‘Married to the Mab’- Faery-Human Marriage in Britain

Queen Mab by blackvelvetwings on DeviantArt

The most recent issue of the Fairy Investigation Society newsletter (issue 17) included an article by Morgan Daimler on faery/ human marriages. She takes a broad approach in her discussion, considering examples from Ireland, Denmark, Germany and France as well as Britain. As regular visitors to the blog will know, I tend to be a bit more chauvinistic here on the British Fairies pages, and the piece set me thinking about the uniquely British aspects of the subject.

In recalling the cases of marriage I had read about, what immediately struck me was how they tended to be distributed to the west and north of Britain, with very few in the south-east- in other words in England. The story of Wild Edric comes from Shropshire- that is, the north-west Midlands- but the most of the recorded stories relate to over the border, in Wales, or much further north in the Highlands and the northern isles. I’m not sure what this tells us about the attractiveness of English males to fairy women; probably it’s not wholly flattering.

Cornwall is another blank, largely, which may be surprising in that the prevalence of Welsh and Highland cases might incline us to speculate that faery marriage is a feature of ‘Celtic’ regions. The Cornish stories of Cherry of Zennor, Jenny Permuen and of the ‘Fairy Master’ all have undertones of sex and marriage; all three human females are nubile girls who are employed by older widowers to act as carers for their orphaned children. The happily-ever-after outcome you might anticipate in a typical fairy tale is that she marries her employer and starts a new family with him. This doesn’t happen in the Cornish examples though. Love is also in the air in the Cornish tale of Ann Jefferies, but the affection one faery shows for her ends up causing dissension, for which she’s blamed and is ejected from faeryland. Cornish girls seem to have major problems settling down with supernatural suitors.

Pondering this, another thought struck me. In Wales (and, predominantly, in North Wales- Sir Caernarfon and Lleyn) the bulk of the ‘faery marriage’ cases concern the so-called gwragedd annwn, generally called ‘lake maidens’ in English and widely accepted as being faeries. In fact, the name more literally might be translated as ‘hell women’ or ‘underworld wives,’ and their exact status is somewhat anomalous when compared to the tylwyth teg proper. In origin and in nature the gwragedd might better be considered alongside some of the lake spirits and fae women of Arthurian myth- the Lady of the Lake and Morgan le Fay. In the case of the latter, of course, the ‘fay’ element of her name denotes magical powers rather than faery nature.

The singular of the Welsh word, gwraig, means woman or wife. Closely related is another word, gwrach, which has the sense of hag, crone or witch. In Cornish, gwrah is more simply just ‘witch’- as in the west Penwith place-name Crows an Wra, the witch’s cross. The little settlement itself, on the main road to the grimness that is the Land’s End visitor centre, is almost entirely devoid of magical or mysterious qualities, but it sits in an ancient and ritual landscape. Just to the north-west is the hill of Carn Brea, topped by two burial chambers; to the north is Bartinney, with its cairns and Bartine hillfort; to the north-east is Carn Euny ancient settlement and holy well; to the east Boscawen-Un stone circle. A little further north is the setting for William Bottrell’s story of Uter Bosence and the Piskey, in which a man was piskey led and ended up being terrorised by a gang of spriggans led by a pixie goat. The pobel vean have been sighted dancing at nearby Sennen and Trevescan. My point here is that the ‘witch’ of the hamlet of Crows inhabited a hallowed environment which was separated from the supernatural world by the thinnest of veils. Her witchiness may have been as much a matter of her contacts and associations as anything innate. This may indicate some of the connotations of the Welsh gwraig as well.

Anyway, returning to North Wales, several families were reported by Professor John Rhys to trace their descent from one of the lake women- amongst them the Pellings of the area around Llanberis and Caernarfon and the Symachaid of Llyn Corwrion. One of the offspring of the former, William Williams of Llandegai, claimed ancestry from a woman called Penelope and declared “The best blood in my own veins is this fairy’s.” Penelope’s name was given to her children, who in time came to be called the ‘Pellings,’ but one suspects some sort of educated intrusion into this story, as her name is Greek, the most famous bearers being Odysseus’ wife and a dryad of Mount Kyllene in Arcadia, mother of Pan by Hermes. William Williams may have called her a fairy, but this lass (and all of her kind) were no ordinary representatives of the tylwyth teg. It may be for this reason that one folklorist who examined these ‘fairy brides’ called the Welsh accounts a “unique sub-group” of this class of story of human-fae marriage and talked advisedly about the gwragedd as ‘human’ and as ‘supernatural women’ (Juliette Wood, ‘The Fairy Bride Legend in Wales,’ in Folklore, vol.103, 1992, 58, 60 & 66).

