Welsh Folk Tales

by Peter Stevenson

  A voice whispered in her head, ‘Clean up this mess’. After she had scrubbed away all the blood, she thought the little room looked quite charming. Then she heard voices and footsteps, so she hid inside an old grandfather clock. There were four voices, deep and growling, and one said, ‘We must find the person who has done this’.

  Just then, she noticed blood on the pendulum, and as she scrubbed it with the hem of her dress the clock chimed. The door opened, and four big men with black beards and ear piercings peered in at her. Like bears, they were. They growled and gnashed their teeth, and she closed her eyes and waited for them to eat her up. But they told her not to be afraid, and one of them held out a beautiful earring, another a necklace, and they invited her to stay and look after their house.

  Fallen Snow suspected these men were robbers, which was good, because it meant they would be able to keep her in pretty things. So she agreed to stay. The men liked to play with her golden hair, and soon they asked her to marry them. She agreed, providing they stole plenty of money and jewels. And so it was, she lived there with these four bad men who all loved her.

  I know this because I played fiddle at their weddings. There was no beer, only brandy, and I drank so much I don’t remember how I got home. But she married all four of them, she did. And they are living there still, happy as Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs.

  ‘Xolova.’

  23

  SETTLERS, TRAVELLERS AND TOURISTS

  Madoc and the Moon-Eyed People

  When Owain, King of Gwynedd, died in 1170, a war of succession broke out between his many sons. Madoc, one of Owain’s illegitimate children, decided to leave his ravaged country in search of a brave new world. He built the Gwennan Gorn, a ship constructed of oak from the forests of Nant Gwynant, held together with stag’s horn. He sailed from Rhos-on-Sea and landed in ‘Utopia’, Mobile Bay, Alabama. Leaving his people to settle, he returned to Wales with a skeleton crew, and told everyone of his plans to build a new Gwynedd, free from civil war. He gathered enough settlers to fill ten ships, and set sail.

  Madoc never returned.

  Except in folk tales.

  Stories were told of a mythical native tribe who had built a stone fort at Devil’s Backbone in north-west Georgia, before settling along the Missouri River. They had white skin, blonde hair and blue eyes, and spoke a language not unlike Welsh. The Cherokee called them the ‘Moon-eyed people’, for they could see better at night. They called themselves ‘Mandan’.

  Iolo Morganwg heard these stories, and financed an expedition to search for the Mandan, led by John Evans, son of a Methodist preacher from Waunfawr. Evans landed in Baltimore in 1792 with $1.75 in his pocket, and wrote to Iolo saying it was ‘the Mabinogion, or Death’. He walked over the Allegheny Mountains to Pittsburgh, then seven hundred miles down the Ohio by boat, along the Mississippi to St Louis, where he was thrown into jail by the Spanish rulers on suspicion of being an English spy. He negotiated his release by volunteering to take the hazardous journey through the Rockies to map the trail to the Pacific for Spain.

  In 1795, he set off along the Missouri with thirty men, following the route taken by the lost Welsh. As winter approached, they reached the Omaha territories, aware of the story that Chief Blackbird was said to have killed sixty men who opposed him by poisoning their dog-meat soup. In fact, Blackbird befriended them, and allowed them to build a fort by the river and hunt buffalo on the freezing plains. When spring came, Evans and a handful of men rode north. After three hundred miles, they were attacked by the Sioux and fled back to the safety of the Omaha. Evans was told that a Frenchman had made contact with a white-skinned tribe who lived in houses and grew crops, so he set off again, this time following the Missouri.

  Having walked and ridden one thousand eight hundred miles, and travelled five thousand miles from Waunfawr, John Evans found the Mandan. He knew, because a Union Jack was flying over their village, hoisted there by a Canadian fur trader, Rene Jessaume. Evans removed the offending object and raised the Spanish flag. The Mandan chiefs, Big White Man and Black Cat, welcomed him and invited him to stay. He spent a winter with them, examining their skin for whiteness and studying their speech for linguistic traces of Welsh. Counting from one to five in Welsh is ‘un, dau, tri, pedwar, pump’. In Mandan it is ‘maxana, nunp, namini, toop, kixo’. In the spring, Evans’s health had deteriorated, and when Jessaume returned and threatened to kill him he decided it was time to leave the Welsh tribe forever.

