CHAPTER X

DIFFICULTIES OF THE FOLKLORIST

For priests, with prayers and other godly gear,

Have made the merry goblins disappear;

And, where they played their merry pranks before,

Have sprinkled holy water on the floor.--Dryden.

The attitude of the Kymry towards folklore and popular superstitions

varies according to their training and religious views; and I

distinguish two classes of them in this respect. First of all,

there are those who appear to regret the ebb of the tide of ancient

beliefs. They maintain that people must have been far more interesting

when they believed in the fairies; and they rave against Sunday schools

and all other schools for having undermined the ancient superstitions

of the peasantry: it all comes, they say, of over-educating the

working classes. Of course one may occasionally wish servant maids

still believed that they might get presents from the fairies for being

neat and tidy; and that, in the contrary case of their being sluts,

they would be pinched black and blue during their sleep by the little

people: there may have been some utility in beliefs of that kind. But,

if one takes an impartial view of the surroundings in which this

kind of mental condition was possible, no sane man could say that

the superstitious beliefs of our ancestors conduced on the whole to

their happiness. Fancy a state of mind in which this sort of thing is

possible:--A member of the family is absent, let us say, from home

in the evening an hour later than usual, and the whole household is

thrown into a panic because they imagine that he has strayed on fairy

ground, and has been spirited away to the land of fairy twilight,

whence he may never return; or at any rate only to visit his home

years, or maybe ages, afterwards, and then only to fall into a heap

of dust just as he has found out that nobody expects or even knows

him. Or take another instance:--A man sets out in the morning on an

important journey, but he happens to sneeze, or he sees an ill-omened

bird, or some other dreaded creature, crossing his path: he expects

nothing that day but misfortune, and the feeling of alarm possibly

makes him turn back home, allowing the object of his journey to be

sacrificed. That was not a satisfactory state of things or a happy one,

and the unhappiness might be wholly produced by causes over which the

patient had absolutely no control, so long at any rate as the birds

of the air have wings, and so long as sneezing does not belong to

the category of voluntary actions. Then I might point to the terrors

of magic; but I take it to be unnecessary to dwell on such things,

as most people have heard about them or read of them in books. On

the whole it is but charitable to suppose that those who regret the

passing away of the ages of belief and credulity have not seriously

attempted to analyse the notions which they are pleased to cherish.

Now, as to the other class of people, namely, those who object to

folklore in every shape and form, they may be roughly distinguished

into different groups, such as those to whom folklore is an

abomination, because they hold that it is opposed to the Bible, and

those who regard it as too trivial to demand the attention of any

serious person. I have no occasion for many words with the former,

since nearly everything that is harmful in popular superstition has

ceased in Wales to be a living force influencing one's conduct; or if

this be not already the case, it is fast becoming so. Those therefore

who condemn superstitions have really no reason to set their faces

against the student of folklore: it would be just as if historians were

to be boycotted because they have, in writing history--frequently,

the more the pity--to deal with dark intrigues, cruel murders, and

sanguinary wars. Besides, those who study folklore do not thereby

help to strengthen the hold of superstition on the people. I have

noticed that any local peculiarity of fashion, the moment it becomes

known to attract the attention of strangers, is, one may say, doomed:

a Celt, like anybody else, does not like to be photographed in a light

which may perchance show him at a disadvantage. It is much the same,

I think, with him as the subject of the studies of the folklorist:

hence the latter has to proceed with his work very quietly and very

warily. If, then, I pretended to be a folklorist, which I can hardly

claim to be, I should say that I had absolutely no quarrel with him

who condemns superstition on principle. On the other hand, I should

not consider it fair of him to regard me as opposed to the progress

of the race in happiness and civilization, just because I am curious

to understand its history.

With regard to him, however, who looks at the collecting and

the studying of folklore as trivial work and a waste of time,

I should gather that he regards it so on account, first perhaps,

of his forgetting the reality their superstitions were to those

who believed in them; and secondly, on account of his ignorance

of their meaning. As a reality to those who believed in them,

the superstitions of our ancestors form an integral part of their

history. However, I need not follow that topic further by trying to

show how 'the proper study of mankind is man,' and how it is a mark of

an uncultured people not to know or care to know about the history of

the race. So the ancient Roman historian, Tacitus, evidently thought;

for, when complaining how little was known as to the original peopling

of Britain, he adds the suggestive words ut inter barbaros, 'as usual

among barbarians.' Conversely, I take it for granted that no liberally

educated man or woman of the present day requires to be instructed

as to the value of the study of history in all its aspects, or to be

told that folklore cannot be justly called trivial, seeing that it

has to do with the history of the race--in a wider sense, I may say

with the history of the human mind and the record of its development.

As history has been mentioned, it may be here pointed out that one

of the greatest of the folklorist's difficulties is that of drawing

the line between story and history. Nor is that the worst of it; for

the question as between fact and fiction, hard as it is in itself,

is apt to be further complicated by questions of ethnology. This

may be illustrated by reference to a group of legends which project

a vanishing distinction between the two kindred races of Brythons

and Goidels in Wales; and into the story of some of them Arthur is

introduced playing a principal rôle. They seem to point to a time

when the Goidels had as yet wholly lost neither their own language

nor their own institutions in North Wales: for the legends belong

chiefly to Gwyned, and cluster especially around Snowdon, where the

characteristics of the Goidel as the earlier Celt may well have

lingered latest, thanks to the comparatively inaccessible nature

of the country. One of these legends has already been summarized as

representing Arthur marching up the side of Snowdon towards Bwlch y

Saethau, where he falls and is buried under a cairn named from him

Carned Arthur: see p. 473. We are not told who his enemies were;

but with this question has usually been associated the late Triad,

iii. 20, which alludes to Arthur meeting in Nanhwynain with Medrawd

or Medrod (Modred) and Idawc Corn Prydain, and to his being betrayed,

for the benefit and security of the Saxons in the island. An earlier

reference to the same story occurs in the Dream of Rhonabwy in the

Red Book of Hergest [156], in which Idawc describes himself as Idawc

son of Mynio, and as nicknamed Idawc Cord Prydain--which means 'Idawc

the Churn-staff of Prydain'--in reference presumably to his activity

in creating dissension. He confesses to having falsified the friendly

messages of Arthur to Medrod, and to succeeding thereby in bringing

on the fatal battle of Camlan, from which Idawc himself escaped to

do penance for seven years on the Llech Las, 'Grey Stone [157],'

in Prydain or Pictland.

Another story brings Arthur and the giant Rhita into collision, the

latter of whom has already been mentioned as having, according to

local tradition, his grave on the top of Snowdon: see pp. 474-9. The

story is a very wild one. Two kings who were brothers, Nyniaw or Nynio

and Peibiaw or Peibio, quarrelled thus: one moonlight night, as they

were together in the open air, Nynio said to Peibio, 'See, what a

fine extensive field I possess.' 'Where is it?' asked Peibio. 'There

it is,' said Nynio, 'the whole firmament.' 'See,' said Peibio,

'what innumerable herds of cattle and sheep I have grazing in thy

field.' 'Where are they?' asked Nynio. 'There they are,' said Peibio,

'the whole host of stars that thou seest, each of golden brightness,

with the moon shepherding them.' 'They shall not graze in my field,'

said Nynio. 'But they shall,' said Peibio; and the two kings got

so enraged with one another, that they began a war in which their

warriors and subjects were nearly exterminated. Then comes Rhita Gawr,

king of Wales, and attacks them on the dangerous ground of their

being mad. He conquered them and shaved off their beards [158]; but

when the other kings of Prydain, twenty-eight in number, heard of it,

they collected all their armies together to avenge themselves on Rhita

for the disgrace to which he had subjected the other two. But after a

great struggle Rhita conquers again, and has the beards of the other

kings shaved. Then the kings of neighbouring kingdoms in all directions

combined to make war on Rhita to avenge the disgrace to their order;

but they were also vanquished forthwith, and treated in the same

ignominious fashion as the thirty kings of Prydain. With the beards

he had a mantle made to cover him from head to foot, and that was a

good deal, we are told, since he was as big as two ordinary men. Then

Rhita turned his attention to the establishment of just and equitable

laws as between king and king and one realm with another [159]. But

the sequel to the shaving is related by Geoffrey of Monmouth, x. 3,

where Arthur is made to tell how the giant, after destroying the

other kings and using their beards in the way mentioned, asked him

for his beard to fix above the other beards, as he stood above them in

rank, or else to come and fight a duel with him. Arthur, as might be

expected, chose the latter course, with the result that he slew Rhita,

there called Ritho, at a place said to be in Aravio Monte, by which

the Welsh translator understood the chief mountain of Eryri [160] or

Snowdon. So it is but natural that his grave should also be there, as

already mentioned. I may here add that it is the name Snowdon itself,

probably, that underlies the Senaudon or Sinadoun of such Arthurian

romances as the English version of Libeaus Desconus, though the place

meant has been variously supposed to be situated elsewhere than in

the Snowdon district: witness Sinodun Hill in Berkshire [161].

