Shakespeare's "Puck" and the Welsh "Pwcca"
Many were the tales told from village to village of little sprites seen dancing in the meadows on moonlight nights, and the Tylwyth Teg, or fairy family, was regarded with…
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“Shakespeare's "Puck" and the Welsh "Pwcca" from Shakespeare and the Welsh by Frederick James Harries, 1919.
There was formerly a very real and widespread belief in fairies among the people of Wales, and the belief still lingers in some of the more rural parts of the Principality. Many were the tales told from village to village of little sprites seen dancing in the meadows on moonlight nights, and the Tylwyth Teg, or fairy family, was regarded with mingled feelings of affection and awe. There were good fairies and bad fairies, but there was also another kind of fairy, neither good nor bad, but simply mischievous, and him the old Welsh people knew as Pwcca. In Shakespeare's play, A Midsummer Night's Dream, we have a "merry wanderer of the night” who is given the name of "Puck."
That frights the maidens of the villagery;
Skim milk, and sometimes labour in the quern,
And bootless make the breathless housewife churn,
And sometime make the drink to bear no barm,
Mislead night wanderers, laughing at their harm...
It may be noted, too, that there is a pauky in Scotland, a pooca in Ireland, and in Iceland where many Irish bards either settled, or were taken as prisoners there is a puki.
We are told that Shakespeare was the first to use the general term of "Puck" as a proper name, and some Welshmen of letters claim that Shakespeare's “Puck" was suggested by the little Welsh fairy Pwcca. In his British Goblins Wirt Sikes states the case for Pwcca so concisely that we cannot do better than quote his arguments:
"Shakespeare's use of Welsh folklore, it should be noted, was extensive, and particularly faithful. Keightly, in his Fairy Mythology, rates the bard soundly for his inaccurate use of fairy mythology. But the reproach will not apply as regards Wales. From his Welsh informant Shakespeare got Mab, which is simply the Cymric for a little child, and the root of numberless words signifying 'babyish, childish, love of children (Mabgar), kitten (Mabgath), prattling (Mabrarth),' and, most notable of all, of 'Mabinogion.' “
Proceeding, the same writer remarks: "There is a Welsh tradition to the effect that Shakespeare received his knowledge of Cambrian fairies from his friend Richard Price, son of Sir John Price of the Priory, Brecon. It is even claimed that Cwm Pwcca, or Puck Valley, a part of the romantic glen of the Clydach in Breconshire, is the original scene of the Midsummer Night's Dream, a fancy as light and airy as Puck himself. Anyhow, there Cwm Pwcca is, and in the sylvan days before Frere and Powell's ironworks were set up there it is said to have been as full of goblins as a Methodist's head is full of piety. And there are in Wales other places bearing like names, where Pwcca 's pranks are well remembered by old inhabitants. The range given in Wales to the popular fancy is expressed with fidelity by Shakespeare's words in the mouth of Puck:
“I'll follow you, I'll lead you about, around,
Through bog, through bush, through brake, through briar.
Sometime a horse I'll be, sometime a hound,
A hog, a headless bear, sometime a fire;
And neigh, and bark, and grunt, and roar, and burn
Like horse, hound, hog, bear, fire, at every turn."
In this connection it is curious to note that in one of the later poems of Welsh mediaeval literature Gwion Bach transforms himself into a hare, a bird, a fish, and a grain of wheat; while similar transformations occur in early Irish poetry.
According to a letter written by the poet Campbell to Mrs. Fletcher in 1833, and published in her autobiography, it was thought that Shakespeare visited the valley of Cwm Pwcca in person.
“It is no later than yesterday," wrote Campbell, "that I discovered a probability, almost near a certainty, that Shakespeare visited friends in the very town (Brecon in Wales) where Mrs. Siddons was born, and that he there found in a neighbouring glen called 'The Valley of Fairy Puck' the principal machinery for his Midsummer Night's Dream."
Campbell's probability, unfortunately for us, does not appear to have materialised into a certainty.
In this connection Sir Sidney Lee remarks (July 5th, 1917): "I have not been able so far to discover any foundation for the statement that Richard Price of Brecon was a friend of Shakespeare. The allegation seems to rest on no more obvious basis than that which makes, the dramatist's mother of Welsh descent." As we have seen, however, it was from his father that he derived the Welsh blood that flowed in his veins.
The theory of Shakespeare's supposed connection with Brecon seems to have originated with the Breconshire county historian, Theophilus Jones, who was influenced by the fact that one Hugh Evans, who was Rector of Merthyr Cynog in Breconshire, and whose executor was Mr. Richard Price of the Priory, Brecon, bore the same name as the schoolmaster-parson in the Merry Wives of Windsor (see Chapter IV., p. 53). "Carnhuanawc" (the Rev. Thomas Price), author of Hanes Cymry, was much with Theophilus Jones in his youth, and communicated this idea to Thomas Campbell, who had some correspondence with the Rev. Thomas Price when writing his Life of Mrs. Siddons. (The celebrated actress was born in 1755 at a house in High Street, Brecon, now known as the Siddons Wine Vaults, but then called the Shoulder of Mutton.)
Fleay, in his Chronicle History of the Life and Work of William Shakespeare, speaking of the first quarto of the Merry Wives of Windsor, tells us that Sir Hugh Evans in the fairy scene appears as "Puck Hobgoblin" in black. "The prefixes Qu., Qui., and Pist." he says, "are mistakes for Queen and Puck. Pistol and Quickly cannot be actors in this scene, nor in the entrance are they placed with 'Evans, Anne Page, Fairies,’ but at the ends of the second and third lines, as if by after-thought . All the Pistol fairy speeches belong to Evans (Puck). There seems to have arisen some confusion in the final revision when this scene was probably altered.”
In the modern versions of the play, Anne Page, as the Fairy Queen, calls upon "crier Hobgoblin" to " make the fairy o-yes," and the speech of Hobgoblin which is interrupted by Falstaff’s aside is continued by Evans. But in the middle of the scene Hobgoblin and Evans have one line of verse divided between them. This looks as if Hobgoblin was originally a separate character, especially as Evans is described as a Satyr. Query: who takes the part of Hobgoblin? William, apparently. It is by no means clear that Fleay is right in saying that confusion has arisen in the final revision; yet it is certainly curious that both Hobgoblin and Evans act as the fairy crier.
The music of the Tylwyth Teg has been variously described by those who claim to have heard it, but usually with much vagueness, as "a sweet intangible harmony, recalling the words of Caliban in The Tempest (Act III., Scene 3)"
The isle is full of noises,
Sounds and sweet airs that give delight and hurt not.
In A Winter's Tale an essentially Celtic note is struck. The old Shepherd, in Act III., Scene 2, declares:
This is fairy gold, boy, and 'twill prove so;
Up with't, keep it clos ; home, home, the next way.
We are lucky, boy, and to be so still requires nothing but secrecy.
We have here, as Sikes points out, a traditional belief of the Welsh peasantry in a nutshell. Welsh, Cornish, and Irish fairy lore is full of stories of the fairy gold that vanishes, or turns to withered leaves, if the condition of secrecy is not observed by the finder.
Harries, Frederick James. Shakespeare and the Welsh. T. Fisher Unwin, 1919.
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