We could say much the same about the exceptionalism of many other human marriages with supernatural partners. In Wales, and even more so in Scotland, Orkney and Shetland, relationships are recorded with merfolk and with selkies. I have written about these in some detail in my book, Beyond Faery, but- as the title implies- they aren’t strictly faeries either. If these cases are subtracted from the total number of British examples, you’re actually left with quite a reduced roster of life partnerships between humans and members of the sith, tylwyth teg and faeries. A good example of such a union comes from North Wales:

“At Dolgellau a faery woman bathed in a pool every summer night and most locals would avoid the spot out of respect for her privacy. A young man called Hugh Evans couldn’t resist spying on a naked faery girl and, when he did, was so taken with her that he asked her to marry him.  She consented on condition that she should be allowed to go off on her own at night and that he should never interfere in this, nor ask her any questions.  One night Hugh’s curiosity got the better of him (yet again) and he tried to follow her out of their bedroom window, but he fell and broke his leg. She nursed him until he was well again- and then left him forever.”

This story epitomises some of the general features of human/faery marriage that Morgan Daimler notes in her article. The partnerships often involve a measure of coercion (from both sides) such as capture or abduction. Even in the more voluntary cases, as we might classify this one, persuasion to submit over a period of time might be required (remember the fussiness of the gwragedd annwn over the bread they’re offered by suitors?) and the human’s commitment might be tested with conditions, prohibitions and taboos. Violation of these apparently cannot be forgiven and the relationship has to be terminated. With the lake maidens, striking the fae wife, most particularly with iron, must be avoided. When- ultimately- this rule is breached, the spouse departs, taking with her all property she brought to the match (as Morgan also notes).

The dowry brought with her by the gwraig in so many of the Welsh accounts is a feature worth dwelling upon. She contributes material wealth (usually cattle, rarely money) and, hence, prosperity, to the marriage. She adds to this with offspring and with the skills that she transmits to them. When she departs, after the taboo that she has imposed has been broken, the husband and his farm cease to prosper. These brides very obviously have economic, and therefore, social power; this influence, notably, isn’t diminished by the fact that she’s coming into a unfamiliar world. The wife retains her autonomy and influence- which, I think, tells us something about faery society: that it is largely matriarchal and operates under the rule of a faery queen.

Another key feature- and a testament to the bonds of love and attachment that can develop- is the fact that one party normally has to cross the dimensions from Faery to middle earth, or vice versa. The Dolgellau faery tries to have the best of both worlds, it seems, with her nights spent (I presume) with her own kind. In the story of the mermaid of Zennor, though, her chosen partner, local boy Mathey Trewella, went to live with her under the sea. These arrangements rarely seem to work out well, though, as if the pull of home is stronger than any familial affection. The Orkney story of Johnny Croy describes how he managed to secure a mermaid wife by snatching her precious golden comb. To win it back, she struck a bargain with him- that she would live with him on his farm for seven years and that he would then go with her to visit her family under the sea. During the first part of their marriage, they had seven children. When the time came to go under the waves, Johnny’s mother branded her youngest grandchild on its buttock with a red-hot cross. This brutal measure prevented the mermaid taking her baby with her- but the rest of the family disappeared forever beneath the sea. A similar sort of story is told about the Caernarfonshire mermaid called Nefyn. She eventually consented to be a man’s wife after he had trapped her on dry land, but the match was plainly less than wholly voluntary, and she also had to surrender to her husband her magic swimming cap.  The couple became well off and had ten sets of twins together, but it transpired that the reason for Nefyn’s self-sacrifice was to learn a song that she had heard her husband singing.  Once she had acquired the tune, she returned to her merfolk family.  Her husband went with her for a while, but eventually returned home, where their children had remained.

One way or another, most faery-human marriages seem to be starkly transactional- one side submits for reasons of material gain- and they also involve a degree of coercion that’s barely concealed by any subsequent ‘success’ arising from the match, in terms of children or prosperity.

Gwragedd Annwn by Janey Jane on DeviantArt