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
arose in the night, and next day a scrap of her red cloak was found on
the edge of a frightful bog, in which she is believed to have
disappeared in the darkness and storm. The husband went mad; their
cottage fell to decay; and to this day the shepherds declare that
Catti's ghost haunts the spot. It is most often seen, and in its most
terrific shape, during howling storms, when it rides on the gale,
shrieking as it goes.[64]
FOOTNOTE:
[64] 'Camb. Quarterly,' i., 452.
VI.
Few Cambrian spirits are devoid of a didactic purpose. Some teach
reverence for the dead,--a lesson in great request among the rising
generation in Wales and elsewhere. The church at Tregaron,
Cardiganshire, was being rebuilt in 1877, and certain skulls were
turned up by the diggers in making new foundations. The boys of
Tregaron amused themselves playing ball with the skulls, picking out
their teeth, banging them against the wall to see if they would break,
and the like.[65] They probably never heard the story told by Mrs.
Morgan of Newport to the Prophet Jones: of some people who were
drinking at an inn there, 'two of them officers of excise,' when one
of the men, to show his courage, declared he was afraid of no ghosts,
and dared go to the charnel house and fetch a skull from that ghastly
place. This bold and dangerous thing he did, and the men debated, over
their beer, whether it was a male or a female skull, and concluded it
was a woman's, 'though the grave nearly destroys the difference
between male and female before the bones are turned to dust, and the
difference then quite destroyed and known only to God.' After a jolly
hour over the skull, the bold one carried it back and left it where he
got it; but as he was leaving the church, suddenly a tremendous blast
like a whirlwind seized him, and so mauled and hauled him that his
teeth chattered in his head and his knees knocked together, and he
ever after swore that nothing should tempt him to such a deed again.
He was still more convinced that the ghost of the original owner of
the skull had been after him, when he got home, and his wife told him
that his cane, which hung in the room, had been beating against the
wall in a dreadful manner.
FOOTNOTE:
[65] 'Western Mail,' Dec. 14, 1877.
VII.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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