British Goblins Part 15

Pa hyd? Pa hyd? Dychwelwch feibion Adda!

Pa hyd? Pa hyd yr erlidiwch y Cristnogion duwiol?

How long? How long? Return ye sons of Adam!

How long? How long will ye persecute the G.o.dly Christians?

After a time they departed; reappeared; departed again; the great light faded; and the light of Mr. Thomas's candle was once more visible on his table. There was also Rees David, a man of more than common piety, who lived in Carmarthens.h.i.+re, near Whitlands. At the time of his death, it was testified by 'several religious persons who were in the room,' that there was heard, by them and by the dying man, the singing of angels. It drew nearer and nearer as his death-struggle grew imminent, and after his death they 'heard the pleasant incomparable singing gradually depart, until it was out of hearing.'

That the dying do see something more, in the last moment of expiring nature, than it is given to living eyes to see, is a cherished belief by numberless Christian men and women, whom to suspect of superst.i.tious credulity were to grossly offend. This belief is based on exclamations uttered by the dying, while with fixed and staring eyes they appeared to gaze intently at some object not visible to the bystanders. But that the bystanders also saw, or heard, voice or vision from the Unknown, is not often pretended.

VII.

Reference has been made to the euphemisms in use among all peoples to avoid p.r.o.nouncing the name of the devil. That many good folk still consider the word devil, lightly spoken, a profane utterance only second to a similar utterance of G.o.d's name, is a curious survival of old superst.i.tions. No prohibition of this sort attaches to the words demon, fiend, etc., nor to such euphemisms, common in both Welsh and English, as the adversary, the evil one, etc. It is an old custom in North Wales to spit at the name of the devil, even when so innocently used as in p.r.o.nouncing the name of the Devil's Bridge. The peasantry prefer to call the bridge 'Pont y Gwr Drwg,' the Bridge of the Wicked One; and spitting and wiping off the tongue are deemed a necessary precaution after saying devil, diafol, or diawl. The phrase 'I hope to goodness,' so common in Wales and elsewhere, is clearly but another euphemism for G.o.d; the goodness meant is the Divine beneficence.

'Goodness' sake' is but a contraction of 'For G.o.d's sake!' The Hebrew tetragrammaton which was invested with such terror, as representing the great 'I am,' finds an explanation, according to the ideas of Welsh scholars, in the Bardic traditions. These relate that, by the utterance of His Name, G.o.d created this world; the Name being represented by the symbol / , three lines which typify the focusing of the rising sun's rays at the equinoxes and solstices. The first ray is the Creator, the second the Preserver, and the third the Destroyer; the whole are G.o.d's Name. This name cannot be uttered by a mortal; he has not the power; therefore it remains for ever unuttered on earth.

At the creation the universe uttered it in joy at the new-born world; 'the morning stars sang together.' At the last day it will be uttered again. Till then it is kept a secret, lest it be degraded, as it has been by the Hindus, who, from the three rays created their three false G.o.ds, Brahma, Vishnu, and Siva. Tradition relates that Einigan Gawr saw the Divine Name appear, and inscribed it on three rods of mountain ash. The people mistook the three rods thus inscribed for G.o.d himself, and Einigan died from grief at their error.[87]

FOOTNOTE:

[87] 'Dosparth Edeyrn Dafod Aur,' 3.

VIII.

The devil with which we are acquainted is a character unknown to Greek or Roman mythology; this devil was a later invention; but his ident.i.ty with the genii, or jinns of the 'Arabian Nights,' the Dvs of Persian history, is clear enough. Ahriman, the evil spirit, king of the realms of darkness and of fire, was apparently the progenitor of Satan, as Vritra was of Ahriman. Both these ancient arch-fiends appeared as serpents in form, and were myths representing the darkness, slain by the light, or the sun-G.o.d, in the one case called Indra, in the other Ormuzd. The medieval devil with horns and hoofs does not appear in the records of Judaism. He is an outgrowth of the moral principle of the Christian era; and traced to his origins he is simply a personification of the adversary in the never-ending struggle on earth between light and darkness. That struggle is not, in nature, a moral one; but it remains to-day, as it was in the beginning, the best type we have of the battle between right and wrong, and between truth and error. When G.o.d said, 'Let there be light,' the utterance became the symbol and guide of virtue, of brave endeavour, and of scientific research, until the end.

CHAPTER VII.

Cambrian Death-Portents--The Corpse-Bird--The Tan-Wedd--Listening at the Church-Door--The Lledrith--The Gwrach y Rhibyn--The Llandaff Gwrach--Ugliness of this Female Apparition--The Black Maiden--The Cyhyraeth, or Crying Spirit--Its Moans on Land and Sea--The St. Mellons Cyhyraeth--The Groaning Spirit of Bedwellty.

I.

There are death portents in every country, and in endless variety; in Wales these portents a.s.sume distinct and striking individualities, in great number and with clearly defined attributes. The banshee, according to Mr. Baring-Gould, has no corresponding feature in Scandinavian, Teutonic, or cla.s.sic mythology, and belongs entirely to the Celts. The Welsh have the banshee in its most blood-curdling form under the name of the Gwrach y Rhibyn; they have also the Cyhyraeth, which is never seen, but is heard, moaning dolefully and dreadfully in the night; the Tolaeth, also only heard, not groaning but imitating some earthly sound, such as sawing, singing, or the tramping of feet; the Cwn Annwn and Cwn y Wybr, Dogs of h.e.l.l and Dogs of the Sky; the Canwyll Corph, or Corpse Candle; the Teulu, or Goblin Funeral, and many others--all of them death-portents. These, as the more important and striking, I will describe further; but there are several others which must first be mentioned.

The Aderyn y Corph is a bird which chirps at the door of the person who is about to die, and makes a noise that sounds like the Welsh word for 'Come! come!' the summons to death.[88] In ancient tradition, it had no feathers nor wings, soaring without support high in the heavens, and, when not engaged upon some earthly message, dwelling in the land of illusion and phantasy.[89] This corpse-bird may properly be a.s.sociated with the superst.i.tion regarding the screech-owl, whose cry near a sick-bed inevitably portends death. The untimely crowing of a c.o.c.k also foretells the sudden demise of some member of the family.

In North Wales the cry of the golden plover is a death-omen; these birds are called, in this connection, the whistlers.[90] The same superst.i.tion prevails in Warwicks.h.i.+re, and the sound is called the seven whistlers.

Thunder and lightning in mid-winter announce the death of the great man of the parish. This superst.i.tion is thought to be peculiar to Wales, or to the wilder and more secluded parts of North Wales.[91]

Also deemed peculiar to Wales is the Tan-wedd, a fiery apparition which falls on the lands of a freeholder who is about to die. It is described as appearing somewhat similar to falling stars, but slower of motion. 'It lighteneth all the air and ground where it pa.s.seth,'

says 'the honest Welshman, Mr. Davis, in a letter to Mr. Baxter,'

adding, 'lasteth three or four miles or more, for aught is known, because no man seeth the rising or beginning of it; and when it falls to the ground it sparkleth and lighteth all about.'[92] It also comes as a duty-performing goblin, after a death, haunting the graveyard, and calling attention to some special grave by its conduct, as in the following account: Walter Watkins, of the Neuadd, in a parish of Brecknocks.h.i.+re, was going one dark night towards Taf Fechan Chapel, not far from his house, when he saw a light near the chapel. It increased till it was as big as a church tower, and decreased again till it was as small as a star; then enlarged again and decreased as before; and this it did several times. He went to his house and fetched his father and mother to see it, and they all saw it plainly, much to their astonishment and wonder. Some time after, as a neighbour was ploughing in a field near the chapel, about where the mysterious light had been seen, the plough struck against a large flat stone.

This the ploughman raised up, after a deal of difficulty, and under it he found a stone chest, in which was the jawbone of a man, and nought else except an earthen jug. The bone was supposed to be the remains of a man who had disappeared long before, and whose wife had since married; and on her being told of it, she fell ill and died. The light, which had often been seen before by various persons, was after this seen no more. It was believed to be the spirit of the murdered man, appearing as a light.

