From earliest times, Men and the fairy kind seem to have existed side by side. Ancient myths and legends tell how, as the Sidhe (the People of the Mounds), they influenced and aided great heroes in their efforts or else worked against them on behalf of their enemies. Initially, they were probably no more than the embodiment of the elemental forces, which the Celts believed to be in the landscape all around them. Latterly, however, they were considered to be another race not human and were known under a variety of names. For example, as the Tuatha de Danaan (the People of Danu), they were known throughout ancient Ireland as great healers but also were feared as powerful magicians. According to the “Book of Invasions” (a monkish text probably written around the 12th century), they arrived “from the East” (Greece?) in a “golden mist” and partly drove out those who already occupied Ireland. As the slightly more hostile Sluagh in Scotland, they were responsible for creating fierce winds and for hurling stone and rocks at the humans whom they despised
They often appeared, when they allowed the Sons of Adam to see them, as humanoid creatures, sometimes in old legends as beautiful men and girls, golden-skinned and with noble features. Their society, according to tradition, was loosely modeled on Celtic society itself so that the mortals whom they captured could make the transition between the two spheres of existence quite easily.
But where had the fairy kind—the Sidhe, the Sluagh, or whatever local Celts chose to call them—come from? Had they, as some sources suggest, come from the East? Were they all that remained of the ancient gods and goddesses who had once been worshipped throughout the Celtic lands before the coming of Christianity? Or were they really angels who had been banished from Heaven? Were they friendly or utterly and implacably hostile towards Humankind? Down through the centuries, from very ancient to relatively recent times, there have been many explanations for their origin.
One of those who considered the problem from a learned perspective and with regard to the Welsh Tylwth Teg (as the Sidhe were named in Wales) was the folklorist and Classicist Elias Owen, Vicar of Llanyblodwel. Turning his not inconsiderable knowledge to the matter, he began to speculate on the origins of these supernatural beings from earliest, mythological antiquity. His “Notes on Y Tylwyth Teg” (1895–6) set the Celtic fairies within a wider Classical and mythological context, as the following excerpt shows.
Excerpt From
“Notes on Y Tylwyth Teg”
by Elias Owen
The Fairy tales that abound in the Principality (of Wales) have much in common with like legends in other countries. This points to a common origin of all such tales. There is a real and unreal, a mythical and material aspect to Fairy Folk-lore. The prevalence, the obscurity and the different versions of the same Fairy tale shows that their origin dates from remote antiquity. The supernatural and the material are strangely blended together in these legends, and this also points to their great age, and intimates that these wild and imaginative Fairy narratives had some historical foundation. If carefully sifted, these legends will yield a fruitful harvest of ancient thoughts and facts connected with a history of a people which, as a race is, perhaps, now extinct, but which has to a certain extent been merged into a stronger and more robust race, by whom they were conquered and dispossessed of much of their land. The conquerors of the Fair Tribe have transmitted to us tales of their timid, unwarlike, but truthful predecessors of the soil, and these tales shew that for a time, both races were the inhabitants of the land, and to a certain extent, by stealth, intermarried.
Fairy tales, much alike in character, are to be heard in many countries, peopled by peoples of the Aryan race [Editor's Note: With whom the Celts were believed to have strong connections], and consequently these stories in outline were most probably in existence before the emigration of the families belonging to that race. It is not improbable that the emigrants would carry with them, into all countries whithersoever they went, their ancestral legends, and they would have no difficulty in supplying these interesting stories with a home in their new country. If that supposition be correct, we must look for the origin of Fairy Mythology in the cradle of the Ayrian people, and not in any part of the world inhabited by the descendants of that great race.
But it is not improbable that incidents in the process of colonisation would repeat themselves, or under special circumstances, vary, and thus we should have similar and different variations of the same historical event in all countries once inhabited by a diminutive race, which was overcome by a more powerful people.
In Wales, Fairy legends have such peculiarities that they seem to be historical fragments of by-gone days. And apparently, they refer to a race which immediately preceded the Celt in the occupation of the country, and with which the Celt, to a limited degree, amalgamated.
