'Naturally the tailor was as far behind with his work the second day as

the first day, and it was very noticeable to the woman of the house when

she returned. She thereupon requested him to tell her what the matter

might be. Then he said to her, "I urge upon you after going to bed

to-night not to fondle that child, because he is not your child, nor is

he a child: he is an old fairy man. And to-morrow, at dead tide, go down

to the shore and wrap him in your plaid and put him upon a rock and

begin to pick that shell-fish which is called limpet, and for your life

do not leave the shore until such a time as the tide will flow so high

that you will scarcely be able to wade in to the main shore." The woman

complied with the tailor's advice, and when she had waded to the main

shore and stood there looking at the child on the rock, it cried to her,

"You had a great need to do what you have done. Otherwise you'd have

seen another ending of your turn; but blessing be to you and curses on

your adviser." When the wife arrived home her own natural child was in

the cradle.'

THE TESTIMONY OF MURDOCH MACLEAN

The husband of Marian MacLean had entered while the last stories were

being told, and when they were ended the spirit was on him, and wishing

to give his testimony he began:--

_Lachlann's Fairy Mistress._--'My grandmother, Catherine MacInnis, used

to tell about a man named Lachlann, whom she knew, being in love with a

fairy woman. The fairy woman made it a point to see Lachlann every

night, and he being worn out with her began to fear her. Things got so

bad at last that he decided to go to America to escape the fairy woman.

As soon as the plan was fixed, and he was about to emigrate, women who

were milking at sunset out in the meadows heard very audibly the fairy

woman singing this song:--

What will the brown-haired woman do

When Lachlann is on the billows?

'Lachlann emigrated to Cape Breton, landing in Nova Scotia; and in his

first letter home to his friends he stated that the same fairy woman was

haunting him there in America.'[40]

_Abduction of a Bridegroom._--'I have heard it from old people that a

couple, newly married, were on their way to the home of the bride's

father, and for some unknown reason the groom fell behind the

procession, and seeing a fairy-dwelling open along the road was taken

into it. No one could ever find the least trace of where he went, and

all hope of seeing him again was given up. The man remained with the

fairies so long that when he returned two generations had disappeared

during the lapse of time. The township in which his bride's house used

to be was depopulated and in ruins for upwards of twenty years, but to

him the time had seemed only a few hours; and he was just as fresh and

youthful as when he went in the fairy-dwelling.'

_Nature of Fairies._--Previous to his story-telling Murdoch had heard us

discussing the nature and powers of fairies, and at the end of this

account he volunteered, without our asking for it, an opinion of his

own:--'This (the story just told by him) leads me to believe that the

spirit and body [of a mortal] are somehow mystically combined by fairy

enchantment, for the fairies had a mighty power of enchanting natural

people, and could transform the physical body in some way. It cannot be

but that the fairies are spirits. According to my thinking and belief

they cannot be anything but spirits. My firm belief, however, is that

they are not the spirits of dead men, but are the fallen angels.'

Then his wife Marian had one more story to add, and she at once, when

she could, began:--

_The Messenger and the Fairies._--'Yes, I have heard the following

incident took place here on the Island of Barra about one hundred years

ago:--A young woman taken ill suddenly sent a messenger in all haste to

the doctor for medicine. On his return, the day being hot and there

being five miles to walk, he sat down at the foot of a knoll and fell

asleep; and was awakened by hearing a song to the following air: "Ho,

ho, ho, hi, ho, ho. Ill it becomes a messenger on an important message

to sleep on the ground in the open air."'

And with this, for the hour was late and dark, and we were several miles

from Castlebay, we bade our good friends adieu, and began to hunt for a

road out of the little mountain valley where Murdoch and Marian guard

their cows and sheep. And all the way to the hotel Michael and I

discussed the nature of fairies. Just before midnight we saw the welcome

lights in Castlebay across the heather-covered hills, and we both

entered the hotel to talk. There was a blazing fire ready for us and

something to eat. Before I took my final leave of my friend and guide, I

asked him to dictate for me his private opinions about fairies, what

they are and how they appear to men, and he was glad to meet my request.

Here is what he said about the famous folk-lorist, the late Mr. J. F.

Campbell, with whom he often worked in Barra, and for himself:--

MICHAEL BUCHANAN'S DEPOSITION CONCERNING FAIRIES

'I was with the late Mr. J. F. Campbell during his first and second tour

of the Island of Barra in search of legendary lore strictly connected

with fairies, and I know from daily conversing with him about fairies

that he held them to be spirits appearing to the naked eye of the

spectator as any of the present or former generations of men and women,

except that they were smaller in stature. And I know equally that he,

holding them to be spirits, thought they could appear or disappear at

will. My own firm belief is that the fairies were or are only spirits

which were or are seen in the shape of human beings, but smaller as

regards stature. I also firmly believe in the existence of fairies as

such; and accept the modern and ancient traditions respecting the ways

and customs of various fairy tribes, such as John Mackinnon, the old

piper, and John Campbell, and the MacLeans told us. And I therefore have

no hesitation in agreeing with the views held by the late Mr. J. F.

Campbell regarding fairies.'

THE RECITERS' LAMENT, AND THEIR STORY

The following material, so truly Celtic in its word-colour and in the

profound note of sadness and lamentation dominating it, may very

appropriately conclude our examination of the Fairy-Faith of Scotland,

by giving us some insight into the mind of the Scotch peasants of two

generations ago, and into the then prevailing happy social environment

under which their belief in fairies flourished. For our special use Dr.

Alexander Carmichael has rendered it out of the original Gaelic, as this

was taken down by him in various versions in the Western Hebrides. One

version was recited by Ann Macneill, of Barra, in the year 1865, another

by Angus Macleod, of Harris, in 1877. In relation to their belief in

fairies the anti-clerical bias of the reciters is worth noting as a

curious phenomenon:--

'That is as I heard when a hairy little fellow upon the knee of my

mother. My mother was full of stories and songs of music and chanting.

My two ears never heard musical fingers more preferable for me to hear

than the chanting of my mother. If there were quarrels among children,

as there were, and as there will be, my beloved mother would set us to

dance there and then. She herself or one of the other crofter women of

the townland would sing to us the mouth-music. We would dance there till

we were seven times tired. A stream of sweat would be falling from us

before we stopped--hairful little lassies and stumpy little fellows.

These are scattered to-day! scattered to-day over the wide world! The

people of those times were full of music and dancing stories and

traditions. The clerics have extinguished these. May ill befall them!

And what have the clerics put in their place? Beliefs about creeds, and

disputations about denominations and churches! May lateness be their

lot! It is they who have put the cross round the heads and the

entanglements round the feet of the people. The people of the Gaeldom of

to-day are anear perishing for lack of the famous feats of their

fathers. The black clerics have suppressed every noble custom among the

people of the Gaeldom--precious customs that will never return, no never

again return.' (Now follows what the Reciters heard upon the knee of

their mother):--

'"I have never seen a man fairy nor a woman fairy, but my mother saw a

troop of them. She herself and the other maidens of the townland were

once out upon the summer _sheiling_ (grazing). They were milking the

cows, in the evening gloaming, when they observed a flock of fairies

reeling and setting upon the green plain in front of the knoll. And, oh

King! but it was they the fairies themselves that had the right to the

dancing, and not the children of men! Bell-helmets of blue silk covered

their heads, and garments of green satin covered their bodies, and

sandals of yellow membrane covered their feet. Their heavy brown hair

was streaming down their waist, and its lustre was of the fair golden

sun of summer. Their skin was as white as the swan of the wave, and

their voice was as melodious as the mavis of the wood, and they

themselves were as beauteous of feature and as lithe of form as a

picture, while their step was as light and stately and their minds as

sportive as the little red hind of the hill. The damsel children of the

_sheiling_-fold never saw sight but them, no never sight but them, never

aught so beautiful.

'"There is not a wave of prosperity upon the fairies of the knoll, no,

not a wave. There is no growth nor increase, no death nor withering upon

the fairies. Seed unfortunate they! They went away from the Paradise

with the One of the Great Pride. When the Father commanded the doors

closed down and up, the intermediate fairies had no alternative but to

leap into the holes of the earth, where they are, and where they will

be."

'This is what I heard upon the knee of my beloved mother. Blessings be

with her ever evermore!'

IV. IN THE ISLE OF MAN

Introduction by SOPHIA MORRISON, Hon. Secretary of the Manx

Language Society.

The Manx hierarchy of fairy beings people hills and glens, caves and

rivers, mounds and roads; and their name is legion. Apparently there is

not a place in the island but has its fairy legend. Sir Walter Scott

said that the 'Isle of Man, beyond all other places in Britain, was a

peculiar depository of the fairy-traditions, which, on the Island being

conquered by the Norse, became in all probability chequered with those

of Scandinavia, from a source peculiar and more direct than that by

which they reached Scotland and Ireland'.

A good Manxman, however, does not speak of fairies--the word _ferish_, a

corruption of the English, did not exist in the island one hundred and

fifty years ago. He talks of 'The Little People' (_Mooinjer veggey_),

or, in a more familiar mood, of 'Themselves', and of 'Little Boys'

(_Guillyn veggey_), or 'Little Fellas'. In contradistinction to mortals

he calls them 'Middle World Men', for they are believed to dwell in a

world of their own, being neither good enough for Heaven nor bad enough

for Hell.

At the present moment almost all the older Manx peasants hold to this

belief in fairies quite firmly, but with a certain dread of them; and,

to my knowledge, two old ladies of the better class yet leave out cakes

and water for the fairies every night. The following story, illustrative

of the belief, was told to me by Bill Clarke:--

'Once while I was fishing from a ledge of rocks that runs out into the

sea at Lag-ny-Keilley, a dense grey mist began to approach the land, and

I thought I had best make for home while the footpath above the rocks

was visible. When getting my things together I heard what sounded like a

lot of children coming out of school. I lifted my head, and behold ye,

there was a fleet of fairy boats each side of the rock. Their

riding-lights were shining like little stars, and I heard one of the

_Little Fellas_ shout, "_Hraaghyn boght as earish broigh, skeddan dy

liooar ec yn mooinjer seihll shoh, cha nel veg ain_" (Poor times and

dirty weather, and herring enough at the people of this world, nothing

at us). Then they dropped off and went agate o' the flitters.'

'Willy-the-Fairy,' as he is called, who lives at Rhenass, says he often

hears the fairies singing and playing up the Glen o' nights. I have

heard him sing airs which he said he had thus learned from the _Little

People_.[41]

Again, there is a belief that at Keeill Moirrey (Mary's Church), near

Glen Meay, a little old woman in a red cloak is sometimes seen coming

over the mountain towards the _keeill_, ringing a bell, just about the

hour when church service begins. Keeill Moirrey is one of the early

little Celtic cells, probably of the sixth century, of which nothing

remains but the foundations.

And the following prayer, surviving to our own epoch, is most

interesting. It shows, in fact, pure paganism; and we may judge from it

that the ancient Manx people regarded Manannan, the great Tuatha De

Danann god, in his true nature, as a spiritual being, a Lord of the Sea,

and as belonging to the complex fairy hierarchy. This prayer was given

to me by a Manxwoman nearly one hundred years old, who is still living.

She said it had been used by her grandfather, and that her father prayed

the same prayer--substituting St. Patrick's name for Manannan's:--

_Manannan beg mac y Leirr, fer vannee yn Ellan,

Bannee shin as nyn maatey, mie goll magh

As cheet stiagh ny share lesh bio as marroo "sy vaatey"._

(Little Manannan son of Leirr, who blest our Island,

Bless us and our boat, well going out

And better coming in with living and dead [fish] in the boat).

* * * * *

It seems to me that no one of the various theories so far advanced

accounts in itself for the Fairy-Faith. There is always a missing

factor, an unknown quantity which has yet to be discovered. No doubt the

Pygmy Theory explains a good deal. In some countries a tradition has

been handed down of the times when there were races of diminutive men in

existence--beings so small that their tiny hands could have used the

flint arrow-heads and scrapers which are like toys to us. No such

tradition exists at the present day in the Isle of Man, but one might

have filtered down from the far-off ages and become innate in the

folk-memory, and now, unknown to the Manx peasant, may possibly suggest

to his mind the troops of _Little People_ in the shadowy glen or on the

lonely mountain-side. Again, the rustling of the leaves or the sough of

the wind may be heard by the peasant as strange and mysterious voices,

or the trembling shadow of a bush may appear to him as an unearthly

being. Natural facts, explainable by modern science, may easily remain

dark mysteries to those who live quiet lives close to Nature, far from

sophisticated towns, and whose few years of schooling have left the

depths of their being undisturbed, only, as it were, ruffling the

shallows.

But this is not enough. Even let it be granted that nine out of every

ten cases of experiences with fairies can be analysed and explained

away--there remains the tenth. In this tenth case one is obliged to

admit that there is something at work which we do not understand, some

force in play which, as yet, we know not. In spite of ourselves we feel

'There's Powers that's in'. These Powers are not necessarily what the

superstitious call 'supernatural'. We realize now that there is nothing

supernatural--that what used to be so called is simply something that we

do not understand at present. Our forefathers would have thought the

telephone, the X-rays, and wireless telegraphy things 'supernatural'. It

is more than possible that our descendants may make discoveries equally

marvellous in the realms both of mind and matter, and that many things,

which nowadays seem to the materialistically-minded the creations of

credulous fancy, may in the future be understood and recognized as part

of the one great scheme of things.

Some persons are certainly more susceptible than others to these unknown

forces. Most people know reliable instances of telepathy and

presentiment amongst their acquaintances. It seems not at all contrary

to reason that both matter and mind, in knowledge of which we have not

gone so very far after all, may exist in forms as yet entirely unknown

to us. After all, beings with bodies and personalities different from

our own may well inhabit the unseen world around us: the Fairy Hound,

white as driven snow, may show himself at times among his mundane

companions; _Fenodyree_ may do the farm-work for those whom he favours;

the _Little People_ may sing and dance o' nights in Colby Glen. Let us

not say it is 'impossible'.

