Welsh Folk Tales

by Peter Stevenson

  Caradoc explained his wife’s problem and the old man told them not to discuss it, she would be fine tomorrow, and he refused their offer of money. The following morning, the words flowed from Marguerite’s pen and within three weeks her book was finished. They returned to Llangurig to thank Old Gruff, who explained that someone had wished her bad, so he had bent the wish by going to the mountain to draw strength, pray and think thoughts. Marguerite wanted to know how he knew this, but Caradoc told her it would not be wise to know too much. For Gruff lived by the Unseen.

  An old farmer called Chickenheart moved to Llangurig from Hereford after his wife had died of overwork from looking after him. He lived in a red-brick farmhouse where flies poured out of the taps rather than water. Opposite was a white cottage where a bearded blacksmith lived with his widowed daughter. Chickenheart was mean-minded and the smith a gentle soul, if left undisturbed. Soon a feud grew between them.

  After an argument, Chickenheart’s cattle fell sick and dropped dead, his sheep were riddled with the fluke, injections didn’t work, the vet’s bill was running up, and his old dog Fly got run over and lost a leg. Chickenheart was convinced the smith had bewitched him, so he fetched Old Gruff, thinking he would be cheaper than a vet. Gruff walked round the house, paused in the bedroom, then gave Chickenheart a white envelope with some white powder in it, and told him to keep it by him and he would be bothered no longer by the blacksmith. Chickenheart offered a half crown, and Gruff refused it.

  A woman from Aberystwyth was churning butter when a gypsy called and asked the pretty lady to buy a smidgen from her basket. The woman ignored her and carried on turning the handle. As the gypsy walked off cursing, the churning became heavier, the butter refused to set, and her arm nearly dropped off with effort. So she caught the bus over the mountains to Llangurig to see Old Gruff, having been careful not to tell her husband who would have said it was a waste of the bus fare. Gruff asked if anyone had called asking a favour, so she told him about the gypsy. He explained that she should treat gypsies with respect, and never act rudely towards them. He gave her three small white stones to stand overnight in the dairy, and the following day her butter churned.

  A young boy called Glyn from Llangurig bled freely if he cut himself. Once, he fell into a glass frame and gashed his arm. Tourniquets were applied but the cloths were soon soaked through, so he was carried to Old Gruff. The conjurer placed his hands on the blue stone and then on the boy’s arm, went outside to the pump to wash the blood from his hands, and when he returned, the bleeding had stopped and there was colour in Glyn’s cheeks.

  One winter Old Gruff fell and broke his leg. The doctor told him he would never be able to ride his pony up the mountain again. Gruff said, ‘Then it is time to die.’ Marguerite and Caradoc visited him and she asked about the blue stone. ‘Y Garreg Ddedwydd’ (‘The Blessing Stone’ ), he called it. It had been in his family for hundreds of years. It had come from Palestine and had been cut in two, but he didn’t know where the other half was. As they were about to drive away, Old Gruff strode up his garden path, gave Marguerite the blue stone, stood by his white wooden gate, and waved them off. They never saw him again.

  His funeral procession was a mile long. They came by trap, by car, on bikes, on foot, a farm wagon carried all the flowers, and he was buried in Llangurig churchyard in the grave of a giant.

  Not long after, a young poet visited Caradoc and Marguerite in Aberystwyth. Marguerite told him the story of the stone and invited him to make a wish. Years later she asked him if his wish had come true. ‘Not likely,’ he said. ‘I asked for fame, success, money.’ His name was Dylan Thomas.

  6

  HAGS, HARES AND DOLLS

  Witchery

  The last woman to be legally executed as a witch in Wales was Margaret ferch Richard in 1655. By 1736 the laws against witchcraft were repealed, cursing and charming were commonplace, and every town and village had a gwiddanes.

