Category: 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.

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.

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 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.

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

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.

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.

A Visit to Fairyland

The following fairy folk tale takes place around Llyn Cwellyn, a 215 acre, 120 feet deep glacial lake which has now been dammed to create a reservoir. The tale is taken ‘Bedd Gelert: Its Facts, Fairies, and Folk-Lore (1899) by D E Jenkins.