PEEL, ISLE OF MAN,

_September_ 1910.

ON THE SLOPES OF SOUTH BARRULE

I was introduced to the ways and nature of Manx fairies in what is

probably the most fairy-haunted part of the isle--the southern slopes of

South Barrule, the mountain on whose summit Manannan is said to have had

his stronghold, and whence he worked his magic, hiding the kingdom in

dense fog whenever he beheld in the distance the coming of an enemy's

ship or fleet. And from a representative of the older generation, Mrs.

Samuel Leece, who lives at Ballamodda, a pleasant village under the

shadow of South Barrule, I heard the first story:--

_Baby and Table Moved by Fairies._--'I have been told of _their_ (the

fairies') taking babies, though I can't be sure it is true. But this did

happen to my own mother in this parish of Kirk Patrick about eighty

years since: She was in bed with her baby, but wide awake, when she felt

the baby pulled off her arm and heard the rush of _them_. Then she

mentioned the Almighty's name, and, as _they_ were hurrying away, a

little table alongside the bed went round about the floor twenty times.

Nobody was in the room with my mother, and she always allowed it was the

_little fellows_.'

MANX TALES IN A SNOW-BOUND FARM-HOUSE

When our interesting conversation was over, Mrs. Leece directed me to

her son's farm-house, where her husband, Mr. Samuel Leece, then happened

to be; and going there through the snow-drifts, I found him with his son

and the family within. The day was just the right sort to stir Manx

memories, and it was not long before the best of stories about the

'little people' were being told in the most natural way, and to the

great delight of the children. The grandfather, who is eighty-six years

of age, sat by the open fire smoking; and he prepared the way for the

stories (three of which we record) by telling about a ghost seen by

himself and his father, and by the announcement that 'the fairies are

thought to be spirits'.

_Under 'Fairy' Control._--'About fifty years ago,' said Mr. T. Leece,

the son, 'Paul Taggart, my wife's uncle, a tailor by trade, had for an

apprentice, Humphrey Keggan, a young man eighteen or nineteen years of

age; and it often happened that while the two of them would be returning

home at nightfall, the apprentice would suddenly disappear from the side

of the tailor, and even in the midst of a conversation, as soon as they

had crossed the burn in the field down there (indicating an adjoining

field). And Taggart could not see nor hear Humphrey go. The next morning

Humphrey would come back, but so worn out that he could not work, and he

always declared that _little men_ had come to him in crowds, and used

him as a horse, and that with them he had travelled all night across

fields and over hedges.' The wife of the narrator substantiated this

strange psychological story by adding:--'This is true, because I know my

Uncle Paul too well to doubt what he says.' And she then related the two

following stories:--

_Heifer Killed by Fairy Woman's Touch._--'Aunt Jane was coming down the

road on the other side of South Barrule when she saw a strange woman'

(who Mr. T. Leece suggested was a witch) 'appear in the middle of the

gorse and walk right over the gorse and heather in a place where no

person could walk. Then she observed the woman go up to a heifer and put

her hand on it; and within a few days that heifer was dead.'

_The Fairy Dog._--'This used to happen about one hundred years ago, as

my mother has told me:--Where my grandfather John Watterson was reared,

just over near Kerroo Kiel (Narrow Quarter), all the family were

sometimes sitting in the house of a cold winter night, and my great

grandmother and her daughters at their wheels spinning, when a little

white dog would suddenly appear in the room. Then every one there would

have to drop their work and prepare for _the company_ to come in: they

would put down a fire and leave fresh water for _them_, and hurry off

upstairs to bed. They could hear _them_ come, but could never see them,

only the dog. The dog was a fairy dog, and a sure sign of their coming.'

TESTIMONY OF A HERB-DOCTOR AND SEER

At Ballasalla I was fortunate enough to meet one of the most interesting

of its older inhabitants, John Davies, a Celtic medicine-man, who can

cure most obstinate maladies in men or animals with secret herbs, and

who knows very much about witchcraft and the charms against it. 'Witches

are as common as ducks walking barefooted,' he said, using the duck

simile, which is a popular Manx one; and he cited two particular

instances from his own experience. But for us it is more important to

know that John Davies is also an able seer. The son of a weaver, he was

born in County Down, Ireland, seventy-eight years ago; but in earliest

boyhood he came with his people to the Isle of Man, and grew up in the

country near Ramsay, and so thoroughly has he identified himself with

the island and its lore, and even with its ancient language, that for

our purposes he may well be considered a Manxman. His testimony about

Manx fairies is as follows:--

_Actual Fairies Described._--'I am only a poor ignorant man; when I was

married I couldn't say the word "matrimony" in the right way. But one

does not have to be educated to see fairies, and I have seen them many a

time. I have seen them with the naked eye as numerous as I have seen

scholars coming out of Ballasalla school; and I have been seeing them

since I was eighteen to twenty years of age. The last one I saw was in

Kirk Michael. Before education came into the island more people could

see the fairies; now very few people can see them. But _they_ (the

fairies) are as thick on the Isle of Man as ever _they_ were. _They_

throng the air, and darken Heaven, and rule this lower world. It is only

twenty-one miles from this world up to the first heaven.[42] There are

as many kinds of fairies as populations in our world. I have seen some

who were about two and a half feet high; and some who were as big as we

are. I think very many such fairies as these last are the lost souls of

the people who died before the Flood. At the Flood all the world was

drowned; but the Spirit which God breathed into Adam will never be

drowned, or burned, and it is as much in the sea as on the land. Others

of the fairies are evil spirits: our Saviour drove a legion of devils

into a herd of swine; the swine were choked, but not the devils. You

can't drown devils; it is spirits they are, and just like a shadow on

the wall.' I here asked about the personal aspects of most fairies of

human size, and my friend said:--'_They_ appear to me in the same dress

as in the days when they lived here on earth; the spirit itself is only

what God blew into Adam as the breath of life.'

It seems to me that, on the whole, John Davies has had genuine visions,

but that whatever he may have seen has been very much coloured in

interpretation by his devout knowledge of the Christian Bible, and by

his social environment, as is self-evident.

TESTIMONY OF A BALLASALLA MANXWOMAN

A well-informed Manxwoman, of Ballasalla, who lives in the ancient stone

house wherein she was born, and in which before her lived her

grandparents, offers this testimony:--

_Concerning Fairies._--'I've heard a good deal of talk about fairies,

but never believed in them myself; the old people thought them the

ghosts of the dead or some such things. They were like people who had

gone before (that is, dead). If there came a strange sudden knock or

noises, or if a tree took a sudden shaking when there was no wind,

people used to make out it was caused by the fairies. On the 11th of

May[43] we used to gather mountain-ash (_Cuirn_) with red berries on it,

and make crosses out of its sprigs, and put them over the doors, so that

the fairies would not come in. My father always saw that this was done;

he said we could have no luck during the year if we forgot to do it.'

TESTIMONY GIVEN IN A JOINER'S SHOP

George Gelling, of Ballasalla, a joiner, has a local reputation for

knowing much about the fairies, and so I called on him at his workshop.

This is what he told me:--

_Seeing the Fairies._--'I was making a coffin here in the shop, and,

after tea, my apprentice was late returning; he was out by the hedge

just over there looking at a crowd of _little people_ kicking and

dancing. One of them came up and asked him what he was looking at; and

this made him run back to the shop. When he described what he had seen,

I told him they were nothing but fairies.'

_Hearing Fairy Music._--'Up by the abbey on two different occasions I

have heard the fairies. They were playing tunes not of this world, and

on each occasion I listened for nearly an hour.'

_Mickleby and the Fairy Woman._--'A man named Mickleby was coming from

Derbyhaven at night, when by a certain stream he met two ladies. He

saluted them, and then walked along with them to Ballahick Farm. There

he saw a house lit up, and they took him into it to a dance. As he

danced, he happened to wipe away his sweat with a part of the dress of

one of the two strange women who was his partner. After this adventure,

whenever Mickleby was lying abed at night, the woman with whom he danced

would appear standing beside his bed. And the only way to drive her away

was to throw over her head and Mickleby a linen sheet which had never

been bleached.'

_Nature of Fairies._--'The fairies are spirits. I think they are in this

country yet: A man below here forgot his cow, and at a late hour went to

look for her, and saw that crowds of fairies like little boys were with

him. [St.] Paul said that spirits are thick in the air, if only we could

see them; and we call spirits fairies. I think the old people here in

the island thought of fairies in the same way.'

_The Fairies' Revenge._--William Oates now happened to come into the

workshop, and being as much interested in the subject under discussion

as ourselves, offered various stories, of which the following is a

type:--'A man named Watterson, who used often to see the fairies in his

house at Colby playing in the moonlight, on one occasion heard them

coming just as he was going to bed. So he went out to the spring to get

fresh water for them; and coming into the house put the can down on the

floor, saying, "Now, little beggars, drink away." And at that (an insult

to the fairies) the water was suddenly thrown upon him.'

A VICAR'S TESTIMONY

When I called on the Rev. J. M. Spicer, vicar of Malew parish, at his

home near Castletown, he told me this very curious story:--

_The Taking of Mrs. K----._--'The belief in fairies is quite a living

thing here yet. For example, old Mrs. K----, about a year ago, told me

that on one occasion, when her daughter had been in Castletown during

the day, she went out to the road at nightfall to see if her daughter

was yet in sight, whereupon a whole crowd of fairies suddenly

surrounded her, and began taking her off toward South Barrule Mountain;

and, she added, "I couldn't get away from _them_ until I had called my

son."'

A CANON'S TESTIMONY

I am greatly indebted to the Rev. Canon Kewley, of Arbory, for the

valuable testimony which follows, and especially for his kindness in

allowing me to record what is one of the clearest examples of a

collective hallucination I have heard about as occurring in the

fairy-haunted regions of Celtic countries:--

_A Collective Hallucination._--'A good many things can be explained as

natural phenomena, but there are some things which I think cannot be.

For example, my sister and myself and our coachman, and apparently the

horse, saw the same phenomenon at the same moment: one evening we were

driving along an avenue in this parish when the avenue seemed to be

blocked by a great crowd of people, like a funeral procession; and the

crowd was so dense that we could not see through it. The throng was

about thirty to forty yards away. When we approached, it melted away,

and no person was anywhere in sight.'

_The Manx Fairy-Faith._--'Among the old people of this parish there is

still a belief in fairies. About eighteen years ago, I buried a man, a

staunch Methodist, who said he once saw the road full of fairies in the

form of little black pigs, and that when he addressed them, "In the name

of God what are ye?" they immediately vanished. He was certain they were

the fairies. Other old people speak of the fairies as the _little folk_.

The tradition is that the fairies once inhabited this island, but were

banished for evil-doing. The elder-tree, in Manx _tramman_, is supposed

to be inhabited by fairies. Through accident, one night a woman ran into

such a tree, and was immediately stricken with a terrible swelling which

her neighbours declared came from disturbing the fairies in the tree.

This was on the borders of Arbory parish.'

The Canon favours the hypothesis that in much of the folk-belief

concerning fairies and Fairyland there is present an instinct, as seen

among all peoples, for communion with the other world, and that this

instinct shows itself in another form in the Christian doctrine of the

Communion of Saints.

FAIRY TALES ON CHRISTMAS DAY

The next morning, Christmas morning, I called at the picturesque

roadside home of Mrs. Dinah Moore a Manxwoman living near Glen Meay; and

she contributed the best single collection of Manx folk-legends I

discovered on the island. The day was bright and frosty, and much snow

still remained in the shaded nooks and hollows, so that a seat before

the cheerful fire in Mrs. Moore's cottage was very comfortable; and with

most work suspended for the ancient day of festivities in honour of the

Sun, re-born after its death at the hands of the Powers of Darkness, all

conditions were favourable for hearing about fairies, and this may

explain why such important results were obtained.

_Fairy Deceit._--'I heard of a man and wife who had no children. One

night the man was out on horseback and heard a little baby crying beside

the road. He got off his horse to get the baby, and, taking it home,

went to give it to his wife, and it was only a block of wood. And then

the old fairies were outside yelling at the man: "_Eash un oie, s'cheap

t'ou mollit!_" (Age one night, how easily thou art deceived!).'

_A Midwife's Strange Experience._--'A strange man took a nurse to a

place where a baby boy was born. After the birth, the man set out on a

table two cakes, one of them broken and the other one whole, and said to

the nurse: "Eat, eat; but don't eat of the cake which is broken nor of

the cake which is whole." And the nurse said: "What in the name of the

Lord am I going to eat?" At that all the fairies in the house

disappeared; and the nurse was left out on a mountain-side alone.'

_A Fairy-Baking._--'At night the fairies came into a house in Glen

Rushen to bake. The family had put no water out for them; and a

beggar-man who had been left lodging on the sofa downstairs heard the

fairies say, "We have no water, so we'll take blood out of the toe of

the servant who forgot our water." And from the girl's blood they mixed

their dough. Then they baked their cakes, ate most of them, and poked

pieces up under the thatched roof. The next day the servant-girl fell

ill, and was ill until the old beggar-man returned to the house and

cured her with a bit of the cake which he took from under the thatch.'

_A Changeling Musician._--'A family at Dalby had a poor idiot baby, and

when it was twenty years old it still sat by the fire just like a child.

