This ghastly creature would await the unwary just around a sharp bend or hidden turning.  She had wild, coarse hair; sharp cheekbones and a huge, curved nose that nearly reached the tip of her pointed chin; burning red eyes; and two or three long, spiked teeth.  She dreaded water and would wail hideously rather than cross it.

But Gwrach-y-Rhibyn was a forbidding exception to the general character of the bwciod.  The fairy realm was occupied by the tylwyth teg.  Most fairies were small, generally genial folk who were often kind to old people and who gratefully rewarded those who helped them.  They would leave silver fairy money for those who left a clean, warm hearth and a bowl of fresh water (so that the fairies could bathe their babies) out for them overnight.  Of course, their presence had to be kept secret or else they and their silver would disappear.

Extremely clean folk, the tylwyth teg were known to relentlessly tease dirty or slovenly humans until they changed their ways. They could also be arbitrarily mischievous. Kilvert told of an old woman in his parish who had lined the interior of her cottage with a thick, impenetrable wall of prickly gorse. She had blocked out her windows and had a large, movable piece covering the door. She claimed that she was being tormented by the tylwyth teg, who were tipping over her milk pails and crockery. The gorse barrier was the only means by which she could keep them at bay.

Most Radnorshire fairy tales indicate that the tylwyth teg had a domestic life similar to that of human beings: They ate, drank, married, and reared families yet were not governed by terrestrial laws.  They were not apparitions or ghosts but were quire real.  Fairies generally lived underground, in dimly lit caves, and only came to the surface at times of half light or mist, at dusk or in the evening.  Their cave entrances were usually marked by standing stones, old ruins, circles, bushes in open ground, riverbanks, or prominent sods.  Fairies had no religion and did not practice divine worship, which they considered distasteful.  They apparently lived by seven-year cycles: seven years on earth, seven years underground, and seven years in the air.  It is unclear if this was a repetitive cycle or their entire life span.