The story of Rhita is told also by Malory, who calls that giant Ryons

and Ryence; and there the incident seems to end with Ryons being led

to Arthur's court by knights who had overcome him. Ryons' challenge,

as given by Malory [162], runs thus:--

'This meane whyle came a messager from kynge Ryons of Northwalys. And

kynge he was of all Ireland and of many Iles. And this was his message

gretynge wel kynge Arthur in this manere wyse sayenge . that kynge

Ryons had discomfyte and ouercome xj kynges . and eueryche of hem

did hym homage . and that was this . they gaf hym their berdys clene

flayne of . as moche as ther was . wherfor the messager came for kyng

Arthurs berd. For kyng Ryons had purfyled a mantel with kynges berdes

. and there lacked one place of the mantel . wherfor he sente for his

berd or els he wold entre in to his landes . and brenne and slee . &

neuer leue tyl he haue the hede and the berd.'

Rhita is not said, it is true, to have been a Gwydel, 'Goidel';

but he is represented ruling over Ireland, and his name, which is

not Welsh, recalls at first sight those of such men as Boya the Pict

or Scot figuring in the life of St. David, and such as Llia Gvitel,

'Llia the Goidel,' mentioned in the Stanzas of the Graves in the

Black Book of Carmarthen as buried in the seclusion of Ardudwy

[163]. Malory's Ryons is derived from the French Romances, where,

as for example in the Merlin, according to the Huth MS., it occurs

as Rion-s in the nominative, and Rion in régime. The latter, owing

to the old French habit of eliding d or th, derives regularly enough

from such a form as the accusative Rithon-em [164], which is the

one occurring in Geoffrey's text; and we should probably be right in

concluding therefrom that the correct old Welsh form of the name was

Rithon. But the Goidelic form was at the same time probably Ritta,

with a genitive Rittann, for an earlier Ritton. Lastly, that the

local legend should perpetuate the Goidelic Ritta slightly modified,

has its parallel in the case of Trwyd and Trwyth, and of Echel and

Egel or Ecel, pp. 541-2 and 536-7.

The next story [165] points to a spot between y Dinas or Dinas

Emrys and Llyn y Dinas as containing the grave of Owen y Mhacsen,

that is to say, 'Owen son of Maxen.' Owen had been fighting with a

giant--whose name local tradition takes for granted--with balls of

steel; and there are depressions (panylau [166]) still to be seen

in the ground where each of the combatants took his stand. Some,

however, will have it that it was with bows and arrows they fought,

and that the hollows are the places they dug to defend themselves. The

result was that both died at the close of the conflict; and Owen,

being asked where he wished to be buried, ordered an arrow to be shot

into the air and his grave to be made where it fell. The story is

similarly given in the Iolo MSS., pp. 81-2, where the combatants are

called Owen Findu ab Macsen Wledig, 'Owen of the Dark Face, son of

Prince Maxen,' and Eurnach Hen, 'E. the Ancient,' one of the Gwydyl

or 'Goidels' of North Wales, and otherwise called Urnach Wydel. He is

there represented as father (1) of the Serrigi defeated by Catwallawn

or Cadwallon Law-hir, 'C. the Long-handed,' at Cerrig y Gwydyl,

'the Stones of the Goidels,' near Malldraeth [167], in Anglesey,

where the great and final rout of the Goidels is represented as having

taken place [168]; (2) of Daronwy, an infant spared and brought up in

Anglesey to its detriment, as related in the other story, p. 504; and

(3) of Solor, who commands one of the three cruising fleets of the

Isle of Prydain [169]. The stronghold of Eurnach or Urnach is said

to have been Dinas Ffaraon, which was afterwards called Din Emreis

and Dinas Emrys. The whole story about the Goidels in North Wales,

however, as given in the Iolo MSS., pp. 78-80, is a hopeless jumble,

though it is probably based on old traditions. In fact, one detects

Eurnach or Urnach as Wrnach or Gwrnach in the story of Kulhwch and

Olwen [170] in the Red Book, where we are told that Kei or Cai, and

others of Arthur's men, got into the giant's castle and cut off his

head in order to secure his sword, which was one of the things required

for the hunting of Twrch Trwyth. In an obscure passage, also in a poem

in the Black Book, we read of Cai fighting in the hall of this giant,

who is then called Awarnach [171]. Some such a feat appears to have

been commemorated in the place-name Gwryd Cai, 'Cai's Feat of Arms,'

which occurs in Llewelyn's grant of certain lands on the Bedgelert

and Pen Gwryd side of Snowdon in 1198 to the monks of Aberconwy,

or rather in an inspeximus of the same: see Dugdale's Monasticon,

v. 673a, where it stands printed gwryt, kei. Nor is it unreasonable

to guess that Pen Gwryd is only a shortening of Pen Gwryd Cai,

'Cai's Feat Knoll or Terminus'; but compare p. 217 above. Before

leaving Cai I may point out that tradition seems to ascribe to him

as his residence the place called Caer Gai, 'Cai's Fort,' between

Bala and Llanuwchllyn. If one may treat Cai as a historical man, one

may perhaps suppose him, or some member of his family, commemorated

by the vocable Burgocavi on an old stone found at Caer Gai, and said

to read: Ic iacit Salvianus Burgocavi filius Cupitiani [172]--'Here

lies Salvianus Burgocavis, son of Cupitianus.' The reader may also

be referred back to such non-Brythonic and little known figures as

Daronwy, Cathbalug, and Brynach, together perhaps with Mengwaed,

the wolf-lord of Arllechwed, pp. 504-5. It is worth while calling

attention likewise to Goidelic indications afforded by the topography

of Eryri, to wit such cases as Bwlch Mwrchan or Mwlchan, 'Mwrchan's

Pass,' sometimes made into Bwlch Mwyalchen or even Bwlch y Fwyalchen,

'the Ousel's Gap,' near Llyn Gwynain; the remarkable remains called

Muriau'r Dre, 'the Town Walls'--otherwise known as Tre'r Gwydelod

[173], 'the Goidels' town'--on the land of Gwastad Annas at the top

of Nanhwynain; and Bwlch y Gwydel, still higher towards Pen Gwryd,

may have meant the 'Goidel's Pass.'

Probably a study of the topography on the spot would result in the

identification of more names similarly significant; but I will call

attention to only one of them, namely Bedgelert or, as it is locally

pronounced, Bethgelart, though the older spellings of the name appear

to be Beth Kellarth and Beth Kelert. Those who are acquainted with

the story, as told there, of the man who rashly killed his hound might

think that Bedgelert, 'Gelert or Kelert's Grave,' refers to the hound;

but there is a complete lack of evidence to show this widely known

story to have been associated with the neighbourhood by antiquity

[174]; and the compiler of the notes and pedigrees known as Boned y

Saint was probably right in treating Kelert as the name of an ancient

saint: see the Myvyr. Arch., ii. 36. In any case, Kelert or Gelert

with its rt cannot be a genuine Welsh name: the older spellings seem to

indicate two pronunciations--a Goidelic one, Kelert, and a Welsh one,

Kelarth or Kellarth, which has not survived. The documents, however,

in which the name occurs require to be carefully examined for the

readings which they supply.

Lastly, from the Goidels of Arfon must not be too violently severed

those of Mona, among whom we have found, pp. 504-5, the mysterious

Cathbalug, whose name, still half unexplained, reminds one of such

Irish ones as Cathbuadach, 'battle-victorious or conquering in war';

and to the same stratum belongs Daronwy, p. 504, which survives as the

name of a farm in the parish of Llanfachreth. The Record of Carnarvon,

p. 59, speaks both of a Molendinum de Darronwy et Cornewe, 'Mill of

Daronwy [175] and Cornwy,' and of Villæ de Dorronwy et Kuwghdornok,

'Vills of Daronwy and of the Cnwch Dernog,' which has been mentioned

as now pronounced Clwch Dernog, p. 457: it is situated in the adjoining

parish of Llandeusant. The name is given in the same Record as Dernok,

and is doubtless to be identified with the Ternóc not very uncommon

in Irish hagiology. With these names the Record further associates a

holding called Wele Conus, and Conus survives in Weun Gonnws, the name

of a field on the farm of Bron Heulog, adjoining Clwch Dernog. That

is not all, for Connws turns out to be the Welsh pronunciation of the

Goidelic name Cunagussus, of which we have the Latinized genitive on

the Bodfedan menhir, some distance north-east of the railway station

of Ty Croes. It reads: CVNOGVSI HIC IACIT, 'Here lies (the body) of

Cunagussus,' and involves a name which has regularly become in Irish

Conghus, while the native Welsh equivalent would be Cynwst [176]. These

names, and one [177] or two more which might be added to them, suggest

a very Goidelic population as occupying, in the fifth or sixth century,

the part of the island west of a line from Amlwch to Malldraeth.

