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Rhoslydan

Round Barrow(s)

Folklore

According to Rhys, in his 1901 'Celtic Folklore: Welsh and Manx':
Mrs. Davies, who is sixtyone years of age, says that when her parents, Edward and Ann Williams, lived at Rhoslydan, near Bryneglwys, in Yale, some seventy-five years ago, the servant man happened one day in the spring to be ploughing in a field near the house. As he was turning his team back at one end of the field, he heard some one calling out from the other end, Y mae eisieu hoelen yn y pil, or 'The peel wants a nail'; for pil is the English peel, a name given to a sort of shovel provided with a long handle for placing loaves in an oven, and for getting them out again. When at length the ploughman had reached the end of the field whence he guessed the call to have proceeded, he there saw a small peel, together with a hammer and a nail, under the hedge. He saw that the peel required a nail to keep it together, and as everything necessary for mending it were there ready to hand, he did as it had been suggested. Then he followed at the plough-tail until he came round again to the same place, and there he this time saw a cake placed for him on the spot where he had previously found the peel and the other things, which had now disappeared. When the servant related this too his master, he told him at once that it was one of the Tylwyth Teg of that locality that had called out to him.
The field contains two round barrows - no doubt the fairy lived in one of them.
Rhiannon Posted by Rhiannon
27th January 2005ce

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