IX.

IX.There is a kind of fairy tale of which I think I have hitherto not given the reader a specimen: a good instance is given in the third volume of theBrython, at p. 459, by a contributor who calls himself Idnerth ab Gwgan, who, I learn from the Rev. Chancellor Silvan Evans, the editor, was no other than the Rev. Benjamin Williams, best known to Welsh antiquaries by his bardic name of Gwynionyđ. The preface to the tale is also interesting, so I am tempted to render the whole into English, as follows:—‘The fair family were wonderful creatures in the imaginary world: they encamped, they walked, and they capered a great deal in former ages in our country, according to what we learn from some of our old people. It may be supposed that they were very little folks like the children ofRhys Đwfn; for the old people used to imagine that they were wont to visit their hearths in great numbers in ages gone by. The girls at the farm houses used to make the hearths clean after supper, and to place a cauldron full of water near the fire; and so they thought that the fair family came there to play at night, bringing sweethearts for the young women, andleaving pieces of money on the hob for them in the morning. Sometimes they might be seen as splendid hosts exercising themselves on our hills. They were very fond of the mountains of Dyfed; travellers between Lampeter and Cardigan used to see them on the hill of Ỻanwenog, but by the time they had reached there the fairies would be far away on the hills of Ỻandyssul, and when one had reached the place where one expected to see the family together in tidy array, they would be seen very busily engaged on the tops of Crug y Balog; when one went there they would be on Blaen Pant ar Fi, moving on and on to Bryn Bwa, and, finally, to some place or other in the lower part of Dyfed. Like the soldiers of our earthly world, they were possessed of terribly fascinating music; and in the autumnal season they had their rings, still named from them, in which they sang and danced. The young man of Ỻech y Derwyđ24was his father’s only son, as well as heir to the farm; so he was very dear to his father and his mother, indeed he was the light of their eyes. Now, the head servant and the son were bosom friends: they were like brothers together, or rather twin brothers. As the son and the servant were such friends, the farmer’s wife used to get exactly the same kind of clothes prepared for the servant as for her son. The two fell in love with two handsome young women of very good reputation in the neighbourhood. The two couples were soon joined in honest wedlock, and great was the merry-making on the occasion. The servant had a suitable place to live in on the farm of Ỻech y Derwyđ; but about half a year after the son’s marriage,he and his friend went out for sport, when the servant withdrew to a wild and retired corner to look for game. He returned presently for his friend, but when he got there he could not see him anywhere: he kept looking around for some time for him, shouting and whistling, but there was no sign of his friend. By-and-by, he went home to Ỻech y Derwyđ expecting to see him, but no one knew anything about him. Great was the sorrow of his family through the night; and next day the anxiety was still greater. They went to see the place where his friend had seen him last: it was hard to tell whether his mother or his wife wept the more bitterly; but the father was a little better, though he also looked as if he were half mad with grief. The spot was examined, and, to their surprise, they saw a fairy ring close by, and the servant recollected that he had heard the sound of very fascinating music somewhere or other about the time in question. It was at once agreed that the man had been unfortunate enough to have got into the ring of theTylwyth, and to have been carried away by them, nobody knew whither. Weeks and months passed away, and a son was born to the heir of Ỻech y Derwyđ, but the young father was not there to see his child, which the old people thought very hard. However, the little one grew up the very picture of his father, and great was his influence over his grandfather and grandmother; in fact he was everything to them. He grew up to be a man, and he married a good-looking girl in that neighbourhood; but her family did not enjoy the reputation of being kind-hearted people. The old folks died, and their daughter-in-law also. One windy afternoon in the month of October, the family of Ỻech y Derwyđ beheld a tall thin old man, with his beard and hair white as snow, coming towards the house, and they thought he wasa Jew. The servant maids stared at him, and their mistress laughed at the “old Jew,” at the same time that she lifted the children up one after another to see him. He came to the door and entered boldly enough, asking about his parents. The mistress answered him in an unusually surly and contemptuous tone, wondering why the “drunken old Jew had come there,” because it was thought he had been drinking, and that he would otherwise not have spoken so. The old man cast wondering and anxious looks around on everything in the house, feeling as he did greatly surprised; but it was the little children about the floor that drew his attention most: his looks were full of disappointment and sorrow. He related the whole of his account, saying that he had been out the day before and that he was now returning. The mistress of the house told him that she had heard a tale about her husband’s father, that he had been lost years before her birth while out sporting, whilst her father maintained that it was not true, but that he had been killed. She became angry, and quite lost her temper at seeing “the old Jew” not going away. The old man was roused, saying that he was the owner of the house, and that he must have his rights. He then went out to see his possessions, and presently went to the house of the servant, where, to his surprise, things had greatly changed; after conversing with an aged man, who sat by the fire, the one began to scrutinize the other more and more. The aged man by the fire told him what had been the fate of his old friend, the heir of Ỻech y Derwyđ. They talked deliberately of the events of their youth, but it all seemed like a dream; in short, the old man in the corner concluded that his visitor was his old friend, the heir of Ỻech y Derwyđ, returning from the land of theTylwyth Tegafter spending half a hundred years there.The other old man, with the snow-white beard, believed in his history, and much did they talk together and question one another for many hours. The old man by the fire said that the master of Ỻech y Derwyđ was away from home that day, and he induced his aged visitor to eat some food, but, to the horror of all, the eater fell down dead on the spot25. There is no record that an inquest was held over him, but the tale relates that the cause of it was, that he ate food after having been so long in the world of the fair family. His old friend insisted on seeing him buried by the side of his ancestors; but the rudeness of the mistress of Ỻech y Derwyđ to her father-in-law brought a curse on the family that clung to it to distant generations, and until the place had been sold nine times.’A tale like this is to be found related of Idwal of Nantclwyd, inCymru Fu, p. 85. I said ‘a tale like this,’ but, on reconsidering the matter, I should think it is the very same tale passed through the hands of Glasynys or some one of his imitators. Another of this kind will be found in theBrython, ii. 170, and several similar ones also in Wirt Sikes’ book, pp. 65–90, either given at length, or merely referred to. There is one kind of variant which deserves special notice, as making the music to which the sojourner in Faery listens for scores of years to be that of a bird singing on a tree. A story of the sort is located by Howells, in hisCambrian Superstitions, pp. 127–8, at Pant Shon Shencin, near Pencader, in Cardiganshire. This latter kind of story leads easily up to another development, namely, to substituting for the bird’s warble the song and felicity of heaven, and for the simple shepherd a pious monk. Inthis form it is located at a place called Ỻwyn y Nef, or ‘Heaven’s Grove,’ near Celynnog Fawr, in Carnarvonshire. It is given by Glasynys inCymru Fu, pp. 183–4, where it was copied from theBrython, iii. 111, in which he had previously published it. Several versions of it in rhyme came down from the eighteenth century, and Silvan Evans has brought together twenty-six stanzas in point inSt. David’s College Magazinefor 1881, pp. 191–200, where he has put into a few paragraphs all that is known about the song of theHen Wr o’r Coed, or the Old Man of the Wood, in his usually clear and lucid style.A tale from the other end of the tract of country once occupied by a sprinkling, perhaps, of Celts among a population of Picts, makes the man, and not the fairies, supply the music. I owe it to the kindness of the Rev. Andrew Clark, Fellow of Lincoln College, Oxford, who heard it from the late sexton of the parish of Dollar, in the county of Clackmannan. The sexton died some twelve years ago, aged seventy: he had learnt the tale from his father. The following are Mr. Clark’s words:—‘Glendevon is a parish and village in the Ochils in County Perth, about five miles from Dollar as you come up Glen Queich and down by Gloomhill. Glen Queich is a narrowish glen between two grassy hills—at the top of the glen is a round hill of no great height, but very neat shape, the grass of which is always short and trim, and the ferns on the shoulder of a very marked green. This, as you come up the glen, seems entirely to block the way. It is called the “Maiden Castle.” Only when you come quite close do you see the path winding round the foot of it. A little further on is a fine spring bordered with flat stones, in the middle of a neat, turfy spot, called the “Maiden’s Well.” This road, till the new toll-road was made on the other sideof the hills, was the thoroughfare between Dollar and Glendevon.’The following is the legend, as told by the ‘Bethrel’:—‘A piper, carrying his pipes, was coming from Glendevon to Dollar in the grey of the evening. He crossed the Garchel (a little stream running into the Queich burn), and looked at the “Maiden Castle,” and saw only the grey hillside and heard only the wind soughing through the bent. He had got beyond it when he heard a burst of lively music: he turned round, and instead of the dark knoll saw a great castle, with lights blazing from the windows, and heard the noise of dancing issuing from the open door. He went back incautiously, and a procession issuing forth at that moment, he was caught and taken into a great hall ablaze with lights, and people dancing on the floor. He had to pipe to them for a day or two, but he got anxious, because he knew his people would be wondering why he did not come back in the morning as he had promised. The fairies seemed to sympathize with his anxiety, and promised to let him go if he played a favourite tune of his, which they seemed fond of, to their satisfaction. He played his very best, the dance went fast and furious, and at its close he was greeted with loud applause. On his release he found himself alone, in the grey of the evening, beside the dark hillock, and no sound was heard save the purr of the burn and the soughing of the wind through the bent. Instead of completing his journey to Dollar, he walked hastily back to Glendevon to relieve his folk’s anxiety. He entered his father’s house and found no kent face there. On his protesting that he had gone only a day or two before, and waxing loud in his bewildered talk, a grey old man was roused from a doze behind the fire; and told how he had heard when a boy from his father thata piper had gone away to Dollar on a quiet evening, and had never been heard or seen since, nor any trace of him found. He had been in the “castle” for a hundred years.’The termPlant Rhys Đwfnhas already been brought before the reader: it means ‘the Children ofRhys Đwfn,’ andRhys Đwfnmeans literally Rhys the Deep, but the adjective in Welsh connotes depth of character in the sense of shrewdness or cunning. Nay, even the Englishdeepis often borrowed for use in the same sense, as when one colloquially saysun dîp iawn yw e, ‘he is a very calculating or cunning fellow.’ The following account of Rhys and his progeny is given by Gwynionyđ in the first volume of theBrython, p. 130, which deserves being cited at length:—‘There is a tale current in Dyfed, that there is, or rather that there has been, a country between Cemmes, the northern Hundred of Pembrokeshire, and Aberdaron in Ỻeyn. The chief patriarch of the inhabitants was Rhys Đwfn, and his descendants used to be called after him the Children of Rhys Đwfn. They were, it is said, a handsome race enough, but remarkably small in size. It is stated that certain herbs of a strange nature grew in their land, so that they were able to keep their country from being seen by even the most sharp sighted of invaders. There is no account that these remarkable herbs grew in any other part of the world excepting on a small spot, about a square yard in area, in a certain part of Cemmes. If it chanced that a man stood alone on it, he beheld the whole of the territory ofPlant Rhys Đwfn; but the moment he moved he would lose sight of it altogether, and it would have been utterly vain for him to look for his footprints. In another story, as will be seen presently, the requisite platform was a turf from St. David’s churchyard. The Rhysians had not much land—theylived in towns. So they were wont in former times to come to market to Cardigan, and to raise the prices of things terribly. They were seen of no one coming or going, but only seen there in the market. When prices happened to be high, and the corn all sold, however much there might have been there in the morning, the poor used to say to one another on the way home, “Oh!theywere there to-day,” meaningPlant Rhys Đwfn. So they were dear friends in the estimation of Siôn Phil Hywel, the farmer; but not so high in the opinion of Dafyđ, the labourer. It is said, however, that they were very honest and resolute men. A certain Gruffyđ ab Einon was wont to sell them more corn than anybody else, and so he was a great friend of theirs. He was honoured by them beyond all his contemporaries by being led on a visit to their home. As they were great traders like the Phœnicians of old, they had treasures from all countries under the sun. Gruffyđ, after feasting his eyes to satiety on their wonders, was led back by them loaded with presents. But before taking leave of them, he asked them how they succeeded in keeping themselves safe from invaders, as one of their number might become unfaithful, and go beyond the virtue of the herbs that formed their safety. “Oh!” replied the little old man of shrewd looks, “just as Ireland has been blessed with a soil on which venomous reptiles cannot live, so with our land: no traitor can live here. Look at the sand on the sea-shore: perfect unity prevails there, and so among us. Rhys, the father of our race, bade us, even to the most distant descendant, honour our parents and ancestors; love our own wives without looking at those of our neighbours; and do our best for our children and grandchildren. And he said that if we did so, no one of us would ever prove unfaithful to another, orbecome what you call a traitor. The latter is a wholly imaginary character among us; strange pictures are drawn of him with his feet like those of an ass, with a nest of snakes in his bosom, with a head like the devil’s, with hands somewhat like a man’s, while one of them holds a large knife, and the family lies dead around the figure. Good-bye!” When Gruffyđ looked about him he lost sight of the country ofPlant Rhys, and found himself near his home. He became very wealthy after this, and continued to be a great friend ofPlant Rhysas long as he lived. After Gruffyđ’s death they came to market again, but such was the greed of the farmers, like Gruffyđ before them, for riches, and so unreasonable were the prices they asked for their corn, that the Rhysians took offence and came no more to Cardigan to market. The old people used to think that they now went to Fishguard market, as very strange people were wont to be seen there.’ On the other hand, some Fishguard people were lately of opinion that it was at Haverfordwest the fairies did their marketing: I refer to a letter of Mr. Ferrar Fenton’s, in thePembroke County Guardianof October 31, 1896, in which he mentions a conversation he had with a Fishguard woman as to the existence of fairies: ‘There are fairies,’ she asserted, ‘for they came to Ha’rfordwest market to buy things, so theremustbe.’With this should be compared pp. 9–10 of Wirt Sikes’British Goblins, where mention is made of sailors on the coast of Pembrokeshire and Carmarthenshire, ‘who still talk of the green meadows of enchantment lying in the Irish Channel to the west of Pembrokeshire,’ and of men who had landed on them, or seen them suddenly vanishing. The author then proceeds to abstract from Howells’Cambrian Superstitions, p. 119, the following paragraph:—‘The fairies inhabiting theseislands are said to have regularly attended the markets at Milford Haven and Laugharne. They made their purchases without speaking, laid down their money and departed, always leaving the exact sum required, which they seemed to know without asking the price of anything. Sometimes they were invisible; but they were often seen by sharp-eyed persons. There was always one special butcher at Milford Haven upon whom the fairies bestowed their patronage instead of distributing their favours indiscriminately. The Milford Haven folk could see the green Fairy Islands distinctly, lying out a short distance from land; and the general belief was that they were densely peopled with fairies. It was also said that the latter went to and fro between the islands and the shore, through a subterranean gallery under the bottom of the sea.’Another tale given in theBrython, ii. 20, by a writer who gives his name as B. Davies26, will serve to show, short though it be, that the termPlant Rhys Đwfnwas not confined to those honestly dealing fairies, but was used in a sense wholly synonymous with that ofTylwyth Teg, as understood in other parts of Wales. The story runs as follows, and should be compared with the Dyffryn Mymbyr one given above, pp. 100–3:—‘One calm hot day, when the sun of heaven was brilliantly shining, and the hay in the dales was being busily made by lads and lasses, and by grown-up people of both sexes, a woman in the neighbourhood of Emlyn placed her one-year-old infant in thegader, or chair, as the cradle is called in these parts, and out she went to the field for a while, intending to return, when herneighbour, an old woman overtaken by the decrepitude of eighty summers, should call to her that her darling was crying. It was not long before she heard the old woman calling to her; she ran hurriedly, and as soon as she set foot on the kitchen floor she took her little one in her arms as usual, saying to him, “O my little one! thy mother’s delight art thou! I would not take the world for thee, &c.” But to her surprise he had a very old look about him, and the more the tender-hearted mother gazed at his face, the stranger it seemed to her, so that at last she placed him in the cradle and told her trouble and sorrow to her relatives and acquaintances. And after this one and the other had given his opinion, it was agreed at last that it was one ofRhys Đwfn’schildren that was in the cradle, and not her dearly loved baby. In this distress there was nothing to do but to fetch a sorcerer, as fast as the fastest horse could gallop. He said, when he saw the child, that he had seen his like before, and that it would be a hard job to get rid of him, though not such a very hard job this time. The shovel was made red hot in the fire by one of the Cefnarth27boys, and held before the child’s face; and in an instant the short little old man took to his heels, and neither he nor his like was seen afterwards from Aber Cuch to Aber Bargoed at any rate. The mother, it is said, found her darling unscathed the next moment. I remember also hearing that the strange child was as old as the grandfather of the one that had been lost.’As I see no reason to make any profound distinction between lake maidens and sea maidens, I now give Gwynionyđ’s account of the mermaid who was foundby a fisherman from Ỻandydoch or St. Dogmael’s28, near Cardigan: see theBrython, i. 82:—‘One fine afternoon in September, in the beginning of the last century, a fisherman, whose name was Pergrin29, went to a recess in the rock near Pen Cemmes, where he found a sea maiden doing her hair, and he took the water lady prisoner to his boat …. We know not what language is used by sea maidens … but this one, this time at any rate, talked, it is said, very good Welsh; for when she was in despair in Pergrin’s custody, weeping copiously, and with her tresses all dishevelled, she calledout: ‘Pergrin, if thou wilt let me go, I will give thee three shouts in the time of thy greatest need.’ So, in wonder and fear, he let her go to walk the streets of the deep, and visit her sweethearts there. Days and weeks passed without Pergrin seeing her after this; but one hot afternoon, when the sea was pretty calm, and the fishermen had no thought of danger, behold his old acquaintance showing her head and locks, and shouting out in a loud voice: ‘Pergrin! Pergrin! Pergrin! take up thy nets, take up thy nets, take up thy nets!’ Pergrin and his companion instantly obeyed the message, and drew their nets in with great haste. In they went, past the bar, and by the time they had reached the Pwll Cam the most terrible storm had overspread the sea, while he and his companion were safe on land. Twice nine others had gone out with them, but they were all drowned without having the chance of obeying the warning of the water lady.’ Perhaps it is not quite irrelevant to mention here the armorial bearings which Drayton ascribes to the neighbouring county of Cardigan in the following couplet in hisBattaile of Agincourt(London, 1631), p. 23:—As Cardigan the next to them that went,Came with a Mermayd sitting on a Rock.A writer in theBrython, iv. 194, states that the people of Nefyn in Ỻeyn claim the story of the fisher and the mermaid as belonging to them, which proves that a similar legend has been current there: add to this the fact mentioned in theBrython, iii. 133, that a red mermaid with yellow hair, on a white field, figures in the coat of arms of the family resident at Glasfryn in the parish of Ỻangybi, in Eifionyđ or the southern portion of Carnarvonshire; and we have already suggested that Glasynys’ story (pp. 117–25) was madeup, to a certain extent, of materials found on the coasts of Carnarvonshire. A small batch of stories about South Wales mermaids is given by a writer who calls himself Ab Nadol30, in theBrython, iv. 310, as follows:—‘A few rockmen are said to have been working, about eighty years ago, in a quarry near Porth y Rhaw, when the day was calm and clear, with nature, as it were, feasting, the flowers shedding sweet scent around, and the hot sunshine beaming into the jagged rocks. Though an occasional wave rose to strike the romantic cliffs, the sea was like a placid lake, with its light coverlet of blue attractive enough to entice one of the ladies ofRhys Đwfnforth from the town seen by Daniel Huws off Trefin as he was journeying between Fishguard and St. David’s in the year 1858, to make her way to the top of a stone and to sit on it to disentangle her flowing silvery hair. Whilst she was cleaning herself, the rockmen went down, and when they got near her they perceived that, from her waist upwards, she was like the lasses of Wales, but that, from her waist downwards, she had the body of a fish. And, when they began to talk to her, they found she spoke Welsh, though she only uttered the following few words to them: “Reaping in Pembrokeshire and weeding in Carmarthenshire.” Off she then went to walk in the depth of the sea towards her home. Another tale is repeated about a mermaid, said to have been caught by men below the land of Ỻanwnda, near the spot, if not on the spot, where the French made their landing afterwards, and three miles to the west of Fishguard. It then goes on to say that they carried her to their home, and kept her in a secure place forsome time; before long, she begged to be allowed to return to the brine land, and gave the people of the house three bits of advice; but I only remember one of them,’ he writes, ‘and this is it: “Skim the surface of the pottage before adding sweet milk to it: it will be whiter and sweeter, and less of it will do.” I was told that this family follow the three advices to this day.’ A somewhat similar advice to that about the pottage is said to have been given by a mermaid, under similar circumstances, to a Manxman.After putting the foregoing bits together, I was favoured by Mr. Benjamin Williams with notes on the tales and on the persons from whom he heard them: they form the contents of two or three letters, mostly answers to queries of mine, and the following is the substance of them:—Mr. Williams is a native of the valley of Troed yr Aur31, in the Cardiganshire parish of that name. He spent a part of his youth at Verwig, in the angle between the northern bank of the Teifi and Cardigan Bay. He heard of Rhys Đwfn’s Children first from a distant relative of his father’s, a Catherine Thomas, who came to visit her daughter, who lived not far from his father’s house: that would now be from forty-eight to fifty years ago. He was very young at the time, and of Rhys Đwfn’s progeny he formed a wonderful idea, which was partly due also to the talk of one James Davies or Siàms Mocyn, who was very well up in folklore, and was one of his father’s next-door neighbours. He was an old man, and nephew to the musician, DavidJenkin Morgan. The only spot near Mr. Williams’ home, that used to be frequented by the fairies, was Cefn y Ceirw, ‘the Stag’s Ridge,’ a large farm, so called from having been kept as a park for their deer by the Lewises of Aber Nant Bychan. He adds that the late Mr. Philipps, of Aberglasney, was very fond of talking of things in his native neighbourhood, and of mentioning the fairies at Cefn y Ceirw. It was after moving to Verwig that Mr. Williams began to put the tales he heard on paper: then he came in contact with three brothers, whose names were John, Owen, and Thomas Evans. They were well-to-do and respectable bachelors, living together on the large farm of Hafod Ruffyđ. Thomas was a man of very strong common sense, and worth consulting on any subject: he was a good arithmetician, and a constant reader of the Baptist periodical,Seren Gomer, from its first appearance. He thoroughly understood the bardic metres, and had a fair knowledge of music. He was well versed in Scripture, and filled the office of deacon at the Baptist Chapel. His death took place in the year 1864. Now, the eldest of the three brothers, the one named John, or Siôn, was then about seventy-five years of age, and he thoroughly believed in the tales about the fairies, as will be seen from the following short dialogue:—Siôn:Williams bach, ma’n rhaid i bod nhw’i gâl: yr w i’n cofio yn amser Bone fod marchnad Aberteifi yn ỻawn o lafir yn y bore—digon yno am fis—ond cin pen hanner awr yr ôđ y cwbwl wedi darfod. Nid ôđ possib i gweld nhwi: mâ gida nhwi faint a fynnon nhwi o arian.Williams:Siwt na fyse dynion yn i gweld nhwi ynte, Siôn?Siôn:O mâ gida nhwi đynion fel ninne yn prynidrostyn nhwi; ag y mâ nhwi fel yr hen siówmin yna yn geỻi gneid pob tric.John: ‘My dear Williams, it must be that they exist: I remember Cardigan market, in the time of Bonaparte, full of corn in the morning—enough for a month—but in less than half an hour it was all gone. It was impossible to see them: they have as much money as they like.’Williams: ‘How is it, then, that men did not see them, John?’John: ‘Oh, they have men like us to do the buying for them; and they can, like those old showmen, do every kind of trick.’At this kind of display of simplicity on the part of his brother, Thomas used to smile and say: ‘My brother John believes such things as those;’ for he had no belief in them himself. Still it is from his mouth that Mr. Williams published the tales in theBrython, which have been reproduced here, that of ‘Pergrin and the Mermaid,’ and all about the ‘Heir of Ỻech y Derwyđ,’ not to mention the ethical element in the account of Rhys Đwfn’s country and its people, the product probably of his mind. Thomas Evans, or as he was really called, Tommos Ifan, was given rather to grappling with the question of the origin of such beliefs; so one day he called Mr. Williams out, and led him to a spot about four hundred yards from Bol y Fron, where the latter then lived: he pointed to the setting sun, and asked Mr. Williams what he thought of the glorious sunset before them. ‘It is all produced,’ he then observed, ‘by the reflection of the sun’s rays on the mist: one might think,’ he went on to say, ‘that there was there a paradise of a country full of fields, forests, and everything that is desirable.’ And before they had moved away the grand scene had disappeared, whenThomas suggested that the idea of the existence of the country of Rhys Đwfn’s Children arose from the contemplation of that phenomenon. One may say that Thomas Evans was probably far ahead of the Welsh historians who try to extract history from the story ofCantre’r Gwaelod, ‘the Bottom Hundred,’ beneath the waves of Cardigan Bay; but what was seen was probably an instance of the mirage to be mentioned presently. Lastly, besides Mr. Williams’ contributions to theBrython, and a small volume of poetry, entitledBriaỻen glan Ceri, some tales of his were published by Ỻaỻawg inBygonessome years ago, and he had the prize at the Cardigan Eisteđfod of 1866 for the best collection in Welsh of the folklore of Dyfed: his recollection was that it contained in all thirty-six tales of all kinds; but since the manuscript, as the property of the Committee of that Eisteđfod, was sold, he could not now consult it: in fact he is not certain as to who the owner of it may now be, though he has an idea that it is either the Rev. Rees Williams, vicar of Whitchurch, near Solva, Pembrokeshire, or R. D. Jenkins, Esq., of Cilbronnau, Cardiganshire. Whoever the owner may be, he would probably be only too glad to have it published, and I mention this merely to call attention to it. The Eisteđfod is to be commended for encouraging local research, and sometimes even for burying the results in obscurity, but not always.