Lastly, the chronological indications of the crushing of the power

of the Goidels, and the incipient merging of that people with the

Brythons into a single nation of Kymry or 'Compatriots,' are worthy

of a passing remark. We seem to find the process echoed in the

Triads when they mention as a favourite at Arthur's Court the lord

of Arllechwed, named Menwaed, who has been guessed, p. 507 above,

to have been a Goidel. Then Serrigi and Daronwy are signalized as

contemporaries of Cadwallon Law-hir, who inflicted on the former,

according to the later legend, the great defeat of Cerrig y Gwydyl

[178]. The name, however, of the leader of the Goidels arrayed against

Cadwallon may be regarded as unknown, and Serrigi as a later name,

probably of Norse origin, introduced from an account of a tenth

century struggle with invaders from the Scandinavian kingdom of Dublin

[179]. In this conqueror we have probably all that can be historical

of the Caswallon of the Mabinogion of Branwen and Manawydan, that is,

the Caswallon who ousts the Goidelic family of Llyr from power in this

country, and makes Pryderi of Dyfed pay homage to him as supreme king

of the island. His name has there undergone assimilation to that of

Cassivellaunos, and he is furthermore represented as son of Beli,

king of Prydain in the days of its independence, before the advent

of the legions of Rome. But as a historical man we are to regard

Caswallon probably as Cadwallon Law-hir, grandson of Cuneda and father

of Maelgwn of Gwyned. Now Cuneda and his sons, according to Nennius (§

62), expelled the Goidels with terrible slaughter; and one may say,

with the Triads, which practically contradict Nennius' statement as

to the Goidels being expelled, that Cuneda's grandson continued the

struggle with them. In any case there were Goidels still there, for

the Book of Taliessin seems to give evidence [180] of a persistent

hostility, on the part of the Goidelic bards of Gwyned, to Maelgwn

and the more Brythonic institutions which he may be regarded as

representing. This brings the Goidelic element down to the sixth

century [181]. Maelgwn's death took place, according to the oldest

manuscript of the Annales Cambriæ, in the year 547, or ten years

after the Battle of Camlan--in which, as it says, Arthur and Medrod

fell. Now some of this is history and some is not: where is the line

to be drawn? In any case, the attempt to answer that question could

not be justly met with contempt or treated as trivial.

The other cause, to which I suggested that contempt for folklore

was probably to be traced, together with the difficulties springing

therefrom to beset the folklorist's paths, is one's ignorance of the

meaning of many of the superstitions of our ancestors. I do not wish

this to be regarded as a charge of wilful ignorance; for one has

frankly to confess that many old superstitions and superstitious

practices are exceedingly hard to understand. So much so, that

those who have most carefully studied them cannot always agree

with one another in their interpretation. At first sight, some of

the superstitions seem so silly and absurd, that one cannot wonder

that those who have not gone deeply into the study of the human mind

should think them trivial, foolish, or absurd. It is, however, not

improbable that they are the results of early attempts to think out

the mysteries of nature; and our difficulty is that the thinking was

so infantile, comparatively speaking, that one finds it hard to put

one's self back into the mental condition of early man. But it should

be clearly understood that our difficulty in ascertaining the meaning

of such superstitions is no proof whatsoever that they had no meaning.

The chief initial difficulty, however, meeting any one who would

collect folklore in Wales arises from the fact that various influences

have conspired to laugh it out of court, so to say, so that those who

are acquainted with superstitions and ancient fads become ashamed to

own it: they have the fear of ridicule weighing on their minds, and

that is a weight not easily removed. I can recall several instances:

among others I may mention a lady who up to middle age believed

implicitly in the existence of fairies, and was most anxious that

her children should not wander away from home at any time when there

happened to be a mist, lest the fairies should carry them away to

their home beneath a neighbouring lake. In her later years, however,

it was quite useless for a stranger to question her on these things:

fairy lore had been so laughed out of countenance in the meantime,

that at last she would not own, even to the members of her own family,

that she remembered anything about the fairies. Another instance in

point is supplied by the story of Castellmarch, and by my failure

for a whole fortnight to elicit from the old blacksmith of Aber Soch

the legend of March ab Meirchion with horse's ears. Of course I can

readily understand the old man's shyness in repeating the story of

March. Science, however, knows no such shyness, as it is her business

to pry into everything and to discover, if possible, the why and

wherefore of all things. In this context let me for a moment revert to

the story of March, silly as it looks:--March was lord of Castellmarch

in Lleyn, and he had horse's ears; so lest the secret should be known,

every one who shaved him was killed forthwith; and in the spot where

the bodies were buried there grew reeds, which a bard cut in order to

provide himself with a pipe. The pipe when made would give no music

but words meaning March has horse's ears! There are other forms of

the story, but all substantially the same as that preserved for us

by Llwyd (pp. 233-4), except that one of them resembles more closely

the Irish version about to be summarized. It occurs in a manuscript

in the Peniarth collection, and runs thus:--March had horse's ears,

a fact known to nobody but his barber, who durst not make it known for

fear of losing his head. But the barber fell ill, so that he had to

call in a physician, who said that the patient was being killed by a

secret; and he ordered him to tell it to the ground. The barber having

done so became well again, and fine reeds grew on the spot. One day,

as the time of a great feast was drawing nigh, certain of the pipers

of Maelgwn Gwyned coming that way saw the reeds, some of which they

cut and used for their pipes. By-and-by they had to perform before

King March, when they could elicit from their pipes no strain but

'Horse's ears for March ab Meirchion' (klvstiav march i varch ab

Meirchion). Hence arose the saying--'That is gone on horns and pipes'

(vaeth hynny ar gyrn a ffibav), which was as much as to say that the

secret is become more than public [182].

The story, it is almost needless to say, can be traced also in Cornwall

and in Brittany [183]; and not only among the Brythonic peoples of

those countries, but among the Goidels of Ireland likewise. The Irish

story runs thus [184]:--Once on a time there was a king over Ireland

whose name was Labraid Lorc, and this is the manner of man he was--he

had two horse's ears on him. And every one who shaved the king used

to be slain forthwith. Now the time of shaving him drew nigh one

day, when the son of a widow in the neighbourhood was enjoined to do

it. The widow went and besought the king that her son should not be

slain, and he promised her that he would be spared if he would only

keep his secret. So it came to pass; but the secret so disagreed with

the widow's son that he fell ill, and nobody could divine the cause

until a druid came by. He at once discovered that the youth was ill

of an uncommunicated secret, and ordered him to go to the meeting of

four roads. 'Let him,' said he, 'turn sunwise, and the first tree he

meets on the right side let him tell the secret to it, and he will

be well.' This you might think was quite safe, as it was a tree and

not his mother, his sister, or his sweetheart; but you would be quite

mistaken in thinking so. The tree to which the secret was told was

a willow; and a famous Irish harper of that day, finding he wanted a

new harp, came and cut the makings of a harp from that very tree; but

when the harp was got ready and the harper proceeded to play on it,

not a note could he elicit but 'Labraid Lorc has horse's ears!' As to

the barber's complaint, that was by no means unnatural: it has often

been noticed how a secret disagrees with some natures, and how uneasy

and restless it makes them until they can out with it. The same thing

also, in an aggravated form, occurs now and then to a public man who

has prepared a speech in the dark recesses of his heart, but has to

leave the meeting where he intended to have it out, without finding

his opportunity. Our neighbours on the other side of the Channel have

a technical term for that sort of sufferer: they say of him that he is

malade d'un discours rentré, or ill of a speech which has gone into

the patient's constitution, like the measles or the small-pox when

it fails to come out. But to come back to the domain of folklore,

I need only mention the love-lorn knights in Malory's Morte Darthur,

who details their griefs in doleful strains to solitary fountains in

the forests: it seems to have relieved them greatly, and it sometimes

reached other ears than those of the wells. Now with regard to him

of the equine ears, some one might thoughtlessly suggest, that, if it

ever became a question of improving this kind of story, one should make

the ears into those of an ass. As a matter of fact there was a Greek

story of this kind, and in that story the man with the abnormal head

was called Midas, and his ears were said to be those of an ass. The

reader will find him figuring in most collections of Greek stories;

so I need not pursue the matter further, except to remark that the

exact kind of brute ears was possibly a question which different

nations decided differently. At any rate Stokes mentions a Serbian

version in which the ears were those of a goat.

What will, however, occur to everybody to ask, is--What was the

origin of such a story? what did it mean, if it had a meaning? Various

attempts have been made to interpret this kind of story, but nobody,

so far as I know, has found a sure key to its meaning. The best

guess I can make has been suggested in a previous chapter, from

which it will be seen that the horse fits the Welsh context, so to

say, best, the goat less well, and the ass probably least of all:

see pp. 433-9 above. Supposing, then, the interpretation of the

story established for certain, the question of its origin would

still remain. Did it originate among the Celts and the Greeks and

other nations who relate it? or has it simply originated among one of

those peoples and spread itself to the others? or else have they all

inherited it from a common source? If we take the supposition that

it originated independently among a variety of people in the distant

past, then comes an interesting question as to the conditions under

which it arose, and the psychological state of the human race in the

distant past. On the other supposition one is forced to ask: Did the

Celts get the story from the Greeks, or the Greeks from the Celts,

or neither from either, but from a common source? Also when and how

did the variations arise? In any case, one cannot help seeing that

a story like the one I have instanced raises a variety of profoundly

difficult and interesting questions.

