Welsh Legends of Fairy Women Marrying Men

The Pentrevoelas Legend.

I am indebted to the Rev. Owen Jones, Vicar of Pentrevoelas, a mountain parish in West Denbighshire, for the following tale, which was written in Welsh by a native of those parts, and appeared in competition for a prize on the Folk-Lore of that parish.

The son of Hafodgarreg was shepherding his father’s flock on the hills, and whilst thus engaged, he, one misty morning, came suddenly upon a lovely girl, seated on the sheltered side of a peat-stack.  The maiden appeared to be in great distress, and she was crying bitterly.  The young man went up to her, and spoke kindly to her, and his attention and sympathy were not without effect on the comely stranger.  So beautiful was the young woman, that from expressions of sympathy the smitten youth proceeded to words of love, and his advances were not repelled.  But whilst the lovers were holding sweet conversation, there appeared on the scene a venerable and aged man, who, addressing the female as her father, bade her follow him.  She immediately obeyed, and both departed leaving the young man alone.  He lingered about the place until the evening, wishing and hoping that she might return, but she came not.  Early the next day, he was at the spot where he first felt what love was.  All day long he loitered about the place, vainly hoping that the beautiful girl would pay another visit to the mountain, but he was doomed to disappointment, and night again drove him homewards.  Thus, daily went he to the place where he had met his beloved, but she was not there, and, love-sick and lonely, he returned to Hafodgarreg.  Such devotion deserved its reward.  It would seem that the young lady loved the young man quite as much as he loved her.  And in the land of allurement and illusion (yn nhir hud a lledrith) she planned a visit to the earth, and met her lover, but she was soon missed by her father, and he, suspecting her love of this young man, again came upon them, and found them conversing lovingly together.  Much talk took place between the sire and his daughter, and the shepherd, waxing bold, begged and begged her father to give him his daughter in marriage.  The sire, perceiving that the man was in earnest, turned to his daughter, and asked her whether it were her wish to marry a man of the earth?  She said it was.  Then the father told the shepherd he should have his daughter to wife, and that she should stay with him, until he should strike her with iron, and that, as a marriage portion, he would give her a bag filled with bright money.  The young couple were duly married, and the promised dowry was received.  For many years they lived lovingly p. 10and happily together, and children were born to them.  One day this man and his wife went together to the hill to catch a couple of ponies, to carry them to the Festival of the Saint of Capel Garmon.  The ponies were very wild, and could not be caught.  The man, irritated, pursued the nimble creatures.  His wife was by his side, and now he thought he had them in his power, but just at the moment he was about to grasp their manes, off they wildly galloped, and the man, in anger, finding that they had again eluded him, threw the bridle after them, and, sad to say, the bit struck the wife, and as this was of iron they both knew that their marriage contract was broken.  Hardly had they had time to realize the dire accident, ere the aged father of the bride appeared, accompanied by a host of Fairies, and there and then departed with his daughter to the land whence she came, and that, too, without even allowing her to bid farewell to her children.  The money, though, and the children were left behind, and these were the only memorials of the lovely wife and the kindest of mothers, that remained to remind the shepherd of the treasure he had lost in the person of his Fairy spouse.

Such is the Pentrevoelas Legend.  The writer had evidently not seen the version of this story in the Cambro-Briton, nor had he read Williams’s tale of a like occurrence, recorded in Observations on the Snowdon Mountains.  The account, therefore, is all the more valuable, as being an independent production.

A fragmentary variant of the preceding legend was given me by Mr. Lloyd, late schoolmaster of Llanfihangel-Glyn-Myfyr, a native of South Wales, who heard the tale in the parish of Llanfihangel.  Although but a fragment, it may not be altogether useless, and I will give it as I received it:—

Shon Rolant, Hafod y Dre, Pentrevoelas, when going home from Llanrwst market, fortunately caught a Fairy-maid, whom he took home with him.  She was a most handsome woman, but rather short and slight in person.  She was admired by everybody on account of her great beauty.  Shon Rolant fell desperately in love with her, and would have married her, but this she would not allow.  He, however, continued pressing her to become his wife, and, by and by, she consented to do so, provided he could find out her name.  As Shon was again going home from the market about a month later, he heard someone saying, near the place where he had seized the Fairy-maid, “Where is little Penloi gone?  Where is little Penloi gone?”  Shon at once thought that some one was searching for the Fairy he had captured, and when he reached home, he addressed the Fairy by the name he had heard, and Penloi consented to become his wife.  She, however, expressed displeasure at marrying a dead man, as the Fairies call us.  She informed her lover that she was not to be touched with iron, or she would disappear at once.  Shon took great care not to touch her with iron.  However, one day, when he was on horseback talking to his beloved Penloi, who stood at the horse’s head, the horse suddenly threw up its head, and the curb, which was of iron, came in contact with Penloi, who immediately vanished out of sight.

