'Before bidding one another "Good-bye," they are said to have sworn to each other eternal fidelity, even though they should never see one another from that moment forth, and that nothing should make the one forget the other.

'It is thought probable that the young man Rhyderch, on his way back towards home, got into one of the rings of the fairies, that they allured him into one of their caves in the Ravens' Rift, and that there he remained.

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'It is high time for us now to turn back towards Pantannas and Pen Craig Daf. The parents of the unlucky youth were almost beside themselves: they had no idea where to go to look for him, and, though they searched every spot in the place, they failed completely to find him or any clue to his history.

'A little higher up the country, there dwelt, in a cave underground, an aged hermit called Gweiryd, who was regarded also as a sorcerer. They went a few weeks afterwards to ask him whether he could give them any information about their lost son; but it was of little avail. What that man told them did but deepen the wound and give the event a still more hopeless aspect. When they had told him of the appearance of the little woman, and the doleful cry heard rising from the river on the night when their son was lost, he informed them that it was the judgement threatened to the family by the fairies that had overtaken the youth, and that it was useless for them to think of ever seeing him again: possibly he might make his appearance after generations had gone by, but not in their lifetime.

'Time rolled on, weeks grew into months, and months into years, until Rhyderch's father and

mother were gathered to their ancestors. The place continued the same, but the inhabitants constantly changed, so that the memory of Rhyderch's disappearance was fast dying away. Nevertheless there was one who expected his return all the while, and hoped, as it were against hope, to see him once more. Every morn, as the gates of the dawn opened beyond the castellated heights of the east, she might be seen, in all weathers, hastening to the top of a small hill, and, with eyes full of the tears of longing, gazing in every direction to see if she could behold any sign of her beloved's return; but in vain. At noon, she might be seen on the same spot again; she was also there at the hour when the sun was wont to hide himself, like a redhot ball of fire, below the horizon. She gazed until she was nearly blind, and she wept forth her soul from day to day for the darling of her heart. At last they that looked out at the windows began to refuse their service, and the almond tree commenced to crown her head with its virgin bloom. She continued to gaze, but he came not. Full of days, and ripe for the grave, death put an end to all her hopes and all her expectations. Her mortal remains were buried in the graveyard of the old Chapel of the Fan1.

'Years passed away like smoke, and generations like the shadows of the morning, and there was no longer anybody alive who remembered Rhyderch, but the tale of his sudden missing was frequently in people's mouths. And we ought to have said that after the event no one of the fairies was seen about the neighbourhood, and the sound of their music ceased from that night.

The Fan is the highest mountain in the parish of Merthyr Tydfil, Mr. Hughes tells me: he adds that there was on its side once a chapel with a burial ground. Its history seems to be lost, but human bones have, as he states, been frequently found there.

'Rhyderch had been allured by them, and they took him away into their cave. When he had stayed there only a few days, as he thought, he asked for permission to return, which was readily granted him by the king. He issued from the cave when it was a fine noon, with the sun beaming from the bosom of a cloudless firmament. He walked on from the Ravens' Rift until he came near the site of the Fan Chapel; but what was his astonishment to find no chapel there! Where, he wondered, had he been, and how long away? So with mixed feelings he directed his steps towards Pen Craig Daf, the home of his beloved one, but she was not there nor any one whom he knew either. He could get no word of the history of his sweetheart, and those who dwelt in the place took him for a madman.

'He hastened then to Pantannas, where his astonishment was still greater. He knew nobody there, and nobody knew anything about him. At last the man of the house came in, and he remembered hearing his grandfather relating how a youth had suddenly disappeared, nobody knew whither, some hundreds of years previously. Somehow or other the man of the house chanced to knock his walking-stick against Rhyderch, when the latter vanished in a shower of dust. Nothing more was ever heard of him.'

Before leaving Glamorgan, I may add that Mr. Sikes associates fairy ladies with Crymlyn Lake, between Briton Ferry and Swansea ; but, as frequently happens with him, he does not deign to tell us whence he got the legend. 'It is also believed,' he says at p. 35, 'that a large town lies swallowed up there, and that the Guraged Annwn have turned the submerged walls to use as the superstructure of their fairy palaces. Some claim to have seen the towers of beautiful castles lifting their battlements beneath the surface of the dark

waters, and fairy bells are at times heard ringing from these towers.' So much by the way: we shall return to Crymlyn in chapter vii.

XII.

The other day, as I was going to Gwent, I chanced to be in the Golden Valley in Herefordshire, where the names in the churchyards seem largely to imply a Welsh population, though the Welsh language has not been heard there for ages. Among others I noticed Joneses and Williamses in abundance at Abbey Dore, Evanses and Bevans, Morgans, Prossers and Prices, not to mention Sayces-that is to say, Welshmen of English extraction or education--a name which may also be met with in Little England in Pembrokeshire, and probably on other English-Welsh borders. Happening to have to wait for a train at the Abbey Dore station, I got into conversation with the tenants of a cottage hard by, and introduced the subject of the fairies. The old man knew nothing about them, but his wife, Elizabeth Williams, had been a servant girl at a place called Pen Pôch, which she pronounced with the Welsh guttural ch: she said that it is near ILandeilo Cressenny in Monmouthshire. It was about forty years ago when she served at Pen Pôch, and her mistress' name was Evans, who was then about fifty years of age. Now Mrs. Evans was in the habit of impressing on her servant girls' minds, that, unless they made the house tidy before going to bed, and put everything in its place overnight, the little people-the fairies, she thinks she called them -would leave them no rest in bed at night, but would come and 'pinch them like.' If they put everything in its place, and left the house 'tidy like,' it would be all

right, and 'nobody would do anything to them like.' That is all I could get from her without prompting her, which I did at length by suggesting to her that the fairies might leave the tidy servants presents, a shilling 'on the hearth or the hob like.' Yes, she thought there was something of that sort, and her way of answering me suggested that this was not the first time she had heard of the shilling. She had never been lucky enough to have had one herself, nor did she know of anybody else that 'had got it like.'

During a brief but very pleasant sojourn at ILanover in May, 1883, I made some inquiries about the fairies, and obtained the following account from William Williams, who now, in his seventieth year, works in Lady ILanover's garden :-'I know of a family living a little way from here at or as they would now call it in English -, whose ancestors, four generations ago, used to be kind to Bendith y Mamau, and always welcomed their visits by leaving at night a basinful of bread and milk for them near the fire. It always used to be eaten up before the family got up in the morning. But one night a naughty servant man gave them instead of milk a bowlful of urine1. They, on finding it out, threw it about the house and went away disgusted. But the servant watched in the house the following night. They found him out, and told him that he had made fools of them, and that in punishment for his crime there would always be a fool, i. e. an idiot, in his family. As a matter of fact, there was one among his children afterwards, and there is one in the family now. They have always been in a bad way ever since, and they never prosper. The name of the man who originally

1 The above, I am sorry to say, is not the only instance of this nasty trick associating itself with Gwent, as will be seen from the story of Bwca'r Trwyn in chapter x.

RHYS