In this story, the protagonist gets lost and falls into a lake—but instead of drowning, he discovers a whole city down there. If I were to base a story off of this one, I'd take that concept of a civilization under a lake, then twist the genre with it, so it's something a little darker, so the fantasy's tinged a little more with a quiet, eerie horror element.
In this one, the protagonist goes through and gets things ready for the fairy folk to come through and visit: sets out bread, removes all the iron from a place so it's safe, and so on. I like the idea of a character freelancing for various unpleasant supernatural entities, making preparations for them to cross through or sweep past an area, helping them carry out their business on the mortal end. Another aspect of the story that caught my attention was when the wife confronted her husband about where he got his money from, saying, "I don't believe you get it honestly." A similar confrontation, possibly between best friends who're also business partners ("business partners" interpreted pretty loosely), is probably what I'd go with for this one.
Though I also liked the idea of another family, another house, another world nestled just underneath the one the protagonist sees, for me, the most interesting part of this story was the idea of the old woman with a shift reputation, who "was thought to earn her living by stealing babies for the fairies." The idea of fairies needing a human accomplice—somebody who knows the town and its people and how their houses are guarded—to help swap their changelings is something that's never occurred to me before, but it's quite striking, and I'd like to explore that. It'd be interesting to see what kind of personality it would take to steal the babies for a living, plus that person's relationship with the fairies and how exactly they pay the character.
In this story, like so many others, the protagonist wins himself a mythological creature for a wife (in this case, the nymph of a lake), then loses her due to some seemingly trivial case of carelessness. It did make me start thinking, though—in all of the myths like this, the bride always becomes human and comes to live with the husband in his world. What if the husband was the one transformed, just enough to survive, and came to live in the wife's world? Better yet, what if he wins her as his wife, but she's still stuck in the lake, and he's still stuck on land, and they can only meet in brief, wistful little snatches of time at the shore? It seems more interesting than the husband being given an easy deal, so that's probably what I'd explore here.
I loved this story from the outset, because I loved the the idea of a wizard needing to find some "plucky fellow" to camp out in a dangerous place and perform dangerous magic with him in order to secure some treasure. The wizard approaches everyone he knows about it, but can't find anyone—until he's approached by a "reckless youth" named John Gethin, who says that he "care[s] for nothing in heaven above, or in the earth beneath or in the water under the earth," and offers to come along for half the treasure. I love the idea of this dynamic, and that's what I would use in my story: the protagonist would put out an ad in a paper or something, which would lead to the team-up and a sort of Tango & Cash- or Fight Club-inspired dynamic between the two.
As far as this story is concerned, I thought the idea of a sanctuary, protected against royalty or the law or anyone, has the most potential for a retelling. I'd probably write a story about a ring of criminals using it as protection, or a petty criminal protagonist who quickly realizes he's not the only one of his kind there. I'd like to bring some kind of fantasy or sci-fi bent to this one, too, but I haven't decided yet what that would look like.
This time, it wasn't so much anything in the story itself, but the abstract concept behind it that caught my interest. If I were to use this one as the inspiration for my own retelling, I'd stick to that idea of a haunted lake, then see what new, modern-day direction I could spin it in.
Two things caught my eye when I read this one; the first was the idea of a creature that can't be killed, and so gets locked away for the foreseeable future instead. It could be an interesting concept to play around with, especially if somebody were to decide to spring the monster at the end—possibly because all the townspeople who locked him up were worse monsters than the one in the glorified cage. The other element that interested me was the image of this horrible monster being captured because he let his guard down, caught "while it slept with its head on [some girl's] knees." That's a monster I want to read about, and I'd be curious to find out more about the girl who helped capture him, too, and how she ends up feeling about what happens after he's chained and locked away.
I'm not usually a title person, but that's actually the thing about this story that inspired me the most. Rather than focusing on the old lady or the monk, I would probably write about the Devil's Bridge mentioned in the story, which also gets called the Bad Man's Bridge. I'd put it in a modern-day setting—probably some small town, where town histories get muddled with old superstitions and rumors and half-baked legends—and change the backstory behind the bridge (thanks to all the old rumors, there's probably more mystery than facts about my bridge, and that probably works better for me anyways). I'd either be going for a The Lost Boys meets Stand By Me flair, or looking at an old suicide bridge inspired a little by the feel of the legends about Robert Johnson.
Bibliography: The Welsh Fairy Book by W. Jenkyn Thomas. Source: Mythology and Folklore UN-Textbook.
Image Credit: Illustration for "Why Dunant has the Front Door in the Back," by Willy Pogány. Source: The Welsh Fairy Book.
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