Ceredigion Folk Tales E-Book

Peter Stevenson

• Herausgeber: The History Press
• Kategorie: Fantasy und Science-Fiction
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 310

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2014

Beschreibung

Ceredigion is a land shaped by mythology, where mermaids and magic mix with humans and where ordinary people achieve extraordinary things. This is a captivating collection of traditional and modern stories, including the submerged city of Cantre'r Gwaelod, or the 'Welsh Atlantis', how the Devil came to build a bridge over the Rheidol, the elephant that died in Tregaron, and how the Holy Grail came to Nanteos. All the while the tylwyth teg (the Welsh fairies) and changelings run riot through the countryside. Storyteller and illustrator Peter Stevenson takes us on a tour of a county steeped in legend, encountering ghosts, witches and heroes at every turn.

Leseprobe

‘There’s one advantage in being poor.

It’s very inexpensive.’

– Ceredigion proverb

CONTENTS

Title Page

Epigraph

Acknowledgements

Introduction

1 Mari Berllan Pitter

2 Sir Dafydd Llwyd, the Conjurer of Ceredigion

3 Tales of the Tylwyth Teg

4 John the Painter and the Fairy Ring

5 The Aberystwyth Hiring Fair

6 The Llwynwermwnt Changeling

7 The Lady of Felin-Wern Millpond

8 The Salty Welsh Sea

9 Rhysyn and the Mermaid

10 The Petrified Forest

11 The Tale of Taliesin

12 The Old Toad of Borth Bog

13 Dafydd Meurig and the Dancing Bear

14 The Wickedest Man in Ceredigion

15 Twm Siôn Cati, the Tregaron Trickster

16 The Green Man of No Man’s Land

17 The War of the Little Englishman

18 The Devil’s Bridge

19 The Headless Dog of Penparcau

20 The Transvestite White Lady of Broginan

21 Crooked Beti Grwca

22 Sigl-di-gwt

23 The Ffos-y-Ffin Goblin and the One-Eyed Preacher

24 The Brwcsod of Ffair Rhos

25 The Talking Tree of Cwmystwyth

26 The Dribbling Cow and Other Curious Cattle

27 The Elephant that Died in Tregaron

28 The Queer Old Couple Who Always Quarrelled

29 Julie’s Been Working for the Drugs Squad

30 The King of the Rocks

Notes

Bibliography

Copyright

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

Thanks to Declan Flynn and Chris Ogle at The History Press, the National Library of Wales, Emma Lile at the National History Museum at St Fagans, Robin Gwyndaf for allowing access to his archive, Lucy Thomas at the Welsh Books Council, Stuart Evans, Jez Danks, and Anna Evans at Ceredigion Museum, Helen and Anya at Ceredigion Archive, Catrin at the National Sound Archive, the librarians of Ceredigion, Emily Trahair and Planet magazine, Gill Ogden and Aberystwyth Arts Centre, Cecil Sharp House, Fiona Collins, Dafydd Eto and David Moore, Ceri Owen-Jones, Elsa Davies, Iola Billings, Dafydd Wyn Morgan, Mary-Ann Constantine, Valériane Leblond, Bethan Miles, Conti’s café, Yarn Storytellers, Delyth and Dafydd at Ty Mawr, Jonathan Davies, Gerald Morgan, Gordon Jones, Mabel Pakenham-Walsh, Chris Grooms, Sue Clow, Michael Freeman, Derek Bryce, Jen Jones and the Welsh Quilt Centre, Tony and Cory Mortis-Wait, Martin at Ystwyth Books, Hazel Thomas at the People’s Collection Wales, Brian Swaddling, Linda and Sarah in the Print Shop at NLW, Kevin Williams, Peter Jones, Bob the poet, Susan Passmore, Anthony Morris, Alan Hale, and to all the little red mannikins, one-eyed preachers, transvestite ghosts, dyn hysbys, drunken mermaids, mischievous bwcas, headless dogs, two-headed calves, expired elephants and long-nosed fiddlers who have taken the time to indulge a curious gentleman of the road and have invited him to drink water from oak leaves rolled into the shape of a cone.