Listening at the church-door in the dark, to hear shouted by a ghostly voice in the deserted edifice the names of those who are shortly to be buried in the adjoining churchyard, is a Hallow E'en custom in some parts of Wales. In other parts, the window serves the same purpose.

There are said to be still extant, outside some village churches, steps which were constructed in order to enable the superst.i.tious peasantry to climb to the window to listen. The principle of 'expectant attention,' so well known to physiological science, would be likely in this case to act with special force as a ghost-raiser. In an ancient MS. by Llywelyn Sion, of Llangewydd, there is mention of a frightful monster called the Fad Felen, which was seen through the key-hole of Rhos church by Maelgwn Gwynedd, who 'died in consequence.'

This monster was predicted in a poem by Taliesin, as a 'strange creature' which should come from the sea marsh, with hair and teeth and eyes like gold. The yellow fever plague, which raged in Wales during some five years in the sixth century, is the monster referred to in this legend.

The Scotch wraith and Irish fetch have their parallel in Wales in the Lledrith, or spectre of a person seen before his death; it never speaks, and vanishes if spoken to. It has been seen by miners previous to a fatal accident in the mine. The story is told of a miner who saw himself lying dead and horribly maimed in a phantom tram-car, led by a phantom horse, and surrounded by phantom miners. As he watched this dreadful group of spectres they pa.s.sed on, looking neither to the right nor the left, and faded away. The miner's dog was as frightened as its master at the sight, and ran howling into the darkness. Though deeming himself doomed, the miner continued to work in the pit; and as the days pa.s.sed on, and no harm came to him, he grew more cheerful, and was so bold as to laugh at the superst.i.tion. The day he did this, a stone fell from the roof and broke his arm. As soon as he recovered he resumed work in the pit; his death followed instantly. A stone crushed him, and he was borne maimed and dead in the tram along the road where his lledrith had appeared, 'a mile below the play of suns.h.i.+ne and wave of trees.'[93]

The Mallt y Nos, or night-fiend, is a death-omen mentioned by Rev.

D. R. Thomas in the 'Archaeologia Cambrensis'; and Croker[94] gives as the Welsh parallel of the Irish death-coach a spectre called ceffyl heb un pen, or the headless horse. The marw coel, or 'yellow spot before death,' is another death-omen which I have been able to trace no further than the pages where I find it.[95]

FOOTNOTES:

[88] 'Dewch! dewch!'

[89] 'Cymru Fu,' 299.

[90] 'Camb. Quarterly,' iv., 487.

[91] 'Arch. Camb.' 4th Se., iii., 333.

[92] Brand, 'Pop. Ant.' iii., 127.

[93] 'Tales and Sketches of Wales,' in 'Weekly Mail.'

[94] 'Fairy Legends of the South of Ireland,' 341.

[95] 'The Vale of Glamorgan.'

II.

A frightful figure among Welsh apparitions is the Gwrach y Rhibyn, whose crowning distinction is its prodigious ugliness. The feminine p.r.o.noun is generally used in speaking of this goblin, which unlike the majority of its kind, is supposed to be a female. A Welsh saying, regarding one of her s.e.x who is the reverse of lovely, is, 'Y mae mor salw a Gwrach y Rhibyn,' (She is as ugly as the Gwrach y Rhibyn.) The spectre is a hideous being with dishevelled hair, long black teeth, long, lank, withered arms, leathern wings, and a cadaverous appearance. In the stillness of night it comes and flaps its wings against the window, uttering at the same time a blood-curdling howl, and calling by name on the person who is to die, in a lengthened dying tone, as thus: 'Da-a-a-vy!' 'De-i-i-o-o-o ba-a-a-ch!' The effect of its shriek or howl is indescribably terrific, and its sight blasting to the eyes of the beholder. It is always an omen of death, though its warning cry is heard under varying circ.u.mstances; sometimes it appears in the mist on the mountain side, or at cross-roads, or by a piece of water which it splashes with its hands. The gender of apparitions is no doubt as a rule the neuter, but the Gwrach y Rhibyn defies all rules by being a female which at times sees fit to be a male. In its female character it has a trick of crying at intervals, in a most doleful tone, 'Oh! oh! fy ngwr, fy ngwr!' (my husband! my husband!) But when it chooses to be a male, this cry is changed to 'Fy ngwraig!

