John Rhys

“ He is lured, be it noticed, out of his home in the lake by the attractions of a young woman, who lets him rest his head in her lap and fall asleep. When he wakes to find himself in chains he takes a cruel revenge on her. But with infinite toil and labour he is dragged beyond the Conwy watershed into one of the highest tarns on Snowdon; for there is here no question of killing him, but only of removing him where he cannot harm the people of the Conwy Valley. ”

“ Sikes.
‘But the fair family did not,’ Mr. William Jones goes on to say, ‘always give mortals the means of good living: sometimes they made no little fun of them. Once on a time the Drws y Coed man was going home from Beđgelert Fair, rather merry than sad, along the old road over the Gader, when he saw, on coming near [100] the top of the Gader, a fine, handsome house near the road, in which there was a rare merrymaking. He knew perfectly well that there was no such a building anywhere on his way, and it made him think that he had lost his way and gone astray ”

“ I shall not come without the swine.' So he and eleven followers, all disguised as bards from North Wales, presented themselves in due time at the court of Pryderi, on the banks of the river Teivi. They met with an excellent reception; and on the evening of the first day, Pryderi suggested that one of the young men in Gwydion's suite should tell a tale or relate a history—I use both words, because the Mabinogi, touched by no nice discrimination born of the bolder wisdom of a later age, makes no distinction between story and history, between story-tellers and historians. ”

“ Gwydion obtained the boons which he conferred on man mostly by force or by craft from the powers terrene, with whom he dealt in an utterly unscrupulous fashion.
Woden procured the precious draught which was to be a gift and joy for men by wiliness, Ulysses-like patience, and even perjury, as when he became the guileful lover of Gundfled, daughter of Suptung the giant, who owned the holy drink, in order to steal the latter, which he did successfully. ”

“ His father was a [224] farmer there, and his children, both boys and girls, were like ordinary folks, excepting Elis, who was deformed, his legs being so short that his body seemed only a few inches from the ground when he walked. His voice was also small and squeaky. However, he was very sharp, and could find his way among the rocks pretty well when he went in quest of his father’s sheep and goats, of which there used to be plenty there formerly. Everybody believed Elis to have been a changeling, and one saying of his is still remembered in that part of the country. ”

“ As the law of her country did not permit her to frequent the earth with an earthly being, she and her mother invented a way of avoiding the one thing and of securing the other. A great piece of sod was set to float on the surface of the lake, and on that she used to be for long hours, freely conversing in tenderness with her consort on shore; by means of that plan they managed to live together until he breathed his last. Their descendants owned Drws y Coed for many generations, and they intermarried and mixed with the people of the district. ”

“ If we glance at Ptolemy’s Geography written in the second century, we find in his account of the British Isles that he names more than fifty of our river mouths and estuaries, and that he divides their names almost equally into masculine and feminine. The modern Welsh usage has, it is seen, departed far from this, but not so far the folklore: the afanc is a male, and we have a figure of the same sex appearing as the father of the lake maiden in the Fan Fach story, and in that of Ỻyn Du’r Arđu ”

“ They agreed with me that English shoes did not, as a rule, fit Welsh feet, and this because they are made too low in the instep: I ought to have said that they all agreed except one undergraduate, who held his peace. He is a tall man, powerful in the football field, but of no dark complexion, and I have never dared to look in the direction of his feet since, lest he should catch me carrying my comparisons to cruel extremes. Perhaps the flatness of the feet of the one race is not emphasized so much as the height of the instep in those of the other. ”

“ Unfortunately for me, all the adult changelings of whom I happen to have heard any account had died some years before I began to turn my attention to the population of Faery, with the exception, perhaps, of one whose name I obtained under the seal of secrecy. It was that of the wife of a farmer living near Nefyn, in West Carnarvonshire. It was whispered that she was a changeling, so I am inclined to regard her as no other than one of the representatives of the same aboriginal stock to which one might conjecture some of her neighbours also to belong ”

