neat cottage the midwife perceives the large
overhanging branches of an ancient oak, whose hollow and moss-grown
trunk she had before mistaken for the fireplace, where glow-worms
supplied the place of lamps. And in North Wales, when Mrs. Gamp
incautiously rubbed an itching eye with the finger she had used to rub
the baby's eyes, "then she saw with that eye that the wife lay on a
bundle of rushes and withered ferns, in a large cave of big stones all
round her, with a little fire in one corner of it; and she also saw that
the lady was only Eilian, her former servant-girl, whilst with the other
eye she beheld the finest place she had ever seen." More terrible still,
in another story, evidently influenced by the Welsh Methodist revival,
the unhappy woman beheld "herself surrounded by fearful flames; the
ladies and gentlemen looked like devils, and the children appeared like
the most hideous imps of hell, though with the other parts of her eyes
all looked grand and beautiful as before."[35]

However disturbing these visions may have been, the nurse was generally
discreet enough to maintain perfect silence upon them until she got back
to the safety of her own home. But it is not very surprising if her
tongue sometimes got the better of her, as in a story obtained by
Professor Rhys at Ystrad Meurig. There the heroine said to the elf-lady
in the evening, as she was dressing the infant: "You have had a great
many visitors to-day." To this the lady sharply replied: "How do you
know that? Have you been putting the ointment to your eyes?" Thereupon
she jumped out of bed, and blew into her eyes, saying: "Now you will see
no more." The woman could never afterwards see the fairies, nor was the
ointment entrusted to her again. So in the Cornish tale of Cherry of
Zennor, that young damsel, being hired by a fairy widower to keep house
for him, has the assurance to fall in love with him. She touches her own
eyes with the unguent kept for anointing the eyes of her master's little
boy, and in consequence catches her master kissing a lovely lady. When
he next attempts to kiss Cherry herself she slaps his face, and, mad
with jealousy, lets slip the secret. No fairy widower with any
self-respect could put up with such conduct as this; and Cherry has to
quit Fairyland. Her parents had supposed her dead; and when she returned
they believed at first it was her ghost. Indeed, it is said she was
never afterwards right in her head; and on moonlight