  There was Dolly Llewellyn, the Queen of the Pembrokeshire witches; Old Moll from Gower, who left misfortune wherever she went; Ala, the Romani witch of Llanrug, left poisoned apples for unsuspecting children; the Old Hag of the Black Mountain chased little girls while croaking as a black crow; Beti Grwca from Ceinewydd was famed for love potions and mischief; Poor Hannah from Llandudno was burned alive in a cave on the Great Orme; Betty Foggy once stopped a ship being launched in Pembroke Dock; Kate the Flanders witch lived in a Flemish farmhouse in Southerndown and turned herself into a hare to torment the local huntsmen who trampled the flowers in her garden; Mari Berllan Pitter from Pennant could stop horses with a whisper, made a waterwheel turn backwards, and could curse anyone except the local poet; Creaky Wheel of Llanbadarn Fawr stole potatoes in the middle of the night and if anyone complained, she threatened to break their heads with a sickle and have her daughter put the evil eye on them.

  The Llanddona Witches

  One stormy night an open boat came ashore in Red Wharf Bay, with a cargo of ragged men and women. The locals thought they were from Scandinavia, or Ireland, or had escaped from a sinking Spanish ship. They had no rudder or oars, which suggested they were criminals set adrift to drown as punishment. So the locals tried to push the boat back out to sea, but they were forced back by a spring of fresh drinking water that gushed like a fountain out of the sand. In the face of this, the strangers were allowed to make a home for themselves on the commons at the edge of the village.

  The menfolk earned their living from smuggling. They had a trick of removing their red neckties and releasing black flies into the eyes of prying customs officers, so preventing them seeing the rum and brandy that passed by in front of their very noses.

  The womenfolk were small with red hair. Siani Bwt was forty-four inches high and had two thumbs on her left hand. She rented a room in Caernarfon once a week, where she told fortunes. People flocked from all over to see her, so she draped old clothes across the room to keep her consultations private from the waiting crowds.

  Big Bela, Lisi Blac and Elen Dal lived by begging, and if anyone refused to give them milk or potatoes, they cast spells, uttered curses, and helped themselves to whatever they wanted. Elen once asked a farmer’s wife from Beaumaris for some butter and when the woman refused, her three cows sat on their haunches like begging dogs, gazing benignly and chewing slowly. Nothing would move them. Watching them was an old gnarled hare.

  One of the Llanddona witches went to the market at Llangefni with her daughter. She placed a bid on a plump pig, and no one dared bid against her, save for one wealthy farmer. At the height of the bidding, he felt a hand in his back pocket and turned round to find the daughter. He knocked her to the ground and she lay there crying. He doubled his bid, bought the pig, and as the old woman helped her daughter to her feet, she cursed the hand that struck her helpless girl. Come winter, the pig died of a fever and the farmer’s hand withered and hung lifeless by his side.

  Here is one of the Tribe’s spells, which was chanted at Y Ffynnon Oer for a man who had offended them. It cursed the man to break a bone when he crossed a stile, and not just any old bone, but his neck bone:

  Crwydro y byddo am oesodd lawer,

  Ac yn mhob cam, camfa,

  Yn mhob camfa, codwm,

  Yn mhob codwm, tori asgwrm

  Nid yr asgwrm mwyaf na’r lleiaf,

  Ond asgwrn chwil corn ei wddw bob tro.

  Two of the Llanddona Tribe were known as Chwiorydd y Diafol, the Devil Sisters, who took their pleasure in cursing cattle, giving children nightmares, and casting spells on fishermen. They once went begging to a farm, but were turned away empty-handed and the sheepdog was set on them. As they walked away giggling, the barn burned to the ground and the dog dropped down dead.

  At Pentraeth market they asked a flower-girl for a few coppers in exchange for telling her fortune. The girl refused, saying she had no money to spare. One of the sisters reached out a hand and touched the girl’s flowers to make them wilt. But they didn’t, for the girl was the youngest
of seven sisters and the Chwiorydd had no power over her.

  Goronwy Tudor had a birthmark above his breast which protected him from the Llanddona girls. Taking no chances, he nailed horseshoes above his door, placed rowan by the doorpost, grew Mary’s Turnip in his garden, and sprinkled earth from the churchyard in every room. Nonetheless, his dairy became afflicted, the milk dried up, the cows gave blood, and he saw a hare suckling at their udders. Goronwy shot at the hare with a silver coin and it ran away screaming. He followed a trail of blood over the hill to a cottage, where he found Big Bela with a wound in her leg. She cursed him, so he collected some witch’s butter from decayed trees, moulded it into Bela’s shape, and stuck it with pins. Every pin caused her to scream with pain and blood to flow. So it was, until she released Goronwy from the curse.

