Welsh folklore, Wirt Sikes
Fairy Rings
Welsh fairy rings are grassy circles associated with the tread of dancing fairies. Sikes records people avoiding them even when they no longer expect to see the dancers themselves. In the Rhys and Llewellyn tale, contact with a person at the ring’s edge lets other witnesses hear the harps and see the hidden dance. Rhys is pulled out after months that have felt like minutes to him.
Also known as Corelw
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In the sources
Principal account
TraditionalWelsh fairy rings are grassy circles associated with the tread of dancing fairies. Sikes records people avoiding them even when they no longer expect to see the dancers themselves.
Further detail
TraditionalIn the Rhys and Llewellyn tale, contact with a person at the ring’s edge lets other witnesses hear the harps and see the hidden dance. Rhys is pulled out after months that have felt like minutes to him.
Context & interpretation
This entry combines Sikes’s report of avoidance customs with a distinct dance-and-rescue legend. It concerns the meaning of rings in folklore rather than the natural causes of actual circular growth in grass.
Original passages
Source 1
British Goblins
the tread of their tripping feetOpen this page in the book
Passage & edition details
Location recorded at citation review: Wirt Sikes, British Goblins (1880), active reader leaf 118
Exact passage checked against active scan text and its original-leaf mapping; whitespace and scan line breaks normalised.
- Edition
- IMJ-0044-E001
- Reader page
- IMJ-0044-E001-P0118
- Original scan leaf
- 119
- Recorded leaf number
- 119
- Current Reader position
- 117
- Reader verification
- Source-preserving update confirmed
Source 2
British Goblins
his own foot was on the outward edge of a fairy ringOpen this page in the book
Passage & edition details
Location recorded at citation review: Wirt Sikes, British Goblins (1880), active reader leaf 86
Exact passage checked against active scan text and its original-leaf mapping; whitespace and scan line breaks normalised.
- Edition
- IMJ-0044-E001
- Reader page
- IMJ-0044-E001-P0086
- Original scan leaf
- 87
- Recorded leaf number
- 87
- Current Reader position
- 85
- Reader verification
- Source-preserving update confirmed
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