A legend of an encounter with a fairy maiden who rises from the depths

http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2013/jan/04/ruralaffairs-wales

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Narrow switchback lanes, bedraggled meadowsweet an astonishing survival along sheltered verges, climb south toward the Black Mountain, dipping into quiet valleys of small farms, each new rise affording glimpses of dramatic hill scenery ahead. The high tops of Bannau Sir Gaer and Fan Brycheiniog, between Afon Tywi's wide strath and the scarred gorges of Afon Tawe southward, mark a boundary between industrial valleys running down to Severn sea and high-grazing commons that stretch from here to Snowdonia. The northern sides of the two hills are elegant, ice-sculpted, streaked red in gullies where underlying sandstone's laid bare.

In the rare local glimmer of a fine afternoon, every peak but these cloud-hidden, I climbed the steep track above Llanddeusant that leads in a couple of miles to the dark corrie-pool of Llyn y Fan Fach. At this lake, deep and broad, lying close within the shadow of the scarp, locates one of the clearest recensions of a legend recurrent throughout Wales. It tells of a mortal and his encounter here with a fairy maiden who rises from the depths. He asks her to marry. She's dismissive at first ("Moist is your bread – I'll not have you!" is how her rejection of him translates from the Welsh); then relents, with the proviso that should he touch her three times with iron, she and her dowry of cattle will disappear back into the water.

The marriage prospers. Her skill in animal husbandry is remarkable. Three sons are born, who become famous physicians. But inadvertently, three times he touches her with iron, the last in tossing her a horse's bridle. The waters close around her. Fifty years ago I knew old people who claimed in all sincerity descent from the fairies. Some folklorists have argued that racial memory of intermarriage between aboriginal people and Iron Age invaders underlies these tales. I cast a final look across lake-water silvered by a rising moon and follow my shadow down – the story in its transfigured landscape no longer quite so incredible.