Adapted from Welsh Folk-Lore by Owain Elias
IN MATHAVARN, IN THE PARISH OF Llanwrin, and the Cantrev of Cyveilioc, there is a wood which is called Ffridd yr Ywen (Forest of the Yew); it is supposed to be so called because there is a yew tree growing in the very middle of it. In many parts of the wood are to be seen green circles, which are called ‘the dancing places of the goblins,’ about which, a considerable time ago, the following tale was very common in the neighbourhood.
Two servants of John Pugh, Esq., went out one day to work in the Ffridd yr Ywen. Pretty early in the afternoon the whole country was so covered with dark vapour, that the youths thought night was coming on; but when they came to the middle of the ‘Forest’ it brightened up around them and the darkness seemed all left behind; so, thinking it too early to return home for the night, they lay down and slept.
One of them, on waking, was much surprised to find no one there but himself; he wondered a good deal at the behaviour of his companion but made up his mind at last that he had gone on some business of his own, as he had been talking of it for some time before; so, the sleeper went home, and when they inquired after his companion, he told them he was gone to the cobbler’s shop. The next day they inquired of him again about his fellow-servant, but he could not give them any account of him; but at last confessed how and where they had both gone to sleep.
After searching and searching many days, the servant man went to a gwr cyvarwydd (a conjuror), which was a very common trade in those days, according to the legend; and the conjuror said to him, “Go to the same place where you and the lad slept; go there exactly a year after the boy was lost; let it be on the same day of the year, and at the same time of the day, but take care that you do not step inside the Fairy ring, stand on the border of the green circles you saw there, and the boy will come out with many of the goblins to dance, and when you see him so near to you that you may take hold of him, snatch him out of the ring as quickly as you can.”
He did according to this advice, and plucked the boy out, and then asked him, “if he did not feel hungry,” to which his once lost companion answered “No,” for he had still the remains of his dinner that he had left in his wallet before going to sleep, and he asked, “if it was not nearly night, and time to go home,” not knowing that a year had passed by.
His look was like a skeleton, and, of course, as soon as he tasted food he was a dead man.