A tailor came to the house to work on a day when all the folks were out

cutting corn, and the idiot was left with him. The tailor began to

whistle as he sat on the table sewing, and the little idiot sitting by

the fire said to him: "If you'll not tell anybody when they come in,

I'll dance that tune for you." So the little fellow began to dance, and

he could step it out splendidly. Then he said to the tailor: "If you'll

not tell anybody when they come in, I'll play the fiddle for you." And

the tailor and the idiot spent a very enjoyable afternoon together. But

before the family came in from the fields, the poor idiot, as usual, was

sitting in a chair by the fire, a big baby who couldn't hardly talk.

When the mother came in she happened to say to the tailor, "You've a

fine chap here," referring to the idiot. "Yes, indeed," said the tailor,

"we've had a very fine afternoon together; but I think we had better

make a good fire and put him on it." "Oh!" cried the mother, "the poor

child could never even walk." "Ah, but he can dance and play the fiddle,

too," replied the tailor. And the fire was made; but when the idiot saw

that they were for putting him on it he pulled from his pocket a ball,

and this ball went rolling on ahead of him, and he, going after it, was

never seen again.' After this strange story was finished I asked Mrs.

Moore where she had heard it, and she said:--'I have heard this story

ever since I was a girl. I knew the house and family, and so did my

mother. The family's name was Cubbon.'

_The Fenodyree's (or 'Phynnodderee's') Disgust._--'During snowy weather,

like this, the Fenodyree would gather in the sheep at night; and during

the harvest season would do the threshing when all the family were abed.

One time, however, just over here at Gordon Farm, the farmer saw him,

and he was naked; and so the farmer put out a new suit of clothes for

him. The Fenodyree came at night, and looking at the clothes with great

disgust at the idea of wearing such things, said:--

_Bayrn_ da'n chione, doogh da'n chione,

Cooat da'n dreeym, doogh da'n dreeym,

Breechyn da'n toin, doogh da'n toin,

Agh my she lhiat Gordon mooar,

Cha nee lhiat Glion reagh Rushen.

(Cap for the head, alas! poor head,

Coat for the back, alas! poor back,

Breeches for the breech, alas! poor breech,

But if big Gordon [farm] is thine,

Thine is not the merry Glen of Rushen.)[44]

And off he went to Glen Rushen for good.'

TESTIMONY FROM THE KEEPER OF PEEL CASTLE

From Mrs. Moore's house I walked on to Peel, where I was fortunate in

meeting, in his own home, Mr. William Cashen, the well-known keeper of

the famous old Peel Castle, within whose yet solid battlements stands

the one true round tower outside of Ireland. I heard first of all about

the fairy dog--the _Moddey Doo_ (Manx for Black Dog)--which haunts the

castle; and then Mr. Cashen related to me the following anecdotes and

tales about Manx fairies:--

_Prayer against the Fairies._--'My father's and grandfather's idea was

that the fairies tumbled out of the battlements of Heaven, falling

earthward for three days and three nights as thick as hail; and that one

third of them fell into the sea, one third on the land, and one third

remained in the air, in which places they will remain till the Day of

Judgement. The old Manx people always believed that this fall of the

fairies was due to the first sin, pride; and here is their prayer

against the fairies:--"_Jee saue mee voish cloan ny moyrn_" (God

preserve me from the children of pride [or ambition]).'

_A Man's Two Wives._--'A Ballaleece woman was captured by the fairies;

and, soon afterwards, her husband took a new wife, thinking the first

one gone for ever. But not long after the marriage, one night the first

wife appeared to her former husband and said to him, and the second wife

overheard her: "You'll sweep the barn clean, and mind there is not one

straw left on the floor. Then stand by the door, and at a certain hour a

company of people on horseback will ride in, and you lay hold of that

bridle of the horse I am on, and don't let it go." He followed the

directions carefully, but was unable to hold the horse: the second wife

had put some straw on the barn floor under a bushel.'

_Sounds of Infinity._--'On Dalby Mountain, this side of

Cronk-yn-Irree-Laa the old Manx people used to put their ears to the

earth to hear the Sounds of Infinity (_Sheean-ny-Feaynid_), which were

sounds like murmurs. They thought these sounds came from beings in

space; for in their belief all space is filled with invisible

beings.'[45]

TO THE MEMORY OF A MANX SCHOLAR

Since the following testimony was written down, its author, the late Mr.

John Nelson, of Ramsey, has passed out of our realm of life into the

realm invisible. He was one of the few Manxmen who knew the Manx

language really well, and the ancient traditions which it has preserved

both orally and in books. In his kindly manner and with fervent loyalty

toward all things Celtic, he gave me leave, during December 1909, to

publish for the first time the interesting matter which follows; and,

with reverence, we here place it on record to his memory:--

_A Blinding by Fairies._--'My grandfather, William Nelson, was coming

home from the herring fishing late at night, on the road near Jurby,

when he saw in a pea-field, across a hedge, a great crowd of _little

fellows_ in red coats dancing and making music. And as he looked, an old

woman from among them came up to him and spat in his eyes, saying:

"You'll never see us again"; and I am told that he was blind afterwards

till the day of his death. He was certainly blind for fourteen years

before his death, for I often had to lead him around; but, of course, I

am unable to say of my own knowledge that he became blind immediately

after his strange experience, or if not until later in life; but as a

young man he certainly had good sight, and it was believed that the

fairies destroyed it.'

_The Fairy Tune._--'William Cain, of Glen Helen (formerly Rhenass), was

going home in the evening across the mountains near Brook's Park, when

he heard music down below in a glen, and saw there a great glass house

like a palace, all lit up. He stopped to listen, and when he had the new

tune he went home to practise it on his fiddle; and recently he played

the same fairy tune at Miss Sophia Morrison's Manx entertainment in

Peel.'

_Manannan the Magician._--Mr. Nelson told a story about a _Buggane_ or

_Fenodyree_, such as we already have, and explained the _Glashtin_ as a

water-bull, supposed to be a goblin half cow and half horse, and then

offered this tradition about Manannan:--'It is said that Manannan was a

great magician, and that he used to place on the sea pea-shells, held

open with sticks and with sticks for masts standing up in them, and then

so magnify them that enemies beheld them as a strong fleet, and would

not approach the island. Another tradition is that Manannan on his three

legs (the Manx coat of arms) could travel from one end to the other of

his isle with wonderful swiftness, moving like a wheel.'[46]

TESTIMONY OF A FARMER AND FISHERMAN

From the north of the island I returned to Peel, where I had arranged to

meet new witnesses, and the first one of these is James Caugherty, a

farmer and fisherman, born in Kirk Patrick fifty-eight years ago, who

testified (in part) as follows:--

_Churn Worked by Fairies._--'Close by Glen Cam (Winding Glen), when I

was a boy, our family often used to hear the empty churn working in the

churn-house, when no person was near it, and they would say, "Oh, it's

the _little fellows_."'

_A Remarkable Changeling Story._--'Forty to fifty years ago, between St.

John's and Foxdale, a boy, with whom I often played, came to our house

at nightfall to borrow some candles, and while he was on his way home

across the hills he suddenly saw a little boy and a little woman coming

after him. If he ran, they ran, and all the time they gained on him.

Upon reaching home he was speechless, his hands were altered (turned

awry), and his feet also, and his fingernails had grown long in a

minute. He remained that way a week. My father went to the boy's mother

and told her it wasn't Robby at all that she saw; and when my father was

for taking the tongs and burning the boy with a piece of glowing turf

[as a changeling test], the boy screamed awfully. Then my father

persuaded the mother to send a messenger to a doctor in the north near

Ramsey "doing charms", to see if she couldn't get Robby back. As the

messenger was returning, the mother stepped out of the house to relieve

him, and when she went into the house again her own Robby was there. As

soon as Robby came to himself all right, he said a little woman and a

little boy had followed him, and that just as he got home he was

conscious of being taken away by them, but he didn't know where they

came from nor where they took him. He was unable to tell more than this.

Robby is alive yet, so far as I know; he is Robert Christian, of

Douglas.'

EVIDENCE FROM A MEMBER OF THE HOUSE OF KEYS

Mr. T. C. Kermode, of Peel, member of the House of Keys, the Lower House

of the Manx Parliament, very kindly dictated for my use the following

statement concerning fairies which he himself has seen:--

_Reality of Fairies._--'There is much belief here in the island that

there actually are fairies; and I consider such belief based on an

actual fact in nature, because of my own strange experience. About forty

years ago, one October night, I and another young man were going to a

kind of Manx harvest-home at Cronk-a-Voddy. On the Glen Helen road, just

at the Beary Farm, as we walked along talking, my friend happened to

look across the river (a small brook), and said: "Oh look, there are the

fairies. Did you ever see them?" I looked across the river and saw a

circle of supernatural light, which I have now come to regard as the

"astral light" or the light of Nature, as it is called by mystics, and

in which spirits become visible. The spot where the light appeared was a

flat space surrounded on the sides away from the river by banks formed

by low hills; and into this space and the circle of light, from the

surrounding sides apparently, I saw come in twos and threes a great

crowd of little beings smaller than Tom Thumb and his wife. All of them,

who appeared like soldiers, were dressed in red. They moved back and

forth amid the circle of light, as they formed into order like troops

drilling. I advised getting nearer to them, but my friend said, "No, I'm

going to the party." Then after we had looked at them a few minutes my

friend struck the roadside wall with a stick and shouted, and we lost

the vision and the light vanished.'

_The Manx Fairy-Faith._--'I have much evidence from old Manx people, who

are entirely reliable and God-fearing, that they have seen the fairies

hunting with hounds and horses, and on the sea in ships, and under other

conditions, and that they have heard their music. They consider the

fairies a complete nation or world in themselves, distinct from our

world, but having habits and instincts like ours. Social organization

among them is said to be similar to that among men, and they have their

soldiers and commanders. Where the fairies actually exist the old people

cannot tell, but they certainly believe that they can be seen here on

earth.'

TESTIMONY FROM A PAST PROVINCIAL GRAND MASTER

Mr. J. H. Kelly, Past Provincial Grand Master of the Isle of Man

District of Oddfellows, a resident of Douglas, offers the following

account of a curious psychical experience of his own, and attributes it

to fairies:--

_A Strange Experience with Fairies._--'Twelve to thirteen years ago, on

a clear moonlight night, about twelve o'clock, I left Laxey; and when

about five miles from Douglas, at Ballagawne School, I heard talking,

and was suddenly conscious of being in the midst of an invisible throng.

As this strange feeling came over me, I saw coming up the road four

figures as real to look upon as human beings, and of medium size, though

I am certain they were not human. When these four, who seemed to be

connected with the invisible throng, came out of the Garwick road into

the main road, I passed into a by-road leading down to a very peaceful

glen called Garwick Glen; and I still had the same feeling that

invisible beings were with me, and this continued for a mile. There was

no fear or emotion or excitement, but perfect calm on my part. I

followed the by-road; and when I began to mount a hill there was a

sudden and strange quietness, and a sense of isolation came over me, as

though the joy and peace of my life had departed with the invisible

throng. From different personal experiences like this one, I am firmly

of the opinion and belief that the fairies exist. One cannot say that

they are wholly physical or wholly spiritual, but the impression left

upon my mind is that they are an absolutely real order of beings not

human.'

Invoking Little Manannan, son of Leirr, to give us safe passage

across his watery domain, we now go southward to the nearest

Brythonic country, the Land of Arthur, WALES.

V. IN WALES

Introduction by The Right Hon. SIR JOHN RHYS, M.A., D.Litt.,

F.B.A., Hon. LL.D. of the University of Edinburgh; Professor of

Celtic in the University of Oxford; Principal of Jesus College;

author of _Celtic Folklore, Welsh and Manx_, &c.

The folk-lore of Wales in as far as it concerns the Fairies consists of

a very few typical tales, such as:--

(1) The Fairy Dance and the usual entrapping of a youth, who dances with

the Little People for a long time, while he supposes it only a few

minutes, and who if not rescued is taken by them.

(2) There are other ways in which recruits may be led into Fairyland and

induced to marry fairy maidens, and any one so led away is practically

lost to his kith and kin, for even if he be allowed to visit them, the

visit is mostly cut short in one way or another.

(3) A man catches a fairy woman and marries her. She proves to be an

excellent housewife, but usually she has had put into the

marriage-contract certain conditions which, if broken, inevitably

release her from the union, and when so released she hurries away

instantly, never to return, unless it be now and then to visit her

children. One of the conditions, especially in North Wales, is that the

husband should never touch her with iron. But in the story of the Lady

of Llyn y Fan Fach, in Carmarthenshire, the condition is that he must

not strike the wife without a cause three times, the striking being

interpreted to include any slight tapping, say, on the shoulder. This

story is one of the most remarkable on record in Wales, and it recalls

the famous tale of Undine, published in German many years ago by De La

Motte Fouqué. It is not known where he found it, or whether the people

among whom it was current were pure Germans or of Celtic extraction.

(4) The Fairies were fond of stealing nice healthy babies and of leaving

in their place their own sallow offspring. The stories of how the right

child might be recovered take numerous forms; and some of these stories

suggest how weak and sickly children became the objects of systematic

cruelty at the hands of even their own parents. The changeling was

usually an old man, and many were the efforts made to get him to betray

his identity.

(5) There is a widespread story of the fairy husband procuring for his

wife the attendance of a human midwife. The latter was given a certain

ointment to apply to the baby's eyes when she dressed it. She was not to

touch either of her own eyes with it, but owing to an unfailing accident

she does, and with the eye so touched she is enabled to see the fairies

in their proper shape and form. This has consequences: The fairy husband

pays the midwife well, and discharges her. She goes to a fair or market

one day and observes her old master stealing goods from a stall, and

makes herself known to him. He asks her with which eye she sees him. She

tells him, and the eye to which he objects he instantly blinds.

(6) Many are the stories about the fairies coming into houses at night

to wash and dress their children after everybody is gone to bed. A

servant-maid who knows her business leaves a vessel full of water for

them, and takes care that the house is neat and tidy, and she then

probably finds in the morning some fairy gift left her, whereas if the

house be untidy and the water dirty, they will pinch her in her sleep,

and leave her black and blue.

