it, of Welsh being “English’d out of Wales, as Latin was barbarously
Goth’d out of Italy.” From the time of the Great Rebellion, however,
the condition of the Welsh language began to improve, and it is
possible greatly to overrate the difficulties with which Johnson met in
coming to know the life of the people. Impatiently he had exclaimed,
“Let us, if we do talk, talk about something; men and women are my
subject of enquiry; let us see how these differ from those we have left
behind.” But from any evidence in his journal Johnson did not consider
it worth his while to discover how much the Welsh really do differ from
the English. The visible physical fact with which he was confronted
was the dark-haired, dark-eyed, dark-complexioned Welshman of medium
stature, very Spanish-looking, sometimes almost Oriental. What he
heard were voices quite distinct from the English, quiet and pure in
enunciation. What he must have felt--if he felt the Welsh as distinct,
except in inferiority--was a race as different as the south is from
the north, sensitive, imaginative, excitable, deeply impressionable to
everything that is beautiful, as capable of the “howl” as the Irish,
yet more critical, of an intellectual independence which makes Roman
Catholicism unwelcome to the Welsh, with a shrewdness that is the logic
of success in money-getting, a captive race with minds which can never
be servile. Yet in a letter to Boswell announcing that he had visited
five out of the six counties of North Wales, Dr. Johnson wrote: “Wales
is so little different from England, that it offers nothing to the
speculation of the traveller.” Johnson was capable, too, of taunting
Boswell with the sterility of Scotland. He had a certain strain of
contrariness in him, “tonic” some call it, which made him emphasize the
undesirable features of a country or a personality. Three years after
this journey, forgetting even his interest in castles, he was able to
say: “Except the woods of _Bachycraigh_, what is there in Wales that
can fill the hunger of ignorance, or quench the thirst of curiosity?”
[1] Heb Duw, Heb Dym (Without God, Nothing), Duw a’ diggon (God and
plenty) would be more correct Welsh and a better translation.
V
_Welsh Folk-Lore_
Many and attractively full of poetry are the superstitions still
living in the solitary Welsh hills. One day I encountered a hillside
woman while we were looking for a hilltop church. She was in great
distress, breathless and flapping her apron. Now there is a Welsh
legend that bees were created in paradise, and her bees were running
away. Apparently, this worldly, heartless creature had no intention, if
an apron could prevent it, of allowing her bees to go back to heaven.
Fairyland is Cambria in Wales, if you will let me juggle with my
words in this fashion, for I do not know how to express it otherwise.
And yearning for continued love and life, even with the bees, is the
breath of the phantom and spirit world called “Fairyland.” Although the
instinct of faith in the supernatural may be primitive and the Welsh of
to-day highly civilized, yet supernatural belief is still ineradicated
among the people. Their childish tales, often so hard to understand,
are full of a haunting race life. Conviction, for example, that fairies
are the souls of dead mortals, mortals not good enough for heaven or
bad enough for hell,--at least the thought is a gentle one, and as such
not to be despised. And to their gentle masters the fairies themselves
seem to have given an uncommon devotion. If fairies are troublesome,
one can sometimes get rid of them by changing one’s residence. But
not so with these Welsh fairies! Like the family servant for whom
every one longs, they stick closer than a brother. Even going into
England will not drive Welsh fairies away from those they love. Matthew
Arnold should have considered this when he was studying the Celtic
temperament, and denouncing it for its inconstancy, for the essence of
all that is Celtic is the Welsh fairy.
One is a little of the opinion of the youth, who, when he first saw
the Lady of the Lake, thought she was a goose. That is what I thought
of my first fairies, and still think of them. Yet, in this day and
generation, it is something to have seen a fairy at all! It was dusk,
and I had come through a tiny hill village, where white cottages were
gleaming in the dark, and light shining on garden walls. It was so
quiet that I could hear pine needles dropping on the ground, and the
wind talking in the branches of the rain, still miles distant upon the
sea. The noise of a tardy bumblebee, hurrying homeward in the dark,
fairly boomed in my ears, and the sounds of shale rock slipping down
the hillside came and went mysteriously. Through lighted windows I
caught glimpses of evening comfort, of a bright fire glowing with peat,
whose aroma was everywhere on the soft air, of dressers and tridarns,
brave with countless ornaments, of a grandfather’s clock whose wise old
face shone with light, of children’s heads about the supper table.
