Welsh Fairy Folklore of Swansea and Carmarthenshire: Golden Treasure, Faery Passwords, Changelings, and the Mermaid (Lady of the Lake)
The following interesting story is from the book Celtic Folklore: Welsh and Manx by John Rhys (1901):
"Mr. Richard L. Davies, teacher of the Board School at Ystalyfera, in the Tawe Valley [or Swansea Valley], has been kind enough to write out for me a budget of ideas about the Cwm Tawe Fairies, as retailed to him by a native who took great delight in the traditions of his neighbourhood - John Davies (Shon o'r Bont), who was a storekeeper at Ystalyfera. He died an old man about three years ago. I give his stories as transmitted to me by Mr. Davies, but the reader will find them a little hazy now and then, as when the fairies are made into ordinary conjurer's devils:
"That is a wonderful thing, that old castle there, he would say, pointing to the Ynys Geinon Rock [near Craig Y Nos Castle, now in the Brecon Beacons National Park near Glyntawe, in Powys, Wales]. I remember a time when people would be terrified to go near it, especially at night. There was considerable danger that one might be taken to Bendith y Mamau [or Tylwyth Teg, the fairy folk]. It is said that there are a great many of them there, though I know not where they abide. The old folks used to say that there was a pit somewhere about the middle of the Castle, about a yard wide and some five or six yards deep, with a stone about three tons in weight over the mouth of it, and that they had a passage underground from that pit all the way to the cave of Tan yr Ogof near the top of the Cwm [or valley], that is, near Adelina Patti's residence at Craig y Nos Castle:
"There [in the cave], it was said, they spent their time during the day, while they came down here to play their tricks at night. They have, they say, a gold ladder of one or two and twenty rungs, and it is along that they pass up and down. They have a little word ; and it suffices if the foremost on the ladder merely utters that word, for the stone to rise of itself; while there is another word, which it suffices the hindmost in going down to utter so that the stone shuts behind him.
"It is said that a servant from one of the neighbouring farms, when looking for rabbits in the rock, happened to say the word as he stood near the stone, that it opened for him, and that he went down the ladder; but that because he was ignorant of the word to make it shut behind him, the fairies discovered by the draught putting out their candles that there was something wrong. So they found him out and took him with them. He remained living with them for seven years, but at the end of the seven years he escaped with his hat full of guineas [gold coins]. He had by this time learnt the two words, and got to know a good deal about the hiding places of their treasures. He told everything to a farmer in the neighbourhood, so the latter likewise went down, and some used to say that he brought thence thrice the fill of a salt-chest of guineas, half guineas, and seven-and-sixpenny pieces in one day. But he got too greedy, and like many a greedy one before him his crime proved his death; for he went down the fourth time in the dusk of the evening, when the fairies came upon him, and he was never seen any more. It is said that his four quarters [as in "drawn and quartered"] hang in a room under the Castle but who has been there to see them I know not. It is true enough that the above-mentioned farmer got lost, and that nothing was heard respecting him; and it is equally true that his family became very well to do almost at once at that time.
"You know as well as I do that they say, that the fairies have underground passages to the caves of Ystradfellte, near Penderyn. There is the Garn Goch [Y Garn Goch Iron Age Fort, with a history of settlement dating back to the Neolithic] also on the Drum (now called the village of Onllwyn); they say there are hundreds of tons of gold accumulated by them there, and you have heard the story about one of the Gethings going thither to dig in the Garn, and how he [sic] was transformed by the fairies into a wheel of fire, and that he could get no quiet from them until he sent them to manufacture a rope of sand!"
— A more intelligible version of this story has been given at pp. 19-20 above. "There was formerly an old woman living in a small house near Ynys Geinon; and she had the power of bewitching, people used to say: there was a rumour that she spent seven days, seven hours, and seven minutes with the fairies every year in the cave at the Castle. It was a pretty general belief that she got such and such a quantity of gold for every child she could steal for them, and that she put one of those old urchins of theirs in its place: the latter never grew at all. The way she used to do it was to enter people's houses with the excuse of asking for alms, having a large dark-grey old cloak on her back, and the cloak concealed one of the children of Bendith y Mamau. Whenever she found the little child of the good woman of the house in its cradle, she would take upon herself to rock the cradle, so that if the mother only turned her back for a minute or two, she would throw the sham child into the cradle and hurry away as fast as she could with the baby.
"A man in the neighbourhood had a child lingering for years without growing at all, and it was the opinion of all that it had been changed by the old woman. The father at length threatened to call in the aid of "the wise man," when the old woman came there for seven days, pretending that it was in order to bathe the little boy in cold water; and on the seventh day she got permission to take him, before it was light, under a certain spout of water: so she said, but the neighbours said it was to change him. However that was, the boy from that time forth got on as fast as a gosling. But the mother had all but to take an oath to the old woman, that she would duck him in cold water every morning for three months, and by the end of that time there was no finer infant in the Cwm."
Mr. Davies has given me some account also of the annual pilgrimage to the Fan mountains [Carmarthen Fans] to see the Lake Lady: these are his words on the subject — they recall pp. 15-16 above:
— "It has been the yearly custom (for generations, as far as I can find) for young as well as many people further advanced in years to make a general excursion in carts, gambos, and all kinds of vehicles, to ILyn y Fan [Llyn y Fan Fach], in order to see the water nymph (who appeared on one day only, viz. the first Sunday in August). This nymph was said to have the lower part of her body resembling that of a dolphin, while the upper part was that of a beautiful lady: this anomalous form appeared on the first Sunday in August (if the lake should be without a ripple) and combed her tresses on the reflecting surface of the lake. The yearly peregrination to the abode of the Fan deity is still kept up in this valley — Cwmtawe; but not to the extent that it used to formerly."
Originally posted on our Random Religion and Spirituality blog at:
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