fy ngwraig!' (my wife! my wife!) or 'Fy mlentyn, fy mlentyn bach!' (my child, my little child!) There is a frightful story of a dissipated peasant who met this goblin on the road one night, and thought it was a living woman; he therefore made wicked and improper overtures to it, with the result of having his soul nearly frightened out of his body in the horror of discovering his mistake. As he emphatically exclaimed, 'Och, Dduw! it was the Gwrach y Rhibyn, and not a woman at all.'

III.

The Gwrach y Rhibyn recently appeared, according to an account given me by a person who claimed to have seen it, at Llandaff. Surely, no more probable site for the appearance of a spectre so ancient of lineage could be found, than that ancient cathedral city where some say was the earliest Christian fane in Great Britain, and which was certainly the seat of the earliest Christian bishopric. My narrator was a respectable-looking man of the peasant-farmer cla.s.s, whom I met in one of my walks near Cardiff, in the summer of 1878. 'It was at Llandaff,' he said to me, 'on the fourteenth of last November, when I was on a visit to an old friend, that I saw and heard the Gwrach y Rhibyn. I was sleeping in my bed, and was woke at midnight by a frightful screeching and a shaking of my window. It was a loud and clear screech, and the shaking of the window was very plain, but it seemed to go by like the wind. I was not so much frightened, sir, as you may think; excited I was--that's the word--excited; and I jumped out of bed and rushed to the window and flung it open. Then I saw the Gwrach y Rhibyn, saw her plainly, sir, a horrible old woman with long red hair and a face like chalk, and great teeth like tusks, looking back over her shoulder at me as she went through the air with a long black gown trailing along the ground below her arms, for body I could make out none. She gave another unearthly screech while I looked at her; then I heard her flapping her wings against the window of a house just below the one I was in, and she vanished from my sight. But I kept on staring into the darkness, and as I am a living man, sir, I saw her go in at the door of the Cow and Snuffers Inn, and return no more. I watched the door of the inn a long time, but she did not come out. The next day, it's the honest truth I'm telling you, they told me the man who kept the Cow and Snuffers Inn was dead--had died in the night. His name was Llewellyn, sir--you can ask any one about him, at Llandaff--he had kept the inn there for seventy years, and his family before him for three hundred years, just at that very spot. It's not these new families that the Gwrach y Rhibyn ever troubles, sir, it's the old stock.'

IV.

The close resemblance of this goblin to the Irish banshee (or bens.h.i.+) will be at once perceived. The same superst.i.tion is found among other peoples of Celtic origin. Sir Walter Scott mentions it among the highlands of Scotland.[96] It is not traced among other than Celtic peoples distinctly, but its a.s.sociation with the primeval mythology is doubtless to be found in the same direction with many other death-omens, to wit, the path of the wind-G.o.d Hermes.

The frightful ugliness of the Gwrach y Rhibyn is a consistent feature of the superst.i.tion, in both its forms; it recalls the Black Maiden who came to Caerleon and liberated Peredur:[97] 'Blacker were her face and her two hands than the blackest iron covered with pitch; and her hue was not more frightful than her form. High cheeks had she, and a face lengthened downwards, and a short nose with distended nostrils.

And one eye was of a piercing mottled gray, and the other was as black as jet, deep-sunk in her head. And her teeth were long and yellow, more yellow were they than the flower of the broom. And her stomach rose from the breast-bone, higher than her chin. And her back was in the shape of a crook, and her legs were large and bony. And her figure was very thin and spare, except her feet and legs, which were of huge size.' The Welsh word 'gwrach' means a hag or witch, and it has been fancied that there is a connection between this word and the mythical Avagddu,[98] whose wife the gwrach was.

The Gwrach y Rhibyn appears also as a river-spectre, in Glamorgans.h.i.+re.

FOOTNOTES:

[96] 'Demonology and Witchcraft,' 351.