INTRODUCTION

FOLK TALES AND STORYTELLING IN CEREDIGION

Myra Evans was born in New Quay in 1883. She was a writer, a storyteller, an illustrator, a mother of six, a linguist, a humanist, a teacher, a collector of music, songs and lullabies, and a singer, although she considered herself more a crow than a canary. She learned fairy tales from her family and friends: from her father Thomas Rees of ‘Glasfryn’, her grandfather Rees Rees, and her great grandfather Daniel Williams of ‘Glyngolau’; from the old sea captains David Jones of ‘Annie Brocklebank’ and Captain Davies ‘Loch Shiels’ and a cobbler, William Evans.

Myra left us a jewel, a collection of fairy tales and local legends, each of them about named people and places, dating from before the 1850s. They are misty memories of local characters, and of farmhouses and cottages, some now in ruins while others have 4x4s on tarmac driveways and Laura Ashley drapes in PVC windows. Often there are caravan parks, though the streams still sing their harmonies to the grey wagtails and the overhanging oak trees.

These stories are of another world, an Otherworld so familiar to the folk of Ceredigion 100 years ago; exotic and enticing, dark and dangerous, curious and comical, a world of the marginalised and misunderstood, of flooded lands and lost languages. A dreamworld.

Myra’s stories reflect the entwining of the landscape and its people. Telling tales is part of the richness of conversation, language, poetry, humour, metaphor and banter in Ceredigion. Stories were often only known within families or small communities, always told in Welsh at informal gatherings in the kitchen, having first ensured to invite the old farmer who knew all the tittle tattle, and the young woman who played all her taid’s (grandad’s) tunes on the fiddle he had given her when she was 5. Along with the storytellers there were singers, musicians, gossips, dancers, poets, quilters, carpenters, preachers and teachers; often they were all the same person. There was the woman with her jars of herbal remedies, and the conjurer, the dyn hysbys, with his recitations, incantations and his book of spells, a source of fear and not a little amusement to many a child. This was a world where every girl and boy were expected from an early age to perform. There were plenty of opportunities at social gatherings: the Noson Lawen, the merry nights in the village halls which celebrated the harvest; the Pilnos, when folk gathered to make rush lights, passing the long night with stories and songs, and the local Eisteddfodau, the annual competitions organised to encourage the creative arts, and to decide who should represent the village at the national event.

The folk poets, y bardd gwylad, were articulate, intelligent, intuitive artists who could express emotions and stories in verse, in strict metre or less formally, giving a voice to those who did not have their command of language. The boys of Cilie farmhouse just north of Llangrannog were well renowned as wordsmiths. Saunders Lewis’ description of the folk poets applies equally to the storytellers:

The folk poet was a craftsman or farmer who followed his occupation in the area where he was born, who knew all the people in the neighbourhood and who could trace their family connections, who also knew the dialect of his native heath, and every story, event and omen, and who used the traditional social gift of poetry to console a bereaved family, to contribute to the jollifications at a wedding feast, or to record a contretemps with lightly malicious satire. His talent was a normal part of the propriety and entertainment of the Welsh rural society, chronicling its happenings, adorning its walls and its tombstones, recording its characters, its events, its sadness and its joy. It was a craft, the metres, the vocabulary, the praise and the words of courtesy were traditional. It was not expected that it should be different from its kind. It was sufficient that it appropriately followed the pattern … The kin of these poets are the mountain birds, the rainbow and the lonely places. They do not marry or give in marriage, they do not quarrel, and do not see their neighbours often enough to be satirical about them.

Cerngoch, a farmer from Bronant at the end of the nineteenth century, divided his work into these categories: nature, love, doorstep, beer, hunting, to persons, memorial, moral, force of habit, hypocrisy, the virtuous woman, religion, trivia and englynion (structured poetry).

