British Goblins: Welsh Folklore, Fairy Mythology, Legends and Traditions by Wilt Sikes, Fiction, Fairy Tales, Folk Tales, Legends & Myt

The legend of the Cyhyraeth is sometimes conflated with tales of a monstrous Welsh spirit in the shape of a hideously ugly woman with a harpy-like appearance: unkempt hair and wizened, withered arms with leathery wings, long black teeth and pale corpse-like features. She approaches the window of the person about to die by night and calls their name or travels invisibly beside them and utters her cry when they approach a stream or crossroads.

Wirt Sikes's 1881 tome defines and records Welsh fairy legends as they existed -- still vital, alive, not just a mordant mythology but living folklore in that year. Like many texts of the time, it treats the subject mechanically, detailing fairy legends with such care and precision as to leach away a measuyre of the magic. But all the same, there's plenty of magic here: this is the myth that modern fasntasy grows from and the truth is that it's not to be found elsewhere still alive. (Jacketless library hardcover.)

About the Author
Sikes, Wirt: - "William Wirt Sikes (1836 - 1883) was an American journalist and writer, perhaps best known today for his writings on Welsh folklore and customs. In June 1876 Sikes was appointed U.S. Consul at Cardiff, Wales. Over the next few years Sikes produced a number of pieces on Welsh folklore, mythology, and customs, collected as British Goblins; Welsh Folk-Lore, Fairy Mythology, Legends, and Traditions (1880) and Rambles and Studies in Old South Wales (1881). He also wrote Studies of Assassination (1881). He died in Cardiff in 1883 and was buried in Brookwood Cemetery, Brookwood, Surrey."