The next legend is taken from Williams’s Observations on the Snowdon Mountains.  His work was published in 1802.  He, himself, was born in Anglesey, in 1738, and migrated to Carnarvonshire about the year 1760.  It was in this latter county that he became a learned antiquary, and a careful recorder of events that came under his notice.  His “Observations” throw considerable light upon the life, the customs, and the traditions of the inhabitants of the hill parts and secluded glens of Carnarvonshire.  I have thought fit to make these few remarks about the author I quote from, so as to enable the reader to give to him that credence which he is entitled to.  Williams entitles the following story, “A Fairy Tale,” but I will for the sake of reference call it “The Ystrad Legend.”

 Sacred Hilltops and Sun Temples of the Fairy Race in Cornwall, England and the Ohio Valley

Sun Temple (Henge) in England was the abode of the fairy race.

There are ruined British antiquities whose builders are long forgotten, strange prehistoric circular sun-temples, crowning the hill tops, mysterious underground passageways, and crosses probably pre-Christian. Everywhere are the records of the mighty past of this thrice-holy Druid land of sunset. There are weird legends of the lost kingdom of the Fairies. Legends of Phoenician Amorites, who came for tin; legends of gods and of giants, of pixies and of fairies.

Hilltop, Sun Temple, (henge) at Mounds State Park that included caves and subterranean passageways. Is it by chance that fairies have been witnessed at this location?

But there in that most southern and western corner of the Isle of Britain, the Sacred Fires themselves still burn on the divine hill-tops, though smothered in the hearts of its children.  He looks upon cromlech and dolmen, upon ancient caves of initiation, and upon the graves of his prehistoric ancestors, and vaguely feels, but does not know, why his land is so holy, is so permeated by an indefinable magic; for he has lost his ancestral mystic touch with the unseen—he is ‘educated’ and ‘civilized’. 

Map map shows the bottom of the bluff below the Sun Temple complex at Mounds State Park, Anderson, Indiana. Is this where the fairies dwell?

The Cave entrance is still visible at the bottom of the bluff at Mounds State Park, directly below the Sun Temples. 

 Burial Mounds, Ghosts and Paranormal Fairies

Moundsville Prison has the largest burial mound in North America in its front yard. Is it a coincidence that it is also the most haunted places in America? Mounds were portals for the dead. Whether you watch, Ghost Adventures, The Dead Files, My Ghost Story or any f the other shows, i many cases the locations are near burial mounds. Think of how many of these shows originate from Ohio, Indiana or West Virginia where the Adena mounds are located. Coincidence?

Burial Mounds may already in pagan times have been pointed out as tombs of gods who died in myth or ritual, like the tombs of Zeus in Crete and of Osiris in Egypt. Again, fairies, in some aspects, are ghosts of the dead, and haunt burial mounds; hence, when gods became fairies they would do the same. And once they were thought of as dead kings, any notable burial would be pointed out as theirs, since it is a law in folk-belief to associate burial mounds or other structures not with the dead or with their builders, but with supernatural or mythical or even historical personages. If síde ever meant "ghosts," it would be easy to call the dead gods by this name, and to connect them with the places of the dead

 Demonic Spirits of the Celts

While the greater objects of nature were worshipped for themselves alone, the Celts also peopled the earth with spirits, benevolent or malevolent, of rocks, hills, dales, forests, lakes, and streams and while greater divinities of growth had been evolved, they still believed in lesser spirits of vegetation, of the corn, and of fertility, connected, however, with these gods. Some of these still survive as fairies seen in meadows, woodlands, or streams, or as demonic beings haunting lonely places. And even now, in French folk-belief, sun, moon, winds, etc., are regarded as actual personages. Sun and moon are husband and wife; the winds have wives; they are addressed by personal names and reverenced.Some spirits may already have had a demonic aspect in pagan times. The Tuatha Déa conjured up meisi, "spectral bodies that rise from the ground," against the Milesians, and at their service were malignant sprites—urtrochta, and "forms, spectres, and great queens" called guidemain (false demons). The Druids also sent forth mischievous spirits called siabra. In the Táin there are 
references to bocânachs, banânaichs, and geniti-glinni, "goblins, eldritch beings, and glen-folk." These are twice called Tuatha Dé Danann, and this suggests that they were nature-spirits akin to the greater gods. The geniti-glinni would be spirits haunting glen and valley. They are friendly to Cúchulainn in the Táin, but in theFeast of Bricriu he and other heroes fight and destroy them. In modern Irish belief they are demons of the air, perhaps fallen angels.

