British Goblins: Welsh Folk Lore, Fairy Mythology, Legends and Traditions

by Wirt Sikes

The sovereign of the fairies, and their especial guardian and protector, was one Gwyn ap Nudd.

Keightley [8] divides into four classes the Scandinavian elements of popular belief as to fairies, viz.: 1. The Elves; 2. The Dwarfs, or Trolls; 3. The Nisses; and 4. The Necks, Mermen, and Mermaids.

The fairies of Wales may be divided into five classes, if analogy be not too sharply insisted on. Thus we have, 1. The Ellyllon, or elves; 2. The Coblynau, or mine fairies; 3. The Bwbachod, or household fairies; 4. The Gwragedd Annwn, or fairies of the lakes and streams; and 5. The Gwyllion, or mountain fairies.

The modern Welsh name for fairies is y Tylwyth Teg, the fair folk or family.

The Ellyllon are the pigmy elves who haunt the groves and valleys, and correspond pretty closely with the English elves.

The Ellylldan is a species of elf exactly corresponding to the English Will-o’-wisp, the Scandinavian Lyktgubhe, and the Breton Sand Yan y Tad. The Welsh word dan means fire; dan also means a lure; the compound word suggests a luring elf-fire.

there Cwm Pwca is, and in the sylvan days, before Frere and Powell’s ironworks were set up there, it is said to have been as full of goblins as a Methodist’s head is of piety.

A servant girl who attended to the cattle on the Trwyn farm, near Abergwyddon, used to take food to ‘Master Pwca,’ as she called the elf. A bowl of fresh milk and a slice of white bread were the component parts of the goblin’s repast, and were placed on a certain spot where he got them. One night the girl, moved by the spirit of mischief, drank the milk and ate most of the bread, leaving for Master Pwca only water and crusts. Next morning she found that the fastidious fairy had left the food untouched. Not long after, as the girl was passing the lonely spot, where she had hitherto left Pwca his food, she was seized under the arm pits by fleshly hands (which, however, she could not see), and subjected to a castigation of a most mortifying character. Simultaneously there fell upon her ear in good set Welsh a warning not to repeat her offence on peril of still worse treatment. This story ‘is thoroughly believed in there to this day.’ [18]

The most familiar form of the Pwca story is one which I have encountered in several localities, varying so little in its details that each account would be interchangeable with another by the alteration of local names. This form presents a peasant who is returning home from his work, or from a fair, when he sees a light travelling before him. Looking closer he perceives that it is carried by a dusky little figure, holding a lantern or candle at arm’s length over its head. He follows it for several miles, and suddenly finds himself on the brink of a frightful precipice. From far down below there rises to his ears the sound of a foaming torrent. At the same moment the little goblin with the lantern springs across the chasm, alighting on the opposite side; raises the light again high over its head, utters a loud and malicious laugh, blows out its candle and disappears up the opposite hill, leaving the awestruck peasant to get home as best he can.

The Gwyllion are female fairies of frightful characteristics, who haunt lonely roads in the Welsh mountains, and lead night-wanderers astray.

the Old Woman of the Mountain typifies all her kind. She is very carefully described by the Prophet Jones, [31] in the guise in which she haunted Llanhiddel Mountain in Monmouthshire. This was the semblance of a poor old woman, with an oblong four-cornered hat, ash-coloured clothes, her apron thrown across her shoulder, with a pot or wooden can in her hand, such as poor people carry to fetch milk with, always going before the spectator, and sometimes crying ‘Wow up!’ This is an English form of a Welsh cry of distress, ‘Wwb!’ or ‘Ww-bwb!’

Robert Williams, of Langattock, Crickhowel, ‘a substantial man and of undoubted veracity,’ tells this tale: As he was travelling one night over part of the Black Mountain, he saw the Old Woman, and at the same time found he had lost his way. Not knowing her to be a spectre he hallooed to her to stay for him, but receiving no answer thought she was deaf. He then hastened his steps, thinking to overtake her, but the faster he ran the further he found himself behind her, at which he wondered very much, not knowing the reason of it. He presently found himself stumbling in a marsh, at which discovery his vexation increased; and then he heard the Old Woman laughing at him with a weird, uncanny, crackling old laugh. This set him to thinking she might be a gwyll; and when he happened to draw out his knife for some purpose, and the Old Woman vanished, then he was sure of it; for Welsh ghosts and fairies are afraid of a knife.