The Fairies have, in Wales, at least three common and distinctive names, as well as others that are not nowadays used.
The first and most general name given to the Fairies is “Y Tylwyth Teg or the Fair Tribe, as an expressive and descriptive term. They are spoken of as people, and not as myths or goblins, and they are said to be a fair or handsome race.
Another common name for the Fairies is Bendyth y Mamau or “A Mother's Blessing”. In Doctor Owen Pughe's Dictionary, they are called “Benditth eu Mamau” or, “Their Mother's Blessing”. The first is the more common expression, at least in North Wales. It is a singularly strange expression, and difficult to explain. Perhaps it hints at Fairy origin on the mother's side of certain fortunate people.
The third name given to the Fairies is “Ellyll, an elf, a demon, a goblin. This conveys these beings to the land of spirits, and makes them resemble the oriental Genii, and Shakespeare's sportive elves. It agrees, likewise, with the modern popular creed respecting goblins and their doings.
Davydd ab Gwilym in a description of a mountain mist in which he was once enveloped says:
“Yr ydoedd ym mbob gobant
Ellyllon mingeimiou gant”
A hundred wrymouthed elves.”
The Cambro-Britian v. I.p. 348
In Prembrokeshire, the Fairies are called Dynon Bach Teg or the Small Fair People.
Another name applied to the Fairies is Plant Annwfn or Plant Annwn. This, however, is not an appellation in common use. The term is applied to the Fairies in the third paragraph of a Welsh prose poem called Bard Cuag, thus:
“Y bwriodd y Tylwyth Teg fi...oni baify nyfod; mawn pryd i'th achub o' gigweinau Plant Annwfn.”
“Where the Tylwyth Teg threw me......If I had not come in time to rescue thee from the clutches of Plant Annwfn”
Annwn or Annwfn is defined in Canon Silvan Evans's Dictionary as an abyss, Hades etc. Plant Annwfn, therefore, means the children of the lower regions. It is a name derived from the supposed place of abode—the bowels of the earth—of the Fairies. Guragedd Annwn, the dames of Elfin land, is a name applied to Fairy ladies.
Ellis Wynne, the author of Bard Cuag, was born in 1671, and the probability that the words Plant Annwfn formed in his days part of the vocabulary of the people. He was born in Merionethshire.
Gwyll, according to Richards and Dr. Owen Pughe is a Fairy, a goblin etc. The plural of Gwyll would be Gwylliaid or Gwyllion but this latter word Dr. Pughe defines as ghosts, hobgoblins etc. Formerly there was, in Merionethshire, a red-haired family of robbers called Y Gwylliaid Cochion or the Red Fairies, of whom I shall speak hereafter.
Coblynau or Knockers have been described as a species of Fairies whose abode was within the rocks, and whose province it was to indicate to the miners by the process of knocking etc., the presence of rich lodes of lead and other metals in this or that direction of the mine.
That the words Tylwyth Teg and Ellyll are convertible terms appears from the following stanza, which is taken from the Cumbrian Magazine vol ii p. 58.
“Pan dramwych ffrid yr Ywan,
Lle mae Tylwyth Teg rhodien,
Dos yamlaen, a pbaid a sefyll,
Gwillia'th droed—rhag dawnsva'r Ellyll”
“When the forest of the Yew,
Where Fairies haunt, thou passest through,
Tarry not, thy footsteps guard,
From the Goblin's dancing sward”
Although the poet mentions Tylwyth Teg and Ellyll as identical, he might have done so for rhythmical reasons. Undoubtedly, in the first instance, a distinction would be drawn between these two words, which originally were intended perhaps to describe two different kinds of beings but in the course of time the words became interchangeable, and thus there distinctive character is lost. In English, the words Fairies and elves are used without any distinction. It would appear from Brand's Popular Antiquities vol. II p. 478. that, according to Gervaise of Tilbury there were two types of Goblin in England, called Portuni and Grant. This division suggests a difference between the Tylwyth Teg and the Ellyll. The Portuni, we are told, were very small of stature and old in appearance, “statura pusilli dimidium pollicis non habentes” but then they were “senili vultu facie corrugata”. The wrinkled face and aged appearance of the Portuni remind us of nursery Fairy tales in which the ancient female Fairy figures. The pranks of the Portuni are similar to those of Shakespeare's Puck. The species Grant is not described, and consequently it cannot be ascertained how far they resembled any of the many kinds of Welsh Fairies. Gervaise, speaking of one of these species says:—“If anything should be carried on in the house, or any kind of laborious work to be done, the join themselves to the work, and expedite it with more than human facility.”