IX.There is a kind of fairy tale of which I think I have hitherto not given the reader a specimen: a good instance is given in the third volume of theBrython, at p. 459, by a contributor who calls himself Idnerth ab Gwgan, who, I learn from the Rev. Chancellor Silvan Evans, the editor, was no other than the Rev. Benjamin Williams, best known to Welsh antiquaries by his bardic name of Gwynionyđ. The preface to the tale is also interesting, so I am tempted to render the whole into English, as follows:—‘The fair family were wonderful creatures in the imaginary world: they encamped, they walked, and they capered a great deal in former ages in our country, according to what we learn from some of our old people. It may be supposed that they were very little folks like the children ofRhys Đwfn; for the old people used to imagine that they were wont to visit their hearths in great numbers in ages gone by. The girls at the farm houses used to make the hearths clean after supper, and to place a cauldron full of water near the fire; and so they thought that the fair family came there to play at night, bringing sweethearts for the young women, andleaving pieces of money on the hob for them in the morning. Sometimes they might be seen as splendid hosts exercising themselves on our hills. They were very fond of the mountains of Dyfed; travellers between Lampeter and Cardigan used to see them on the hill of Ỻanwenog, but by the time they had reached there the fairies would be far away on the hills of Ỻandyssul, and when one had reached the place where one expected to see the family together in tidy array, they would be seen very busily engaged on the tops of Crug y Balog; when one went there they would be on Blaen Pant ar Fi, moving on and on to Bryn Bwa, and, finally, to some place or other in the lower part of Dyfed. Like the soldiers of our earthly world, they were possessed of terribly fascinating music; and in the autumnal season they had their rings, still named from them, in which they sang and danced. The young man of Ỻech y Derwyđ24was his father’s only son, as well as heir to the farm; so he was very dear to his father and his mother, indeed he was the light of their eyes. Now, the head servant and the son were bosom friends: they were like brothers together, or rather twin brothers. As the son and the servant were such friends, the farmer’s wife used to get exactly the same kind of clothes prepared for the servant as for her son. The two fell in love with two handsome young women of very good reputation in the neighbourhood. The two couples were soon joined in honest wedlock, and great was the merry-making on the occasion. The servant had a suitable place to live in on the farm of Ỻech y Derwyđ; but about half a year after the son’s marriage,he and his friend went out for sport, when the servant withdrew to a wild and retired corner to look for game. He returned presently for his friend, but when he got there he could not see him anywhere: he kept looking around for some time for him, shouting and whistling, but there was no sign of his friend. By-and-by, he went home to Ỻech y Derwyđ expecting to see him, but no one knew anything about him. Great was the sorrow of his family through the night; and next day the anxiety was still greater. They went to see the place where his friend had seen him last: it was hard to tell whether his mother or his wife wept the more bitterly; but the father was a little better, though he also looked as if he were half mad with grief. The spot was examined, and, to their surprise, they saw a fairy ring close by, and the servant recollected that he had heard the sound of very fascinating music somewhere or other about the time in question. It was at once agreed that the man had been unfortunate enough to have got into the ring of theTylwyth, and to have been carried away by them, nobody knew whither. Weeks and months passed away, and a son was born to the heir of Ỻech y Derwyđ, but the young father was not there to see his child, which the old people thought very hard. However, the little one grew up the very picture of his father, and great was his influence over his grandfather and grandmother; in fact he was everything to them. He grew up to be a man, and he married a good-looking girl in that neighbourhood; but her family did not enjoy the reputation of being kind-hearted people. The old folks died, and their daughter-in-law also. One windy afternoon in the month of October, the family of Ỻech y Derwyđ beheld a tall thin old man, with his beard and hair white as snow, coming towards the house, and they thought he wasa Jew. The servant maids stared at him, and their mistress laughed at the “old Jew,” at the same time that she lifted the children up one after another to see him. He came to the door and entered boldly enough, asking about his parents. The mistress answered him in an unusually surly and contemptuous tone, wondering why the “drunken old Jew had come there,” because it was thought he had been drinking, and that he would otherwise not have spoken so. The old man cast wondering and anxious looks around on everything in the house, feeling as he did greatly surprised; but it was the little children about the floor that drew his attention most: his looks were full of disappointment and sorrow. He related the whole of his account, saying that he had been out the day before and that he was now returning. The mistress of the house told him that she had heard a tale about her husband’s father, that he had been lost years before her birth while out sporting, whilst her father maintained that it was not true, but that he had been killed. She became angry, and quite lost her temper at seeing “the old Jew” not going away. The old man was roused, saying that he was the owner of the house, and that he must have his rights. He then went out to see his possessions, and presently went to the house of the servant, where, to his surprise, things had greatly changed; after conversing with an aged man, who sat by the fire, the one began to scrutinize the other more and more. The aged man by the fire told him what had been the fate of his old friend, the heir of Ỻech y Derwyđ. They talked deliberately of the events of their youth, but it all seemed like a dream; in short, the old man in the corner concluded that his visitor was his old friend, the heir of Ỻech y Derwyđ, returning from the land of theTylwyth Tegafter spending half a hundred years there.The other old man, with the snow-white beard, believed in his history, and much did they talk together and question one another for many hours. The old man by the fire said that the master of Ỻech y Derwyđ was away from home that day, and he induced his aged visitor to eat some food, but, to the horror of all, the eater fell down dead on the spot25. There is no record that an inquest was held over him, but the tale relates that the cause of it was, that he ate food after having been so long in the world of the fair family. His old friend insisted on seeing him buried by the side of his ancestors; but the rudeness of the mistress of Ỻech y Derwyđ to her father-in-law brought a curse on the family that clung to it to distant generations, and until the place had been sold nine times.’A tale like this is to be found related of Idwal of Nantclwyd, inCymru Fu, p. 85. I said ‘a tale like this,’ but, on reconsidering the matter, I should think it is the very same tale passed through the hands of Glasynys or some one of his imitators. Another of this kind will be found in theBrython, ii. 170, and several similar ones also in Wirt Sikes’ book, pp. 65–90, either given at length, or merely referred to. There is one kind of variant which deserves special notice, as making the music to which the sojourner in Faery listens for scores of years to be that of a bird singing on a tree. A story of the sort is located by Howells, in hisCambrian Superstitions, pp. 127–8, at Pant Shon Shencin, near Pencader, in Cardiganshire. This latter kind of story leads easily up to another development, namely, to substituting for the bird’s warble the song and felicity of heaven, and for the simple shepherd a pious monk. Inthis form it is located at a place called Ỻwyn y Nef, or ‘Heaven’s Grove,’ near Celynnog Fawr, in Carnarvonshire. It is given by Glasynys inCymru Fu, pp. 183–4, where it was copied from theBrython, iii. 111, in which he had previously published it. Several versions of it in rhyme came down from the eighteenth century, and Silvan Evans has brought together twenty-six stanzas in point inSt. David’s College Magazinefor 1881, pp. 191–200, where he has put into a few paragraphs all that is known about the song of theHen Wr o’r Coed, or the Old Man of the Wood, in his usually clear and lucid style.A tale from the other end of the tract of country once occupied by a sprinkling, perhaps, of Celts among a population of Picts, makes the man, and not the fairies, supply the music. I owe it to the kindness of the Rev. Andrew Clark, Fellow of Lincoln College, Oxford, who heard it from the late sexton of the parish of Dollar, in the county of Clackmannan. The sexton died some twelve years ago, aged seventy: he had learnt the tale from his father. The following are Mr. Clark’s words:—‘Glendevon is a parish and village in the Ochils in County Perth, about five miles from Dollar as you come up Glen Queich and down by Gloomhill. Glen Queich is a narrowish glen between two grassy hills—at the top of the glen is a round hill of no great height, but very neat shape, the grass of which is always short and trim, and the ferns on the shoulder of a very marked green. This, as you come up the glen, seems entirely to block the way. It is called the “Maiden Castle.” Only when you come quite close do you see the path winding round the foot of it. A little further on is a fine spring bordered with flat stones, in the middle of a neat, turfy spot, called the “Maiden’s Well.” This road, till the new toll-road was made on the other sideof the hills, was the thoroughfare between Dollar and Glendevon.’The following is the legend, as told by the ‘Bethrel’:—‘A piper, carrying his pipes, was coming from Glendevon to Dollar in the grey of the evening. He crossed the Garchel (a little stream running into the Queich burn), and looked at the “Maiden Castle,” and saw only the grey hillside and heard only the wind soughing through the bent. He had got beyond it when he heard a burst of lively music: he turned round, and instead of the dark knoll saw a great castle, with lights blazing from the windows, and heard the noise of dancing issuing from the open door. He went back incautiously, and a procession issuing forth at that moment, he was caught and taken into a great hall ablaze with lights, and people dancing on the floor. He had to pipe to them for a day or two, but he got anxious, because he knew his people would be wondering why he did not come back in the morning as he had promised. The fairies seemed to sympathize with his anxiety, and promised to let him go if he played a favourite tune of his, which they seemed fond of, to their satisfaction. He played his very best, the dance went fast and furious, and at its close he was greeted with loud applause. On his release he found himself alone, in the grey of the evening, beside the dark hillock, and no sound was heard save the purr of the burn and the soughing of the wind through the bent. Instead of completing his journey to Dollar, he walked hastily back to Glendevon to relieve his folk’s anxiety. He entered his father’s house and found no kent face there. On his protesting that he had gone only a day or two before, and waxing loud in his bewildered talk, a grey old man was roused from a doze behind the fire; and told how he had heard when a boy from his father thata piper had gone away to Dollar on a quiet evening, and had never been heard or seen since, nor any trace of him found. He had been in the “castle” for a hundred years.’The termPlant Rhys Đwfnhas already been brought before the reader: it means ‘the Children ofRhys Đwfn,’ andRhys Đwfnmeans literally Rhys the Deep, but the adjective in Welsh connotes depth of character in the sense of shrewdness or cunning. Nay, even the Englishdeepis often borrowed for use in the same sense, as when one colloquially saysun dîp iawn yw e, ‘he is a very calculating or cunning fellow.’ The following account of Rhys and his progeny is given by Gwynionyđ in the first volume of theBrython, p. 130, which deserves being cited at length:—‘There is a tale current in Dyfed, that there is, or rather that there has been, a country between Cemmes, the northern Hundred of Pembrokeshire, and Aberdaron in Ỻeyn. The chief patriarch of the inhabitants was Rhys Đwfn, and his descendants used to be called after him the Children of Rhys Đwfn. They were, it is said, a handsome race enough, but remarkably small in size. It is stated that certain herbs of a strange nature grew in their land, so that they were able to keep their country from being seen by even the most sharp sighted of invaders. There is no account that these remarkable herbs grew in any other part of the world excepting on a small spot, about a square yard in area, in a certain part of Cemmes. If it chanced that a man stood alone on it, he beheld the whole of the territory ofPlant Rhys Đwfn; but the moment he moved he would lose sight of it altogether, and it would have been utterly vain for him to look for his footprints. In another story, as will be seen presently, the requisite platform was a turf from St. David’s churchyard. The Rhysians had not much land—theylived in towns. So they were wont in former times to come to market to Cardigan, and to raise the prices of things terribly. They were seen of no one coming or going, but only seen there in the market. When prices happened to be high, and the corn all sold, however much there might have been there in the morning, the poor used to say to one another on the way home, “Oh!theywere there to-day,” meaningPlant Rhys Đwfn. So they were dear friends in the estimation of Siôn Phil Hywel, the farmer; but not so high in the opinion of Dafyđ, the labourer. It is said, however, that they were very honest and resolute men. A certain Gruffyđ ab Einon was wont to sell them more corn than anybody else, and so he was a great friend of theirs. He was honoured by them beyond all his contemporaries by being led on a visit to their home. As they were great traders like the Phœnicians of old, they had treasures from all countries under the sun. Gruffyđ, after feasting his eyes to satiety on their wonders, was led back by them loaded with presents. But before taking leave of them, he asked them how they succeeded in keeping themselves safe from invaders, as one of their number might become unfaithful, and go beyond the virtue of the herbs that formed their safety. “Oh!” replied the little old man of shrewd looks, “just as Ireland has been blessed with a soil on which venomous reptiles cannot live, so with our land: no traitor can live here. Look at the sand on the sea-shore: perfect unity prevails there, and so among us. Rhys, the father of our race, bade us, even to the most distant descendant, honour our parents and ancestors; love our own wives without looking at those of our neighbours; and do our best for our children and grandchildren. And he said that if we did so, no one of us would ever prove unfaithful to another, orbecome what you call a traitor. The latter is a wholly imaginary character among us; strange pictures are drawn of him with his feet like those of an ass, with a nest of snakes in his bosom, with a head like the devil’s, with hands somewhat like a man’s, while one of them holds a large knife, and the family lies dead around the figure. Good-bye!” When Gruffyđ looked about him he lost sight of the country ofPlant Rhys, and found himself near his home. He became very wealthy after this, and continued to be a great friend ofPlant Rhysas long as he lived. After Gruffyđ’s death they came to market again, but such was the greed of the farmers, like Gruffyđ before them, for riches, and so unreasonable were the prices they asked for their corn, that the Rhysians took offence and came no more to Cardigan to market. The old people used to think that they now went to Fishguard market, as very strange people were wont to be seen there.’ On the other hand, some Fishguard people were lately of opinion that it was at Haverfordwest the fairies did their marketing: I refer to a letter of Mr. Ferrar Fenton’s, in thePembroke County Guardianof October 31, 1896, in which he mentions a conversation he had with a Fishguard woman as to the existence of fairies: ‘There are fairies,’ she asserted, ‘for they came to Ha’rfordwest market to buy things, so theremustbe.’With this should be compared pp. 9–10 of Wirt Sikes’British Goblins, where mention is made of sailors on the coast of Pembrokeshire and Carmarthenshire, ‘who still talk of the green meadows of enchantment lying in the Irish Channel to the west of Pembrokeshire,’ and of men who had landed on them, or seen them suddenly vanishing. The author then proceeds to abstract from Howells’Cambrian Superstitions, p. 119, the following paragraph:—‘The fairies inhabiting theseislands are said to have regularly attended the markets at Milford Haven and Laugharne. They made their purchases without speaking, laid down their money and departed, always leaving the exact sum required, which they seemed to know without asking the price of anything. Sometimes they were invisible; but they were often seen by sharp-eyed persons. There was always one special butcher at Milford Haven upon whom the fairies bestowed their patronage instead of distributing their favours indiscriminately. The Milford Haven folk could see the green Fairy Islands distinctly, lying out a short distance from land; and the general belief was that they were densely peopled with fairies. It was also said that the latter went to and fro between the islands and the shore, through a subterranean gallery under the bottom of the sea.’Another tale given in theBrython, ii. 20, by a writer who gives his name as B. Davies26, will serve to show, short though it be, that the termPlant Rhys Đwfnwas not confined to those honestly dealing fairies, but was used in a sense wholly synonymous with that ofTylwyth Teg, as understood in other parts of Wales. The story runs as follows, and should be compared with the Dyffryn Mymbyr one given above, pp. 100–3:—‘One calm hot day, when the sun of heaven was brilliantly shining, and the hay in the dales was being busily made by lads and lasses, and by grown-up people of both sexes, a woman in the neighbourhood of Emlyn placed her one-year-old infant in thegader, or chair, as the cradle is called in these parts, and out she went to the field for a while, intending to return, when herneighbour, an old woman overtaken by the decrepitude of eighty summers, should call to her that her darling was crying. It was not long before she heard the old woman calling to her; she ran hurriedly, and as soon as she set foot on the kitchen floor she took her little one in her arms as usual, saying to him, “O my little one! thy mother’s delight art thou! I would not take the world for thee, &c.” But to her surprise he had a very old look about him, and the more the tender-hearted mother gazed at his face, the stranger it seemed to her, so that at last she placed him in the cradle and told her trouble and sorrow to her relatives and acquaintances. And after this one and the other had given his opinion, it was agreed at last that it was one ofRhys Đwfn’schildren that was in the cradle, and not her dearly loved baby. In this distress there was nothing to do but to fetch a sorcerer, as fast as the fastest horse could gallop. He said, when he saw the child, that he had seen his like before, and that it would be a hard job to get rid of him, though not such a very hard job this time. The shovel was made red hot in the fire by one of the Cefnarth27boys, and held before the child’s face; and in an instant the short little old man took to his heels, and neither he nor his like was seen afterwards from Aber Cuch to Aber Bargoed at any rate. The mother, it is said, found her darling unscathed the next moment. I remember also hearing that the strange child was as old as the grandfather of the one that had been lost.’As I see no reason to make any profound distinction between lake maidens and sea maidens, I now give Gwynionyđ’s account of the mermaid who was foundby a fisherman from Ỻandydoch or St. Dogmael’s28, near Cardigan: see theBrython, i. 82:—‘One fine afternoon in September, in the beginning of the last century, a fisherman, whose name was Pergrin29, went to a recess in the rock near Pen Cemmes, where he found a sea maiden doing her hair, and he took the water lady prisoner to his boat …. We know not what language is used by sea maidens … but this one, this time at any rate, talked, it is said, very good Welsh; for when she was in despair in Pergrin’s custody, weeping copiously, and with her tresses all dishevelled, she calledout: ‘Pergrin, if thou wilt let me go, I will give thee three shouts in the time of thy greatest need.’ So, in wonder and fear, he let her go to walk the streets of the deep, and visit her sweethearts there. Days and weeks passed without Pergrin seeing her after this; but one hot afternoon, when the sea was pretty calm, and the fishermen had no thought of danger, behold his old acquaintance showing her head and locks, and shouting out in a loud voice: ‘Pergrin! Pergrin! Pergrin! take up thy nets, take up thy nets, take up thy nets!’ Pergrin and his companion instantly obeyed the message, and drew their nets in with great haste. In they went, past the bar, and by the time they had reached the Pwll Cam the most terrible storm had overspread the sea, while he and his companion were safe on land. Twice nine others had gone out with them, but they were all drowned without having the chance of obeying the warning of the water lady.’ Perhaps it is not quite irrelevant to mention here the armorial bearings which Drayton ascribes to the neighbouring county of Cardigan in the following couplet in hisBattaile of Agincourt(London, 1631), p. 23:—As Cardigan the next to them that went,Came with a Mermayd sitting on a Rock.A writer in theBrython, iv. 194, states that the people of Nefyn in Ỻeyn claim the story of the fisher and the mermaid as belonging to them, which proves that a similar legend has been current there: add to this the fact mentioned in theBrython, iii. 133, that a red mermaid with yellow hair, on a white field, figures in the coat of arms of the family resident at Glasfryn in the parish of Ỻangybi, in Eifionyđ or the southern portion of Carnarvonshire; and we have already suggested that Glasynys’ story (pp. 117–25) was madeup, to a certain extent, of materials found on the coasts of Carnarvonshire. A small batch of stories about South Wales mermaids is given by a writer who calls himself Ab Nadol30, in theBrython, iv. 310, as follows:—‘A few rockmen are said to have been working, about eighty years ago, in a quarry near Porth y Rhaw, when the day was calm and clear, with nature, as it were, feasting, the flowers shedding sweet scent around, and the hot sunshine beaming into the jagged rocks. Though an occasional wave rose to strike the romantic cliffs, the sea was like a placid lake, with its light coverlet of blue attractive enough to entice one of the ladies ofRhys Đwfnforth from the town seen by Daniel Huws off Trefin as he was journeying between Fishguard and St. David’s in the year 1858, to make her way to the top of a stone and to sit on it to disentangle her flowing silvery hair. Whilst she was cleaning herself, the rockmen went down, and when they got near her they perceived that, from her waist upwards, she was like the lasses of Wales, but that, from her waist downwards, she had the body of a fish. And, when they began to talk to her, they found she spoke Welsh, though she only uttered the following few words to them: “Reaping in Pembrokeshire and weeding in Carmarthenshire.” Off she then went to walk in the depth of the sea towards her home. Another tale is repeated about a mermaid, said to have been caught by men below the land of Ỻanwnda, near the spot, if not on the spot, where the French made their landing afterwards, and three miles to the west of Fishguard. It then goes on to say that they carried her to their home, and kept her in a secure place forsome time; before long, she begged to be allowed to return to the brine land, and gave the people of the house three bits of advice; but I only remember one of them,’ he writes, ‘and this is it: “Skim the surface of the pottage before adding sweet milk to it: it will be whiter and sweeter, and less of it will do.” I was told that this family follow the three advices to this day.’ A somewhat similar advice to that about the pottage is said to have been given by a mermaid, under similar circumstances, to a Manxman.After putting the foregoing bits together, I was favoured by Mr. Benjamin Williams with notes on the tales and on the persons from whom he heard them: they form the contents of two or three letters, mostly answers to queries of mine, and the following is the substance of them:—Mr. Williams is a native of the valley of Troed yr Aur31, in the Cardiganshire parish of that name. He spent a part of his youth at Verwig, in the angle between the northern bank of the Teifi and Cardigan Bay. He heard of Rhys Đwfn’s Children first from a distant relative of his father’s, a Catherine Thomas, who came to visit her daughter, who lived not far from his father’s house: that would now be from forty-eight to fifty years ago. He was very young at the time, and of Rhys Đwfn’s progeny he formed a wonderful idea, which was partly due also to the talk of one James Davies or Siàms Mocyn, who was very well up in folklore, and was one of his father’s next-door neighbours. He was an old man, and nephew to the musician, DavidJenkin Morgan. The only spot near Mr. Williams’ home, that used to be frequented by the fairies, was Cefn y Ceirw, ‘the Stag’s Ridge,’ a large farm, so called from having been kept as a park for their deer by the Lewises of Aber Nant Bychan. He adds that the late Mr. Philipps, of Aberglasney, was very fond of talking of things in his native neighbourhood, and of mentioning the fairies at Cefn y Ceirw. It was after moving to Verwig that Mr. Williams began to put the tales he heard on paper: then he came in contact with three brothers, whose names were John, Owen, and Thomas Evans. They were well-to-do and respectable bachelors, living together on the large farm of Hafod Ruffyđ. Thomas was a man of very strong common sense, and worth consulting on any subject: he was a good arithmetician, and a constant reader of the Baptist periodical,Seren Gomer, from its first appearance. He thoroughly understood the bardic metres, and had a fair knowledge of music. He was well versed in Scripture, and filled the office of deacon at the Baptist Chapel. His death took place in the year 1864. Now, the eldest of the three brothers, the one named John, or Siôn, was then about seventy-five years of age, and he thoroughly believed in the tales about the fairies, as will be seen from the following short dialogue:—Siôn:Williams bach, ma’n rhaid i bod nhw’i gâl: yr w i’n cofio yn amser Bone fod marchnad Aberteifi yn ỻawn o lafir yn y bore—digon yno am fis—ond cin pen hanner awr yr ôđ y cwbwl wedi darfod. Nid ôđ possib i gweld nhwi: mâ gida nhwi faint a fynnon nhwi o arian.Williams:Siwt na fyse dynion yn i gweld nhwi ynte, Siôn?Siôn:O mâ gida nhwi đynion fel ninne yn prynidrostyn nhwi; ag y mâ nhwi fel yr hen siówmin yna yn geỻi gneid pob tric.John: ‘My dear Williams, it must be that they exist: I remember Cardigan market, in the time of Bonaparte, full of corn in the morning—enough for a month—but in less than half an hour it was all gone. It was impossible to see them: they have as much money as they like.’Williams: ‘How is it, then, that men did not see them, John?’John: ‘Oh, they have men like us to do the buying for them; and they can, like those old showmen, do every kind of trick.’At this kind of display of simplicity on the part of his brother, Thomas used to smile and say: ‘My brother John believes such things as those;’ for he had no belief in them himself. Still it is from his mouth that Mr. Williams published the tales in theBrython, which have been reproduced here, that of ‘Pergrin and the Mermaid,’ and all about the ‘Heir of Ỻech y Derwyđ,’ not to mention the ethical element in the account of Rhys Đwfn’s country and its people, the product probably of his mind. Thomas Evans, or as he was really called, Tommos Ifan, was given rather to grappling with the question of the origin of such beliefs; so one day he called Mr. Williams out, and led him to a spot about four hundred yards from Bol y Fron, where the latter then lived: he pointed to the setting sun, and asked Mr. Williams what he thought of the glorious sunset before them. ‘It is all produced,’ he then observed, ‘by the reflection of the sun’s rays on the mist: one might think,’ he went on to say, ‘that there was there a paradise of a country full of fields, forests, and everything that is desirable.’ And before they had moved away the grand scene had disappeared, whenThomas suggested that the idea of the existence of the country of Rhys Đwfn’s Children arose from the contemplation of that phenomenon. One may say that Thomas Evans was probably far ahead of the Welsh historians who try to extract history from the story ofCantre’r Gwaelod, ‘the Bottom Hundred,’ beneath the waves of Cardigan Bay; but what was seen was probably an instance of the mirage to be mentioned presently. Lastly, besides Mr. Williams’ contributions to theBrython, and a small volume of poetry, entitledBriaỻen glan Ceri, some tales of his were published by Ỻaỻawg inBygonessome years ago, and he had the prize at the Cardigan Eisteđfod of 1866 for the best collection in Welsh of the folklore of Dyfed: his recollection was that it contained in all thirty-six tales of all kinds; but since the manuscript, as the property of the Committee of that Eisteđfod, was sold, he could not now consult it: in fact he is not certain as to who the owner of it may now be, though he has an idea that it is either the Rev. Rees Williams, vicar of Whitchurch, near Solva, Pembrokeshire, or R. D. Jenkins, Esq., of Cilbronnau, Cardiganshire. Whoever the owner may be, he would probably be only too glad to have it published, and I mention this merely to call attention to it. The Eisteđfod is to be commended for encouraging local research, and sometimes even for burying the results in obscurity, but not always.

