One of the most beautiful legends in the Iolo Manuscripts is the story of one of these death portents. There was a lord rich in houses and land and gold. Every luxury of life was his for the asking. One night he heard a voice cry out distinctly three times, “The greatest and richest man of this parish shall perish to-night.” He was aware that there was no other man so great or rich as he, and he sent for the physician and prepared to die. But the night passed and day came and he still lived. At sunrise he heard the bell tolling and knew that some one must have died, and he sent to enquire who it was. It was an old blind beggar who had asked for charity at the lord’s gate and been refused. Then this great lord saw that the voice had come as a warning to him, that his riches were as nothing in comparison with the treasure and wealth which the blind man had in the kingdom of heaven. He accepted the warning and relieved all who were poor or in need. When he died, angels were heard to sing him a welcome, and after his death he was buried, as he had asked to be, in the blind beggar’s grave.
Of hags and witches there used to be far too many in Wales. Shakespeare tells all one needs to know of them. For some reasons, hidden to us, he had peculiarly intimate and extensive information concerning Celtic folk-lore. Macbeth, speaking of witches, says, “I have learned by the perfectest report, they have more in them than mortal knowledge. When I burned in desire to question them further, they made themselves air, into which they vanished.” These witches did not hesitate to throw even portions of human beings into seething cauldrons:—
“Round about the cauldron go;
In the poisoned entrails throw.”
They threw in other things, too, as the third witch tells us,—
“Scale of dragon, tooth of wolf,
Witches’ mummy, maw and gulf
Of the ravin’d salt-sea shark,
Root of hemlock digged i’ the dark,
Liver of blaspheming Jew,