Yr oedynt unwaith mewn hen adeilad ar y ffarm; a dywedod yr hen wr ei fod ef wedi cael tlawer o arian yn y tte hwnnw pan yn hogyn, a buasai wedi cael ychwaneg oni bai ei dad.

Yr oed wedi cudio yr arian yn y ty, ond daeth ei fam o hyd iddynt, a dywedod yr hanes wrth ei dad. Ofnai ei fod yn fachgen drwg, mai eu ttadrata yr oed. Dywedai ei dad y gwnai ido dweyd yn mha le yr oed yn eu cael, neu y tynnai ei groen tros ei ben; ac aeth attan a thorod wialen bwrpasol at orchwyl o'r fath.

Yr oed y bachgen yn gwrando ar yr ymdidan rhwng ei dad a'i fam, ac yr oed yn benderfynol o gadw'r peth yn dirgelwch fel yr oed wedi ei rybudio gan y Tylwyth Teg.

Aeth i'r ty, a dechreuod y tad ei holi, ac yntau yn gwrthod ateb; ymbiliai a'i dad, a dywedai eu bod yn berffaith onest ido ef, ac y cai ef ychwaneg os cadwai'r peth yn dirgelwch; ond os dywedai, nad oed dim ychwaneg i'w gael. Mod bynnag ni wrandawai y tad ar ei esgusion na’i resymau, a'r wialen a orfu; dywedod y bachgen mai gan y Tylwyth Teg yr oed yn eu cael, a hynny ar yr amod nad oed i dweyd wrth neb. Mawr oed edifeirwch yr hen bobl dodwy.

am lad yr wyd oed yn

Aeth y bachgen i'r hen adeilad lawer gwaith ar ol hyn, ond ni chafod byth ychwaneg o arian yno.

'When a lad, he was a servant at Towyn Trewern, near Holyhead, to an old man about his own age at present. They were one day in an old building on the farm, and the old man told him that he had had much money in that place when he was a lad, and that he would have had more had it not been for his father. He had hidden the money at home, where his mother found it and told his father of the affair: she feared he was a bad boy, and that it was by theft he got it. His father said that he would make him say where he got it,

or else that he would strip him of the skin of his back, at the same time that he went out and cut a rod fit for effecting a purpose of the kind. The boy heard all this talk between his father and his mother, and felt determined to keep the matter a secret, as he had been warned by the Tylwyth Teg. He went into the house, and his father began to question him, while he refused to answer. He supplicatingly protested that the money was honestly got, and that he should get more if he kept it a secret, but that, if he did not, there would be no more to be got. However, the father would give no ear to his excuses or his reasons, and the rod prevailed; so that the boy said that it was from the Tylwyth Teg he used to get it, and that on condition of his not telling anybody. Greatly did the old folks regret having killed the goose that laid the eggs. The boy went many a time afterwards to the old building, but he never found any more money there.'

IV.

Through the Rev. Daniel Lewis, incumbent of Bettws Garmon, I was directed to Mr. Samuel Rhys Williams, of the Post Office of that place, who has kindly given me the result of his inquiries when writing on the subject of the antiquities of the neighbourhood for a competition at a literary meeting held there a few years ago. He tells me that he got the following short tale from a native of Drws y Coed, whose name is Margaret Williams. She has been living at Bettws Garmon for many years, and is now over eighty. He does not know whether the story is in print or not, but he is certain that Margaret Williams never saw it, even if it be. He further thinks he has heard it from another person, to wit a man over seventy-seven years

of age, who has always lived at Drws y Coed, in the parish of Bedgelert :

y

Y mae hanes am fab i amaethwr a breswyliai yn yr Ystrad1, Betws Garmon2, pan yn dychwelyd adref o daith yn hwyr un noswaith, darfod ido weled cwmni o'r Tylwyth Teg ynghanol eu hafiaeth a'u glođest. Syfrdanwyd y ttanc yn y fan gan degwch anghymarol un o'r rhianod hyn, fel beidiod neidio i ganol y cylch, a chymeryd ei eilun gydag ef. Wedi idi fod yn trigo gydag ef yn ei gartref am ysbaid, cafod gandi aðaw bod yn wraig ido ar amodau neillduol. Un o'r amodau hyn ydoed, na bydai ido gyffwrd yndi ag un math o haiarn. Bu yn wraig ido, a ganwyd iddynt dau o blant. Un diwrnod yr oed y gwr yn y maes yn ceisio dal y ceffyl; wrth ei weled yn ffaelu, aeth y wraig ato i'w gynorthwyo, a phan oed y march yn carlamu heibio gottyngod yntau y ffrwyn o'i law, er mwyn ceisio ei atal heibio; a phwy a darawod ond ei wraig, yr hon a diflannod yn y fan atlan o'i olwg?

