Fairy Money and Fairy Gifts in General--The Story of Gitto
Bach, or Little Griffith--The Penalty of Blabbing--Legends
of the Shepherds of Cwm Llan--The Money Value of
Kindness--Ianto Llewellyn and the Tylwyth Teg--The Legend of
Hafod Lwyddog--Lessons inculcated by these Superstitions.
I.
'This is fairy gold, boy, and 'twill prove so,' says the old shepherd
in 'Winter's Tale;' sagely adding, 'Up with it, keep it close; home,
home, the next way. We are lucky, boy, and to be so still, requires
nothing but secrecy.'[59] Here we have the traditional belief of the
Welsh peasantry in a nut-shell. Fairy money is as good as any, so long
as its source is kept a profound secret; if the finder relate the
particulars of his good fortune, it will vanish. Sometimes--especially
in cases where the money has been spent--the evil result of tattling
consists in there being no further favours of the sort. The same law
governs fairy gifts of all kinds. A Breconshire legend tells of the
generosity of the Tylwyth Teg in presenting the peasantry with loaves
of bread, which turned to toadstools next morning; it was necessary to
eat the bread in darkness and silence to avoid this transformation.
The story of Gitto Bach, a familiar one in Wales, is a picturesque
example. Gitto Bach (little Griffith), a good little farmer's boy of
Glamorganshire, used often to ramble to the top of the mountain to
look after his father's sheep. On his return he would show his
brothers and sisters pieces of remarkably white paper, like crown
pieces, with letters stamped upon them, which he said were given to
him by the little children with whom he played on the mountain. One
day he did not return. For two years nothing was heard of him.
Meantime other children occasionally got like crown-pieces of paper
from the mountains. One morning when Gitto's mother opened the door
there he sat--the truant!--dressed exactly as he was when she saw him
last, two years before. He had a little bundle under his arm. 'Where
in the world have you been all this time?' asked the mother, 'Why,
it's only yesterday I went away!' quoth Gitto. 'Look at the pretty
clothes the children gave me on the mountain, for dancing with them to
the music of their harps.' With this he opened his bundle, and showed
a handsome dress; and behold, it was only paper, like the fairy money.
FOOTNOTE:
[59] 'Winter's Tale,' Act III., Sc. 3.
II.
But usually, throughout Wales, it is simply a discontinuance of fairy
favour which follows blabbing. A legend is connected with a bridge in
Anglesea, of a lad who often saw the fairies there, and profited by
their generosity. Every morning, while going to fetch his father's
cows from pasture, he saw them, and after they were gone he always
found a groat on a certain stone of Cymmunod Bridge. The boy's having
money so often about him excited his father's suspicion, and one
Sabbath day he cross-questioned the lad as to the manner in which it
was obtained. Oh, the meddlesomeness of fathers! Of course the poor
boy confessed that it was through the medium of the fairies, and of
course, though he often went after this to the field, he never found
any money on the bridge, nor saw the offended Tylwyth Teg again.
Through his divulging the secret their favour was lost.
Jones tells a similar story of a young woman named Anne William
Francis, in the parish of Bassalleg, who on going by night into a
little grove of wood near the house, heard pleasant music, and saw a
company of fairies dancing on the grass. She took a pail of water
there, thinking it would gratify them. The next time she went there
she had a shilling given her, 'and so had for several nights after,
until she had twenty-one shillings.' But her mother happening to find
the money, questioned her as to where she got it, fearing she had
stolen it. At first the girl would not tell, but when her mother 'went
very severe on her,' and threatened to beat her, she confessed she got
the money from the fairies. After that they never gave her any more.
The Prophet adds: 'I have heard of other places where people have had
money from the fairies, sometimes silver sixpences, but most commonly
copper coin. As they cannot make money, it certainly must be money
lost or concealed by persons.' The Euhemerism of this is hardly like
the wonder-loving Jones.
III.
In the legends of the two shepherds of Cwm Llan and their experience
with the fairies, the first deals with the secrecy feature, while the
second reproduces the often-impressed lesson concerning the money
value of kindness. The first is as follows: One evening a shepherd,
who had been searching for his sheep on the side of Nant y Bettws,
after crossing Bwlch Cwm Llan, espied a number of little people
singing and dancing, and some of the prettiest damsels he ever set
eyes on preparing a feast. He went to them and partook of the meal,
and thought he had never tasted anything to equal those dishes. When
it became dusk they pitched their tents, and the shepherd had never
seen before such beautiful things as they had about them there. They
provided him with a soft feather-bed and sheets of the finest linen,
and he retired, feeling like a prince. But on the morrow, lo and
behold! his bed was but a bush of bulrushes, and his pillow a tuft of
moss. He however found in his shoes some pieces of silver, and
afterwards, for a long time, he continued to find once a week a piece
of silver placed between two stones near the spot where he had lain.
One day he divulged his secret to another, and the weekly coin was
never placed there again.
There was another shepherd near Cwm Llan, who heard some strange noise
in a crevice of a rock, and turning to see what it was, found there a
singular creature who wept bitterly. He took it out and saw it to be a
fairy child, but whilst he was looking at it compassionately, two
middle-aged men came to him and thanked him courteously for his
kindness, and on leaving him presented him with a staff as a token of
remembrance of the occasion. The following year every sheep he
possessed bore two ewe lambs. They continued to thus breed for years
to come; but one very dark and stormy night, having stayed very late
in the village, in crossing the river that comes down from Cwm Llan,
there being a great flood sweeping everything before it, he dropped
his staff into the river and saw it no more. On the morrow he found
that nearly all his sheep and lambs, like his staff, had been swept
away by the flood. His wealth had departed from him in the same way as
it came--with the staff which he had received from the guardians of
the fairy child.
