Welsh folk-lore, fairy mythology, legends and traditions

Happy Midsummers Day (Northern Hemisphereans) and Midwinters (on the Southern side)!

Amazing Welsh woodcut: "The Faery Frolic at the Cromlech," in _British Goblins: Welsh folk-lore, fairy mythology, legends and traditions_ by Wirt Sikes, London, 1880. It's modern, but done in the style of witch-hunt-era prints of the Witches' Dance, only this time affectionate and non-demonological.

What artistry—especially the circle dancers at foreground: the women's hair flying, and the fairy women galloping full tilt behind them, past a standing stone, and with a multitude of the fairy host coming on beyond. What you see here is a detail; I'll post the entire print further down, where you'll see that all these figures are miniature, and the dolmen will come into view.

British Goblins: Welsh folk-lore, fairy mythology, legends and traditions, by Wirt Sikes; 1880; London: Sampson and Low.

The subtitle is the real subject of this book, which is available digitally here, with illustrations and also a few renditions of songs or airs. From the site's description of its contents:

"In British Goblins (1880) Wirt Sikes, the United States consul to Cardiff from 1876 to 1883, describes the mythology and legends of Wales, a land steeped in folklore. (Considering its geographic focus, why the book is not simply called Welsh Goblins remains a mystery.) The first section of the book concerns the fairies, which are known as “y Tylwyth Teg” in Welsh, meaning the fair folk or family. They come in five varieties: Ellyllon (elves), Coblynau (mine fairies), Bwbachod (household fairies), Gwragedd Annwn (underwater fairies), and Gwyllion (mountain fairies).

"The Ellyllon are pigmy elves who haunt the groves and valleys. They dine on poisonous toadstools and fairy butter, which they extract from deep crevices in limestone rocks. Their hands are clad in the bells of the foxglove, the leaves of which are a powerful sedative. They are sometimes kindly, sometimes menacing and almost always mischievous. One variety of Ellyllon, the Ellylldan, will wait in boggy wetland and flash their fiery lures to lead travellers off the safe path, sometimes to their death.

"The Coblynau populate the mines, quarries and underground regions of Wales. They are about half a metre tall, very ugly to look it, and generally good-natured. They will make a peculiar knocking or rapping sound to let miners know the whereabouts of a rich vein of ore. The word coblyn has the double meaning in Welsh of “knocker” and “sprite”. And, Wirt Sikes asks, “may it not be the original of ‘goblin’?” ...

"The Gwragedd Annwn ["witch-hags of the underworld"] are female fairies of the streams and lakes, particularly the isolated lakes of the high mountains, where they serve as “avenues of communication between this world and the lower one of annwn, the shadowy domain presided over by Gwyn ap Nudd, king of the fairies.”

Their description leaves out the most interesting stories, which i'll be posting commenting on below: lake fairies and elven cows, the Old Woman of the Mountain, goat women lovers, fairy dances in which centuries of time pass without the entranced human noticing. Music of the Ellyllon (a glimpse of what Tolkien was drawing on) and the singing birds, and fateful omens of the banshee-like Gwrach Y Rhiben, including her terrifying wails.

View of the whole scene, with the fairy host approaching the dolmen (and showing how the harper and boxers got on top of it) and the boy looking on in amazement. One of the riders has been thrown and is about to be caught like an acrobat by one of the revelers.

I'm going to post screencaps of some highlights, starting with the page describing the "fairy frolic scene". It discusses the connection of megaliths, fairies, and dancing. Then compares (and this is linguistically well founded) the popular name for the Castle Correg cromlech to the korrigans of Bretagne. (The two cultures, Welsh and Breton, are very closely related.)

And then he recounts a French story about the dolmen at Pirols, in Auvergne, that a faery woman built, carrying its massive blocks from far away, and the largest of the stones she balanced on her spindle, spinning all the way. (I have a whole collection of these stories, mostly French, but bleeding over to Germany, of spinners who built megaliths. Eventually some of them drift over into saints, especially the Virigin Mary.) See the section on Stone-Raising Spinners in my old article "The Old Goddess" (chapter, actually, in the unpublished Goddess of the Witches).

Shui Rhys would go out on the land in converse with the faeries, and everyone knew it. They finally carried her off, says the story. Spirits with harps everywhere in this picture. It's not that the Welsh woman is wearing the witch's hat, but that the witch's hat was modeled on the dress of Welsh country women back in those times, and of other British rural women. Were Welsh women seen as likely witches? I cannot think of any witch hunts in Wales, come to that. Ireland few, and Scotland many, but no witch hunt histories touch on Wales. Misfortune more likely to be put up to the Plant Annwn, I'm guessing. Will have to go back at look at Trevellyan's study of Welsh folk tradition and see what turns up. 

The Old Woman of the Mountain

Canna's Stone, and magical stones that move at night

Fairies in green, and "the old elves of the blue petticoat"

Birds of enchantment; dancers caught up in fairy dance

Gwyragedd Annwn, Lake Fairies, Three Causeless Blows and they're gone

Hoofed ladies and enchanting goat women

Supernational sanctions for disturbing a cromlech

Welsh form of the caoíne / keening the dead

Death omens of the Gwrach Y Rhibyn

Snakestones, and Bonfires

Cutty black sow; Halloween customs

Warding off faerie folk with iron

You can read preceding and following pages from the above at this link which gives access to the entire book.

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