Celtic Lore & Legend (9 page)

In a meadow belonging to Ystrad, bounded by the river which flows from Cwellyn Lake, they say the Fairies used to assemble, and dance on fair moon-light-nights. One evening a
young man who was the heir and occupier of this farm, hid himself in a thicket close to the spot where they used to gambol; presently they appeared, and when in their merry mood, out he bounced from his covert and seized one of their females; the rest of the company dispersed themselves and disappeared in an instant. Disregarding her struggles and screams; he hauled her to his home, where he treated her so very kindly that she became content to live with him as his maid servant; but he could not prevail upon her to tell him her name. Some time after, happening to see the Fairies again upon the same spot, he heard one of them saying: “The last time we met here, our sister
Penelope
was snatched away from us by one of the mortals”. Rejoiced at knowing the name of his
Incognita
, he returned home: and, as she was very beautiful and extremely active, he proposed to marry her, which she would not for a long time consent to; at last however she complied but on this condition: ‘That if ever he should strike her with
iron
, she would leave him and never return to him again’. They lived happily for many years together, and he had by her a son and a daughter; and by her industry and prudent management as a house-wife, he became one of the richest men in the country. He farmed, besides his own household, his own freehold, all the lands on the north side of Nant-y-Bettws to the top of Snowdon and all of Cwmbrynog in Llanberis, an extent of about five thousand acres or upwards.

Unfortunately, one day Penelope followed her husband into the fields to catch a horse; and he being in rage at the animal as he ran away from him, threw the bridle that was in his hand, which unluckily fell on poor Penelope. She disappeared in an instant and he never saw her afterwards, but heard her voice in the window of his room, one night after, requesting him to take care of the children in these words:

“
Rhag bod anwyd ar fy mab,
Yn rhodd rhowch arno gob ai dad,
Rhag bod anwyd ar liwr cann,
Rhoddwch arni bais ei mam
”.

That is:

“Oh! Lest my son should suffer cold,

Him in his father’s coal infold.

Lest cold should seize my darling fair,

For her, her mother’s robe prepare”.

These children and their descendants, they say, were called
Pellings
; a word corrupted from their mother’s name Penelope.

Williams proceeds thus with reference to the descendants of this union:

“The late Thomas Rowlands Esq., of Caeran in Anglesey, the father of the late Lady Bukeley, was a descendant of this lady if it be true that the name
Pellings
came from her; and there are still living several opulent and respectable people who are known to have sprung from the
Pellings
. The best blood in my own veins is this Fairy’s.”

This tale was chronicled in the last century but it is not known whether every particular incident connected therewith was recorded by Williams.
Glasynys
, the Rev. Owen Wynne Jones, a clergyman, relates a tale in the
Brython
which he regards as the same tale as that given by Williams, and he says that he heard it scores of times when he was a lad. [
Editor’s Note
: Glasynys was the pen name used by another celebrated Welsh folklorist and antiquarian: Owen Wynne Jones, who contributed to the
Brython
, a Welsh journal of history, tradition and folklore, to which Elias Owen alludes.] Glasynys was born in the parish of Rhostryfan in Carnarvonshire in 1827,
and as the place of his birth is not far distant from the scene of this legend, he may have heard a different version of Williams’s tale and that too of equal value with Williams’s Possibly, there are not more than from forty to fifty years between the time when that older writer heard the tale and the time when it was heard by the younger man. An octogenarian or even a younger person could have conversed with both Williams and Glasynys.
Glasynys
tale appears in Professor Rhys’s
Welsh Fairy Tales, Cymmrodor
, vol iv,
p. 188
. It originally appeared in the
Brython
for 1863
p. 193
. It is as follows:

“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 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 them to give her back to him, to which the youth would not listen. The little man uttered terrible threats, but he would not yield, so an agreement was made between them that he was to have her 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 Bettws Fair, the wife’s horse got restive, and somehow as the husband was attending to the horse, the stirrups 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”.