These small farming and fishing communities on the windswept fringe of western Britain are not as isolated as some believe. News hawkers, itinerant puppeteers, magic lantern showmen, theatrical troupes, musicians, tramps, travelling menageries, broadsheet and chapbook sellers, seasonal agricultural workers who moved from farm to farm, all of them travellers, brought tales with them. Ships docked along the coast, bringing sailors and smugglers from all over the world, each with a story to tell; the Gypsies settled on either side of the Dyfi estuary and told stories reminiscent of the Arabian Nights or eastern European wonder tales; Margaret Jones, illustrator of Tales from the Mabinogion (ed. Jones, Gwyn & Kevin Crossley-Holland [London: Victor Gollancz, 1984]) performed her puppet shows in her homes in Tre Taliesin and India; a couple of hundred years ago Cornishmen came to work in the lead mines; in the 1930s Italians fleeing poverty came up from South Wales and opened cafes; Poles fled mainland Europe during the war and opened delis; students came from all over the world to study at the universities in Aberystwyth and Lampeter. The county has always been independent and free-thinking, and a few years ago boasted the gay and lesbian capital of Wales. They say of Aberystwyth that most of the country celebrates one queen, whereas Aber celebrates them all. Preachers travelled the land telling tales, much as some storytellers preach. Within the last fifty years the English language storytellers have arrived, following on from the New Age settlers in the early 1970s. They have brought with them new ideas of storytelling as an environmental tool, as performance theatre, as an expression of women’s beliefs, and as a means to heal body and soul.

Given the ever-changing nature of traditions and communities, all a book like this can do is to offer a snapshot of stories from a moment of time. Ceredigion has been my home for twenty years, walking the old Welsh tramping roads with a sketchbook and an open ear, listening to stories over mugs of black tea and lemon cake in corner cafés, and vanishing into manuscripts and books in archives and libraries as a fiddler would step into a fairy ring. There are no stories from the Mabinogion here, as few are specifically set in Ceredigion, and they can easily be read elsewhere. Pryderi was King of Dyfed, though his court was further south than Ceredigion, Cei and Bedwyr sat on Pumlimon before they plucked the hair from the giant’s beard, and Gwydion marched the enchanted pigs he had stolen from Pryderi back through the county. Perhaps the Mabinogion owes rather more to literature than folklore, although its stories are now a fundamental part of the repertoire of Welsh storytellers. A storyteller in Borth illustrates the tale with the tattoos on his arm as he rolls up his sleeve. Rhiannon, Branwen and Blodeuwedd in five minutes, with pictures.

Ceredigion is a land of contrasts, where old meets new, where dolphins swim close to the biggest fish-processing plant in the land; where men dress in women’s clothes not only for a Friday night out with the boys, but to stand up for their liberty and carry out acts of subversion; where conjurers weave their spells in the hills away from those who think they wear pointy hats, cloaks, long grey beards and appear on Saturday night TV; where the last beavers in Wales lived on the banks of the Teifi rather than in a cage waiting for permission to be released as part of a reintroduction scheme; and where the fair folk are darker and more dangerous than the gossamer-winged sprites who live in the illustrations in children’s picture books. It is a land where people speak the language of story, and the stories have mud on their boots.

1

MARI BERLLAN PITTER

There is a young man, one of those gaunt, earnest young men, with bottle-bottom glasses, unruly fair hair, a book under his arm, and a thermos strapped to a rucksack on his back. He’s looking for remains, antiquities, stories from the past, with mud on his boots and bramble scratches on his legs. He’s thirsty from walking but too nervous to ask for water in the pub in Pennant, as it was a little rowdy. He’s passing an old farmhouse, Mynachdy, and as he reaches the gate, he is wondering whether to ask for a drink, when a girl limps out in front of him. She’s dark, jet-black hair flecked with red, deep dark eyes full of pain, and thin red lips that seem to be spitting blood. Plain and pretty at the same time, he thinks, for he is just at that difficult age. She has a slight hunch to her shoulder, head wrapped in a shawl, and hobnailed boots against bare legs. She is burning fury. She turns to look back at the entrance to the farm where the man is standing, and a stream of venom pours from her mouth. His Welsh is poor, though he understands enough to know that this is not kindly meant. She stares him in the eye, he is rooted to the spot, and he doesn’t know if he is terrified or in love. But in the blink of a crow’s eye, she’s gone.