IX.There is a kind of fairy tale of which I think I have hitherto not given the reader a specimen: a good instance is given in the third volume of theBrython, at p. 459, by a contributor who calls himself Idnerth ab Gwgan, who, I learn from the Rev. Chancellor Silvan Evans, the editor, was no other than the Rev. Benjamin Williams, best known to Welsh antiquaries by his bardic name of Gwynionyđ. The preface to the tale is also interesting, so I am tempted to render the whole into English, as follows:—‘The fair family were wonderful creatures in the imaginary world: they encamped, they walked, and they capered a great deal in former ages in our country, according to what we learn from some of our old people. It may be supposed that they were very little folks like the children ofRhys Đwfn; for the old people used to imagine that they were wont to visit their hearths in great numbers in ages gone by. The girls at the farm houses used to make the hearths clean after supper, and to place a cauldron full of water near the fire; and so they thought that the fair family came there to play at night, bringing sweethearts for the young women, andleaving pieces of money on the hob for them in the morning. Sometimes they might be seen as splendid hosts exercising themselves on our hills. They were very fond of the mountains of Dyfed; travellers between Lampeter and Cardigan used to see them on the hill of Ỻanwenog, but by the time they had reached there the fairies would be far away on the hills of Ỻandyssul, and when one had reached the place where one expected to see the family together in tidy array, they would be seen very busily engaged on the tops of Crug y Balog; when one went there they would be on Blaen Pant ar Fi, moving on and on to Bryn Bwa, and, finally, to some place or other in the lower part of Dyfed. Like the soldiers of our earthly world, they were possessed of terribly fascinating music; and in the autumnal season they had their rings, still named from them, in which they sang and danced. The young man of Ỻech y Derwyđ24was his father’s only son, as well as heir to the farm; so he was very dear to his father and his mother, indeed he was the light of their eyes. Now, the head servant and the son were bosom friends: they were like brothers together, or rather twin brothers. As the son and the servant were such friends, the farmer’s wife used to get exactly the same kind of clothes prepared for the servant as for her son. The two fell in love with two handsome young women of very good reputation in the neighbourhood. The two couples were soon joined in honest wedlock, and great was the merry-making on the occasion. The servant had a suitable place to live in on the farm of Ỻech y Derwyđ; but about half a year after the son’s marriage,he and his friend went out for sport, when the servant withdrew to a wild and retired corner to look for game. He returned presently for his friend, but when he got there he could not see him anywhere: he kept looking around for some time for him, shouting and whistling, but there was no sign of his friend. By-and-by, he went home to Ỻech y Derwyđ expecting to see him, but no one knew anything about him. Great was the sorrow of his family through the night; and next day the anxiety was still greater. They went to see the place where his friend had seen him last: it was hard to tell whether his mother or his wife wept the more bitterly; but the father was a little better, though he also looked as if he were half mad with grief. The spot was examined, and, to their surprise, they saw a fairy ring close by, and the servant recollected that he had heard the sound of very fascinating music somewhere or other about the time in question. It was at once agreed that the man had been unfortunate enough to have got into the ring of theTylwyth, and to have been carried away by them, nobody knew whither. Weeks and months passed away, and a son was born to the heir of Ỻech y Derwyđ, but the young father was not there to see his child, which the old people thought very hard. However, the little one grew up the very picture of his father, and great was his influence over his grandfather and grandmother; in fact he was everything to them. He grew up to be a man, and he married a good-looking girl in that neighbourhood; but her family did not enjoy the reputation of being kind-hearted people. The old folks died, and their daughter-in-law also. One windy afternoon in the month of October, the family of Ỻech y Derwyđ beheld a tall thin old man, with his beard and hair white as snow, coming towards the house, and they thought he wasa Jew. The servant maids stared at him, and their mistress laughed at the “old Jew,” at the same time that she lifted the children up one after another to see him. He came to the door and entered boldly enough, asking about his parents. The mistress answered him in an unusually surly and contemptuous tone, wondering why the “drunken old Jew had come there,” because it was thought he had been drinking, and that he would otherwise not have spoken so. The old man cast wondering and anxious looks around on everything in the house, feeling as he did greatly surprised; but it was the little children about the floor that drew his attention most: his looks were full of disappointment and sorrow. He related the whole of his account, saying that he had been out the day before and that he was now returning. The mistress of the house told him that she had heard a tale about her husband’s father, that he had been lost years before her birth while out sporting, whilst her father maintained that it was not true, but that he had been killed. She became angry, and quite lost her temper at seeing “the old Jew” not going away. The old man was roused, saying that he was the owner of the house, and that he must have his rights. He then went out to see his possessions, and presently went to the house of the servant, where, to his surprise, things had greatly changed; after conversing with an aged man, who sat by the fire, the one began to scrutinize the other more and more. The aged man by the fire told him what had been the fate of his old friend, the heir of Ỻech y Derwyđ. They talked deliberately of the events of their youth, but it all seemed like a dream; in short, the old man in the corner concluded that his visitor was his old friend, the heir of Ỻech y Derwyđ, returning from the land of theTylwyth Tegafter spending half a hundred years there.The other old man, with the snow-white beard, believed in his history, and much did they talk together and question one another for many hours. The old man by the fire said that the master of Ỻech y Derwyđ was away from home that day, and he induced his aged visitor to eat some food, but, to the horror of all, the eater fell down dead on the spot25. There is no record that an inquest was held over him, but the tale relates that the cause of it was, that he ate food after having been so long in the world of the fair family. His old friend insisted on seeing him buried by the side of his ancestors; but the rudeness of the mistress of Ỻech y Derwyđ to her father-in-law brought a curse on the family that clung to it to distant generations, and until the place had been sold nine times.’A tale like this is to be found related of Idwal of Nantclwyd, inCymru Fu, p. 85. I said ‘a tale like this,’ but, on reconsidering the matter, I should think it is the very same tale passed through the hands of Glasynys or some one of his imitators. Another of this kind will be found in theBrython, ii. 170, and several similar ones also in Wirt Sikes’ book, pp. 65–90, either given at length, or merely referred to. There is one kind of variant which deserves special notice, as making the music to which the sojourner in Faery listens for scores of years to be that of a bird singing on a tree. A story of the sort is located by Howells, in hisCambrian Superstitions, pp. 127–8, at Pant Shon Shencin, near Pencader, in Cardiganshire. This latter kind of story leads easily up to another development, namely, to substituting for the bird’s warble the song and felicity of heaven, and for the simple shepherd a pious monk. Inthis form it is located at a place called Ỻwyn y Nef, or ‘Heaven’s Grove,’ near Celynnog Fawr, in Carnarvonshire. It is given by Glasynys inCymru Fu, pp. 183–4, where it was copied from theBrython, iii. 111, in which he had previously published it. Several versions of it in rhyme came down from the eighteenth century, and Silvan Evans has brought together twenty-six stanzas in point inSt. David’s College Magazinefor 1881, pp. 191–200, where he has put into a few paragraphs all that is known about the song of theHen Wr o’r Coed, or the Old Man of the Wood, in his usually clear and lucid style.A tale from the other end of the tract of country once occupied by a sprinkling, perhaps, of Celts among a population of Picts, makes the man, and not the fairies, supply the music. I owe it to the kindness of the Rev. Andrew Clark, Fellow of Lincoln College, Oxford, who heard it from the late sexton of the parish of Dollar, in the county of Clackmannan. The sexton died some twelve years ago, aged seventy: he had learnt the tale from his father. The following are Mr. Clark’s words:—‘Glendevon is a parish and village in the Ochils in County Perth, about five miles from Dollar as you come up Glen Queich and down by Gloomhill. Glen Queich is a narrowish glen between two grassy hills—at the top of the glen is a round hill of no great height, but very neat shape, the grass of which is always short and trim, and the ferns on the shoulder of a very marked green. This, as you come up the glen, seems entirely to block the way. It is called the “Maiden Castle.” Only when you come quite close do you see the path winding round the foot of it. A little further on is a fine spring bordered with flat stones, in the middle of a neat, turfy spot, called the “Maiden’s Well.” This road, till the new toll-road was made on the other sideof the hills, was the thoroughfare between Dollar and Glendevon.’The following is the legend, as told by the ‘Bethrel’:—‘A piper, carrying his pipes, was coming from Glendevon to Dollar in the grey of the evening. He crossed the Garchel (a little stream running into the Queich burn), and looked at the “Maiden Castle,” and saw only the grey hillside and heard only the wind soughing through the bent. He had got beyond it when he heard a burst of lively music: he turned round, and instead of the dark knoll saw a great castle, with lights blazing from the windows, and heard the noise of dancing issuing from the open door. He went back incautiously, and a procession issuing forth at that moment, he was caught and taken into a great hall ablaze with lights, and people dancing on the floor. He had to pipe to them for a day or two, but he got anxious, because he knew his people would be wondering why he did not come back in the morning as he had promised. The fairies seemed to sympathize with his anxiety, and promised to let him go if he played a favourite tune of his, which they seemed fond of, to their satisfaction. He played his very best, the dance went fast and furious, and at its close he was greeted with loud applause. On his release he found himself alone, in the grey of the evening, beside the dark hillock, and no sound was heard save the purr of the burn and the soughing of the wind through the bent. Instead of completing his journey to Dollar, he walked hastily back to Glendevon to relieve his folk’s anxiety. He entered his father’s house and found no kent face there. On his protesting that he had gone only a day or two before, and waxing loud in his bewildered talk, a grey old man was roused from a doze behind the fire; and told how he had heard when a boy from his father thata piper had gone away to Dollar on a quiet evening, and had never been heard or seen since, nor any trace of him found. He had been in the “castle” for a hundred years.’The termPlant Rhys Đwfnhas already been brought before the reader: it means ‘the Children ofRhys Đwfn,’ andRhys Đwfnmeans literally Rhys the Deep, but the adjective in Welsh connotes depth of character in the sense of shrewdness or cunning. Nay, even the Englishdeepis often borrowed for use in the same sense, as when one colloquially saysun dîp iawn yw e, ‘he is a very calculating or cunning fellow.’ The following account of Rhys and his progeny is given by Gwynionyđ in the first volume of theBrython, p. 130, which deserves being cited at length:—‘There is a tale current in Dyfed, that there is, or rather that there has been, a country between Cemmes, the northern Hundred of Pembrokeshire, and Aberdaron in Ỻeyn. The chief patriarch of the inhabitants was Rhys Đwfn, and his descendants used to be called after him the Children of Rhys Đwfn. They were, it is said, a handsome race enough, but remarkably small in size. It is stated that certain herbs of a strange nature grew in their land, so that they were able to keep their country from being seen by even the most sharp sighted of invaders. There is no account that these remarkable herbs grew in any other part of the world excepting on a small spot, about a square yard in area, in a certain part of Cemmes. If it chanced that a man stood alone on it, he beheld the whole of the territory ofPlant Rhys Đwfn; but the moment he moved he would lose sight of it altogether, and it would have been utterly vain for him to look for his footprints. In another story, as will be seen presently, the requisite platform was a turf from St. David’s churchyard. The Rhysians had not much land—theylived in towns. So they were wont in former times to come to market to Cardigan, and to raise the prices of things terribly. They were seen of no one coming or going, but only seen there in the market. When prices happened to be high, and the corn all sold, however much there might have been there in the morning, the poor used to say to one another on the way home, “Oh!theywere there to-day,” meaningPlant Rhys Đwfn. So they were dear friends in the estimation of Siôn Phil Hywel, the farmer; but not so high in the opinion of Dafyđ, the labourer. It is said, however, that they were very honest and resolute men. A certain Gruffyđ ab Einon was wont to sell them more corn than anybody else, and so he was a great friend of theirs. He was honoured by them beyond all his contemporaries by being led on a visit to their home. As they were great traders like the Phœnicians of old, they had treasures from all countries under the sun. Gruffyđ, after feasting his eyes to satiety on their wonders, was led back by them loaded with presents. But before taking leave of them, he asked them how they succeeded in keeping themselves safe from invaders, as one of their number might become unfaithful, and go beyond the virtue of the herbs that formed their safety. “Oh!” replied the little old man of shrewd looks, “just as Ireland has been blessed with a soil on which venomous reptiles cannot live, so with our land: no traitor can live here. Look at the sand on the sea-shore: perfect unity prevails there, and so among us. Rhys, the father of our race, bade us, even to the most distant descendant, honour our parents and ancestors; love our own wives without looking at those of our neighbours; and do our best for our children and grandchildren. And he said that if we did so, no one of us would ever prove unfaithful to another, orbecome what you call a traitor. The latter is a wholly imaginary character among us; strange pictures are drawn of him with his feet like those of an ass, with a nest of snakes in his bosom, with a head like the devil’s, with hands somewhat like a man’s, while one of them holds a large knife, and the family lies dead around the figure. Good-bye!” When Gruffyđ looked about him he lost sight of the country ofPlant Rhys, and found himself near his home. He became very wealthy after this, and continued to be a great friend ofPlant Rhysas long as he lived. After Gruffyđ’s death they came to market again, but such was the greed of the farmers, like Gruffyđ before them, for riches, and so unreasonable were the prices they asked for their corn, that the Rhysians took offence and came no more to Cardigan to market. The old people used to think that they now went to Fishguard market, as very strange people were wont to be seen there.’ On the other hand, some Fishguard people were lately of opinion that it was at Haverfordwest the fairies did their marketing: I refer to a letter of Mr. Ferrar Fenton’s, in thePembroke County Guardianof October 31, 1896, in which he mentions a conversation he had with a Fishguard woman as to the existence of fairies: ‘There are fairies,’ she asserted, ‘for they came to Ha’rfordwest market to buy things, so theremustbe.’With this should be compared pp. 9–10 of Wirt Sikes’British Goblins, where mention is made of sailors on the coast of Pembrokeshire and Carmarthenshire, ‘who still talk of the green meadows of enchantment lying in the Irish Channel to the west of Pembrokeshire,’ and of men who had landed on them, or seen them suddenly vanishing. The author then proceeds to abstract from Howells’Cambrian Superstitions, p. 119, the following paragraph:—‘The fairies inhabiting theseislands are said to have regularly attended the markets at Milford Haven and Laugharne. They made their purchases without speaking, laid down their money and departed, always leaving the exact sum required, which they seemed to know without asking the price of anything. Sometimes they were invisible; but they were often seen by sharp-eyed persons. There was always one special butcher at Milford Haven upon whom the fairies bestowed their patronage instead of distributing their favours indiscriminately. The Milford Haven folk could see the green Fairy Islands distinctly, lying out a short distance from land; and the general belief was that they were densely peopled with fairies. It was also said that the latter went to and fro between the islands and the shore, through a subterranean gallery under the bottom of the sea.’Another tale given in theBrython, ii. 20, by a writer who gives his name as B. Davies26, will serve to show, short though it be, that the termPlant Rhys Đwfnwas not confined to those honestly dealing fairies, but was used in a sense wholly synonymous with that ofTylwyth Teg, as understood in other parts of Wales. The story runs as follows, and should be compared with the Dyffryn Mymbyr one given above, pp. 100–3:—‘One calm hot day, when the sun of heaven was brilliantly shining, and the hay in the dales was being busily made by lads and lasses, and by grown-up people of both sexes, a woman in the neighbourhood of Emlyn placed her one-year-old infant in thegader, or chair, as the cradle is called in these parts, and out she went to the field for a while, intending to return, when herneighbour, an old woman overtaken by the decrepitude of eighty summers, should call to her that her darling was crying. It was not long before she heard the old woman calling to her; she ran hurriedly, and as soon as she set foot on the kitchen floor she took her little one in her arms as usual, saying to him, “O my little one! thy mother’s delight art thou! I would not take the world for thee, &c.” But to her surprise he had a very old look about him, and the more the tender-hearted mother gazed at his face, the stranger it seemed to her, so that at last she placed him in the cradle and told her trouble and sorrow to her relatives and acquaintances. And after this one and the other had given his opinion, it was agreed at last that it was one ofRhys Đwfn’schildren that was in the cradle, and not her dearly loved baby. In this distress there was nothing to do but to fetch a sorcerer, as fast as the fastest horse could gallop. He said, when he saw the child, that he had seen his like before, and that it would be a hard job to get rid of him, though not such a very hard job this time. The shovel was made red hot in the fire by one of the Cefnarth27boys, and held before the child’s face; and in an instant the short little old man took to his heels, and neither he nor his like was seen afterwards from Aber Cuch to Aber Bargoed at any rate. The mother, it is said, found her darling unscathed the next moment. I remember also hearing that the strange child was as old as the grandfather of the one that had been lost.’As I see no reason to make any profound distinction between lake maidens and sea maidens, I now give Gwynionyđ’s account of the mermaid who was foundby a fisherman from Ỻandydoch or St. Dogmael’s28, near Cardigan: see theBrython, i. 82:—‘One fine afternoon in September, in the beginning of the last century, a fisherman, whose name was Pergrin29, went to a recess in the rock near Pen Cemmes, where he found a sea maiden doing her hair, and he took the water lady prisoner to his boat …. We know not what language is used by sea maidens … but this one, this time at any rate, talked, it is said, very good Welsh; for when she was in despair in Pergrin’s custody, weeping copiously, and with her tresses all dishevelled, she calledout: ‘Pergrin, if thou wilt let me go, I will give thee three shouts in the time of thy greatest need.’ So, in wonder and fear, he let her go to walk the streets of the deep, and visit her sweethearts there. Days and weeks passed without Pergrin seeing her after this; but one hot afternoon, when the sea was pretty calm, and the fishermen had no thought of danger, behold his old acquaintance showing her head and locks, and shouting out in a loud voice: ‘Pergrin! Pergrin! Pergrin! take up thy nets, take up thy nets, take up thy nets!’ Pergrin and his companion instantly obeyed the message, and drew their nets in with great haste. In they went, past the bar, and by the time they had reached the Pwll Cam the most terrible storm had overspread the sea, while he and his companion were safe on land. Twice nine others had gone out with them, but they were all drowned without having the chance of obeying the warning of the water lady.’ Perhaps it is not quite irrelevant to mention here the armorial bearings which Drayton ascribes to the neighbouring county of Cardigan in the following couplet in hisBattaile of Agincourt(London, 1631), p. 23:—As Cardigan the next to them that went,Came with a Mermayd sitting on a Rock.A writer in theBrython, iv. 194, states that the people of Nefyn in Ỻeyn claim the story of the fisher and the mermaid as belonging to them, which proves that a similar legend has been current there: add to this the fact mentioned in theBrython, iii. 133, that a red mermaid with yellow hair, on a white field, figures in the coat of arms of the family resident at Glasfryn in the parish of Ỻangybi, in Eifionyđ or the southern portion of Carnarvonshire; and we have already suggested that Glasynys’ story (pp. 117–25) was madeup, to a certain extent, of materials found on the coasts of Carnarvonshire. A small batch of stories about South Wales mermaids is given by a writer who calls himself Ab Nadol30, in theBrython, iv. 310, as follows:—‘A few rockmen are said to have been working, about eighty years ago, in a quarry near Porth y Rhaw, when the day was calm and clear, with nature, as it were, feasting, the flowers shedding sweet scent around, and the hot sunshine beaming into the jagged rocks. Though an occasional wave rose to strike the romantic cliffs, the sea was like a placid lake, with its light coverlet of blue attractive enough to entice one of the ladies ofRhys Đwfnforth from the town seen by Daniel Huws off Trefin as he was journeying between Fishguard and St. David’s in the year 1858, to make her way to the top of a stone and to sit on it to disentangle her flowing silvery hair. Whilst she was cleaning herself, the rockmen went down, and when they got near her they perceived that, from her waist upwards, she was like the lasses of Wales, but that, from her waist downwards, she had the body of a fish. And, when they began to talk to her, they found she spoke Welsh, though she only uttered the following few words to them: “Reaping in Pembrokeshire and weeding in Carmarthenshire.” Off she then went to walk in the depth of the sea towards her home. Another tale is repeated about a mermaid, said to have been caught by men below the land of Ỻanwnda, near the spot, if not on the spot, where the French made their landing afterwards, and three miles to the west of Fishguard. It then goes on to say that they carried her to their home, and kept her in a secure place forsome time; before long, she begged to be allowed to return to the brine land, and gave the people of the house three bits of advice; but I only remember one of them,’ he writes, ‘and this is it: “Skim the surface of the pottage before adding sweet milk to it: it will be whiter and sweeter, and less of it will do.” I was told that this family follow the three advices to this day.’ A somewhat similar advice to that about the pottage is said to have been given by a mermaid, under similar circumstances, to a Manxman.After putting the foregoing bits together, I was favoured by Mr. Benjamin Williams with notes on the tales and on the persons from whom he heard them: they form the contents of two or three letters, mostly answers to queries of mine, and the following is the substance of them:—Mr. Williams is a native of the valley of Troed yr Aur31, in the Cardiganshire parish of that name. He spent a part of his youth at Verwig, in the angle between the northern bank of the Teifi and Cardigan Bay. He heard of Rhys Đwfn’s Children first from a distant relative of his father’s, a Catherine Thomas, who came to visit her daughter, who lived not far from his father’s house: that would now be from forty-eight to fifty years ago. He was very young at the time, and of Rhys Đwfn’s progeny he formed a wonderful idea, which was partly due also to the talk of one James Davies or Siàms Mocyn, who was very well up in folklore, and was one of his father’s next-door neighbours. He was an old man, and nephew to the musician, DavidJenkin Morgan. The only spot near Mr. Williams’ home, that used to be frequented by the fairies, was Cefn y Ceirw, ‘the Stag’s Ridge,’ a large farm, so called from having been kept as a park for their deer by the Lewises of Aber Nant Bychan. He adds that the late Mr. Philipps, of Aberglasney, was very fond of talking of things in his native neighbourhood, and of mentioning the fairies at Cefn y Ceirw. It was after moving to Verwig that Mr. Williams began to put the tales he heard on paper: then he came in contact with three brothers, whose names were John, Owen, and Thomas Evans. They were well-to-do and respectable bachelors, living together on the large farm of Hafod Ruffyđ. Thomas was a man of very strong common sense, and worth consulting on any subject: he was a good arithmetician, and a constant reader of the Baptist periodical,Seren Gomer, from its first appearance. He thoroughly understood the bardic metres, and had a fair knowledge of music. He was well versed in Scripture, and filled the office of deacon at the Baptist Chapel. His death took place in the year 1864. Now, the eldest of the three brothers, the one named John, or Siôn, was then about seventy-five years of age, and he thoroughly believed in the tales about the fairies, as will be seen from the following short dialogue:—Siôn:Williams bach, ma’n rhaid i bod nhw’i gâl: yr w i’n cofio yn amser Bone fod marchnad Aberteifi yn ỻawn o lafir yn y bore—digon yno am fis—ond cin pen hanner awr yr ôđ y cwbwl wedi darfod. Nid ôđ possib i gweld nhwi: mâ gida nhwi faint a fynnon nhwi o arian.Williams:Siwt na fyse dynion yn i gweld nhwi ynte, Siôn?Siôn:O mâ gida nhwi đynion fel ninne yn prynidrostyn nhwi; ag y mâ nhwi fel yr hen siówmin yna yn geỻi gneid pob tric.John: ‘My dear Williams, it must be that they exist: I remember Cardigan market, in the time of Bonaparte, full of corn in the morning—enough for a month—but in less than half an hour it was all gone. It was impossible to see them: they have as much money as they like.’Williams: ‘How is it, then, that men did not see them, John?’John: ‘Oh, they have men like us to do the buying for them; and they can, like those old showmen, do every kind of trick.’At this kind of display of simplicity on the part of his brother, Thomas used to smile and say: ‘My brother John believes such things as those;’ for he had no belief in them himself. Still it is from his mouth that Mr. Williams published the tales in theBrython, which have been reproduced here, that of ‘Pergrin and the Mermaid,’ and all about the ‘Heir of Ỻech y Derwyđ,’ not to mention the ethical element in the account of Rhys Đwfn’s country and its people, the product probably of his mind. Thomas Evans, or as he was really called, Tommos Ifan, was given rather to grappling with the question of the origin of such beliefs; so one day he called Mr. Williams out, and led him to a spot about four hundred yards from Bol y Fron, where the latter then lived: he pointed to the setting sun, and asked Mr. Williams what he thought of the glorious sunset before them. ‘It is all produced,’ he then observed, ‘by the reflection of the sun’s rays on the mist: one might think,’ he went on to say, ‘that there was there a paradise of a country full of fields, forests, and everything that is desirable.’ And before they had moved away the grand scene had disappeared, whenThomas suggested that the idea of the existence of the country of Rhys Đwfn’s Children arose from the contemplation of that phenomenon. One may say that Thomas Evans was probably far ahead of the Welsh historians who try to extract history from the story ofCantre’r Gwaelod, ‘the Bottom Hundred,’ beneath the waves of Cardigan Bay; but what was seen was probably an instance of the mirage to be mentioned presently. Lastly, besides Mr. Williams’ contributions to theBrython, and a small volume of poetry, entitledBriaỻen glan Ceri, some tales of his were published by Ỻaỻawg inBygonessome years ago, and he had the prize at the Cardigan Eisteđfod of 1866 for the best collection in Welsh of the folklore of Dyfed: his recollection was that it contained in all thirty-six tales of all kinds; but since the manuscript, as the property of the Committee of that Eisteđfod, was sold, he could not now consult it: in fact he is not certain as to who the owner of it may now be, though he has an idea that it is either the Rev. Rees Williams, vicar of Whitchurch, near Solva, Pembrokeshire, or R. D. Jenkins, Esq., of Cilbronnau, Cardiganshire. Whoever the owner may be, he would probably be only too glad to have it published, and I mention this merely to call attention to it. The Eisteđfod is to be commended for encouraging local research, and sometimes even for burying the results in obscurity, but not always.

