evan’s eyes lit up. He suggested Billy James in Newton, ‘He’s weary of life, he’d be glad to go.’

  Death said he wanted a healthy man.

  Evan coughed, thumped his chest, spat into the fire, and said, ‘Well there’s Dewi Mawr of Pyle, he can walk forty miles a day and not be breathless.’

  Death smiled, but Evan was getting into his stride.

  ‘There’s Ned of Merthyr Mawr, Jack o’ Cornelly, old Uncle Dick o’ Newton, all over eighty, miserable as sin, and no one to mourn over them.’

  ‘Too old’, said Death.

  Evan suggested, ‘A game o’ cards?’

  Death said that, contrary to popular belief, he wasn’t a gambler.

  ‘I could give you my savings,’ said Evan. ‘It’s a tidy sum.’

  Death said he had little use for money where he came from, but maybe they could do a deal.

  Evan agreed.

  Death told him he must be more generous, and give money to the poor.

  ‘Indeed,’ said Evan.

  He must visit his poor old Aunt Molly.

  ‘Yes, indeed,’ said Evan.

  He must help his nephew repair his old fishing boat.

  ‘Yes, agreed.’

  And support fundraising events, even if they involved fancy-dress.

  ‘Agreed, yes indeed.’

  If you fail, I will come for you.

  Evan asked, ‘Then will I live forever?’

  No, said Death, only till a hundred.

  Evan said he would be quite satisfied with ninety-nine. So he took his Aunt Molly to live with him, bought his nephew a new fishing boat, and gave a few extra coins to the orphanage. But as he approached ninety, he slipped back into his old miserly ways, and Death came for him. Evan pleaded for the other six years, for he still hadn’t dug his garden.

  Too late.

  Death took him.

  Modryb Nan

  Jack’s Nan often disappeared from her home in Neath for months, even years, but she always returned. She had a man in Bridgend, they said, for he had twice been seen visiting her, dressed in a long grey cloak and a slouching grey hat. Jack had never seen his face, but had heard the rattling of keys as he walked.

  One night Jack heard three knocks on the door. Nan shouted, ‘Who’s there?’

  The answer came, ‘You know me.’

  Jack peered over the banisters and watched Nan open the door. A stranger in a grey cloak entered. ‘I am come for you,’ he said.

  Nan shivered and said she wasn’t ready, it was a cold night and she was warm by the fire.

  The stranger threw off his cloak to reveal a bag-o’-bones, and said, ‘This is the third time of asking, tonight I claim my bride’, and he took Nan by the hand and held her round the waist and they began to dance, whirring wildly round and round the flagstone floor, until Nan fell to the floor. Death put on his cloak, threw open the door, and as the icy wind blew in, he grabbed Nan by the arm and was gone. The last Jack saw as he wiped the frost from the window, was a grey skeletal horse flying away like lightning with Nan in front and Death behind.

  And this time Modryb Nan never returned from her Dance with Death.

  Sin-Eaters

  A long, lean and lamentable old man lived in a cottage at Llangorse in the late 1600s. He was paid sixpence to eat a loaf of bread and drink a maple wood bowl full of beer from the chest of a corpse, so consuming the sins of the dead. In the 1850s another sin-eater lived in Llandybie, remembered as a pariah in the community, paid 2s 6d to eat a plate of salt and bread from the corpse’s chest, while muttering an incantation. In Llanllyfni, a family placed a potato or freshly baked cake on the co
rpse, and then left the coffin under the Coeden Bechod, the Tree of Sins, where the sin-eater ate it after dark.

  A highwayman frequented the road through the Usk Valley from Brecon to Abergavenny. No one knew his identity, but suspicion fell upon a gentleman who lived in a fine house in Crickhowel, whose piebald mare was seen by night carrying a masked rider. On his death around 1850, the funeral procession stopped outside the sin-eater’s house. He was a gaunt old man with a sallow complexion, sunken eyes and long grey hair. He ate bread and drank beer over the corpse in exchange for a silver coin, and the gentleman was laid to rest in Crickhowel cemetery. Strange tales were told of the ghost of a masked man on a piebald horse who held up carriages on the road from Brecon to Abergavenny. When he removed his mask, he revealed a gaunt old man with a sallow complexion, sunken eyes and long grey hair.

  Vampires

  In La Dame de Pique, or The Vampire, a Phantasm Related in Three Dramas of 1852, Dion Boucicault wrote:

  The Peaks of Snowdon – The moonlight is seen to tip the highest peaks and creeps down the mountain side; it arrives at the ledge, and bathes the body of Alan Raby in a bright white light – After a moment his chest begins to heave and his limbs to quiver, he raises his arms to his heart, and then, revived completely, rises to his full height. Alan (addressing the moon); ‘Fountain of my life! Once more thy rays restore me. Death! – I defy thee!’

  Boucicault himself played the part of the vampire who climbed Snowdon on the stage of the Princess’s Theatre in London in 1852, forty-five years before Bram Stoker’s Dracula washed up in Whitby. However, Alan Raby was not a normal Welsh vampire.

  A man bought an old four-poster bed at a bankruptcy sale in Cardiff for his wife and four-month-old baby to sleep in while he was away. On the first night, the baby griped and grumbled. On the second night, it wept and wailed till the woman called the doctor, who prescribed a powder to help it sleep. On the third night, it shrieked and howled, and she clutched it to her breast until it died in her arms. On its throat was a red mark with a spot in the middle that was oozing blood.