Most fairy encounters in Welsh folklore are brief and frightening. Polly Williams's lasted years.
Wirt Sikes heard it as a story Polly used to tell. She was a good woman, he says, born in Trevethin parish, who lived at the Ship Inn in Pontypool. When she was a child, coming home from school one day, she saw the fairies dancing in a pleasant, dry place under a crab-apple tree. She thought they were children like herself and went over, and they drew her into their dance. She brought them into an empty barn and they danced together there.
After that, for three or four years, she often met them and danced with them on her way to or from school. She never heard a sound from their feet, and once she realised they were fairies she took off her ffollachau, her clogs, so that her own clattering feet would not offend them. They wore blue and green aprons, and though they were small she could tell from their faces that they were not children. Once she came home barefoot and was told off for going to school like that, but she kept quiet about the fairies for fear of trouble and did not speak of them until she was grown.
In the end she stopped going to them. They tried to coax her back, and when she would not come, they punished her by dislocating one of her legs, a "walking member" as Sikes's source delicately put it. The Ship Inn has not been located for this record, and the pin is placed approximately in Pontypool.
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