Be it noted; I am not professing any fervent personal belief in the
reports to which I have alluded. For all I know, the Lama, in spite of
Reuter, was not transfigured, and the _poltergeist_, in spite of the
late Mr. Andrew Lang, may in reality be only mischievous Polly, the
servant girl at the farm. And to go farther: I do not know that I should
be justified in putting either of these cases of the marvellous in line
with a chance paragraph that caught my eye last summer; for this had
not, on the face of it at all events, anything wildly out of the common.
Indeed, I dare say that I should not have read it, should not have seen
it, if it had not contained the name of a place which I had once
visited, which had then moved me in an odd manner that I could not
understand. Indeed, I am sure that this particular paragraph deserves to
stand alone, for even if the _poltergeist_ be a real _poltergeist_, it
merely reveals the psychic whimsicality of some region that is not our
region. There were better things and more relevant things behind the few
lines dealing with Llantrisant, the little town by the sea in
Arfonshire.
Not on the surface, I must say, for the cutting I have preserved
it--reads as follows:--
LLANTRISANT.--The season promises very favourably: temperature of
the sea yesterday at noon, 65 deg. Remarkable occurrences are
supposed to have taken place during the recent Revival. The lights
have not been observed lately. "The Crown." "The Fisherman's Rest."
The style was odd certainly; knowing a little of newspapers. I could see
that the figure called, I think, _tmesis_, or cutting, had been
generously employed; the exuberances of the local correspondent had been
pruned by a Fleet Street expert. And these poor men are often hurried;
but what did those "lights" mean? What strange matters had the vehement
blue pencil blotted out and brought to naught?
That was my first thought, and then, thinking still of Llantrisant and
how I had first discovered it and found it strange, I read the paragraph
again, and was saddened almost to see, as I thought, the obvious
explanation. I had forgotten for the moment that it was war-time, that
scares and rumours and terrors about traitorous signals and flashing
lights were current everywhere by land and sea; someone, no doubt, had
been watching innocent farmhouse windows and thoughtless fanlights of
lodging houses; these were the "lights" that had not been observed
lately.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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