Meddygon Myddfai
From British Goblins Welsh Folk-lore, Fairy Mythology, Legends and Traditions
by Wirt Sikes (1881)
The legend relates that a
farmer in the parish of Myddfai, Carmarthenshire, having bought some lambs in a
neighbouring fair, led them to graze near Llyn y Fan Fach, on the Black Mountains.
Whenever he visited these lambs three beautiful damsels appeared to him from the lake, on
whose shores they often made excursions. Sometimes he pursued and tried to catch them, but
always failed; the enchanting nymphs ran before him and on reaching the lake taunted him
in these words:
Cras dy fara,
Anhawdd ein dala;
which, if one must render it literally, means:
Bake your bread,
'Twill be hard to catch us;
but which, more poetically treated, might signify
Mortall, who eatest baken bread,
Not for thee is the fairy's bed!
One day some moist bread from the lake came floating ashore. The farmer
seized it, and devoured it with avidity. The following day, to his great delight, he was
successful in his chase, and caught the nymphs on the shore. After talking a long time
with them, he mustered up the courage to propose marriage to one of them. She consented
to accept him on condition that he would distinguish her from her sisters the next day.
This was a new and great difficulty to the young farmer, for the damsels were so similar
in form and features, that he could scarcely see any difference between them. He noted,
however, a trifling singularity in the strapping of the chosen one's sandal, by which he
recognised her on the following day. As good as her word, the gwraig immediately left
the lake and went with him to his farm. Before she quitted the lake she summoned therefrom
to attend her, seven cows, two oxen, and one bull. She stipulated that she should remain
with the farmer only until such time as he should strike her thrice without cause.
For some years they dwelt peaceably together, and she bore him three sons,
who were the celebrated Meddygon Myddfai. One day, when preparing for a fair in the
neighbourhood) the farmer desired her to go to the held for his horse. She said she would,
but being rather dilatory, he said to her humorously Dos, dos, dos,' i.e., 'Go, go, go,'
and at the same time slightly tapped her arm three times with his glove.
The blows were slight - but they were blows. The terms of the marriage
contract were broken, and the dame departed, summoning with her her seven cows, her two
oxen, and the bull. The oxen were at that moment ploughing in the field, but they
immediately obeyed her call and dragged the plough after them to the lake. The furrow,
from the field in which they were ploughing to the margin of the lake, is still to be seen -
in several parts of that country - at the present day. After her departure, the gwraig
annwn once met her three sons in the valley now called Cwm Meddygon, and gave them a magic
box containing remedies of wonderful power, through whose use they became celebrated.
Their names were Cadogan, Gruffydd and Emion, and the farmer's name was
Rhiwallon. Rhiwallon and his sons, named as above, were physicians to Rhys Gryg, Lord of
Dynevor, and son of the last native prince of Wales. They lived about 1230, and dying,
left behind them a compendium of their medical practice.
is another typical story of an earthling joining the fairy people dating from
the twelfth-century.
