Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 15, 1904.djvu/91

 Collectanea. 75

Wizardry on the Welsh Border.

{Read at Meeting, \ 1th February, 1904-)

[The following article, by a young lady who is still at school, is inserted in all its fulness of picturesque detail partly on account of the admirable object lesson it affords in the collection of folklore. Boys and girls have a great advantage in this work in the ease with which they can vanquish the barriers of racial or class prejudice, which are after all the main difficulties to be overcome. Miss Wherry has given fictitious names to her informants, but the genuineness of her narratives must be self-evident to any one who knows the garrulous dramatic visionary folk of the Welsh Marches. Readers will not fail also to note the close correspondence of the relative positions of witch and wise man in Monmouthshire with those of the witch and witch-doctor in Central Africa, as described in the preceding paper.— Ed.]

While staying at 'a farmhouse in Monmouthshire this summer, I tried to collect some stories about the wise men, ghosts, and superstitions of the place. I was indebted to our landlady, Mrs. Briton, for many of them, but she referred me to an old Mrs. Pryce, who, she said, could tell me more stories than anyone.

I first made the acquaintance of Mrs. Pryce in the stable-yard wishing to sell a " fine oak table." She was a weird-looking figure in her heavy cloak and cottage bonnet, but the most striking feature about her was the curious penetrating brightness of her eyes. Next day we all trooped down to see the table in her cottage at Trel- leck. She was more witch-like than ever ; so much so that I looked around for the black cat, which, however, was not forthcoming ; she gave long histories of the usual six children whom she had buried, also of her quarrels with her landlord. She also wished to sell some chairs, for she said, " I've no need of chairs, being all alone, and I have the bench I used to kill pigs upon, 'twill not be used for that agen, so I may so well sit on it so long as I do hve."

Two or three days afterwards she came up for the money for her table. Drawing me mysteriously out of the room she whispered on the stairs, " They're after me for the rent." She got her money and was then prevailed upon to " take a drop o' cider." I then