Names Given To The Fairies
:
NAMES GIVEN TO THE FAIRIES.
The Fairies have, in Wales, at least three common and distinctive names,
as well as others that are not nowadays used.
The first and most general name given to the Fairies is Y Tylwyth
Teg, or, the Fair Tribe, an expressive and descriptive term. They are
spoken of as a people, and not as myths or goblins, and they are said to
be a fair or handsome race.
Another common name for the Fairies,
s, Bendith y Mamau, or, The
Mothers' Blessing. In Doctor Owen Pughe's Dictionary they are called
Bendith eu Mamau, or, Their Mothers' Blessing. The first is the
most common expression, at least in North Wales. It is a singularly
strange expression, and difficult to explain. Perhaps it hints at a
Fairy origin on the mother's side of certain fortunate people.
The third name given to Fairies is Ellyll, an elf, a demon, a goblin.
This name conveys these beings to the land of spirits, and makes them
resemble the oriental Genii, and Shakespeare's sportive elves. It
agrees, likewise, with the modern popular creed respecting goblins and
their doings.
Davydd ab Gwilym, in a description of a mountain mist in which he was
once enveloped, says:--
Yr ydoedd ym mhob gobant
Ellyllon mingeimion gant.
There were in every hollow
A hundred wrymouthed elves.
The Cambro-Briton, v. I., p. 348.
In Pembrokeshire the Fairies are called Dynon Buch Teg, or the Fair
Small People.
Another name applied to the Fairies is Plant Annwfn, or Plant Annwn.
This, however, is not an appellation in common use. The term is applied
to the Fairies in the third paragraph of a Welsh prose poem called Bardd
Cwsg, thus:--
Y bwriodd y Tylwyth Teg fi . . . oni bai fy nyfod i mewn
pryd i'th achub o gigweiniau Plant Annwfn.
Where the Tylwyth Teg threw me . . . if I had not come
in time to rescue thee from the clutches of Plant Annwfn.