Merionethshire Version Of The Fairy Mother And Human Midwife
: FAIRY MOTHERS AND HUMAN MIDWIVES.: Welsh Folk-lore
A more complete version of this legend is given in the Gordofigion, pp.
97, 98. The writer says:--
Yr oedd bydwraig yn Llanuwchllyn wedi cael ei galw i Goed y Garth, sef
Siambra Duon--cartref y Tylwyth Teg--at un o honynt ar enedigaeth baban.
Dywedasant wrthi am gymeryd gofal rhag, cyffwrdd y dwfr oedd ganddi yn
trin y babi yn agos i'w llygaid; ond cyffyrddodd y wraig a'r llygad aswy
yn ddigon difeddwl.
sef tad y baban, a dechreuodd ei holi pa sut yr oeddynt yn Siambra Duon?
pa fodd yr oedd y wraig? a sut 'roedd y teulu bach i gyd? Edrychai yntau
arni yn graff, a gofynodd, 'A pha lygad yr ydych yn fy ngweled i?' 'A
hwn,' ebe hithau, gan gyfeirio at ei llygad aswy. Tynodd yntau y llygad
hwnw o'i phen, ac yna nis gallai'r wraig ei ganfod.
This in English is:--
There was a midwife who lived at Llanuwchllyn, who was called to Coed y
Garth, that is, to Siambra Duon, the home of the Tylwyth Teg, to attend
to one of them in child birth. They told her to be careful not to touch
her eyes with the water used in washing the baby, but quite
unintentionally the woman touched her left eye. Shortly afterwards the
midwife saw the Fairy's husband at Bala, and she began enquiring how they
all were at Siambra Duon, how the wife was, and how the little family
was? He looked at her intently, and then asked, With which eye do you
see me? With this, she said, pointing to her left eye. He plucked
that eye out of her head, and so the woman could not see him.
With regard to this tale, the woman's eye is said to have been plucked
out; in the first tale she was only deprived of her supernatural power of
sight; in other versions the woman becomes blind with one eye.
Professor Rhys in Y Cymmrodor, vol. iv., pp. 209, 210, gives a variant
of the midwife story which differs in some particulars from that already
related. I will call this the Corwrion version.
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