(7) The fairies were not strong in their household arrangements, so it

was not at all unusual for them to come to the farm-houses to borrow

what was wanting to them.

In the neighbourhood of Snowdon the fairies were believed to live

beneath the lakes, from which they sometimes came forth, especially on

misty days, and children used to be warned not to stray away from their

homes in that sort of weather, lest they should be kidnapped by them.

These fairies were not Christians, and they were great thieves. They

were fond of bright colours. They were sharp of hearing, and no word

that reached the wind would escape them. If a fairy's proper name was

discovered, the fairy to whom it belonged felt baffled.[47]

Some characteristics of the fairies seem to argue an ancient race, while

other characteristics betray their origin in the workshop of the

imagination; but generally speaking, the fairies are heterogeneous,

consisting partly of the divinities of glens and forests and mountains,

and partly of an early race of men more or less caricatured and equipped

by fable with impossible attributes.[48]

JESUS COLLEGE, OXFORD,

_October_ 1910.

Our field of research in the Land of Arthur includes all the coast

counties save Cardiganshire, from Anglesey on the north to

Glamorganshire on the south. At the very beginning of our investigation

of the belief in the _Tylwyth Teg_, or 'Fair Folk' in the Isle of

Anglesey or Mona, the ancient stronghold of the Druids, we shall see

clearly that the testimony offered by thoroughly reliable and prominent

native witnesses is surprisingly uniform, and essentially animistic in

its nature; and in passing southward to the end of Wales we shall find

the Welsh Fairy-Faith with this same uniformity and exhibiting the same

animistic background everywhere we go.

TESTIMONY OF AN ANGLESEY BARD

Mr. John Louis Jones, of Gaerwen, Anglesey, a native bard who has taken

prizes in various Eisteddfods, testifies as follows:--

_Tylwyth Teg's Visits._--'When I was a boy here on the island, the

_Tylwyth Teg_ were described as a race of little beings no larger than

children six or seven years old, who visited farm-houses at night after

all the family were abed. No matter how securely closed a house might

be, the _Tylwyth Teg_ had no trouble to get in. I remember how the old

folk used to make the house comfortable and put fresh coals on the fire,

saying, "Perhaps the _Tylwyth Teg_ will come to-night." Then the

_Tylwyth Teg_, when they did come, would look round the room and say,

"What a clean beautiful place this is!" And all the while the old folk

in bed were listening. Before departing from such a clean house the

_Tylwyth Teg_ always left a valuable present for the family.'

_Fairy Wife and Iron Taboo._--'A young man once caught one of the

_Tylwyth Teg_ women, and she agreed to live with him on condition that

he should never touch her with iron. One day she went to a field with

him to catch a horse, but in catching the horse he threw the bridle in

such a way that the bit touched the _Tylwyth Teg_ woman, and all at once

she was gone. As this story indicates, the _Tylwyth Teg_ could make

themselves invisible. I think they could be seen by some people and not

by other people. The old folk thought them a kind of spirit race from a

spirit world.'

EVIDENCE FROM CENTRAL ANGLESEY

Owing to the very kindly assistance of Mr. E. H. Thomas, of Llangefni,

who introduced me to the oldest inhabitants of his town, in their own

homes and elsewhere, and then acted as interpreter whenever Welsh alone

was spoken, I gleaned very clear evidence from that part of Central

Anglesey. Seven witnesses, two of whom were women, ranging in age from

seventy-two to eighty-nine years, were thus interviewed, and each of

them stated that in their childhood the belief in the _Tylwyth Teg_ as a

non-human race of good little people--by one witness compared to singing

angels--was general. Mr. John Jones, the oldest of the seven, among much

else, said in Welsh:--'I believe personally that the _Tylwyth Teg_ are

still existing; but people can't see them. I have heard of two or three

persons being together and one only having been able to see the _Tylwyth

Teg_.'

TESTIMONY FROM TWO ANGLESEY CENTENARIANS

Perhaps nowhere else in Celtic lands could there be found as witnesses

two sisters equal in age to Miss Mary Owen and Mrs. Betsy Thomas, in

their hundred and third and hundredth year respectively (in 1909). They

live a quiet life on their mountain-side farm overlooking the sea, in

the beautiful country near Pentraeth, quite away from the rush and noise

of the great world of commercial activity; and they speak only the

tongue which their prehistoric Kimric ancestors spoke before Roman, or

Saxon, or Norman came to Britain. Mr. W. Jones, of Plas Tinon, their

neighbour, who knows English and Welsh well, acted as interpreter. The

elder sister testified first:--

_'Tylwyth Teg's' Nature._--'There were many of the _Tylwyth Teg_ on the

Llwydiarth Mountain above here, and round the Llwydiarth Lake where they

used to dance; and whenever the prices at the Llangefni market were to

be high they would chatter very much at night. They appeared only after

dark; and all the good they ever did was singing and dancing. Ann

Jones, whom I knew very well, used often to see the _Tylwyth Teg_

dancing and singing, but if she then went up to them they would

disappear. She told me they are an invisible people, and very small.

Many others besides Ann Jones have seen the _Tylwyth Teg_ in these

mountains, and have heard their music and song. The ordinary opinion was

that the _Tylwyth Teg_ are a race of spirits. I believe in them as an

invisible race of good little people.'

_Fairy Midwife and Magic Oil._--'The _Tylwyth Teg_ had a kind of magic

oil, and I remember this story about it:--A farmer went to Llangefni to

fetch a woman to nurse his wife about to become a mother, and he found

one of the _Tylwyth Teg_, who came with him on the back of his horse.

Arrived at the farm-house, the fairy woman looked at the wife, and

giving the farmer some oil told him to wash the baby in it as soon as it

was born. Then the fairy woman disappeared. The farmer followed the

advice, and what did he do in washing the baby but get some oil on one

of his own eyes. Suddenly he could see the _Tylwyth Teg_, for the oil

had given him the second-sight. Some time later the farmer was in

Llangefni again, and saw the same fairy woman who had given him the oil.

"How is your wife getting on?" she asked him. "She is getting on very

well," he replied. Then the fairy woman added, "Tell me with which eye

you see me best." "With this one," he said, pointing to the eye he had

rubbed with the oil. And the fairy woman put her stick in that eye, and

the farmer never saw with it again.'[49]

_Seeing 'Tylwyth Teg'._--The younger sister's testimony is as

follows:--'I saw one of the _Tylwyth Teg_ about sixty years ago, near

the Tynymyndd Farm, as I was passing by at night. He was like a little

man. When I approached him he disappeared suddenly. I have heard about

the dancing and singing of the _Tylwyth Teg_, but never have heard the

music myself. The old people said the _Tylwyth Teg_ could appear and

disappear when they liked; and I think as the old people did, that they

are some sort of spirits.'

TESTIMONY FROM AN ANGLESEY SEERESS

At Pentraeth, Mr. Gwilyn Jones said to me:--'It always was and still is

the opinion that the _Tylwyth Teg_ are a race of spirits. Some people

think them small in size, but the one my mother saw was ordinary human

size.' At this, I immediately asked Mr. Jones if his mother was still

living, and he replying that she was, gave me her address in Llanfair.

So I went directly to interview Mr. Jones's mother, Mrs. Catherine

Jones, and this is the story about the one of the _Tylwyth Teg_ she

saw:--

_'Tylwyth Teg' Apparition._--'I was coming home at about half-past ten

at night from Cemaes, on the path to Simdda Wen, where I was in service,

when there appeared just before me a very pretty young lady of ordinary

size. I had no fear, and when I came up to her put out my hand to touch

her, but my hand and arm went right through her form. I could not

understand this, and so tried to touch her repeatedly with the same

result; there was no solid substance in the body, yet it remained beside

me, and was as beautiful a young lady as I ever saw. When I reached the

door of the house where I was to stop, she was still with me. Then I

said "Good night" to her. No response being made, I asked, "Why do you

not speak?" And at this she disappeared. Nothing happened afterwards,

and I always put this beautiful young lady down as one of the _Tylwyth

Teg_. There was much talk about my experience when I reported it, and

the neighbours, like myself, thought I had seen one of the _Tylwyth

Teg_. I was about twenty-four years old at the time of this

incident.'[50]

TESTIMONY FROM A PROFESSOR OF WELSH

Just before crossing the Menai Straits I had the good fortune to meet,

at his home in Llanfair, Mr. J. Morris Jones, M.A. (Oxon.), Professor of

Welsh in the University College at Bangor, and he, speaking of the

fairy-belief in Anglesey as he remembers it from boyhood days, said:--

_'Tylwyth Teg.'_--'In most of the tales I heard repeated when I was a

boy, I am quite certain the implication was that the _Tylwyth Teg_ were

a kind of spirit race having human characteristics, who could at will

suddenly appear and suddenly disappear. They were generally supposed to

live underground, and to come forth on moonlight nights, dressed in

gaudy colours (chiefly in red), to dance in circles in grassy fields. I

cannot remember having heard changeling stories here in the Island: I

think the _Tylwyth Teg_ were generally looked upon as kind and

good-natured, though revengeful if not well treated. And they were

believed to have plenty of money at their command, which they could

bestow on people whom they liked.'

EVIDENCE FROM NORTH CARNARVONSHIRE

Upon leaving Anglesey I undertook some investigation of the Welsh

fairy-belief in the country between Bangor and Carnarvon. From the

oldest Welsh people of Treborth I heard the same sort of folk-lore as

we have recorded from Anglesey, except that prominence was given to a

flourishing belief in _Bwganod_, goblins or bogies. But from Mr. T. T.

Davis Evans, of Port Dinorwic, I heard the following very unusual story

based on facts, as he recalled it first hand:--

_Jones's Vision._--'William Jones, who some sixty years ago declared he

had seen the _Tylwyth Teg_ in the Aberglaslyn Pass near Beddgelert, was

publicly questioned about them in Bethel Chapel by Mr. Griffiths, the

minister; and he explained before the congregation that the Lord had

given him a special vision which enabled him to see the _Tylwyth Teg_,

and that, therefore, he had seen them time after time as little men

playing along the river in the Pass. The minister induced Jones to

repeat the story many times, because it seemed to please the

congregation very much; and the folks present looked upon Jones's vision

as a most wonderful thing.'

EVIDENCE FROM SOUTH CARNARVONSHIRE

To Mr. E. D. Rowlands, head master of the schools at Afonwen, I am

indebted for a summary of the fairy-belief in South Carnarvonshire:--

_'Tylwyth Teg.'_--'According to the belief in South Carnarvonshire, the

_Tylwyth Teg_ were a small, very pretty people always dressed in white,

and much given to dancing and singing in rings where grass grew. As a

rule, they were visible only at night; though in the day-time, if a

mother while hay-making was so unwise as to leave her babe alone in the

field, the _Tylwyth Teg_ might take it and leave in its place a

hunchback, or some deformed object like a child. At night, the _Tylwyth

Teg_ would entice travellers to join their dance and then play all sorts

of tricks on them.'[51]

_Fairy Cows and Fairy Lake-Women._--'Some of the _Tylwyth Teg_ lived in

caves; others of them lived in lake-bottoms. There is a lake called Llyn

y Morwynion, or "Lake of the Maidens", near Festiniog, where, as the

story goes, a farmer one morning found in his field a number of very

fine cows such as he had never seen before. Not knowing where they came

from, he kept them a long time, when, as it happened, he committed some

dishonest act and, as a result, women of the _Tylwyth Teg_ made their

appearance in the pasture and, calling the cows by name, led the whole

herd into the lake, and with them disappeared beneath its waters. The

old people never could explain the nature of the _Tylwyth Teg_, but they

always regarded them as a very mysterious race, and, according to this

story of the cattle, as a supernatural race.'

EVIDENCE FROM MERIONETHSHIRE

Mr. Louis Foster Edwards, of Harlech, recalling the memories of many

years ago, offers the following evidence:--

_Scythe-Blades and Fairies._--'In an old inn on the other side of

Harlech there was to be an entertainment, and, as usual on such

occasions, the dancing would not cease until morning. I noticed, before

the guests had all arrived, that the landlady was putting scythe-blades

edge upwards up into the large chimney, and, wondering why it was, asked

her. She told me that the fairies might come before the entertainment

was over, and that if the blades were turned edge upwards it would

prevent the fairies from troubling the party, for they would be unable

to pass the blades without being cut.'

_'Tylwyth Teg' and their World._--'There was an idea that the _Tylwyth

Teg_ lived by plundering at night. It was thought, too, that if anything

went wrong with cows or horses the _Tylwyth Teg_ were to blame. As a

race, the _Tylwyth Teg_ were described as having the power of

invisibility; and it was believed they could disappear like a spirit

while one happened to be observing them. The world in which they lived

was a world quite unlike ours, and mortals taken to it by them were

changed in nature. The way a mortal might be taken by the _Tylwyth Teg_

was by being attracted into their dance. If they thus took you away, it

would be according to our time for twelve months, though to you the time

would seem no more than a night.'

FAIRY TRIBES IN MONTGOMERYSHIRE

From Mr. D. Davies-Williams, who outlined for me the Montgomeryshire

belief in the _Tylwyth Teg_ as he has known it intimately, I learned

that this is essentially the same as elsewhere in North and Central

Wales. He summed up the matter by saying:--

_Belief in Tylwyth Teg._--'It was the opinion that the _Tylwyth Teg_

were a real race of invisible or spiritual beings living in an invisible

world of their own. The belief in the _Tylwyth Teg_ was quite general

fifty or sixty years ago, and as sincere as any religious belief is

now.'