  When he returned to St Louis, Evans wrote to Iolo, ‘There is no such people as the Welsh Indians’. He took to the bottle, his house flooded, and he died in New Orleans aged twenty-nine. The Mandan lived a little longer. They caught smallpox from the white settlers and by the 1830s there were only one hundred and fifty left. The few survivors married into neighbouring tribes, and the last ‘pure’ Mandan, Mattie Grinnell, died in 1975.

  The Mandan told the story of Lone Man, who travelled the world from swamp to swamp, and when the corn was ripe he sang, ‘Who am I? Where do I come from?’ The earth told him, ‘I am your mother. I grow herbs for you. Boil them up for food and medicine. Go into the world and heal your brothers.’ So Lone Man travelled. He met a brother, and they argued over who was the oldest, then they smoked tobacco together, and decided to take Mother Earth’s herbs and make a world. They created hills and lakes, trees and plains, woodpeckers and buffalo, and the animals multiplied. Old Grandmother Frog complained that they were making too many animals and needed to be rid of some. So they hit Frog with a hot stone and she became the first creature to die. Frog came back and told them Death wasn’t such a good idea after all, but they said it was too late, Death was here to stay.

  Having created his world, Lone Man had nothing left to do. He was bored. So he became Coyote the Trickster. Coyote came to a village where everyone was thin, despite there being so much food. The people said that whenever they hunted, a raven appeared. It had the head of a bald man and the body of a long-necked bird. When it squawked ‘gi-ba, gi-ba’, the food turned sour. Coyote tasted it, he chewed and he chewed and spat it out. So he called for friend Spider. They made a fire of dung and sticks, sat and smoked their pipes, and considered how to stop Raven. They knew he lived in a hole in a hollow tree, so Spider spun a web across the hole and when Raven emerged, he flew into the web. Coyote caught him and threw him into the fire. As he burned, his feathers flew into the air like small ravens. Coyote crushed the unburned bones, and out flew a White Raven, as white as Branwen in the old story. As it flew away, White Raven sang, ‘Only when the world ends will I return’.

  Wil Cefn Goch

  Saturday 28 November 1868 was Election Day in Ceredigion, and Tory candidate Edward Vaughan of Trawscoed was defending his seat. There was change in the air. Vaughan had evicted families from their cottages, the windows of his election office in Aberystwyth had been smashed, and a hundred special constables were on the streets armed with staves. Labouring men had the vote for the first time and declared themselves for the Liberals.

  Vaughan lost his seat that day, and returned to his mansion to be told his gamekeeper Joseph Butler had been shot dead by three poachers. One of them, Morgan Jones, had been captured. His fourteen-year-old brother gave himself up the following morning. The third, the man who fired the shot, William Richards of Llangwyryfon, was on the run. Vaughan offered one hundred pounds reward for information leading to Wil’s arrest, wealth beyond dreams to the poor folk of Ceredigion. And so the hunt began for Wil Cefn Goch.

  Wil was described as being:

  About 28 years of age, 5ft 9” or 10” high, slight figure, long thin legs, with stooping gait, light hair slightly curled, thin sandy whiskers, long thin face, lower teeth overlapping upper teeth, long nose rather Roman, full grey eyes, speaks very little English, is supposed to be dressed in a dark home-made coarse coat, corduroy breeches and leggings, striped check shirt, and lace-up boots, clumsy feet, and has been operated upon for a bruise in the testicle.

  The polic
e searched barns and cottages, but there was no sign of Wil. His girlfriend Elizabeth Morgan of Pontrhydfendigaid refused to talk, for she knew the folk of Ceredigion were hiding him in hayricks, outhouses, pigsties, trees and up chimneys. The police entered a house where a woman had just given birth, and interviewed her as she lay in bed holding her bawling baby, although they failed to spot Wil, who was lying beneath her. He hid behind a revolving mill wheel, and when the police asked the miller to stop the wheel, he said he would if they paid him compensation for loss of production. Being good Cardi boys, they refused.

