Origins and setting
This Welsh wonder tale comes from the Black Mountain country on the western edge of the Brecon Beacons, where Llyn y Fan Fach—the Little Lake below the high escarpment—lies clear and dark beneath the wind. It is one of Britain’s most beloved fairy-bride stories. A mortal cowherd wins a lady of the lake by passing a curious trial of bread, lives with her under strict conditions, and loses her by breaking them—yet from their sons spring the famed Physicians of Myddfai, healers whose lore is said to have come from the Otherworld.
The tale
There was once a poor cowherd who pastured his few beasts on the slopes above Blaensawdde. Each day, when the sun slid behind the ridge and the sheep folded, he would sit by Llyn y Fan Fach and throw his crust upon the water, for company more than for sport, watching the ripples widen out into the evening.
One twilight, when the lake was level as slate, the water trembled and out walked a maiden—tall and slight, with hair like river-weed in moonlight and sandals wet with shining. She took the crust from the surface as if from a platter and smiled at him.
“Will you be my wife?” blurted the cowherd, all bewitched at once.
She laughed softly. “**Win me if you can. Bake a loaf for my supper—**but mind you, hard-baked I will not have; half-baked I will not have; the bread must be baked just right.”
The next day he ran home and begged his mother to bake the finest loaf she could. She, anxious to help, baked it hard as a stone, thinking good crust meant good fortune. The cowherd carried it to the lakeside and called. The maiden rose, looked at the loaf, and shook her head.
“Hard-baked I will not have.” She touched the bread; it bobbed and floated like a cork. Then she was gone.
On the second day, determined to please, the mother under-baked the loaf till the centre was damp as dough. Again the maiden came; again she refused.
“Half-baked I will not have.” She pressed the loaf; it sagged, and the water took it down.
On the third day the mother, chastened, baked the loaf as it should be—brown, light, and even. The cowherd laid it on the water. The maiden stepped ashore, and with her came a grey gentleman of the lake, grave and courteous.
“Father, this is the one,” said the maiden.
The water-lord eyed the cowherd and spoke in a voice like wind in a reed-bed. “Take my daughter, and with her a dowry of cattle—seven sleek cows, two oxen, and a white bull with red ears. But mark this bond: if ever you strike her three blows without cause,” and here he lifted a long pale finger, “she must return to us, and she will take with her all that is ours.”
“I would sooner cut off my hand than lift it against her,” swore the cowherd.
So they were married upon the hillside, and the cattle came from the mist—milk-rich and otherworldly, the white bull shining like a winter moon. The pair made a farm at Myddfai, and prosperity followed them like a hound.
A household of marvels
Their days were good. The fairy wife moved about the house light as foam, yet everything she touched kept its order better than before. She had a way with herbs—meadowsweet, betony, plantain, eyebright—and when neighbours were ill she brought them teas and poultices that set them right quicker than prayer alone. Three sons were born to them, quick and handsome, and the father would say that his luck had struck the full.
Only one thing troubled him: sometimes, at a fair or a feast, his wife would behave in ways that seemed not of this world—as if moved by seasons other than men’s.
The first time was at a christening. When the mother placed the infant in her arms, the fairy bride began to weep—softly at first, then all at once, as if a flood-gate had been loosed.
“Hush, love,” whispered the cowherd, embarrassed before the neighbours, and he touched her lightly with his glove.
She looked at him with those lake-deep eyes. “That is the first blow.”
“Blow?” he stammered. “It was but a touch!”
“The bond knows no measure, only number,” she said, and wept on.
The second time was at a wedding. At the merry moment when the couple kissed, the fairy wife laughed out, wild and ringing, though no one had told a jest. Ashamed to be thought disrespectful, the cowherd tapped her arm.
“That is the second blow,” she said, her laughter dying.
The third time was at a funeral. As the bier passed and the bell tolled, a bleak wind went through the mourners, and the fairy wife smiled—not from joy, but with a far look, as if she saw release where others saw only loss. The cowherd, fearing scandal, laid a hand upon her shoulder.
She turned to him as one waking from a dream and spoke very gently: “Husband, the third blow has been struck. Remember our bond. I must go.”
He caught her hands in a panic. “No—no, I did not mean it! Stay.”
