Piety as a Protection from the Seductions of the Tylwyth
Teg--Various Exorcisms--Cock-crowing--The Name of
God--Fencing off the Fairies--Old Betty Griffith and her
Eithin Barricade--Means of Getting Rid of the Tylwyth
Teg--The Bwbach of the Hendrefawr Farm--The Pwca'r Trwyn's
Flitting in a Jug of Barm.
I.
The extreme piety of his daily walk and conversation may have been
held as an explanation why the Prophet Jones saw so few goblins
himself, and consequently why most of his stories of the fairies are
related as coming from other people. The value of a general habit of
piety, as a means of being rid of fairies, has already been mentioned.
The more worldly exorcisms, such as the production of a black-handled
knife, or the turning one's coat wrongside out, are passed over by the
Prophet as trivial; but by the student of comparative folk-lore, they
are not deemed unimportant. The last-mentioned exorcism, by the way,
is current among the Southern negroes of the United States. The more
spiritual exorcisms are not less interesting than the others, however.
First among these is ranked the pronunciation of God's name; but the
crowing of a cock is respectfully mentioned, in connection with the
story of our Saviour. Jones gives many accounts which terminate in the
manner of the following: Rees John Rosser, born at Hendy, in the
parish of Llanhiddel, 'a very religious young man,' went one morning
very early to feed the oxen in a barn called Ysgubor y Llan, and
having fed them lay himself upon the hay to rest. While he lay there
he heard the sound of music approaching, and presently a large company
of fairies came into the barn. They wore striped clothes, some in
gayer colours than the others, but all very gay; and they all danced
to the music. He lay there as quiet as he could, thinking they would
not see him, but he was espied by one of them, a woman, who brought a
striped cushion with four tassels, one at each corner of it, and put
it under his head. After some time the cock crew at the house of Blaen
y Cwm, hard by, upon which they appeared as if they were surprised and
displeased; the cushion was hastily whisked from under his head, and
the fairies vanished. 'The spirits of darkness do not like the crowing
of the cock, because it gives notice of the approach of day, for they
love darkness rather than light.... And it hath been several times
observed that these fairies cannot endure to hear the name of God.' A
modern Welsh preacher (but one whose opinions contrast most decidedly
with those of Jones) observes: 'The cock is wonderfully well versed in
the circumstances of the children of Adam; his shrill voice at dawn of
day is sufficient intimation to every spirit, coblyn, wraith, elf,
bwci, and apparition to flee into their illusive country for their
lives, before the light of day will show them to be an empty
nothingness, and bring them to shame and reproach.'[55] Shakspeare
introduces this superstition in Hamlet:
_Ber._ It was about to speak, when the cock crew.
_Hor._ And then it started like a guilty thing
Upon a fearful summons.[56]
But the opinion that spirits fly away at cock-crow is of extreme
antiquity. It is mentioned by the Christian poet Prudentius (fourth
century) as a tradition of common belief.[57] As for the effect of the
name of God as an exorcism, we still encounter this superstition, a
living thing in our own day, and in every land where modern
'spiritualism' finds believers. The mischief produced at 'spiritual
seances' by 'bad spirits' is well-known to those who have paid any
attention to this subject. The late Mr. FitzHugh Ludlow once related
to me, with dramatic fervour, the result of his attempts to exorcise a
bad spirit which was in possession of a female 'medium,' by trying to
make her pronounce the name of Christ. She stumbled and stammered over
this test in a most embarrassing way, and finally emerged from her
trance with the holy name unspoken; the bad spirit had fled. This was
in New York, in 1867. Like many others who assert their unbelief in
spiritualism, Mr. Ludlow was intensely impressed by this phenomenon.
Students of comparative folk-lore class all such manifestations under
a common head, whether related of fairies or spirit mediums. They
trace their origin to the same source whence come the notions of
propitiating the fairies by euphemistic names. The use of such names
as Jehovah, the Almighty, the Supreme Being, etc., for the terrible
and avenging God of the Jewish theology, being originally an endeavour
to avoid pronouncing the name of God, it is easy to see the connection
with the exorcising power of that name upon all evil spirits, such as
fairies are usually held to be. Here also, it is thought, is presented
the ultimate source of that horror of profane language which prevails
among the Puritanic peoples of England and America. The name of the
devil is similarly provided with euphemisms, some of which--such as
the Old Boy--are not of a sort to offend that personage's ears; and
until recently the word devil was deemed almost as offensive as the
word God, when profanely used.
FOOTNOTES:
[55] Rev. Robert Ellis, in 'Manion Hynafiaethol.' (Treherbert, 1873.)
[56] 'Hamlet,' Act I., Sc. 1.
[57] Brand, 'Popular Antiquities,' ii., 31.
II.