Goats are in Wales held in peculiar esteem for their supposed occult intellectual powers. They are believed to be on very good terms with the Tylwyth Teg, and possessed of more knowledge than their appearance indicates. It is one of the peculiarities of the Tylwyth Teg that every Friday night they comb the goats’ beards to make them decent for Sunday.

Their association with the Gwyllion is related in the legend of Cadwaladr’s goat: Cadwaladr owned a very handsome goat, named Jenny, of which he was extremely fond; and which seemed equally fond of him; but one day, as if the very diawl possessed her, she ran away into the hills, with Cadwaladr tearing after her, half mad with anger and affright. At last his Welsh blood got so hot, as the goat eluded him again and again, that he flung a stone at her, which knocked her over a precipice, and she fell bleating to her doom. Cadwaladr made his way to the foot of the crag; the goat was dying, but not dead, and licked his hand—which so affected the poor man that he burst into tears, and sitting on the ground took the goat’s head on his arm. The moon rose, and still he sat there. Presently he found that the goat had become transformed to a beautiful young woman, whose brown eyes, as her head lay on his arm, looked into his in a very disturbing way. ‘Ah, Cadwaladr,’ said she, ‘have I at last found you?’ Now Cadwaladr had a wife at home, and was much discomfited by this singular circumstance; but when the goat—yn awr maiden—arose, and putting her black slipper on the end of a moonbeam, held out her hand to him, he put his hand in hers and went with her. As for the hand, though it looked so fair, it felt just like a hoof. They were soon on the top of the highest mountain in Wales, and surrounded by a vapoury company of goats with shadowy horns. These raised a most unearthly bleating ...

The Tylwyth Teg have a fatal admiration for lovely children. Hence the abundant folk-lore concerning infants who have been stolen from their cradles, and a plentyn-newid (change-child—the equivalent of our changeling) left in its place by the Tylwyth Teg.

Gweliz vi ken guelet iar wenn, Gweliz mez ken gwelet gwezen. Gweliz mez ha gweliz gwial, Gweliz derven e Koat Brezal, Biskoaz na weliz kemend all.

Gweliz mez ken gwelet derven, Gweliz vi ken gwelet iar wenn, Erioez ne wiliz evelhenn.

Gwelais fesen cyn gweled derwen; Gwelais wy cyn gweled iâr; Erioed ni welais ferwi bwyd i fedel Mewn plisgyn wy iâr! Acorns before oak I knew; An egg before a hen; Never one hen’s egg-shell stew Enough for harvest men!

preacher of the gospel. There are special exorcisms and preventive measures to interfere with the fairies in their quest of infants. The most significant of these, throughout Cambria, is a general habit of piety. Any pious exclamation has value as an exorcism; but it will not serve as a preventive. To this end you must put a knife in the child’s cradle when you leave it alone, or you must lay a pair of tongs across the cradle. But the best preventive is baptism; it is usually the unbaptised infant that is stolen. So in Friesland, Germany, it is considered a protection against the fairies who deal in changelings, to lay a Bible under the child’s pillow. In Thuringia it is deemed an infallible preventive to hang the father’s breeches against the wall. Anything more trivial than this, as a matter for the consideration of grave and scholarly men, one could hardly imagine; but it is in precisely these trivial or seemingly trivial details that the student of comparative folk-lore finds his most extraordinary indices. Such a superstition in isolation would suggest nothing; but it is found again in Scotland, [37] and other countries, including China, where ‘a pair of the trousers of the child’s father are put on the frame of the bedstead in such a way that the waist shall hang downward or be lower than the legs. On the trousers is stuck a piece of red paper, having four words written upon it intimating that all unfavourable influences are to go into the trousers instead of afflict...

Closely akin to the subject of changelings is that of adults or well-grown children being led away to live with the Tylwyth Teg.

Specific details in this instance are wanting; but it was no doubt the Ellyllon who led all these folk astray, and put a cap of oblivion on their heads, which prevented them from ever telling their adventures clearly.

The Welsh fairies are most often dancing together when seen. They seek to entice mortals to dance with them, and when anyone is drawn to do so, it is more than probable he will not return to his friends for a long time. Edmund William Rees, of Aberystruth, was thus drawn away by the fairies, and came back at the year’s end, looking very bad. But he could not give a very clear account of what he had been about, only said he had been dancing. This was a common thing in these cases. Either they were not able to, or they dared not, talk about their experiences.