Much of this is probably pre-Celtic as well as Celtic, but it held its ground because it was dear to the Celts themselves. They upheld the aboriginal cults resembling those which, in the lands whence they came, had been native and local with themselves. Such cults are as old as the world, and when Christianity expelled the worship of the greater gods, younger in growth, the ancient nature worship, dowered with immortal youth,

"bowed low before the blast

In patient deep disdain,"

to rise again in vigour. Preachers, councils, and laws inveighed against it. The old rites continued to be practised, or survived under a Christian dress and colouring. They are found in Breton villages, in Highland glens, in Welsh and Cornish valleys, in Irish townships, and only the spread of school-board education, with its materialism and uninviting common sense, is forcing them at last to yield.

The denunciations of these cults throw some light upon them. Offerings at trees, stones, fountains, and cross-roads, the lighting of fires or candles there, and vows or incantations addressed to them, are forbidden, as is also the worship of trees, groves, stones, rivers, and wells. The sun and moon 
are not to be called lords. Wizardry, and divination, and the leapings and dancings, songs and choruses of the pagans, i.e. their orgiastic cults, are not to be practised. Tempest-raisers are not to ply their diabolical craft. These denunciations, of course, were not without their effect, and legend told how the spirits of nature were heard bewailing the power of the Christian saints, their mournful cries echoing in wooded hollows, secluded valleys, and shores of lake and river. Their power, though limited, was not annihilated, but the secrecy in which the old cults often continued to be practised gave them a darker colour. They were identified with the works of the devil, and the spirits of paganism with dark and grisly demons. This culminated in the mediæval witch persecutions, for witchcraft was in part the old paganism in a new guise. Yet even that did not annihilate superstition, which still lives and flourishes among the folk, though the actual worship of nature-spirits has now disappeared.

Welsh Legens of Fairy Ladies marrying Men

 

WELSH LEGENDS OF FAIRY LADIES MARRYING MEN.

1.  The Pentrevoelas Legend.

I am indebted to the Rev. Owen Jones, Vicar of Pentrevoelas, a mountain parish in West Denbighshire, for the following tale, which was written in Welsh by a native of those parts, and appeared in competition for a prize on the Folk-Lore of that parish.

The son of Hafodgarreg was shepherding his father’s flock on the hills, and whilst thus engaged, he, one misty morning, came suddenly upon a lovely girl, seated on the sheltered side of a peat-stack.  The maiden appeared to be in great distress, and she was crying bitterly.  The young man went up to her, and spoke kindly to her, and his attention and sympathy were not without effect on the comely stranger.  p. 9So beautiful was the young woman, that from expressions of sympathy the smitten youth proceeded to words of love, and his advances were not repelled.  But whilst the lovers were holding sweet conversation, there appeared on the scene a venerable and aged man, who, addressing the female as her father, bade her follow him.  She immediately obeyed, and both departed leaving the young man alone.  He lingered about the place until the evening, wishing and hoping that she might return, but she came not.  Early the next day, he was at the spot where he first felt what love was.  All day long he loitered about the place, vainly hoping that the beautiful girl would pay another visit to the mountain, but he was doomed to disappointment, and night again drove him homewards.  Thus daily went he to the place where he had met his beloved, but she was not there, and, love-sick and lonely, he returned to Hafodgarreg.  Such devotion deserved its reward.  It would seem that the young lady loved the young man quite as much as he loved her.  And in the land of allurement and illusion (yn nhir hud a lledrith) she planned a visit to the earth, and met her lover, but she was soon missed by her father, and he, suspecting her love for this young man, again came upon them, and found them conversing lovingly together.  Much talk took place between the sire and his daughter, and the shepherd, waxing bold, begged and begged her father to give him his daughter in marriage.  The sire, perceiving that the man was in earnest, turned to his daughter, and asked her whether it were her wish to marry a man of the earth?  She said it was.  Then the father told the shepherd he should have his daughter to wife, and that she should stay with him, until he should strike her with iron, and that, as a marriage portion, he would give her a bag filled with bright money.  The young couple were duly married, and the promised dowry was received.  For many years they lived lovingly p. 10and happily together, and children were born to them.  One day this man and his wife went together to the hill to catch a couple of ponies, to carry them to the Festival of the Saint of Capel Garmon.  The ponies were very wild, and could not be caught.  The man, irritated, pursued the nimble creatures.  His wife was by his side, and now he thought he had them in his power, but just at the moment he was about to grasp their manes, off they wildly galloped, and the man, in anger, finding that they had again eluded him, threw the bridle after them, and, sad to say, the bit struck the wife, and as this was of iron they both knew that their marriage contract was broken.  Hardly had they had time to realise the dire accident, ere the aged father of the bride appeared, accompanied by a host of Fairies, and there and then departed with his daughter to the land whence she came, and that, too, without even allowing her to bid farewell to her children.  The money, though, and the children were left behind, and these were the only memorials of the lovely wife and the kindest of mothers, that remained to remind the shepherd of the treasure he had lost in the person of his Fairy spouse.

