Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 21, 1910.djvu/148

120 Stories of the Wild Huntsman and his hell-hounds, eerie and ghostly to the last degree, come from every part of Wales in numbers sufficient to give a name to a whole chapter (pp. 47-54). Sometimes a stray hound would haunt a house where death was imminent, or the whole pack would hunt through a house from room to room, until they got on the scent of the doomed man, who fled in terror with the Cwn Annwn, the hounds of the Under-world, at his heels (p. 48).

The Ceffyl-dwr, or water-horse, does not seem to be a "death-token." He is in fact the Scottish Kelpie. He comes out of seas, lakes, or rivers, allows himself to be mounted or harnessed, then throws his rider or breaks away from the plough, plunges into the sea, or vanishes into the air. He is described as "luminous and fascinating" in South Wales, as dark, fiery-eyed, and forbidding in the North. Sometimes he is winged like Pegasus, sometimes his hoofs are turned backwards. In North Wales, where the myths seem to be, like the scenery, altogether more wild and gloomy than in the south, he can transform himself into other shapes, a goat, a satyr, a monster, leaping upon harmless passers-by, crushing and injuring them in his horrid grip.

The Gwrach-y-rhibyn is a gruesome night-hag with talons and bat-like wings, who rises up out of swamps or river-creeks and haunts old ruined castles,—Caerphilly, St. Donat's, and others. She is a sort of Banshee, an ancestral spectre, haunting old families, heralding death, or mourning over change of ownership. She is generally seen flapping her wings, wailing and sobbing, but sometimes she is spoken of as a kind of Fury, capable of maltreating anyone who offends her, attacking them with beak and talons as an eagle might (pp. 65-69). Numerous legends are told of "weird ladies," (what is the Welsh appellation thus translated does not appear), who haunt lonely spots,—wells, fields, ruins. Sometimes a ghost tradition attaches to them. Generally they guard hidden treasures; often they are bespelled, and can only be disenchanted by the firm grip of a man, as Tamlane was by that of Fair Janet. Often they give flowers or berries to friendly passers-by, which turn to gold in the recipients' pockets; sometimes they point out the whereabouts of hoards of gold. The