The Welsh Fair Folk are central to the folk beliefs and practices of Wales. Sometimes called Plant Annwfn, ‘The Children of Annwfn’, the Welsh otherworld, and also Y Tylwyth Teg (‘Fair Folk’), these supernatural people aren’t fairies in the modern sense of tiny, winged spirits, but are instead very similar to humans in size and shape, and in the past often intermarried with human families.
The study of folklore and folk-belief came relatively late to Wales, but even though most of our sources are from the 18th, 19th and 20th centuries, we can trace the lineage of these once oral texts back into the mythology of the Mabinogion stories and similar medieval sources. Because of this, we can sometimes outline the evolution of Welsh mythology over long periods of time.
This course looks at the most prominent features of the Welsh Fair Folk, discussing their nature and the origins of their magic, their relationship to the mortal realm and what their stories symbolised and meant for the common folk of Wales.
This course is currently made up of 4 chapters, containing 8 separate videos on different topics, and has a total running time of 3.6 hours.