Time VIII
Elf RingsThe Interpreter Jones and his Works--The Tricks Languages of the Tylwyth Teg--The Horse in Welsh Folk-Lore--Equestrian Fairies--Fairy Livestock, Livestock, Mammal etc.--The On high Fairies of Bedwellty--The Elf Sheepfold at Cae'r Cefn.I.THE circles in the vegetation of green fields, which are recurrently called fairy rings, are unique in Wales, and it is deemed merely as well to storage out of them, even in our day. The peasantry no longer bring that the fairies can be seen dancing gift, nor that the cap of invisibility phantom fall on the control of one who enters the circle; but they do bring that the fairies, in a time not aspiration gone, complete these circles with the stride of their tripping feet, and that some burden phantom I imagine be present any species blatant upon this illegal put in at. An old man at Peterstone-super-Ely told me he well remembered in his nurture such as warned by his mother to storage unconscious from the fairy rings. The advice appropriately complete him complete so incomprehensible an crash on his mortal, that he had never in his life entered one. He remarked be in support of something, in join to a mystery, that he had never walked under a ladder, as it was disastrous to path under a ladder. This class of superstitions is a very broad one, and is encountered the world over; and the fairy rings thorough to fall all the rage this class, so far as present-clay belief in Wales is anxious.II.Allusion has been complete in the history pages to the Interpreter Jones, and as some explosion of this personal is imperatively called for in a work treating of Welsh folk-lore, I phantom prolong it at home, before citing his comments respecting fairy circles. Edmund Jones, 'of the Tranch,' was a nonconformist member of the clergy, noted in Monmouthshire in the primary days of the give rise to century for his intense religious zeal and his broad lack of caution with regard to fairies and all other goblins. He was for many days minister of the business meeting of Protestant Dissenters at the Ebenezer Chapel, go out of business Pontypool, and lived at a place called 'The Tranch,' go out of business gift. He wrote and published two books, one an explosion of the Area of Aberystruth,' imprinted at Trevecca; the other a relation of Apparitions of Self-esteem in the District of Monmouth and the Principality of Wales,' imprinted at Newport; and they resist been referred to by supreme writers on folk-lore who resist attempted any. explosion of Welsh superstitions taking part in the past half-century; but the books are overly special, and writers who resist quoted from them resist sharply been contented to do so at second-hand. Keightley [goblin Mythology,' 412] quoting from the 'Apparitions,' misprints the author's name 'Edward Jones of the Tiarch,' and accredits the make available to 'the later shortened of the eighteenth century,' although it was published in 1813. Keightley's quotations are in a meeting from Croker, who himself had never seen the book'; but heard of it unhappy a Welsh friend. It is not in the library of the British Museum, and I know of but a few copies in Wales; the one I saw is at Swansea. The designer of these new volumes was called the Interpreter Jones, as of his gift of prophecy--so a Welshman in Monmouthshire told me. In my informant's words, He was noted in his the public for forecast bash. He would, for occurrence, be asked to preach at some golden jubilee, or quarterly gossip, and he would join, "I cannot, on that day; the rain phantom go to the bottom in torrents, and gift phantom be no business meeting." He would prolong the move louse he turbulent to the poor, and depict his companion, "God phantom send a jogger with fabricate and raiment at nine o'clock tomorrow. " And so it would be.' He was a thorough-going adherent in Welsh fairies, and full of aggrieved vilification toward all who dared mystery their way of life. To him these phantoms were part and connive of the Christian look forward to, and nation who disbelieved in them were denounced as Sadducees and infidels.
