There are many different types of stories - some are told for entertainment and others to teach, some make you laugh and others make you cry, some are about everyday life and others about worlds of enchantment and magic, some are about the gods and others about the animals. There are many ways of classifying stories, and the sections here are just to guide you around:
I have retold these stories in my own words - feel free to tell them in yours.
These are the humorously exaggerated tales in which so many Welsh 'characters' have specialised; the Welsh term is Celwydd Golau, a light lie.
During the 5th and 6th centuries AD, in the chaos of the Dark Ages when the Roman Empire had collapsed in Western Europe and new kingdoms and peoples were emerging, the Church had to change too. This was the period of monastic expansion, when individuals and communities sought solitude to worship God, and of missionary work, in Ireland, amongst the pagan Germanic tribes. The names of very many 'saints', both men and women, have come down to us in all the Celtic lands, and travelling between them and England and Europe; Ynys Enlli, Bardsey Island, has been described as "the burial place of 10,000 saints." In those days, the title of 'saint' was awarded locally, and not many were Vatican-approved.
There are some saints about which hardly anything is known except for their names, preserved perhaps in the name of their habitation. An early religious settlement was known as a llan, meaning the enclosure rather than the actual church, and very many placenames in Wales contain this root followed by a saint's name. See A Note on Placenames.
But there are other saints whose lives were recorded, although some of these hagiographies are more stories than histories. Naturally the saints performed miracles and could call down fire from heaven to confound tyrants if necessary.
This is a list of the most notable Welsh saints:
The most famous outlaw in Welsh tradition was Twm Sion Cati
One of the earliest stories we have about visiting the faires is that of Elidurus, recorded in the 12th century by the historian Gerald of Wales.
A common story about people disappearing in the company of fairies is illustrated by this story from . Two friends, hired men at the same farm, were making their way home over a mountain raod, after a long evening courting their sweethearts in a neighbouring farm. At the wildest part of the road, they heard music drifting over towards them, but could see no sign of any house. But it was a moonlit night almost as clear as day, and they had no difficulty in following a narrow track that seemed to lead them towards the sound.
As they got closer, they were able to see a great crowd of beautiful girls and handsome men dancing on a green lawn in the middle of the rough grass and gorse, with the musicians standing on a twmpath mound to one side, fiddling as afast as they could. One of the girls turned and beckoned to the young men, and before his companion could say anything, one of them had jumped into the ring and was dancing with her. And on they danced, wih no sign of anyone tiring or needing a rest, so the one watching decided to walk on back to the farm, rather than wait for his companion who seemed in no hurrry to leave.
But the next day there was no sign of the dancer, and that evening his friend retraced his steps back to the dancing-lawn, and found no trace of the missing man, and no sign of footprints or a great company having been there, but there was a large fairy ring in the centre of the grass; he knew then that these had been the Fair Folk, and that they had taken his friend away with them.
But most of those abducted by the Fair Folk were babies, and it was considered very dangerous to leave a baby unwatched, especially one who had not yet been baptized. Turn your back for a moment and he might be 'changed'; oh, he would look the same at first, but would not grow bigger, would become an unhealthy, wailing
It used to be believed in many countries that the fairies would steal human children to join their courts, either because they needed or out of jealousy that humans had souls. Often they would take a healthy baby and leave one of their own in its place, identical in appearance but soon the parents would notice that the baby had stopped growing and become sick and peevish.
According to tradition, the first thing was to establish that the child was indeed a changeling.
The usual method of getting the fairy mother to reclaim her own child and return the stolen one, was to illtreat it or threaten to do so;
Some people have conjectured that this belief was a folk response to children suffering various medical conditions which were not understood at the time, such as a child's intolerance of gluten in food.
The most famous story is The Lady of Llyn y Fan Fach, also known as the Physicians of Myddfai.
These are those stories set in an indefinite time and place, Amser maith yn ol or Once upon a time, where the hero or heroine faces impossible challenges but is able to overcome them all, perhaps with his or her native wit, but more usually with the aid of a magic helper - a fairy god-mother or a talking horse maybe.
The typical structure seems to be that the story begins with a crisis; there is something wrong in the kingdom or in the family, and there has to be a quest to find the cure or there are tasks to be performed before there can be a resolution of the crisis. Sometimes three sisters or brothers set out to try their luck, and only the youngest succeeds; repetition and pattern are woven into many stories, and nowhere more so than in these tales.
The majority of tale types within the Arnti-Thomson classification fall into this group, and similar stories may be found all over Europe. They are relatively rare in Wales however, perhaps because
The story of Culhwch and Olwen, from the Mabinogion, is an ancient wonder tale, where the wicked stepmother curses her son to marry the unattainable giant's daughter, which he succeeds in doing with the multitudinously-talented helpers from Arthur's court.
These stories include: