Note 43 — Chapter VII · Triumphs of the Water-world

Speaking of the rank and file of the fairies in rather a promiscuous fashion, one may say that we have found manifold proof of their close connexion with the water-world. Not only have we found them supposed to haunt places bordering on rivers, to live beneath the lakes, or to inhabit certain green isles capable of playing hide-and-seek with the ancient mariner, and perhaps not so very ancient either; but other considerations have been suggested as also pointing unmistakably to the same conclusion. Take for instance the indirect evidence afforded by the method of proceeding to recover an infant stolen by the fairies. One account runs thus: The mother who had lost her baby was to go with a wizard and carry with her to a river the child left her in exchange. The wizard would say, Crap ar y wrach, ‘Grip the hag,’ and the woman would reply, Rhy hwyr, gyfraglach, ‘Too late, you urchin43.’ Before she uttered those words she had dropped the urchin into the river, and she would then return to her house. By that time the kidnapped child would be found to have come back home44. The words here used have not been quite forgotten in Carnarvonshire, but no distinct meaning seems to be attached to them now; at any rate I have failed to find anybody who could explain them. I should however guess that the wizard addressed his words to the fairy urchin with the intention, presumably, that the fairies in the river should at the same time hear and note what was about to be done. Another, and a somewhat more intelligible version, is given in the Gwyliedyđ for 1837, p. 185, by a contributor who publishes it from a manuscript which Lewis Morris began to write in 1724 and finished apparently in 1729. He was a native of Anglesey, and it is probably to that county the story belongs, which he gives to illustrate one of the phonological aspects of certain kinds of Welsh. That account differs from the one just cited in that it introduces no wizard, but postulates two fairy urchins between whom the dialogue occurs, which is not unusual in our changeling stories: see p. 62. After this explanation I translate Morris’ words thus:—