In Scotland, there are at least two species of elves, the Brownies and the Fairies. The Brownies are so called from their tawny walnut colour, and the Fairies from their fairness. The Portuni of Gervaise appear to have corresponded in character to the Brownies, who were said to have employed themselves in the night to the discharge of laborious undertakings, acceptable to the family to which they had devoted themselves. [Editor's Note: In this they appear to be a folkloric remnant of the ancient household gods of Rome who were in charge of the maintenance and well-being of house, home, and property.] The Fairies proper of Scotland strongly resembled the Fairies of Wales.
The term Brownie, or swarthy elve, suggests a connection between them and the Gwylliaid Cochion or Red Fairies of Wales.
In the mythology of the Greeks, and other nations, gods and goddesses are spoken of as falling in love with human beings, and many an ancient genealogy began with a celestial ancestor. Much of the same thing is said of the Fairies. Tradition speaks of them as being enamoured of the inhabitants of this earth, and content for awhile to be wedded to mortals. And there are families in Wales who are said to have Fairy blood coursing through their veins, but they are, or were, not so highly esteemed as were the offspring of the gods among the Greeks. The famous physicians of Myddfai, who owed their talent and supernatural knowledge to their Fairy origin are, however, an exception, for their renown, notwithstanding their parentage, was always great, and increased in greatness as the rolling years removed them from their traditionary parent, the Fairy lady of the Van Pool.
The Pellings are said to have sprung from a Fairy mother and the author of Observations on the Snowdon Mountainside states that the best blood in his veins is Fairy blood. There are, in some parts of Wales, reputed descendants on the female side of the Gwilliaid Cochion race; and there are other families among us who the aged of fifty years ago, with an ominous shake of the head, would say were of Fairy extraction. We are not, therefore, in Wales void of families of doubtful parentage or origin.
All the current tales of men marrying Fairy ladies belong to a class of stories called, technically, Taboo stories. In these tales the lady marries her lover conditionally, and when this condition is broken, she deserts her husband and children, and hies back to Fairy land.
This kind of tale is current among many people. Max Muller in Chips from a German Workshop vol. II pp. 104-6 records one of these ancient stories, which is found in the Brahamna of Yagur-Veda. Omitting a few particulars, the story is as follows:
“Urvasi, a kind of Fairy, fell in love with Pururavas, son of Ida and when she met him she said: ‘Embrace me three times a day, but never against my will, and let me never see you without your royal garments for this is the manner of women’. In this manner she lived with him a long time, and she was with child. Then her former friends, the Gandharvas, said:
“This Urvasi has now dwelt a long time among mortals, let us see that she come back.” Now, there was a ewe with two lambs, tied to the couch of Urvasi and Pururavas and the Gandharvas stole one of them. Urvasi said: “They take away my darling as if I had lived in a land where there is no hero and no man.” They stole the second and she upbraided her husband again. Then Proves looked and said: ‘How can that be a land without heroes and men where I am?’ And naked he sprang up; he thought it too long to put on his dress. Then the Gandharvas sent a flash of lightning, and Urvasi saw her husband naked as by daylight. Then she vanished: ‘I am come back’ she said, and went.
Puruavas bewailed his love in bitter grief. But whilst walking along the border of a lake full of lotus flowers, the Fairies were playing there in the water, in the shape of birds and Urvasi discovered him and said:
‘That is the man with whom I dwelt so long’. Then her friends said. ‘Let us appear to him.’ She agreed and they appeared before him. Then the king recognised her and said:
‘Lo! my wife, stay, thou cruel in mind! Let us now exchange some words! Our secrets, if they are not told now, will not bring us back on any later day!’
