In the beginning of the century, Hughes went as military substitute for
a farmer’s son. He got £80, a watch, and a suit of clothes. His mother
was loath to let him go, and when he joined his regiment, she followed
him from Amlych to Pwlheli to try and buy him off. He would not hear of
it. “Mother,” he said, “the whole of Anglesey would not keep me, I want
to be off, and see the world.”
The regiment was quartered in Edinboro’, and Hughes married the daughter
of the burgess with whom he was billeted. Thence, leaving a small son,
as hostage to the grandparents, they went to Ireland, and Hughes and his
wife were billeted on a pork-butcher’s family in Dublin. One day, the
mother of the pork-butcher, an old granny, told them she had seen the
fairies.
“Last night, as I was abed, I saw a bright, bright light come in, and
afterwards a troop of little angels. They danced all over my bed, and
they played and sang music--oh! the sweetest music ever I heard. I lay
and watched them and listened. By-and-bye the light went out and the
music stopped, and I saw them no more. I regretted the music very much.
But directly after another smaller light appeared, and a tall dark man
came up to my bed, and with something in his hand he tapped me on the
temple; it felt like some one drawing a sharp pin across my temple then
he went too. In the morning my pillow was covered with blood. I thought
and thought, and then I knew I had moved the pig’s trough and must have
put it in the fairies’ path and the fairies were angered, and the king
of the fairies had punished me for it.” She moved the trough back to its
old place the next day, and received no more visits from the wee folk.