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
The majority of stories of this class turn on the subject of hidden
treasures. The popular belief is that if a person die while any
hoarded money--or indeed metal of any kind, were it nothing more than
old iron--is still hidden secretly, the spirit of that person cannot
rest. Its perturbation can only be relieved by finding a human hand to
take the hidden metal, and throw it down the stream of a river. To
throw it up the stream, will not do. The Ogmore is the favourite river
for this purpose in lower Glamorganshire. The spirit selects a
particular person as the subject of its attentions, and haunts that
person till asked what it wants, when it prefers its request. Some say
it is only ill-gotten treasure which creates this disturbance of the
grave's repose. A tailor's wife at Llantwit Major, who had been a
stout and jolly dame, was thus haunted until she was worn to the
semblance of a skeleton, 'for not choosing to take a hoard honestly to
the Ogmore.' But flesh and blood could not resist for ever, and
so--this is her story: 'I at last consented, for the sake of quiet,
to take the treasure to the river; and the spirit wafted me through
the air so high that I saw below me the church loft, and all the
houses, as if I leaned out of a balloon. When I took the treasure to
throw it into the river, in my flurry I flung it up stream instead of
down: and on this the spirit, with a savage look, tossed me into a
whirlwind, and however I got back to my home I know not.' The
bell-ringers found her lying insensible in the church lane, as they
were going home from church late in the evening.
II.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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