But a higher hill was calling me, and an adventure of whose nature I
had not even dreamed. I turned off the road by a Wesleyan chapel and
mounted a steep path. Up, up, up I went around the side of a green
hill, sometimes listening to the night stir of the birds, sometimes
startled by a brown rabbit, leaping for cover. Out beyond, the
mountains of Snowdonia were piled height on height, all washed in sepia
depth upon a sky, moonless, but brilliant with stars. I hastened, for
I was eager to reach the pine-crowned summit. Up there would be no
sound except the wind in the trees, and once in a while some homely
noises from the villages in the valley below: the sharp bark of a dog,
the bleating of a lamb, the closing of some cottage door, a resonant
“good-night.”
Once on the hilltop, I lay down to rest, listening to the soft flight
and hooting of some young owl, and feeling the grass cool and deep to
my head and hands. As I lay there, eyes half closed, I heard some one
coming up the path. Nearer and nearer drew uncertain footsteps and the
tapping of a cane over loose stones. I sat up quickly, and there in
the dark was an old woman, a cane in one hand, a basket in the other.
Something cried piteously from the basket and I asked what it was. The
old crone said that it was a kitten, and showed me a sack in which
something else, tied up, squirmed and mewed. But she did not open the
bag. After a due amount of greeting and curtseying, the old woman went
on. I noticed that she kept looking back as she followed the path over
the crown of the hill.
My attention was diverted from her by the approach of more footsteps.
It was a boy, a very large boy, and in his hand I could clearly see a
school-bag, ridiculously small for such a big lad, in which he, too,
carried something. Behind him walked a huge dog, feathered on back and
legs so heavily that his shaggy hair trailed on the ground. I heard
something cry from the little bag, and I asked what it was. The lad
replied in Welsh that it was a kitten. I could see him smiling as he
stood his ground. Except in Welsh there was nothing further for me to
do. Under the most favourable circumstances it is a great deal to do
anything at all in Welsh, and with my heart beating rapidly and my
tongue growing dry, I did not feel that I could do anything more in any
language. We were silent while the little thing kept on “miaowing,”
and this boy, like an ordinary boy, hitched about for a few moments,
kicking stones from the path, and then went on, followed by the dog.
Erect and uneasy, I continued to sit up. Just as dog and boy were
out of sight I heard some one else stumbling up the path and a faint
kitten-like noise. I began to be afraid of those kittens being carried
one after one over this desolate hilltop. It suggested a little the
enchantments in the “Mabinogion,” only in the “Mabinogion” mice and
not kittens played the leading part. I got up and fled before this
experience should have a chance to become the beginning of some
enchantment. But already I felt as if a spell were upon me, and even
when I was quite far away from the kitteny place, I was still in a
strange condition of excitement. One feels a natural dislike for any
sort of hilltop enchantments, and I did.
I was making considerable speed in my Welsh-soled boots and feeling
more like an ordinary person, when the path took a sharp turn and I saw
something strange in front of me. Down below ran the road, hard enough
to be a fact, and lighted by the clear glow of the stars. If only one
could always be sure of what is coming in this world, such a turning
as I had taken would be like Keats’s beauty, “a joy forever.” But
alas! close at my own right hand, very distinct, unmistakably clear,
rose something my eyes had never met before: a chimney with no house
attached to it. And on the treeless meadow in front of this apparition
I saw the old woman leaning on her stick and the boy sitting beside his
dog. Clearly the spell had worked. But how I struggled out from under
this enchantment is another story.
The least credulous may look at fairy and goblin food in the woods
and fields, and their gloves, the foxglove, growing beside the road.
And their animals, their sheep, their horses, their dogs are visible
on many a dim hillside. The Welsh speak of these little people as the
fair folk or family--“y Tylwyth Teg.” And well do they deserve the
name. Sometimes they are spoken of as the fair folk of the wood or the
fair folk of the mine. In gowns of green, blue, white, and scarlet they
dance on moonlit nights. If they like you they will bestow blessings on
you, and are frequently called “mothers’ blessings” because mothers are
glad to have such little ones. But if one speaks unkindly of them, one
will get into trouble. And here, whether one be talking of fairies or
of mortals, who cannot always avenge themselves as readily as fairies,
is a lesson worth remembering.