He looks around, and on the road towards Cilau Aeron he sees a hare, watching him. One of those ancient scarred hares that can outstare a lurcher. It runs into a field and follows the line of an old thorn hedge, weaving in and out like dog rose and honeysuckle, unscratched by the blackthorn and bramble. He follows, running along the line of the hedge. It’s so thickly woven; how could a hare pass through it? When he is one side of the hedge, the hare is on the other, he climbs over gates and fences, rusting wire tearing his shirt, bruising his leg, trapping fingers, squelching through cow pats. He is in a thorn thicket, his trousers ripped, knees torn, mud mingling with blood. He pulls himself out, and there is the hare, in a circle where a castle once stood, staring at him. It turns and disappears down a bank; he follows, slips on his backside, bangs the back of his head on a stone, and sits there with his boots dangling in the stream.

On the opposite bank is the hare. Their eyes meet. It’s laughing at him. It turns and runs up the wooded slope through a carpet of wild garlic, towards a cottage built into the rock face, pretty and double-fronted, smoke billowing from tall chimneys that look like rabbit’s ears. He watches the hare run through a patch of strawberries in the garden and in through the front door. He picks himself up, wades across the river and up to the cottage. He hears a voice, ‘Dewch i mewn, cariad.’ A woman’s voice. ‘Don’t be shy, take off your boots.’ He does, and walks in.

The room is sepia and ochre, full of smoke and smells that tickle his nose, sweet and sour, aromatic and leafy, like cooking herbs. The walls are covered in sagging shelves and oak cabinets, full of misty brown jars and green glass bottles. There is an inglenook at one end, surrounded by a wickerwork screen, with dried bryony and wormwood hanging from the lintel. Sat in a worn rocking chair is an old woman, stirring a black pot hanging from a hook and chain over the open fire. She is small, grey hair flecked with black, deep dark eyes, thin white lips, and a wrinkled round face wrapped in a shawl that covers a slight hump on one shoulder. There is no sign of the hare. She ladles out the contents of the cauldron into a bowl and holds it out to him.

‘There’s bara brith on the table, fill your belly. You’re as thin as a rake.’ She looks him up and down. ‘You’ve made a mess of yourself, my boy. Sit down, pull down your trousers and we’ll bathe those cuts.’ He can’t refuse. She fetches bottles and jars and mixes potions and powders and, with a small piece of red muslin, she cleans the mud from his wounds and fills them with concoctions and tinctures. She asks him what he is doing in the woods, and he explains: antiquities, folk tales, old characters, you know. She knows, and while she cleans his cuts, she tells him stories, as if she understands exactly what he is seeking.

The cottage, she says, is Berllan Pitter, the Bitter Orchard. A family lived here 200 years ago; John and Mary Davies, with their daughter Mari and son David. Father worked at the big house, Mynachdy, as a gardener. Mynachdy was haunted by a ghost so small it could pass through the eye of a needle. Mari started working there too, as a maidservant. She was one of those dark intense girls, strong-willed and sensitive, mending broken animals, always seeing phantoms, pulling the heads from dolls, invoking spirits. She loved horses; she could whisper to them, send them to sleep, just like the man at Strata Florida. When her parents died, she was turned 50, set in her ways. She had fallen out with a man at the big house long ago, so had to earn a living for herself. She turned to the plants in the woods and became an herbalist. And so the stories started.