Our next witness is the Rev. Josiah Jones, minister of the

Congregational Church of Machynlleth; and, after a lifetime's experience

in Montgomeryshire, he gives this testimony:--

_A Deacon's Vision._--'A deacon in my church, John Evans, declared that

he had seen the _Tylwyth Teg_ dancing in the day-time, within two miles

from here, and he pointed out the very spot where they appeared. This

was some twenty years ago. I think, however, that he saw only certain

reflections and shadows, because it was a hot and brilliant day.'

_Folk-Beliefs in General._--'As I recall the belief, the old people

considered the _Tylwyth Teg_ as living beings halfway between something

material and spiritual, who were rarely seen. When I was a boy there was

very much said, too, about corpse-candles and phantom funerals, and

especially about the _Bwganod_, plural of _Bwgan_, meaning a sprite,

ghost, hobgoblin, or spectre. The _Bwganod_ were supposed to appear at

dusk, in various forms, animal and human; and grown-up people as well as

children had great fear of them.'

_A Minister's Opinion._--'Ultimately there is a substance of truth in

the fairy-belief, but it is wrongly accounted for in the folk-lore: I

once asked Samuel Roberts, of Llanbrynmair, who was quite a noted Welsh

scholar, what he thought of the _Tylwyth Teg_, of hobgoblins, spirits,

and so forth; and he said that he believed such things existed, and that

God allowed them to appear in times of great ignorance to convince

people of the existence of an invisible world.'

IN CARDIGANSHIRE; AND A FOLK-LORIST'S TESTIMONY

No one of our witnesses from Central Wales is more intimately acquainted

with the living folk-beliefs than Mr. J. Ceredig Davies, of Llanilar, a

village about six miles from Aberystwyth; for Mr. Davies has spent many

years in collecting folk-lore in Central and South Wales. He has

interviewed the oldest and most intelligent of the old people, and while

I write this he has in the press a work entitled _The Folk-Lore of Mid

and West Wales_. Mr. Davies very kindly gave me the following outline of

the most prominent traits in the Welsh fairy-belief according to his own

investigations:--

_'Tylwyth Teg_.'--'The _Tylwyth Teg_ were considered a very small

people, fond of dancing, especially on moonlight nights. They often came

to houses after the family were abed; and if milk was left for them,

they would leave money in return; but if not treated kindly they were

revengeful. The changeling idea was common: the mother coming home would

find an ugly changeling in the cradle. Sometimes the mother would

consult the _Dynion Hysbys_, or "Wise Men" as to how to get her babe

back. As a rule, treating the fairy babe roughly and then throwing it

into a river would cause the fairy who made the change to appear and

restore the real child in return for the changeling.'

_'Tylwyth Teg' Marriage Contracts._--'Occasionally a young man would see

the _Tylwyth Teg_ dancing, and, being drawn into the dance, would be

taken by them and married to one of their women. There is usually some

condition in the marriage contract which becomes broken, and, as a

result, the fairy wife disappears--usually into a lake. The marriage

contract specifies either that the husband must never touch his fairy

wife with iron, or else never beat or strike her three times. Sometimes

when fairy wives thus disappear, they take with them into the lake their

fairy cattle and all their household property.'

_'Tylwyth Teg' Habitations._--'The _Tylwyth Teg_ were generally looked

upon as an immortal race. In Cardiganshire they lived underground; in

Carmarthenshire in lakes; and in Pembrokeshire along the sea-coast on

enchanted islands amid the Irish Sea. I have heard of sailors upon

seeing such islands trying to reach them; but when approached, the

islands always disappeared. From a certain spot in Pembrokeshire, it is

said that by standing on a turf taken from the yard of St. David's

Cathedral, one may see the enchanted islands.'[52]

_'Tylwyth Teg' as Spirits of Druids._--'By many of the old people the

_Tylwyth Teg_ were classed with spirits. They were not looked upon as

mortal at all. Many of the Welsh looked upon the _Tylwyth Teg_ or

fairies as the spirits of Druids dead before the time of Christ, who

being too good to be cast into Hell were allowed to wander freely about

on earth.'

TESTIMONY FROM A WELSHMAN NINETY-FOUR YEARS OLD

At Pontrhydfendigaid, a village about two miles from the railway-station

called Strata Florida, I had the good fortune to meet Mr. John Jones,

ninety-four years old, yet of strong physique, and able to write his

name without eye-glasses. Both Mr. J. H. Davies, Registrar of the

University College of Aberystwyth, and Mr. J. Ceredig Davies, the

eminent folk-lorist of Llanilar, referred me to Mr. John Jones as one of

the most remarkable of living Welshmen who could tell about the olden

times from first-hand knowledge. Mr. John Jones speaks very little

English, and Mr. John Rees, of the Council School, acted as our

interpreter. This is the testimony:--

_Pygmy-sized 'Tylwyth Teg'._--'I was born and bred where there was

tradition that the _Tylwyth Teg_ lived in holes in the hills, and that

none of these _Tylwyth Teg_ was taller than three to four feet. It was a

common idea that many of the _Tylwyth Teg_, forming in a ring, would

dance and sing out on the mountain-sides, or on the plain, and that if

children should meet with them at such a time they would lose their way

and never get out of the ring. If the _Tylwyth Teg_ fancied any

particular child they would always keep that child, taking off its

clothes and putting them on one of their own children, which was then

left in its place. They took only boys, never girls.'

_Human-sized 'Tylwyth Teg'._--'A special sort of _Tylwyth Teg_ used to

come out of lakes and dance, and their fine looks enticed young men to

follow them back into the lakes, and there marry one of them. If the

husband wished to leave the lake he had to go without his fairy wife.

This sort of _Tylwyth Teg_ were as big as ordinary people; and they were

often seen riding out of the lakes and back again on horses.'

_'Tylwyth Teg' as Spirits of Prehistoric Race._--'My grandfather told me

that he was once in a certain field and heard singing in the air, and

thought it spirits singing. Soon afterwards he and his brother in

digging dikes in that field dug into a big hole, which they entered and

followed to the end. There they found a place full of human bones and

urns, and naturally decided on account of the singing that the bones and

urns were of the _Tylwyth Teg_.'[53]

_A Boy's Visit to the 'Tylwyth Teg's' King._--'About eighty years ago,

at Tynylone, my grandfather told me this story: "A boy ten years old was

often whipped and cruelly treated by his schoolmaster because he could

not say his lessons very well. So one day he ran away from school and

went to a river-side, where some little folk came to him and asked why

he was crying. He told them the master had punished him; and on hearing

this they said, 'Oh! if you will stay with us it will not be necessary

for you to go to school. We will keep you as long as you like.' Then

they took him under the water and over the water into a cave

underground, which opened into a great palace where the _Tylwyth Teg_

were playing games with golden balls, in rings like those in which they

dance and sing. The boy had been taken to the king's family, and he

began to play with the king's sons. After he had been there in the

palace in the full enjoyment of all its pleasures he wished very much to

return to his mother and show her the golden ball which the _Tylwyth

Teg_ gave him. And so he took the ball in his pocket and hurried through

the cave the way he had come; but at the end of it and by the river two

of the _Tylwyth Teg_ met him, and taking the ball away from him they

pushed him into the water, and through the water he found his way home.

He told his mother how he had been away for a fortnight, as he thought,

but she told him it had been for two years. Though the boy often tried

to find the way back to the _Tylwyth Teg_ he never could. Finally, he

went back to school, and became a most wonderful scholar and

parson."'[54]

IN MERLIN'S COUNTRY; AND A VICAR'S TESTIMONY

The Rev. T. M. Morgan, vicar of Newchurch parish, two miles from

Carmarthen, has made a very careful study of the folk-traditions in his

own parish and in other regions of Carmarthenshire, and is able to

offer us evidence of the highest value, as follows:--[55]

_'Tylwyth Teg' Power over Children._--'The _Tylwyth Teg_ were thought to

be able to take children. "You mind, or the _Tylwyth Teg_ will take you

away," parents would say to keep their children in the house after dark.

It was an opinion, too, that the _Tylwyth Teg_ could transform good

children into kings and queens, and bad children into wicked spirits,

after such children had been _taken_--perhaps in death. The _Tylwyth

Teg_ were believed to live in some invisible world to which children on

dying might go to be rewarded or punished, according to their behaviour

on this earth. Even in this life the _Tylwyth Teg_ had power over

children for good or evil. The belief, as these ideas show, was that the

_Tylwyth Teg_ were spirits.'

_'Tylwyth Teg' as Evil Spirits._--A few days after my return to Oxford,

the Rev. T. M. Morgan, through his son, Mr. Basil I. Morgan, of Jesus

College, placed in my hands additional folk-lore evidence from his own

parish, as follows:--'After Mr. Wentz visited me on Thursday, September

30, 1909, I went to see Mr. Shem Morgan, the occupier of Cwmcastellfach

farm, an old man about seventy years old. He told me that in his

childhood days a great dread of the fairies occupied the heart of every

child. They were considered to be evil spirits who visited our world at

night, and dangerous to come in contact with; there were no good spirits

among them. He related to me three narratives touching the fairies':--

_'Tylwyth Teg's' Path._--The first narrative illustrates that the

_Tylwyth Teg_ have paths (precisely like those reserved for the Irish

_good people_ or for the Breton dead), and that it is death to a mortal

while walking in one of these paths to meet the _Tylwyth Teg_.

_'Tylwyth Teg' Divination._--The second narrative I quote:--'A farmer of

this neighbourhood having lost his cattle, went to consult _y dyn

hysbys_ (a diviner), in Cardiganshire, who was friendly with the

fairies. Whenever the fairies visited the diviner they foretold future

events, secrets, and the whereabouts of lost property. After the farmer

reached the diviner's house the diviner showed him the fairies, and then

when the diviner had consulted them he told the farmer to go home as

soon as he could and that he would find the cattle in such and such a

place. The farmer did as he was directed, and found the cattle in the

very place where the _dyn hysbys_ told him they would be.' And the third

narrative asserts that a man in the parish of Trelech who was

fraudulently excluded by means of a false will from inheriting the

estate of his deceased father, discovered the defrauder and recovered

the estate, solely through having followed the advice given by the

_Tylwyth Teg_, when (again as in the above account) they were called up

as spirits by a _dyn hysbys_, a Mr. Harries, of Cwrt y Cadno, a place

near Aberystwyth.[56]

TESTIMONY FROM A JUSTICE OF THE PEACE

Mr. David Williams, J.P., who is a member of the Cymmrodorion Society of

Carmarthen, and who has sat on the judicial bench for ten years, offers

us the very valuable evidence which follows:--

_'Tylwyth Teg' and their King and Queen._--'The general idea, as I

remember it, was that the _Tylwyth Teg_ were only visitors to this

world, and had no terrestrial habitations. They were as small in stature

as dwarfs, and always appeared in white. Often at night they danced in

rings amid green fields. Most of them were females, though they had a

king; and, as their name suggests, they were very beautiful in

appearance. The king of the _Tylwyth Teg_ was called _Gwydion ab Don_,

_Gwyd_ referring to a temperament in man's nature. His residence was

among the stars, and called _Caer Gwydion_. His queen was _Gwenhidw_. I

have heard my mother call the small fleece-like clouds which appear in

fine weather the _Sheep of Gwenhidw_.'[57]

_'Tylwyth Teg' as Aerial Beings._--Mr. Williams's testimony continues,

and leads us directly to the Psychological or Psychical Theory:--'As

aerial beings the _Tylwyth Teg_ could fly and move about in the air at

will. They were a special order of creation. I never heard that they

grew old; and whether they multiplied or not I cannot tell. In character

they were almost always good.'

_Ghosts and Apparitions._--Our conversation finally drifted towards

ghosts and apparitions, as usual, and to Druids. In the chapter dealing

with Re-birth (pp. 390-1) we shall record what Mr. Williams said about

Druids, and here what he said about ghosts and apparitions:--'Sixty

years ago there was hardly an individual who did not believe in

apparitions; and in olden times Welsh families would collect round the

fire at night and each in turn give a story about the _Tylwyth Teg_ and

ghosts.'

_Conferring Vision of a Phantom Funeral._--'There used to be an old man

at Newchurch named David Davis (who lived about 1780-1840), of Abernant,

noted for seeing phantom funerals. One appeared to him once when he was

with a friend. "Do you see it? Do you see it?" the old man excitedly

asked. "No," said his friend. Then the old man placed his foot on his

friend's foot, and said, "Do you see it now?" And the friend replied

that he did.'[58]

_Magic and Witchcraft._--Finally, we shall hear from Mr. Williams about

Welsh magic and witchcraft, which cannot scientifically be divorced from

the belief in fairies and apparitions:--'There used to be much

witchcraft in this country; and it was fully believed that some men, if

advanced scholars, had the power to injure or to bewitch their

neighbours by magic. The more advanced the scholar the better he could

carry on his craft.'

ADDITIONAL EVIDENCE FROM CARMARTHENSHIRE

My friend, and fellow student at Jesus College, Mr. Percival V. Davies,

of Carmarthen, contributes, as supplementary to what has been recorded

above, the following evidence, from his great-aunt, Mrs. Spurrell, also

of Carmarthen, a native Welshwoman who has seen a _canwyll gorff_

(corpse-candle):--

_Bendith y Mamau._--'In the Carmarthenshire country, fairies (_Tylwyth

Teg_) are often called _Bendith y Mamau_, the "Mothers' Blessing."'

_How Ten Children Became Fairies._--'Our Lord, in the days when He

walked the earth, chanced one day to approach a cottage in which lived a

woman with twenty children. Feeling ashamed of the size of her family,

she hid half of them from the sight of her divine visitor. On His

departure she sought for the hidden children in vain; they had become

fairies and had disappeared.'