[Illustration: RUTHIN CASTLE
_From an engraving by Buck, 1742_]
Elves, according to the Welsh,--I have seen only a picture of one
drawn by a Welsh miner,--also live on goblin food and wear foxgloves
when they have any particularly hard work to do. The Queen of the Elves
is none other than the Shakespearean fairy spoken of by Mercutio, who
comes
“In shape no bigger than an agate stone
On the forefinger of an alderman.”
No one who has _not_ seen a fairy can have any idea how difficult it
is to draw the line between history and story. The difficulties of the
folklorist are as nothing,--for his is the scientific spirit,--compared
with the trouble the real fairy hunter has in the open. Nowadays, of
course, no one believes everything or possibly anything he is told. But
in times past mankind seems to have been gifted with a more intimate
faith in and knowledge of some things than we have to-day. For example,
people used to know Satan better and were more afraid of him. An honest
Welsh farmer saw him lying across the road with his head on one wall
and his tail on the other. The Devil was moaning horribly, which in
this uncomfortable position would not be strange for any one.
In criticism of Welsh fairies there is one thing to be said. They not
only have a rather practical-joking sort of humour, but they also have
very little sense of equity. A man may do his best for them, and then
they repay him in the end by a trick. A Welsh piper was coming home
in the gray of the evening, and had to cross a little running stream,
from which he saw only the shadowed hillside and heard only the voice
of the wind. But when he had travelled beyond the hill, music became
audible, and, turning, instead of the knoll he had been looking at,
there was a great castle with lights blazing and music playing and the
sound of dancing feet. He went back and was caught in the procession
coming out from its doors and taken in to pipe to them. He piped for a
day or so, but he was anxious to return to his people, and the fairies
seemed to understand. They said they would let him go if he would play
a favourite tune. He played his best, they danced fast and furiously.
And at last he was set free on the dark hillside, with only the voice
of the wind for company. He went home hastily, but when he entered his
father’s house no one knew him. An old man awoke from a doze by the
fire, and said that he had heard, when a boy, of a piper who had gone
away on a quiet evening and never come back again. That was over a
hundred years ago.
Perhaps there is no reason why the fairies, as well as poor mortals,
should not be allowed a natural and happy alternation between badness
and goodness. Metaphorically speaking, they are not the only creatures
who steal money and butter and cheese, and who whisk away helpless,
unbaptized infants. Doubtless a New England Mather--those early New
England Mathers were hard on babies--would say that an infant who
remained unbaptized long enough to be discovered by a fairy deserved
to be stolen. Such an idea could have flourished only in New England.
As if it were not bad enough to face the-survival-of-the-fittest
test in this life without carrying it over into heaven! I, for one,
am not disposed to find fault with the fairies when, as happened in
Beddgelert, they led a man into beautiful lodgings. To know what a
temptation a beautiful apartment might become, one must have lived,
as I have, in that little mountain-cupped village. When the man awoke
in the morning after a peaceful night’s rest, he was sleeping on a
swamp with a clump of rushes for his pillow. If he had been a nervous,
sleepless, modern man, instead of finding fault as he did, he would
have been grateful for the night’s sound rest and forthwith tried
the swamp again. After this there would have been a “Swamp Cure for
Insomnia.”
There are ghosts, too, in Wales, but they are rather spiritless
creatures, much easier to catch and not so tricksy as the fairies. Nor
do they select prickly furze and stony hilltops as their hiding-places.
But on the whole they are difficult to subdue, especially the farm
ghosts. While the servants are busy making the butter, the ghost or
spirit frequently throws something unclean into the milk or sends
the pans spinning around like mad. In one farm the farmer offered a
reward of five pounds to any one who would lay their particularly
lively spirit. Several people tried it, including an aged priest in
whose face the impertinent ghost waved a woman’s bonnet. Finally, the
Established Church being unable to cope with this sprightly situation,
an Independent minister from Llanarmon coaxed the ghost into the barn.
There the spirit, still unsubdued, turned into a lion, a mastiff, and
other ferocious beasts, but in no incarnation could it do any harm to
the Independent Griffiths. It became discouraged, and the minister
persuaded the poor thing to appear in the form of a fly. Perhaps
in this incarnation the wretched thing still had hopes of revenge.
