The fairies of Wales – the Tylwyth Teg

Welsh fairies, like their counterparts elsewhere in Britain, often feature in stories in which they steal people away. Supposedly having difficulty in reproducing themselves, fairies often steal human children and leave ugly changelings in their place; they frequently summon human midwives to help with the birth.

One such tale centres on a skilled Welsh midwife who had a servant named Eilian, whose mind was never on her work. “Away with the fairies,” some folk would say, and indeed, one day she vanished.

Shortly after Eilian’s disappearance, a late-night knock at the door summoned the midwife to assist a woman in labour. She helped the mother deliver the child in a richly furnished room with carpets, tapestries, and handsomely carved furniture. The mother asked her to rub some ointment on the newborn’s eyes, and so the midwife tried a little of it on her own eyes.

Immediately she saw that the splendid room was only a cave with straw on the floor and moss on the walls, and that the mother lying on the bare bedframe was the missing Eilian. Eilian begged her to say nothing and to go; there was no helping her, and so the midwife accepted her reward – a bag of fairy gold – and made her way home.