IN PEMBROKESHIRE; AT THE PENTRE EVAN CROMLECH

Our Pembrokeshire witness is a maiden Welshwoman, sixty years old, who

speaks no English, but a university graduate, her nephew, will act as

our interpreter. She was born and has lived all her life within sight

of the famous Pentre Evan Cromlech, in the home of her ancestors, which

is so ancient that after six centuries of its known existence further

record of it is lost. In spite of her sixty years, our witness is as

active as many a city woman of forty or forty-five. Since her girlhood

she has heard curious legends and stories, and, with a more than

ordinary interest in the lore of her native country, has treasured them

all in her clear and well-trained memory. The first night, while this

well-stored memory of hers gave forth some of its treasures, we sat in

her own home, I and my friend, her nephew, on one side in a

chimney-seat, and she and her niece on the other side in another,

exposed to the cheerful glow and warmth of the fire. When we had

finished that first night it was two o'clock, and there had been no

interruption to the even flow of marvels and pretty legends. A second

night we spent likewise. What follows now is the result, so far as we

are concerned with it:--

_Fairies and Spirits._--'Spirits and fairies exist all round us,

invisible. Fairies have no solid bodily substance. Their forms are of

matter like ghostly bodies, and on this account they cannot be caught.

In the twilight they are often seen, and on moonlight nights in summer.

Only certain people can see fairies, and such people hold communication

with them and have dealings with them, but it is difficult to get them

to talk about fairies. I think the spirits about us are the fallen

angels, for when old Doctor Harris died his books on witchcraft had to

be burned in order to free the place where he lived from evil spirits.

The fairies, too, are sometimes called the fallen angels. They will do

good to those who befriend them, and harm to others. I think there must

be an intermediate state between life on earth and heavenly life, and it

may be in this that spirits and fairies live. There are two distinct

types of spirits: one is good and the other is bad. I have heard of

people going to the fairies and finding that years passed as days, but I

do not believe in changelings, though there are stories enough about

them. That there are fairies and other spirits like them, both good and

bad, I firmly believe. My mother used to tell about seeing the

"fair-folk" dancing in the fields near Cardigan; and other people have

seen them round the cromlech up there on the hill (the Pentre Evan

Cromlech). They appeared as little children in clothes like soldiers'

clothes, and with red caps, according to some accounts.'

_Death-Candles Described._--'I have seen more than one death-candle. I

saw one death-candle right here in this room where we are sitting and

talking.' I was told by the nephew and niece of our present witness that

this particular death-candle took an untrodden course from the house

across the fields to the grave-yard, and that when the death of one of

the family occurred soon afterwards, their aunt insisted that the corpse

should be carried by exactly the same route; so the road was abandoned

and the funeral went through the ploughed fields. Here is the

description of the death-candle as the aunt gave it in response to our

request:--'The death-candle appears like a patch of bright light; and no

matter how dark the room or place is, everything in it is as clear as

day. The candle is not a flame, but a luminous mass, lightish blue in

colour, which dances as though borne by an invisible agency, and

sometimes it rolls over and over. If you go up to the light it is

nothing, for it is a spirit. Near here a light as big as a pot was seen,

and rays shot out from it in all directions. The man you saw here in the

house to-day, one night as he was going along the road near Nevern, saw

the death-light of old Dr. Harris, and says it was lightish green.'

_Gors Goch Fairies._--Now we began to hear more about fairies:--'One

night there came a strange rapping at the door of the ancient manor on

the Gors Goch farm over in Cardiganshire, and the father of the family

asked what was wanted. Thin, silvery voices said they wanted a warm

place in which to dress their children and to tidy them up. The door

opened then, and in came a dozen or more little beings, who at once set

themselves to hunting for a basin and water, and to cleaning themselves.

At daybreak they departed, leaving a pretty gift in return for the

kindness. In this same house at another time, whether by the same party

of little beings or by another could not be told, a healthy child of the

family was _changed_ because he was unbaptized, and a frightful-looking

child left in his place. The mother finally died of grief, and the other

children died because of the loss of their mother, and the father was

left alone. Then some time after this, the same little folks who came

the first time returned to clean up, and when they departed, in place of

their former gifts of silver, left a gift of gold. It was not long

before the father became heir to a rich farm in North Wales, and going

to live on it became a magician, for the little people, still

befriending him, revealed themselves in their true nature and taught him

all their secrets.'

_Levi Salmon's Control of Spirits._--'Levi Salmon, who lived about

thirty years ago, between here and Newport, was a magician, and could

call up good and bad spirits; but was afraid to call up the bad ones

unless another person was with him, for it was a dangerous and terrible

ordeal. After consulting certain books which he had, he would draw a

circle on the floor, and in a little while spirits like bulls and

serpents and other animals would appear in it, and all sorts of spirits

would speak. It was not safe to go near them; and to control them Levi

held a whip in his hand. He would never let them cross the circle. And

when he wanted them to go away he always had to throw something to the

chief spirit.'

_The Haunted Manor and the Golden Image._--I offer now, in my own

language, the following remarkable story:--The ancient manor-house on

the Trewern Farm (less than a mile from the Pentre Evan Cromlech) had

been haunted as long as anybody could remember. Strange noises were

often heard in it, dishes would dance about of their own accord, and

sometimes a lady dressed in silk appeared. Many attempts were made to

lay the ghosts, but none succeeded. Finally things got so bad that

nobody wanted to live there. About eighty years ago the sole occupants

of the haunted house were Mr. ---- and his two servants. At the time, it

was well known in the neighbourhood that all at once Mr. ---- became

very wealthy, and his servants seemed able to buy whatever they wanted.

Everybody wondered, but no one could tell where the money came from; for

at first he was a poor man, and he couldn't have made much off the farm.

The secret only leaked out through one of the servants after Mr. ----

was dead. The servant declared to certain friends that one of the

ghosts, or, as he thought, the Devil, appeared to Mr. ---- and told him

there was an image of great value walled up in the room over the main

entrance to the manor. A search was made, and, sure enough, a large

image of solid gold was found in the very place indicated, built into a

recess in the wall. Mr. ---- bound the servants to secrecy, and began to

turn the image into money. He would cut off small pieces of the image,

one at a time, and take them to London and sell them. In this way he

sold the whole image, and nobody was the wiser. After the image was

found and disposed of, ghosts were no longer seen in the house, nor were

unusual noises heard in it at night. The one thing which beyond all

doubt is true is that when Mr. ---- died he left his son an estate worth

about £50,000 (an amount probably greatly in excess of the true one);

and people have always wondered ever since where it came from, if not in

part from the golden image.[59]

Hundreds of parallel stories in which, instead of ghosts, fairies and

demons are said to have revealed hidden treasure could be cited.

IN THE GOWER PENINSULA, GLAMORGANSHIRE

Our investigations in Glamorganshire cover the most interesting part,

the peninsula of Gower, where there are peculiar folk-lore conditions,

due to its present population being by ancestry English and Flemish as

well as Cornish and Welsh. Despite this race admixture, Brythonic

beliefs have generally survived in Gower even among the non-Celts; and

because of the Cornish element there are pixies, as shown by the

following story related to me in Swansea by Mr. ----, a well-known

mining engineer:--

_Pixies._--'At Newton, near the Mumbles (in Gower), an old woman, some

twenty years ago, assured me that she had seen the pixies. Her father's

grey mare was standing in the trap before the house ready to take some

produce to the Swansea market, and when the time for departure arrived

the pixies had come, but no one save the old woman could see them. She

described them to me as like tiny men dancing on the mare's back and

climbing up along the mare's mane. She thought the pixies some kind of

spirits who made their appearance in early morning; and all mishaps to

cows she attributed to them.'

TESTIMONY FROM AN ARCHAEOLOGIST

The Rev. John David Davis, rector of Llanmadoc and Cheriton parishes,

and a member of the Cambrian Archaeological Society, has passed many

years in studying the antiquities and folk-lore of Gower, being the

author of various antiquarian works; and he is without doubt the oldest

and best living authority to aid us. The Rector very willingly offers

this testimony:--

_Pixies and 'Verry Volk'._--'In this part of Gower, the name _Tylwyth

Teg_ is never used to describe fairies; _Verry Volk_ is used instead.

Some sixty years ago, as I can remember, there was belief in such

fairies here in Gower, but now there is almost none. Belief in

apparitions still exists to some extent. One may also hear of a person

being pixy-led; the pixies may cause a traveller to lose his way at

night if he crosses a field where they happen to be. To take your coat

off and turn it inside out will break the pixy spell.[60] The _Verry

Volk_ were always little people dressed in scarlet and green; and they

generally showed themselves dancing on moonlight nights. I never heard

of their making changelings, though they had the power of doing good or

evil acts, and it was a very risky thing to offend them. By nature they

were benevolent.'

_A 'Verry Volk' Feast._--'I heard the following story many years

ago:--The tenant on the Eynonsford Farm here in Gower had a dream one

night, and in it thought he heard soft sweet music and the patter of

dancing feet. Waking up, he beheld his cow-shed, which opened off his

bedroom, filled with a multitude of little beings, about one foot high,

swarming all over his fat ox, and they were preparing to slaughter the

ox. He was so surprised that he could not move. In a short time the

_Verry Volk_ had killed, dressed, and eaten the animal. The feast being

over, they collected the hide and bones, except one very small leg-bone

which they could not find, placed them in position, then stretched the

hide over them; and, as the farmer looked, the ox appeared as sound and

fat as ever, but when he let it out to pasture in the morning he

observed that it had a slight lameness in the leg lacking the missing

bone.'[61]

FAIRIES AMONG GOWER ENGLISH FOLK

The population of the Llanmadoc region of Gower are generally English by

ancestry and speech; and not until reaching Llanmorlais, beyond

Llanridian, did I find anything like an original Celtic and

Welsh-speaking people, and these may have come into that part within

comparatively recent times; and yet, as the above place-names tend to

prove, in early days all these regions must have been Welsh. It may be

argued, however, that this English-speaking population may be more

Celtic than Saxon, even though emigrants from England. In any case, we

can see with interest how this so-called English population now echo

Brythonic beliefs which they appear to have adopted in Gower, possibly

sympathetically through race kinship; and the following testimony

offered by Miss Sarah Jenkins, postmistress of Llanmadoc, will enable us

to do so:--

_Dancing with Fairies._--'A man, whose Christian name was William, was

enticed by the fairy folk to enter their dance, as he was on his way to

the Swansea market in the early morning. They kept him dancing some

time, and then said to him before they let him go, "Will dance well; the

last going to market and the first that shall sell." And though he

arrived at the market very late, he was the first to sell anything.'

_Fairy Money._--'An old woman, whom I knew, used to find money left by

the fairies every time they visited her house. For a long time she

observed their request, and told no one about the money; but at last she

told, and so never found money afterwards.'

_Nature of Fairies._--'The fairies (_verry volk_) were believed to have

plenty of music and dancing. Sometimes they appeared dressed in bright

red. They could appear and disappear suddenly, and no one could tell how

or where.'

CONCLUSION

Much more might easily be said about Welsh goblins, about Welsh fairies

who live in caves, or about Welsh fairy women who come out of lakes and

rivers, or who are the presiding spirits of sacred wells and

fountains,[62] but these will have some consideration later, in Section

III. For the purposes of the present inquiry enough evidence has been

offered to show the fundamental character of Brythonic fairy-folk as we

have found them. And we can very appropriately close this inquiry by

allowing our Welsh-speaking witness from the Pentre Evan country,

Pembrokeshire, to tell us one of the prettiest and most interesting

fairy-tales in all Wales. The name of Taliessin appearing in it leads us

to suspect that it may be the remnant of an ancient bardic tale which

has been handed down orally for centuries. It will serve to illustrate

the marked difference between the short conversational stories of the

living Fairy-Faith and the longer, more polished ones of the traditional

Fairy-Faith; and we shall see in it how a literary effect is gained at

the expense of the real character of the fairies themselves, for it

transforms them into mortals:--

_Einion and Olwen._--'My mother told the story as she used to sit by the

fire in the twilight knitting stockings:--"One day when it was cloudy

and misty, a shepherd boy going to the mountains lost his way and walked

about for hours. At last he came to a hollow place surrounded by rushes

where he saw a number of round rings. He recognized the place as one he

had often heard of as dangerous for shepherds, because of the rings. He

tried to get away from there, but he could not. Then an old, merry,

blue-eyed man appeared. The boy, thinking to find his way home, followed

the old man, and the old man said to him, 'Do not speak a word till I

tell you.' In a little while they came to a _menhir_ (long stone). The

old man tapped it three times, and then lifted it up. A narrow path with

steps descending was revealed, and from it emerged a bluish-white light.

'Follow me,' said the old man, 'no harm will come to you.' The boy did

so, and it was not long before he saw a fine, wooded, fertile country

with a beautiful palace, and rivers and mountains. He reached the palace

and was enchanted by the singing of birds. Music of all sorts was in

the palace, but he saw no people. At meals dishes came and disappeared

of their own accord. He could hear voices all about him, but saw no

person except the old man--who said that now he could speak. When he

tried to speak he found that he could not move his tongue. Soon an old

lady with smiles came to him leading three beautiful maidens, and when

the maidens saw the shepherd boy they smiled and spoke, but he could not

reply. Then one of the girls kissed him; and all at once he began to

converse freely and most wittily. In the full enjoyment of the

marvellous country he lived with the maidens in the palace a day and a

year, not thinking it more than a day, for there was no reckoning of

time in that land. When the day and the year were up, a longing to see

his old acquaintances came on him; and thanking the old man for his

kindness, he asked if he could return home. The old man said to him,

'Wait a little while'; and so he waited. The maiden who had kissed him

was unwilling to have him go; but when he promised her to return, she

sent him off loaded with riches.

'"At home not one of his people or old friends knew him. Everybody

believed that he had been killed by another shepherd. And this shepherd

had been accused of the murder and had fled to America.

