Читать книгу THE ELEMENT ENCYCLOPEDIA OF FAIRIES: An A-Z of Fairies, Pixies, and other Fantastical Creatures - Lucy Cooper - Страница 112

“The Mother’s Blessing,” the local name for fairies in Glamorgan, Wales, where, according to Sir John Rhys’ Celtic Folklore: Welsh and Manx (1901):

… the parish was then crammed full of Bendith y Mamau, and when the moon was bright and full they were wont to keep people awake with their music till the break of day. The fairies of Llanfabon were remarkable on account of their ugliness, and they were equally remarkable on account of the tricks they played. Stealing children from their cradles during the absence of their mothers and luring men by means of their music into some pestilential and desolate bog were things that seemed to afford them considerable amusement.

Further accounts of their tricks include details of the underground secret passages leading to their dwelling and to caverns of stored gold where:

They have, they say, a gold ladder of one or two and twenty rungs, and it is along this that they pass up and down. They have a little word; and it suffices if the foremost on the ladder merely utters that word, for the stone to rise of itself; while there is another word, which it suffices the hindmost in going down to utter so that the stone shuts behind him.

A farmhand accidentally gains access to the passage but is discovered by the fairies who take him to live with them and “… at the end of the seven years he escaped with his hat full of guineas.” However, he passes on the secret to a farmer, who accumulates great wealth:

… thrice the fill of a salt-chest of guineas, half-guineas, and seven-and-sixpenny pieces in one day. But he got too greedy, and like many a greedy one before him his crime proved his death; for he went down the fourth time in the dusk of the evening, when the fairies came upon him, and he was never seen any more.