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
It is unnecessary here to repeat, what I for my own part never forget,
nor, I trust, does the reader, that Wales is no exception to the rest
of the world in its credulity. That it is more picturesque is true,
and it is also true that there is here an unusual amount of legend
which has not hitherto found its way into books. Death-omens are
common to all lands; even in America, there are tales of the banshee,
imported from Ireland along with the sons of that soil. In one recent
case which came under my notice the banshee belonged to a
Cambridgeshire Englishman. This was at Evansville, Indiana, and the
banshee had appeared before the deaths of five members of a family,
the last of whom was the father. His name was Feast, and the
circumstances attending the banshee's visits were gravely described in
a local journal as a matter of news. Less distinguished death-portents
are common enough in the United States. That the Cambrian portents are
so picturesque and clearly defined must be considered strong testimony
to the vivid imagination of the Welsh. Figures born of the fancy, as
distinguished from creatures born of the flesh, prove their parentage
by the vagueness of their outlines. The outlines of the Cyhyraeth and
the Gwrach y Rhibyn sometimes run into and mingle with each other, and
so do those of the Tolaeth and the Goblin Funeral; but the wonder is
they are such distinct entities as they are.
VI.
To say that all the visible inhabitants of the mundane spirit-world
are creatures of the disordered human liver, is perhaps a needless
harshness of statement. The question of a future life is not involved
in this subject, nor raised by the best writers who are studying it;
but, religious belief quite apart, it remains to be proved that
spirits of a supernatural world have any share in the affairs of a
world governed by natural law. A goblin which manifests itself to the
human eye, it seems to me, becomes natural, by bowing before the
natural laws which rule in optics. Yet believers in ghosts find no
difficulty in this direction; the word 'supernatural' covers a
multitude of sins. 'What is the supernatural?' asks Disraeli, in
'Lothair.' 'Can there be anything more miraculous than the existence
of man and the world? anything more literally supernatural than the
origin of things?'
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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