The Shepherd of Myddvai

High in the Black Mountains of Carmarthenshire lies the lake called Llyn y Fan Fach. One day the shepherd of Myddvai led his lambs to its edge and lay down there while they grazed. Suddenly he saw three maidens rise out of the dark water. Shaking bright drops from their hair, they glided to the shore and wandered among his sheep. Their beauty was more than human, and he fell in love with the one who came closest to him.

He offered her the bread he had brought. She took it and tasted it, then sang to him:

“Hard-baked is your bread;
It is not easy to catch me.”

And she ran back to the lake laughing.

The next day he brought bread that was not so well baked and watched for the maidens. When they came ashore, he offered it as before, and the maiden tasted it and sang:

“Unbaked is your bread;
I will not have you.”

And she vanished into the waves.

A third time the shepherd tried to win the maiden, and this time he offered her bread he had found floating near the shore. That pleased her, and she promised to be his wife if he could pick her out from among her sisters the next day. The shepherd recognised his sweetheart by the way her sandal was tied. Then she warned him that she would make him as fine a wife as any woman of this world, unless he struck her three times without cause. He was sure that could never happen. So she summoned three cows, two oxen and a bull out of the water to be her dowry, and he led her home as his bride.

The years passed happily, and the shepherd and the lake maiden had three children. One day they were going to a christening, and she said it was too far to walk, so he told her to fetch the horses.

“I will,” she said, “if you bring me the gloves I left in the house.”

When he came back with the gloves, she was still standing there, so he gave her shoulder a light tap with the gloves and said, “Go on, go on.”

“That’s one,” she said.

Another time they were at a wedding, and in the middle of all the joy and laughter she suddenly began to sob and weep. Her husband tapped her on the shoulder and asked, “Why are you crying?”

“Because they are walking into trouble, and trouble is coming to you, for that is the second blow you have given me without cause. Be careful. The third will be the last.”

After that the husband took great care never to strike her. But one day, at a funeral, she suddenly burst out laughing. Forgetting himself, he touched her rather roughly on the shoulder and said, “Is this a time for laughing?”

“I laugh,” she said, “because the dead are free of their troubles, while yours are only beginning. That was the third blow, and it ends our marriage. Farewell.” With that she got up, left, and went to their home.

She looked round the farm and called out to the animals that had come with her from the lake:

“Brindle cow, white speckled,
Spotted cow, bold freckled,
Old white face, and grey Geringer,
And the white bull from the king’s coast,
Grey ox, and black calf,
All, all, follow me home.”

The black calf, newly slaughtered and hung up on a hook, came down alive and whole and trotted after her, and the oxen out in the field hauled their plough along behind them and did as she told them. She fled to the lake with all the animals following her, and they plunged with her into the dark water. The legend explains a furrow across the mountains as the mark of that dragged plough.

The lake maiden came out of the water just one more time, when her sons had grown into men. Then she gave them gifts of healing, and because of those gifts they became famous as Meddygon Myddvai, the physicians of Myddvai.

Where this story comes from

Joseph Jacobs took this Welsh legend for Celtic Fairy Tales from Mr. W. Rees’s preface to The Physicians of Myddvai, the doctors’ book of remedies from the Red Book of Hergest, published by the Welsh MS. Society in 1861. The legend itself is not in the Red Book; Rees wrote it down from oral tradition.

Jacobs explains that the physicians of Myddvai were real people, famous for their medical skill for about six hundred years, until the family died out with John Jones, who was living in 1743. To explain their uncanny knowledge of herbs, people said they were descended from a fairy ancestress who taught them in a place still called Pant-y-Meddygon, “Doctors’ Dingle.”

Jacobs offers the rough English respelling “Methugon Muthvai” for “Meddygon Myddvai”. This is his historical approximation, not a general pronunciation rule for Welsh letters.

Read the original: Joseph Jacobs, Celtic Fairy Tales (Project Gutenberg #7885, The Shepherd of Myddvai)

Best for ages 9–12 — a short, haunting Welsh legend about a fairy bride from a mountain lake.

Whose definition of a blow counts?

The husband treats the first touch as a small prompt, but his wife has already stated the condition of their marriage. Each occasion also shows him assuming that her response should match his: hurry, celebrate a wedding, mourn a funeral. Her explanations reveal another perspective. Her departure enforces a boundary she had made clear, while her later gift to the sons keeps the parental bond distinct from the marriage.

Read the three exchanges

For each touch, record what he expects and what she says. How could he have asked about her response without touching her? Then explain why teaching the sons need not mean returning to the husband.

Think about it

• How did the shepherd finally win the lake maiden?
• What warning did she give him before she agreed to marry him?
• Why did she weep at a wedding and laugh at a funeral?

You may also like

• The Sprightly Tailor — another short legend from Celtic Fairy Tales tied to a real place
• The Horned Women — another short, eerie household tale from Jacobs
• The Farmer of Liddesdale — another tale of a bargain with an otherworldly stranger