Such is the Pentrevoelas Legend.  The writer had evidently not seen the version of this story in the Cambro-Briton, nor had he read Williams’s tale of a like occurrence, recorded in Observations on the Snowdon Mountains.  The account, therefore, is all the more valuable, as being an independent production.

A fragmentary variant of the preceding legend was given me by Mr. Lloyd, late schoolmaster of Llanfihangel-Glyn-Myfyr, a native of South Wales, who heard the tale in the parish of Llanfihangel.  Although but a fragment, it may not be altogether useless, and I will give it as I received it:—

Shon Rolant, Hafod y Dre, Pentrevoelas, when going p. 11home from Llanrwst market, fortunately caught a Fairy-maid, whom he took home with him.  She was a most handsome woman, but rather short and slight in person.  She was admired by everybody on account of her great beauty.  Shon Rolant fell desperately in love with her, and would have married her, but this she would not allow.  He, however, continued pressing her to become his wife, and, by and by, she consented to do so, provided he could find out her name.  As Shon was again going home from the market about a month later, he heard some one saying, near the place where he had seized the Fairy-maid, “Where is little Penloi gone?  Where is little Penloi gone?”  Shon at once thought that some one was searching for the Fairy he had captured, and when he reached home, he addressed the Fairy by the name he had heard, and Penloi consented to become his wife.  She, however, expressed displeasure at marrying a dead man, as the Fairies call us.  She informed her lover that she was not to be touched with iron, or she would disappear at once.  Shon took great care not to touch her with iron.  However, one day, when he was on horseback talking to his beloved Penloi, who stood at the horse’s head, the horse suddenly threw up its head, and the curb, which was of iron, came in contact with Penloi, who immediately vanished out of sight.

The next legend is taken from Williams’s Observations on the Snowdon Mountains.  His work was published in 1802.  He, himself, was born in Anglesey, in 1738, and migrated to Carnarvonshire about the year 1760.  It was in this latter county that he became a learned antiquary, and a careful recorder of events that came under his notice.  His “Observations” throw considerable light upon the life, the customs, and the traditions of the inhabitants of the hill parts and secluded glens of Carnarvonshire.  I have thought fit to make these few remarks about the author p. 12I quote from, so as to enable the reader to give to him that credence which he is entitled to.  Williams entitles the following story, “A Fairy Tale,” but I will for the sake of reference call it “The Ystrad Legend.”

Fairy Ladies Marrying Men

 

FAIRY LADIES MARRYING MORTALS.

     In the mythology of the Greeks, and other nations, gods and goddesses are spoken of as falling in love with human beings, and many an ancient genealogy began with a celestial ancestor.  Much the same thing is said of the Fairies.  Tradition speaks of them as being enamored of the inhabitants of this earth, and content, for a while, to be wedded to mortals.  And there are families in Wales who are said to have Fairy blood coursing through their veins, but they are, or were, not so highly esteemed as were the offspring of the gods among the Greeks.  The famous physicians of Myddfai, who owed their talent and supposed supernatural knowledge to their Fairy origin, are, however, an exception; for their renown, notwithstanding their parentage, was always great, and increased in greatness, as the rolling years removed them from their traditionary parent, the Fairy lady of the Van Pool.