But already he heard a sound like the draw of a long wave across shingle. She stepped back, and her voice changed, ringing clear as a shepherd’s call among hills:
“Come, Dun and Brindle; come, Blossom and Star. Come all that are mine—home, home to the lake!”
From the meadows and byres the fairy cattle lifted their heads as one. The seven cows left off their chewing, the white-eared calves stopped their play, the white bull with red ears shook his crown, and the oxen backed from the yoke as if the wood had burned them. Lowing, tossing horns, they streamed past the hedges and down the track, never breaking a gate, never treading a furrow, yet nothing could stay them. The fairy bride walked before them, and not even the children’s cries could halt her.
At the shore of Llyn y Fan Fach, she turned once. “I have kept my side of the bargain; keep you yours. Think kindly of me, and I will not forget our sons.” Then she and the herd went into the water as one goes through a door, and the lake lay smooth as glass.
Only a single team of oxen—some say bewitched, some say blessed—remained trembling by the field. The yoke wedged; whether they were too slow to answer or too fast to be loosed, they stayed behind and lived out their days ploughing the red earth of Myddfai.
The lake’s gift
The cowherd was heart-broken, and the boys grew up half-wistful for the mother who sang to them in their dreams. When they were of an age to walk the hill, a message came in that same dream-song:
“Come to the stone above the water when the mist lifts from the reeds. Bring hearts that listen and hands that do no harm.”
So the three sons went at dawn to the lake. A white mist lay low; when it thinned, their mother stood upon the water as upon a polished floor, no older, no farther than a hand’s breadth away, though a yard of black depth lay between.
“My time among you is not ended, only altered,” she said. “I cannot cross to your hearth, but I can teach you what heals.” She named each son:
“Rhiwallon, whose mind is a clear pool; Cadwgan, whose hands are steady; Gruffudd, whose words will comfort. Learn the flesh and its frailties, the bone and its setting, the leaf and its virtue.”
Then she gave them a leather pouch that never ran out of simples and a little book wrapped in waxed linen. “Write down what I show you, and use it well, without greed. When the pouch is empty and the book is full, you will have no need of charms, for knowledge itself is the best spell.”
She taught them the uses of comfrey for knitting bone, yarrow to staunch blood, foxglove to strengthen a failing heart when wisely measured, honey to cleanse a wound, willow-bark for fever, and a hundred more. She showed them how to read the pulse, how to set a limb, how to ask a question so the sick would tell the truth of their pain. And when the sun touched the ridge, she sank like a reflection into the lake, leaving only rings that spread and were gone.
The Physicians of Myddfai
From that day the brothers became the Physicians of Myddfai. They went on foot and horse through all the valleys of Carmarthenshire, never refusing a cottage because it was poor nor a hall because it was proud. They wrote their remedies and receipts in the little book until its pages were a garden of green wisdom; and men said their skill was so sure that when others muttered over herbs, they gave reasons.
As for their father, he grew quiet and wise, and when folk pitied him he would say, “What is lost by folly may be lightened by service. My sons heal; that is her dowry left with us.”
If you walk to Llyn y Fan Fach on a still evening, the hill’s brow mirrored in the water, you may hear cattle low under the surface and a soft voice counting leaves on the shore. That will be the lady of the lake at her old work, keeping tally of the virtues that grow between stone and stream, faithful to her bargain in the way of the Tylwyth Teg.
Iconic lines and moments
- The bread trial: “Hard-baked I will not have; half-baked I will not have; the bread must be baked just right.”
- The condition set at the wedding: “If ever you strike her three blows without cause, she must return to us, and she will take with her all that is ours.”
- The tally of the blows: “That is the first blow… That is the second… Husband, the third blow has been struck.”
- The summons to the herd: “Come, Dun and Brindle; come, Blossom and Star—home, home to the lake!”
- The bequest to her sons: “Learn the flesh and its frailties, the bone and its setting, the leaf and its virtue… knowledge itself is the best spell.”
So ends the wonder tale of Llyn y Fan Fach: a marriage made on a lake’s bright edge, broken not by malice but by misunderstanding, and redeemed in part by healing—the fairy wife’s last gift to the world she left.
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