IV.
A Pembrokeshire Welshman told me this story as a tradition well known
in that part of Wales. Ianto Llewellyn was a man who lived in the
parish of Llanfihangel, not more than fifty or eighty years ago, and
who had precious good reason to believe in the fairies. He used to
keep his fire of coal balls burning all night long, out of pure
kindness of heart, in case the Tylwyth Teg should be cold. That they
came into his kitchen every night he was well aware; he often heard
them. One night when they were there as usual, Ianto was lying wide
awake and heard them say, 'I wish we had some good bread and cheese
this cold night, but the poor man has only a morsel left; and though
it's true that would be a good meal for us, it is but a mouthful to
him, and he might starve if we took it.' At this Ianto cried out at
the top of his voice, 'Take anything I've got in my cupboard and
welcome to you!' Then he turned over and went to sleep. The next
morning, when he descended into the kitchen, he looked in his
cupboard, to see if by good luck there might be a bit of crust there.
He had no sooner opened the cupboard door than he cried out, 'O'r
anwyl! what's this?' for there stood the finest cheese he had ever
seen in his life, with two loaves of bread on top of it. 'Lwc dda i
ti!' cried Ianto, waving his hand toward the wood where he knew the
fairies lived; 'good luck to you! May you never be hungry or
penniless!' And he had not got the words out of his mouth when he
saw--what do you think?--a shilling on the hob! But that was the lucky
shilling. Every morning after this, when Ianto got up, there was the
shilling on the hob--another one, you mind, for he'd spent the first
for beer and tobacco to go with his bread and cheese. Well, after
that, no man in the parish was better supplied with money than Ianto
Llewellyn, though he never did a stroke of work. He had enough to keep
his wife in ease and comfort, too, and he got the name of Lucky Ianto.
And lucky he might have been to the day of his death but for the
curiosity of woman. Betsi his wife was determined to know where all
this money came from, and gave the poor man no peace. 'Wel, naw wfft!'
she cried--which means in English, 'Nine shames on you'--'to have a
bad secret from your own dear wife!' 'But you know, Betsi, if I tell
you I'll never get any more money.' 'Ah,' said she, 'then it's the
fairies!' 'Drato!' said he--and that means 'Bother it all'--'yes--the
fairies it is.' With that he thrust his hands down in his breeches
pockets in a sullen manner and left the house. He had had seven
shillings in his pockets up to that minute, and he went feeling for
them with his fingers, and found they were gone. In place of them were
some pieces of paper fit only to light his pipe. And from that day the
fairies brought him no more money.
V.
The lesson of generosity is taught with force and simplicity in the
legend of Hafod Lwyddog, and the necessity for secrecy is quite
abandoned. Again it is a shepherd, who dwelt at Cwm Dyli, and who went
every summer to live in a cabin by the Green Lake (Llyn Glas) along
with his fold. One morning on awaking from sleep he saw a good-looking
damsel dressing an infant close by his side. She had very little in
which to wrap the babe, so he threw her an old shirt of his own, and
bade her place it about the child. She thanked him and departed. Every
night thereafter the shepherd found a piece of silver placed in an
old clog in his cabin. Years and years this good luck continued, and
Meirig the shepherd became immensely wealthy. He married a lovely
girl, and went to the Hafod Lwyddog to live. Whatever he undertook
prospered--hence the name Hafod Lwyddog, for Lwydd means prosperity.
The fairies paid nightly visits to the Hafod. No witch or evil sprite
could harm this people, as Bendith y Mamau was poured down upon the
family, and all their descendants.[60]
FOOTNOTE:
[60] 'Cymru Fu,' 472.
VI.
The thought will naturally occur that by fostering belief in such
tales as some of the foregoing, roguery might make the superstition
useful in silencing inquiry as to ill-gotten gains. But on the other
hand the virtues of hospitality and generosity were no doubt fostered
by the same influences. If any one was favoured by the fairies in this
manner, the immediate explanation was, that he had done a good turn to
them, generally without suspecting who they were. The virtues of
neatness, in young girls and servants, were encouraged by the like
notions; the belief that a fairy will leave money only on a clean-kept
hob, could tend to nothing more directly. It was also made a condition
of pleasing the Tylwyth Teg that the hearth should be carefully swept
and the pails left full of water. Then the fairies would come at
midnight, continue their revels till daybreak, sing the well-known
strain of 'Toriad y Dydd,' or 'The Dawn,' leave a piece of money on
the hob, and disappear. Here is seen a precaution against fire in the
clean-swept hearth and the provision of filled water-pails. That the
promised reward did not always arrive, was not evidence it would never
arrive; and so the virtue of perseverance was also fostered.
Superstitions of this class are widely prevalent among Aryan peoples.
The 'Arabian Nights' story of the old rogue whose money turned to
leaves will be recalled. In Danish folk-lore, the fairy money bestowed
on the boors turns sometimes to pebbles, and sometimes grows hot and
burns their fingers, so that they drop it, when it sinks into the
earth.
[Music: TORIAD Y DYDD.]