'"On the first day of the new moon the boy remembered his promise, and

returned to the other country; and there was great rejoicing in the

beautiful palace when he arrived. Einion, for that was the boy's name,

and Olwen, for that was the girl's name, now wanted to marry; but they

had to go about it quietly and half secretly, for the _fair-folk_

dislike ceremony and noise. When the marriage was over, Einion wished to

go back with Olwen to the upper world. So two snow-white ponies were

given them, and they were allowed to depart.

'"They reached the upper world safely; and, being possessed of unlimited

wealth, lived most handsomely on a great estate which came into their

possession. A son was born to them, and he was called Taliessin. People

soon began to ask for Olwen's pedigree, and as none was given it was

taken for granted that she was one of the _fair-folk_. 'Yes, indeed,'

said Einion, 'there is no doubt that she is one of the _fair-folk_,

there is no doubt that she is one of the very _fair-folk_, for she has

two sisters as pretty as she is, and if you saw them all together you

would admit that the name is a suitable one.' And this is the origin of

the term _fair-folk_ (_Tylwyth Teg_)."'

From Wales we go to the nearest Brythonic country, Cornwall, to study

the fairy-folk there.

VI. IN CORNWALL

Introduction by HENRY JENNER, Member of the Gorsedd of the Bards of

Brittany; Fellow and Local Secretary for Cornwall of the Society of

Antiquaries; author of _A Handbook of the Cornish Language_, &c.

In Cornwall the legends of giants, of saints, or of Arthur and his

knights, the observances and superstitions connected with the

prehistoric stone monuments, holy wells, mines, and the like, the

stories of submerged or buried cities, and the fragments of what would

seem to be pre-Christian faiths, have no doubt occasional points of

contact with Cornish fairy legends, but they do not help to explain the

fairies very much. Yet certain it is that not only in Cornwall and other

Celtic lands, but throughout most of the world, a belief in fairies

exists or has existed, and so widespread a belief must have a reason for

it, though not necessarily a good one. That which with unconscious

humour men generally call 'education' has in these days caused those

lower classes, to whom the deposit of this faith was entrusted, to be

ashamed of it, and to despise and endeavour to forget it. And so now in

Cornwall, as elsewhere at that earlier outbreak of Philistinism, the

Reformation,

From haunted spring and grassy ring

Troop goblin, elf and fairy,

And the kelpie must flit from the black bog-pit,

And the brownie must not tarry.

But, in spite of Protestantism, school-boards, and education committees,

'pisky-pows' are still placed on the ridge-tiles of West Cornish

cottages, to propitiate the piskies and give them a dancing-place, lest

they should turn the milk sour, and St. Just and Morvah folk are still

'pisky-led' on the Gump (_an Ûn Gumpas_, the Level Down, between Chûn

Castle and Carn Kenidjack), and more rarely St. Columb and Roche folk on

Goss Moor. It will not do to say that it is only another form of

'whisky-led'. That is an evidently modern explanation, invented since

the substitution of strange Scottish and Irish drinks for the good

'Nantes' and wholesome 'Plymouth' of old time, and it does not fit in

with the phenomena. It was only last winter, in a cottage not a hundred

yards from where I am writing, that milk was set at night for piskies,

who had been knocking on walls and generally making nuisances of

themselves. Apparently the piskies only drank the 'astral' part of the

milk (whatever that may be) and then the neighbouring cats drank what

was left, and it disagreed with them. I cannot vouch for the truth of

the part about the piskies and the 'astral' milk--I give it as it was

told to me by the occupant of the cottage, who was not unacquainted with

'occult' terminology--but I do know that the milk was consumed, and that

the cats, one of which was my own, were with one accord unwell all over

the place. But for the present purpose it does not matter whether these

things really happened or not. The point is that people thought they

happened.

Robert Hunt, in his _Popular Romances of the West of England_, divided

the fairies of Cornish folk-lore into five classes: (1) the Small

People; (2) the Spriggans; (3) the Piskies; (4) the Buccas, Bockles, or

Knockers; (5) the Brownies. This is an incorrect classification. The

_Pobel Vean_ or Small People, the Spriggans, and the Piskies are not

really distinguishable from one another. Bucca, who properly is but one,

is a deity not a fairy, and it is said that at Newlyn, the great seat of

his worship, offerings of fish are still left on the beach for him. His

name is the Welsh _pwca_, which is probably 'Puck', though Shakespeare's

Puck was just a pisky, and it may be connected with the general

Slavonic word _Bog_, God; so that if, as some say, _buccaboo_ is really

meant for _Bucca-du_, Black Bucca, this may be an equivalent of

_Czernobog_, the Black God, who was the Ahriman of Slavonic dualism, and

_Bucca-widn_ (White Bucca), which is rarer, though the expression does

come into a St. Levan story, may be the corresponding _Bielobog_.

_Bockle_, which personally I have never heard used, suggests the

Scottish _bogle_, and both may be diminutives of _bucca_, _bog_,

_bogie_, or _bug_, the last in the sense in which one English version

translates the _timor nocturnus_ of Psalm XC. 5, not in that of _cimex

lectularius_. But _bockle_ and _brownie_ are probably both foreign

importations borrowed from books, though a 'brownie' _eo nomine_ has

been reported from Sennen within the last twenty years.

The Knockers or Knackers are mine-spirits, quite unconnected with Bucca

or bogles. The story, as I have always heard it, is that they are the

spirits of Jews who were sent by the Romans to work in the tin mines,

some say for being concerned in the Crucifixion of our Lord, which

sounds improbable. They are benevolent spirits, and warn miners of

danger.

But the only true Cornish fairy is the Pisky, of the race which is the

_Pobel Vean_ or Little People, and the Spriggan is only one of his

aspects. The Pisky would seem to be the 'Brownie' of the Lowland Scot,

the _Duine Sith_ of the Highlander, and, if we may judge from an

interesting note in Scott's _The Pirate_, the 'Peght' of the Orkneys. If

_Daoine Sith_ really means 'The Folk of the Mounds' (barrows), not 'The

People of Peace', it is possible that there is something in the theory

that Brownie, _Duine Sith_, and 'Peght', which is Pict, are only in

their origin ways of expressing the little dark-complexioned aboriginal

folk who were supposed to inhabit the barrows, cromlechs, and _allées

couvertes_, and whose cunning, their only effective weapon against the

mere strength of the Aryan invader, earned them a reputation for magical

powers. Now _Pisky_ or _Pisgy_ is really _Pixy_. Though as a patriotic

Cornishman I ought not to admit it, I cannot deny, especially as it

suits my argument better, that the Devon form is the correct one. But

after all there has been always a strong Cornish element in Devon, even

since the time when Athelstan drove the Britons out of Exeter and set

the Tamar for their boundary, and I think the original word is really

Cornish. The transposition of consonants, especially when _s_ is one of

them, is not uncommon in modern Cornish English. _Hosged_ for

_hogshead_, and _haps_ for _hasp_ are well-known instances. If we take

the root of _Pixy_, _Pix_, and divide the double letter _x_ into its

component parts, we get _Piks_ or _Pics_, and if we remember that a

final _s_ or _z_ in Cornish almost always represents a _t_ or _d_ of

Welsh and Breton (cf. _tas_ for _tad_, _nans_ for _nant_, _bos_ for

_bod_), we may not unreasonably, though without absolute certainty,

conjecture that _Pixy_ is _Picty_ in a Cornish form.[63]

Without begging any question concerning the origin, ethnology, or

homogeneity of those who are called 'Picts' in history, from the times

of Ammianus Marcellinus and Claudian until Kenneth MacAlpine united the

Pictish kingdom with the Scottish, we can nevertheless accept the fact

that the name 'Pict' has been popularly applied to some pre-Celtic race

or races, to whom certain ancient structures, such as 'vitrified forts'

and 'Picts' houses' have been attributed. In Cornwall there are

instances of prehistoric structures being called 'Piskies' Halls' (there

is an _allée couverte_ so called at Bosahan in Constantine), and

'Piskies' Crows' (_Crow_ or _Craw_, Breton _Krao_, is a shed or hovel;

'pegs' craw' is still used for 'pig-sty'); and there are three genuine

examples of what would in Scotland be called 'Picts' Houses' just

outside St. Ives in the direction of Zennor, though only modern

antiquaries have applied that name to them. In the district in which

they are, the fringe of coast from St. Ives round by Zennor, Morvah,

Pendeen, and St. Just nearly to Sennen, are found to this day a strange

and separate people of Mongol type, like the Bigaudens of Pont l'Abbé

and Penmarc'h in the Breton Cornouailles, one of those 'fragments of

forgotten peoples' of the 'sunset bound of Lyonesse' of whom Tennyson

tells. They are a little 'stuggy' dark folk, and until comparatively

modern times were recognized as different from their Celtic neighbours,

and were commonly believed to be largely wizards and witches. One of Mr.

Wentz's informants seems to attribute to Zennor a particularly virulent

brand of pisky, and Zennor is the most primitive part of that district.

Possibly the more completely unmixed ancestors of this race were 'more

so' than the present representatives; but, be this as it may, if _Pixy_

is really _Picty_, it would seem that, like the inhabitants of the

extreme north of the British Isles, the south-western Britons eventually

applied the fairly general popular name of the mysterious, half dreaded,

half despised aboriginal to a race of preternatural beings in whose

existence they believed, and, with the name, transferred some of the

qualities, attributes, and legends, thus producing a mixed mental

conception now known as 'pisky' or 'pixy'.

There seems to have been always and everywhere (or nearly so) a belief

in a race, neither divine nor human, but very like to human beings, who

existed on a 'plane' different from that of humans, though occupying the

same space. This has been called the 'astral' or the 'fourth-dimensional'

plane. Why 'astral'? why 'fourth-dimensional'? why 'plane'? are

questions the answers to which do not matter, and I do not attempt to

defend the terms, but you must call it something. This is the belief to

which Scott refers in the introduction to _The Monastery_, as the

'beautiful but almost forgotten theory of astral spirits or creatures of

the elements, surpassing human beings in knowledge and power, but

inferior to them as being subject, after a certain space of years, to a

death which is to them annihilation'. The subdivisions and elaborations

of the subject by Paracelsus, the Rosicrucians, and the modern

theosophists are no doubt amplifications of that popular belief, which,

though rather undefined, resembles the theory of these mystics in its

main outlines, and was probably what suggested it to them.

These beings are held to be normally imperceptible to human senses, but

conditions may arise in which the 'astral plane' of the elementals and

that part of the 'physical plane' in which, if one may so express it,

some human being happens to be, may be in such a relation to one another

that these and other spirits may be seen and heard. Some such condition

is perhaps described in the story of Balaam the soothsayer, in that

incident when 'the Lord opened the eyes of the young man and he saw, and

behold, the mountain was full of horses and chariots of fire round about

Elisha', and possibly also in the mysterious 'sound of a going in the

tops of the mulberry trees' which David heard; but no doubt in these

cases it was angels and not elementals. It may also be allowable to

suggest, without irreverence, that the Gospel stories of the

Transfiguration and Ascension are connected with the same idea, though

the latter is expressed in the form of the geocentric theory of the

universe.

The Cornish pisky stories are largely made up of instances of contact

between the two 'planes', sometimes accidental, sometimes deliberately

induced by incantations or magic eye-salve, yet with these stories are

often mingled incidents that are not preternatural at all. How, when,

and why this belief arose, I do not pretend even to conjecture; but

there it is, and though of course the holders of it do not talk about

'planes', that is very much the notion which they appear to have.

I do not think that the piskies were ever definitely held to be the

spirits of the dead, and while a certain confusion has arisen, as some

of Mr. Wentz's informants show, I think it belongs to the confused

eschatology of modern Protestants. To a pre-Reformation Cornishman, or

indeed to any other Catholic, the idea was unthinkable. 'Justorum animae

in manu Dei sunt, et non tanget illos tormentum malitiae: visi sunt

oculis insipientium mori: illi autem sunt in pace,' and the

transmigration of the souls of the faithful departed into another order

of beings, not disembodied because never embodied, was to them

impossible. Such a notion is on a par with the quaint but very usual

hope of the modern 'Evangelical' Christian, so beautifully expressed in

one of Hans Andersen's stories, that his departed friends are promoted

to be 'angels'. There may be, perhaps, an idea, as there certainly is in

the Breton Death-Faith, that the spirits of the faithful dead are all

round us, and are not rapt away into a _distant_ Paradise or Purgatory.

This may be of pre-Christian origin, but does not contradict any article

of the Christian faith. The warnings, apparitions, and hauntings, the

'calling of the dead' at sea, and other details of Cornish

Death-Legends, seem to point to a conception of a 'plane' of the dead,

similar to but not necessarily identical with that of the elementals.

Under some quite undefined conditions contact may occur with the

'physical plane', whence the alleged incidents; but this Cornish

Death-Faith, though sometimes, as commonly in Brittany, presenting

similar phenomena, has in itself nothing to do with piskies, and as for

the unfaithful departed, their destination was also well understood, and

it was not Fairyland. There are possible connecting links in the not

very common idea that piskies are the souls of unbaptized children, and

in the more common notion that the _Pobel Vean_ are, not the disembodied

spirits, but the living souls and bodies of the old Pagans, who,

refusing Christianity, are miraculously preserved alive, but are

condemned to decrease in size until they vanish altogether. Some

authorities hold that it is the race and not the individual which

dwindles from generation to generation.

This last idea, as well as the name 'pixy', gives some probability to

the conclusion that, as applied to Cornwall, Mr. MacRitchie's theory

represents a part of the truth, and that on to an already existing

belief in elementals have been grafted exaggerated traditions of a dark

pre-Celtic people. These were not necessarily pygmies, but smaller than

Celts, and may have survived for a long time in forests and hill

countries, sometimes friendly to the taller race, whence come the

stories of piskies working for farmers, sometimes hostile, which may

account for the legends of changelings and other mischievous tricks.

