British Goblins: Welsh Folk-lore, Fairy Mythology, Legends and TraditionsSikes, Wirt
History
British Goblins: Welsh Folk-lore, Fairy Mythology, Legends and Traditions
Sikes, Wirt
Folklore -- Wales; Goblins -- Wales; Mythology, Celtic -- Wales; Mythology, Welsh; Wales -- Social life and customs
A poetic account by a modern character, called Iolo the Bard, is thus
condensed: 'One night, when the moon had gone down, as I was sitting
on a hill-top, the Ellylldan passed by. I followed it into the valley.
We crossed plashes of water where the tops of bulrushes peeped above,
and where the lizards lay silently on the surface, looking at us with
an unmoved stare. The frogs sat croaking and swelling their sides, but
ceased as they raised a melancholy eye at the Ellylldan. The wild
fowl, sleeping with their heads under their wings, made a low cackle
as we went by. A bittern awoke and rose with a scream into the air. I
felt the trail of the eels and leeches peering about, as I waded
through the pools. On a slimy stone a toad sat sucking poison from the
night air. The Ellylldan glowed bravely in the slumbering vapours. It
rose airily over the bushes that drooped in the ooze. When I lingered
or stopped, it waited for me, but dwindled gradually away to a speck
barely perceptible. But as soon as I moved on again, it would shoot up
suddenly and glide before. A bat came flying round and round us,
flapping its wings heavily. Screech-owls stared silently at us with
their broad eyes. Snails and worms crawled about. The fine threads of
a spider's web gleamed in the light of the Ellylldan. Suddenly it shot
away from me, and in the distance joined a ring of its fellows, who
went dancing slowly round and round in a goblin dance, which sent me
off to sleep.'[15]
FOOTNOTES:
[13] Keightley, 'Fairy Mythology,' 441.
[14] Hon. W. O. Stanley, M.P., in 'Notes and Queries.'
[15] 'The Vale of Glamorgan.' (London, 1839.)
V.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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