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found the peel and the other things, which had now disappeared. When the servant related this to his master, he told him at once that it was one of the Tylwyth Teg of that locality that had called out to him. With this should be compared the story of the man who mended a fairy's plough vice: see p. 64 above.

X.

Early this year I had occasion to visit the well-known Hengwrt Library at Peniarth, and during my stay there Mr. Wynne very kindly took me to see such of the ILanegryn people as were most likely to have somewhat to say about the fairies. Many of the inhabitants had heard of them, but they had no long tales about them. One man, however, told me of a William Pritchard, of Pentre Bach, near ILwyngwryl, who died at sixty, over eighty years ago, and of a Rhys Williams, the clerk of ILangelynin, how they were going home late at night from a cock-fight at ILanegryn, and how they came across the fairies singing and dancing on a plot of ground known as Gwastad Meirionyd, 'the Plain of Merioneth,' on the way from ILwyngwryl to ILanegryn. It consists, I am told by Mr. Robert Roberts of ILanegryn, of no more than some twenty square yards, outside which one has a good view of Cardigan Bay and the heights of Merioneth and Carnarvonshire, while from the Gwastad itself neither sea nor mountain is visible. On this spot, then, the belated cockfighters were surrounded by the fairies. They swore at the fairies and took to their heels, but they were pursued as far as Clawd Du. Also I was told that Elen Egryn, the authoress, some sixty years ago, of some poetry called Telyn Egryn, had also seen fairies in her youth, when she used to go up the hills to look

after her father's sheep. This happened near a little brook, from which she could see the sea when the sun was in the act of sinking in it; then many fairies would come out dancing and singing, and also crossing and recrossing the little brook. It was on the side of Rhiwfelen, and she thought the little folks came out of the brook somewhere. She had been scolded for talking about the fairies, but she firmly believed in them to the end of her life. This was told me by Mr. W. Williams, the tailor, who is about sixty years of age; and also by Mr. Rowlands, the ex-bailiff of Peniarth, who is about seventy-five. I was moreover much interested to discover at ILanegryn a scrap of kelpie story, which runs as follows, concerning ILyn Gwernen, situated close to the old road between Dolgelley and ILanegryn :

As a man from the village of ILanegryn was returning in the dusk of the evening across the mountain from Dolgelley, he heard, when hard by Lyn Gwernen, a voice crying out from the water :

Daeth yr awr ond ni đaeth y dyn ! The hour is come but the man is not!

As the villager went on his way a little distance, what should meet him but a man of insane appearance, and with nothing on but his shirt. As he saw the man making full pelt for the waters of the lake, he rushed at him to prevent him from proceeding any further. But as to the sequel there is some doubt: one version makes the villager conduct the man back about a mile from the lake to a farm house called Dyffrydan, which was on the former's way home. Others seem to think that the man in his shirt rushed irresistibly into the lake, and this I have no doubt comes nearer the end of the story in its original form. Lately I have heard a part of a similar story about ILyn Cynnwch, which has already been mentioned, p. 135, above. My informant

is Miss Lucy Griffith, of Glynmalden, near Dolgettey, a lady deeply interested in Welsh folklore and Welsh antiquities generally. She obtained her information from a Dolgeftey ostler, formerly engaged at the Ship Hotel, to the effect that on Gwyl Galan, 'the eve of New Year's Day,' a person is seen walking backwards and forwards on the strand of Cynnwch Lake, crying out:Mae'r awr wedi dyfod a'r dyn heb dyfod!

The hour is come while the man is not!

The ostler stated also that lights are to be seen on Cader Idris on the eve of New Year's Day, whatever that statement may mean. The two lake stories seem to suggest that the Lake Spirit was entitled to a victim once a year, whether the sacrifice was regarded as the result of accident or design. By way of comparison, one may mention the notion, not yet extinct, that certain rivers in various parts of the kingdom regularly claim so many victims: for some instances at random see an article by Mr. J. M. Mackinlay, on Traces of River Worship in Scottish Folklore, a paper published in the Proceedings of the Society of Antiquaries of Scotland, 1895-6, pp. 69-76. Take for example the fol lowing rhyme :

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In the neighbourhood of Ystrad Meurig, between the Teifi and the Ystwyth basins, almost everybody can

relate tales about the fairies, but not much that is out of the ordinary run of such stories elsewhere. Among others, Isaac Davies, the smith living at Ystrad Meurig, had heard a great deal about fairies, and he said that there were rings belonging to them in certain fields at Tan y Graig and at ILanafan. Where the rings were, there the fairies danced until the ground became red and bare of grass. The fairies were, according to him, all women, and they dressed like foreigners, in short cotton dresses reaching only to the knee-joint. This description is somewhat peculiar, as the idea prevalent in the country around is, that the fairy ladies had very long trains, and that they were very elegantly dressed ; so that it is a common saying there, that girls who dress in a better or more showy fashion than ordinary look like Tylwyth Teg, and the smith confessed he had often heard that said. Similarly Howells, pp. 113, 121-2, finds the dresses of the fairies dancing on the Freni, in the north-east of Pembrokeshire, represented as indescribably elegant and varying in colour; and those who, in the month of May, used to frequent the prehistoric encampment of Moeđin1 or Moydin-from which a whole cantred takes its name in Central Cardiganshire—as fond of appearing in green; while blue petticoats are said, he says, to have prevailed in the fairy dances in North Wales 2.

Another showed me a spot on the other side of the Teifi, where the Tylwyth Teg had a favourite spot for

'According to old Welsh orthography this would be written Moudin, and in the book Welsh of the present day it would have to become Meudin. Restored, however, to the level of Gallo-Roman names, it would be Mogodunum or Magodunum. The place is known as Casteff Moeđin, and includes within it the end of a hill about halfway between Lannarth and Lampeter.

2 For other mentions of the colours of fairy dress see pp. 44, 139 above, where red prevails, and contrast the Lake Lady of Lyn Barfog clad in green, P. 145.

dancing; and at the neighbouring village of Swyd Ffynnon, another meadow was pointed out as their resort on the farm of Dôl Bydyë. According to one account I had there, the fairies dressed themselves in very long clothes, and when they danced they took hold of one another's enormous trains. Besides the usual tales concerning men enticed into the ring and retained in Faery for a year and a day, and concerning the fairies' dread of pren cerdingen or mountain ash, I had the midwife tale in two or three forms, differing more or less from the versions current in North Wales. For the most complete of them I am indebted to one of the young men studying at the Grammar School, Mr. D. ILedrodian Davies. It used to be related by an old woman who died some thirty years ago at the advanced age of about 100. She was Pàli, mother of old Rachel Evans, who died seven or eight years ago, when she was about eighty. The latter was a curious character, who sometimes sang maswed, or rhymes of doubtful propriety, and used to take the children of the village to see fairy rings. She also used to see the Tylwyth, and had many tales to tell of them. But her mother, Pàli, had actually been called to attend at the confinement of one of them. The beginning of the tale is not very explicit ; but, anyhow, Pàli one evening found herself face to face with the fairy lady she was to attend upon. She appeared to be the wife of one of the princes of the country. She was held in great esteem, and lived in a very grand palace. Everything there had been arranged in the most beautiful and charming fashion. The wife was in her bed with nothing about her but white, and she fared sumptuously. In due time, when the baby had been born, the midwife had all the care connected with dressing it and serving its mother. Pàli could see or hear nobody in the whole place but

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