Mysterious Britain & Ireland

Category: Folktales

Fairies / Folklore / Folktales / Welsh Fairies / Welsh Folktales

Tylwyth Teg of Cwm Llan

In this valley below the south eastern side of Yr Wyddfa (Mount Snowdon), it is said that the Tylwyth Teg (Fairy Folk) live. It is said that one day, a shepherd heard a wailing sound, and he moved a rock where the sound was coming from. When he did this he rescued a Tylwyth Teg who has trapped there. Later, he encountered two old men who thanked him, and gave him a staff.

Fairies / Folklore / Folktales / Scottish Fairies / Scottish Folktales

Lukki Minnie

The following account of the tale of Lukki Minnie appeared in Malachy Tallack’s blog on the New Stateman website (30 April 2007). ‘For centuries – perhaps even for millennia, no-one is entirely sure – Shetland has been home to a very special creature.

Fairies / Folklore / Folktales / Scottish Fairies / Scottish Folktales

Touching the Elements

In the following tale which appeared in ‘Some Folk-Tales and Legends of Shetland (1920)’ by John Nicolson, the ‘elements’ referred to are the bread and wine of the Eucharist and I suppose it is supposed to show the reputed strength of Christianity over pagan fairy magic.

Fairies / Folklore / Folktales / Welsh Fairies / Welsh Folktales

Fairy Gold Of Cwmglas Hollow

According to John Rhys in his ‘Celtic Folklore Welsh And Manx’ [1901] ‘The following is a later tale, which Mr. Thomas Davies heard from his mother, who died in 1832:–‘When she was a girl, living at Yr Hafod, Llanberis, there was a girl of her age being brought up at Cwmglas in the same parish.

Fairies / Folklore / Folktales / Welsh Fairies / Welsh Folktales

Fairies of Llyn Dwythwch

Children were often warned in the past about the dangers of fairies and John Rhys in his ‘Celtic Folklore Welsh And Manx’ (1901) vouched for an account from a lady who grew up in Cwm Brwynog thirty to forty years earlier.

Fairies / Folklore / Folktales / Welsh Fairies / Welsh Folktales

Tylwyth Teg of Llyn Cwellyn

In ‘Celtic Folklore Welsh And Manx’ (1901) John Rhys mentioned a story concerning fairies that had been passed to him by two brothers who had in turn heard it from Mari Domos Siôn, who died around 1850. ‘A shepherd had once lost his way in the mist on the mountain on the land of Caeau Gwynion, towards Cwellyn Lake, and got into a ring where the Tylwyth Teg* were dancing: it was only af

Fairies / Folklore / Folktales / Scottish Fairies / Scottish Folktales

The Fairies’ Hill

According to Lord Archibald Campbell in his ‘Waifs and Strays of Celtic Tradition, Argyllshire Series, vol. 1 (1889); There is a green hill above Kintraw, known as the Fairies’ Hill, of which the following story is told.

English Fairies / English Folktales / Fairies / Folklore / Folktales

The Lost Child

Robert Hunt in his ‘Popular Romances of the West of England; or, The Drolls, Traditions, and Superstitions of Old Cornwall’ (1865) gives an account of the lost child of Trefonick which was given to him thirty years earlier by an old woman of the parish.