Hard as the folklorist may find it to extract tales and legends from

the people of Wales at the present day, there is one thing which he

finds far more irritating than the taciturnity of the peasant, and

that is the hopeless fashion in which some of those who have written

about Welsh folklore have deigned to record the stories which were

known to them. Take as an instance the following, which occurs in

Howells' Cambrian Superstitions, pp. 103-4:--

'In Cardiganshire there is a lake, beneath which it is reported that

a town lies buried; and in an arid summer, when the water is low,

a wall, on which people may walk, extending across the lake is seen,

and supposed to appertain to the inundated city or town; on one side

is a gigantic rock, which appears to have been split, as there is

a very extensive opening in it, which nearly divides it in twain,

and which tradition relates was thus occasioned:--Once upon a time

there was a person of the name of Pannog, who had two oxen, so large

that their like was never known in any part of the world, and of whom

it might be said,

They ne'er will look upon their like again.

It chanced one day that one of them (and it appears that they were

not endued with a quantum of sense proportionate to their bulk)

was grazing near a precipice opposite the rock, and whether it was

his desire to commit suicide, or to cool his body by laving in the

lake below, one knows not, but certain it is that down he plunged,

and was never seen more: his partner searching for him a short time

after, and not perceiving any signs of his approach, bellowed almost

as loud as the Father of the Gods, who when he spake "Earth to his

centre shook"; however, the sound of his bleating [sic] split the

opposite rock, which from the circumstance is called Uchain Pannog

(Pannog's Oxen). These oxen were said to be two persons, called in

Wales, Nyniaf and Phebiaf, whom God turned into beasts for their sins.

Here it is clear that Mr. Howells found a portion, if not the whole,

of his story in Welsh, taken partly from the Kulhwch story, and

apparently in the old spelling; for his own acquaintance with the

language did not enable him to translate Nynnya6 a pheiba6 into

'Nynio and Peibio.' The slenderness of his knowledge of Welsh is

otherwise proved throughout his book, especially by the way in which

he spells Welsh words: in fact one need not go beyond this very story

with its Uchain Pannog. But when he had ascertained that the lake was

in Cardiganshire he might have gone a little further and have told

his readers which lake it was. It is not one of the lakes which I

happen to know in the north of the county--Llyn Llygad y Rheidol on

Plinlimmon, or the lake on Moel y Llyn to the north of Cwm Ceulan,

or either of the Iwan Lakes which drain into the Merin (or Meri),

a tributary of the Mynach, which flows under Pont ar Fynach, called

in English the Devil's Bridge. From inquiry I cannot find either that

it is any one of the pools in the east of the county, such as those of

the Teifi, or Llyn Ferwyn, not far from the gorge known as Cwm Berwyn,

mentioned in Edward Richards' well known lines, p. 43:--

Mae'n bwrw' 'Nghwm Berwyn a'r cysgod yn estyn,

Gwna heno fy mwthyn yn derfyn dy daith.

It rains in Cwm Berwyn, the shadows are growing,

To-night make my cabin the end of thy journey.

There is, it is true, a pool at a place called Maes y Llyn in the

neighbourhood of Tregaron, as to which there is a tradition that a

village once occupied the place of its waters: otherwise it shows

no similarity to the lake of Howells' story. Then there is a group

of lakes in which the river Aeron takes its rise: they are called

Llyn Eidwen, Llyn Fanod, and Llyn Farch. As to Llyn Eidwen, I had

it years ago that at one time there was a story current concerning

'wild cattle,' which used to come out of its waters and rush back into

them when disturbed. In the middle of this piece of water, which has

a rock on one side of it, is a small island with a modern building on

it; and one would like to know whether it shows any traces of early

occupation. Then as to Llyn Farch, there is a story going that there

came out of it once on a time a wonderful animal, which was shot by a

neighbouring farmer. Lastly, at Llyn Fanod there are boundary walls

which go right out into the lake; and my informant thinks the same

is the case with Llyn Eidwen [185]. One of these walls is probably

what in Howells' youthful hands developed itself into a causeway. The

other part of his story, referring to the lowing of the Bannog Oxen,

comes from a well known doggerel which runs thus:--

Llan Dewi Frefi fraith [186],

Lle brefod yr ych naw gwaith,

Nes hollti craig y Foelallt.

Llandewi of Brefi the spotted,

Where bellowed the ox nine times,

Till the Foelallt rock split in two.

Brefi is the name of the river from which this Llandewi takes its

distinctive name; and it is pronounced there much the same as brefu,

'the act of lowing, bellowing, or bleating.' Now the Brefi runs down

through the Foelallt Farm, which lies between two very big rocks

popularly fancied to have been once united, and treated by Howells,

somewhat inconsistently, as the permanent forms taken by the two

oxen. The story which Howells seems to have jumbled up with that

of one or more lake legends, is to be found given in Samuel Rush

Meyrick's County of Cardigan: see pp. 265-6, where one reads of a

wild tradition that when the church was building there were two oxen

to draw the stone required; and one of the two died in the effort to

drag the load, while the other bellowed nine times and thereby split

the hill, which before presented itself as an obstacle. The single

ox was then able to bring the load unassisted to the site of the

church. It is to this story that the doggerel already given refers;

and, curiously enough, most of the district between Llandewi and

Ystrad Fflur, or Strata Florida, is more or less associated with the

Ychen Bannog. Thus a ridge running east and west at a distance of some

three miles from Tregaron, and separating Upper and Lower Caron from

one another, bears the name of Cwys yr Ychen Bannog, or the Furrow

of the Ychen Bannog. It somewhat resembles in appearance an ancient

dyke, but it is said to be nothing but 'a long bank of glacial till

[187].' Moreover there used to be preserved within the church of

Llandewi a remarkable fragment of a horn commonly called Madcorn

yr Ych Bannog, 'the mabcorn or core of the Bannog Ox's Horn.' It is

now in the possession of Mr. Parry of Llidiardau, near Aberystwyth;

and it has been pronounced by Prof. Boyd Dawkins to have belonged to

'the great urus (Bos Primigenius), that Charlemagne hunted in the

forests of Aachen, and the monks of St. Galle ate on their feast

days.' He adds that the condition of the horn proves it to have been

derived from a peat bog or alluvium [188]. On the whole, it seems

to me probable that the wild legends about the Ychen Bannog [189]

in Cardiganshire have underlying them a substratum of tradition going

back to a time when the urus was not as yet extinct in Wales. How far

the urus was once treated in this country as an emblem of divinity,

it is impossible to say; but from ancient Gaul we have such a name

as Urogeno-nertus [190], meaning a man of the strength of an Urogen,

that is, of the offspring of a urus; not to mention the Gaulish Tarvos

Trigaranus, or the bull with three cranes on his back. With this

divine animal M. d'Arbois de Jubainville would identify the Donnos

underlying such Gallo-Roman names as Donnotaurus, and that of the

wonderful bull called Donn in the principal epic story of Ireland

[191], where we seem to trace the same element in the river-name

given by Ptolemy as Mo-donnos, one of the streams of Wicklow, or

else the Slaney. This would be the earliest instance known of the

prefixing of the pronoun mo, 'my,' in its reverential application,

which was confined in later ages to the names of Goidelic saints.

To return, however, to the folklorist's difficulties, the first

thing to be done is to get as ample a supply of folklore materials

as possible; and here I come to a point at which some of the readers

of these pages could probably help; for we want all our folklore

and superstitions duly recorded and rescued from the yawning gulf of

oblivion, into which they are rapidly and irretrievably dropping year

by year, as the oldest inhabitant passes away.

Some years ago I attempted to collect the stories still remembered in

Wales about fairies and lake dwellers; and I seem to have thrown some

amount of enthusiasm into that pursuit. At any rate, one editor of a

Welsh newspaper congratulated me on being a thorough believer in the

fairies. Unfortunately, I was not nearly so successful in recommending

myself as a believer to the old people who could have related to me

the kind of stories I wanted. Nevertheless, the best plan I found was

to begin by relating a story about the fairies myself: if that method

did not result in eliciting anything from the listener, then it was

time to move on to try the experiment on another subject. Among the

things which I then found was the fact, that most of the well known

lakes and tarns of Wales were once believed to have had inhabitants

of a fairy kind, who owned cattle that sometimes came ashore and

mixed with the ordinary breeds, while an occasional lake lady became

the wife of a shepherd or farmer in the neighbourhood. There must,

however, be many more of these legends lurking in out of the way

parts of Wales in connexion with the more remote mountain tarns;

and it would be well if they were collected systematically.