A popular protection from the encroachments of fairies is the eithin,
or prickly furze, common in Wales. It is believed that the fairies
cannot penetrate a fence or hedge composed of this thorny shrub. An
account illustrating this, and otherwise curious in its details, was
given in 1871 by a prominent resident of Anglesea:[58] 'One day, some
thirty years ago, Mrs. Stanley went to one of the old houses to see an
old woman she often visited. It was a wretched hovel; so unusually
dark when she opened the door, that she called to old Betty Griffith,
but getting no answer she entered the room. A little tiny window of
one pane of glass at the further side of the room gave a feeble light.
A few cinders alight in the miserable grate also gave a glimmer of
light, which enabled her to see where the bed used to be, in a recess.
To her surprise she saw it entirely shut out by a barricade of thick
gorse, so closely packed and piled up that no bed was to be seen.
Again she called Betty Griffith; no response came. She looked round
the wretched room; the only symptom of life was a plant of the
Wandering Jew (_Saxifraga tricolor_), so called by the poor people,
and dearly loved to grace their windows. It was planted in a broken
jar or teapot on the window, trailing its long tendrils around, with
here and there a new formed plant seeming to derive sustenance from
the air alone. As she stood, struck with the miserable poverty of the
human abode, a faint sigh came from behind the gorse. She went close
and said, "Betty, where are you?" Betty instantly recognised her
voice, and ventured to turn herself round from the wall. Mrs. Stanley
then made a small opening in the gorse barricade, which sadly pricked
her fingers; she saw Betty in her bed and asked her, "Are you not
well? are you cold, that you are so closed up?" "Cold! no. It is not
cold, Mrs. Stanley; it is the Tylwyth Teg; they never will leave me
alone, there they sit making faces at me, and trying to come to me."
"Indeed! oh how I should like to see them, Betty." "Like to see them,
is it? Oh, don't say so." "Oh but Betty, they must be so pretty and
good." "Good? they are not good." By this time the old woman got
excited, and Mrs. Stanley knew she should hear more from her about the
fairies, so she said, "Well, I will go out; they never will come if I
am here." Old Betty replied sharply, "No, do not go. You must not
leave me. I will tell you all about them. Ah! they come and plague me
sadly. If I am up they will sit upon the table; they turn my milk sour
and spill my tea; then they will not leave me at peace in my bed, but
come all round me and mock at me." "But Betty, tell me what is all
this gorse for? It must have been great trouble for you to make it all
so close." "Is it not to keep them off? They cannot get through this,
it pricks them so bad, and then I get some rest." So she replaced the
gorse and left old Betty Griffith happy in her device for getting rid
of the Tylwyth Teg.'
FOOTNOTE:
[58] Hon. W. O. Stanley, in 'Notes and Queries.'
III.
A common means of getting rid of the fairies is to change one's place
of residence; the fair folk will not abide in a house which passes
into new hands. A story is told of a Merionethshire farmer who, being
tormented beyond endurance by a Bwbach of a mischievous turn,
reluctantly resolved to flit. But first consulting a wise woman at
Dolgelley, he was advised to make a pretended flitting, which would
have the same effect; he need only give out that he was going to move
over the border into England, and then get together his cattle and his
household goods, and set out for a day's drive around the Arenig. The
fairy would surely quit the house when the farmer should quit it, and
especially would it quit the premises of a born Cymro who avowed his
purpose of settling in the foreign land of the Sais. So then he could
come back to his house by another route, and he would find the
obnoxious Bwbach gone. The farmer did as he was told, and set out upon
his journey, driving his cattle and sheep before him, and leading the
cart upon which his furniture was piled, while his wife and children
trudged behind. When he reached Rhyd-y-Fen, a ford so called from this
legend, they met a neighbour, who exclaimed, 'Holo, Dewi, are you
leaving us for good?' Before the farmer could answer there was a
shrill cry from inside the churn on the cart, 'Yes, yes, we are
flitting from Hendrefawr to Eingl-dud, where we've got a new home.' It
was the Bwbach that spoke. He was flitting with the household goods,
and the farmer's little plan to be rid of him was a complete failure.
The good man sighed as he turned his horses about and went back to
Hendrefawr by the same road he had come.
IV.
The famous Pwca of the Trwyn Farm, in Mynyddyslwyn parish, came there
from his first abode, at Pantygasseg, in a jug of barm. One of the
farm-servants brought the jug to Pantygasseg, and as she was being
served with the barm in the jug, the Pwca was heard to say, 'The Pwca
is going away now in this jug of barm, and he'll never come back;' and
he was never heard at Pantygasseg again. Another story tells that a
servant let fall a ball of yarn, over the ledge of the hill whose base
is washed by the two fishponds between Hafod-yr-Ynys and Pontypool,
and the Pwca said, 'I am going in this ball, and I'll go to the Trwyn,
and never come back,'--and directly the ball was seen to roll down the
hillside, and across the valley, ascending the hill on the other side,
and trundling along briskly across the mountain top to its new abode.