She replied: ‘What would I do with thy speech! I am gone like the first of the dawns. Puruavaras, go home again. I am hard to be caught, like the wind’.
The Fairy wife by and by relents, and her mortal lover became, by a certain sacrifice, one of the Gandharvas.
This ancient Hindu Fairy tale resembled in many particulars similar tales found in Celtic Folk-lore and possibly the original story in its main features, existed before the Ayrian family had separated. The very words, “I am hard to be caught” appear in one of the Welsh legends, which shall hereafter be given:
“I am hard to be caught”
And the scene is similar: in both cases the Fairy ladies are discovered in a lake. The immortal weds the mortal, conditionally, and for awhile the union seems to be a happy one. But, unwittingly, when engaged in an undertaking suggested by, or in agreement with the wife's wishes, the prohibited thing is done and the lady vanished away.
Such are the chief features of these mythical marriages. I will now record like tales that have found a home in several parts of Wales.
I am indebted to the Rev. Owen Jones, Vicar of Pentrevoelas, a mountain parish in West Denbighshire for the following tale, which was written in Welsh by a native of those parts and appeared in competition for a prize on the Folk-lore of that parish.
The son of Hafodgarrog was shepherding his father's flock on the hills and while thus engaged, he, one misty morning, came suddenly upon a lovely girl, seated on the sheltered side of the peat-stack. The maiden appeared to be in great distress and she was crying bitterly. The young man went up to her, and spoke kindly to her, and his attention and sympathy were not without effect on the comely stranger. So beautiful was the young woman, that from the expression of sympathy, the smitten youth proceeded to words of love, and his advances were not repelled. But while the lovers were holding sweet conversation, there appeared on the scene a venerable and aged man, who, addressing the female as her father, bade her follow him. She immediately obeyed, and both departed, leaving the young man alone. He lingered about the place until the evening, wishing and hoping that she might return, but she came not. Early the next day, he was at the spot, where he first felt what love was. All day long, he lingered about the place, hoping that the beautiful girl would pay another visit to the mountain, but he was doomed to disappointment and night again drove him homewards. Thus, daily, went he to the place where he had first met his beloved, but she was not there, and, love-sick and lonely, he returned to Hafodgarrog. Such devotion deserved its reward. It would seem that the young lady loved the young man quite as much as he loved her. And in the land of allurement and illusion (yen nhir hud a lledrith), she planned a visit to the earth, and met her lover, but she was soon missed by her father, and he suspecting her love for this young man came upon them, and found them conversing lovingly together. Much talk took place between the sire and his daughter, and the shepherd, waxing bold, begged and begged her father to give him his daughter in marriage. The sire, perceiving that the man was in earnest, turned to his daughter and asked her whether it were her wish to be married to a man of the earth? She said it was. Then the father told the shepherd he should have his daughter to wife, and that she should stay with him, until he should strike her with iron, and that as a marriage portion, he would give her a bag filled with bright money. The young couple were duly married and the promised dowry was received. For many years, they lived lovingly and happily together, and children were born to them. One day this man and his wife went to the hill to catch a couple of ponies, to carry them to the Festival of the Saint of Capel Garmon. The ponies were very wild and could not be caught. The man, irritated, pursued the nimble creatures. His wife was by his side and now he thought he had them in his power, but just at the moment he was about to grasp their manes, off they wildly galloped, and the man in anger, finding that they had again eluded him, threw the bridle after them, and, sad to say, the bit struck his wife and, as this was of iron, they both knew that their marriage contract was broken. Hardly had they time to realise the dire accident, ere the aged father of the bride appeared, accompanied by a host of Fairies, and there and then departed with his daughter to the land whence she came, and that too, without even allowing her to bid farewell to her children. The money though, and the children were left behind, and these were the only memorials of the lovely wife and the kindest of mothers, that remained to remind the shepherd of the treasure he had lost in the person of his Fairy spouse.
Such is the Pentrevoelas Legend. The writer had evidently not seen the version of this story in the Cambro-Briton nor had he read Williams's tale of a like occurrence, recorded in Observations on the Snowdon Mountains. The account, therefore, is all the more valuable as being an independent production.