One of the most complete and best known of these lake stories is

that of Llyn y Fan Fach in the Beacons of Carmarthenshire, called in

Welsh Bannau Sir Gaer. The story is so much more circumstantial than

all the others, that it has been placed at the beginning of this

volume. Next to it may be ranked that of the Ystrad Dyfodwg pool,

now known as Llyn y Forwyn, the details of which have only recently

been unearthed for me by a friend: see pp. 27-30 above. Well, in the

Fan Fach legend the lake lady marries a young farmer from Mydfai,

on the Carmarthenshire side of the range; and she is to remain his

wife so long as he lives without striking her three times without

cause. When that happens, she leaves him and calls away with her

all her live stock, down to the little black calf in the process of

being flayed; for he suddenly dons his hide and hurries away after

the rest of the stock into the lake. The three blows without cause

seem to belong to a category of very ancient determinants which

have been recently discussed, with his usual acumen and command of

instances from other lands, by Mr. Hartland, in the chapters on the

Swan Maidens in his Science of Fairy Tales. But our South Welsh story

allows the three blows only a minimum of force; and in North Wales the

determinant is of a different kind, though probably equally ancient:

for there the husband must not strike or touch the fairy wife with

anything made of iron, a condition which probably points back to the

Stone Age. For archæologists are agreed, that before metal, whether

iron or bronze, was used in the manufacturing of tools, stone was the

universal material for all cutting tools and weapons. But as savages

are profoundly conservative in their habits, it is argued that on

ceremonial and religious occasions knives of stone continued to be the

only ones admissible long after bronze ones had been in common use

for ordinary purposes. Take for example the text of Exodus iv. 25,

where Zipporah is mentioned circumcising her son with a flint. From

instances of the kind one may comprehend the sort of way in which iron

came to be regarded as an abomination and a horror to the fairies. The

question will be found discussed by Mr. Hartland at length in his

book mentioned above: see more especially pp. 305-9.

Such, to my mind, are some of the questions to which the fairies

give rise: I now wish to add another turning on the reluctance of

the fairies to disclose their names. There is one story in particular

which would serve to illustrate this admirably; but it is one which,

I am sorry to say, I have never been able to discover complete or

coherent in Wales. The substance of it should be, roughly speaking,

as follows:--A woman finds herself in great distress and is delivered

out of it by a fairy, who claims as reward the woman's baby. On a

certain day the baby will inevitably be taken by the fairy unless the

fairy's true name is discovered by the mother. The fairy is foiled by

being in the meantime accidentally overheard exulting, that the mother

does not know that his or her name is Rumpelstiltzchen, or whatever it

may be in the version which happens to be in question. The best known

version is the German one, where the fairy is called Rumpelstiltzchen;

and it will be found in the ordinary editions of Grimm's Märchen. The

most complete English version is the East Anglian one published by

Mr. Edward Clodd, in his recent volume entitled Tom Tit Tot, pp. 8-16;

and previously in an article full of research headed 'The Philosophy

of Rumpelstiltskin,' in Folk-Lore for 1889, pp. 138-43. It is first

to be noted that in this version the fairy's name is Tom Tit Tot, and

that the German and the East Anglian stories run parallel. They agree

in making the fairy a male, in which they differ from our Welsh Silly

Frit and Silly go Dwt: in what other respect the story of our Silly

differed from that of Rumpelstiltzchen and Tom Tit Tot it is, in the

present incomplete state of the Welsh one, impossible to say. Here

it may be found useful to recall the fragments of the Welsh story:

(1) A fairy woman used to come out of Corwrion Pool to spin on fine

summer days, and whilst spinning she sang or hummed to herself sìli

ffrit, sìli ffrit--it does not rise even to a doggerel couplet: see

p. 64 above. (2) A farmer's wife in Lleyn used to have visits from

a fairy woman who came to borrow things from her; and one day when

the goodwife had lent her a troell bach, or wheel for spinning flax,

she asked the fairy to give her name, which she declined to do. She

was, however, overheard to sing to the whir of the wheel as follows

(p. 229):--

Bychan a wyda' hi Little did she know

Mai Sìli go Dwt That Silly go Dwt

Yw f'enw i. Is my name.

This throws some light on Silly Frit, and we know where we are; but

the story is inconsequent, and far from representing the original. We

cannot, however, reconstruct it quite on the lines of Grimm's or

Clodd's version. But I happened to mention my difficulty one day

to Dr. J. A. H. Murray, when he assured me of the existence of a

Scottish version in which the fairy is a female. He learnt it when

he was a child, he said, at Denholm, in Roxburghshire; and he was

afterwards charmed to read it in Robert Chambers' Popular Rhymes of

Scotland (Edinburgh, 1858), pp. 221-5, whence Mr. Clodd has given an

abstract of it in his 'Philosophy of Rumpelstiltskin.' Among those

popular rhymes the reader will find it as related at length by Nurse

Jenny in her inimitable fashion; but the Scotch is so broad, that I

think it advisable, at the risk of some havoc to the local colouring,

to southronize it somewhat as follows:--

'I see that you are fond of talks about fairies, children; and a story

about a fairy and the goodwife of Kittlerumpit has just come into

my mind; but I can't very well tell you now whereabouts Kittlerumpit

lies. I think it is somewhere in the Debatable Ground; anyway I shall

not pretend to know more than I do, like everybody nowadays. I wish

they would remember the ballad we used to sing long ago:--

Mony ane sings the gerss, the gerss,

And mony ane sings the corn;

And mony ane clatters o' bold Robin Hood,

Ne'er kent where he was born.

But howsoever about Kittlerumpit: the goodman was a rambling sort

of body; and he went to a fair one day, and not only never came home

again, but nevermore was heard of. Some said he 'listed, and others

that the tiresome pressgang snatched him up, though he was furnished

with a wife and a child to boot. Alas! that wretched pressgang! They

went about the country like roaring lions, seeking whom they might

devour. Well do I remember how my eldest brother Sandy was all but

smothered in the meal-chest, hiding from those rascals. After they

were gone, we pulled him out from among the meal, puffing and crying,

and as white as any corpse. My mother had to pick the meal out of

his mouth with the shank of a horn spoon.

'Ah well, when the goodman of Kittlerumpit was gone, the goodwife

was left with small means. Little resources had she, and a baby boy

at her breast. All said they were sorry for her; but nobody helped

her--which is a common case, sirs. Howsoever the goodwife had a sow,

and that was her only consolation; for the sow was soon to farrow,

and she hoped for a good litter.

'But we all know hope is fallacious. One day the woman goes to the

sty to fill the sow's trough; and what does she find but the sow lying

on her back, grunting and groaning, and ready to give up the ghost.

'I trow this was a new pang to the goodwife's heart; so she sat down

on the knocking-stone [192], with her bairn on her knee, and cried

sorer than ever she did for the loss of her own goodman.

'Now I premise that the cottage of Kittlerumpit was built on a brae,

with a large fir-wood behind it, of which you may hear more ere we go

far on. So the goodwife, when she was wiping her eyes, chances to look

down the brae; and what does she see but an old woman, almost like a

lady, coming slowly up the road. She was dressed in green, all but

a short white apron and a black velvet hood, and a steeple-crowned

beaver hat on her head. She had a long walking-staff, as long as

herself, in her hand--the sort of staff that old men and old women

helped themselves with long ago; I see no such staffs now, sirs.

'Ah well, when the goodwife saw the green gentlewoman near her, she

rose and made a curtsy; and "Madam," quoth she, weeping, "I am one

of the most misfortunate women alive."

'"I don't wish to hear pipers' news and fiddlers' tales, goodwife,"

quoth the green woman. "I know you have lost your goodman--we had

worse losses at the Sheriff Muir [193]; and I know that your sow is

unco sick. Now what will you give me if I cure her?"

'"Anything your ladyship's madam likes," quoth the witless goodwife,

never guessing whom she had to deal with.

'"Let us wet thumbs on that bargain," quoth the green woman; so thumbs

were wetted, I warrant you; and into the sty madam marches.

'She looks at the sow with a long stare, and then began to mutter to

herself what the goodwife couldn't well understand; but she said it

sounded like--

Pitter patter,

Holy Water.

'Then she took out of her pocket a wee bottle, with something like

oil in it; and she rubs the sow with it above the snout, behind the

ears, and on the tip of the tail. "Get up, beast," quoth the green

woman. No sooner said than done--up jumps the sow with a grunt,

and away to her trough for her breakfast.

'The goodwife of Kittlerumpit was a joyful goodwife now, and would

have kissed the very hem of the green woman's gowntail; but she

wouldn't let her. "I am not so fond of ceremonies," quoth she;

"but now that I have righted your sick beast, let us end our settled

bargain. You will not find me an unreasonable, greedy body--I like

ever to do a good turn for a small reward: all I ask, and will have,

is that baby boy in your bosom."

'The goodwife of Kittlerumpit, who now knew her customer, gave a shrill

cry like a stuck swine. The green woman was a fairy, no doubt; so

she prays, and cries, and begs, and scolds; but all wouldn't do. "You

may spare your din," quoth the fairy, "screaming as if I was as deaf

as a door-nail; but this I'll let you know--I cannot, by the law we

live under, take your bairn till the third day; and not then, if you

can tell me my right name." So madam goes away round the pig-sty end;

and the goodwife falls down in a swoon behind the knocking-stone.

