Such, to my mind, are some of the questions to which the fairies give rise: I now wish to add another turning on the reluctance of the fairies to disclose their names. There is one story in particular which would serve to illustrate this admirably; but it is one which, I am sorry to say, I have never been able to discover complete or coherent in Wales. The substance of it should be, roughly speaking, as follows:--A woman finds herself in great distress and is delivered out of it by a fairy, who claims as reward the woman's baby. On a certain day the baby will inevitably be taken by the fairy unless the fairy's true name is discovered by the mother. The fairy is foiled by being in the meantime accidentally overheard exulting, that the mother does not know that his or her name is Rumpelstiltzchen, or whatever it may be in the version which happens to be in question. The best known version is the German one, where the fairy is called Rumpelstiltzchen; and it will be found in the ordinary editions of Grimm's Märchen. The most complete English version is the East Anglian one published by Mr. Edward Clodd, in his recent volume entitled Tom Tit Tot, pp. 8-16; and previously in an article full of research headed 'The Philosophy of Rumpelstiltskin,' in Folk-Lore for 1889, pp. 138-43. It is first to be noted that in this version the fairy's name is Tom Tit Tot, and that the German and the East Anglian stories run parallel. They agree in making the fairy a male, in which they differ from our Welsh Silly Frit and Silly go Dwt: in what other respect the story of our Silly differed from that of Rumpelstiltzchen and Tom Tit Tot it is, in the present incomplete state of the Welsh one, impossible to say. Here it may be found useful to recall the fragments of the Welsh story: (1) A fairy woman used to come out of Corwrion Pool to spin on fine summer days, and whilst spinning she sang or hummed to herself sìli ffrit, sìli ffrit--it does not rise even to a doggerel couplet: see p. 64 above. (2) A farmer's wife in Lleyn used to have visits from a fairy woman who came to borrow things from her; and one day when the goodwife had lent her a troell bach, or wheel for spinning flax, she asked the fairy to give her name, which she declined to do. She was, however, overheard to sing to the whir of the wheel as follows (p. 229):--
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Celtic Folklore: Welsh and Manx (Volume 2 of 2) — Part 84
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