IX.There is a kind of fairy tale of which I think I have hitherto not given the reader a specimen: a good instance is given in the third volume of theBrython, at p. 459, by a contributor who calls himself Idnerth ab Gwgan, who, I learn from the Rev. Chancellor Silvan Evans, the editor, was no other than the Rev. Benjamin Williams, best known to Welsh antiquaries by his bardic name of Gwynionyđ. The preface to the tale is also interesting, so I am tempted to render the whole into English, as follows:—‘The fair family were wonderful creatures in the imaginary world: they encamped, they walked, and they capered a great deal in former ages in our country, according to what we learn from some of our old people. It may be supposed that they were very little folks like the children ofRhys Đwfn; for the old people used to imagine that they were wont to visit their hearths in great numbers in ages gone by. The girls at the farm houses used to make the hearths clean after supper, and to place a cauldron full of water near the fire; and so they thought that the fair family came there to play at night, bringing sweethearts for the young women, andleaving pieces of money on the hob for them in the morning. Sometimes they might be seen as splendid hosts exercising themselves on our hills. They were very fond of the mountains of Dyfed; travellers between Lampeter and Cardigan used to see them on the hill of Ỻanwenog, but by the time they had reached there the fairies would be far away on the hills of Ỻandyssul, and when one had reached the place where one expected to see the family together in tidy array, they would be seen very busily engaged on the tops of Crug y Balog; when one went there they would be on Blaen Pant ar Fi, moving on and on to Bryn Bwa, and, finally, to some place or other in the lower part of Dyfed. Like the soldiers of our earthly world, they were possessed of terribly fascinating music; and in the autumnal season they had their rings, still named from them, in which they sang and danced. The young man of Ỻech y Derwyđ24was his father’s only son, as well as heir to the farm; so he was very dear to his father and his mother, indeed he was the light of their eyes. Now, the head servant and the son were bosom friends: they were like brothers together, or rather twin brothers. As the son and the servant were such friends, the farmer’s wife used to get exactly the same kind of clothes prepared for the servant as for her son. The two fell in love with two handsome young women of very good reputation in the neighbourhood. The two couples were soon joined in honest wedlock, and great was the merry-making on the occasion. The servant had a suitable place to live in on the farm of Ỻech y Derwyđ; but about half a year after the son’s marriage,he and his friend went out for sport, when the servant withdrew to a wild and retired corner to look for game. He returned presently for his friend, but when he got there he could not see him anywhere: he kept looking around for some time for him, shouting and whistling, but there was no sign of his friend. By-and-by, he went home to Ỻech y Derwyđ expecting to see him, but no one knew anything about him. Great was the sorrow of his family through the night; and next day the anxiety was still greater. They went to see the place where his friend had seen him last: it was hard to tell whether his mother or his wife wept the more bitterly; but the father was a little better, though he also looked as if he were half mad with grief. The spot was examined, and, to their surprise, they saw a fairy ring close by, and the servant recollected that he had heard the sound of very fascinating music somewhere or other about the time in question. It was at once agreed that the man had been unfortunate enough to have got into the ring of theTylwyth, and to have been carried away by them, nobody knew whither. Weeks and months passed away, and a son was born to the heir of Ỻech y Derwyđ, but the young father was not there to see his child, which the old people thought very hard. However, the little one grew up the very picture of his father, and great was his influence over his grandfather and grandmother; in fact he was everything to them. He grew up to be a man, and he married a good-looking girl in that neighbourhood; but her family did not enjoy the reputation of being kind-hearted people. The old folks died, and their daughter-in-law also. One windy afternoon in the month of October, the family of Ỻech y Derwyđ beheld a tall thin old man, with his beard and hair white as snow, coming towards the house, and they thought he wasa Jew. The servant maids stared at him, and their mistress laughed at the “old Jew,” at the same time that she lifted the children up one after another to see him. He came to the door and entered boldly enough, asking about his parents. The mistress answered him in an unusually surly and contemptuous tone, wondering why the “drunken old Jew had come there,” because it was thought he had been drinking, and that he would otherwise not have spoken so. The old man cast wondering and anxious looks around on everything in the house, feeling as he did greatly surprised; but it was the little children about the floor that drew his attention most: his looks were full of disappointment and sorrow. He related the whole of his account, saying that he had been out the day before and that he was now returning. The mistress of the house told him that she had heard a tale about her husband’s father, that he had been lost years before her birth while out sporting, whilst her father maintained that it was not true, but that he had been killed. She became angry, and quite lost her temper at seeing “the old Jew” not going away. The old man was roused, saying that he was the owner of the house, and that he must have his rights. He then went out to see his possessions, and presently went to the house of the servant, where, to his surprise, things had greatly changed; after conversing with an aged man, who sat by the fire, the one began to scrutinize the other more and more. The aged man by the fire told him what had been the fate of his old friend, the heir of Ỻech y Derwyđ. They talked deliberately of the events of their youth, but it all seemed like a dream; in short, the old man in the corner concluded that his visitor was his old friend, the heir of Ỻech y Derwyđ, returning from the land of theTylwyth Tegafter spending half a hundred years there.The other old man, with the snow-white beard, believed in his history, and much did they talk together and question one another for many hours. The old man by the fire said that the master of Ỻech y Derwyđ was away from home that day, and he induced his aged visitor to eat some food, but, to the horror of all, the eater fell down dead on the spot25. There is no record that an inquest was held over him, but the tale relates that the cause of it was, that he ate food after having been so long in the world of the fair family. His old friend insisted on seeing him buried by the side of his ancestors; but the rudeness of the mistress of Ỻech y Derwyđ to her father-in-law brought a curse on the family that clung to it to distant generations, and until the place had been sold nine times.’A tale like this is to be found related of Idwal of Nantclwyd, inCymru Fu, p. 85. I said ‘a tale like this,’ but, on reconsidering the matter, I should think it is the very same tale passed through the hands of Glasynys or some one of his imitators. Another of this kind will be found in theBrython, ii. 170, and several similar ones also in Wirt Sikes’ book, pp. 65–90, either given at length, or merely referred to. There is one kind of variant which deserves special notice, as making the music to which the sojourner in Faery listens for scores of years to be that of a bird singing on a tree. A story of the sort is located by Howells, in hisCambrian Superstitions, pp. 127–8, at Pant Shon Shencin, near Pencader, in Cardiganshire. This latter kind of story leads easily up to another development, namely, to substituting for the bird’s warble the song and felicity of heaven, and for the simple shepherd a pious monk. Inthis form it is located at a place called Ỻwyn y Nef, or ‘Heaven’s Grove,’ near Celynnog Fawr, in Carnarvonshire. It is given by Glasynys inCymru Fu, pp. 183–4, where it was copied from theBrython, iii. 111, in which he had previously published it. Several versions of it in rhyme came down from the eighteenth century, and Silvan Evans has brought together twenty-six stanzas in point inSt. David’s College Magazinefor 1881, pp. 191–200, where he has put into a few paragraphs all that is known about the song of theHen Wr o’r Coed, or the Old Man of the Wood, in his usually clear and lucid style.A tale from the other end of the tract of country once occupied by a sprinkling, perhaps, of Celts among a population of Picts, makes the man, and not the fairies, supply the music. I owe it to the kindness of the Rev. Andrew Clark, Fellow of Lincoln College, Oxford, who heard it from the late sexton of the parish of Dollar, in the county of Clackmannan. The sexton died some twelve years ago, aged seventy: he had learnt the tale from his father. The following are Mr. Clark’s words:—‘Glendevon is a parish and village in the Ochils in County Perth, about five miles from Dollar as you come up Glen Queich and down by Gloomhill. Glen Queich is a narrowish glen between two grassy hills—at the top of the glen is a round hill of no great height, but very neat shape, the grass of which is always short and trim, and the ferns on the shoulder of a very marked green. This, as you come up the glen, seems entirely to block the way. It is called the “Maiden Castle.” Only when you come quite close do you see the path winding round the foot of it. A little further on is a fine spring bordered with flat stones, in the middle of a neat, turfy spot, called the “Maiden’s Well.” This road, till the new toll-road was made on the other sideof the hills, was the thoroughfare between Dollar and Glendevon.’The following is the legend, as told by the ‘Bethrel’:—‘A piper, carrying his pipes, was coming from Glendevon to Dollar in the grey of the evening. He crossed the Garchel (a little stream running into the Queich burn), and looked at the “Maiden Castle,” and saw only the grey hillside and heard only the wind soughing through the bent. He had got beyond it when he heard a burst of lively music: he turned round, and instead of the dark knoll saw a great castle, with lights blazing from the windows, and heard the noise of dancing issuing from the open door. He went back incautiously, and a procession issuing forth at that moment, he was caught and taken into a great hall ablaze with lights, and people dancing on the floor. He had to pipe to them for a day or two, but he got anxious, because he knew his people would be wondering why he did not come back in the morning as he had promised. The fairies seemed to sympathize with his anxiety, and promised to let him go if he played a favourite tune of his, which they seemed fond of, to their satisfaction. He played his very best, the dance went fast and furious, and at its close he was greeted with loud applause. On his release he found himself alone, in the grey of the evening, beside the dark hillock, and no sound was heard save the purr of the burn and the soughing of the wind through the bent. Instead of completing his journey to Dollar, he walked hastily back to Glendevon to relieve his folk’s anxiety. He entered his father’s house and found no kent face there. On his protesting that he had gone only a day or two before, and waxing loud in his bewildered talk, a grey old man was roused from a doze behind the fire; and told how he had heard when a boy from his father thata piper had gone away to Dollar on a quiet evening, and had never been heard or seen since, nor any trace of him found. He had been in the “castle” for a hundred years.’The termPlant Rhys Đwfnhas already been brought before the reader: it means ‘the Children ofRhys Đwfn,’ andRhys Đwfnmeans literally Rhys the Deep, but the adjective in Welsh connotes depth of character in the sense of shrewdness or cunning. Nay, even the Englishdeepis often borrowed for use in the same sense, as when one colloquially saysun dîp iawn yw e, ‘he is a very calculating or cunning fellow.’ The following account of Rhys and his progeny is given by Gwynionyđ in the first volume of theBrython, p. 130, which deserves being cited at length:—‘There is a tale current in Dyfed, that there is, or rather that there has been, a country between Cemmes, the northern Hundred of Pembrokeshire, and Aberdaron in Ỻeyn. The chief patriarch of the inhabitants was Rhys Đwfn, and his descendants used to be called after him the Children of Rhys Đwfn. They were, it is said, a handsome race enough, but remarkably small in size. It is stated that certain herbs of a strange nature grew in their land, so that they were able to keep their country from being seen by even the most sharp sighted of invaders. There is no account that these remarkable herbs grew in any other part of the world excepting on a small spot, about a square yard in area, in a certain part of Cemmes. If it chanced that a man stood alone on it, he beheld the whole of the territory ofPlant Rhys Đwfn; but the moment he moved he would lose sight of it altogether, and it would have been utterly vain for him to look for his footprints. In another story, as will be seen presently, the requisite platform was a turf from St. David’s churchyard. The Rhysians had not much land—theylived in towns. So they were wont in former times to come to market to Cardigan, and to raise the prices of things terribly. They were seen of no one coming or going, but only seen there in the market. When prices happened to be high, and the corn all sold, however much there might have been there in the morning, the poor used to say to one another on the way home, “Oh!theywere there to-day,” meaningPlant Rhys Đwfn. So they were dear friends in the estimation of Siôn Phil Hywel, the farmer; but not so high in the opinion of Dafyđ, the labourer. It is said, however, that they were very honest and resolute men. A certain Gruffyđ ab Einon was wont to sell them more corn than anybody else, and so he was a great friend of theirs. He was honoured by them beyond all his contemporaries by being led on a visit to their home. As they were great traders like the Phœnicians of old, they had treasures from all countries under the sun. Gruffyđ, after feasting his eyes to satiety on their wonders, was led back by them loaded with presents. But before taking leave of them, he asked them how they succeeded in keeping themselves safe from invaders, as one of their number might become unfaithful, and go beyond the virtue of the herbs that formed their safety. “Oh!” replied the little old man of shrewd looks, “just as Ireland has been blessed with a soil on which venomous reptiles cannot live, so with our land: no traitor can live here. Look at the sand on the sea-shore: perfect unity prevails there, and so among us. Rhys, the father of our race, bade us, even to the most distant descendant, honour our parents and ancestors; love our own wives without looking at those of our neighbours; and do our best for our children and grandchildren. And he said that if we did so, no one of us would ever prove unfaithful to another, orbecome what you call a traitor. The latter is a wholly imaginary character among us; strange pictures are drawn of him with his feet like those of an ass, with a nest of snakes in his bosom, with a head like the devil’s, with hands somewhat like a man’s, while one of them holds a large knife, and the family lies dead around the figure. Good-bye!” When Gruffyđ looked about him he lost sight of the country ofPlant Rhys, and found himself near his home. He became very wealthy after this, and continued to be a great friend ofPlant Rhysas long as he lived. After Gruffyđ’s death they came to market again, but such was the greed of the farmers, like Gruffyđ before them, for riches, and so unreasonable were the prices they asked for their corn, that the Rhysians took offence and came no more to Cardigan to market. The old people used to think that they now went to Fishguard market, as very strange people were wont to be seen there.’ On the other hand, some Fishguard people were lately of opinion that it was at Haverfordwest the fairies did their marketing: I refer to a letter of Mr. Ferrar Fenton’s, in thePembroke County Guardianof October 31, 1896, in which he mentions a conversation he had with a Fishguard woman as to the existence of fairies: ‘There are fairies,’ she asserted, ‘for they came to Ha’rfordwest market to buy things, so theremustbe.’With this should be compared pp. 9–10 of Wirt Sikes’British Goblins, where mention is made of sailors on the coast of Pembrokeshire and Carmarthenshire, ‘who still talk of the green meadows of enchantment lying in the Irish Channel to the west of Pembrokeshire,’ and of men who had landed on them, or seen them suddenly vanishing. The author then proceeds to abstract from Howells’Cambrian Superstitions, p. 119, the following paragraph:—‘The fairies inhabiting theseislands are said to have regularly attended the markets at Milford Haven and Laugharne. They made their purchases without speaking, laid down their money and departed, always leaving the exact sum required, which they seemed to know without asking the price of anything. Sometimes they were invisible; but they were often seen by sharp-eyed persons. There was always one special butcher at Milford Haven upon whom the fairies bestowed their patronage instead of distributing their favours indiscriminately. The Milford Haven folk could see the green Fairy Islands distinctly, lying out a short distance from land; and the general belief was that they were densely peopled with fairies. It was also said that the latter went to and fro between the islands and the shore, through a subterranean gallery under the bottom of the sea.’Another tale given in theBrython, ii. 20, by a writer who gives his name as B. Davies26, will serve to show, short though it be, that the termPlant Rhys Đwfnwas not confined to those honestly dealing fairies, but was used in a sense wholly synonymous with that ofTylwyth Teg, as understood in other parts of Wales. The story runs as follows, and should be compared with the Dyffryn Mymbyr one given above, pp. 100–3:—‘One calm hot day, when the sun of heaven was brilliantly shining, and the hay in the dales was being busily made by lads and lasses, and by grown-up people of both sexes, a woman in the neighbourhood of Emlyn placed her one-year-old infant in thegader, or chair, as the cradle is called in these parts, and out she went to the field for a while, intending to return, when herneighbour, an old woman overtaken by the decrepitude of eighty summers, should call to her that her darling was crying. It was not long before she heard the old woman calling to her; she ran hurriedly, and as soon as she set foot on the kitchen floor she took her little one in her arms as usual, saying to him, “O my little one! thy mother’s delight art thou! I would not take the world for thee, &c.” But to her surprise he had a very old look about him, and the more the tender-hearted mother gazed at his face, the stranger it seemed to her, so that at last she placed him in the cradle and told her trouble and sorrow to her relatives and acquaintances. And after this one and the other had given his opinion, it was agreed at last that it was one ofRhys Đwfn’schildren that was in the cradle, and not her dearly loved baby. In this distress there was nothing to do but to fetch a sorcerer, as fast as the fastest horse could gallop. He said, when he saw the child, that he had seen his like before, and that it would be a hard job to get rid of him, though not such a very hard job this time. The shovel was made red hot in the fire by one of the Cefnarth27boys, and held before the child’s face; and in an instant the short little old man took to his heels, and neither he nor his like was seen afterwards from Aber Cuch to Aber Bargoed at any rate. The mother, it is said, found her darling unscathed the next moment. I remember also hearing that the strange child was as old as the grandfather of the one that had been lost.’As I see no reason to make any profound distinction between lake maidens and sea maidens, I now give Gwynionyđ’s account of the mermaid who was foundby a fisherman from Ỻandydoch or St. Dogmael’s28, near Cardigan: see theBrython, i. 82:—‘One fine afternoon in September, in the beginning of the last century, a fisherman, whose name was Pergrin29, went to a recess in the rock near Pen Cemmes, where he found a sea maiden doing her hair, and he took the water lady prisoner to his boat …. We know not what language is used by sea maidens … but this one, this time at any rate, talked, it is said, very good Welsh; for when she was in despair in Pergrin’s custody, weeping copiously, and with her tresses all dishevelled, she calledout: ‘Pergrin, if thou wilt let me go, I will give thee three shouts in the time of thy greatest need.’ So, in wonder and fear, he let her go to walk the streets of the deep, and visit her sweethearts there. Days and weeks passed without Pergrin seeing her after this; but one hot afternoon, when the sea was pretty calm, and the fishermen had no thought of danger, behold his old acquaintance showing her head and locks, and shouting out in a loud voice: ‘Pergrin! Pergrin! Pergrin! take up thy nets, take up thy nets, take up thy nets!’ Pergrin and his companion instantly obeyed the message, and drew their nets in with great haste. In they went, past the bar, and by the time they had reached the Pwll Cam the most terrible storm had overspread the sea, while he and his companion were safe on land. Twice nine others had gone out with them, but they were all drowned without having the chance of obeying the warning of the water lady.’ Perhaps it is not quite irrelevant to mention here the armorial bearings which Drayton ascribes to the neighbouring county of Cardigan in the following couplet in hisBattaile of Agincourt(London, 1631), p. 23:—As Cardigan the next to them that went,Came with a Mermayd sitting on a Rock.A writer in theBrython, iv. 194, states that the people of Nefyn in Ỻeyn claim the story of the fisher and the mermaid as belonging to them, which proves that a similar legend has been current there: add to this the fact mentioned in theBrython, iii. 133, that a red mermaid with yellow hair, on a white field, figures in the coat of arms of the family resident at Glasfryn in the parish of Ỻangybi, in Eifionyđ or the southern portion of Carnarvonshire; and we have already suggested that Glasynys’ story (pp. 117–25) was madeup, to a certain extent, of materials found on the coasts of Carnarvonshire. A small batch of stories about South Wales mermaids is given by a writer who calls himself Ab Nadol30, in theBrython, iv. 310, as follows:—‘A few rockmen are said to have been working, about eighty years ago, in a quarry near Porth y Rhaw, when the day was calm and clear, with nature, as it were, feasting, the flowers shedding sweet scent around, and the hot sunshine beaming into the jagged rocks. Though an occasional wave rose to strike the romantic cliffs, the sea was like a placid lake, with its light coverlet of blue attractive enough to entice one of the ladies ofRhys Đwfnforth from the town seen by Daniel Huws off Trefin as he was journeying between Fishguard and St. David’s in the year 1858, to make her way to the top of a stone and to sit on it to disentangle her flowing silvery hair. Whilst she was cleaning herself, the rockmen went down, and when they got near her they perceived that, from her waist upwards, she was like the lasses of Wales, but that, from her waist downwards, she had the body of a fish. And, when they began to talk to her, they found she spoke Welsh, though she only uttered the following few words to them: “Reaping in Pembrokeshire and weeding in Carmarthenshire.” Off she then went to walk in the depth of the sea towards her home. Another tale is repeated about a mermaid, said to have been caught by men below the land of Ỻanwnda, near the spot, if not on the spot, where the French made their landing afterwards, and three miles to the west of Fishguard. It then goes on to say that they carried her to their home, and kept her in a secure place forsome time; before long, she begged to be allowed to return to the brine land, and gave the people of the house three bits of advice; but I only remember one of them,’ he writes, ‘and this is it: “Skim the surface of the pottage before adding sweet milk to it: it will be whiter and sweeter, and less of it will do.” I was told that this family follow the three advices to this day.’ A somewhat similar advice to that about the pottage is said to have been given by a mermaid, under similar circumstances, to a Manxman.After putting the foregoing bits together, I was favoured by Mr. Benjamin Williams with notes on the tales and on the persons from whom he heard them: they form the contents of two or three letters, mostly answers to queries of mine, and the following is the substance of them:—Mr. Williams is a native of the valley of Troed yr Aur31, in the Cardiganshire parish of that name. He spent a part of his youth at Verwig, in the angle between the northern bank of the Teifi and Cardigan Bay. He heard of Rhys Đwfn’s Children first from a distant relative of his father’s, a Catherine Thomas, who came to visit her daughter, who lived not far from his father’s house: that would now be from forty-eight to fifty years ago. He was very young at the time, and of Rhys Đwfn’s progeny he formed a wonderful idea, which was partly due also to the talk of one James Davies or Siàms Mocyn, who was very well up in folklore, and was one of his father’s next-door neighbours. He was an old man, and nephew to the musician, DavidJenkin Morgan. The only spot near Mr. Williams’ home, that used to be frequented by the fairies, was Cefn y Ceirw, ‘the Stag’s Ridge,’ a large farm, so called from having been kept as a park for their deer by the Lewises of Aber Nant Bychan. He adds that the late Mr. Philipps, of Aberglasney, was very fond of talking of things in his native neighbourhood, and of mentioning the fairies at Cefn y Ceirw. It was after moving to Verwig that Mr. Williams began to put the tales he heard on paper: then he came in contact with three brothers, whose names were John, Owen, and Thomas Evans. They were well-to-do and respectable bachelors, living together on the large farm of Hafod Ruffyđ. Thomas was a man of very strong common sense, and worth consulting on any subject: he was a good arithmetician, and a constant reader of the Baptist periodical,Seren Gomer, from its first appearance. He thoroughly understood the bardic metres, and had a fair knowledge of music. He was well versed in Scripture, and filled the office of deacon at the Baptist Chapel. His death took place in the year 1864. Now, the eldest of the three brothers, the one named John, or Siôn, was then about seventy-five years of age, and he thoroughly believed in the tales about the fairies, as will be seen from the following short dialogue:—Siôn:Williams bach, ma’n rhaid i bod nhw’i gâl: yr w i’n cofio yn amser Bone fod marchnad Aberteifi yn ỻawn o lafir yn y bore—digon yno am fis—ond cin pen hanner awr yr ôđ y cwbwl wedi darfod. Nid ôđ possib i gweld nhwi: mâ gida nhwi faint a fynnon nhwi o arian.Williams:Siwt na fyse dynion yn i gweld nhwi ynte, Siôn?Siôn:O mâ gida nhwi đynion fel ninne yn prynidrostyn nhwi; ag y mâ nhwi fel yr hen siówmin yna yn geỻi gneid pob tric.John: ‘My dear Williams, it must be that they exist: I remember Cardigan market, in the time of Bonaparte, full of corn in the morning—enough for a month—but in less than half an hour it was all gone. It was impossible to see them: they have as much money as they like.’Williams: ‘How is it, then, that men did not see them, John?’John: ‘Oh, they have men like us to do the buying for them; and they can, like those old showmen, do every kind of trick.’At this kind of display of simplicity on the part of his brother, Thomas used to smile and say: ‘My brother John believes such things as those;’ for he had no belief in them himself. Still it is from his mouth that Mr. Williams published the tales in theBrython, which have been reproduced here, that of ‘Pergrin and the Mermaid,’ and all about the ‘Heir of Ỻech y Derwyđ,’ not to mention the ethical element in the account of Rhys Đwfn’s country and its people, the product probably of his mind. Thomas Evans, or as he was really called, Tommos Ifan, was given rather to grappling with the question of the origin of such beliefs; so one day he called Mr. Williams out, and led him to a spot about four hundred yards from Bol y Fron, where the latter then lived: he pointed to the setting sun, and asked Mr. Williams what he thought of the glorious sunset before them. ‘It is all produced,’ he then observed, ‘by the reflection of the sun’s rays on the mist: one might think,’ he went on to say, ‘that there was there a paradise of a country full of fields, forests, and everything that is desirable.’ And before they had moved away the grand scene had disappeared, whenThomas suggested that the idea of the existence of the country of Rhys Đwfn’s Children arose from the contemplation of that phenomenon. One may say that Thomas Evans was probably far ahead of the Welsh historians who try to extract history from the story ofCantre’r Gwaelod, ‘the Bottom Hundred,’ beneath the waves of Cardigan Bay; but what was seen was probably an instance of the mirage to be mentioned presently. Lastly, besides Mr. Williams’ contributions to theBrython, and a small volume of poetry, entitledBriaỻen glan Ceri, some tales of his were published by Ỻaỻawg inBygonessome years ago, and he had the prize at the Cardigan Eisteđfod of 1866 for the best collection in Welsh of the folklore of Dyfed: his recollection was that it contained in all thirty-six tales of all kinds; but since the manuscript, as the property of the Committee of that Eisteđfod, was sold, he could not now consult it: in fact he is not certain as to who the owner of it may now be, though he has an idea that it is either the Rev. Rees Williams, vicar of Whitchurch, near Solva, Pembrokeshire, or R. D. Jenkins, Esq., of Cilbronnau, Cardiganshire. Whoever the owner may be, he would probably be only too glad to have it published, and I mention this merely to call attention to it. The Eisteđfod is to be commended for encouraging local research, and sometimes even for burying the results in obscurity, but not always.