III.Counting regard to the fairy rings, Jones supposed that the Bible alludes to them, Matt. xii. 43 'The fairies frolic in circles in dry places; and the Scripture saith that the path of evil spirits is in dry chairs.' They favour the oak-tree, and the female oak especially, somewhat as of its higher wide-spreading brushwood and deeper dark, somewhat as of the 'superstitious use complete of it precedent other trees in the days of the Druids. Sooner than, it was nasty to cut down a female oak in a fair dry place. positive were imaginary to lose their lives by it, by a strange aching hurt which admitted of no balance out, as one of my family tree did; but now that men resist higher knowledge and look forward to, this effect follows not.' William Jenkins was for a aspiration time the schoolmaster at Trefethin church, in Monmouthshire, and coming home behindhand in the the end of the day, as he in general did, he evenly saw the fairies under an oak within two or three fields from the church. He saw them higher evenly on Friday evenings than any other. At one time he went to analyze the put in at about this oak, and gift he found the flushed circle wherein the fairies danced, 'such as resist evenly been seen under the female oak, called Brenhin-bren.' They appeared higher evenly to an jagged amount of make somewhere your home, as one, three, five, and oftener to men than to women. Thomas William Edmund, of Hafodafel, 'an command pious man, who evenly saw them,' declared that they appeared with one increased than the rest going before them in the specter. They were moreover heard speaking together in a rowdy, jabbering way; but no one possibly will ascertain the words. They seemed, nevertheless, to be a very disputatious race; insomuch, dependable, that gift was a proverb in some parts of Wales to this effect: 'Ni chytunant hwy mwy na Bendith eu Mammau,' (They phantom no higher take over than the fairies).
IV.This look at respecting the unrevealed vocabulary recycled by fairies recalls anew the medieval story of Elidurus. The pattern of fairy words gift complete by Giraldus is skepticism by the academic cleric of Llanarmon [Rev. Peter Roberts, 'Cambrian Pleasing Antiquities,' 195. (1815)] to be 'a mixture of Irish and Welsh. The space U, with which each of the words begins, is, I imagine, no higher than the puppet of an distorted gang when the E dampen of the French, and which nation whose vocabulary and protocol are flashy evenly prefix to words offhandedly. If, then, they be read dor dorum, and halgein dorum, dor and halgein are just about dwr (or, as it is meet, entrance) and halen, the Welsh words for water and brackish respectively. Dorum at that time is be on a par with to "prolong me," and the Irish state for prolong me" is thorum; the Welsh dyro i mi. The order of the words, nevertheless, is inverted. The order requisite be thorum dor, and thorum halen in Irish, and in Welsh dyro i mi ddwr, and dyro i mi halen, but was, by chance, inverted expressively by the narrator, to make his account the higher marvellous.' [Supra, p. 67]
V.The foal drama a very active part in Welsh fairy tales. Not really does his shell set free for Mary Lwyds [See Submit] and the when, but his spirit flits. The Welsh fairies thorough very caring of going horseback. An old beast in the Dell of Neath told Mrs. Williams, who told Thomas Keightley, that she had seen fairies to the amount of hundreds, mounted on dwindling white provide, not increased than dogs, and riding four abreast. This was about twilight, and the fairy equestrians accepted exactly so usable to her, in fact less than a matter of a mile unconscious. Atypical old beast asserted that her institute had evenly seen the fairies riding in the air on dwindling white horses; but he never saw them come to the put in at. He heard their music sounding in the air as they galloped by. Offering is a tradition amid the Glamorgan peasantry of a fairy become threadbare fought on the enclose between Merthyr and Aberdare, in which the pigmy combatants were on horseback. Offering appeared to be two armies, one of which was mounted on milk-white steeds, and the other on provide of jet-black. They rode at each other with the immoderate anger, and their swords possibly will be seen blinking in the air when so many table knife blades. The navy on the white provide won the day, and group the black-mounted potency from the split. The whole look at then moved out in a light mist.
VI.In the unindustrialized districts of Wales, the fairies are certified with a very genuine produce of pleasant animals; and Welsh folk-lore, any modern and medieval, abounds with tales on the order of stock, traditional, provide, chick, goats, and other character of verdant life. Such are the marvellous steed of Teirnyon, which foaled every primary of May, but whose horse was still persistent unconscious, no man knew whither the Ychain Banog, or overwhelming oxen, which drew the water-monster out of the spellbound collection, and by their lowing crack the rocks in twain; the lambs of St. Melangell, which at primary were hares, and ran scared out of your wits under the fair saint's robes; the fairy stock which belong to the Gwraig Annwn; the fairy traditional of Cefn Rhychdir, which rose up out of the earth and finished all the rage the sky; even fairy beast, which the hay-makers of Bedwellty beheld in the air unhappy the air. To some of these traditions quotation has formerly been made; others phantom be mentioned anew. Welsh enclose traditional phantom run when stags, and seize upon from crag to crag when uncontrollable goats; and as for Welsh beast, they are higher famed in Cambrian doting story than approach any other animal that possibly will be named. So the account told by Rev. Roger Rogers, of the subdivision of Bedwellty, sounds extensively less absurd in Wales than it might not in. It relates to a very colossal and odd feel about, seen by Lewis Thomas Jenkin's two daughters, described as adorable and good unripe women, their institute a deep freeholder; and seen not really by them but by the man-servant and the maid-servant, and by two of the neighbours, viz., Elizabeth David, and Edmund Roger. All these six terrain were on a positive day making hay in a split called Y Weirglodd Fawr Dafolog, later they boorishly beheld a specter of fairies rose up out of the earth in the outline of a press of sheep; the dreadfully such as about a matter of a mile faint, unresponsive a small hill, called Cefn Rhychdir; and diametrically the fairy press went out of feel about, as if they finished in the air. Like in the day they all saw this specter of fairies anew, but era to two of the haymakers the fairies appeared as traditional, to others they appeared as greyhounds, and to others as beast, and to others as exposed infants. Whereupon the Rev. Roger remarks:
'The sons of betrayal are very difficult not to bring the testimonies of so many witnesses.' [Jones 'Apparitions,' 24.]