'Ah well, the goodwife of Kittlerumpit could not sleep any that night

for crying, and all the next day the same, cuddling her bairn till

she nearly squeezed its breath out; but the second day she thinks of

taking a walk in the wood I told you of; and so with the bairn in her

arms, she sets out, and goes far in among the trees, where was an

old quarry-hole, grown over with grass, and a bonny spring well in

the middle of it. Before she came very near, she hears the whirring

of a flax wheel, and a voice singing a song; so the woman creeps

quietly among the bushes, and peeps over the brow of the quarry;

and what does she see but the green fairy tearing away at her wheel,

and singing like any precentor:--

Little kens our guid dame at hame,

That Whuppity Stoorie is my name.

'"Ha, ha!" thinks the woman, "I've got the mason's word at last; the

devil give them joy that told it!" So she went home far lighter than

she came out, as you may well guess--laughing like a madcap with the

thought of cheating the old green fairy.

'Ah well, you must know that this goodwife was a jocose woman,

and ever merry when her heart was not very sorely overladen. So she

thinks to have some sport with the fairy; and at the appointed time

she puts the bairn behind the knocking-stone, and sits on the stone

herself. Then she pulls her cap over her left ear and twists her

mouth on the other side, as if she were weeping; and an ugly face

she made, you may be sure. She hadn't long to wait, for up the brae

climbs the green fairy, neither lame nor lazy; and long ere she got

near the knocking-stone she screams out--"Goodwife of Kittlerumpit,

you know well what I come for--stand and deliver!"

'The woman pretends to cry harder than before, and wrings her hands,

and falls on her knees, with "Och, sweet madam mistress, spare my

only bairn, and take the wretched sow!"

'"The devil take the sow, for my part," quoth the fairy; "I come not

here for swine's flesh. Don't be contramawcious, huzzy, but give me

the child instantly!"

'"Ochone, dear lady mine," quoth the crying goodwife; "forgo my poor

bairn, and take me myself!"

'"The devil is in the daft jade," quoth the fairy, looking like the

far end of a fiddle; "I'll bet she is clean demented. Who in all the

earthly world, with half an eye in his head, would ever meddle with

the likes of thee?"

'I trow this set up the woman of Kittlerumpit's bristle: for though she

had two blear eyes and a long red nose besides, she thought herself

as bonny as the best of them. So she springs off her knees, sets the

top of her cap straight, and with her two hands folded before her,

she makes a curtsy down to the ground, and, "In troth, fair madam,"

quoth she, "I might have had the wit to know that the likes of me is

not fit to tie the worst shoe-strings of the high and mighty princess,

Whuppity Stoorie."

'If a flash of gunpowder had come out of the ground it couldn't have

made the fairy leap higher than she did; then down she came again

plump on her shoe-heels; and whirling round, she ran down the brae,

screeching for rage, like an owl chased by the witches.

'The goodwife of Kittlerumpit laughed till she was like to split;

then she takes up her bairn, and goes into her house, singing to it

all the way:--

A goo and a gitty, my bonny wee tyke,

Ye'se noo ha'e your four-oories;

Sin' we've gien Nick a bane to pyke,

Wi' his wheels and his Whuppity Stoories.'

That is practically Chambers' version of this Scottish story; and as

to the name of the fairy Whuppity Stoorie, the first syllable should

be the equivalent of English whip, while stoor is a Scotch word for

dust in motion: so the editor asks in a note whether the name may

not have originated in the notion 'that fairies were always present

in the whirls of dust occasioned by the wind on roads and in streets

[194].' But he adds that another version of the story calls the green

woman Fittletetot, which ends with the same element as the name Tom

Tit Tot and Silly go Dwt. Perhaps, however, the Welsh versions of

the story approached nearest to one from Mochdrum in Wigtownshire,

published in the British Association's Papers of the Liverpool Meeting,

1896, p. 613. This story was contributed by the Rev. Walter Gregor,

and the name of the fairy in it is Marget Totts: in this we have a

wife, who is in great distress, because her husband used to give her

so much flax to spin by such and such a day, that the work was beyond

human power. A fairy comes to the rescue and takes the flax away,

promising to bring it back spun by the day fixed, provided the woman

can tell the fairy's name. The woman's distress thereupon becomes

as great as before, but the fairy was overheard saying as she span,

'Little does the guidwife ken it, my name is Marget Totts.' So the

woman got her flax returned spun by the day; and the fairy, Marget

Totts, went up the chimney in a blaze of fire as the result of rage

and disappointment. Here one cannot help seeing that the original,

of which this is a clumsy version, must have been somewhat as follows

Little does the guidwife wot

That my name is Marget Tot.

To come back to Wales, we have there the names Silly Frit and

Silly go Dwt, which are those of females. The former name is purely

English--Silly Frit, which has been already guessed (p. 66) to mean

a silly sprite, or silly apparition, with the idea of its being a

fright of a creature to behold: compare the application elsewhere to

a fairy changeling of the terms crimbil (p. 263) and cyrfaglach or

cryfaglach (p. 450), which is explained as implying a haggard urchin

that has been half starved and stunted in its growth. Leaving out

of the reckoning this connotation, one might compare the term with

the Scottish habit of calling the fairies silly wights, 'the Happy

Wights.' See J. Jamieson's Scottish Dictionary, where s. v. seily,

seely, 'happy,' he purports to quote the following lines from 'the

Legend of the Bishop of St. Androis' in a collection of Scottish

Poems of the Sixteenth Century (Edinburgh, 1801), pp. 320-1:--

For oght the kirk culd him forbid,

He sped him sone, and gat the thrid;

Ane Carling of the Quene of Phareis,

That ewill win gair to elphyne careis,

Through all Braid Albane scho hes bene,

On horsbak on Hallow ewin;

And ay in seiking certayne nyghtis,

As scho sayis, with sur [read our] sillie wychtis.

Similarly, he gives the fairies the name of Seely Court, and cites as

illustrating it the following lines from R. Jamieson's Popular Ballads,

(i. 236, and) ii. 189:--

But as it fell out on last Hallowe'en,

When the Seely Court was ridin' by,

The queen lighted down on a gowan bank,

Nae far frae the tree where I wont to lye.

Into Welsh, however, the designation Silly Frit must have come,

not from Scotland, but from the Marches; and the history of Sìli go

Dwt must be much the same. For, though construed as Welsh, the name

would mean the Silly who is go Dwt [195], 'somewhat tidy or natty';

but the dwt (mutated from twt) was suggested doubtless by the tot of

such fairy names as Tom Tit Tot. That brings me to another group,

where the syllable is trot or trut, and this we have in the Welsh

doggerel, mentioned at p. 229, as follows:--

Bychan a wyda' hi Little did she know

Mai Trwtyn-Tratyn That Trwtyn Tratyn

Yw f'enw i. Is my name.

But this name Trwtyn-Tratyn sounds masculine, and not that of

a she-fairy such as Silly Frit. The feminine would have been

Trwtan-Tratan in the Carnarvonshire pronunciation, and in fact

trwtan is to be heard there; but more frequently a kind of derivative

trwdlan, meaning an ungainly sort of woman, a drudge, a short-legged

or deformed maid of all work. Some Teutonic varieties of this group

of stories will be found mentioned briefly in Mr. Clodd's article on

the 'Philosophy of Rumpelstiltskin [196].' Thus from the Debatable

Ground on the borders of England and Scotland there comes a story

in which the fairy woman's name was Habetrot; and he alludes to an

Icelandic version in which the name is Gillitrut; but for us still

more interest attaches to the name in the following rhyme [197]:--

Little does my lady wot

That my name is Trit-a-Trot.

This has been supposed to belong to a story coming from Ireland; but

whether that may prove true or not, it is hardly to be doubted that

our Trwtyn Tratyn is practically to be identified with Trit-a-Trot,

who is also a he-fairy.

That is not all; for since the foregoing notes were penned, a tale

has reached me from Mr. Craigfryn Hughes about a fairy who began

by conducting himself like the brownies mentioned at pp. 287, 324-5

above. The passages here in point come from the story of which a part

was given at pp. 462-4; and they are to the following effect:--Long

ago there was in service at a Monmouthshire farm a young woman who was

merry and strong. Who she was or whence she came nobody knew; but many

believed that she belonged to the old breed of Bendith y Mamau. Some

time after she had come to the farm, the rumour spread that the house

was sorely troubled by a spirit. But the girl and the elf understood

one another well, and they became the best of friends. So the elf

proved very useful to the maid, for he did everything for her--washing,

ironing, spinning and twisting wool; in fact they say that he was

remarkably handy at the spinning-wheel. Moreover, he expected only

a bowlful of sweet milk and wheat bread, or some flummery, for his

work. So she took care to place the bowl with his food at the bottom

of the stairs every night as she went to bed. It ought to have been

mentioned that she was never allowed to catch a sight of him; for he

always did his work in the dark. Nor did anybody know when he ate his

food: she used to leave the bowl there at night, and it would be empty

by the time when she got up in the morning, the bwca having cleared

it. But one night, by way of cursedness, what did she do but fill the

bowl with some of the stale urine which they used in dyeing wool and

other things about the house. But heavens! it would have been better

for her not to have done it; for when she got up next morning what

should he do but suddenly spring from some corner and seize her by

the neck! He began to beat her and kick her from one end of the house

to the other, while he shouted at the top of his voice at every kick:--

Y faidan din dwmp--

Yn rhoi bara haid a thrwnc

I'r bwca!