She was regarded as a little odd, away with the fairies; fine when you’re young and nearly pretty, but when you get older, well, curtains twitch and fingers point. She had a wicked sense of humour. People would ask her, ‘What you been doin’ today, Mari?’ and she would answer, ‘Drownin’ kittens.’ She started visiting people, selling her potions and remedies, asking for money or food in exchange. Many had known her father and took pity on her, and if they refused, she simply turned and walked away with her head down, without a word. Sometimes she cursed them, under her breath, or loudly if they were objectionable. People started to believe that her curses came true. Animals fell ill, people too; butter wouldn’t churn; she cursed three farmers and they all lost cattle; she made a young girl walk backwards; she turned Dic Roderick’s water wheel at Llanarth into reverse, and horses wouldn’t pass her house because she’d put a protective spell on it. Even her own cousin’s horse stood stock still until she lifted her curse. Only one man was safe from her spells: Lluestwr, the local poet. Not only could she curse, she could lift the spells of others. She would place a ball of wool in a bowl of water, stick a pin into it and recite a chapter of the Bible, for she was a devout chapel goer. They said she had power, fear spread, and soon the word witchery was heard, which made her curse even more.

Witchcraft was known all over Ceredigion. Young girls made potions to attract men, cure animals and heal wounds. There were stories about Pegi Jonin in Bronant, Black Ellen the Gypsy of Gogerddan, Beti Grwca of New Quay, Beti Havard of Llangybie, and Crick y Wheel of Llanbadarn Fawr who dug up vegetables and milked cows in the middle of the night and threatened to break people’s heads with a sickle if they came near. Her daughter supposedly had a crooked eye which could bewitch you just by staring. There were three witches in Aberarth who could make themselves disappear and reappear in Cardigan. A servant at Dolfawr laughed at the idea that Betty’r Bont of Ystrad Meurig had powers, until one night he found he had been turned into a hare and was chased all the way to bed by two greyhounds. Another night she turned him into a horse, saddled him and rode him till dawn. In Llangwyryfon in 1922 a woman cursed a cow, which promptly sat down, refused to move and had to be shot. At Lluest Farm in Llwyngroes, an old woman cursed a farmer who refused her food, and all his pigs lay on their backs with their trotters in the air. In Talybont a woman was thought to have turned herself into a hare, while in Llandre one was shot when in the form of a hare. A woman from Tregaron asked a farmer’s wife for a small corner of his large farm to grow some potatoes, but was turned away from the door by a servant. The servant saw a hare looking at him, assumed it was the woman, took a gun and shot at her, but the hare ran away. Friends told him that she could only be killed by a bent fourpenny silver coin. He shot at the hare again, it rolled over screaming terribly, and the old woman was found later with a wound. The doctor was sent for and he found a bent fourpenny silver coin in two pieces embedded in her leg. He called her a witch, refused to treat her and she died.

If there were witches, there were also charms and protections against them. In Bettws Bledrws a woman tried to steal a horse but failed because it wore a protective necklace known as Ialen Cerddenin; a man in Lledrod asked the local conjuror for a written charm after being bewitched by a hag; there were snakestones, round stones thought to be formed when the heads of two snakes met; witch bottles, half-filled with lead, designed to hold her spirit which were then buried beneath a yew tree; in Ysbyty Ystwyth, a couple smeared fungus on a gatepost to protect themselves against a witch, and in Llanafan, a workman found witch’s butter on the shafts of a wagon, which he scraped off and burned, thinking that would also kill the witch.

They could cure, too. Up until the late 1920s a woman in Aberystwyth had cured dozens of people of disease of the heart, clefyd y galon, by measuring their heads with a piece of yarn and mixing a drink made of brandy and yellow cake saffron. An old woman in Mynydd Bach a hundred years earlier cured a young woman of love by placing her by a tub of water and molten lead. Indigestion was cured by herbs boiled in urine, and rickets by snipping the ear.

