British Goblins: Welsh Folk-lore, Fairy Mythology, Legends and TraditionsSikes, Wirt
History
British Goblins: Welsh Folk-lore, Fairy Mythology, Legends and Traditions
Sikes, Wirt
Folklore -- Wales; Goblins -- Wales; Mythology, Celtic -- Wales; Mythology, Welsh; Wales -- Social life and customs
Equally prodigious was the spectre seen by Thomas Miles Harry, of the
parish of Aberystruth. He was coming home by night from Abergavenny,
when his horse took fright at something which it saw, but which its
master could not see. Very much terrified, the latter hastened to guide
the animal into an adjoining yard, and dismount; whereupon he saw the
apparition of a gigantic woman. She was so prodigiously tall, according
to the account of the horrified Harry, that she was fully half as high
as the tall beech trees on the other side of the road; and he hastened
to hide from his eyes the awful sight, by running into the house, where
they listened open-mouthed to his tale. Concerning this Mr. Harry we
are assured that he was of an affable disposition, innocent and
harmless, and the grandfather of that eminent and famous preacher of
the Gospel, Thomas Lewis, of Llanharan, in Glamorganshire.[72] The same
narrator relates that Anne, the daughter of Herbert Jenkins, of the
parish of Trefethin, 'a young woman well disposed to what is good,' was
going one evening to milk the cows by Rhiw-newith, when as she passed
through a wood she saw a horrible black man standing by a holly tree.
She had with her a dog, which saw it also, and ran towards it to bark
at it, upon which it stretched out a long black tongue, and the dog ran
affrighted back to the young woman, crawling and cringing about her
feet for fear. She was in great terror at all this, but had the courage
still to go on after the cows, which had strayed into another field.
She drove them back to their own field, and in passing the holly-tree
avoided looking that way for fear of seeing the black man again.
However, after she had got safely by she looked back, and saw the
monster once more, 'very big in the middle and narrow at both ends,'
and as it walked away the ground seemed to tremble under its heavy
tread. It went towards a spring in that field called Ffynon yr Yspryd,
(the Fountain of the Spirit,) where ghosts had been seen before, and
crossing over the stile into the common way, it whistled so loud and
strong that the narrow valley echoed and re-echoed with the prodigious
sound. Then it vanished, much to the young woman's relief.
FOOTNOTE:
[72] Jones, 'Apparitions.'
III.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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