A black calf, which haunted a Pembrokeshire brook early in the present century, was believed to be the devil in familiar guise. It appeared at a certain spot near the village of Narberth--a village which has figured actively in mythic story since the earliest ages of which there is any record. One night two peasants caught the terrible calf and took it home, locking it up safely in a stable with some other cattle, but it had vanished when morning came. Henry Llewelyn, of Ystrad Defoc parish, Glamorganshire, was beset by the devil in the shape of a round bowl. He had been sent by his minister (Methodist) to fetch from another parish a load of religious books--Bibles, Testaments, Watts' 'Psalms, Hymns and Songs for Children'--and was coming home with the same, on horseback, by night, when he saw a living thing, round like a bowl, moving to and fro across the lane. The bold Llewelyn having concluded it was the devil, resolved to speak to it. 'What seekest thou, thou foul thing?' he demanded, adding, 'In the name of the Lord Jesus go away!' And to prove that it was the adversary, at these words it vanished into the ground, leaving a sulphurous smell behind. To William Jones, a sabbath-breaker, of Risca village, the devil appeared as an enormous mastiff dog, which transformed itself into a great fire and made a roaring noise like burning gorse. And to two men at Merthyr Tydfil, in Glamorganshire, the fiend appeared in the shape of a gosling. These men were one night drinking together at the Black Lion Inn, when one dared the other to go to conjure. The challenge was accepted, and they went, but conducted their emprise with such drunken recklessness, that the devil put out the eyes of one of them, so that he was blind the rest of his days. FOOTNOTES: [82] In his fascinating essay on the 'Folk-Lore of France,' in the 'Folk-Lore Record' for 1878 (published by the Folk-Lore Society) Mr. A. Lang says: 'So widespread is this superstition, that a friend of mine declares he has met with it among the savages of New Caledonia, and has known a native who actually died, as he himself said he would, after meeting one of the fairy women of the wild wood.' [83] Gruffydd ab yr Ynad Coch. [84] 'The Life and Death of Mr. Vavasor Powell,' p. 8. (A curious seventeenth century book, no two existing copies of which appear to be alike. I here cite from that in the library of the Marquis of Bute, than which a more perfect copy is rarely met with.) VI.