A fragmentary variant of the preceding legend was given me by Mr. Lloyd, late schoolmaster of Llanfibangal-Glyn-Mylyr, a native of South Wales who heard the tale in the parish of Llanfibangel. Although but a fragment, it may not be altogether useless, and I will give it as I received it:
Shon Rolant, Haford y Dre, Pentrevoelas, when going home from Llanrwst market, fortunately caught a Fairy-maid whom he took home with him. She was a most handsome woman, but rather short and slight in person. She was admired by everybody on account of her great beauty. Shon Rolant fell desperately in love with her and would have married her but this she would not allow. He, however, continued pressing her to become his wife and by and by, she consented to do so, provided she could find out her name. As Shon was again going home from the market about a month later, he heard some one saying, near the place where he had seized the Fairy maid: “Where is little Penloi gone? Where is little Penloi gone?” Shon thought that some one was searching for the Fairy he had captured, and when he reached home, he addressed the Fairy by the name he had heard, and Penloi consented to become his wife. [Editor's Note: This portion of the tale seems to be a variant of a very old legend that has come down to us in the form of the children's fairy tale Rumpelstiltskin. As with many other ancient peoples, the early Celts believed in both the importance and power of names—which was, after all, a person's identity, and speaking another's name would give one power over them.) She, however, expressed displeasure at marrying a dead man, as the Fairies call us. She informed her lover that she was not to be touched with iron or she would disappear at once. [Editor's Note: Fairies were supposed to have a particular aversion to iron. In certain parts of the Celtic world, iron horseshoes were placed close to a sleeping child until it could be baptised, to prevent it being stolen by the fairy-kind.] Shon took great care not to touch her with iron. However one day, when he was on horseback, talking to his beloved Penloi, who stood at the horse's head, the horse suddenly threw up its head and the curb, which was of iron, came in contact with Penloi, who immediately vanished out of sight.
The next legend is taken from Williams's Observations on the Snowdon Mountains. His work was published in 1802. He himself was born in Anglesey, in 1738, and migrated to Carnarvonshire about the year 1760. It was in this latter county that he became a learned antiquary, and a careful recorder of events that came under his notice. His “Observations” throw a considerable light upon the life, the customs and the traditions of the inhabitants of the hill parts and secluded glens of Carnarvonshire. I have thought fit to make these few remarks about the author I quote from, so as to enable the reader to give him the credence which he is entitled to. Williams entitles the following story “A Fairy Tale”, but I will for the sake of reference, call it “The Ystrad Legend.”
In a meadow belonging to Ystrad, bounded by the river which flows from Cwellyn Lake, they say the Fairies used to assemble, and dance on fair moon-light-nights. One evening a young man who was the heir and occupier of this farm, hid himself in a thicket close to the spot where they used to gambol; presently they appeared, and when in their merry mood, out he bounced from his covert and seized one of their females; the rest of the company dispersed themselves and disappeared in an instant. Disregarding her struggles and screams; he hauled her to his home, where he treated her so very kindly that she became content to live with him as his maid servant; but he could not prevail upon her to tell him her name. Some time after, happening to see the Fairies again upon the same spot, he heard one of them saying: “The last time we met here, our sister Penelope was snatched away from us by one of the mortals”. Rejoiced at knowing the name of his Incognita, he returned home: and, as she was very beautiful and extremely active, he proposed to marry her, which she would not for a long time consent to; at last however she complied but on this condition: ‘That if ever he should strike her with iron, she would leave him and never return to him again’. They lived happily for many years together, and he had by her a son and a daughter; and by her industry and prudent management as a house-wife, he became one of the richest men in the country. He farmed, besides his own household, his own freehold, all the lands on the north side of Nant-y-Bettws to the top of Snowdon and all of Cwmbrynog in Llanberis, an extent of about five thousand acres or upwards.
Unfortunately, one day Penelope followed her husband into the fields to catch a horse; and he being in rage at the animal as he ran away from him, threw the bridle that was in his hand, which unluckily fell on poor Penelope. She disappeared in an instant and he never saw her afterwards, but heard her voice in the window of his room, one night after, requesting him to take care of the children in these words:
Yn rhodd rhowch arno gob ai dad,
Rhag bod anwyd ar liwr cann,
Rhoddwch arni bais ei mam”.
