British Goblins E-Book

Wirt Sikes

• Herausgeber: David De Angelis
• Kategorie: Gesellschafts- und Liebesromane
• Sprache: Englisch

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2017

Beschreibung

One of the most beautiful and complete collections of stories, legends, myths, folktales, and traditions to ever emerge from Wales. Compiled by an American—the United States consul for Wales in the late nineteenth century—this volume was the work of several years’ labor.
Scouring the hills and valleys of Wales after falling in love with the land, the author wrote down the oral traditions, stories, myths, and legends related to him by the people he met on his travels. The result was a spectacular work, divided up into four sections: “Faerie Realm,” the “Spirit-World,” “Quaint Old Customs,” and “Bells, Wells, Stones, and Dragons.”
Rarely has a nation’s mythos and essence been so elegantly captured as in this work. The legacy of Welsh mythology and folklore has entered the vocabulary of modern English, and spread around the world, being some of the oldest tales in all Europe.

Leseprobe

BRITISH GOBLINS

Welsh Folk-Lore, Fairy Mythology, Legends and Traditions

By

WIRT SIKES

With Illustrations by T. H. Thomas

LONDON: S. LOW, MARSTON, SEARLE & RIVINGTON

ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED IN 1880

© David De Angelis 2017 [all rights reserved]

TABLE OF CONTENTS

CHAPTER I. FAIRY TALES AND THE ANCIENT MYTHOLOGY

CHAPTER II. CLASSIFICATION OF WELSH FAIRIES

CHAPTER III. LAKE FAIRIES

CHAPTER IV. MOUNTAIN FAIRIES

CHAPTER V. CHANGELINGS

CHAPTER VI. LIVING WITH THE TYLWYTH TEG

CHAPTER VII. FAIRY MUSIC

CHAPTER VIII. FAIRY RINGS

CHAPTER IX. PIETY AS A PROTECTION FROM THE SEDUCTIONS OF THE TYLWYTH TEG

CHAPTER X. FAIRY MONEY AND FAIRY GIFTS IN GENERAL

CHAPTER XI. ORIGINS OF WELSH FAIRIES

CHAPTER I. FAIRY TALES AND THE ANCIENT MYTHOLOGY

At eve, the primrose path along,

The milkmaid shortens with a song

Her solitary way;

She sees the fairies with their queen

Trip hand-in-hand the circled green, And hears them raise, at times unseen, The ear-enchanting lay.

Rev. John Logan: Ode to Spring, 1780

The Compensations of Science--Existing Belief in Fairies in Wales--The Faith of Culture--The Credulity of Ignorance--The Old Time Welsh

Fairyland--The Fairy King--The Legend of St. Collen and Gwyn ap Nudd-The Green Meadows of the Sea--Fairies at Market--The Land of Mystery

I.

WITH regard to other divisions of the field of folk-lore, the views of scholars differ, but in the realm of faerie these differences are reconciled; it is agreed that fairy tales are relics of the ancient mythology; and the philosophers stroll hand in hand harmoniously. This is as it should be, in a realm about which cluster such delightful memories of the most poetic period of life--childhood, before scepticism has crept in as ignorance slinks out. The knowledge which introduced scepticism is infinitely more valuable than the faith it displaced; but, in spite of that, there be few among us who have not felt evanescent regrets for the displacement by the of the old faith in fairies. There was something so peculiarly fascinating in that old belief, that 'once upon a time' the world was less practical in its facts than now, less commonplace and hum-drum, less subject to the inexorable laws of gravitation, optics, and the like. What dramas it has yielded! What poems, what dreams, what delights!