Note 20 — Chapter XII · Race in Folklore and Myth

To return again to the fairies, some of them are described as more comely and good-looking than the rest (pp. 83, 250), but the fairy women are always pictured as fascinating, though their offspring as changelings are as uniformly presented in the light of repulsive urchins; but whole groups of the fairy population are sometimes described as being as ugly of face as they were thievish in disposition—those, for instance, of Ỻanfabon, in Glamorganshire (p. 262). There is one district, however, which is an exception to the tenor of fairy physiognomy: it is that of the Pennant neighbourhood, in Carnarvonshire, together with the hills and valleys, roughly speaking, from Cwm Straỻyn to Ỻwytmor and from Drws y Coed to Dolbenmaen. The fairies of that tract are said to have been taller than the others, and characterized by light or even flaxen hair, together with eyes of clear blue: see pp. 89, 93–7, 105–8. Nor is that all, for we are told that they would not let a person of dark complexion come near them (p. 96). The other fairies, when kidnapping, it is true, preferred the blond infants of other people to their own swarthy brats, which, perhaps, means that it was a policy of their people to recruit itself with men of the superior physique of the more powerful population around them. The supposed fairy ancestress of the people of the Pennant Valley bears, in the stories in point, such names as Penelope, Bella, Pelisha, and Sibi, while her descendants are still taunted with their descent—a quarrel which, within living memory, used to be fought out with fists at the fairs at Penmorfa and elsewhere. This seems to indicate a comparatively late settlement20 in the district of a family or group of families from without, and an origin, therefore, somewhat similar to that of the Simychiaid and Cowperiaid (p. 67) of a more eastern portion of the same county, rather than anything deserving to be considered with the rest of the annals of Faery. Passing by this oasis, then, such snap-shot photographs as I have been able to take, so to speak, of fairyland cleared of the glamour resting on its landscape, seem to disclose to the eye a swarthy population of short stumpy men occupying the most inaccessible districts of our country. They appear to have cared more for soap than clothing21, and they lived on milk taken once a day, when they could get it. They probably fished and hunted, and kept domestic animals, including, perhaps, the pig; but they depended largely on what they could steal at night or in misty weather. Their thieving, however, was not resented, as their visits were believed to bring luck and prosperity (p. 251). Their communities formed as it were islands, owing to the country round about them having been wrested from them by later comers of a more warlike disposition and provided with better weapons. But the existence of the scattered groups of the fairies was in no danger of coming to a violent end: they were safe in consequence of the superstitious beliefs of their stronger neighbours, who probably regarded them as formidable magicians, powerful, among other things, to cause or to cure disease as they pleased. Such, without venturing to refresh my memory by perusing what has been written about dwarf races in other parts of the world, are the impressions made on my mind in the course of analysing and sifting the folklore materials crowded into this volume. That applies, of course, in so far only as regards the fairies in their character of a real people as distinguished from them as creatures of the imagination. But, as I have no wish to earn the displeasure of my literary friends, let me hasten to say that I acknowledge the latter, the creatures of the imagination, to be the true fairies, the admiration of one’s childhood and the despair of one’s later years: the other folk—the aborigines whom I have been trying to depict—form only a sort of substratum, a kind of background to the fairy picture, which I should be the last man to wish to mar.