Through the Looking Glass

Imagine having no real idea what you look like! That was certainly the case for many of our ancestors. Looking into still water might help a little, provided it wasn’t too windy, but even the polished obsidian or bronze mirrors of later history would be unsatisfactory. It’s somehow surprising to realise that glass mirrors weren’t really available in Britain until the 17^th century.

But there’s another dimension, perhaps related to scrying, to this peering into still water for a view, for reassurance — or maybe there’s only mystery. Francis Pryor suggests that bodies of water may once have shrouded the realm of death, home of the ancestors.¹ That could certainly explain the prized objects so often deposited in water by our own ancestors. Llyn Cerrig Bach is quite a small lake on Anglesey but over a hundred metal objects were found there when the lake was drained for a runway extension in 1942. The Gundestrup Cauldron, found in a boggy area of Denmark in 1891, had been taken apart and its sides placed in the bottom of the cauldron², as many such found objects appear to have deliberately been put beyond use. Just as, of course, we put silver coins beyond our own use to this day by throwing them into wells and fountains.

Perhaps the myriad tales of fairy maidens emerging from lakes in Wales to marry human men are in some way connected to this ancient reverence for water and its many mysteries. The women in such stories, which in other areas of Britain often involve the would-be husband taking and hiding the maiden’s animal coat of feathers or sealskin to prevent her from escaping, are known to folklorists as swan maidens, and I’ve become quite fascinated by them.³

Gerald of Wales, who travelled throughout the country in 1188, wrote of Llyn Y Dywarchen near Beddgelert in Eryri (formerly Snowdonia), and its floating island.⁴ Many of his tales are a little suspect, to say the least, but in this case we have corroborating evidence from none other than Edmund Halley, the astronomer for whom the famous comet is named. Halley visited in 1698 and tells us he swam out to the island, sat there and steered it around the lake. Thomas Pennant, in 1784, also noted the island’s existence, but sadly it is no longer to be seen. But islands like this aren’t that uncommon, usually formed when vegetation like rushes cannot reach the bottom of the lake, in which case they use the oxygen in their roots for buoyancy.

And of course the lake has its own swan maiden story: a man from Drwyscoed Farm met a beautiful fairy woman on the floating island, although some say he abducted her from a circle of dancing fairies. Eventually she agreed to become his servant if he discovered her name, which he did by eavesdropping on the Tylwyth Teg – the Fair Folk. According to some people it was Bela, but others say Penelope. She later agreed to marry him on condition that he never touched her with iron and that there must be no iron lock or bolt on their door. They had children and he became very rich thanks to her hard work and good management. But then one day he accidentally touched her with iron and she disappeared instantly.

Jim Perrin tells us that the farmer later heard her voice one night, requesting him to take care of the children, and adds that these children and their descendants were called Pellings, from their mother’s name, Penelope, while others say Belisiaid, from Bela. Perrin adds that a an elderly local farmer told him that one of his neighbours was descended from the fairies through Bela, while another neighbour said that the name she had for them was Pellings.⁵

So many of the swan maiden stories of Wales occur close to water – although in Wales it’s often hard to avoid! – that these twin themes of proximity to water and the avoidance of iron are worth considering together, although there certainly isn’t room to do this full justice here. Interestingly, this attitude to iron isn’t only found in British stories but elsewhere, certainly in Denmark, Sweden and Poland. There’s also a fascinating story called “Hassan of Basra” in the One Thousand and One Nights that includes the swan maiden motif but without the taboo around iron, although the tale does contain many references to metals and alchemy.

Metals would likely have been cherished in the early days of smelting and smithing, possibly considered almost miraculous, so if a sacrifice or an offering to the ancestors is to be made, what else but highly prized metal and where else but in equally precious water, gateway to the otherworld?

There seems to be an understanding that the fair folk are the “old people”, the inhabitants of these isles since time immemorial and certainly long before incoming tribes – such as the Celts – came along. Perhaps not so much an invasion as groups of people travelling from elsewhere in Europe, but given enough time and incomers, conflict was likely, as, sadly, we still see today. Even Gerald of Wales, back in the 12^th century, seems dimly to have understood about the older inhabitants of these isles: he gives the story of a priest named Elidyr who told him that as a young boy he had run away from home and hid under a riverbank, staying there for a couple of days and becoming very hungry, whereupon two small men appeared who led him through an underground tunnel into a beautiful, rich country where no sun shone, no moon or stars brightened the night. The boy later visited this magical land several times and on one occasion his mother asked him to bring back some gold for her, a poor return for the kindness of these folk. He did so but was chased and the gold snatched back. When he returned to the riverbank in repentance, the underground passage was no longer to be found. He had remembered some of the people’s words and Gerald thought they must be Greek and therefore linked these folk to the tale of the ancient Britons, led by one Brutus, descendant of Aeneas, who travelled from Troy and settled in Britain after the well-known Bronze Age war.⁶  Gerald must have been familiar with Geoffrey of Monmouth’s History of the Kings of Britain, in which the story of Brutus is told, written a couple of generations before the journey through Wales. ⁷