The idea that the thick-buttocked lass

Should give barley bread and p--

To the bogie!

Meanwhile she screamed for help, but none came for some time; when,

however, he heard the servant men getting up, he took to his heels

as hard as he could; and nothing was heard of him for some time. But

at the end of two years he was found to be at another farm in the

neighbourhood, called Hafod yr Ynys, where he at once became great

friends with the servant girl: for she fed him like a young chicken,

by giving him a little bread and milk all the time. So he worked

willingly and well for her in return for his favourite food. More

especially, he used to spin and wind the yarn for her; but she wished

him in time to show his face, or to tell her his name: he would by no

means do either. One evening, however, when all the men were out, and

when he was spinning hard at the wheel, she deceived him by telling

him that she was also going out. He believed her; and when he heard

the door shutting, he began to sing as he plied the wheel:--

Hi warda'n iawn pe gwypa hi,

Taw Gwarwyn-a-throt yw'm enw i.

How she would laugh, did she know

That Gwarwyn-a-throt is my name!

'Ha! ha!' said the maid at the bottom of the stairs; 'I know thy name

now.' 'What is it, then?' he asked. She replied, 'Gwarwyn-a-throt';

and as soon as she uttered the words he left the wheel where it was,

and off he went. He was next heard of at a farmhouse not far off,

where there happened to be a servant man named Moses, with whom he

became great friends at once. He did all his work for Moses with

great ease. He once, however, gave him a good beating for doubting

his word; but the two remained together afterwards for some years

on the best possible terms: the end of it was that Moses became

a soldier. He went away to fight against Richard Crookback, and

fell on the field of Bosworth. The bogie, after losing his friend,

began to be troublesome and difficult to live with. He would harass

the oxen when they ploughed, and draw them after him everywhere,

plough and all; nor could any one prevent them. Then, when the sun

set in the evening he would play his pranks again, and do all sorts

of mischief about the house, upstairs, and in the cowhouses. So the

farmer was advised to visit a wise man (dyn cynnil), and to see if

he could devise some means of getting rid of the bogie. He called

on the wise man, who happened to be living near Caerleon on the

Usk; and the wise man, having waited till the moon should be full,

came to the farmer's house. In due time the wise man, by force of

manoeuvring, secured the bogie by the very long nose which formed

the principal ornament of his face, and earned for him the name of

Bwca'r Trwyn, 'the Bogie of the Nose.' Whilst secured by the nose,

the bogie had something read to him out of the wise man's big book;

and he was condemned by the wise man to be transported to the banks of

the Red Sea for fourteen generations, and to be conveyed thither by

'the upper wind' (yr uwchwynt). No sooner had this been pronounced

by the cunning man than there came a whirlwind which made the whole

house shake. Then came a still mightier wind, and as it began to

blow the owner of the big book drew the awl out of the bogie's nose;

and it is supposed that the bogie was carried away by that wind,

for he never troubled the place any more.

Another version of the story seems to have been current, which

represented the bogie as in no wise to blame [198]: but I attach

some importance to the foregoing tale as forming a link of connexion

between the Rumpelstiltzchen group of fairies, always trying to get

hold of children; the brownie kind, ever willing to serve in return

for their simple keep; and the troublesome bogie, that used to haunt

Welsh farm houses and delight in breaking crockery and frightening

the inmates out of their wits. In fact, the brownie and the bogie

reduce themselves here into different humours of the same uncanny

being. Their appearance may be said to have differed also: the bogie

had a very long nose, while the brownie of Blednoch had only 'a hole

where a nose should have been.' But one of the most remarkable points

about the brownie species is that the Lincolnshire specimen was a

small creature, 'a weeny bit of a fellow'--which suggests a possible

community of origin with the banshee of the Irish, and also of the

Welsh: witness the wee little woman in the story of the Curse of

Pantannas (pp. 188-9), who seems to come up out of the river. All

alike may perhaps be said to suggest various aspects of the dead

ancestor or ancestress; but Bwca'r Trwyn is not to be severed from

the fairy woman in the Pennant Valley, who undertakes some of the

duties, not of a dairymaid, as in other cases mentioned, but those

of a nurse. Her conduct on being offered a gown is exactly that of

the brownie similarly placed: see p. 109 above. But she and Bwca'r

Trwyn are unmistakably fairies who take to domestic service, and

work for a time willingly and well in return for their food, which,

as in the case of other fairies, appears to have been mostly milk.

After this digression I wish only to point out that the Welsh bogie's

name, Gwarwyn-a-throt, treated as Welsh, could only mean white-necked

and (or with) a trot; for a throt could only mean 'and (or with) a

trot.' So it is clear that a throt is simply the equivalent of a-Trot,

borrowed from such an English combination as Trit-a-Trot, and that

it is idle to translate Gwarwyn-a-throt. Now trot and twt are not

native Welsh words; and the same remark applies to Trwtyn Tratyn, and

of course to Sìli ffrit and Sìli go Dwt. Hence it is natural to infer

that either these names have in the Welsh stories merely superseded

older ones of Welsh origin, or else that there was no question of name

in the Welsh stories till they had come under English influence. The

former conjecture seems the more probable of the two, unless one should

rather suppose the whole story borrowed from English sources. But

it is of no consequence here as regards the reluctance of fairies to

disclose their names; for we have other instances to which the reader

may turn, on pp. 45, 87-8, 97 above. One of them, in particular,

is in point here: see pp. 54, 61. It attaches itself to the Pool of

Corwrion in the neighbourhood of Bangor; and it relates how a man

married a fairy on the express condition that he was neither to know

her name nor to touch her with iron, on pain of her instantly leaving

him. Of course in the lapse of years the conditions are accidentally

violated by the luckless husband, and the wife flies instantly away

into the waters of the pool: her name turned out to be Belene.

Thus far of the unwillingness of the fairies to tell their names: I

must now come to the question, why that was so. Here the anthropologist

or the student of comparative folklore comes to our aid; for it is

an important part of his business to compare the superstitions of

one people with those of another; and in the case of superstitions

which have lost their meaning among us, for instance, he searches

for a parallel among other nations, where that parallel forms part

of living institutions. In this way he hopes to discover the key to

his difficulties. In the present case he finds savages who habitually

look at the name as part and parcel of the person [199]. These savages

further believe that any part of the person, such as a hair off one's

head or the parings of one's nails, if they chanced to be found by an

enemy, would give that enemy magical power over their lives, and enable

him to injure them. Hence the savage tendency to conceal one's name. I

have here, as the reader will perceive, crowded together several

important steps in the savage logic; so I must try to illustrate them,

somewhat more in detail, by reference to some of the survivals of them

after the savage has long been civilized. To return to Wales, and to

illustrate the belief that possession of a part of one's person, or

of anything closely identified with one's person, gives the possessor

of it power over that person, I need only recall the Welsh notion,

that if one wished to sell one's self to the devil one had merely

to give him a hair of one's head or the tiniest drop of one's blood,

then one would be for ever his for a temporary consideration. Again,

if you only had your hair cut, it must be carefully gathered and hidden

away: by no means must it be burnt, as that might prove prejudicial

to your health. Similarly, you should never throw feathers into the

fire; for that was once held, as I infer, to bring about death among

one's poultry: and an old relative of mine, Modryb Mari, 'Aunt Mary,'

set her face against my taste for toasted cheese. She used to tell

me that if I toasted my cheese, my sheep would waste away and die:

strictly speaking, I fancy this originally meant only the sheep

from whose milk the cheese had been made. But I was not well versed

enough in the doctrines of sympathetic magic to reply, that it did

not apply to our cheese, which was not made from sheep's milk. So

her warning used to frighten me and check my fondness for toasted

cheese, a fondness which I had doubtless quite innocently inherited,

as anybody will see who will glance at one of the Hundred Mery Talys,

printed by John Rastell in the sixteenth century, as follows:--'I

fynde wrytten amonge olde gestes, howe God mayde Saynt Peter porter of

heuen, and that God of hys goodnes, sone after his passyon, suffered

many men to come to the kyngdome of Heuen with small deseruynge; at

whyche tyme there was in heuen a great companye of Welchemen, whyche

with their crakynge and babelynge troubled all the other. Wherfore

God sayde to Saynte Peter that he was wery of them, and that he wolde

fayne haue them out of heuen. To whome Saynte Peter sayd: Good Lorde,

I warrente you, that shall be done. Wherfore Saynt Peter wente out of

heuen gates and cryed wyth a loud voyce Cause bobe [200], that is as

moche to saye as rosted chese, whiche thynge the Welchemen herynge,

ranne out of Heuen a great pace. And when Saynt Peter sawe them all

out, he sodenly wente into Heuen, and locked the dore, and so sparred

all the Welchemen out. By this ye may se, that it is no wysdome for a

man to loue or to set his mynde to moche upon any delycate or worldely

pleasure, wherby he shall lose the celestyall and eternall ioye.'