That is:
“Oh! Lest my son should suffer cold,
Him in his father's coal infold.
Lest cold should seize my darling fair,
For her, her mother's robe prepare”.
These children and their descendants, they say, were called Pellings; a word corrupted from their mother's name Penelope.
Williams proceeds thus with reference to the descendants of this union:
“The late Thomas Rowlands Esq., of Caeran in Anglesey, the father of the late Lady Bukeley, was a descendant of this lady if it be true that the name Pellings came from her; and there are still living several opulent and respectable people who are known to have sprung from the Pellings. The best blood in my own veins is this Fairy's.”
This tale was chronicled in the last century but it is not known whether every particular incident connected therewith was recorded by Williams. Glasynys, the Rev. Owen Wynne Jones, a clergyman, relates a tale in the Brython which he regards as the same tale as that given by Williams, and he says that he heard it scores of times when he was a lad. [Editor's Note: Glasynys was the pen name used by another celebrated Welsh folklorist and antiquarian: Owen Wynne Jones, who contributed to the Brython, a Welsh journal of history, tradition and folklore, to which Elias Owen alludes.] Glasynys was born in the parish of Rhostryfan in Carnarvonshire in 1827, and as the place of his birth is not far distant from the scene of this legend, he may have heard a different version of Williams's tale and that too of equal value with Williams's Possibly, there are not more than from forty to fifty years between the time when that older writer heard the tale and the time when it was heard by the younger man. An octogenarian or even a younger person could have conversed with both Williams and Glasynys. Glasynys tale appears in Professor Rhys's Welsh Fairy Tales, Cymmrodor, vol iv, p. 188. It originally appeared in the Brython for 1863 p. 193. It is as follows:
“One fine sunny morning, as the young heir of Ystrad was busied with his sheep on the side of Moel Eilio, he met a very pretty girl, and when he got home he told the folks there of it. A few days afterwards, he met her again, and this happened several times, when he mentioned it to his father, who advised him to seize her when he next met her. The next time he met her he proceeded to do so, but before he could tale her away, a little fat old man came to them and begged them to give her back to him, to which the youth would not listen. The little man uttered terrible threats, but he would not yield, so an agreement was made between them that he was to have her to wife until he touched her skin with iron, and great was the joy both of the son and his parents in consequence. They lived together for many years, but once on a time, on the evening of Bettws Fair, the wife's horse got restive, and somehow as the husband was attending to the horse, the stirrups touched the skin of her bare leg, and that very night, she was taken away from him. She had three or four children and more than one of their descendants, as Glasynys maintains, were known to him at the time he wrote in 1863”.
No Welsh Taboo story can be complete without the pretty tale of the Van Lake Legend or, as it is called “The Myddfai Legend”. Because of its intrinsic beauty and worth and for sake of comparison with the preceding stories, I will relate this legend. There are various versions. [Editor's Note: For comparative purposes I have chosen a version to which Elias Owen alludes and recounts in his Notes and which appeared in a volume of the Cambro-Briton in 1821.]
“A man who lived in the farmhouse called Esgair-Ileathdy, in the parish of Myddvai in Carmarthenshire, having bought some lambs in a neighbouring fair, brought them to graze near Llyn a Van Voch on the Black Mountains. Whenever he visited the lambs, three most beautiful female figures presented themselves to him from the lake and often made excursions on the boundaries of it. For some time, he pursued and endeavoured to catch them, but always failed; for the enchanting nymphs, and, when they had reached the lake they tauntingly exclaimed:
Cras dy fara,
Anhawdd ein dala.
which, with a little circumlocution, means “For thee, who eatest baked bread, it is difficult to catch us”.