“ Now, though the harpist was a mere stripling, he thought of wedding at once—he was never before in such a heaven of delight. But next morning he was waked, not by a kiss from Olwen, but by the Plas Drain shepherd’s dog licking his lips: he found himself sleeping against the wall of a sheepfold (corlan) , with his harp in a clump of rushes at his feet, without any trace to be found of the family with whom he had spent such a happy night.
The next story recalls Glasynys’ Einion Las, as given at pp. 111–5 above: its peculiarity is the part played by the well introduced. ”

“ So that sìli ffrit Leisa Bèla may now be heard from the mouths of the children in that neighbourhood. But I have not been successful in finding out what Liza Bella’s ‘silly frit’ exactly means, though I am, on the whole, convinced that the words are other than of Welsh origin. The last of them, ffrit, is usually applied in Cardiganshire to anything worthless or insignificant, and the derivative, ffrityn, means one who has no go or perseverance in him: the feminine is ffriten. In Carnarvonshire my wife has heard ffrityn and ffritan applied to a small man and a small woman respectively. ”

“ In Welsh, the nine forms of the mythic beauty have been effaced by the blanching hand of oblivion; but one recognizes her person in the Lady of the Fountain who becomes Owein's wife, after her handmaid Lunet had rescued him from death by giving him a Gygean ring to conceal him from his enemies. In the case of Fedelm, the reference to the nine nights of the week is involved in the nine forms of her beauty, and in that of Lunet they are symbolized by the ring which makes its possessor invisible whenever he pleases. ”

“ The fairy Werđon, in the radical form Gwerđon, not only recalls to my mind the Green Isles called Gwerđonau Ỻïon, but also the saying, common in North Wales, that a person in great anxiety ‘sees Y Werđon.’ Thus, for instance, a man who fails to return to his family at the hour expected, and believes his people to be in great anxiety about him, expresses himself by saying that they will have ‘seen the Werđon on my account’ (mi fyđan’ wedi gwel’d y Werđon am dana’i) . Is that Ireland, or is it the land of the fairies, the other world, in fact? ”

“ According to the Book of the Dun, it happened one day during Cúchulainn's defence of Ulster against the forces of Ailill and Medb from the west, that the Mórrigu presented herself to him in the form of a damsel of highly distinguished appearance, clad in a dress of all colours. 'Who art thou?' inquired Cúchulainn. 'I am the daughter of Buan the king,' said she; 'I am come to thee; I have loved thee on account of thy fame, and I have brought with me my treasures and my herds.' 'Not good, indeed,' said he, 'is the time of thy coming to us: is not the bloom of our . ”

“ For I have long suspected that we cannot regard as of Aryan origin the vocal talent so general in Wales, and so conspicuous in our choirs of working people as to astonish all the great musicians who have visited our national festival. Beyond all doubt, race has not a little to do with the artistic feelings: a short-skull may be as unmusical, for example, as I am ”

“ He at once guessed that the ingenious wording of the boy's utterance betokened coming greatness, and that Aitherne, who would probably be of the same opinion, would come, as he feared, to kill the boy in order to avoid the rise of a possible rival. So it was thought expedient to take the boy out of the way, and his sister took him to the sea near Slieve Mis in the south, which must mean either the Bay of Dingle or of Tralee, in the west of Kerry, while his father made an earthen image of him, which was dressed up to counterfeit Amorgen asleep close to where Eccet was at work. ”

“ I shall set thee in my place in Hades, and give thee the most beautiful woman thou hast ever seen to sleep with thee every night. Thou shalt have my form and shape, so that no valet, no officer, or anybody else who has ever been in my suite, should know that it is not I. That,' said he, 'is to last till this time to-morrow twelvemonth, when this spot is to be our meeting-place.' 'But,' said Pwyỻ, 'though I remain there a year, what certainty have I of engaging him thou speakest of?' 'This night twelvemonth,' said Arawn, 'I have an appointment to meet him in the ford ”

“ There is no cave to be seen in the rock, and probably there never was one, as the formation is the Old Red Sandstone; and the island was perhaps equally imaginary.’
That is the substance of Mr. James’ letter, in which he, moreover, refers to J. D. Rhys’ account of the lake in his Welsh introduction to his Grammar, published in London in 1592, under the title Cambrobrytannicæ Cymraecæve Linguæ Institutiones et Rudimenta. ”