  Months passed, roads were blocked and ports watched. Wil was moved from house to house, protected by Dafydd Thomas Joseph, clock maker from Trefenter, and John Jones, the radical grocer of Aberystwyth. They decided to send him to Ohio where Ceredigion migrants would look after him. They avoided roadblocks by walking the mountain tracks to Liverpool, where Dafydd bought him a ticket for the New World. The police swarmed round the docks but failed to spot Wil, who was disguised as a plausible woman, albeit with a bruised testicle. Vaughan sent a detective to Ohio, but received a letter implying that there were plenty of trees in America to hang a private detective from.

  In Ohio, Wil was no folk hero. He worked as an itinerant farm worker, drank too much, and tried to stab an Irish maid who taunted him for his lack of English, but the butcher’s knife stuck in a cupboard and before he could pull it out, she escaped. No proceedings were taken as the maid was considered as bad as he was.

  He found a job as an iron worker and changed his name to David D. Evans. Elizabeth, his girlfriend from Pontrhydfendigaid, saved up enough money to sail out to join him, and within a year they were married. They bought a farm, adopted a son and she settled him down to a life around the chapel. He lived for fifty-one years in Ohio and is buried in Oak Hill Cemetery, close to the chapel which is now a Welsh museum. The museum staff were unaware of him, perhaps understandably preferring spinning wheels and harps to an unattractive folk ‘hero’.

  Malacara

  In May 1865 the clipper ship Mimosa was chartered to take over a hundred and fifty settlers to Patagonia, to create a new colony based around the Welsh language and culture. On board with his father, mother and sister, was three-year-old John Daniel Evans from Mountain Ash. They settled in the lower Chubut Valley where they built farms on land given by the local Tehuelche people, though the soil was stony and difficult to plough. By the time young Evans was twenty-one, he had become a fine farmer and horseman, with an instinctive knowledge of the Pampas and the indigenous people.

  In 1883, Evans was chosen to lead an expedition to search for more fertile fields, minerals and possibly gold, further along the river towards the Andes. He set off with his creole pony, Malacara, and a company of young Welshmen.

  This was the time of the ‘Conquest of the Desert’, when Argentina and Chile were fighting for control of Patagonia and the indigenous people were being slaughtered or incarcerated. Evans and his men passed soldiers with Tehuelche prisoners. In fear, the men turned back, all except for three: Davies, Hughes and Parry. They rode for four hundred miles into the High Sierra, tied into their saddles with exhaustion, heads bowed in sleep, horses’ hooves splintering on the sharp stones.

  A group of Mapuche accused them of being spies for the Argentinians. They realised they could go no further so they decided to return to the Welsh settlement, but as they retreated, Evans heard hooves behind him, turned round to see Hughes and Parry on the ground, and Davies limp in the saddle. All three men were speared. A party of Mapuche were on his tail. Malacara galloped on until they came to a precipice, when the pony leapt over a twenty foot wide ravine, scrambled down a scree slope and began the two hundred-mile journey home.

  Two days later, Evans rode into the Welsh colony. The settlers could not understand why the indigenous people would attack them. A party of forty men rode to the valley and found the bodies of Hughes, Parry and Davies. They had been picked at by vultures, their hearts and bones cut out, and their genitals placed in their mouths. It seemed that Evans and his men had been mistaken for an Argentinian patrol. The bodies were buried and a memorial was erected.

  Two years later, John Daniel Evans and Malacara again followed the river to the Andes, and this time he arrived in a valley he christened Cwm Hyfryd, where he built a town, Trevelin. He worked as a miller and farmer, helped build the railway, supported the chapel, brought up six children after his wife Elizabeth died, owned the first car in Trevelin, and once returned to Wales to search for the wife of Richard Davies, one of his three companions who had been killed that day. When Malacara died in 1909, John Evans erected a monument to the heroism of his brave horse, without whom he would not have lived till he was eighty-one.

  And the Tehuelche? They had lived in Patagonia for fourteen thousand years, as hunter-gatherers and nomads, before their hunting grounds were turned into sheep pasture by settlers. They voluntarily changed their traditional way of life in order to live peacefully with their neighbours, but were killed by European diseases and persecution. By the 1960s the native language had died out, though a few thousand people with Tehuelche ancestry still live in Patagonia and Argentina, and a handful are learning the old language – alongside over five thousand Patagonians who speak Welsh.

  The Texan Cattle Farmer

  A cattle rancher from Texas was on holiday in Crymych when he met an old farmer. ‘Howdy,’ said the Texan, ‘fine little black cattle you got there?’