IX.

There is a kind of fairy tale of which I think I have hitherto not given the reader a specimen: a good instance is given in the third volume of theBrython, at p. 459, by a contributor who calls himself Idnerth ab Gwgan, who, I learn from the Rev. Chancellor Silvan Evans, the editor, was no other than the Rev. Benjamin Williams, best known to Welsh antiquaries by his bardic name of Gwynionyđ. The preface to the tale is also interesting, so I am tempted to render the whole into English, as follows:—‘The fair family were wonderful creatures in the imaginary world: they encamped, they walked, and they capered a great deal in former ages in our country, according to what we learn from some of our old people. It may be supposed that they were very little folks like the children ofRhys Đwfn; for the old people used to imagine that they were wont to visit their hearths in great numbers in ages gone by. The girls at the farm houses used to make the hearths clean after supper, and to place a cauldron full of water near the fire; and so they thought that the fair family came there to play at night, bringing sweethearts for the young women, andleaving pieces of money on the hob for them in the morning. Sometimes they might be seen as splendid hosts exercising themselves on our hills. They were very fond of the mountains of Dyfed; travellers between Lampeter and Cardigan used to see them on the hill of Ỻanwenog, but by the time they had reached there the fairies would be far away on the hills of Ỻandyssul, and when one had reached the place where one expected to see the family together in tidy array, they would be seen very busily engaged on the tops of Crug y Balog; when one went there they would be on Blaen Pant ar Fi, moving on and on to Bryn Bwa, and, finally, to some place or other in the lower part of Dyfed. Like the soldiers of our earthly world, they were possessed of terribly fascinating music; and in the autumnal season they had their rings, still named from them, in which they sang and danced. The young man of Ỻech y Derwyđ24was his father’s only son, as well as heir to the farm; so he was very dear to his father and his mother, indeed he was the light of their eyes. Now, the head servant and the son were bosom friends: they were like brothers together, or rather twin brothers. As the son and the servant were such friends, the farmer’s wife used to get exactly the same kind of clothes prepared for the servant as for her son. The two fell in love with two handsome young women of very good reputation in the neighbourhood. The two couples were soon joined in honest wedlock, and great was the merry-making on the occasion. The servant had a suitable place to live in on the farm of Ỻech y Derwyđ; but about half a year after the son’s marriage,he and his friend went out for sport, when the servant withdrew to a wild and retired corner to look for game. He returned presently for his friend, but when he got there he could not see him anywhere: he kept looking around for some time for him, shouting and whistling, but there was no sign of his friend. By-and-by, he went home to Ỻech y Derwyđ expecting to see him, but no one knew anything about him. Great was the sorrow of his family through the night; and next day the anxiety was still greater. They went to see the place where his friend had seen him last: it was hard to tell whether his mother or his wife wept the more bitterly; but the father was a little better, though he also looked as if he were half mad with grief. The spot was examined, and, to their surprise, they saw a fairy ring close by, and the servant recollected that he had heard the sound of very fascinating music somewhere or other about the time in question. It was at once agreed that the man had been unfortunate enough to have got into the ring of theTylwyth, and to have been carried away by them, nobody knew whither. Weeks and months passed away, and a son was born to the heir of Ỻech y Derwyđ, but the young father was not there to see his child, which the old people thought very hard. However, the little one grew up the very picture of his father, and great was his influence over his grandfather and grandmother; in fact he was everything to them. He grew up to be a man, and he married a good-looking girl in that neighbourhood; but her family did not enjoy the reputation of being kind-hearted people. The old folks died, and their daughter-in-law also. One windy afternoon in the month of October, the family of Ỻech y Derwyđ beheld a tall thin old man, with his beard and hair white as snow, coming towards the house, and they thought he wasa Jew. The servant maids stared at him, and their mistress laughed at the “old Jew,” at the same time that she lifted the children up one after another to see him. He came to the door and entered boldly enough, asking about his parents. The mistress answered him in an unusually surly and contemptuous tone, wondering why the “drunken old Jew had come there,” because it was thought he had been drinking, and that he would otherwise not have spoken so. The old man cast wondering and anxious looks around on everything in the house, feeling as he did greatly surprised; but it was the little children about the floor that drew his attention most: his looks were full of disappointment and sorrow. He related the whole of his account, saying that he had been out the day before and that he was now returning. The mistress of the house told him that she had heard a tale about her husband’s father, that he had been lost years before her birth while out sporting, whilst her father maintained that it was not true, but that he had been killed. She became angry, and quite lost her temper at seeing “the old Jew” not going away. The old man was roused, saying that he was the owner of the house, and that he must have his rights. He then went out to see his possessions, and presently went to the house of the servant, where, to his surprise, things had greatly changed; after conversing with an aged man, who sat by the fire, the one began to scrutinize the other more and more. The aged man by the fire told him what had been the fate of his old friend, the heir of Ỻech y Derwyđ. They talked deliberately of the events of their youth, but it all seemed like a dream; in short, the old man in the corner concluded that his visitor was his old friend, the heir of Ỻech y Derwyđ, returning from the land of theTylwyth Tegafter spending half a hundred years there.The other old man, with the snow-white beard, believed in his history, and much did they talk together and question one another for many hours. The old man by the fire said that the master of Ỻech y Derwyđ was away from home that day, and he induced his aged visitor to eat some food, but, to the horror of all, the eater fell down dead on the spot25. There is no record that an inquest was held over him, but the tale relates that the cause of it was, that he ate food after having been so long in the world of the fair family. His old friend insisted on seeing him buried by the side of his ancestors; but the rudeness of the mistress of Ỻech y Derwyđ to her father-in-law brought a curse on the family that clung to it to distant generations, and until the place had been sold nine times.’A tale like this is to be found related of Idwal of Nantclwyd, inCymru Fu, p. 85. I said ‘a tale like this,’ but, on reconsidering the matter, I should think it is the very same tale passed through the hands of Glasynys or some one of his imitators. Another of this kind will be found in theBrython, ii. 170, and several similar ones also in Wirt Sikes’ book, pp. 65–90, either given at length, or merely referred to. There is one kind of variant which deserves special notice, as making the music to which the sojourner in Faery listens for scores of years to be that of a bird singing on a tree. A story of the sort is located by Howells, in hisCambrian Superstitions, pp. 127–8, at Pant Shon Shencin, near Pencader, in Cardiganshire. This latter kind of story leads easily up to another development, namely, to substituting for the bird’s warble the song and felicity of heaven, and for the simple shepherd a pious monk. Inthis form it is located at a place called Ỻwyn y Nef, or ‘Heaven’s Grove,’ near Celynnog Fawr, in Carnarvonshire. It is given by Glasynys inCymru Fu, pp. 183–4, where it was copied from theBrython, iii. 111, in which he had previously published it. Several versions of it in rhyme came down from the eighteenth century, and Silvan Evans has brought together twenty-six stanzas in point inSt. David’s College Magazinefor 1881, pp. 191–200, where he has put into a few paragraphs all that is known about the song of theHen Wr o’r Coed, or the Old Man of the Wood, in his usually clear and lucid style.A tale from the other end of the tract of country once occupied by a sprinkling, perhaps, of Celts among a population of Picts, makes the man, and not the fairies, supply the music. I owe it to the kindness of the Rev. Andrew Clark, Fellow of Lincoln College, Oxford, who heard it from the late sexton of the parish of Dollar, in the county of Clackmannan. The sexton died some twelve years ago, aged seventy: he had learnt the tale from his father. The following are Mr. Clark’s words:—‘Glendevon is a parish and village in the Ochils in County Perth, about five miles from Dollar as you come up Glen Queich and down by Gloomhill. Glen Queich is a narrowish glen between two grassy hills—at the top of the glen is a round hill of no great height, but very neat shape, the grass of which is always short and trim, and the ferns on the shoulder of a very marked green. This, as you come up the glen, seems entirely to block the way. It is called the “Maiden Castle.” Only when you come quite close do you see the path winding round the foot of it. A little further on is a fine spring bordered with flat stones, in the middle of a neat, turfy spot, called the “Maiden’s Well.” This road, till the new toll-road was made on the other sideof the hills, was the thoroughfare between Dollar and Glendevon.’The following is the legend, as told by the ‘Bethrel’:—‘A piper, carrying his pipes, was coming from Glendevon to Dollar in the grey of the evening. He crossed the Garchel (a little stream running into the Queich burn), and looked at the “Maiden Castle,” and saw only the grey hillside and heard only the wind soughing through the bent. He had got beyond it when he heard a burst of lively music: he turned round, and instead of the dark knoll saw a great castle, with lights blazing from the windows, and heard the noise of dancing issuing from the open door. He went back incautiously, and a procession issuing forth at that moment, he was caught and taken into a great hall ablaze with lights, and people dancing on the floor. He had to pipe to them for a day or two, but he got anxious, because he knew his people would be wondering why he did not come back in the morning as he had promised. The fairies seemed to sympathize with his anxiety, and promised to let him go if he played a favourite tune of his, which they seemed fond of, to their satisfaction. He played his very best, the dance went fast and furious, and at its close he was greeted with loud applause. On his release he found himself alone, in the grey of the evening, beside the dark hillock, and no sound was heard save the purr of the burn and the soughing of the wind through the bent. Instead of completing his journey to Dollar, he walked hastily back to Glendevon to relieve his folk’s anxiety. He entered his father’s house and found no kent face there. On his protesting that he had gone only a day or two before, and waxing loud in his bewildered talk, a grey old man was roused from a doze behind the fire; and told how he had heard when a boy from his father thata piper had gone away to Dollar on a quiet evening, and had never been heard or seen since, nor any trace of him found. He had been in the “castle” for a hundred years.’The termPlant Rhys Đwfnhas already been brought before the reader: it means ‘the Children ofRhys Đwfn,’ andRhys Đwfnmeans literally Rhys the Deep, but the adjective in Welsh connotes depth of character in the sense of shrewdness or cunning. Nay, even the Englishdeepis often borrowed for use in the same sense, as when one colloquially saysun dîp iawn yw e, ‘he is a very calculating or cunning fellow.’ The following account of Rhys and his progeny is given by Gwynionyđ in the first volume of theBrython, p. 130, which deserves being cited at length:—‘There is a tale current in Dyfed, that there is, or rather that there has been, a country between Cemmes, the northern Hundred of Pembrokeshire, and Aberdaron in Ỻeyn. The chief patriarch of the inhabitants was Rhys Đwfn, and his descendants used to be called after him the Children of Rhys Đwfn. They were, it is said, a handsome race enough, but remarkably small in size. It is stated that certain herbs of a strange nature grew in their land, so that they were able to keep their country from being seen by even the most sharp sighted of invaders. There is no account that these remarkable herbs grew in any other part of the world excepting on a small spot, about a square yard in area, in a certain part of Cemmes. If it chanced that a man stood alone on it, he beheld the whole of the territory ofPlant Rhys Đwfn; but the moment he moved he would lose sight of it altogether, and it would have been utterly vain for him to look for his footprints. In another story, as will be seen presently, the requisite platform was a turf from St. David’s churchyard. The Rhysians had not much land—theylived in towns. So they were wont in former times to come to market to Cardigan, and to raise the prices of things terribly. They were seen of no one coming or going, but only seen there in the market. When prices happened to be high, and the corn all sold, however much there might have been there in the morning, the poor used to say to one another on the way home, “Oh!theywere there to-day,” meaningPlant Rhys Đwfn. So they were dear friends in the estimation of Siôn Phil Hywel, the farmer; but not so high in the opinion of Dafyđ, the labourer. It is said, however, that they were very honest and resolute men. A certain Gruffyđ ab Einon was wont to sell them more corn than anybody else, and so he was a great friend of theirs. He was honoured by them beyond all his contemporaries by being led on a visit to their home. As they were great traders like the Phœnicians of old, they had treasures from all countries under the sun. Gruffyđ, after feasting his eyes to satiety on their wonders, was led back by them loaded with presents. But before taking leave of them, he asked them how they succeeded in keeping themselves safe from invaders, as one of their number might become unfaithful, and go beyond the virtue of the herbs that formed their safety. “Oh!” replied the little old man of shrewd looks, “just as Ireland has been blessed with a soil on which venomous reptiles cannot live, so with our land: no traitor can live here. Look at the sand on the sea-shore: perfect unity prevails there, and so among us. Rhys, the father of our race, bade us, even to the most distant descendant, honour our parents and ancestors; love our own wives without looking at those of our neighbours; and do our best for our children and grandchildren. And he said that if we did so, no one of us would ever prove unfaithful to another, orbecome what you call a traitor. The latter is a wholly imaginary character among us; strange pictures are drawn of him with his feet like those of an ass, with a nest of snakes in his bosom, with a head like the devil’s, with hands somewhat like a man’s, while one of them holds a large knife, and the family lies dead around the figure. Good-bye!” When Gruffyđ looked about him he lost sight of the country ofPlant Rhys, and found himself near his home. He became very wealthy after this, and continued to be a great friend ofPlant Rhysas long as he lived. After Gruffyđ’s death they came to market again, but such was the greed of the farmers, like Gruffyđ before them, for riches, and so unreasonable were the prices they asked for their corn, that the Rhysians took offence and came no more to Cardigan to market. The old people used to think that they now went to Fishguard market, as very strange people were wont to be seen there.’ On the other hand, some Fishguard people were lately of opinion that it was at Haverfordwest the fairies did their marketing: I refer to a letter of Mr. Ferrar Fenton’s, in thePembroke County Guardianof October 31, 1896, in which he mentions a conversation he had with a Fishguard woman as to the existence of fairies: ‘There are fairies,’ she asserted, ‘for they came to Ha’rfordwest market to buy things, so theremustbe.’With this should be compared pp. 9–10 of Wirt Sikes’British Goblins, where mention is made of sailors on the coast of Pembrokeshire and Carmarthenshire, ‘who still talk of the green meadows of enchantment lying in the Irish Channel to the west of Pembrokeshire,’ and of men who had landed on them, or seen them suddenly vanishing. The author then proceeds to abstract from Howells’Cambrian Superstitions, p. 119, the following paragraph:—‘The fairies inhabiting theseislands are said to have regularly attended the markets at Milford Haven and Laugharne. They made their purchases without speaking, laid down their money and departed, always leaving the exact sum required, which they seemed to know without asking the price of anything. Sometimes they were invisible; but they were often seen by sharp-eyed persons. There was always one special butcher at Milford Haven upon whom the fairies bestowed their patronage instead of distributing their favours indiscriminately. The Milford Haven folk could see the green Fairy Islands distinctly, lying out a short distance from land; and the general belief was that they were densely peopled with fairies. It was also said that the latter went to and fro between the islands and the shore, through a subterranean gallery under the bottom of the sea.’Another tale given in theBrython, ii. 20, by a writer who gives his name as B. Davies26, will serve to show, short though it be, that the termPlant Rhys Đwfnwas not confined to those honestly dealing fairies, but was used in a sense wholly synonymous with that ofTylwyth Teg, as understood in other parts of Wales. The story runs as follows, and should be compared with the Dyffryn Mymbyr one given above, pp. 100–3:—‘One calm hot day, when the sun of heaven was brilliantly shining, and the hay in the dales was being busily made by lads and lasses, and by grown-up people of both sexes, a woman in the neighbourhood of Emlyn placed her one-year-old infant in thegader, or chair, as the cradle is called in these parts, and out she went to the field for a while, intending to return, when herneighbour, an old woman overtaken by the decrepitude of eighty summers, should call to her that her darling was crying. It was not long before she heard the old woman calling to her; she ran hurriedly, and as soon as she set foot on the kitchen floor she took her little one in her arms as usual, saying to him, “O my little one! thy mother’s delight art thou! I would not take the world for thee, &c.” But to her surprise he had a very old look about him, and the more the tender-hearted mother gazed at his face, the stranger it seemed to her, so that at last she placed him in the cradle and told her trouble and sorrow to her relatives and acquaintances. And after this one and the other had given his opinion, it was agreed at last that it was one ofRhys Đwfn’schildren that was in the cradle, and not her dearly loved baby. In this distress there was nothing to do but to fetch a sorcerer, as fast as the fastest horse could gallop. He said, when he saw the child, that he had seen his like before, and that it would be a hard job to get rid of him, though not such a very hard job this time. The shovel was made red hot in the fire by one of the Cefnarth27boys, and held before the child’s face; and in an instant the short little old man took to his heels, and neither he nor his like was seen afterwards from Aber Cuch to Aber Bargoed at any rate. The mother, it is said, found her darling unscathed the next moment. I remember also hearing that the strange child was as old as the grandfather of the one that had been lost.’As I see no reason to make any profound distinction between lake maidens and sea maidens, I now give Gwynionyđ’s account of the mermaid who was foundby a fisherman from Ỻandydoch or St. Dogmael’s28, near Cardigan: see theBrython, i. 82:—‘One fine afternoon in September, in the beginning of the last century, a fisherman, whose name was Pergrin29, went to a recess in the rock near Pen Cemmes, where he found a sea maiden doing her hair, and he took the water lady prisoner to his boat …. We know not what language is used by sea maidens … but this one, this time at any rate, talked, it is said, very good Welsh; for when she was in despair in Pergrin’s custody, weeping copiously, and with her tresses all dishevelled, she calledout: ‘Pergrin, if thou wilt let me go, I will give thee three shouts in the time of thy greatest need.’ So, in wonder and fear, he let her go to walk the streets of the deep, and visit her sweethearts there. Days and weeks passed without Pergrin seeing her after this; but one hot afternoon, when the sea was pretty calm, and the fishermen had no thought of danger, behold his old acquaintance showing her head and locks, and shouting out in a loud voice: ‘Pergrin! Pergrin! Pergrin! take up thy nets, take up thy nets, take up thy nets!’ Pergrin and his companion instantly obeyed the message, and drew their nets in with great haste. In they went, past the bar, and by the time they had reached the Pwll Cam the most terrible storm had overspread the sea, while he and his companion were safe on land. Twice nine others had gone out with them, but they were all drowned without having the chance of obeying the warning of the water lady.’ Perhaps it is not quite irrelevant to mention here the armorial bearings which Drayton ascribes to the neighbouring county of Cardigan in the following couplet in hisBattaile of Agincourt(London, 1631), p. 23:—As Cardigan the next to them that went,Came with a Mermayd sitting on a Rock.A writer in theBrython, iv. 194, states that the people of Nefyn in Ỻeyn claim the story of the fisher and the mermaid as belonging to them, which proves that a similar legend has been current there: add to this the fact mentioned in theBrython, iii. 133, that a red mermaid with yellow hair, on a white field, figures in the coat of arms of the family resident at Glasfryn in the parish of Ỻangybi, in Eifionyđ or the southern portion of Carnarvonshire; and we have already suggested that Glasynys’ story (pp. 117–25) was madeup, to a certain extent, of materials found on the coasts of Carnarvonshire. A small batch of stories about South Wales mermaids is given by a writer who calls himself Ab Nadol30, in theBrython, iv. 310, as follows:—‘A few rockmen are said to have been working, about eighty years ago, in a quarry near Porth y Rhaw, when the day was calm and clear, with nature, as it were, feasting, the flowers shedding sweet scent around, and the hot sunshine beaming into the jagged rocks. Though an occasional wave rose to strike the romantic cliffs, the sea was like a placid lake, with its light coverlet of blue attractive enough to entice one of the ladies ofRhys Đwfnforth from the town seen by Daniel Huws off Trefin as he was journeying between Fishguard and St. David’s in the year 1858, to make her way to the top of a stone and to sit on it to disentangle her flowing silvery hair. Whilst she was cleaning herself, the rockmen went down, and when they got near her they perceived that, from her waist upwards, she was like the lasses of Wales, but that, from her waist downwards, she had the body of a fish. And, when they began to talk to her, they found she spoke Welsh, though she only uttered the following few words to them: “Reaping in Pembrokeshire and weeding in Carmarthenshire.” Off she then went to walk in the depth of the sea towards her home. Another tale is repeated about a mermaid, said to have been caught by men below the land of Ỻanwnda, near the spot, if not on the spot, where the French made their landing afterwards, and three miles to the west of Fishguard. It then goes on to say that they carried her to their home, and kept her in a secure place forsome time; before long, she begged to be allowed to return to the brine land, and gave the people of the house three bits of advice; but I only remember one of them,’ he writes, ‘and this is it: “Skim the surface of the pottage before adding sweet milk to it: it will be whiter and sweeter, and less of it will do.” I was told that this family follow the three advices to this day.’ A somewhat similar advice to that about the pottage is said to have been given by a mermaid, under similar circumstances, to a Manxman.After putting the foregoing bits together, I was favoured by Mr. Benjamin Williams with notes on the tales and on the persons from whom he heard them: they form the contents of two or three letters, mostly answers to queries of mine, and the following is the substance of them:—Mr. Williams is a native of the valley of Troed yr Aur31, in the Cardiganshire parish of that name. He spent a part of his youth at Verwig, in the angle between the northern bank of the Teifi and Cardigan Bay. He heard of Rhys Đwfn’s Children first from a distant relative of his father’s, a Catherine Thomas, who came to visit her daughter, who lived not far from his father’s house: that would now be from forty-eight to fifty years ago. He was very young at the time, and of Rhys Đwfn’s progeny he formed a wonderful idea, which was partly due also to the talk of one James Davies or Siàms Mocyn, who was very well up in folklore, and was one of his father’s next-door neighbours. He was an old man, and nephew to the musician, DavidJenkin Morgan. The only spot near Mr. Williams’ home, that used to be frequented by the fairies, was Cefn y Ceirw, ‘the Stag’s Ridge,’ a large farm, so called from having been kept as a park for their deer by the Lewises of Aber Nant Bychan. He adds that the late Mr. Philipps, of Aberglasney, was very fond of talking of things in his native neighbourhood, and of mentioning the fairies at Cefn y Ceirw. It was after moving to Verwig that Mr. Williams began to put the tales he heard on paper: then he came in contact with three brothers, whose names were John, Owen, and Thomas Evans. They were well-to-do and respectable bachelors, living together on the large farm of Hafod Ruffyđ. Thomas was a man of very strong common sense, and worth consulting on any subject: he was a good arithmetician, and a constant reader of the Baptist periodical,Seren Gomer, from its first appearance. He thoroughly understood the bardic metres, and had a fair knowledge of music. He was well versed in Scripture, and filled the office of deacon at the Baptist Chapel. His death took place in the year 1864. Now, the eldest of the three brothers, the one named John, or Siôn, was then about seventy-five years of age, and he thoroughly believed in the tales about the fairies, as will be seen from the following short dialogue:—Siôn:Williams bach, ma’n rhaid i bod nhw’i gâl: yr w i’n cofio yn amser Bone fod marchnad Aberteifi yn ỻawn o lafir yn y bore—digon yno am fis—ond cin pen hanner awr yr ôđ y cwbwl wedi darfod. Nid ôđ possib i gweld nhwi: mâ gida nhwi faint a fynnon nhwi o arian.Williams:Siwt na fyse dynion yn i gweld nhwi ynte, Siôn?Siôn:O mâ gida nhwi đynion fel ninne yn prynidrostyn nhwi; ag y mâ nhwi fel yr hen siówmin yna yn geỻi gneid pob tric.John: ‘My dear Williams, it must be that they exist: I remember Cardigan market, in the time of Bonaparte, full of corn in the morning—enough for a month—but in less than half an hour it was all gone. It was impossible to see them: they have as much money as they like.’Williams: ‘How is it, then, that men did not see them, John?’John: ‘Oh, they have men like us to do the buying for them; and they can, like those old showmen, do every kind of trick.’At this kind of display of simplicity on the part of his brother, Thomas used to smile and say: ‘My brother John believes such things as those;’ for he had no belief in them himself. Still it is from his mouth that Mr. Williams published the tales in theBrython, which have been reproduced here, that of ‘Pergrin and the Mermaid,’ and all about the ‘Heir of Ỻech y Derwyđ,’ not to mention the ethical element in the account of Rhys Đwfn’s country and its people, the product probably of his mind. Thomas Evans, or as he was really called, Tommos Ifan, was given rather to grappling with the question of the origin of such beliefs; so one day he called Mr. Williams out, and led him to a spot about four hundred yards from Bol y Fron, where the latter then lived: he pointed to the setting sun, and asked Mr. Williams what he thought of the glorious sunset before them. ‘It is all produced,’ he then observed, ‘by the reflection of the sun’s rays on the mist: one might think,’ he went on to say, ‘that there was there a paradise of a country full of fields, forests, and everything that is desirable.’ And before they had moved away the grand scene had disappeared, whenThomas suggested that the idea of the existence of the country of Rhys Đwfn’s Children arose from the contemplation of that phenomenon. One may say that Thomas Evans was probably far ahead of the Welsh historians who try to extract history from the story ofCantre’r Gwaelod, ‘the Bottom Hundred,’ beneath the waves of Cardigan Bay; but what was seen was probably an instance of the mirage to be mentioned presently. Lastly, besides Mr. Williams’ contributions to theBrython, and a small volume of poetry, entitledBriaỻen glan Ceri, some tales of his were published by Ỻaỻawg inBygonessome years ago, and he had the prize at the Cardigan Eisteđfod of 1866 for the best collection in Welsh of the folklore of Dyfed: his recollection was that it contained in all thirty-six tales of all kinds; but since the manuscript, as the property of the Committee of that Eisteđfod, was sold, he could not now consult it: in fact he is not certain as to who the owner of it may now be, though he has an idea that it is either the Rev. Rees Williams, vicar of Whitchurch, near Solva, Pembrokeshire, or R. D. Jenkins, Esq., of Cilbronnau, Cardiganshire. Whoever the owner may be, he would probably be only too glad to have it published, and I mention this merely to call attention to it. The Eisteđfod is to be commended for encouraging local research, and sometimes even for burying the results in obscurity, but not always.

