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Welsh Folk-Lore a Collection of the Folk-Tales and Legends of North Wales

3.  The Corwrion Version.

One of the Fairies came to a midwife who lived at Corwrion and asked her to come with him and attend on his wife.  Off she went with him, and she was astonished to be taken into a splendid palace.  There she continued to go night and morning to dress the baby for some time, until one day the husband asked her to rub her eyes with a certain ointment he offered her.  She did so and found herself sitting on a tuft of rushes, and not in a palace.  There was no baby, and all had disappeared.  Some time afterwards she happened to go to the town, and whom should she see busily buying various wares but the Fairy on whose wife she had been attending.  She addressed him with the question, “How are you, to-day?”  Instead of answering her he asked, “How do you see me?”  “With my eyes,” was the prompt reply.  “Which eye?” he asked.  “This one,” said she, pointing to it; and instantly he disappeared, never more to be seen by her.

There is yet one other variant of this story which I will give, and for the sake of reference I will call it the Nanhwynan version.  It appears in the Brython, vol. ix., p. 251, and Professor Rhys has rendered it into English in Y Cymmrodor, vol. ix., p. 70.  I will give the tale as related by the Professor.