The young man has been listening intently, but his memory is poor and he’s cursing himself for not recording all this. He looks at his legs and the wounds are almost healed, the bruising gone from his arms; she’s even sewed the rips in his trousers. He thanks her and offers her a piece of chocolate but she refuses, saying a young girl like her must look after her teeth. ‘Wouldn’t want to turn into an old hag. People would talk.’ He takes up his rucksack, and she says, ‘I’ll tell you what started all this. Mari – when she was young and darkly pretty – one of the squires at the big house took a fancy to her. Kensington, his name. They had a bit of a hoo-ha, well, you know. Then he dumped her, threw her out. She walked out the front gate, turned round and cursed him. She was burning fury. History says she was a witch who died in 1898, carried to her grave in a cart pulled by a horse she’d cursed. Folk say she had a daughter; they went to live in Llanarth, where she died in 1904. There are lots of truths, my boy.’

He leaves and scrambles to the top of the bank, and looks down at the little cottage in the orchard. Berllan Pitter is as it has been ever since Mari left. A ruin.

In the 1980s, Theatr Felinfach were producing a show on Mari’s life, and rehearsals went so badly that the cast went to the ruins of her house and buried a script there to pacify her. In 2006 a BBC film crew were at Llyn Tegid, looking for Teggie the lake creature for a series called Celtic Monsters. Filming was affected by a large hornet who attacked Neville Hughes, a BBC employee. The story made the Western Mail because Mr Hughes said the hornet was Mari, who often used to shapeshift. A crude attempt at publicity, the media’s overblown ideas of their own importance, a joke that took on a life of its own? Or had Mari flown all the way up to Snowdonia as a hornet specifically to annoy the BBC? They were right about one thing; Mari was known for shapeshifting, often taking the form of a hare to mislead gullible young men.

2

SIR DAFYDD LLWYD, THE CONJURER OF CEREDIGION

In Itinerarium Cambriae (1191), a description of his tour of Wales three years previously, Giraldus Cambrensis describes meeting soothsayers who when consulted go into a trance, lose control of their senses as if they are possessed, speak apparently meaningless words which suggest answers to your problems, and have to be violently shaken to wake them. Gerald is describing conjurers, dynion hysbys, cunning men. There have been many in Ceredigion, some charismatic, others solitary, all working their magic in very different ways, and all with their books of spells and written remedies. John Harries of Cwrt-y-Cadno served much of the south of the county early in the nineteenth century, Evan Griffiths from Llangurig oversaw the north, and there were others from Pencader, Talybont, Goginan, Trefechan and Ponterwyd. Then there was Sir Dafydd Llwyd of Ysbyty Ystwyth.

Sir Dafydd lived in the early eighteenth century. He was a clergyman who learned the Black Arts when in Oxford, which lead to him being defrocked by the bishop, taking the title of Sir, and moving to Ysbyty Ystwyth. He had a book of spells where he kept his familiar, a demon which shapeshifted and assisted him in his art. He had no rivals, and there is no description of him, which only adds to his mystique. A conjurer from Lampeter once challenged him to a battle of the Black Arts, to demonstrate their control over demons. On the appointed morning, Sir Dafydd arrived early and sent his young apprentice boy to the top of the hill to watch the road from Lampeter. The boy was eager to please, and aware of what might happen to him if he didn’t obey. He scampered up the hill and saw a savage bull approaching. Sir Dafydd proclaimed it was a demon sent from Lampeter, so he stood on Craig Ysguboriau, opened his book of spells and confronted the bull. The bull, seeing what he thought was a clergyman, pawed the ground, bent his head and charged. The conjurer stood his ground and commanded the bull to turn and follow the road back to Lampeter, which it did, goring the Lampeter conjurer to death on the way.

Sir Dafydd was making house calls in Rhaeadr and, on returning to Ceredigion, realised that he had left his book of spells behind. He sent his apprentice boy to fetch it, warning him that under no circumstances was he to look inside, but knowing with certainty that he would. The boy was a curious lad with shaggy black hair, deep eyes and an inquisitive and fearless nature. He sat down and opened the book by the banks of the Wye, the written words began to shiver and shift, and out of the book leapt a monkey demon, a big one, with furrowed eyebrows, hunched shoulders, a bald patch and long ape-like arms. It gazed around, looking gormless, and started to swear. The boy had been taught well, and despite his fear he remembered a spell, ‘Tafl Gerrig o’r Afon’, and immediately the simple demon leapt into the river and started throwing stones onto the bank. When there were few stones left, the boy couldn’t think of another spell, so he ordered the demon to throw the stones back into the river. Then to throw them onto the bank again. This went on until the demon became angry and the idea formed in his small mind that he could either ignore the boy, or eat him. Sir Dafydd had been watching from afar, and commanded the demon back into the book, leaving the boy thinking he had just won a great battle.

