Welsh Folk-Lore Part 12

Tradition, in thus connecting stone implements with the Fairies, throws a dim light on the elfin community. But evidence is not wanting that the Celts themselves used stone utensils.

The things which shall now be mentioned, as being connected with the Fairies, owe their names to no foundation in fact, but are the offspring of a fanciful imagination, and are attributed to the Fairies in agreement with the more modern and grotesque notions concerning those beings and their doings. This will be seen when it is stated that the Fox Glove becomes a Fairy Glove, and the Mushroom, Fairy Food.

_Ymenyn y Tylwyth Teg, or Fairy b.u.t.ter_.

I cannot do better than quote Pennant on this matter. His words are:--

"Petroleum, rock oil, or what the Welsh call it, _Ymenin tylwyth teg_, or Fairies' b.u.t.ter, has been found in the lime stone strata in our mineral country. It is a greasy substance, of an agreeable smell, and, I suppose, ascribed to the benign part of those imaginary beings. It is esteemed serviceable in rheumatic cases, rubbed on the parts affected. It retains a place in our dispensary."

Pennant's _Whiteford_, p. 131.

_Bwyd Ellyllon_, _or Goblins' Food_.

This was a kind of fungus or mushroom. The word is given in Dr. Owen Pughe's dictionary under the head _Ellyll_.

_Menyg y Tylwyth Teg_, _Or Fairy Gloves_.

The Fox Glove is so called, but in Dr. Owen Pughe's dictionary, under the head _Ellyll_, the Fox Glove is called _Menyg Ellyllon_.

_Yr Ellyll Dan_, _or Goblin Fire_.

The Rev. T. H. Evans, in his _History of the Parish of Llanwddyn_, states that in that parish "Will of the Wisp" is called "_Yr Ellyll Dan_." This is indeed the common name for the _Ignis fatuus_ in most, if not in all parts of Wales, but in some places where English is spoken it is better known by the English term, "Jack o' Lantern," or "Jack y Lantern."

_Rhaffau'r Tylwyth Teg_, _or the Ropes of the Fairies_.

Professor Rhys, in his Welsh Fairy Tales--_Y Cymmrodor_ vol. v., p.

75--says, that gossamer, which is generally called in North Wales _edafedd gwawn_, or _gwawn_ yarn, used to be called, according to an informant, _Rhaffau'r Tylwyth Teg_, that is to say, the Ropes of the Fair Family, thus a.s.sociating the Fairies with marshy, or rushy, places, or with ferns and heather as their dwelling places. It was supposed that if a man lay down to sleep in such places the Fairies would come and bind him with their ropes, and cover him with a gossamer sheet, which would make him invisible, and incapable of moving.

FAIRY KNOCKERS, OR COBLYNAU.

The _Coblynau_ or _Knockers_ were supposed to be a species of Fairies who had their abode in the rocks, and whose province it was to indicate by knocks, and other sounds, the presence of ore in mines.

It would seem that many people had dim traditions of a small race who had their dwellings in the rocks. This wide-spread belief in the existence of cave men has, in our days, been shown to have had a foundation in fact, and many vestiges of this people have been revealed by intelligent cave hunters. But the age in which the cave men lived cannot even approximately be ascertained. In various parts of Wales, in the lime rock, their abodes have been brought to light. It is not improbable that the people who occupied the caves of ancient days were, in reality, the original Fairy Knockers. These people were invested, in after ages, by the wonder-loving mind of man, with supernatural powers.

AEschylus, the Greek tragic poet, who died in the 69th year of his age, B.C. 456, in _Prometheus Vinctus_, refers to cave dwellers in a way that indicates that even then they belonged to a dateless antiquity.

In Prometheus's speech to the chorus--[Greek]--lines 458-461, is a reference to this ancient tradition. His words, put into English, are these:--"And neither knew the warm brick-built houses exposed to the sun, nor working in wood, _but they dwelt underground_, like as little ants, _in the sunless recesses of caves_."

The above quotation proves that the Greeks had a tradition that men in a low, or the lowest state of civilization, had their abodes in caves, and possibly the reference to ants would convey the idea that the cave dwellers were small people. Be this as it may, it is very remarkable that the word applied to a _dwarf_ in the dialects of the northern countries of Europe signifies also a _Fairy_, and the dwarfs, or Fairies, are there said to inhabit the rocks. The following quotation from Jamieson's _Scottish Dictionary_ under the word _Droich_, a dwarf, a pigmy, shows this to have been the case:--

"In the northern dialects, _dwerg_ does not merely signify a dwarf, but also a _Fairy_! The ancient Northern nations, it is said, prostrated themselves before rocks, believing that they were inhabited by these pigmies, and that they thence gave forth oracles. Hence they called the echo _dwergamal_, as believing it to be their voice or speech. . . They were accounted excellent artificers, especially as smiths, from which circ.u.mstance some suppose that they have received their name . . . Other Isl. writers a.s.sert that their ancestors did not worship the pigmies as they did the _genii_ or spirits, also supposed to reside in the rocks."

Bishop Percy, in a letter to the Rev. Evan Evans (_Ieuan Prydydd Hir_), writes:--

"Nay, I make no doubt but Fairies are derived from the _Duergar_, or Dwarfs, whose existence was so generally believed among all the northern nations."

_The Cambro-Briton_, vol. i., p. 331.