However, the intrepid Griffiths was too much for it, and it was
captured in a tobacco box and borne off, never to trouble the farmer
any more.
The death portents in Cambria reveal all the strangeness and
lawlessness of the Celtic imagination. No one who does not know the
Welsh hills, who has not been on them day after day, can feel the
significance of these death portents. One must have travelled on the
top and edge of the Welsh mountain world to understand,--have looked
out upon a sea of hills gray and barren in their utter colourlessness,
and down upon valleys like the valley of the shadow of death. There
abyss and altitude are alike full of terrors, of mist before which mind
and step falter, of an Unknown which presses home in bodily anguish,
which distorts the vision and strikes upon the ear with the outcry of
bewildered souls. It is not strange, then, that the Welsh have the
most horrible of banshees. It is known as the Gwrach y Rhybin, the old
hag of the mist; and a Cyhyraeth which moans dolefully in the night
but is never seen; and a Tolaeth which groans or sings or saws, or
tramps with its feet, and is also unseen. And there are, besides, the
“Dogs of Hell” and the “Dogs of the Sky” and the “Corpse Candle” and
the “Goblin Funeral,”--all of them portents of death. Several years
ago I came very near seeing one of these portentous dogs. I was on
a treeless upland pasture, rich with ruby like a deep agate, with
lavender, flecked with emerald-green as musk is freaked with brown;
purple, pink, and opalescent in the sunshine that came and went. There
were black sheep and white in that pasture, I remember, and some little
lambs that straddled with surprise. One rose, stretching and curling
its tail with the delicious energy of waking from sleep. I looked down
what seemed like a particoloured gulf of greensward into valleys where
men and cattle had become dots in size, and up to more fern and heather
and altitudes where the curlew cried. It was as I looked up that I saw
an impressively large black dog that went through an impossibly small
sheep-hole in a sheep-wall. But a wisp of mist came over the Welsh
mountain-side, and one never makes an effort to see that sort of thing
or to run after it. Hunting rollicking elves and lightfoot fairies is
quite a different matter!
One of the most beautiful legends in the Iolo Manuscripts is the
story of one of these death portents. There was a lord rich in houses
and land and gold. Every luxury of life was his for the asking. One
night he heard a voice cry out distinctly three times, “The greatest
and richest man of this parish shall perish to-night.” He was aware
that there was no other man so great or rich as he, and he sent for
the physician and prepared to die. But the night passed and day came
and he still lived. At sunrise he heard the bell tolling and knew that
some one must have died, and he sent to enquire who it was. It was
an old blind beggar who had asked for charity at the lord’s gate and
been refused. Then this great lord saw that the voice had come as a
warning to him, that his riches were as nothing in comparison with the
treasure and wealth which the blind man had in the kingdom of heaven.
He accepted the warning and relieved all who were poor or in need. When
he died, angels were heard to sing him a welcome, and after his death
he was buried, as he had asked to be, in the blind beggar’s grave.
Of hags and witches there used to be far too many in Wales.
Shakespeare tells all one needs to know of them. For some reasons,
hidden to us, he had peculiarly intimate and extensive information
concerning Celtic folk-lore. Macbeth, speaking of witches, says, “I
have learned by the perfectest report, they have more in them than
mortal knowledge. When I burned in desire to question them further,
they made themselves air, into which they vanished.” These witches
did not hesitate to throw even portions of human beings into seething
cauldrons:--
“Round about the cauldron go;
In the poisoned entrails throw.”
They threw in other things, too, as the third witch tells us,--
“Scale of dragon, tooth of wolf,
Witches’ mummy, maw and gulf
Of the ravin’d salt-sea shark,
Root of hemlock digged i’ the dark,
Liver of blaspheming Jew,
Gall of goat, and slips of yew
Silver’d in the moon’s eclipse,
Nose of Turk, and Tartar’s lips.”
[Illustration: THE COMPLEAT ANGLER IN WALES]
In Wales the knowledge which witches possessed they did not use for
the good of others, but for their hurt; they tormented children and
animals, they plagued the hard-working and industrious, and upset the
Welsh household. In Cambria there are witches unlike any I have ever
heard of, witches that will cause cows to sit down like cats before the
fire. No wonder the Welsh farmer keeps his Bible handy in the kitchen
chest, and runs for it post-haste, to read his seated cow a chapter and
unwitch her! No wonder that with such witches conjurors are needed,--if
for no other reason, then to unseat the cows; and that country folk
pluck the snapdragon to protect themselves from these hags! No wonder
the peasants cross their doors, even to this day in isolated districts,
to shield themselves, and that they keep horseshoes and churchyard
earth to preserve their cottages from spells!
