As I have before remarked, there still lingers in some parts of Wales a breath of that atmosphere of fairyland and romance which, to anybody possessing imagination, gives a peculiar value to ideas and beliefs that in less inspiring surroundings would be classed as unmixed superstition by people of common sense. So that the explanation given to a certain Mr. Blair—who was partly of Highland extraction, and therefore possessed something of the Celtic temperament—of a singular little adventure that befell him in Wales, did not seem to him at all far-fetched at the time, but rather the one most appropriate, and quite characteristic of the country. Business obliged Mr. Blair to live some years in this particular Welsh valley, and often, after dinner in the summer, he would cross the river, and walk up the opposite hill to a house called Wernddhu where some friends lived, and spend the evening with them. From Wernddhu a narrow, steep road led down to the bottom of the hill, where it ended; and from this point, a grass lane led up in the direction of a farm.
In the twilight of a certain beautiful evening Mr. Blair left Wernddhu, and started to walk home. He had his dog, a spaniel, with him, and as he descended the hill and reached the place from which the grass lane diverged, he noticed his dog, who was running in front, suddenly lie down and begin to whine. And then he saw that there was another dog, a big Scotch collie, gambolling and playing round the spaniel, though where it had come from he could not imagine, as he was sure that no strange dog had followed him from Wernddhu. But as he walked up to the two animals, his own still whining and shivering, the other suddenly darted away and disappeared up the lane that led to the farm, much to the apparent relief of the spaniel, who immediately seemed to forget his fright, and became quite lively again. Blair continued his homeward way, wondering to whom the collie belonged, as he did not remember having seen it anywhere about before. But the incident, slight though it was, somehow made a decided impression on his mind, so much so, that he could not forbear mentioning it next day to his old landlady, remarking that he supposed they must have got a new dog at Nantgwyn—the farm to which the grass lane referred to eventually led. Mrs. Morgan asked him what the dog was like, and when told, she exclaimed, "Why, indeed, Mr. Blair, you must have seen the Nantgwyn Dog!" She said it was no creature of flesh and blood, but an apparition which had appeared to other people at different times. The story went that many years ago, a tramp had been found lying dead on the very spot where Blair had seen the collie, and it was always thought that the dog, when living, must have belonged to him, and with the devotion characteristic of its kind, had continued faithful, even after death.
Writing of these wraiths of dogs recalls a story told by a Welsh lady whom I will name Miss Johnson, and who was staying during the winter of 1874 with some relations at a house in the West of England. One Sunday evening about six o'clock, when Miss Johnson and the family were sitting quietly in the drawing-room, a great noise was suddenly heard exactly like hounds in full cry. It seemed as if the pack swept past the drawing-room windows, turned the corner of the house, and entered the yard behind. The kennels of the local hunt were only four miles away, and on hunting days the hounds often met or ran in the direction of the house. But to be disturbed by the cry of hounds on a Sunday evening was such an unheard-of thing that Miss Johnson and her friends were, for the moment, petrified with amazement. Almost immediately the butler came running to the room, exclaiming, "The hounds must have got loose! I hear them all in the back yard."
"But how could they get in?" asked some one; "the gates cannot be open at this hour on Sunday." The butler went off looking rather disconcerted, and not a little scared; and Miss Johnson went into the hall, where she found her collie-dog—usually a very quiet, gentle animal—barking and rushing about in a state of frenzy. She opened the front door, and the collie ran out, barking and growling savagely, made a great jump in the air as if springing at somebody or something, then suddenly sank down cowering to the ground, and crept back whimpering to his mistress's side. An exhaustive search revealed not a sign of a hound or stray dog about the place, and Miss Johnson and her relations went to bed that night feeling much puzzled by the strange incident. Next day came the news that a near relative of Miss Johnson had died suddenly the evening before at six o'clock!
Twenty-five years later, Miss Johnson had a similar experience previous to the death of another relation, on which occasion the hour of the death, and the time at which she heard the hounds cry, again tallied exactly. And while meditating on the strangeness of such a coincidence occurring twice over, Miss Johnson remembered the tales that the country people about her old home in Wales used to tell concerning the "Cŵn Teulu" (family hounds) said to haunt the woods round the house, to see or hear one of which was a sure sign of death.
Some people have a vague superstition about the ill-luck of a bird coming into a house, and consider it a sure sign of approaching death should a bird chance to dash itself against a window-pane, as sometimes happens in a gale of wind, or through the attraction of a bright light within the room.
A curious instance regarding this feeling, which occurred quite recently, shows what tremendous power such a superstition may have on certain minds, and how the mind, reacting on the body, may indeed bring fulfilment of what was regarded as a prophecy. The person concerned was a Pembrokeshire farmer, well known to the friend who gave me the story, and whose words I now quote:
"Mr. A. B. Jones, of S——, who was one of the churchwardens of the parish for forty years or thereabouts, died unexpectedly and somewhat suddenly, about three weeks ago. I went the day before yesterday to see Mrs. Jones, who told me all about it, and mentioned the following circumstances. On a cold Sunday evening last winter, just as Mr. R——, the Rector, was going to the pulpit for the sermon, a starling perched on Mr. Jones's head, and remained there: presently he put out his hand, gently grasped the bird, and putting it into his coat pocket, took it home. He turned it loose in the stable, for he felt sorry for it, and wished to give it a chance of living. Mrs. Jones said she was, as I know, not superstitious, but was it not odd?
"It seems that Mr. Jones had had for some months a presentiment that he was not long for this world; his widow showed me an entry in his diary to this effect, and told me that he had been giving his son, a lad of eighteen, all sorts of instructions not long before his death. Whether he was influenced by the starling incident or not, I cannot say."
(This account was written in September 1907, some months after Mr. Jones's death occurred.)