Red Fairies #2: A People Apart? February 3, 2016
Author: Beach Combing | in : Modern , trackback
One of the most curious aspects of the Red Fairy legends in the belief that the Red Fairies survived up until the nineteenth century as a race apart in the locality. This was elevated to high pseudo-science. Here is a passage from The British Race (1909)
In Merioneth there is a red-haired, ruddy-skinned people, with receding brows and very projecting teeth, who are called the ‘Cochion,’ or red ones. They are traceable to the early part of the sixteenth century, when they were known as ‘Y Gwylliad Cochion,’ the red goblins or fairies. They dwelt in dens, like savages, built no houses, and lived mainly on plunder. In 1534: Baron Owen hanged a hundred of them. A terror at country fairs, they would fight with each other when they could get nobody else. They are cannier and fewer now, but still noted for their strength, pugnacity, and high temper. The type is perhaps Finnish or Ugrian, and of Asiatic origin.
Where does this come from? Well there was certainly a memory in the area of lines of descent including the owner of Dugoed Issa. This letter was published in the Cambro Briton in 1820
The first Gwylliaid, or their Captains, are said to have been persons of property, masters, it is said, of ‘eighty hearths,’ and rendered desperate by some act of oppression. The site of their chief mansion is still shown on the upper part of the farm of Dugoed Mawr. These, having become outlaws, rallied about them all the turbulent spirits of the neighbourhood. The whole property, belonging to the several branches of the family, was forfeited, excepting one farm, Dugoed Issa, the owner of which, though a relation, was endowed with more prudence or honesty. This farm was sold to the late Sir W. W. Wynn about sixty years ago. I am a native of the same parish, and was accustomed formerly to take much delight in collecting information about these ancient banditti.
However, much more interesting is another letter in Archaeologia Cambrensis for 1854, which gives what might be called ‘ethnic’ details.
There is a certain red-haired athletic race about Caio and Pencarreg, in Caermarthenshire, called Cochion (the Red ones). The principal personage in the pedigrees of the district is Meurig Goch, or Meurig the Red, from whom many families trace their descent. The Cochion of Pencarreg were in former days noted for their personal strength and pugnacity at the fairs of the country, where sometimes they were not only a terror to others, but to each other, when there were none else left with whom they could contend.
That reference to fighting at fairs is reminiscent of modern stereotypes of Irish travellers. The following fragment is from an informant of the article writer.
But as you, I presume, are more anxious to have some traces of the characteristics of the race than a history of their actions, I have made inquiries on that head, and I find that the Gwylliaid were a tall, athletic race, with red hair, something like the Patagonians of America. They spoke the Welsh language. I was fortunate enough to find out some descendants of the ‘Gwylliaid’ on the maternal side, and those in my native parish of Llangurig (on the way from Aberystwyth to Rhayader). When these Welsh Caffirs [!!] were sent from Mallwyd they wandered here and there, and some of the females were pitied by the farmers, and taken into their houses, and taught to work, and one of these was married to a person not far from this place, and their descendants now live at Bwlchygarreg Llangurig. I knew the old man well. There certainly was something peculiar about him; he was about 70 when I was a boy of 15; he had dark lank hair, a very ruddy skin, with teeth much projecting, and a receding brow. I never heard his honesty questioned; but, mentally, he was considered very much below the average; the children also are not considered quick in anything. They do not like to be taunted with being of the ‘Red Blood’ I am told. I never knew till lately that they were in any way related to the Gwylliaid.
The Welsh, even in the nineteenth century were incredibly conscious of their family lines. It seems that a group of families spread around central Wales still traced their descent to one Meurig Coch (Meurig the Red, with mutation Meurig Goch?) and that Meurig was, rightly or wrongly associated with the Red Fairies. (Note that Fenton’s Tours in Wales has a ‘Castell Meurig Coch’ suggesting this name should possibly be taken back into the Middle Ages). This group of families – what might very loosely be called a clan – then had the misfortune to collide with nineteenth-century racial thinking and before you could say Mein Kampf people were talking about a ‘receding brow’. Was their identity forged in the nineteenth century or like those wonderful Irish fairies, the Ranties, does their identity hark back to an earlier period? drbeachcombing AT yahoo DOT com
29 Feb 2016: Randy asks ‘Perhaps the bucktoothed, sloped headed redheads were the last of the Neanderthal/Cro-Magnon hybrids?’