  ‘Indeed,’ said the old boy, ‘You’re a farmer yourself?’

  ‘Cattleman myself,’ replied the Texan, ‘Thousand head of purebreeds. Takes me three days to drive round my land.’

  ‘Duw, there we are,’ said the old boy, ‘I have a car like that.’

  24

  TRAINS, TRAMPS AND ROADS

  The Old Man of Pencader

  In 1188 Gerald of Wales, Giraldus Cambrensis, priest and chronicler from Manorbier, embarked on a two-month journey around Wales to raise money for the Third Crusade, in the company of the Archbishop of Canterbury.

  Gerald had both Welsh and Norman ancestry – a man of two worlds; a born observer who told of the first recorded encounter with the fairies when a boy called Elidyr ran away from home and met two little men who took him to the Otherworld. He lived happily between the two worlds until he stole a golden ball from the Otherworld for his mother and was banished forever. Instead, he became a priest in Neath.

  Gerald also told this iconic tale:

  In 1162, amidst Welsh uprisings, King Henry II was travelling to Cardigan Castle to meet Lord Rhys. An old man was standing by the roadside in Pencader, so Henry asked his opinion of the future of Wales under English rule. The old man replied, ‘This nation may now be harassed, weakened and decimated by your soldiery, as it has so often been by others in former times; but it will never be totally destroyed by the wrath of man, unless at the same time it is punished by the wrath of God … I do not think that on the Day of Direct Judgement any race other than the Welsh, or any other language, will give answer to the Supreme Judge for this small corner of the earth.’

  The Old Man’s words are engraved in Welsh on a Plaid Cymru plaque near the fish and chip cafe. I recently asked for a day return to Pencader on the bus and the driver said, ‘We don’t do returns to Pencader. Why would anyone want to leave?’

  The Tales of Thomas Phillips, Stationmaster

  In 1926, Thomas Phillips, stationmaster at Carmarthen, published a collection of tales about the curiosities of life on the Welsh railways, entitled Railroad Humours: Humours of the Iron Road, or Stories from the Train.

  Pencader Tunnel had a reputation. It was long and dark enough for young men and women to flirt. A young couple were travelling from Newcastle Emlyn, and the lad had a plaster on his nose when he entered the tunnel but when he came out the other end the plaster was on the cheek of the girl.

  Two visiting gentlemen and three local ladies were in a compartment travelling on the 2.20 p.m. to Llanrhystud Road when
the train ground to a halt in the tunnel. One gentleman put out his pipe, leaving the compartment in complete darkness. The other gent asked why he did not smoke in the tunnel, and he replied there was no pleasure in smoking in the dark. They heard the sound of giggling, followed by rustling, and a loud sniffing. The gent asked what pleasure the ladies got from taking snuff in the dark and they sang:

  There was a young lady who took snuff,

  she said it was easy enough,

  for she sneezed when she pleased,

  and was pleased when she sneezed,

  and that was pleasure enough.

  A little barefoot urchin crept into the train on a cold, wet day, entered an apartment containing a lady and a gentleman, climbed onto the corner window seat and fell asleep. The gentleman rustled his newspaper and grumbled about this scruffy little creature being allowed into his carriage with his dirty feet. The lady arose, removed her expensive muff, placed it gently under the child’s head and kissed him. The gentleman hid behind his newspaper and said no more.

  A wicker basket was left on the platform at Carmarthen Station, addressed to a vicar in Cardigan. Tied to it was a label that said, ‘Containing live dog’. Two young porters liked dogs so they untied the string, opened the basket and peeped in. A large black Labrador leapt out and disappeared down the platform into the night, pursued by the two porters, a ticket collector and the tea lady. The porters knew there would be hell to pay when the stationmaster found out, so they hatched a plan. The station dog, Tipper, was a messy mongrel with an eye patch, who caught rats in exchange for a meal. The porters tied a pink ribbon around Tipper’s neck, placed him in the basket, tied it up, loaded it on the next train for Cardigan and crossed their fingers that the vicar wouldn’t notice. The days passed, but nothing was heard of Tipper again. And that’s why there were no church mice in Cardigan, while Carmarthen railway station was overrun with rats.