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
The student of comparative folk-lore, in reading these accounts,
will be equally impressed with their resemblance to phenomena noted
in many other lands. The conclusion is irresistible that we here
encounter but another form of the fairy which goes in Wales by the
name of the Bwbach, and in England is called the Hobgoblin, in
Denmark the Nis, in Scotland the Brownie. Also, the resemblance is
strong in all stories of this class to certain of the German Kobolds.
In several of these accounts of spirits in Wales appear the leading
particulars of the Kobold Hinzelmann, as condensed by Grimm from
Feldman's long narrative.[76] There is also a close correspondence to
certain ghost stories found in China. In the story of Woo, from the
'Che-wan-luk,'[77] appear details much like those in Hinzelmann, and
equally resembling Welsh particulars, either in the stories given
above, or those which follow. But we are now drawn so near to the
division of Familiar Spirits that we may as well enter it at once.
FOOTNOTES:
[75] For the sake of comparison, I give the latest American case which
comes under my notice. The scene is Akron, a bustling town in the
State of Ohio; the time October, 1878. 'Mr. and Mrs. Michael Metzler,
middle-aged Germans, with their little daughter, ten years of age, and
Mrs. Knoss, Metzler's mother-in-law, recently moved to a brick house
in the suburbs known as Hell's Half Acre. The house is a good,
substantial building, situated in a somewhat open space, and
surrounded by a lonesome deserted air. A few days after they had
moved, they were disturbed by sharp rappings all over the house,
produced by small stones or pebbles thrown against the window panes.
Different members of the family were hit by these stones coming to and
going from the house. Other persons were hit by them, the stones
varying in size from a pea to a hen's egg. Mrs. Metzler said that when
she went after the cow in the evening, she could hear these stones
whistling around her head. Mr. and Mrs. Metzler, who are devout
Catholics, had Father Brown come to the house to exorcise the spirits
which were tormenting them. The reverend father, in the midst of his
exercises, was struck by a stone, and so dismayed thereby that he went
home in despair.' (Newspaper account.)
[76] 'Deutsche Sagen,' i. 103.
[77] Dennys, 'Folk-Lore of China,' 86.
CHAPTER V.
Familiar Spirits--The Famous Sprite of Trwyn Farm--Was it a
Fairy?--The Familiar Spirits of Magicians--Sir David Llwyd's
Demon--Familiar Spirits in Female Form--The Legend of the
Lady of the Wood--The Devil as a Familiar Spirit--His
Disguises in this Character--Summoning and Exorcising
Familiars--Jenkin the Pembrokeshire Schoolmaster--The
Terrible Tailor of Glanbran.
I.
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