THE STORY OF TWO PARISHES

DOLGELLEY & LLANELLTYD

by T.P.ELLIS

III. THE GODS AND FAERIES

 THE ANCIENT GODS -GWYNN AP NUDD -MATH - ISBRI -THE FAIRY OF DOLGELLEY POOL - THE FAIRIES OF CADER - THE 'GREEN MAN' OF LLYN GWERNAN -THE FAIRIES OF LLYN CYNWCH

If, however, they have left few visible remains, they have left a very considerable impression on Welsh legend, and the ancient gods in whom they believed became the heroes of Welsh story.

Possibly they adopted these gods from their predecessors; possibly they shared belief in them with their fore-runners; and, as what we have left of old beliefs is contained in stories changed by centuries of repetition, there is plenty of scope to theorize about the exact kind of belief held.

To tell all that is known or guessed about these old gods - and more is guessed than is known - would carry us into highly controversial matter, and far away from Dolgelley and its neighbourhood; but we must not omit to make some mention of those who have left some traces behind them in the immediate locality.

One of these gods was Gwynn ap Nudd, Light the son of the Morning Mist, whose name at once suggests a similarity with that of Lucifer, son of the Morning.

His chief dwelling place was on the summit of Cader Idris. He was associated with the birth of life, and became the god of the realm of the departed, whose souls, on death, sought refuge among the crags of Cader, where Gwynn ap Nudd hunted them with a pack of hounds to lead them captive to the shades.

Later on he became the King of Faerie-land; and the Church made of him the guardian of the portals of Hell, placed there to keep the evil spirits confined, "least they should emerge and destroy the race of men" as the ancient legend runs.

He was the great god of the neighbourhood, but a greater god than he was Math, who has some association also with the neighbourhood.

Math was called on by another god to create a wife for man, and somewhere in the neighbourhood of Llanelltyd, - for the whole setting of the tale which has come down to us points to that - he did so, taking the blossom of the oak, of the broom, and of the meadow-sweet, - for constancy, beauty and gentleness - wherewith to create her.

I like to picture the scene of this exploit as being in the dell of Cwm-y-Mynach, one of the most beautiful glens it is possible to find in the world, and where oak and broom and heather and meadow-sweet jostle each other in a wild profusion.

The story of this creature of Math's would carry us too far from Dolgelley and its immediate neighbourhood; let it be sufficient to say that she abused her gifts, and bought sorrow and desolation to herself and others, being converted eventually into an owl, to bewail her shortcomings for ever in the woods of Merioneth at night.

The whole of Merioneth is full of traces of these ancient gods, who, in time, fell from their high estate, and became the giants and fairies and heroes of Welsh Legend.

One such was Isbri, who became a giant, and dwelt on the top of Moel Isbri, the hill that frowns down on the village of Llanelltyd; and the number of fairies that dwelt in the neighbourhood, well into the XIXth century, is bewildering.

Dolgelley had a fairy, who lived in the pool beneath the bridge, which crosses the Wnion by the town. She married one Hugh Evans, an inhabitant of the town, not so many generations ago, on the distinct understanding that if she went out at night, her husband was not to follow her. Her frequent wanderings, however, excited his jealousy, and one night he tried to follow her through the window, through which she had disappeared. In doing so, he slipped and fell, breaking his leg, and though his fairy wife returned to tend him until he had recovered, she vanished for ever when he found himself able to walk again.

The fairies were great lovers of Cader Idris, especially of the lower hills just above Dolgelley; and story tells how they, once upon a time, gave a magic harp to a famous harpist who lived in the long ago. The harp would play enchanting music without anyone touching its strings; but it was so ravishing that people, hearing it, danced so wildly that they broke their heads against the rafters, and the fairies had to take their gift away again. The harp has been silent in the land ever since.

Another, rather an unpleasant one,-a little green man-lived at Llyn Gwernan. He was in the habit of watching strangers scaling Cader Idris, and when they were well up the mountain, he caused mists to descend and storms to rage, through which echoed the cry " The hour is come." The result was that travelers lost their way, fell over the precipices, and were then gathered up by the little green man, who hurried away with the fragments to the bottom of the lake.

But the most famous of all were the fairies of Llyn Cynwch, and the beauty of the place is so entrancing that no wonder fairies loved the little dell.

At the bottom of the lake is a marble palace, which only one human being has ever been privileged to see. He was a servant of Nannau, in love with the dairy-maid at the farm of Dol-y-clochydd,-isn't that a beautiful name, the Meadow of the Bellringer? -and one dark night, when going to see his lady-love, he fell into the lake, saw all its wondrous glories, and was eventually led by no less a person than the King of the Fairies along a marble passage,at the end of which was a slate slab, which, when lifted, turned out to be the hearth stone of Dol-y-clochydd, by the side of which the lost lover discovered the dairy-maid weeping over him, for he had been absent for months. 

But we must stop talking of the gods and the fairies, for they are so numerous in the land that, if we didn't, there would be no room to speak of anything else.

The gods were killed off by the coming of Christianity into the land, and the fairies, almost in our own day, by what people call the growth of reason, but what would be more aptly termed the slaying of poetry and imagination.