The Pellings are said to have sprung from a Fairy Mother, and the author of Observations on the Snowdon Mountains states that the best blood in his veins is fairy blood.  There are in some parts of Wales reputed descendants on the female side of the Gwylliaid Cochion race; and there are other families among us whom the aged of fifty years ago, with an ominous shake of the head, would say were of Fairy extraction.  We are not, therefore, in Wales void of families of doubtful parentage or origin.

All the current tales of men marrying Fairy ladies belong to a class of stories called, technically, Taboo stories.  In these tales the lady marries her lover conditionally, and when this condition is broken she deserts husband and children, and hies back to Fairy land.

This kind of tale is current among many people.  Max Müller in Chips from a German Workshop, vol. ii, pp. 104-6, records one of these ancient stories, which is found in the Brahmana of the Yagur-veda.  Omitting a few particulars, the story is as follows:—

p. 7“Urvasi, a kind of Fairy, fell in love with Purûravas, the son of Ida, and when she met him she said, ‘Embrace me three times a day, but never against my will, and let me never see you without your royal garments, for this is the manner of women.’  In this manner she lived with him a long time, and she was with child.  Then her former friends, the Gandharvas, said: ‘This Urvasi has now dwelt a long time among mortals; let us see that she come back.’  Now, there was a ewe, with two lambs, tied to the couch of Urvasi and Purûravas, and the Gandharvas stole one of them.  Urvasi said: ‘They take away my darling, as if I had lived in a land where there is no hero and no man.’  They stole the second, and she upbraided her husband again.  Then Purûravas looked and said: ‘How can that be a land without heroes and men where I am?’  And naked, he sprang up; he thought it too long to put on his dress.  Then the Gandharvas sent a flash of lightning, and Urvasi saw her husband naked as by daylight.  Then she vanished; ‘I come back,’ she said, and went.

Purûravas bewailed his love in bitter grief.  But whilst walking along the border of a lake full of lotus flowers the Fairies were playing there in the water, in the shape of birds, and Urvasi discovered him and said:—

‘That is the man with whom I dwelt so long.’  Then her friends said: ‘Let us appear to him.’  She agreed, and they appeared before him.  Then the king recognised her, and said:—

‘Lo! my wife, stay, thou cruel in mind!  Let us now exchange some words!  Our secrets, if they are not told now, will not bring us back on any later day.’

She replied: ‘What shall I do with thy speech?  I am gone like the first of the dawns.  Purûravas, go home again, I am hard to be caught, like the wind.’”

p. 8The Fairy wife by and by relents, and her mortal lover became, by a certain sacrifice, one of the Gandharvas.

This ancient Hindu Fairy tale resembles in many particulars similar tales found in Celtic Folk-Lore, and possibly, the original story, in its main features, existed before the Aryan family had separated.  The very words, “I am hard to be caught,” appear in one of the Welsh legends, which shall be hereafter given:—

Nid hawdd fy nala,
I am hard to be caught.

And the scene is similar; in both cases the Fairy ladies are discovered in a lake.  The immortal weds the mortal, conditionally, and for awhile the union seems to be a happy one.  But, unwittingly, when engaged in an undertaking suggested by, or in agreement with the wife’s wishes, the prohibited thing is done, and the lady vanishes away.

Such are the chief features of these mythical marriages.  I will now record like tales that have found a home in several parts of Wales.

 Names Given to Fairies

NAMES GIVEN TO THE FAIRIES.

The Fairies have, in Wales, at least three common and distinctive names, as well as others that are not nowadays used.

The first and most general name given to the Fairies is “Y Tylwyth Têg,” or, the Fair Tribe, an expressive and descriptive term.  They are spoken of as a people, and not as myths or goblins, and they are said to be a fair or handsome race.

Another common name for the Fairies, is, “Bendith y Mamau,” or, “The Mothers’ Blessing.”  In Doctor Owen Pughe’s Dictionary they are called “Bendith eu Mamau,” or, “Their Mothers’ Blessing.”  The first is the most common expression, at least in North Wales.  It is a p. 3singularly strange expression, and difficult to explain.  Perhaps it hints at a Fairy origin on the mother’s side of certain fortunate people.

The third name given to Fairies is “Ellyll,” an elf, a demon, a goblin.  This name conveys these beings to the land of spirits, and makes them resemble the oriental Genii, and Shakespeare’s sportive elves.  It agrees, likewise, with the modern popular creed respecting goblins and their doings.

