A couple of workmen engaged at Foelas, the seat of the late Squire Griffiths, thought they would steal a few apples from the orchard for their children, and for this purpose one evening, just before leaving off work, they climbed up a tree, but happening to look down, whom should they see but the Squire, wearing his three-cornered hat, and dressed in the clothes he used to wear when alive, and he was leaning against the trunk of the tree on which they were perched. In great fright they dropped to the ground and took to their heels. They ran without stopping
to Bryn Coch, but there, to their horror, stood the Squire in the middle of the road quietly leaning on his staff. They again avoided him and ran home every step, without looking behind them. The orchard robbers never again saw their late master, nor did they ever again attempt to rob the orchard.
David Salisbury’s Ghost.
I will quote from Bye-Gones, vol. iii., p. 211, an account of this Spirit.
“There was an old Welsh tradition in vogue some fifty years ago, that one David Salisbury, son of Harri Goch of Llanrhaiadr, near Denbigh, and grandson to Thomas Salisbury hên of Lleweni, had given considerable trouble to the living, long after his remains had been laid in the grave. A good old soul, Mr. Griffiths of Llandegla, averred that he had seen his ghost, mounted upon a white horse, galloping over hedges and ditches in the dead of night, and had heard his ‘terrible groans,’ which, he concluded, proceeded from the weight of sin troubling the unhappy soul, which had to undergo these untimely and unpleasant antics. An old Welsh ballad entitled ‘Ysbryd Dafydd Salbri,’ professed to give the true account of the individual in question, but the careful search of many years has failed me in securing a copy of that horrible song.
GORONWY IFAN.”
This Spirit fared better than most of his compeers, for they, poor things, were, according to the popular voice, often doomed to ride headless horses, which madly galloped, the livelong night, hither and thither, where they would, to the great terror of the midnight traveller who might meet this mad unmanageable creature, and also, as it would seem, to the additional discomfort of the unfortunate rider.
It is, or was believed in Gyffylliog parish, which is in the recesses of the Denbighshire mountains, four or five miles to the west of Ruthin, that the horses ridden by Spirits and goblins were real horses, and it was there said when horses were found in their stables at dawn in a state of perspiration that they had been taken out in the night and ridden by Spirits about the country, and hence their jaded condition in the morning.
It was also thought that the horses found in the morning in their pasture ground with tangled manes and tails, and bodies covered with mud, had been during the night used by Spirits, who rushed them through mire and brier, and that consequently they presented the appearance of animals who had followed the hounds in a long chase through a stiff country.
There is a strong family likeness between all Ghost stories, and a lack of originality in their construction, but this suggests a common source from which the majority of these fictions are derived.
I now come to another phase of Spirit Folk-Lore, which has already been alluded to, viz., the visits of Ghosts for the purpose of revealing hidden treasures. The following tale, which I took down from the mouth of John Rowland, at one time the tenant of Plas-yn-llan, Efenechtyd, is an instance of this kind of story.