I’m delighted to announce the publication of a new book through Green Magic Publishing, Welsh Fairies- The Tylwyth Teg. This complements my original Green Magic book, British Fairies, as well as British Pixies and Manx Fairies.
The main purpose of the book is to highlight how the tylwyth teg differ in detail from the wider British faery family. I think their uniqueness lies in certain physical features- such as their strangely pale complexions- and certain cultural characteristics- their musicality and their close links to oak trees and to mines.
In the January 2022 issue of the Fairy Investigation Society newsletter (no. 15), Michael Swords wrote a very interesting article on ‘True’ Close Encounters with the Tylwyth Teg in Anglesey in the Early 1800s. In this, he considered some accounts of faery encounters that were reported in the journal Y Cymmrodor in 1886 (the cases are featured in my new book, naturally). Before examining the evidence from Ynys Mon/ Anglesey, Swords surveyed faery sightings in Wales as a whole (and mapped the results of this review of the published literature).
Analysing the map, which is reproduced newsletter, in the Swords noted that there were:
“[A] great collection of incidents darkening the southeastern area (Glamorgan and Gwent, spilling into Monmouthshire.) This is the location of Cardiff and the densest population area of Wales… This, in UFO research, would represent a typical population-related density of cases. Plenty of potential witnesses but, more importantly, some amounts of persons who want to ask witnesses questions about their experiences and then write them down.”
FIS newsletter 15, pages 22-23
Swords also noted that, in the northeast of the country, there is another relatively dense population area (near to big cities
in England such as Liverpool and Manchester) but nowhere near the case reports seen in the south. He proposed that this was a reflection of the fact that the area was under-investigated. Cases existed in these locales, he felt sure, but very few interested parties went out into the villages and asked about or recorded them. Equally, mid-Wales- which is a mountainous area with low population- had very few reported cases. His intuition was that this area had been almost entirely un-investigated by folklorists. Likewise, were it not for the folklorist who recorded his researches in Y Cymmrodor, there would be very little from around Gwynedd or Ynys Mon (that is, the north-west of the country).
Swords then proceeded to select, from the reported cases for the whole country, those that he found most convincing. The first of these is the ‘Bodfari incident‘ which I have described in a previous posting. The author also ventured drawing what the witnesses reported. As he noted “All of the cases describe personages of a child-like size, and therefore in the three-to-four-foot-tall range. This places them squarely in the range of the common beings seen in the better cases elsewhere in the literature, whether old or modern.” His illustrations include several small ‘gnome’ or dwarf like figures, one dressed in green and another in red, looking like a small Santa Claus. There is also a curious doll-like female who was met repeatedly at Newborough on Ynys Mon, as she would visit a Mrs Roberts to borrow her griddle (gradel in the Welsh that both parties spoke) for baking her bread. The faery girl would thank Mrs Roberts for her loan by giving her a loaf . Here, Swords observed wisely- “I wondered about the ‘iron’ here and if that was an inconsistency which should invalidate the case. Then it occurred to me that I needed to get a little more humility as to whether I understand enough about the thinking processes of fairies to order them about as to what sort of rules they decide to lay down for we humans.” As longer term readers will appreciate, my effort on this blog is always to try to avoid ‘human’ interpretations of non-human activities and to endeavour (perhaps without the requisite humility!) to understand what the faeries are doing on their own terms and not ours.
Swords’ valuable overall summary of the Welsh sightings is as follows:
“The overall assessment of the better Welsh cases is that several incidents of the following stand out: fairies trooping along rural roads or natural areas, fairies playing music and circle-dancing, sometimes near brooks, fairies interacting with rural and farming people in classic brownie ‘tit-for tat’ fashion, and occasional interactions with a solitary [member of the] tylwyth teg. A few cases exhibit hostility, but they are not the norm.”
FIS no.15 page 25
Swords then gives an outline of the half dozen faery accounts that a Mr W. Cobb heard and recorded during a visit to Holyhead in 1885- and which he subsequently regarded as significant and credible enough to report in the journal Y Cymmrodor. The various short stories deal with very typical faery themes: gifts of money that are revoked upon disclosure; leaving out water, soap and towels for the faeries when they enter a house to bathe at night (three incidents); the tylwyth teg undertaking threshing in a barn; and, a visit to the faeries and riding with them. Swords sees the underlying thread to all of these as being “a slightly touchy but generally benign interaction between humans and fairies” in a tit for tat or give and take style. He asks, rhetorically, if this is typical of the tylwyth teg; I think we could say that it’s typical of the British faery as a whole: they are (by and large) the ‘Good Neighbours’ by which name we know them (the Welsh equivalent being Bendith y Mamau- the mothers’ blessings, with the same general sense), subject always to the proviso that offence can be taken and that major breakdowns in relations can, from time to time, take place.
In conclusion, Swords had this to say of Cobb’s cases. His main witness, a Mrs. Owen, firmly believed what she passed onto him partly because, although she hadn’t seen faeries herself, she had been the recipient of gifts of faery money. Much more importantly, though, she believed because she had been told by both her parents about their own faery encounters. These were, to quote Swords, “spectacular, [and] strange and wonderful [yet] told without frills or any great adventure or revelations, just matter-of-factly as if this sort of thing is common knowledge. No one is claiming any special status about themselves, nor boasting nor glory. Something happened. Then it went away. In UFO research, as in many anomalous incidents, this is the prime clue that we are dealing with something that the witness believes to be objectively true.” A point I’ve often made is that I think we ought to take faery reports seriously simply because they have been made consistently and regularly over centuries. They are, by and large, part of the fabric of everyday- usually rural- life, being- to some extent- no different from seeing a fox or a badger in terms of uniqueness, although plainly they carry with them a far greater mystique and magical charge.
Finally, Swords reviewed how we should assess the Ynys Mon accounts- or for that matter, the many other very similar ones from around Wales and around Britain as a whole. In doing so, I feel he sympathised with the position I’ve just set out:
“[Either] many of the people of Anglesey- and Wales in general- were sitting around amusing themselves by telling similar lies and fantasies, or those same people were telling rather short and nearly pointless stories of their mostly brief encounters with entities that they were certain were real elements in their surroundings.”
The article’s author was inclined to take the view that the many witnesses “were talking about realities and not made-up foolishness.” That has always been my approach on this blog, and in Welsh Faeries just as in my other books, I accept that the Welsh witnesses over the last few centuries knew exactly what they saw and felt. It was neither deception nor delusion, but a genuine experience of contact.
British Fairies 
4 thoughts on “Welsh Faeries”