Folk-Lore of West and Mid-WalesDavies, Jonathan Ceredig
History
Folk-Lore of West and Mid-Wales
Davies, Jonathan Ceredig
Folklore -- Wales; Wales -- Social life and customs
From a paper read before the Cardiganshire Antiquarian Society,
by the Rev. J. Morris, Vicar of Llanybyther, I find that there is
a tradition still extant that Llanwenog Church was also removed by
supernatural agency from one site to another.
These popular legends are, undoubtedly, very old, and are current
not only in Wales, but in parts of Scotland also as the following
from Sir Walter Scott's Notes to the Lay of the Last Minstrel prove:
----"When the workmen were engaged in erecting the ancient church
of Old Deer, in Aberdeenshire, upon a small hill called Bissau they
were surprised to find that the work was impeded by supernatural
obstacles. At length the Spirit of the River was heard to say:
"It is not here, it is not here,
That ye shall build the church of Deer;
But on Taptillery,
Where many a corpse shall lie."
"The site of the edifice was accordingly transferred to Taptillery, an
eminence at some distance from where the building had been commenced."
As to the origin of these legends or traditions of the mysterious
removal of churches, it is not easy to arrive at a correct
explanation. Some writers are of the opinion that they contain a
record, imaginative and exaggerated, of real incidents connected with
the history of the churches to which each of them belongs, and that
they are in most cases reminiscences of an older church which once
actually stood on another site. Others see in these stories traces of
the antagonism, in remote times, between peoples holding different
religious beliefs, and the steps taken by one party to seize and
appropriate the sacred spots of the other.
That some of these tales have had their origin in primitive times,
even anterior to Christianity, is probable.
APPARITIONS OF THE DEVIL.
In many of the Welsh Ghost Stories, the spirit or ghost was supposed
to have been none other than the evil one himself.
The visible appearance of his satanic majesty was quite as common
in Wales as in other countries, though, strange to say, he is often
depicted as an inferior in cunning and intellect to a shrewd old
woman, or a bright-witted Welshman, as the following two curious
stories show:--
THE LEGEND OF THE DEVIL'S BRIDGE IN CARDIGANSHIRE.
The Devil's Bridge in the northern part of Cardiganshire is so called
from the tradition that it was erected by him upon the condition that
the first thing that passed over it should be his. The story which
is well-known is something as follows:
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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