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
There was a Bwbach belonging to a certain estate in Cardiganshire,
which took great umbrage at a Baptist preacher who was a guest in the
house, and who was much fonder of prayers than of good ale. Now the
Bwbach had a weakness in favour of people who sat around the hearth
with their mugs of cwrw da and their pipes, and it took to pestering
the preacher. One night it jerked the stool from under the good man's
elbows, as he knelt pouring forth prayer, so that he fell down flat on
his face. Another time it interrupted the devotions by jangling the
fire-irons on the hearth; and it was continually making the dogs fall
a-howling during prayers, or frightening the farm-boy by grinning at
him through the window, or throwing the maid into fits. At last it had
the audacity to attack the preacher as he was crossing a field. The
minister told the story in this wise: 'I was reading busily in my
hymn-book as I walked on, when a sudden fear came over me and my legs
began to tremble. A shadow crept upon me from behind, and when I
turned round--it was myself!--my person, my dress, and even my
hymn-book. I looked in its face a moment, and then fell insensible to
the ground.' And there, insensible still, they found him. This
encounter proved too much for the good man, who considered it a
warning to him to leave those parts. He accordingly mounted his horse
next day and rode away. A boy of the neighbourhood, whose veracity
was, like that of all boys, unimpeachable, afterwards said that he saw
the Bwbach jump up behind the preacher, on the horse's back. And the
horse went like lightning, with eyes like balls of fire, and the
preacher looking back over his shoulder at the Bwbach, that grinned
from ear to ear.
XII.
The same confusion in outlines which exists regarding our own Bogie
and Hobgoblin gives the Bwbach a double character, as a household
fairy and as a terrifying phantom. In both aspects it is ludicrous,
but in the latter it has dangerous practices. To get into its clutches
under certain circumstances is no trifling matter, for it has the
power of whisking people off through the air. Its services are brought
into requisition for this purpose by troubled ghosts who cannot sleep
on account of hidden treasure they want removed; and if they can
succeed in getting a mortal to help them in removing the treasure,
they employ the Bwbach to transport the mortal through the air.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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