“ The distinction is a small one, but it is of great importance when Lleu is compared with the Irish sun-heroes. The former does next to nothing for himself, since nearly everything is done for him by Gwydion; and Balder is treated much in the same way by his parents. On the other hand, the wily shrewdness which the Welsh story ascribes to the father is passed on by the Irish one to his son Lug, while the father practically disappears ”

“ The most common name for the fairies in Welsh is y Tylwyth Teg, ‘the Fair or Beautiful Family’; but in South Cardiganshire we have found them called Plant Rhys Đwfn, ‘the Children of Rhys the Deep’ (pp. 151, 158) , while in Gwent and Morgannwg they are more usually known as Bendith y Mamau, ‘the Blessing of the Mothers’ (p. 174) . Our fourteenth century poet, D. ab Gwilym, uses the first-mentioned term, Tylwyth Teg, in poem xxxix, and our prose literature has a word corr, cor in the sense of a dwarf, and corres for a she dwarf. ”

“ The other children died broken-hearted after their mother, and the husband was left alone with the little elf without any one to comfort them. But shortly after, one began to resort again to the hearth of the Gors Goch to dress children, and the gift, which had formerly been silver money, [111] became henceforth pure gold. In the course of a few years the elf became the heir of a large farm in North Wales, and that is why the old people used to say, “Shoe the elf with gold and he will grow” (Fe đaw gwiđon yn fawr ond ei bedoli ag aur) . ”

“ He is there described sitting on the rock of Harlech in Merioneth, with his courtiers around him, when he descried ships sailing rapidly towards the land: he sent some of his men down to meet them and to ascertain the business of those in them. It turned out to be the fleet of Matholwch, a king of Ireland, who was come to ask for Brân's sister Branwen to wife. Brân, without moving from his seat on the rock, conversed with Matholwch, and bade him land; after due deliberation the latter's request was granted, and he returned to Ireland with Branwen as his queen. ”

“ Rhita is not said, it is true, to have been a Gwyđel, ‘Goidel’; but he is represented ruling over Ireland, and his name, which is not Welsh, recalls at first sight those of such men as Boya the Pict or Scot figuring in the life of St. David, and such as Ỻia Gvitel, ‘Ỻia the Goidel,’ mentioned in the Stanzas of the Graves in the Black Book of Carmarthen as buried in the seclusion of Ardudwy8. Malory’s Ryons is derived from the French Romances, where, as for example in the Merlin, according to the Huth MS., it occurs as Rion-s in the nominative, and Rion in régime. ”

“ From the bottom of the Clogwyn Du it is about a mile to Bwlch y Saethau. Then as to the cave of Ỻanciau Eryri, which nobody can now find, the slope down to it begins from the top of the Ỻiweđ, but ordinarily speaking one could not descend to where it is supposed to have been without the help of ropes, which seems incompatible with the story of the Cwm Dyli shepherd following a sheep until he was at the mouth of the cave; not to mention the difficulty which the descent would have offered to Arthur’s men when they entered it. ”

“ These jottings contain two or three items about the fairies which seem to be genuine:—
‘The bottom of Ỻyn Cynnwch, on the Nannau estate, is level with the hearth-stone of the house of Dôl y Clochyđ. Its depth was found out owing to the sweetheart of one of Siwsi’s girls having lost his way to her from Nannau, where he was a servant. The [136] poor man had fallen into the lake, and gone down and down, when he found it becoming clearer the lower he got, until at last he alighted on a level spot where everybody and everything looked much as he had observed on the dry land. ”

“ These last came into collision with Pwyỻ’s son, Pryderi, in whose country Manawyđan, son of Ỻyr, had ended his days. Pryderi, in consequence of Gwydion’s deceit (pp. 69, 501, 525) , makes war on Math and the children of Dôn: he falls in it, and his army gives hostages to Math. Thus after the disappearance of the sons of Ỻyr, the children of Dôn are found in power in their stead in North Wales70, and that state of things corresponds closely enough to the relation between the Tuatha Dé Danann and the Lir family in Irish legend. ”