One day some moist bread from the lake came to shore. The farmer devoured it with great avidity, and on the following day he was successful in his pursuit and caught the fair damsels. After a little conversation with them, he commanded courage sufficient to make a proposal of marriage to one of them. They consented to accept him on the condition that he would distinguish her from her two sisters on the following day. This was a new and very great difficulty to the young farmer, for the fair nymphs were so similar in form and features, that he could scarcely perceive any difference between them. He observed, however, a trifling singularity in the strapping of her sandal by which he recognised her the following day. Some indeed who relate this legend, say that this Lady of the Lake hinted in a private conversation with her swain that upon the day of the trial, she would place herself between her two sisters and that she would turn her right foot a little to the right and by this means, he distinguished her from her sisters. Whatever were the means, the end was secured, he selected her and she immediately left the lake and accompanied him to his farm. Before she quitted, she summoned to attend her from the lake, seven cows, two oxen, and one bull.
The lady engaged to live with him until such time as he would strike her three times without cause. For some years they lived together in comfort and she bore him three sons, who were the celebrated Meddygon Myddvai.
One day when preparing for a fair in the neighbourhood, he desired her to go to the field for his horse. She said she would, but being rather dilatory, he said to her humorously, “dos, dos. Dos—i.e. go, go, go” and he slightly touched her on the arm, three times with his glove.
As she now deemed the terms of her marriage broken, she immediately departed, and summoned with her her seven cows, her two oxen and the bull. The oxen were at that very time ploughing in the field but they immediately obeyed her call and took the plough with them. The furrow from the field in which they were ploughing, to the margin of the lake is to be seen in several parts of that country to the present day.
After her departure, she once met her two sons in a Cwm, now called Cwm Meddygon (Physicians Combe) and delivered to each of them a bag containing some articles which are unknown but which are supposed to have been some discoveries in medicine.
The Meddygon Myddvai were Rhiwallon and his sons, Cadwgan, Gruffydd, and Einion. They were the chief physicians of their age, and they wrote about A.D. 1230. A copy of their works is in the Welsh School Library, in Grey's Inn Lane.
Such are the Welsh Taboo tales. I will now make a few remarks upon them.
The age of these legends is worthy of consideration. The legend of Meddygon Myddvai dates from about the thirteenth century. Rhiwallon and his sons, we are told by the writer of the Cambro-Briton wrote about 1230 A.D. but the editor of that publication speaks of a manuscript written by these physicians about the year 1300. Modern experts think that their treatise on medicine in the Red Book of Hengist belongs to the end of the fourteenth century, about 1380 or 1400.
Dyfydd ab Gwilym, who is said to have flourished in the fourteenth century, says in one of his poems, as given in the Cambro-Briton, vol ii, p 313, alluding to these physicians:
“Meddyg nis gwnai modd y gwaeth
Myddfai, o chai ddyn maddfaeth”
“A Physician he would not make,
As Myddvai made, if he had a mead fostered man”
It would appear, therefore, that these celebrated physicians lived somewhere about the thirteenth century. They are describes as the Physicians of Rhys Gryg, a prince of South Wales, who lived in the early part of the thirteenth century. Their supposed supernatural origin dates therefore from the thirteenth or at the latest, the fourteenth century.
I have mentioned Y Gwylliaid Cochion, or as they are generally styled, Gwylliaid Cochion Mawddwy, the Red Fairies of Mawddwy as being of Fairy origin. The Llanfrothen Legend [Editor's Note: There is an ancient story from Llanfrothen in Merionethshire in which a shepherd marries a maiden who emerges from a hill. She lives with him for a number of years and they have several children. When touched with iron, she tells him that she must now depart and return to her former life. He asks what will become of the children without a mother, to which she replies, “Let them be red-headed and big-nosed.”] seems to account for a race of men in Wales differing from their neighbours in certain features. The offspring of the Fairy union were, according to the Fairy mother's prediction in that legend, to have red hair and prominent noses. That a race of men having these characteristics did exist in Wales is undoubted. They were a strong tribe, the men were tall and athletic, and lived by plunder. They had their head quarters at Dinas Mawddwy, Merionethshire and taxed their neighbours in open day, driving away sheep and cattle to their dens. So unbearable did their depredations become that John Wynn ap Meredydd of Gwydir and Lewis Owen, or as he is called Baron Owen, raised a body of stout men and overcame them on Christmas Eve, 1554, succeeded in capturing a large number of the offenders and, then and there, some hundred or so of the robbers were hung. Tradition says that a mother begged hard for the life of a young son, who was to be destroyed, but Baron Owen would not relent. On perceiving that her request was unheeded, baring her breast, she said:
“Y bronan melynion hyn a fagasant y rhai a didialant waed fy mab, ac a olchant en dwylaw yu ugwaed calon Ilolrudd en brawd”
“These yellow breasts have nursed those who will revenge my son's blood and will wash their hands in the heart's blood of this murderer of their brother”
According to Pennant this threat was carried out by the murder of Baron Owen in 1555 when he was passing through the thick woods of Mawddwy on his way to Montgomeryshire Assizes at a place called to this day Llidiart y Barwn, the Baron's Gate, from the deed. Tradition further tells us that the murderers had gone a distance off before they remembered their mother's threat and returning thrust their swords into the Baron's heart and washed their hands in his heart's blood. This act was followed by vigorous action, and the banditti were extirpated, the females only remaining, and the descendants of these women are occasionally still to be met with in Montgomeryshire and Merionethshire.
