Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 15, 1904.djvu/220

 196 Collectanea.

On she comes so stately as you please, and drops the wrach un- beknownst, and then she doesn't turn and run ; no, she walks step by step apast them all and so out by the gate. And not one to lift foot nor hand, for they says, ' Stop you, stop you ! Look, look, look ! Sure, 'tis a ghost ! ' And so she come clean away. Ay, it made a good laugh after. That were in mother's time. I don't know do they make the wrach there now."

" PiSCON-LED," AN OlD PEMBROKESHIRE WORD.

" 1 can mind when I were a child. Uncle Day " (David, pro- nounced Dah-y) " he been down at night fishing in his coracle, and coming up the hill in the grey of the morning through the fields he gets into Lidget Snap — you knows whiche one that is — and round and round he goes in that field till he felt like one bewitched, for no such a thing could he find a way out ; piscon- led they was used to call it or pisco-led it might be— — "

" Pixie-led ? " I suggested, but she stuck to it.

" Piscon-led, I believe it was. No, there's no meaning to it as I ever heard, it were just a word.

"There's no talks of that, nor corpse-candles nor phantom funerals now. Why, when I were a girl — you knows that gate leading down to Llan-Shipping ? Well, there was a headless woman sat spinning inside that gate ! How come she there and no head to her ? Oh, I never heard nothing, only there she were. You may be sure, if we youngsters was late coming home from Narberth, when we come to pass that gate, we run ! I always did look in, all the same. But I never seen nothing. Lor', no ! I don't believe in them things. I did then, though.

" The phantom funerals ? Well, there was Evie Philips, he would have it that he seen old John Grifiith his funeral, the night afore he died, going through the village at dead of night, horse and trap and mourners and all. People, they has spirits, we knows that, but a horse — you think a horse could ? No, sure ! But anyways a trap, it don't have no spirit, so whiche way could it appear in a spirit-procession ? No, I don't hold to none of them things."

A Pembrokeshire Charm.

" Toothache is a bad thing to cure ; would you like to know a charm for it ? I can tell you one. You know Dinah was home