To leave the Mery Talys and come back to the instances mentioned,

all of them may be said to illustrate the way in which a part, or

an adjunct, answered for the whole of a person or thing. In fact,

having due regard to magic as an exact science, an exceedingly exact

science, one may say that according to the wisdom of our ancestors

the leading axiom of that science practically amounted to this: the

part is quite equal to the whole. Now the name, as a part of the man,

was once probably identified with the breath of life or with the soul,

as we shall see later; and the latter must have been regarded as a

kind of matter; for I well remember that when a person was dying in

a house, it was the custom about Ponterwyd, in North Cardiganshire,

to open the windows. And a farmer near Ystrad Meurig, more towards

the south of the county, told me some years ago that he remembered

his mother dying when he was a boy: a neighbour's wife who had been

acting as nurse tried to open the window of the room, and as it would

not open she deliberately smashed a pane of it. This was doubtless

originally meant to facilitate the escape of the soul; and the same

idea has been attested for Gloucestershire, Devon, and other parts

of the country [201]. This way of looking at the soul reminds one of

Professor Tylor's words when he wrote in his work on Primitive Culture,

i. 440: 'and he who says that his spirit goes forth to meet a friend,

can still realize in the phrase a meaning deeper than metaphor.'

Then if the soul was material, you may ask what its shape was; and

even this I have a story which will answer: it comes from the same

Modryb Mari who set her face against caws pobi, and cherished a good

many superstitions. Therein she differed greatly from her sister,

my mother, who had a far more logical mind and a clearer conception

of things. Well, my aunt's story was to the following effect:--A

party of reapers on a farm not far from Ponterwyd--I have forgotten

the name--sat down in the field to their midday meal. Afterwards

they rested awhile, when one of their number fell fast asleep. The

others got up and began reaping again, glancing every now and then

at the sleeping man, who had his mouth wide open and breathed very

loudly. Presently they saw a little black man, or something like a

monkey, coming out of his mouth and starting on a walk round the

field: they watched this little fellow walking on and on till he

came to a spot near a stream. There he stopped and turned back:

then he disappeared into the open mouth of the sleeper, who at once

woke up. He told his comrades that he had just been dreaming of his

walking round the field as far as the very spot where they had seen

the little black fellow stop. I am sorry to say that Modryb Mari

had wholly forgotten this story when, years afterwards, I asked her

to repeat it to me; but the other day I found a Welshman who still

remembers it. I happened to complain, at a meeting of kindred spirits,

how I had neglected making careful notes of bits of folklore which I

had heard years ago from informants whom I had since been unable to

cross-examine: I instanced the story of the sleeping reaper, when my

friend Professor Sayce at once said that he had heard it. He spent part

of his childhood near Llanover in Monmouthshire; and in those days he

spoke Welsh, which he learned from his nurse. He added that he well

remembered the late Lady Llanover rebuking his father for having his

child, a Welsh boy, dressed like a little Highlander; and he remembered

also hearing the story here in question told him by his nurse. So far

as he could recall it, the version was the same as my aunt's, except

that he does not recollect hearing anything about the stream of water.

Several points in the story call for notice: among others, one

naturally asks at the outset why the other reapers did not wake the

sleeping man. The answer is that the Welsh seem to have agreed with

other peoples, such as the Irish [202], in thinking it dangerous to

wake a man when dreaming, that is, when his soul might be wandering

outside his body; for it might result in the soul failing to

find the way back into the body which it had temporarily left. To

illustrate this from Wales I produce the following story, which has

been written out for me by Mr. J. G. Evans. The scene of it was a

field on the farm of Cadabowen, near Llan y Bydair, in the Vale of

the Teifi:--'The chief point of the madfall incident, which happened

in the early sixties, was this. During one mid-morning hoe hogi,

that is to say, the usual rest for sharpening the reaping-hooks,

I was playing among the thirty or forty reapers sitting together:

my movements were probably a disturbing element to the reapers, as

well as a source of danger to my own limbs. In order, therefore, to

quiet me, as seems probable, one of the men directed my attention to

our old farm labourer, who was asleep on his back close to the uncut

corn, a little apart from the others. I was told that his soul (ened)

had gone out of his mouth in the form of a black lizard (madfall

du), and was at that moment wandering among the standing corn. If I

woke the sleeper, the soul would be unable to return; and old Thomas

would die, or go crazy; or something serious would happen. I will not

trust my memory to fill in details, especially as this incident once

formed the basis of what proved an exciting story told to my children

in their childhood. A generation hence they may be able to give an

astonishing instance of "genuine" Welsh folklore. In the meanwhile,

I can bear testimony to that "black lizard" being about the most

living impression in my "memory." I see it, even now, wriggling at

the edge of the uncut corn. But as to its return, and the waking of

the sleeper, my memory is a blank. Such are the tricks of "memory";

and we should be charitable when, with bated breath, the educated no

less than the uneducated tell us about the uncanny things they have

"seen with their own eyes." They believe what they say, because they

trust their memory: I do not. I feel practically certain I never saw

a lizard in my life, in that particular field in which the reapers

were.' Mr. Evans' story differs, as it has been seen, from my aunt's

version in giving the soul the shape of a lizard; but the little black

fellow in the one and the black lizard in the other agree not only

in representing the soul as material, but also as forming a complete

organism within a larger one. In a word, both pictures must be regarded

as the outcome of attempts to depict the sleeper's inner man.

If names and souls could be regarded as material substances, so could

diseases; and I wish to say a word or two now on that subject, which a

short story of my wife's will serve to introduce. She is a native of

the Llanberis side of Snowdon; and she remembers going one morning,

when a small child, across to the neighbourhood of Rhyd-du with a

servant girl called Cadi, whose parents lived there. Now Cadi was a

very good servant, but she had little regard for the more civilized

manners of the Llanberis folk; and when she returned with the child in

the evening from her mother's cottage, she admitted that the little

girl was amazed at the language of Cadi's brothers and sisters;

for she confessed that, as she said, they swore like colliers,

whereas the little girl had never before heard any swearing worth

speaking of. Well, among other things which the little girl saw

there was one of Cadi's sisters having a bad leg dressed: when the

rag which had been on the wound was removed, the mother made one of

her other children take it out and fix it on the thorn growing near

the door. The little girl being inquisitive asked why that was done,

and she was told that it was in order that the wound might heal all the

faster. She was not very satisfied with the answer, but she afterwards

noticed the same sort of thing done in her own neighbourhood. Now the

original idea was doubtless that the disease, or at any rate a part

of it--and in such matters it will be remembered that a part is quite

equal to the whole--was attached to the rag; so that putting the rag

out, with a part of the disease attached to it, to rot on the bush,

would bring with it the disappearance of the whole disease.

Another and a wider aspect of this practice was the subject of

notice in the chapter on the Folklore of the Wells, pp. 359-60,

where Mr. Hartland's hypothesis was mentioned. This was to the effect

that if any clothing, or anything else which had been identified

with your person, were to be placed in contact with a sacred tree,

sacred well, or sacred edifice, it would be involved in the effluence

of the divinity that imparts its sacred character to the tree, well,

or temple; and that your person, identified with the clothing or other

article, would also be involved or soaked in the same divine effluence,

and made to benefit thereby. We have since had this kind of reasoning

illustrated, pp. 405-7 above, by the modern legend of Crymlyn, and

the old one of Llyn Lliwan; but the difficulty which it involves is

a very considerable one: it is the difficulty of taking seriously the

infantile order of reasoning which underlies so much of the philosophy

of folklore. I cannot readily forget one of the first occasions of

my coming, so to say, into living contact with it. It was at Tuam in

Connaught, whither I had gone to learn modern Irish from the late

Canon Ulick J. Bourke. There one day in 1871 he presented me with

a copy of The Bull 'Ineffabilis' in Four Languages (Dublin, 1868),

containing the Irish version which he had himself contributed. On

the blue cover was a gilt picture of the Virgin, inscribed Sine Labe

Concepta. No sooner had I brought it to my lodgings than the woman

who looked after the house caught sight of it. She was at once struck

with awe and admiration; so I tried to explain to her the nature of

the contents of the volume. 'So the Father has given you that holy

book!' she exclaimed; 'and you are now a holy man!' I was astonished

at the simple and easy way in which she believed holiness could be

transferred from one person or thing to another; and it has always

helped me to realize the fact that folklorists have no occasion

to invent their people, or to exaggerate the childish features of

their minds. They are still with us as real men and real women, and

at one time the whole world belonged to them; not to mention that

those who may, by a straining of courtesy, be called their leaders

of thought, hope speedily to reannex the daring few who are trying

to tear asunder the bonds forged for mankind in the obscurity of a

distant past. I shall never forget the impression made on my mind

by a sermon I heard preached some years later in the cathedral of

St. Stephen in Vienna. That magnificent edifice in a great centre of

German culture was crowded with listeners, who seemed thoroughly to

enjoy what they heard, though the chief idea which they were asked

to entertain could not possibly be said to rise above the level of

the philosophy of the Stone Age.