Davydd ab Gwilym, in a description of a mountain mist in which he was once enveloped, says:—

Yr ydoedd ym mhob gobant
Ellyllon mingeimion gant.

There were in every hollow
A hundred wrymouthed elves.

The Cambro-Briton, v. I., p. 348.

In Pembrokeshire the Fairies are called Dynon Buch Têg, or the Fair Small People.

Another name applied to the Fairies is Plant Annwfn, or Plant Annwn.  This, however, is not an appellation in common use.  The term is applied to the Fairies in the third paragraph of a Welsh prose poem called Bardd Cwsg, thus:—

Y bwriodd y Tylwyth Têg fi . . . oni bai fy nyfod i mewn
pryd i’th achub o gigweiniau Plant Annwfn.

Where the Tylwyth Têg threw me . . . if I had not come
in time to rescue thee from the clutches of Plant Annwfn.

Annwn, or Annwfn is defined in Canon Silvan Evans’s Dictionary as an abyss, Hades, etc.  Plant Annwn, therefore, means children of the lower regions.  It is a name derived from the supposed place of abode—the bowels of the earth—of the Fairies.  Gwragedd Annwn, dames of Elfin land, is a term applied to Fairy ladies.

p. 4Ellis Wynne, the author of Bardd Cwsg, was born in 1671, and the probability is that the words Plant Annwfn formed in his days part of the vocabulary of the people.  He was born in Merionethshire.

Gwyll, according to Richards, and Dr. Owen Pughe, is a Fairy, a goblin, etc.  The plural of Gwyll would be Gwylliaid, or Gwyllion, but this latter word Dr. Pughe defines as ghosts, hobgoblins, etc.  Formerly, there was in Merionethshire a red haired family of robbers called Y Gwylliaid Cochion, or Red Fairies, of whom I shall speak hereafter.

Coblynau, or Knockers, have been described as a species of Fairies, whose abode was within the rocks, and whose province it was to indicate to the miners by the process of knocking, etc., the presence of rich lodes of lead or other metals in this or that direction of the mine.

That the words Tylwyth Têg and Ellyll are convertible terms appears from the following stanza, which is taken from the Cambrian Magazine, vol. ii, p. 58.

Pan dramwych ffridd yr Ywen,
Lle mae Tylwyth Têg yn rhodien,
Dos ymlaen, a phaid a sefyll,
Gwilia’th droed—rhag dawnsva’r Ellyll.

When the forest of the Yew,
Where Fairies haunt, thou passest through,
Tarry not, thy footsteps guard
From the Goblins’ dancing sward.

Although the poet mentions the Tylwyth Têg and Ellyll as identical, he might have done so for rhythmical reasons.  Undoubtedly, in the first instance a distinction would be drawn between these two words, which originally were intended perhaps to describe two different kinds of beings, but in the course of time the words became interchangeable, and thus their distinctive character was lost.  In English the words Fairies and elves are used without any distinction.  p. 5It would appear from Brand’s Popular Antiquities, vol. II., p. 478., that, according to Gervase of Tilbury, there were two kinds of Goblins in England, called Portuni and Grant.  This division suggests a difference between the Tylwyth Têg and the Ellyll.  The Portuni, we are told, were very small of stature and old in appearance, “statura pusilli, dimidium pollicis non habentes,” but then they were “senili vultu, facie corrugata.”  The wrinkled face and aged countenance of the Portuni remind us of nursery Fairy tales in which the wee ancient female Fairy figures.  The pranks of the Portuni were similar to those of Shakespeare’s Puck.  The species Grant is not described, and consequently it cannot be ascertained how far they resembled any of the many kinds of Welsh Fairies.  Gervase, speaking of one of these species, says:—“If anything should be to be carried on in the house, or any kind of laborious work to be done, they join themselves to the work, and expedite it with more than human facility.”

In Scotland there were at least two species of elves, the Brownies and the Fairies.  The Brownies were so called from their tawny colour, and the Fairies from their fairness.  The Portuni of Gervase appear to have corresponded in character to the Brownies, who were said to have employed themselves in the night in the discharge of laborious undertakings acceptable to the family to whose service they had devoted themselves.  The Fairies proper of Scotland strongly resembled the Fairies of Wales.

The term Brownie, or swarthy elve, suggests a connection between them and the Gwylliaid Cochion, or Red Fairies of Wales.