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.