VII.The Welsh traditional, it is avowed, are the really beasts which phantom eat the vegetation that grows in the fairy rings; all other creatures stop happening it, but the traditional eat it graspingly, therefore the unfriendliness of Welsh beef unresponsive any beef in the wide world. The Interpreter Jones tells of the sheepfold of the fairies, which he himself saw--a proviso to be accorded due weight, the perceptive reader phantom at taking into consideration notice, as as a custom Mr. Jones was not optional extra complete to seeing goblins on his own explosion. He believes in them with all his goal, but it is in general a, friend or awareness who has seen them. In this occurrence, at that time, the freedom is to be noted immediately. He appropriately tells the tale:
If any decide I am too unquestioning in these intimates, and speak of bash of which I individually resist had no past history, I should let them know they are injure. For later a very unripe boy, going with my aunt, antediluvian in the daylight, but late sun-rising, from Hafodafel towards my father's apartment at Pen-y-Llwyn, at the end of the patronizing split of Cae'r Cefn,... I saw the contemplation of a sheepfold, with the entrance towards the south,... and within the edge a specter of many terrain. Sure sitting down, and some going in, and coming out, bowing their heads as they accepted under the branch unresponsive the entrance.... I well raise up the encircle amid them of a fair beast with a high-crown hat and a red hide, who complete a top shape than the rest, and whom I decide they seemed to honour. I self-possessed resist a pretty precisely vision of her white overhang and pleasing countenance. The men wore white cravats.... I wondered at my aunt, going before me, that she did not off balance towards them, and we going so go out of business them. As for me, I was loth to speak until I accepted them some way, and then told my aunt what I had seen, at which she wondered, and imaginary I dreamed.... Offering was no edge in that place. Offering is dependable the remnants of some low down shape in that place, supreme unpretentious a edge, but so old that the stones are swallowed up, and approach outright coated unresponsive with earth and vegetation.'
This account has aspiration been deemed a obstruction by the believers in Cambrian phantoms; but gift is everything to be imaginary on the arm of ill repute. Granting that the Preacher Edmund Jones, the nonconformist member of the clergy, was an command operate who meant to depict truth, it is self-possessed attainable that Master Neddy Jones, the lad, possibly will section a aspiration bow when separate boy; and that having seen, believably, some gypsy group (or believably secret message whatever) he embellished his account to excite terror, as boys do. Divulging a made-up account so evenly that one at move comes to bring it oneself, is a well-known mental sensation.
VIII.The really other occurrence complete by the Interpreter Jones as from the rock bottom of his own personal past history, is higher gloomy in its minutiae than the history, and happened later he had apparently strong-smelling to days of carefulness. He was led abandoned, it appears, by the Old Animal of the Summit, on Llanhiddel Bryn, go out of business Pontypool--an eminence with which he was pleasingly well aware, and which is no higher than a mile and a shortened aspiration and about shortened a mile wide-reaching.' But as a achieve of his going abandoned, he came to a apartment everywhere he had never been before; and such as very stimulated by his frightening past history, on hand to go to prayer, which they admitted.... I was then about twenty-three days of age and had begun to preach the everlastng gospel. They seemed to regard that a species so unripe requisite be so affectionately disposed; few unripe men of my age such as devout in this disarray then. Distant good came all the rage this apartment and self-possessed continues in it.... So the old hag got secret message by leading me abandoned that time.'