Many heard their music, and said of it that it was low and pleasant; but that it had this peculiarity: no one could ever learn the tune. In more favoured parts of the Principality, the words of the song were distinctly heard, and under the name of the ‘Cân y Tylwyth Teg’ are preserved as follows: Dowch, dowch, gyfeillion mân, O blith marwolion byd, Dowch, dowch, a dowch yn lân. Partowch partowch eich pibau cân, Gan ddawnsio dowch i gyd, Mae yn hyfryd heno i hwn.

A local legend of the origin of fairies in Anglesea mingles the practical and the spiritual in this manner: ‘In our Saviour’s time there lived a woman whose fortune it was to be possessed of nearly a score of children, ... and as she saw our blessed Lord approach her dwelling, being ashamed of being so prolific, and that He might not see them all, she concealed about half of them closely, and after his departure, when she went in search of them, to her great surprise found they were all gone. They never afterwards could be discovered, for it was supposed that as a punishment from heaven for hiding what God had given her, she was deprived of them; and it is said these her offspring have generated the race called fairies.’

Men sometimes become as fondly attached to a dog as they could to any human being, and, where the creed of piety is not too severe, the possibility of a dog’s surviving after death in a better world is admitted. ‘It is hard to look in that dog’s eyes and believe,’ said a Welshman to me, ‘that he has not a bit of a soul to be saved.’

In Wales it is thought that horses have peculiarly this ‘gift’ of seeing spectres.

I cannot reasonably express the delight I would experience if a ghost-hunting show brought a horse into a reputedly-haunted house for this reason.

In Wales, the popular belief is compounded of about equal parts of foul magic and fair Biblical text; magic chiefly for summoning, the Book for exorcising.

‘What is the supernatural?’ asks Disraeli, in ‘Lothair.’ ‘Can there be anything more miraculous than the existence of man and the world? anything more literally supernatural than the origin of things?’

In the remote and primitive parish of Defynog, in Breconshire, until a few years since, a custom survived of carrying the King of Summer and the King of Winter. Two boys were chosen to serve as the two kings, and were covered all over with a dress of brigau bedw, (birchen boughs,) only their faces remaining visible. A coin was tossed and the boy chosen was the summer king; a crown of bright-hued ribbons was put upon his head. Upon the other boy’s head was placed a crown of holly, to designate the winter king. Then a procession was formed, headed by two men with drawn swords to clear the way. Four men supported the summer king upon two poles, one under his knees and the other under his arms; and four others bore the winter king in a similar undignified posture. The procession passed round the village and to the farm-houses near by, collecting largess of coin or beer, winding up the perambulation at the churchyard. Here the boys were set free, and received a dole for their services, the winter king getting less than the other.

All Hallows eve is by the Welsh called ‘Nos Calan Gauaf,’ meaning ‘the first night of winter;’ sometimes, ‘Nos Cyn Gauaf,’ the ‘night before winter.’ It is one of the ‘Teir Nos Ysprydnos,’ or ‘three nights for spirits,’ upon which ghosts walk, fairies are abroad, mysterious influences are in the air, strange sights are seen, and in short goblins of every sort are to be with special freedom encountered.

The two other spirit-nights, it may here be mentioned, are May-day eve and Midsummer eve; which with All Hallows were three great festivals of the ancient Druids, when they commemorated the powers of Nature and love in the manner which has been alluded to.

Stendhal’s declaration that, in true Biblical countries, religion spoils one day out of seven, destroys the seventh part of possible happiness, would find strong illustration in Wales. It is not my purpose to argue whether the illustration would prove or disprove Stendhal’s assertion, though one might fairly ask whether religious people are not, perhaps, as happy in going to church on Sunday as irreligious people are in staying away.

Of common prevalence formerly, and still observed in numerous parishes, is the custom called the Plygain, or watching for the dawn. This consists in proceeding to the church at three o’clock on Christmas morning, and uniting in a service which is held by the light of small green candles made for the purpose. Sometimes this ceremony is observed at home, the people in a farm-house holding a jollification on the Christmas eve, and sitting up all night to greet the dawn.

In a certain cavern in Glamorganshire, called the Ogof Cigfrain, or Cavern of the Ravens, is said to be a chest of gold, watched over by two birds of gloomy plumage, in a darkness so profound that nothing can be seen but the fire of their sleepless eyes.