Ifan Gruffydd’s Childhood Warning About Fairies
A record in The Hawthorn Archive, preserving folklore with its place, type and source context attached.
Museum Wales preserves oral testimony from Ifan Gruffydd, born in 1896, recalling childhood fear and fascination surrounding fairy stories on Anglesey. He remembered his mother warning him not to pass a particular boundary near a cave because fairies might take children.
The testimony does not establish that fairies inhabited the cave. It records something equally valuable for a living folklore archive: a supernatural narrative shaping real childhood behaviour and creating an obeyed boundary in a remembered landscape.
Source trail: Museum Wales, Folk Tales from Wales, recorded memories of Ifan Gruffydd.
Related Journal record: Fair Folk in British Folklore.