No matter how he fumbled the English fairies, Shakespeare never made
any mistake with the Welsh. He understood what “mab” meant,--that it
meant a little thing,--just as “mabcath” in Welsh means a kitten, or
“mabinogi,” the singular of “mabinogion,” means a tale told to the
little ones. No one who has not seen a fairy can have any idea how
difficult it is to draw the line between history and story. That some
of the fairies seen on the way home from fairs and from patriotic
Eisteddfodau--Welsh national festivals of poetry and song--are due to
ale, cannot be disputed. It is commonly said that the Methodists are
driving the fairies out of Cambria. These nonconformists are usually
teetotallers. However, the real fairy is still in Wales, and if you do
not believe me, all I can say is, that you must go to Wales and prove
that I am wrong. But perhaps it would be well before you take the
journey to look at your foot, for if you find you have not a foot that
water runs under, it is best for you not to go. So runs the ancient
proverb, and without that lucky foot no fairy shall you see.
There is only one thing that can possibly counteract the lack of a
requisite instep for those who desire to see fairies, and that is
eating a good deal of cheese. I do not know why this is, but I do
know that as far back as one can go, much further back than Giraldus
Cambrensis or even Taliessin or the archest of the archdruids, Welsh
rarebit and roasted cheese have been the very bread of Cymric diet.
There is a story in John Rastell’s “Hundred Mery Talys,” printed in
the sixteenth century, which shows that before Shakespeare came to
elucidate the Welsh fairy, this question of cheese and the Welsh
had been duly considered: “I fynde wrytten amonge olde gestes, howe
God mayde Saynt Peter porter of heuen, and that God of hys goodnes,
sone after his passyon, suffered many men to come to the kyngdome of
Heuen with small deseruynge; at whych tyme there was in heuen a great
companye of Welchmen, whyche with crakynge and babelynge troubled all
the other. Wherefore God sayde to saynte Peter that he was wery of
them, and that he wold fayne haue them out of heuen. To whome Saynte
Peter sayd: Good Lorde, I warrente you, that shall be done. Wherefore
Saynt Peter wente out of heuen gates and cried with a loud voice _Cause
bobe_ (caws pob), that is as moche to saye as rosted chese, whiche
thynge the Welchemen herynge, ranne out of heuen a great pace. And when
Saynt Peter saw them all out, he suddenly wente into Heuen, and locked
the dore, and so sparred all the Welchmen out.”
Undoubtedly among everything Welsh, even in literature, cheese is the
“Open Sesame.” It is encountered in “Mabinogion” romance and beauty,
which is the same thing as to say cheese among the Welsh! Is there any
other folk-lore in the history of the world in which cheese plays so
important a rôle? It might in German folk-lore, but the fact is that
it does not. Bread, milk, the juice of the grape, but cheese? No, that
is lifted into the realm of imagination and of a world-classic only in
Cambria. Again Shakespeare showed his surprisingly accurate knowledge
of the Celt when Falstaff exclaims, “Heaven defend me from that Welsh
Fairy, lest he transform me to a piece of cheese!”
VI
_The City of the Prince of Wales_
From the heart of Snowdon, some thirteen miles or more, on roads gray
with altitudes of rock, green with shining hillside pastures dotted
with white sheep, and crossed by rushing streams, we walked down to
Carnarvon. From the rocky heights behind it, this city of the Prince
of Wales--the great castle pile, the castle walls enclosing the roofs
of many buildings--extends to the edge of the sea, where the boom of
a sailing-vessel swinging around might easily touch the castle wall.
And beyond are the ships, the Island of Anglesey, Mona, beloved in all
Welsh hearts, peaceful and fertile, with the clouds above.
It was tranquil, luxuriant, established, unshaken by anything that
Time had been able to do. There still were the walls strong to defend;
the ships from the sea, and cottage chimneys symbol of many an ingle
nook, of quiet firesides, of homely comforts, of beloved household
faces, of young joy and ancient peace.