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
She has also been seen in the Black Mountain in
Breconshire. Robert Williams, of Langattock, Crickhowel, 'a
substantial man and of undoubted veracity,' tells this tale: As he was
travelling one night over part of the Black Mountain, he saw the Old
Woman, and at the same time found he had lost his way. Not knowing her
to be a spectre he hallooed to her to stay for him, but receiving no
answer thought she was deaf. He then hastened his steps, thinking to
overtake her, but the faster he ran the further he found himself
behind her, at which he wondered very much, not knowing the reason of
it. He presently found himself stumbling in a marsh, at which
discovery his vexation increased; and then he heard the Old Woman
laughing at him with a weird, uncanny, crackling old laugh. This set
him to thinking she might be a gwyll; and when he happened to draw out
his knife for some purpose, and the Old Woman vanished, then he was
sure of it; for Welsh ghosts and fairies are afraid of a knife.
FOOTNOTES:
[31] See p. 104.
[32] Pronounced Wooboob.
[33] 'Juan (Shuï) White is an old acquaintance of my boyhood,' writes
to me a friend who was born some thirty years ago in Monmouthshire. 'A
ruined cottage on the Lasgarn hill near Pontypool was understood by us
boys to have been her house, and there she appeared at 12 p.m.,
carrying her head under her arm.'
II.
Another account relates that John ap John, of Cwm Celyn, set out one
morning before daybreak to walk to Caerleon Fair. As he ascended
Milfre Mountain he heard a shouting behind him as if it were on Bryn
Mawr, which is a part of the Black Mountain in Breconshire. Soon after
he heard the shouting on his left hand, at Bwlch y Llwyn, nearer to
him, whereupon he was seized with a great fright, and began to suspect
it was no human voice. He had already been wondering, indeed, what any
one could be doing at that hour in the morning, shouting on the
mountain side. Still going on, he came up higher on the mountain, when
he heard the shouting just before him, at Gilfach fields, to the
right--and now he was sure it was the Old Woman of the Mountain, who
purposed leading him astray. Presently he heard behind him the noise
of a coach, and with it the special cry of the Old Woman of the
Mountain, viz., 'Wow up!' Knowing very well that no coach could go
that way, and still hearing its noise approaching nearer and nearer,
he became thoroughly terrified, and running out of the road threw
himself down upon the ground and buried his face in the heath,
waiting for the phantom to pass. When it was gone out of hearing, he
arose; and hearing the birds singing as the day began to break, also
seeing some sheep before him, his fear went quite off. And this, says
the Prophet Jones, was 'no profane, immoral man,' but 'an honest,
peaceable, knowing man, and a very comely person' moreover.
III.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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