For the preceding information, the writer is indebted to YrHynafion Cmyru rig pp. 91-94, Archaeologia Cambrensis for 1854 pp. 119-20: Pennant vol ii, pp. 225-27. ed. Carnarvon, and the tradition that was told him by the Rev. D. James, Vicar of Garthbeibio, who likewise pointed out to him the very spot where the Baron was murdered.
But now, who were these Gwylliaid? According to the hint conveyed by their name, they were of Fairy parentage, an idea which the writer in the Archaeologia Cambrensis, vol v 1854 p.119, intended to throw out. But, according to Brut y Tywysogion, Myf Arch., p. 706 A.D. 1114, Denbigh edition, the Gwylliaid Cochion Mawddwy began in the time of Cadwgan ab Bleddyn ab Cynwyn.
From William's Eminent Welshmen, we gather that Prince Cadwgan died in 1110 A.D. and, according to the above-mentioned Brut, it was in his days that the Gwylliaid commenced their career if not their existence.
Unfortunately, for this beginning of the red-headed banditti of Mawddwy, Tacitus states in his Life of Agricola ch. xi that there were in Britain, men with red hair whom he surmises were of German extraction. We must, therefore, look for the commencement of a people of this description long before the twelfth century, and the Llanfrothen legend either dates from remote antiquity or it was some tale that found in its wanderings, a resting place in that locality in ages long past.
From a legend recorded by Geraldus Cambrensius which shall by and by be given, it would seem that a priest named Elidorus lived among the Fairies in their home in the bowels of the earth, and this would be in the early part of the twelfth century. [Editor's Note: In another part of his work, Owen refers to a legend from Cambrensius's “Itinerary through Wales,” which the Archdeacon had learned in 1188 during a visit to St.David's. The legend, already ancient at the time, relates how a boy, Elidorus, being trained for the priesthood and anxious to escape his rigorous masters, fled into an underground world inhabited by a smaller race of men and women who spoke a language similar to Greek. He lived amongst them for a time, returning occasionally to his own sphere and at last was prevailed upon by friends and family to return permanently and to resume his priestly studies. Cambrensius cites the source of this tale as being David II, former Bishop of St. David's who died in 1176 and who allegedly had spoken to Elidorius when the priest was in his old age and who also had learned some of the language of the underground world.] The question arises, is the priest's tale credible, or did he merely relate a story of himself which had been ascribed to some one else in the traditions of the people? If his tale is true, then, there lived even in that late period a remnant of the aborigines of the country, who had their homes in caves. The Myddvai Legend in part corroborates this supposition for the story apparently belongs to the thirteenth century
It is difficult to fix the date of the other legends here given, for they are dressed in modern garb with, however, trappings of remote times. Probably all these tales have reached, through oral tradition, historic times but in reality they belong to that far-off distant period when the prehistoric inhabitants of this island dwelt in Lake-habitations, or in caves. And the marriage of Fairy ladies, with men of a different race, intimate that the more ancient people were not extirpated but were amalgamated with their conquerors.