'The story goes, that the son of a farmer, who lived at the Ystrad in Bettws Garmon, when returning home from a journey, late in the evening, beheld a company of fairies in the middle of their mirth and jollity. The youth was at once bewildered by the incomparable beauty of one of these ladies, so that he ventured to leap into the circle and take his idol away with him. After she had tarried awhile with him at his home, he prevailed on her, on special conditions, to become his wife. One of these conditions was that he should not touch her with iron of any description. She became

1 Ystrad is the Welsh corresponding to Scotch strath, and it is nearly related to the English word strand. It means the flat land near a river. 'Betws (or Bettws) Garmon seems to mean Germanus's Bede-hūs or House of Prayer, but Garmon can hardly have come down in Welsh from the time of the famous saint in the fifth century, as it would then have probably yielded Gerfon and not Garmon: it looks as if it had come through the Goidelic of this country.

his wife, and two children were born to them.

One

day the husband was in the field trying to catch the horse; seeing him unsuccessful, the wife went to him to help him, and, when the horse was galloping past him, he let go the bridle at him in order to prevent him from passing; but whom should he strike but his wife, who vanished out of his sight on the spot.'

Just as I was engaged in collecting these stories in 1881, a correspondent sent me a copy of the Ystrad tale as published by the late bard and antiquary, the Rev. Owen Wyn Jones, better known in Wales by his bardic name of Glasynys', in the Brython2 for 1863, p. 193. I will not attempt to translate Glasynys' poetic prose with all its compound adjectives, but it comes to this in a few words. One fine sunny morning, as the young heir of Ystrad was busied with his sheep on the side of Moel Eilio, he met a very pretty girl, and when he got home he told the folks there of it. A few days afterwards he met her again, and this happened several times, when he mentioned it to his father, who advised

One of the rare merits of our Welsh bards is their habit of assuming permanent noms de plume, by means of which they prevent a number of excellent native names from falling into utter oblivion in the general chaos of Anglo-Hebrew ones, such as Jones, Davies, and Williams, which cover the Principality. Welsh place-names have similarly been threatened by Hebrew names of chapels, such as Bethesda, Rehoboth, and Jerusalem, but in this direction the Jewish mania has only here and there effected permanent mischief.

:

2 The Brython was a valuable Welsh periodical published by Mr. Robert Isaac Jones, at Tremadoc, in the years 1858–1863, and edited by the Rev. Chancellor Silvan Evans, who was then the curate of ILangian in ILeyn in fact he was curate for fourteen years! His excellent work in editing the Brython earned for him his diocesan's displeasure, but it is easier to imagine than to describe how hard it was for him to resign the honorarium of £24 derived from the Brython when his stipend as a clergyman was only £92, at the same time that he had dependent on him a wife and six children. However much some people affect to laugh at the revival of the national spirit in Wales, we have, I think, got so far as to make it, for some time to come, impossible for a Welsh clergyman to be snubbed on account of his literary tastes or his delight in the archæology of his country.

him to seize her when he next met her. The next time he met her he proceeded to do so, but before he could take her away, a little fat old man came to them and begged him to give her back to him, to which the youth would not listen. The little man uttered terrible threats, but the heir of Ystrad would not yield, so an agreement was made between them, that the latter was to have the girl to wife until he touched her skin with iron, and great was the joy both of the son and his parents in consequence. They lived together for many years; but once on a time, on the evening of the Bettws Fair, the wife's horse became restive, and somehow, as the husband was attending to the horse, the stirrup touched the skin of her bare leg, and that very night she was taken away from him. She had three or four children, and more than one of their descendants, as Glasynys maintains, were known to him at the time he wrote in 1863. Glasynys regards this as the same tale which is given by Williams of ILandegai, to whom we shall refer later; and he says that he heard it scores of times when he was a lad.

Lastly, I happened to mention these legends last summer among others to the Rev. Owen Davies, curate of ILanberis, a man who is well versed in Welsh literature, and thoroughly in sympathy with everything Welsh. Mr. Davies told me that he knew a tale of the sort from his youth, as current in the parishes of ILanttechid and ILandegai, near Bangor. Not long afterwards he visited his mother at his native place, in Lanttechid, in order to have his memory of it refreshed; and he also went to the Waen Fawr, on the other side of Carnarvon, where he had the same legend told him with the different localities specified. The following is the Waen Fawr version, of which I give the Welsh as I have had it from Mr. Davies, and as it was