This is how it appears to one who knows his Cornwall in all its aspects

fairly well, but does not profess to be an expert in folk-lore.

BOSPOWES, HAYLE, CORNWALL,

_July_ 1910.

Our investigation of the Fairy-Faith in Cornwall covers the region

between Falmouth and the Land's End, which is now the most Celtic; and

the Tintagel country on the north coast. It is generally believed that

ancient Cornish legends, like the Cornish language, are things of the

past only, but I am now no longer of that opinion. Undoubtedly Cornwall

is the most anglicized of all Celtic lands we are studying, and its

folk-lore is therefore far from being as virile as the Irish folk-lore;

nevertheless, through its people, racially mixed though they are, there

still flows the blood and the inspiration of a prehistoric native

ancestry, and among the oldest Cornish men and women of many an isolated

village, or farm, there yet remains some belief in fairies and pixies.

Moreover, throughout all of Old Cornwall there is a very living faith in

the Legend of the Dead; and that this Cornish Legend of the Dead, with

its peculiar Brythonic character, should be parallel as it is to the

Breton Legend of the Dead, has heretofore, so far as I am aware, not

been pointed out. I am giving, however, only a very few of the Cornish

death-legends collected, because in essence most of them are alike.

A CORNISH HISTORIAN'S TESTIMONY

I was privileged to make my first call in rural Cornwall at the pretty

country home of Miss Susan E. Gay, of Crill, about three miles from

Falmouth; and Miss Gay, who has written a well-known history of Falmouth

(_Old Falmouth_, London, 1903), very willingly accorded me an interview

on the subject of my inquiry, and finally dictated for my use the

following matter:--

_Pixies as 'Astral Plane' Beings._--'The pixies and fairies are little

beings in the human form existing on the 'astral plane', who may be in

the process of evolution; and, as such, I believe people have seen them.

The 'astral plane' is not known to us now because our psychic faculty of

perception has faded out by non-use, and this condition has been brought

about by an almost exclusive development of the physical brain; but it

is likely that the psychic faculty will develop again in its turn.'

_Psychical Interpretation of Folk-Lore._--'It is my point of view that

there is a basis of truth in the folk-lore. With its remnants of occult

learning, magic, charms, and the like, folk-lore seems to be the remains

of forgotten psychical facts, rather than history, as it is often

called.'

PEASANT EVIDENCE FROM THE CRILL COUNTRY

Miss Gay kindly gave me the names of certain peasants in the Crill

region, and from one of them, Mrs. Harriett Christopher, I gleaned the

following material:--

_A Pisky Changeling._--'A woman who lived near Breage Church had a fine

girl baby, and she thought the piskies came and took it and put a

withered child in its place. The withered child lived to be twenty years

old, and was no larger when it died than when the piskies brought it. It

was fretful and peevish and frightfully shrivelled. The parents believed

that the piskies often used to come and look over a certain wall by the

house to see the child. And I heard my grandmother say that the family

once put the child out of doors at night to see if the piskies would

take it back again.'

_Nature of Piskies._--'The piskies are said to be very small. You could

never see them by day. I used to hear my grandmother, who has been dead

fifty years, say that the piskies used to hold a fair in the fields near

Breage, and that people saw them there dancing. I also remember her

saying that it was customary to set out food for the piskies at night.

My grandmother's great belief was in piskies and in spirits; and she

considered piskies spirits. She used to tell so many stories about

spirits [of the dead] coming back and such things that I would be afraid

to go to bed.'

EVIDENCE FROM CONSTANTINE

Our witnesses from the ancient and picturesque village of Constantine

are John Wilmet, seventy-eight years old, and his good wife, two most

excellent and well-preserved types of the passing generation of true

Cornish stock. John began by telling me the following tale about an

_allée couverte_--a tale which in one version or another is apt to be

told of most Cornish megaliths:--

_A Pisky-House._--'William Murphy, who married my sister, once went to

the pisky-house at Bosahan with a surveyor, and the two of them heard

such unearthly noises in it that they came running home in great

excitement, saying they had heard the piskies.'

_The Pisky Thrasher._--'On a farm near here, a pisky used to come at

night to thrash the farmer's corn. The farmer in payment once put down a

new suit for him. When the pisky came and saw it, he put it on, and

said:--

Pisky fine and pisky gay,

Pisky now will fly away.

And they say he never returned.'

_Nature of Piskies._--'I always understood the piskies to be little

people. A great deal was said about ghosts in this place. Whether or not

piskies are the same as ghosts I cannot tell, but I fancy the old folks

thought they were.'

_Exorcism._--'A farmer who lived two miles from here, near the Gweek

River, called Parson Jago to his house to have him quiet the ghosts or

spirits regularly haunting it, for Parson Jago could always put such

things to rest. The clergyman went to the farmer's house, and with his

whip formed a circle on the floor and then commanded the spirit, which

made its appearance on the table, to come down into the circle. While on

the table the spirit had been visible to all the family, but as soon as

it got into the ring it disappeared; and the house was never haunted

afterwards.'

AT ST. MICHAEL'S MOUNT, MARAZION

Our next place for an investigation of the surviving Cornish Fairy-Faith

is Marazion, the very ancient British town opposite the isle called St.

Michael's Mount. (From Constantine I walked through the country to this

point, talking with as many old people as possible, but none of them

knew very much about ancient Cornish beliefs.) It is believed, though

the matter is very doubtful, that Marazion was the chief mart for the

tin trade of Celtic Britain, and that the Mount--sacred to the Sun and

to the Pagan Mysteries long before Caesar crossed the Channel from

Gaul--sheltered the brilliantly-coloured sailing-ships of the

Phoenicians.[64] In such a romantic town, where Oriental merchants and

Celtic pilgrims probably once mingled together, one might expect some

survival of olden beliefs and customs.

_Piskies._--To Mr. Thomas G. Jago, of Marazion, with a memory extending

backwards more than seventy years, he being eighty years old, I am

indebted for this statement about the pisky creed in that locality:--'I

imagine that one hundred and fifty years ago the belief in piskies and

spirits was general. In my boyhood days, piskies were often called "the

mites" (little people): they were regarded as little spirits. The word

_piskies_ is the old Cornish brogue for pixies. In certain grass fields,

mushrooms growing in a circle might be seen of a morning, and the old

folks pointing to the mushrooms would say to the children, "Oh, the

piskies have been dancing there last night."'

Two more of the oldest natives of Marazion, among others with whom I

talked, are William Rowe, eighty-two years old, and his married sister

seventy-eight years old. About the piskies Mr. Rowe said this:--'People

would go out at night and lose their way and then declare that they had

been pisky-led. I think they meant by this that they fell under some

spiritual influence--that some spirit led them astray. The piskies were

said to be small, and they were thought of as spirits.'[65] Mr. Rowe's

sister added:--'If we as children did anything wrong, the old folks

would say to us, "The piskies will carry you away if you do that

again."'

_Witch-Doctors._--I heard the following witch-story from a lawyer, a

native of the district, who lives in the country just beyond

Marazion:--'Jimmy Thomas, of Wendron parish, who died within the last

twenty-five years, was the last witch-doctor I know about in West

Cornwall. He was supposed to have great power over evil spirits. His

immediate predecessor was a woman, called the "Witch of Wendron", and

she did a big business. My father once visited her in company with a

friend whose father had lost some horses. This was about seventy to

eighty years ago. The witch when consulted on this occasion turned her

back to my father's companion, and began talking to herself in Cornish.

Then she gave him some herbs. His father used the herbs, and no more

horses died: the herbs were supposed to have driven all evil spirits out

of the stable.'

IN PENZANCE: AN ARCHITECT'S TESTIMONY

Penzance from earliest times has undoubtedly been, as it is now, the

capital of the Land's End district, the Sacred Land of Britain. And in

Penzance I had the good fortune to meet those among its leading citizens

who still cherish and keep alive the poetry and the mystic lore of Old

Cornwall; and to no one of them am I more indebted than to Mr. Henry

Maddern, F.I.A.S. Mr. Maddern tells me that he was initiated into the

mysteries of the Cornish folk-lore of this region when a boy in Newlyn,

where he was born, by his old nurse Betty Grancan, a native Zennor

woman, of stock probably the most primitive and pure in the British

Islands. At his home in Penzance, Mr. Maddern dictated to me the very

valuable evidence which follows:--

_Two Kinds of Pixies._--'In this region there are two kinds of pixies,

one purely a land-dwelling pixy and the other a pixy which dwells on the

sea-strand between high and low water mark.[66] The land-dwelling pixy

was usually thought to be full of mischievous fun, but it did no harm.

There was a very prevalent belief, when I was a boy, that this

sea-strand pixy, called _Bucca_,[67] had to be propitiated by a _cast_

(three) of fish, to ensure the fishermen having a good _shot_ (catch) of

fish. The land pixy was supposed to be able to render its devotees

invisible, if they only anointed their eyes with a certain green salve

made of secret herbs gathered from Kerris-moor.[68] In the invisible

condition thus induced, people were able to join the pixy revels, during

which, according to the old tradition, time slipped away very, very

rapidly, though people returned from the pixies no older than when they

went with them.'

_The Nurse and the Ointment._--'I used to hear about a Zennor girl who

came to Newlyn as nurse to the child of a gentleman living at

Zimmerman-Cot. The gentleman warned her never to touch a box of ointment

which he guarded in a special room, nor even to enter that room; but one

day in his absence she entered the room and took some of the ointment.

Suspecting the qualities of the ointment, she put it on her eyes with

the wish that she might see where her master was. She immediately found

herself in the higher part of the orchard amongst the pixies, where they

were having much _junketing_ (festivity and dancing); and there saw the

gentleman whose child she had nursed. For a time she managed to evade

him, but before the _junketing_ was at an end he discovered her and

requested her to go home; and then, to her intense astonishment, she

learned that she had been away twenty years, though she was unchanged.

The gentleman scolded her for having touched the ointment, paid her

wages in full, and sent her back to her people. She always had the one

regret, that she had not gone into the forbidden room at first.'

_The Tolcarne Troll._--'The fairy of the Newlyn Tolcarne[69] was in some

ways like the Puck of the English Midlands. But this fairy, or troll,

was supposed to date back to the time of the Phoenicians. He was

described as a little old pleasant-faced man dressed in a tight-fitting

leathern jerkin, with a hood on his head, who lived invisible in the

rock. Whenever he chose to do so he could make himself visible. When I

was a boy it was said that he spent his time voyaging from here to Tyre

on the galleys which carried the tin; and, also, that he assisted in the

building of Solomon's Temple. Sometimes he was called "the Wandering

One", or "Odin the Wanderer". My old nurse, Betty Grancan, used to say

that you could call up the troll at the Tolcarne if while there you held

in your hand three dried leaves, one of the ash, one of the oak, and one

of the thorn, and pronounced an incantation or charm. Betty would never

tell me the words of the charm, because she said I was too much of a

sceptic. The words of such a Cornish charm had to pass from one believer

to another, through a woman to a man, and from a man to a woman, and

thus alternately.'[70]

_Nature of Pixies._--'Pixies were often supposed to be the souls of the

prehistoric dwellers of this country. As such, pixies were supposed to

be getting smaller and smaller, until finally they are to vanish

entirely. The country pixies inhabiting the highlands from above Newlyn

on to St. Just were considered a wicked sort. Their great ambition was

to change their own offspring for human children; and the true child

could only be got back by laying a four-leaf clover on the changeling. A

_winickey_ child--one which was weak, frail, and peevish--was of the

nature of a changeling. Miner pixies, called "knockers", would accept a

portion of a miner's _croust_ (lunch) on good faith, and by knocking

lead him to a rich mother-lode, or warn him by knocking if there was

danger ahead or a cavern full of water; but if the miner begrudged them

the _croust_, he would be left to his own resources to find the lode,

and, moreover, the "knockers" would do all they could to lead him away

from a good lode. These mine pixies, too, were supposed to be spirits,

sometimes spirits of the miners of ancient times.'[71]

_Fairies and Pixies._--'In general appearance the fairies were much the

same as pixies. They were small men and women, much smaller than dwarfs.

The men were swarthy in complexion, and the women had a clear complexion

of a peach-like bloom. None ever appeared to be more than

five-and-twenty to thirty years old. I have heard my nurse say that she

could see scores of them whenever she picked a four-leaf clover and put

it in the wisp of straw which she carried on her head as a cushion for

the bucket of milk. Her theory was that the richness of the milk was

what attracted them. Pixies, like fairies, very much enjoyed milk, and

people of miserly nature used to put salt around a cow to keep the

pixies away; and then the pixies would lead such mean people astray the

very first opportunity that came. According to some country-people, the

pixies have been seen in the day-time, but usually they are only seen at

night.'

A CORNISH EDITOR'S OPINION

Mr. Herbert Thomas, editor of four Cornish papers, _The Cornishman_,

_The Cornish Telegraph_, _Post_, and _Evening Times_, and a true Celt

himself, has been deeply interested in the folk-lore of Cornwall, and

has made excellent use of it in his poetry and other literary

productions; so that his personal opinions, which follow, as to the

probable origin of the fairy-belief, are for our study a very important

contribution:--

_Animistic Origin of Belief in Pixies._--'I should say that the modern

belief in pixies, or in fairies, arose from a very ancient Celtic or

pre-Celtic belief in spirits. Just as among some savage tribes there is

belief in gods and totems, here there was belief in little spirits good

and bad, who were able to help or to hinder man. Belief in the

supernatural, in my opinion, is the root of it all.'

A CORNISH FOLK-LORIST'S TESTIMONY