One day, Sir Dafydd had been on business in Montgomeryshire, and was feeling too tired for the long journey home, so he summoned a demon in the form of a horse, a black snorting wild creature, and he rode home with his apprentice boy sat behind him, clutching on for dear life. The journey was fast and rollicking and the boy sensed that they were flying, though it was too dark to see. He had been told of another conjurer, Sir Dafydd Siôn Evan of Llanbadarn Fawr, who flew through the air on a talking demon horse, often returning after weeks away covered in seaweed or sulphur. When he got home the boy found he had dropped his sock, so in the morning he set off back along the road to look for it, and found it hanging from the topmost branch of an ash tree. The boy was convinced that Sir Dafydd had flown through the air that night.

The apprentice boy was beginning to learn a few tricks from his master, and one Sunday when Sir Dafydd was on his way to church – ‘keeping up appearances’ as he put it – he told the boy to be a scarecrow and keep the crows from his corn. The boy decided that chasing crows all day was too energetic, and when Sir Dafydd returned, he found the boy fast asleep under an oak tree. He was about to scold him most severely when he noticed that every crow in the neighbourhood was locked in his barn. The conjurer smiled to know his boy was learning how to command birds.

A local tailor visited the celebrated conjurer and told him that a man had come into his shop to be measured for a new cloak, but the tailor was afraid because the man wore a hood over his head, had deep eyes, big teeth, cloven hooves for feet, and smelled strongly of sulphur. Sir Dafydd advised the tailor to measure the man as agreed, but to keep behind him and never to show himself. When the man came for his new cloak, the tailor kept behind, and every time the man turned, the tailor turned too. The man commanded the tailor to appear in front of him, and there stood Sir Dafydd, who ordered the man to ‘Go, and never return,’ which he did, for as the conjurer had already sold his soul in return for his powers, the Devil could do little until the contract expired.

The apprentice boy was learning fast, and one day he punched the conjurer on the nose until blood dripped. Sir Dafydd stared at the boy through dark eyes, and the boy met his gaze until the conjurer threw his head back and laughed, because he knew that to draw blood from a dyn hysbys meant they could never command you ever again. The apprentice boy had served his time.

Sir Dafydd was the last of the colourful conjurers. Those who came after were nonetheless in demand, curing cattle, lifting curses, finding lost objects, counteracting witchcraft, laying spirits and dispensing remedies. In the 1800s Evan Morris from Goginan often consulted a conjurer when his pigs and cattle were ill. The conjurer, probably Edward Davies from nearby Ponterwyd, drew circles over a sheet of paper, filled them with indecipherable writing and symbols, and told Mr Morris to rub the paper over the animal’s back from ears to tail muttering, ‘In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Ghost.’ This same charm worked on Mr Morris’ sister-in-law’s old pig. A farmer from Llangwyryfon called on Harries – either John or Henry, it’s not clear which one – of Cwrt-y-cadno when his butter would not churn. The conjurer gave him a piece of paper with a spell written on it, and told him to show it to no one. On his way home, the farmer was stopped by a woman who asked to see Harries’ paper. He showed it to her, and when he returned home, the spell failed to work. He paid for another spell which he showed to no one, and only then did the butter churn. The Llangurig conjurer John Morgan cured a horse of the shivers after a witch in Pontrhydfendigaid in the mid-1850s had cursed it. Around the same time, a man from Lledrod believed his belly pain was due to a woman who was terrorising the neighbourhood, and he only recovered with the help of the Llangurig conjurer. At Penpompren near Talybont a conjurer transformed a spirit into an insect, caught it in a bottle and threw it into the river beneath a bridge. In Tregaron there was a sin-eater who would place a cake or bread on the man’s chest and eat it, so removing a lifetime’s sins.