And again in Percy's _Reliques of Ancient Poetry_, vol. iii., p. 171, are these remarks:--

"It is well known that our Saxon ancestors, long before they left their German forests, believed in the existence of a kind of diminutive demons, or middle species between men and spirits, whom they called _Duergar_, or Dwarfs, and to whom they attributed wonderful performances, far exceeding human art."

Pennant, in his _Tour in Scotland_, 1772, pp. 55-56, when describing the collieries of Newcastle, describes the Knockers thus:--

"The immense caverns that lay between the pillars exhibited a most gloomy appearance. I could not help enquiring here after the imaginary inhabitant, the creation of the labourer's fancy,

The swart Fairy of the mine;

and was seriously answered by a black fellow at my elbow that he really had never met with any, but that his grandfather had found the little implements and tools belonging to this diminutive race of subterraneous spirits. The Germans believed in two species; one fierce and malevolent, the other a gentle race, appearing like little old men, dressed like the miners, and not much above two feet high; these wander about the drifts and chambers of the works, seem perpetually employed, yet do nothing.

Some seem to cut the ore, or fling what is cut into vessels, or turn the windla.s.s, but never do any harm to the miners, except provoked; as the sensible Agricola, in this point credulous, relates in his book, _de Animantibus Subterraneis_."

Jamieson, under the word _Farefolkis_, writes:--"Besides the Fairies, which are more commonly the subject of popular tradition, it appears that our forefathers believed in the existence of a cla.s.s of spirits under this name that wrought in the mines;" and again, quoting from a work dated 1658, the author of which says:--

"In northerne kingdomes there are great armies of devils that have their services which they perform with the inhabitants of these countries, but they are most frequent in rocks and _mines_, where they break, cleave, and make them hollow; which also thrust in pitchers and buckets, and carefully fit wheels and screws, whereby they are drawn upwards; and they show themselves to the labourers, when they list, like phantoms and ghosts."

The preceding quotations from Pennant and Jamieson correspond with the Welsh miners' ideas of the _Coblynau_, or Knockers. There is a difficulty in tracing to their origin these opinions, but, on the whole, I am strongly inclined to say that they have come down to modern times from that remote period when cave-men existed as a distinct people.

But now let us hear what our Welsh miners have to say about the _Coblynau_. I have spoken to several miners on this subject, and, although they confessed that they had not themselves heard these good little people at work, still they believed in their existence, and could name mines in which they had been heard. I was told that they are generally heard at work in new mines, and that they lead the men to the ore by knocking in its direction, and when the lode is reached the knocking ceases.

But the following extracts from two letters written by Lewis Morris, a well-known and learned Welshman, fully express the current opinion of miners in Wales respecting Knockers. The first letter was written Oct.

14, 1754, and the latter is dated Dec. 4, 1754. They appear in Bingley's _North Wales_, vol. ii., pp. 269-272. Lewis Morris writes:--

"People who know very little of arts or sciences, or the powers of nature (which, in other words, are the powers of the author of nature), will laugh at us Cardiganshire miners, who maintain the existence of _Knockers_ in mines, a kind of good natured impalpable people not to be seen, but heard, and who seem to us to work in the mines; that is to say, they are the types or forerunners of working in mines, as dreams are of some accidents, which happen to us. The barometer falls before rain, or storms. If we do not know the construction of it, we should call it a kind of dream that foretells rain; but we know it is natural, and produced by natural means, comprehended by us. Now, how are we sure, or anybody sure, but that our dreams are produced by the same natural means?

There is some faint resemblance of this in the sense of hearing; the bird is killed before we hear the report of the gun. However this is, I must speak well of the _Knockers_, for they have actually stood my good friends, whether they are aerial beings called spirits, or whether they are a people made of matter, not to be felt by our gross bodies, as air and fire and the like.

"Before the discovery of the _Esgair y Mwyn_ mine, these little people, as we call them here, worked hard there day and night; and there are abundance of honest, sober people, who have heard them, and some persons who have no notion of them or of mines either; but after the discovery of the great ore they were heard no more.

"When I began to work at Llwyn Llwyd, they worked so fresh there for a considerable time that they frightened some young workmen out of the work. This was when we were driving levels, and before we had got any ore; but when we came to the ore, they then gave over, and I heard no more talk of them.

"Our old miners are no more concerned at hearing them _blasting_, boring holes, landing _deads_, etc., than if they were some of their own people; and a single miner will stay in the work, in the dead of the night, without any man near him, and never think of any fear or of any harm they will do him. The miners have a notion that the _Knockers_ are of their own tribe and profession, and are a harmless people who mean well. Three or four miners together shall hear them sometimes, but if the miners stop to take notice of them, the _Knockers_ will also stop; but, let the miners go on at their work, suppose it is _boring_, the _Knockers_ will at the same time go on as brisk as can be in landing, _blasting_, or beating down the _loose_, and they are always heard a little distance from them before they come to the ore.

"These are odd a.s.sertions, but they are certainly facts, though we cannot, and do not pretend to account for them. We have now very good ore at _Llwyn Llwyd_, where the _Knockers_ were heard to work, but have now yielded up the place, and are no more heard. Let who will laugh, we have the greatest reason to rejoice, and thank the _Knockers_, or rather G.o.d, who sends us these notices."

The second letter is as follows:--