Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 24, 1913.djvu/124

 1 o8 Collectanea.

Newport, as haunted by this spirit, whose kind offices were obtained by placing a bowl of milk in a particular spot on retiring to bed at night. In the morning the hearth was cleaned up, kettles polished, dishes washed, and sometimes the cows milked and the horses harnessed, in return for the bowl of milk. The Trwyn is a farm and farmstead in the parish of Mynyddyslwyn, and tales of Pwka Trwyn, or Puck of the- Trwyn, have been orally transmitted for several generations. The first place in which the Pwka appeared was Pantygassy, near Pontypool.

'•'■ Ply gain r — I have met a lady whose mother was very successful in adorning the candles for Plygain. Among the Independents and Methodists it was the custom to go on Christmas morning to the chapel at 5 a.m. to celebrate Flygai?i, (which, I have been told, means "very early in the morning"). Candles were dressed and decorated with hoops and coloured paper by the women members of the church, placed in tall brass candlesticks on the communion table, and lighted, after which a service was held. There was a friendly rivalry as to who could make the candles look best. My informant knew this service to have been held within the last fifteen years at Abercarn. A little girl writing this Christmas [1909] from the neighbourhood of Llanfair, near Welshpool, says, — " Plygain or carol singing here to-night." The letter is not dated, but sent off on Dec. 28th.

Welsh Sabbath. — In a curious book, Account of Aberystritth by Edmund Jones, printed at Trevecca in 1779, the author says, — "What progress the Reformation had made was miserably destroyed by the Book of Sports. No doubt the profane part of the people of Aberystruth received the news of these kingly and episcopal orders with pleasure. And as the sinful Israelites willingly followed the commandment of Jereboam to worship the Golden Calves, and obeyed these wicked orders to the utmost, to it they went with a witness, using all manner of sports in the church yards, bringing music there to animate them in their evil exercises, and sometimes, in some places the Parson himself was the musician. All Hell rejoiced at it, for there was a dreadful harvest of Souls prej)ared for it. Now did the Fairies frisk and dance and sing their hellish music, for the darkness of ignorance and vice in which they delighted returned again, and feasts of sin