The Ceredigion conjurers often used the word ‘abracadabra’, written as an inverted triangle with one letter fewer each time until there is only an ‘a’ on the last line. This protected against curses, witches and the evil eye. The charms were kept in bottles on shelves in the home or near the animals.

Conjurers could be a little mischievous. Dick Spot from Llanrwst, named after a black spot near his nose, was on his way home when he was delayed by a public house at Henllan. He was charged 4d for a glass of beer and 6d for bread and cheese, which he considered outrageous, so after paying the bill he wrote a spell on a scrap of paper, hid it under the table, and left. Later that evening, the landlord saw the servant girl dancing like a mad thing round the table, shouting at the top of her voice, ‘Six and four are ten, count it o’er again.’ He tried to stop her but found himself joining her in her dance, both of them shouting, ‘Six and four are ten, count it o’er again.’ His wife, disturbed by the noise, found her husband dancing shamelessly with the pretty servant girl, tried to stop them and with a hop and a jump she too joined in the dance, all of them singing, ‘Six and four are ten, count it o’er again.’ A neighbour heard the racket and, guessing that Dick Spot was the cause, set off after the conjurer to ask him to release the people from his spell.

‘Oh,’ said Dick, ‘if you wish to stop the madness, just burn the piece of paper that is under the table.’ This done, the cavorting stopped and the three people collapsed to the floor, exhausted.

In the late 1950s, the librarian of the National Library of Wales received a phone call from a family in Llanidloes concerning a member of their family from Llangurig who had just died in his 90s. He was said to be the last dyn hysbys, who reputedly had charms and potions that could take away warts and blemishes. The librarian was asked to remove the man’s papers and manuscripts, so he went to the house. The door was unlocked and he went inside. No one greeted him but he had a sense that someone was there, watching him. He went upstairs, found the papers which contained charms and conjurings, and a note that instructed him to take them to the National Library, nowhere else, not to archive or catalogue them, but to hide them in the building. Feeling uneasy, the librarian gathered the papers together and left. On returning to the library, he placed them carefully in books and manuscripts, where they remain to this day, resting in uneasy alliance with the surrounding books, as if they are alive.

Dicky Davies, farmer and conjurer from Fagwyr Fawr near Ponterwyd, was called if a dairy was afflicted, the milk yield was low or the cattle were cursed. He would open his book of spells, speak incantations and bury the milk bucket, then repeat the process with the butter clappers, and so on. The ceremony was conducted with great solemnity, and most people did not question his abilities, needing to trust in someone with powers. The conjurer would be paid for his services, often more than the family could afford, but he was considered worth it. Some children were dumbstruck by the conjurer, while others found the whole performance mumbo jumbo, and thought scrubbing the dairy from top to bottom would have worked just as well. Some laughed to hide their fear.

Once a year this conjurer caught the bus to Aberystwyth, wearing his farming clothes, and took the train to London. Before arriving at Euston he would enter the toilet, change into his dress suit, silk top hat and waistcoat, and join all the conjurers from the UK at the Annual General Meeting of the Magic Circle.

3

TALES OF THE TYLWYTH TEG

On the west Irish coast of Clare and Kerry, folk have the good sense to believe in the fairies. They are thought to be a race of people who lived there before the Irish did – echoes of the dead, the marginalised, scapegoats – feared a little, to be treated with respect, and their land to be preserved. Everyone has stories about ‘Them’. On the west Welsh coast, few would admit to the existence of fairies – the tylwyth teg – other than as gossamer-winged flittery things that inhabit children’s books or crystal shops. In Ireland, priests tolerated the little folk, whereas preachers in Wales saw them as a popish superstition to be eradicated.

The tylwyth teg