The coast between Fishguard and St Davids is high and broken, with little quarries and coves, and it was here that John Rhys placed one of his mermaid stories, taken from the writer Gwynionyd. The setting is a hot, calm afternoon, with the sea lying like a lake and an occasional wave lifting against the rocks.
On such a day, the story says, one of the ladies of Rhys Dwfn's people, the fair folk whose hidden town Daniel Huws of Trefin had glimpsed off the coast in 1858 while travelling between Fishguard and St Davids, came up out of the sea and sat on a stone to untangle her long silvery hair. The rockmen working nearby went down to look. From the waist up she was like any girl of Wales; from the waist down she had the body of a fish. When they spoke to her she understood them and answered in Welsh, but only a few words: "Reaping in Pembrokeshire and weeding in Carmarthenshire." Then she slipped away into the depths towards her home.
Nobody in the story explains what her words meant, which is part of their charm. They may be a garbled piece of farming lore, or a joke at the expense of the two counties. Rhys set the tale beside the St Dogmaels mermaid and the one caught at Llanwnda, as part of a cluster of sea maiden stories along this coast.
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