No Welsh Taboo story can be complete without the pretty tale of the Van Lake Legend or, as it is called “The Myddfai Legend”. Because of its intrinsic beauty and worth and for sake of comparison with the preceding stories, I will relate this legend. There are various versions. [
Editor’s Note
: For comparative
purposes I have chosen a version to which Elias Owen alludes and recounts in his Notes and which appeared in a volume of the Cambro-Briton in 1821.]

“A man who lived in the farmhouse called Esgair-Ileathdy, in the parish of Myddvai in Carmarthenshire, having bought some lambs in a neighbouring fair, brought them to graze near
Llyn a Van Voch
on the Black Mountains. Whenever he visited the lambs, three most beautiful female figures presented themselves to him from the lake and often made excursions on the boundaries of it. For some time, he pursued and endeavoured to catch them, but always failed; for the enchanting nymphs, and, when they had reached the lake they tauntingly exclaimed:

Cras dy fara,
Anhawdd ein dala
.

which, with a little circumlocution, means “For thee, who eatest baked bread, it is difficult to catch us”.

One day some moist bread from the lake came to shore. The farmer devoured it with great avidity, and on the following day he was successful in his pursuit and caught the fair damsels. After a little conversation with them, he commanded courage sufficient to make a proposal of marriage to one of them. They consented to accept him on the condition that he would distinguish her from her two sisters on the following day. This was a new and very great difficulty to the young farmer, for the fair nymphs were so similar in form and features, that he could scarcely perceive any difference between them. He observed, however, a trifling singularity in the strapping of her sandal by which he recognised her the following day. Some indeed who relate this legend, say that this Lady of the Lake hinted in a private conversation with her swain that upon the day of the trial, she would place herself between her
two sisters and that she would turn her right foot a little to the right and by this means, he distinguished her from her sisters. Whatever were the means, the end was secured, he selected her and she immediately left the lake and accompanied him to his farm. Before she quitted, she summoned to attend her from the lake, seven cows, two oxen, and one bull.

The lady engaged to live with him until such time as he would strike her three times without cause. For some years they lived together in comfort and she bore him three sons, who were the celebrated Meddygon Myddvai.

One day when preparing for a fair in the neighbourhood, he desired her to go to the field for his horse. She said she would, but being rather dilatory, he said to her humorously, “dos, dos. Dos—i.e. go, go, go” and he slightly touched her on the arm, three times with his glove.

As she now deemed the terms of her marriage broken, she immediately departed, and summoned with her her seven cows, her two oxen and the bull. The oxen were at that very time ploughing in the field but they immediately obeyed her call and took the plough with them. The furrow from the field in which they were ploughing, to the margin of the lake is to be seen in several parts of that country to the present day.

After her departure, she once met her two sons in a Cwm, now called
Cwm Meddygon
(Physicians Combe) and delivered to each of them a bag containing some articles which are unknown but which are supposed to have been some discoveries in medicine.

The Meddygon Myddvai were Rhiwallon and his sons, Cadwgan, Gruffydd, and Einion. They were the chief physicians of their age, and they wrote about
A.D.
1230. A copy of their works is in the Welsh School Library, in Grey’s Inn Lane.

Such are the Welsh Taboo tales. I will now make a few remarks upon them.

The age of these legends is worthy of consideration. The legend of
Meddygon Myddvai
dates from about the thirteenth century. Rhiwallon and his sons, we are told by the writer of the
Cambro-Briton
wrote about 1230
A.D.
but the editor of that publication speaks of a manuscript written by these physicians about the year 1300. Modern experts think that their treatise on medicine in the
Red Book of Hengist
belongs to the end of the fourteenth century, about 1380 or 1400.

