At Mathafarn, in the parish of Llanwrin, there was a wood called Ffridd yr Ywen, the Forest of the Yew, because a yew tree grew in the very middle of it. All through the wood were green rings in the grass that people called the dancing places of the goblins.
Two servants of John Pugh of Mathafarn went out one day to work in the wood. Early in the afternoon a dark mist came down over the whole country, so thick that the young men thought night was falling. But when they reached the middle of the wood it cleared around them and the darkness seemed to lie behind them. Thinking it was still too early to go home, they lay down and slept.
One of them woke to find himself alone. He supposed his companion had gone off on some business of his own, which he had been talking about, and went home. When they asked where the other one was, he said he must have gone to the cobbler's. But the other servant did not come home that night or the next day, and in the end the one who had come back confessed where they had both fallen asleep. After searching for many days he went to a gŵr cyfarwydd, a conjuror, which the story says was a common trade in those days. The conjuror told him to go back to the place where they had slept exactly a year after the lad was lost, on the same day and at the same hour. He was not to step inside the fairy ring, but to stand on the edge of the green circle, and the lad would come out dancing with the goblins; when he came close enough to grab, he was to snatch him out of the ring as fast as he could.
He did as he was told and pulled the lad out. The lad was not hungry, he said, because he still had the rest of his dinner in his bag from before he fell asleep, and he asked whether it was not nearly night and time to go home. He had no idea a year had gone by. But he looked like a skeleton, and as soon as he tasted food he died.
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