After discussing glaistigs and gruagachs it makes sense to also touch on green ladies. Although some books give accounts of green ladies as though they are their own type of creature, it seems they are more likely to be a generic term for fairy women of many types, with particular strength, power and dispositions.
Green ladies are particularly found in Scotland and Wales, and are often associated with water and wild places. They live in solitary haunts, and are most often encountered in late evening, by moonlight, and in darkness.
A green lady is a fairy woman usually of human size, dressed all in green. She may change her form at will - taking the shape of another woman, or even an animal such as a dog.
In the form of a dog, she may torment shepherds by driving the sheep in different directions, but she can be more dangerous than just this type of mischief, although her ire is especially directed at those who have wronged her. She is known to be deceptive, and particularly dangerous to unwary travellers, to whom she may appear as herself or as a woman known to them, and drown them at a river ford or lead them over the edge of a cliff. It is difficult to fight her because if you name the weapon you intend to use, it will lose its power against her.
Story Time
Three stories are given below that may give some insight into their nature and how to escape a dire fate at their hands. Two stories are from Wonder Tales from Scottish Mythology by Donald Alexander Mackenzie, and one is from Katherine Brigg’s Dictionary of Fairies: Hobgoblins, Bogies, Brownies and other Supernatural Creatures.
The Green Lady and the Smith
A smith was once riding homewards and came in the evening to a ford in the river, when suddenly a green lady rose out of the water ahead of him.
“Stop!” she called, “you cannot ride across.”
The smith called her evil and said he would smite her if she did not let him cross. He was returning from battle, and felt very sure of himself and his strength.
“What have you to fight with?” She asked, and when he named his sword, it instantly lost its power to harm her. So it happened too with his spear, and then she asked if he had room behind him on his horse for a passenger, for she intended to leap up behind him and terrify him as he rode. But instead, he snatched her up ahead of him in the saddle and twisted the reins about her, claiming that she was now in his power.
“You will never leave the ford!” she cried, but the smith claimed that he had one weapon left, and when she asked what it was, rather than naming the dirk in his stocking, he said “the sharp bright weapon against my leg,” for he had become wise to her tricks, and so it did not lose its power over her. Then the lady grew frightened and asked him to put her down, but he would not, and he rode across the river and up onto the moor.
The green lady offered him a herd of speckled fairy cattle if he would put her down, but he would not. Then she offered him a house that could not be destroyed by fire, water, or storm and was enchanted against evil, and this he agreed to.* Setting her down, with the reins still tied about her, he commanded her to fulfil her promise, and she immediately called to all the small Folk thereabouts who came rushing to her - from fear or loyalty I cannot tell. By the time dawn broke, they had built the house as promised.
Then the lady demanded to be set free, and the smith said he would, if she would promise that she would not drown him or his children in the fords of the three rivers nearby, and he named the rivers. But it had been a long night, and he had forgotten the fourth river, and as soon as he lifted the reins from about her she sprang back and cried “you have not named the fourth river! Let you and your children beware!” Then she went past him like a green flame and vanished.
The smith never saw her again, but seven years later one of his sons was drowned in the ford of the fourth river, and he knew the green lady had taken her revenge.
*It bothers me that only two things were offered - this feels like the rule of three should apply, although perhaps the protection from the three rivers comes in as the third offer.
The Green Lady and the Gwartheg Y Llyn
The Gwartheg Y Llyn (gwarrtheg er thlin) are the fairy cattle of Wales, and if one chooses to join a farmer’s herd, their luck is made. One such fairy cow attached herself to an earthly bull, and the farmer added her to his herd. Oh, how he thanked his stars - the stray cow gave more calves than any other cow, and of such quality! And the milk, butter and cheese were unsurpassed. The farmer quickly became the richest man in the countryside.
But as he became richer, he became meaner and more grasping. He began to think the stray cow no longer produced so many calves or so much milk, and he should find other ways she might serve - in fact, he determined to fatten her for market. The cow was as good at fattening as she had been at anything else - soon she was rounder than any other cow in the herd, and the farmer called for the butcher. All the neighbours gathered to see the end of the cow, for she had become very famous thereabouts.
The butcher raised his sharp knife over the cow, but before he could strike a blow his hand was paralysed and the knife dropped to the ground. A piercing scream rang out from the crag above Llyn Barfog, and the crowd looked up to see a tall woman all in green standing on the crag. She chanted loudly, the words quite clear to those down below:
Come thou, Einion’s Yellow One
Stray Horns, the Particoloured Lake Cow,
And the hornless Dodin,
Arise, come home.
And so chanting, she named all progeny of the stray cow still in the farmers herds - which now made up the bulk of his cattle - and each one, led by the stray cow herself, ran up the mountain side towards the green lady. She formed them into ranks and led them down into the dark waters of the lake. With a last disdainful glance at the farmer, all vanished under the water, and only a cluster of yellow waterlilies marked the place where they had sunk. The farmer became as poor as he had been rich.
The Green Lady and the Fisherman
A poor fisherman once lost his boat, and as he sat weeping on the beach bemoaning his fate, a green lady appeared by him.
“If I give you a new boat, will you divide you fish with me?” she asked, and the fisherman agreed. The next morning he found a new boat lying on the beach. For a long time he kept his word, and left half of every catch he made on the green knoll of the river bank, and the green lady was pleased and helped the man to prosper.
One day however, I cannot tell why, he kept all the fish for himself and left none for the lady. The next day, when he set out, he did not catch a single fish, and he returned home sad and empty handed. He was still sadder the next day, when he came down to the beach and found a sudden storm in the night had smashed his boat to pieces. He never saw the green lady again, and regretted for the rest of his life not keeping his promise.