Wales opens its shelf with six tales from P. H. Emerson's Welsh Fairy-Tales and Other Stories (1894), taken down in Anglesey in the winter of 1891–2: a fairy queen who cures a witch's victims at a sacred well, a fairy wife lost to a thrown bridle, the oldest animals in the world, a drunkard feasted by fairies, gold that turns to cockle-shells, and the fairies' own mint at work in an Anglesey mill by night.
Disclosure: this performance is narrated by AI-generated voices.
In this part:
- The Fairy of the Dell — the Queen of the Dell blesses a spring in Mona and cures those the old witch had blinded, lamed and horned; the witch repents, her book and wand are burned, the devils inside her are cast out, and she ends as the healer Madame Dorothy.
- The Pellings — a young farmer seizes a fairy at the dance and will not let her go; he learns her name, Penelope, marries her on one condition — never strike her with iron — and loses her in an instant when a thrown bridle falls on her by chance.
- The Long-Lived Ancestors — the Eagle of Gwernabwy, courting the Owl of Cwm Cwmlwyd, asks the Stag, the Salmon, the Blackbird and the Frog of Mochno Bog how old she is, and none of them has ever seen her younger.
- Old Gwilym — Gwilym Evans finds a golden guinea on his way to buy cheese, drinks it away with the quarrymen, is feasted and bedded by the fairies, and wakes naked in a bunch of gorse.
- The Old Man and the Fairies — carried under the earth to a palace of gold, an old man comes home with his bag full of gold; when his wife worries the secret out of him, the box under the bed holds only cockle-shells.
- The Fairies' Mint — a miller watches his Anglesey mill lit up and working at midnight, and sees golden coins run where the flour runs; he leaves the fairies alone to coin their money.
What is not read: these are selected tales, not the complete volume. Held for a ruling and not read: The Crows and The Baby-Farmer. Excluded by name and not read: The Fairies of Caragonan, The Story of Gelert, and Origin of the Welsh. The book's last six tales, which Emerson himself labels Irish, Scotch, Jersey, Shetland and French, are not Welsh and are not read. Emerson's notes and source commentary are not read; in The Pellings the tale text alone is performed, and Penelope's farewell is heard in the translation the book itself prints.
The tales:
00:45 — The Fairy of the Dell
14:54 — The Pellings
18:17 — The Long-Lived Ancestors
22:16 — Old Gwilym
25:00 — The Old Man and the Fairies
27:32 — The Fairies' Mint
Source: P. H. Emerson (1856–1936), Welsh Fairy-Tales and Other Stories (London: D. Nutt, 1894), the tales as printed; lawful copy Project Gutenberg #8675. Narrated by Silas. Opening and closing theme: Bandoneo Street Romance — with a short instrumental separator between stories, and no music under the narration.
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