Dyfydd ab Gwilym
, who is said to have flourished in the fourteenth century, says in one of his poems, as given in the
Cambro-Briton
, vol ii, p 313, alluding to these physicians:

“
Meddyg nis gwnai modd y gwaeth

Myddfai, o chai ddyn maddfaeth
”

“A Physician he would not make,

As Myddvai made, if he had a mead fostered man”

It would appear, therefore, that these celebrated physicians lived somewhere about the thirteenth century. They are describes as the Physicians of Rhys Gryg, a prince of South Wales, who lived in the early part of the thirteenth century. Their supposed supernatural origin dates therefore from the thirteenth or at the latest, the fourteenth century.

I have mentioned
Y Gwylliaid Cochion
, or as they are generally styled,
Gwylliaid Cochion Mawddwy
, the Red Fairies of Mawddwy as being of Fairy origin. The Llanfrothen Legend [
Editor’s Note
: There is an ancient story from Llanfrothen in Merionethshire in which a shepherd marries a maiden who emerges from a hill. She lives with him for a number of years and they have several children. When touched with iron, she tells him that she must now depart and return to her former life. He asks what will become of the children without a mother, to which she replies, “Let them be red-headed and big-nosed.”] seems to account for a race of men in Wales differing from their neighbours in certain features. The offspring of the Fairy
union were, according to the Fairy mother’s prediction in that legend, to have red hair and prominent noses. That a race of men having these characteristics did exist in Wales is undoubted. They were a strong tribe, the men were tall and athletic, and lived by plunder. They had their head quarters at Dinas Mawddwy, Merionethshire and taxed their neighbours in open day, driving away sheep and cattle to their dens. So unbearable did their depredations become that John Wynn ap Meredydd of Gwydir and Lewis Owen, or as he is called Baron Owen, raised a body of stout men and overcame them on Christmas Eve, 1554, succeeded in capturing a large number of the offenders and, then and there, some hundred or so of the robbers were hung. Tradition says that a mother begged hard for the life of a young son, who was to be destroyed, but Baron Owen would not relent. On perceiving that her request was unheeded, baring her breast, she said:

“
Y bronan melynion hyn a fagasant y rhai a didialant waed fy mab, ac a olchant en dwylaw yu ugwaed calon Ilolrudd en brawd
”

“These yellow breasts have nursed those who will revenge my son’s blood and will wash their hands in the heart’s blood of this murderer of their brother”

According to Pennant this threat was carried out by the murder of Baron Owen in 1555 when he was passing through the thick woods of Mawddwy on his way to Montgomeryshire Assizes at a place called to this day
Llidiart y Barwn
, the Baron’s Gate, from the deed. Tradition further tells us that the murderers had gone a distance off before they remembered their mother’s threat and returning thrust their swords into the Baron’s heart and washed their hands in his heart’s blood. This act was followed by vigorous action, and the banditti were extirpated, the females only remaining, and the descendants of these women are occasionally still to be met with in Montgomeryshire and Merionethshire.

For the preceding information, the writer is indebted to
YrHynafion Cmyru rig
pp. 91-94
,
Archaeologia Cambrensis
for 1854 p
p. 119-20
:
Pennant
vol ii, p
p. 225-27
. ed. Carnarvon , and the tradition that was told him by the Rev. D. James, Vicar of Garthbeibio, who likewise pointed out to him the very spot where the Baron was murdered.

But now, who were these
Gwylliaid
? According to the hint conveyed by their name, they were of Fairy parentage, an idea which the writer in the Archaeologia
Cambrensis
, vol v 1854 p.119, intended to throw out. But, according to
Brut y Tywysogion, Myf. Arch.
, p. 706 A.D. 1114, Denbigh edition, the
Gwylliaid Cochion Mawddwy
began in the time of Cadwgan ab Bleddyn ab Cynwyn.

From William’s
Eminent Welshmen
, we gather that Prince Cadwgan died in 1110 A.D. and, according to the abovementioned
Brut
, it was in his days that the Gwylliaid commenced their career if not their existence.