  Dark Anna’s Doll

  Old Liza lived in a ramshackle hut near Llanfairfechan, where she kept herself alive by begging for bread, milking the wild goats, and borrowing a turnip or a cabbage from a farmer’s field. One morning she awoke to find a basket on her doorstep. She looked inside and found a baby girl, presumably left by the travellers. She carried the little orphan inside, named her Anna, and raised her as her own daughter. As Anna grew, she learned to love the kindness of her foster mother, though many saw old Liza as a fearsome old hag with a sharp tongue.

  One day, Liza asked the farmer at Carreg Fawr for a little food in exchange for some lucky white pebbles she had collected from the stream. The ungrateful man set one of his hunting dogs on her. Anna screamed, Liza jammed her foot between the dog’s bared teeth, wrapped her shawl around the girl to protect her, and kicked the dog off. They ran for their lives, with the dog gnawing at their ankles. When they reached home, Liza held her daughter, stroked her hair and dried her tears. She made a comforting bowl of soup with a couple of potatoes she had ‘borrowed’ from the farmer’s vegetable patch, and sang lullabies until Anna drifted off to sleep.

  That night, Liza found herself in a dark place. She scooped up some clay from the stagnant pool and mixed it with a little moss from the graveyard. By the light of a rush candle, she moulded it into the shape of the farmer, clothed it in bloodied fox fur and stuck two ivy berries on its face for eyes. With moonlight pouring through the window, she heated the figure on a griddle over the fire, muttered a spell, mixed in a little blood from the dog bites on her leg, took her hatpin and pierced the doll through the heart. At Carreg Fawr, the farmer stopped stroking his dog, wiped his forehead, scratched his chest, and carried on hunting. For Liza meant no harm to any living soul, so the spell could not work.

  Come autumn, Liza passed over to the Otherworld, and young Anna was orphaned again. Neighbours brought her bread and milk and gave her paid work, sewing and darning, but at night she was alone with her thoughts. With each passing evening, her thoughts darkened, until they were black as peat. Anna remembered how cruelly the farmer at Carreg Fawr had treated them. By the light of the rush candle, she took hold of Liza’s clay doll, pierced it with the hatpin, muttered a curse, and threw it into the fire. At Carreg Fawr, the farmer choked, clutched his chest, dropped his lantern and set fire to the hay in his barn. Next morning the neighbours found only a smouldering blackened skeleton.

  No one suspected Anna. Why would they? She lived her life as a beggar girl, unseen and unloved, never betraying her emotions to anyone. She carved pegs from elder, carried them round in a wicker basket and sold them for a penny. In six months the elder softened and the pegs broke, so her customers bought more. She wrapped some of the pegs in scraps of cloth torn from her old frocks, cut a notch at the top which she filled with fox fur, drew eyes and a mouth with her sharpened fingernail dipped in blood, and sold them as peg dolls. It was never wise to refuse to pay her or send her away without food, for Dark Anna knew how to fashion a poppet.

  ‘Voodoo dolls’, or poppets, were quite common in Wales. In the Brecon Beacons, Farmer Trickitt turned an old woman and her son from his door. Back in her cave, she made a doll from the body of a burned rat, feet and limbs of a toad, white quartz from the cliff for bones, weeds for sinews, mountain herbs mixed with salt-water worms, pine gum, the heart of a black cockerel, clay from the river bed, water collected from a waterfall by moonlight and ivy berries for eyes. She breathed on it, passed it through the night air, heated it in the fire, doused it in the stream, and in his stone house across the valley, Old Trickitt dropped down dead as a doornail.

  Hunting the Hare

  Siaci lived with his old Nan at Ffrith Isaf, a lime-washed cottage on the hillside at Llanfrothen. He had three jobs: he ran errands for the vicar in Penrhyndeudraeth, caught crows for the landlord of the Oakeley Arms, and was employed as a beater by the squire of the local hunt. He knew the land like the veins and blotches on the back of his Nan’s hand, and never failed to raise a hare from a thicket. But there was one hare the huntsmen could never catch; one of those old gnarled hares that can outstare a greyhound, and weave through the old thorn hedges like dog rose and honeysuckle, unscratched by blackthorn and bramble.

