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
In the Churchyard of Montgomery is a grave where the grass refuses
to grow, though it is in the midst of luxurious vegetation. The
unfortunate man named John Newton, who was buried there in the year
1821, had predicted this as a proof that he was innocent of the charge
brought against him at the Assizes, when he was condemned to die on
the evidence of two men named Thomas Pearce, and Robert Parker, who
charged him with highway robbery. On being asked at the trial why
judgment should not be passed upon him, he said before the judge:
"I venture to assert that as I am innocent of the crime for which
I suffer, the grass, for one generation at least, will not cover my
grave." The poor man's prediction proved true, for the grave to this
day remains a bare spot.
One of the condemned man's accusers became a drunkard, and the other
"wasted away from the earth," and a curse seems to follow every one
who attempts to get anything to grow on the spot. At the head of the
grave is the stem of a rose tree, and it is said that the man who put
it there soon fell sick and died. I had heard of this grave even when
I was a boy, and some account of the story respecting it has appeared
in the papers from time to time.
SHOULDER-BLADE DIVINATION.
Giraldus Cambrensis, seven hundred years ago, speaking of the Flemings
of South Pembrokeshire, in his "Itinerary through Wales," says:--"It
is worthy of remark, that these people, from the inspection of the
right shoulder of rams which have been stripped of their flesh,
and not roasted, but boiled, can discover future events, or those
which have passed and remained long unknown. They know, also, what is
transpiring at a distant place, by a wonderful art, and a prophetic
kind of spirit. They declare also undoubted symptoms of approaching
peace and war, murders and fires, domestic adulteries, the state of
the King, his life and death. It happened in our time, that a man
of those parts, whose name was William Mangunel, a person of high
rank, and excelling all others in the aforesaid art, had a wife big
with child by her own husband's grandson. Well aware of the fact, he
ordered a ram from his own flock to be sent to his wife as a present
from her neighbour; which was carried to the cook and dressed. At
dinner the husband purposely gave the shoulder bone of the ram,
properly cleaned, to his wife, who was also well skilled in this
art, for her examination; when, having for a short time examined the
secret marks, she smiled, and threw the oracle down on the table. Her
husband dissembling, earnestly demanded the cause of her smiling
and the explanation of the matter; overcome by his entreaties, she
answered, 'The man to whose flock this ram belongs has an adulterous
wife, at this time pregnant by the commission of incest with his own
grandson.' The husband, with a sorrowful and dejected countenance,
replied, 'You deliver indeed an oracle supported by too much truth,
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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