A Man Carried Through The Air By The Fairies

The following folk tale by Edward Hamer appeared in a publication entitled ‘Parochial Account of Llanidloes’ (1877) and repeated in Elias Owen’s ‘Welsh Folklore’ (1973).

One Edward Jones, or “Ned the Jockey”, as he was familiarly called, resided, within the memory of the writer, in one of the roadside cottages a short distance from Llanidloes, on the Newtown Road.

While returning home late one evening, it was his fate to fall in with a troop of fairies, who were not pleased to have their gambols disturbed by a mortal. Requesting him to depart, they politely offered him the choice of three means of locomotion, viz., being carried off by a “high wind, middle wind, or low wind.” The jockey soon made up his mind, and elected to make his trip through the air by the assistance of a high wind.

No sooner had he given his decision, than he found himself whisked high up into the air, and his senses completely bewildered by the rapidity of his flight; he did not recover himself again till he came in contact with the earth, being suddenly dropped in the middle of a garden near Ty Gough, on the Bryndu Road, many miles distant from the spot whence he started on his aerial journey.

Ned, when relating this story, would vouch for its genuineness in the most solemn manner, and the person who narrated it to the writer brought forward, as a proof of its truth, “that there was not the slightest trace of any person going into the garden while Ned was found in the middle of it.”

The ultimate fate of the hero of the above incident was extremely melancholy. Returning home inebriated one night, he appears to have mistaken his road, and walked into the Severn, just below the Long Bridge, where his body was found next morning.