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
Innumerable are the Welsh stories of familiar spirits. Sometimes these
are spectres of the sort whose antics we have just been observing.
More often they are confessedly demons, things of evil. In numberless
cases it is no less a personage than the diawl himself who makes his
appearance in the guise of a familiar spirit. The familiar spirit
which takes up its abode in the household is, as we have seen, a
pranksome goblin. Its personal appearance--or rather its
invisibility--is the saving circumstance which prevents it from being
deemed a fairy. The familiar spirit which haunted the house of Job
John Harry, at the Trwyn Farm, in the parish of Mynyddyslwyn, was a
stone-thrower, a stroker of persons, etc., but could not be seen. It
is famous in Wales under the cognomen of Pwca'r Trwyn, and is referred
to in my account of the Ellylldan.[78] The tenants at present residing
on the Trwyn Farm are strangers who have recently invaded the home of
this ancestral spook, but I was able to glean abundant information
concerning it from people thereabout. It made a home of Mr. Harry's
house some time in the last century, for a period beginning some days
before Christmas, and ending with Easter Wednesday, on which day it
departed. During this time it spoke, and did many remarkable things,
but was always invisible. It began at first to make its presence known
by knocking at the outer door in the night; but when persons went to
open the door there was no one there. This continued for some time,
much to the perplexity of the door-openers. At last one night it spoke
to the one who opened the door, and the family were in consequence
much terrified. Some of the neighbours, hearing these tales, came to
watch with the family; and Thomas Evans foolishly brought a gun with
him, 'to shoot the spirit,' as he said. But as Job John Harry was
coming home that night from a journey, the familiar spirit met him in
the lane and said, 'There is a man come to your house to shoot me, but
thou shalt see how I will beat him.' So Job went on to the house, and
immediately stones were thrown at the unbelieving Thomas who had
brought the gun, stones from which he received severe blows. The
company tried to defend him from the stones, which did strike and hurt
him, and no other person; but their efforts were in vain. The result
was, that Thomas Evans took his gun and ran home as fast as his legs
would carry him, and never again engaged in an enterprise of that
sort.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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