  The squire wanted this hare dead, but the vicar warned him it was enchanted and could only be caught by a jet-black hound without a single white hair on its body. The squire found such a dog in Powys, and after the owner haggled a high price, it was brought to Llanfrothen.

  On the day of the hunt, Siaci was beating the bracken when the old hare broke cover, shrieked manically, and ran along the line of the old thorn hedge like dog rose and honeysuckle. The black dog was on its tail, red tongue lolling, unscratched by blackthorn and bramble, and it was gaining on the hare. Through woods, over hills, along streams, the men shouting, ‘Hei, ci du!’, ‘Hey, black dog!’

  Then the air was filled with a shriek as the dog’s teeth sank into the back leg of the hare. Siaci shouted, ‘Hei, Nan!’ The dog’s fur stood on end and it released its grip. The hare wrenched its leg free with a tearing of sinew and skin, and ran towards Ffrith Isaf with Siaci by its side. It leapt through the rhagddor and disappeared.

  The men followed and the squire kicked open the door. The room was sepia and ochre, the air aromatic with spices, dried lavender hanging in bundles from the rafters, smoky bottles on sagging shelves around the walls, and a bubbling cast-iron cauldron hanging from a pot-hook over the open fire. An old woman, wrinkled as a raisin, sat in a stick chair while Siaci wrapped a bandage round her foot. Next to him was a bowl of red water. The hare was nowhere to be seen. Siaci’s Nan blew the squire a kiss. ‘My, what a moustache,’ she said, ‘Come on, cwtch up to old Nan,’ and she patted the seat of her chair, puckered up her lips, and a thousand lines pointed towards the black hole of her mouth where a solitary yellow tooth wobbled in the breeze from her breath.

  In the face of this wrinkled old woman, the fearless huntsmen of Llanfrothen ran for their lives, out the door, and over the hill. Before the squire could follow, the door slammed shut. ‘I demand you open this door, madam, and let me out. Oh …’

  He emerged an hour later without his trousers, holding a primrose and smelling of lavender. His hair had turned snow white. He never, never went hunting again, and never spoke of what happened that day.

  And Old Nan? Well, she taught Siaci how to write charms and invoke demons, and he became even more famous than the crafty conjurer of Criccieth. And who knows where she is now?

  The Witch of Death

  In 1574, ninety-two-year-old Siôn Gruffydd from Llandaff was lying in bed waiting for death. That night, a black shape appeared at the window, a figure with red eyes, a dark green face and black flapping wings. Siôn knew this was the gwrach-y-rhibyn – the death witch had come for him.

  He closed his eyes and opened his arms to embrace her, when the room lightened. He peeped out of one eye to find she had vanished. He leapt out of bed, looked out of the window, and saw her land on the ground, fold her wings and enter the inn next door. The following morning Siôn felt better, so he rose from his deathbed and walked over to the inn for a beer, only to find that Tomos the innkeeper
had died that night.

  Stories of the gwrach-y-rhibyn are quite common in Wales. One lived in the Caerphilly swamp in the late 1700s. She had long black hair, talons for fingers and bat’s wings. After the swamp flooded she moved into the town, wailing like a banshee and wringing her hands. The boys tried to catch her, but she flapped her wings, flew towards the castle and hid within its walls, where she still is, for all I know.

  Another gwrach lived at St Donat’s Castle in the early 1800s, where she flapped her leathern wings on the window and scratched her talons down the glass. She drifted through the village, roaring into the wind with arms outstretched, accompanied by black hounds with red eyes and fangs, bemoaning the death of the last of the Stradling family who had been killed in a duel in Montpelier. The castle is now the venue for Beyond the Border International Storytelling Festival.

  A black lady lived in Tiger Bay where she beckoned to young sailors in the docks, back in the days when Cardiff was insignificant. She once asked a skipper for a ride in his boat, saying he would be handsomely rewarded. As he rowed out into the bay, the boat became heavier and heavier. She asked him to land, took him by the hand, and led him away from the Taff and through the woods. She brushed back her long black hair, smoothed out her dress, and he was eagerly anticipating his reward when she pointed at a stone, and vanished. He lifted it up to find gold. He used his money to become a dockside property developer, and never revealed his secret wealth until he was on his deathbed.