There is a kind of fairy tale of which I think I have hitherto not given the reader a specimen: a good instance is given in the third volume of theBrython, at p. 459, by a contributor who calls himself Idnerth ab Gwgan, who, I learn from the Rev. Chancellor Silvan Evans, the editor, was no other than the Rev. Benjamin Williams, best known to Welsh antiquaries by his bardic name of Gwynionyđ. The preface to the tale is also interesting, so I am tempted to render the whole into English, as follows:—

‘The fair family were wonderful creatures in the imaginary world: they encamped, they walked, and they capered a great deal in former ages in our country, according to what we learn from some of our old people. It may be supposed that they were very little folks like the children ofRhys Đwfn; for the old people used to imagine that they were wont to visit their hearths in great numbers in ages gone by. The girls at the farm houses used to make the hearths clean after supper, and to place a cauldron full of water near the fire; and so they thought that the fair family came there to play at night, bringing sweethearts for the young women, andleaving pieces of money on the hob for them in the morning. Sometimes they might be seen as splendid hosts exercising themselves on our hills. They were very fond of the mountains of Dyfed; travellers between Lampeter and Cardigan used to see them on the hill of Ỻanwenog, but by the time they had reached there the fairies would be far away on the hills of Ỻandyssul, and when one had reached the place where one expected to see the family together in tidy array, they would be seen very busily engaged on the tops of Crug y Balog; when one went there they would be on Blaen Pant ar Fi, moving on and on to Bryn Bwa, and, finally, to some place or other in the lower part of Dyfed. Like the soldiers of our earthly world, they were possessed of terribly fascinating music; and in the autumnal season they had their rings, still named from them, in which they sang and danced. The young man of Ỻech y Derwyđ24was his father’s only son, as well as heir to the farm; so he was very dear to his father and his mother, indeed he was the light of their eyes. Now, the head servant and the son were bosom friends: they were like brothers together, or rather twin brothers. As the son and the servant were such friends, the farmer’s wife used to get exactly the same kind of clothes prepared for the servant as for her son. The two fell in love with two handsome young women of very good reputation in the neighbourhood. The two couples were soon joined in honest wedlock, and great was the merry-making on the occasion. The servant had a suitable place to live in on the farm of Ỻech y Derwyđ; but about half a year after the son’s marriage,he and his friend went out for sport, when the servant withdrew to a wild and retired corner to look for game. He returned presently for his friend, but when he got there he could not see him anywhere: he kept looking around for some time for him, shouting and whistling, but there was no sign of his friend. By-and-by, he went home to Ỻech y Derwyđ expecting to see him, but no one knew anything about him. Great was the sorrow of his family through the night; and next day the anxiety was still greater. They went to see the place where his friend had seen him last: it was hard to tell whether his mother or his wife wept the more bitterly; but the father was a little better, though he also looked as if he were half mad with grief. The spot was examined, and, to their surprise, they saw a fairy ring close by, and the servant recollected that he had heard the sound of very fascinating music somewhere or other about the time in question. It was at once agreed that the man had been unfortunate enough to have got into the ring of theTylwyth, and to have been carried away by them, nobody knew whither. Weeks and months passed away, and a son was born to the heir of Ỻech y Derwyđ, but the young father was not there to see his child, which the old people thought very hard. However, the little one grew up the very picture of his father, and great was his influence over his grandfather and grandmother; in fact he was everything to them. He grew up to be a man, and he married a good-looking girl in that neighbourhood; but her family did not enjoy the reputation of being kind-hearted people. The old folks died, and their daughter-in-law also. One windy afternoon in the month of October, the family of Ỻech y Derwyđ beheld a tall thin old man, with his beard and hair white as snow, coming towards the house, and they thought he wasa Jew. The servant maids stared at him, and their mistress laughed at the “old Jew,” at the same time that she lifted the children up one after another to see him. He came to the door and entered boldly enough, asking about his parents. The mistress answered him in an unusually surly and contemptuous tone, wondering why the “drunken old Jew had come there,” because it was thought he had been drinking, and that he would otherwise not have spoken so. The old man cast wondering and anxious looks around on everything in the house, feeling as he did greatly surprised; but it was the little children about the floor that drew his attention most: his looks were full of disappointment and sorrow. He related the whole of his account, saying that he had been out the day before and that he was now returning. The mistress of the house told him that she had heard a tale about her husband’s father, that he had been lost years before her birth while out sporting, whilst her father maintained that it was not true, but that he had been killed. She became angry, and quite lost her temper at seeing “the old Jew” not going away. The old man was roused, saying that he was the owner of the house, and that he must have his rights. He then went out to see his possessions, and presently went to the house of the servant, where, to his surprise, things had greatly changed; after conversing with an aged man, who sat by the fire, the one began to scrutinize the other more and more. The aged man by the fire told him what had been the fate of his old friend, the heir of Ỻech y Derwyđ. They talked deliberately of the events of their youth, but it all seemed like a dream; in short, the old man in the corner concluded that his visitor was his old friend, the heir of Ỻech y Derwyđ, returning from the land of theTylwyth Tegafter spending half a hundred years there.The other old man, with the snow-white beard, believed in his history, and much did they talk together and question one another for many hours. The old man by the fire said that the master of Ỻech y Derwyđ was away from home that day, and he induced his aged visitor to eat some food, but, to the horror of all, the eater fell down dead on the spot25. There is no record that an inquest was held over him, but the tale relates that the cause of it was, that he ate food after having been so long in the world of the fair family. His old friend insisted on seeing him buried by the side of his ancestors; but the rudeness of the mistress of Ỻech y Derwyđ to her father-in-law brought a curse on the family that clung to it to distant generations, and until the place had been sold nine times.’

A tale like this is to be found related of Idwal of Nantclwyd, inCymru Fu, p. 85. I said ‘a tale like this,’ but, on reconsidering the matter, I should think it is the very same tale passed through the hands of Glasynys or some one of his imitators. Another of this kind will be found in theBrython, ii. 170, and several similar ones also in Wirt Sikes’ book, pp. 65–90, either given at length, or merely referred to. There is one kind of variant which deserves special notice, as making the music to which the sojourner in Faery listens for scores of years to be that of a bird singing on a tree. A story of the sort is located by Howells, in hisCambrian Superstitions, pp. 127–8, at Pant Shon Shencin, near Pencader, in Cardiganshire. This latter kind of story leads easily up to another development, namely, to substituting for the bird’s warble the song and felicity of heaven, and for the simple shepherd a pious monk. Inthis form it is located at a place called Ỻwyn y Nef, or ‘Heaven’s Grove,’ near Celynnog Fawr, in Carnarvonshire. It is given by Glasynys inCymru Fu, pp. 183–4, where it was copied from theBrython, iii. 111, in which he had previously published it. Several versions of it in rhyme came down from the eighteenth century, and Silvan Evans has brought together twenty-six stanzas in point inSt. David’s College Magazinefor 1881, pp. 191–200, where he has put into a few paragraphs all that is known about the song of theHen Wr o’r Coed, or the Old Man of the Wood, in his usually clear and lucid style.