Hartland, in The Science of Fairy Tales, suggests that the fairies in these tales are from a far older period and represent the Stone Age, the period we would probably today call the Neolithic or even the Mesolithic. These people used stone tools, usually flint, already discarded by the incoming tribes, although stone knives were used long afterwards for religious purposes: it’s worth noting that Druids would cut mistletoe only with a golden sickle, not iron. And until quite recently finds of flint arrowheads were called elf bolts.⁸

Grant Allen saw in fairies the ghosts of the Neolithic, the last people to rely entirely on stone tools, who would have been vulnerable to the bronze, or later, iron weapons of newcomers. Perhaps they hid away in less accessible areas and over time stories grew that they were repelled by iron.⁹Allen also mentions the fair folk’s hatred of ploughing the earth, a reminder of the name of Erysichthon, found in a hymn to Demeter by Callimachus. The man had dared to cut down a beautiful poplar tree in a place beloved by Demeter, and was punished by eternal hunger. Robert Graves tells us that his name means something like “Earth Tearer”, adding that this may commemorate a time when it was unthinkable – an act akin to rape – to till the soil without permission from the Goddess.¹⁰

People of both Neolithic and Bronze Ages appear to have been fascinated by lakes, rivers and springs, and perhaps those of us today who can simply turn on a tap find it hard to imagine that a substance so essential to life can be treated with such reverence. It’s worth remembering that most of us could survive for no more than 72 hours without it, and noticeable, too, that many of the Neolithic and early Bronze Age stone circles that still exist today are in close proximity to running water, which could have been for practical or spiritual reasons – or both.

Although in some stories the fair folk are described as small, even tiny, if fairy women were able to marry mortal men there cannot have been a huge discrepancy in size without great difficulty in childbirth, and the stories often mention a number of children. It’s worth considering, though, that maybe the hidden away elder tribes had had a poor diet for generations, which could well have had some effect. Those extinct archaic people known as homo floresiensis, whose remains were found on the island of Flores in Indonesia and who stood well under four feet tall, perhaps had become so because of a phenomenon known as insular dwarfism, which can happen when the range of a population is limited to a small environment – an island, perhaps. Or, because of external pressures, a very restricted hunter/gathering area?

Very noticeable in many of these swan maiden stories is the alacrity with which they leave when touched with iron or another taboo is broken, or indeed when they manage to find their hidden feathers or other animal coat. After all, many were forcibly taken, separated from their sisters and perhaps worn down into agreeing to wed, followed by a life of drudgery, no more joyful circle dancing with the other fair folk, little merriment to be had.  It’s telling that many of the swan maidens of Wales started out by agreeing to be servants to their captors – is it cynical to guess that marriage would have saved the husband from paying wages? As the saying goes: man equals culture while woman equals nature, and swan maidens are no exception. And in patriarchal societies nature is always put to the service of culture.

Geraldine Charles
Autumn Equinox 2024

* Llyn Y Dywarchen photo: Richard0 from Llyn y Dywarchen, CC BY 2.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0>, via Wikimedia Commons

** A panel from the Gundestrup Cauldron showing a goddess with a wheel on either side of her. Thanks to the World History Encyclopedia for the use of this image. < https://www.worldhistory.org/image/13427/female-goddess-gundestrup-cauldron/)

1. Francis Pryor. (2021). Scenes from Prehistoric Life. Head of Zeus Ltd.
2. København, N. (2021). The Gundestrup Cauldron. National Museum of Denmark. https://en.natmus.dk/historical-knowledge/denmark/prehistoric-period-until-1050-ad/the-early-iron-age/the-gundestrup-cauldron/ [Accessed 27 April 2021]
3. Charles, G. (2023). Skeleton Trees and Swan Maidens. The Goddess Temple of Bala.
4. Gerald of Wales. (2004). The Journey Through Wales and The Description of Wales. PenguinBooks.Perrin, J. (2016). Snowdon: The Story of a Mountain.
5. https://madnessofnorthwales.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/07/Perrin-Snowdon-Story-of-a-Welsh-Mountain.pdf
6. Gerald of Wales. (2004). The Journey Through Wales and The Description of Wales. PenguinBooks.
7. Geoffrey of Monmouth. History of the Kings of Britain. Kindle e-book.
8. Hartland, E. S. (1891). The Science of Fairy Tales: An Enquiry into Fairy Mythology. WalterScott.
9. Allen, G, 1881, “Who were the Fairies?” in Cornhill Magazine, Vol. XLIII
10. Robert Graves, 1960, The Greek Myths, Volume I, Penguin