II.

A story, told in various forms in Wales, preserves a tradition of an exceedingly frugal meal which was employed as a means of banishing a plentyn-newid. M. Villemarque, when in Glamorganshire, heard this story, which he found to be precisely the same as a Breton legend, in which the changeling utters a rhymed triad as follows:

Gweliz vi ken guelet iar wenn, Gweliz mez ken gwelet gwezen. Gweliz mez ha gweliz gwial, Gweliz derven e Koat Brezal, Biskoaz na weliz kemend all.

In the Glamorgan story the changeling was heard muttering to himself in a cracked voice: 'I have seen the acorn before I saw the oak: I have seen the egg before I saw the white hen: I have never seen the like of this.' M. Villemarque found it remarkable that these words form in Welsh a rhymed triad nearly the same as in the Breton ballad, thus:

Gweliz mez ken gwelet derven, Gweliz vi ken gwelet iar wenn, Erioez ne wiliz evelhenn.[34]

Whence he concluded that the story and the rhyme are older than the seventh century, the epoch of the separation of the Britons of Wales and Armorica. And this is the story: A mother whose child had been stolen, and a changeling left in its place, was advised by the Virgin Mary to prepare a meal for ten farm-servants in an egg-shell, which would make the changeling speak. This she did, and the changeling asked what she was about. She told him. Whereupon he exclaimed, 'A meal for ten, dear mother, in one egg-shell?' Then he uttered the exclamation given above, ('I have seen the acorn,' etc.,) and the mother replied, 'You have seen too many things, my son, you shall have a beating.' With this she fell to beating him, the child fell to bawling, and the fairy came and took him away, leaving the stolen child sleeping sweetly in the cradle. It awoke and said, 'Ah, mother, I have been a long time asleep!'

FOOTNOTE:

[34] Keightley, 'Fairy Mythology,' 437.