A tale from the other end of the tract of country once occupied by a sprinkling, perhaps, of Celts among a population of Picts, makes the man, and not the fairies, supply the music. I owe it to the kindness of the Rev. Andrew Clark, Fellow of Lincoln College, Oxford, who heard it from the late sexton of the parish of Dollar, in the county of Clackmannan. The sexton died some twelve years ago, aged seventy: he had learnt the tale from his father. The following are Mr. Clark’s words:—

‘Glendevon is a parish and village in the Ochils in County Perth, about five miles from Dollar as you come up Glen Queich and down by Gloomhill. Glen Queich is a narrowish glen between two grassy hills—at the top of the glen is a round hill of no great height, but very neat shape, the grass of which is always short and trim, and the ferns on the shoulder of a very marked green. This, as you come up the glen, seems entirely to block the way. It is called the “Maiden Castle.” Only when you come quite close do you see the path winding round the foot of it. A little further on is a fine spring bordered with flat stones, in the middle of a neat, turfy spot, called the “Maiden’s Well.” This road, till the new toll-road was made on the other sideof the hills, was the thoroughfare between Dollar and Glendevon.’

The following is the legend, as told by the ‘Bethrel’:—‘A piper, carrying his pipes, was coming from Glendevon to Dollar in the grey of the evening. He crossed the Garchel (a little stream running into the Queich burn), and looked at the “Maiden Castle,” and saw only the grey hillside and heard only the wind soughing through the bent. He had got beyond it when he heard a burst of lively music: he turned round, and instead of the dark knoll saw a great castle, with lights blazing from the windows, and heard the noise of dancing issuing from the open door. He went back incautiously, and a procession issuing forth at that moment, he was caught and taken into a great hall ablaze with lights, and people dancing on the floor. He had to pipe to them for a day or two, but he got anxious, because he knew his people would be wondering why he did not come back in the morning as he had promised. The fairies seemed to sympathize with his anxiety, and promised to let him go if he played a favourite tune of his, which they seemed fond of, to their satisfaction. He played his very best, the dance went fast and furious, and at its close he was greeted with loud applause. On his release he found himself alone, in the grey of the evening, beside the dark hillock, and no sound was heard save the purr of the burn and the soughing of the wind through the bent. Instead of completing his journey to Dollar, he walked hastily back to Glendevon to relieve his folk’s anxiety. He entered his father’s house and found no kent face there. On his protesting that he had gone only a day or two before, and waxing loud in his bewildered talk, a grey old man was roused from a doze behind the fire; and told how he had heard when a boy from his father thata piper had gone away to Dollar on a quiet evening, and had never been heard or seen since, nor any trace of him found. He had been in the “castle” for a hundred years.’

The termPlant Rhys Đwfnhas already been brought before the reader: it means ‘the Children ofRhys Đwfn,’ andRhys Đwfnmeans literally Rhys the Deep, but the adjective in Welsh connotes depth of character in the sense of shrewdness or cunning. Nay, even the Englishdeepis often borrowed for use in the same sense, as when one colloquially saysun dîp iawn yw e, ‘he is a very calculating or cunning fellow.’ The following account of Rhys and his progeny is given by Gwynionyđ in the first volume of theBrython, p. 130, which deserves being cited at length:—‘There is a tale current in Dyfed, that there is, or rather that there has been, a country between Cemmes, the northern Hundred of Pembrokeshire, and Aberdaron in Ỻeyn. The chief patriarch of the inhabitants was Rhys Đwfn, and his descendants used to be called after him the Children of Rhys Đwfn. They were, it is said, a handsome race enough, but remarkably small in size. It is stated that certain herbs of a strange nature grew in their land, so that they were able to keep their country from being seen by even the most sharp sighted of invaders. There is no account that these remarkable herbs grew in any other part of the world excepting on a small spot, about a square yard in area, in a certain part of Cemmes. If it chanced that a man stood alone on it, he beheld the whole of the territory ofPlant Rhys Đwfn; but the moment he moved he would lose sight of it altogether, and it would have been utterly vain for him to look for his footprints. In another story, as will be seen presently, the requisite platform was a turf from St. David’s churchyard. The Rhysians had not much land—theylived in towns. So they were wont in former times to come to market to Cardigan, and to raise the prices of things terribly. They were seen of no one coming or going, but only seen there in the market. When prices happened to be high, and the corn all sold, however much there might have been there in the morning, the poor used to say to one another on the way home, “Oh!theywere there to-day,” meaningPlant Rhys Đwfn. So they were dear friends in the estimation of Siôn Phil Hywel, the farmer; but not so high in the opinion of Dafyđ, the labourer. It is said, however, that they were very honest and resolute men. A certain Gruffyđ ab Einon was wont to sell them more corn than anybody else, and so he was a great friend of theirs. He was honoured by them beyond all his contemporaries by being led on a visit to their home. As they were great traders like the Phœnicians of old, they had treasures from all countries under the sun. Gruffyđ, after feasting his eyes to satiety on their wonders, was led back by them loaded with presents. But before taking leave of them, he asked them how they succeeded in keeping themselves safe from invaders, as one of their number might become unfaithful, and go beyond the virtue of the herbs that formed their safety. “Oh!” replied the little old man of shrewd looks, “just as Ireland has been blessed with a soil on which venomous reptiles cannot live, so with our land: no traitor can live here. Look at the sand on the sea-shore: perfect unity prevails there, and so among us. Rhys, the father of our race, bade us, even to the most distant descendant, honour our parents and ancestors; love our own wives without looking at those of our neighbours; and do our best for our children and grandchildren. And he said that if we did so, no one of us would ever prove unfaithful to another, orbecome what you call a traitor. The latter is a wholly imaginary character among us; strange pictures are drawn of him with his feet like those of an ass, with a nest of snakes in his bosom, with a head like the devil’s, with hands somewhat like a man’s, while one of them holds a large knife, and the family lies dead around the figure. Good-bye!” When Gruffyđ looked about him he lost sight of the country ofPlant Rhys, and found himself near his home. He became very wealthy after this, and continued to be a great friend ofPlant Rhysas long as he lived. After Gruffyđ’s death they came to market again, but such was the greed of the farmers, like Gruffyđ before them, for riches, and so unreasonable were the prices they asked for their corn, that the Rhysians took offence and came no more to Cardigan to market. The old people used to think that they now went to Fishguard market, as very strange people were wont to be seen there.’ On the other hand, some Fishguard people were lately of opinion that it was at Haverfordwest the fairies did their marketing: I refer to a letter of Mr. Ferrar Fenton’s, in thePembroke County Guardianof October 31, 1896, in which he mentions a conversation he had with a Fishguard woman as to the existence of fairies: ‘There are fairies,’ she asserted, ‘for they came to Ha’rfordwest market to buy things, so theremustbe.’

With this should be compared pp. 9–10 of Wirt Sikes’British Goblins, where mention is made of sailors on the coast of Pembrokeshire and Carmarthenshire, ‘who still talk of the green meadows of enchantment lying in the Irish Channel to the west of Pembrokeshire,’ and of men who had landed on them, or seen them suddenly vanishing. The author then proceeds to abstract from Howells’Cambrian Superstitions, p. 119, the following paragraph:—‘The fairies inhabiting theseislands are said to have regularly attended the markets at Milford Haven and Laugharne. They made their purchases without speaking, laid down their money and departed, always leaving the exact sum required, which they seemed to know without asking the price of anything. Sometimes they were invisible; but they were often seen by sharp-eyed persons. There was always one special butcher at Milford Haven upon whom the fairies bestowed their patronage instead of distributing their favours indiscriminately. The Milford Haven folk could see the green Fairy Islands distinctly, lying out a short distance from land; and the general belief was that they were densely peopled with fairies. It was also said that the latter went to and fro between the islands and the shore, through a subterranean gallery under the bottom of the sea.’

Another tale given in theBrython, ii. 20, by a writer who gives his name as B. Davies26, will serve to show, short though it be, that the termPlant Rhys Đwfnwas not confined to those honestly dealing fairies, but was used in a sense wholly synonymous with that ofTylwyth Teg, as understood in other parts of Wales. The story runs as follows, and should be compared with the Dyffryn Mymbyr one given above, pp. 100–3:—‘One calm hot day, when the sun of heaven was brilliantly shining, and the hay in the dales was being busily made by lads and lasses, and by grown-up people of both sexes, a woman in the neighbourhood of Emlyn placed her one-year-old infant in thegader, or chair, as the cradle is called in these parts, and out she went to the field for a while, intending to return, when herneighbour, an old woman overtaken by the decrepitude of eighty summers, should call to her that her darling was crying. It was not long before she heard the old woman calling to her; she ran hurriedly, and as soon as she set foot on the kitchen floor she took her little one in her arms as usual, saying to him, “O my little one! thy mother’s delight art thou! I would not take the world for thee, &c.” But to her surprise he had a very old look about him, and the more the tender-hearted mother gazed at his face, the stranger it seemed to her, so that at last she placed him in the cradle and told her trouble and sorrow to her relatives and acquaintances. And after this one and the other had given his opinion, it was agreed at last that it was one ofRhys Đwfn’schildren that was in the cradle, and not her dearly loved baby. In this distress there was nothing to do but to fetch a sorcerer, as fast as the fastest horse could gallop. He said, when he saw the child, that he had seen his like before, and that it would be a hard job to get rid of him, though not such a very hard job this time. The shovel was made red hot in the fire by one of the Cefnarth27boys, and held before the child’s face; and in an instant the short little old man took to his heels, and neither he nor his like was seen afterwards from Aber Cuch to Aber Bargoed at any rate. The mother, it is said, found her darling unscathed the next moment. I remember also hearing that the strange child was as old as the grandfather of the one that had been lost.’

As I see no reason to make any profound distinction between lake maidens and sea maidens, I now give Gwynionyđ’s account of the mermaid who was foundby a fisherman from Ỻandydoch or St. Dogmael’s28, near Cardigan: see theBrython, i. 82:—

‘One fine afternoon in September, in the beginning of the last century, a fisherman, whose name was Pergrin29, went to a recess in the rock near Pen Cemmes, where he found a sea maiden doing her hair, and he took the water lady prisoner to his boat …. We know not what language is used by sea maidens … but this one, this time at any rate, talked, it is said, very good Welsh; for when she was in despair in Pergrin’s custody, weeping copiously, and with her tresses all dishevelled, she calledout: ‘Pergrin, if thou wilt let me go, I will give thee three shouts in the time of thy greatest need.’ So, in wonder and fear, he let her go to walk the streets of the deep, and visit her sweethearts there. Days and weeks passed without Pergrin seeing her after this; but one hot afternoon, when the sea was pretty calm, and the fishermen had no thought of danger, behold his old acquaintance showing her head and locks, and shouting out in a loud voice: ‘Pergrin! Pergrin! Pergrin! take up thy nets, take up thy nets, take up thy nets!’ Pergrin and his companion instantly obeyed the message, and drew their nets in with great haste. In they went, past the bar, and by the time they had reached the Pwll Cam the most terrible storm had overspread the sea, while he and his companion were safe on land. Twice nine others had gone out with them, but they were all drowned without having the chance of obeying the warning of the water lady.’ Perhaps it is not quite irrelevant to mention here the armorial bearings which Drayton ascribes to the neighbouring county of Cardigan in the following couplet in hisBattaile of Agincourt(London, 1631), p. 23:—

As Cardigan the next to them that went,Came with a Mermayd sitting on a Rock.

As Cardigan the next to them that went,

Came with a Mermayd sitting on a Rock.

A writer in theBrython, iv. 194, states that the people of Nefyn in Ỻeyn claim the story of the fisher and the mermaid as belonging to them, which proves that a similar legend has been current there: add to this the fact mentioned in theBrython, iii. 133, that a red mermaid with yellow hair, on a white field, figures in the coat of arms of the family resident at Glasfryn in the parish of Ỻangybi, in Eifionyđ or the southern portion of Carnarvonshire; and we have already suggested that Glasynys’ story (pp. 117–25) was madeup, to a certain extent, of materials found on the coasts of Carnarvonshire. A small batch of stories about South Wales mermaids is given by a writer who calls himself Ab Nadol30, in theBrython, iv. 310, as follows:—

‘A few rockmen are said to have been working, about eighty years ago, in a quarry near Porth y Rhaw, when the day was calm and clear, with nature, as it were, feasting, the flowers shedding sweet scent around, and the hot sunshine beaming into the jagged rocks. Though an occasional wave rose to strike the romantic cliffs, the sea was like a placid lake, with its light coverlet of blue attractive enough to entice one of the ladies ofRhys Đwfnforth from the town seen by Daniel Huws off Trefin as he was journeying between Fishguard and St. David’s in the year 1858, to make her way to the top of a stone and to sit on it to disentangle her flowing silvery hair. Whilst she was cleaning herself, the rockmen went down, and when they got near her they perceived that, from her waist upwards, she was like the lasses of Wales, but that, from her waist downwards, she had the body of a fish. And, when they began to talk to her, they found she spoke Welsh, though she only uttered the following few words to them: “Reaping in Pembrokeshire and weeding in Carmarthenshire.” Off she then went to walk in the depth of the sea towards her home. Another tale is repeated about a mermaid, said to have been caught by men below the land of Ỻanwnda, near the spot, if not on the spot, where the French made their landing afterwards, and three miles to the west of Fishguard. It then goes on to say that they carried her to their home, and kept her in a secure place forsome time; before long, she begged to be allowed to return to the brine land, and gave the people of the house three bits of advice; but I only remember one of them,’ he writes, ‘and this is it: “Skim the surface of the pottage before adding sweet milk to it: it will be whiter and sweeter, and less of it will do.” I was told that this family follow the three advices to this day.’ A somewhat similar advice to that about the pottage is said to have been given by a mermaid, under similar circumstances, to a Manxman.

After putting the foregoing bits together, I was favoured by Mr. Benjamin Williams with notes on the tales and on the persons from whom he heard them: they form the contents of two or three letters, mostly answers to queries of mine, and the following is the substance of them:—Mr. Williams is a native of the valley of Troed yr Aur31, in the Cardiganshire parish of that name. He spent a part of his youth at Verwig, in the angle between the northern bank of the Teifi and Cardigan Bay. He heard of Rhys Đwfn’s Children first from a distant relative of his father’s, a Catherine Thomas, who came to visit her daughter, who lived not far from his father’s house: that would now be from forty-eight to fifty years ago. He was very young at the time, and of Rhys Đwfn’s progeny he formed a wonderful idea, which was partly due also to the talk of one James Davies or Siàms Mocyn, who was very well up in folklore, and was one of his father’s next-door neighbours. He was an old man, and nephew to the musician, DavidJenkin Morgan. The only spot near Mr. Williams’ home, that used to be frequented by the fairies, was Cefn y Ceirw, ‘the Stag’s Ridge,’ a large farm, so called from having been kept as a park for their deer by the Lewises of Aber Nant Bychan. He adds that the late Mr. Philipps, of Aberglasney, was very fond of talking of things in his native neighbourhood, and of mentioning the fairies at Cefn y Ceirw. It was after moving to Verwig that Mr. Williams began to put the tales he heard on paper: then he came in contact with three brothers, whose names were John, Owen, and Thomas Evans. They were well-to-do and respectable bachelors, living together on the large farm of Hafod Ruffyđ. Thomas was a man of very strong common sense, and worth consulting on any subject: he was a good arithmetician, and a constant reader of the Baptist periodical,Seren Gomer, from its first appearance. He thoroughly understood the bardic metres, and had a fair knowledge of music. He was well versed in Scripture, and filled the office of deacon at the Baptist Chapel. His death took place in the year 1864. Now, the eldest of the three brothers, the one named John, or Siôn, was then about seventy-five years of age, and he thoroughly believed in the tales about the fairies, as will be seen from the following short dialogue:—

Siôn:Williams bach, ma’n rhaid i bod nhw’i gâl: yr w i’n cofio yn amser Bone fod marchnad Aberteifi yn ỻawn o lafir yn y bore—digon yno am fis—ond cin pen hanner awr yr ôđ y cwbwl wedi darfod. Nid ôđ possib i gweld nhwi: mâ gida nhwi faint a fynnon nhwi o arian.

Williams:Siwt na fyse dynion yn i gweld nhwi ynte, Siôn?

Siôn:O mâ gida nhwi đynion fel ninne yn prynidrostyn nhwi; ag y mâ nhwi fel yr hen siówmin yna yn geỻi gneid pob tric.

John: ‘My dear Williams, it must be that they exist: I remember Cardigan market, in the time of Bonaparte, full of corn in the morning—enough for a month—but in less than half an hour it was all gone. It was impossible to see them: they have as much money as they like.’

Williams: ‘How is it, then, that men did not see them, John?’

John: ‘Oh, they have men like us to do the buying for them; and they can, like those old showmen, do every kind of trick.’

At this kind of display of simplicity on the part of his brother, Thomas used to smile and say: ‘My brother John believes such things as those;’ for he had no belief in them himself. Still it is from his mouth that Mr. Williams published the tales in theBrython, which have been reproduced here, that of ‘Pergrin and the Mermaid,’ and all about the ‘Heir of Ỻech y Derwyđ,’ not to mention the ethical element in the account of Rhys Đwfn’s country and its people, the product probably of his mind. Thomas Evans, or as he was really called, Tommos Ifan, was given rather to grappling with the question of the origin of such beliefs; so one day he called Mr. Williams out, and led him to a spot about four hundred yards from Bol y Fron, where the latter then lived: he pointed to the setting sun, and asked Mr. Williams what he thought of the glorious sunset before them. ‘It is all produced,’ he then observed, ‘by the reflection of the sun’s rays on the mist: one might think,’ he went on to say, ‘that there was there a paradise of a country full of fields, forests, and everything that is desirable.’ And before they had moved away the grand scene had disappeared, whenThomas suggested that the idea of the existence of the country of Rhys Đwfn’s Children arose from the contemplation of that phenomenon. One may say that Thomas Evans was probably far ahead of the Welsh historians who try to extract history from the story ofCantre’r Gwaelod, ‘the Bottom Hundred,’ beneath the waves of Cardigan Bay; but what was seen was probably an instance of the mirage to be mentioned presently. Lastly, besides Mr. Williams’ contributions to theBrython, and a small volume of poetry, entitledBriaỻen glan Ceri, some tales of his were published by Ỻaỻawg inBygonessome years ago, and he had the prize at the Cardigan Eisteđfod of 1866 for the best collection in Welsh of the folklore of Dyfed: his recollection was that it contained in all thirty-six tales of all kinds; but since the manuscript, as the property of the Committee of that Eisteđfod, was sold, he could not now consult it: in fact he is not certain as to who the owner of it may now be, though he has an idea that it is either the Rev. Rees Williams, vicar of Whitchurch, near Solva, Pembrokeshire, or R. D. Jenkins, Esq., of Cilbronnau, Cardiganshire. Whoever the owner may be, he would probably be only too glad to have it published, and I mention this merely to call attention to it. The Eisteđfod is to be commended for encouraging local research, and sometimes even for burying the results in obscurity, but not always.

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