In the church of St. David’s of Llanfaes, according to Giraldus, was preserved among the relics a stone which caught a thieving boy in the act of robbing a pigeon’s nest, and held him fast for three days and nights. Only by assiduous and long-continued prayer were the unhappy boy’s parents able to get him loose from the terrible stone, and the marks of his five fingers remained ever after impressed upon it, so that all might see them. There was a stone of similar proclivities in the valley of Mowddwy, which did good service for the church. A certain St. Tydecho, a relation of King Arthur, who slept on a blue rock in this valley, was persecuted by Maelgwn Gwynedd. One day this wicked knight came with a pack of white dogs to hunt in that neighbourhood, and sat down upon the saint’s blue stone. When he endeavoured to get up he found himself fastened to his seat so that he could not stir, in a manner absurdly suggestive of French farces; and he was obliged to make up matters with the saint. He ceased to persecute the good man, and to make amends for the past gave him the privilege of sanctuary for a hundred ages.[176]
FOOTNOTE:
[176] ‘Celtic Remains,’ 420. (Printed for the Cambrian Arch. Soc., London, 1878.)
V.
As for Stones of Healing, with qualities resembling those abiding in certain wells, they appear in many shapes. Now it is a maenhir, against which the afflicted peasant must rub himself; now it is a pebble which he must carry in his pocket. The inevitable wart reappears in this connection; the stone which cures the wart is found by the roadside, wrapped in a bit of paper, and dropped on a cross-road; to him who picks it up the wart is transferred. Children in Pembrokeshire will not at the present day pick up a small parcel on a cross-road, suspecting the presence of the wart-bearing stone. In Carmarthen are still to be found traces of a belief in the Alluring Stone, whose virtue is that it will cure hydrophobia. It is represented as a soft white stone, about the size of a man’s head, originally found on a farm called Dysgwylfa, about twelve miles from Carmarthen town. Grains were scraped from the stone with a knife, and administered to the person who had been bitten by a rabid dog; and a peculiarity of the stone was that though generation after generation had scraped it, nevertheless it did not diminish in size. A woman who ate of this miraculous stone, after having been bitten by a suspicious cur, testified that it caused ‘a boiling in her blood.’ The stone was said to have fallen from the sky in the first instance.
VI.
Stones standing at cross-roads are seldom without some superstitious legend. A peasant pointed out to me, on a mountain-top near Crumlyn, Monmouthshire, a cross-roads stone, beneath which, he asserted, a witch sleeps by day, coming forth at night. ‘Least they was say so,’ he explained, with a nervous look about him, ‘but there you! I was never see anything, an’ I was pass by there many nights—yes, indeed, often.’ The man’s eagerness to testify against the truth of the tradition was one of the most impressive illustrations possible of lingering superstitious awe in this connection.
A famous Welsh witch, who used to sleep under a stone at Llanberis, in North Wales, was called Canrig Bwt, and her favourite dish at dinner was children’s brains. A certain criminal who had received a death-sentence was given the alternative of attacking this frightful creature, his life to be spared should he succeed in destroying her. Arming himself with a sharp sword, the doomed man got upon the stone and called on Canrig to come out. ‘Wait till I have finished eating the brains in this sweet little skull,’ was her horrible answer. However, forth she came presently, when the valiant man cut off her head at a blow. To this day they scare children thereabout with the name of Canrig Bwt.
VII.
In every part of Wales one encounters the ancient memorials of King Arthur—sometimes to be dimly connected with the historical character, but more often with the mythical figure—each with its legend, or its bundle of legends, poetic, patriotic, or superstitious. Arthur’s Round Table at Caerleon, Monmouthshire, is as well known to every boy in the neighbourhood as any inn or shop of the village. It is a grass-grown Roman amphitheatre, whence alabaster statues of Adrian’s day have been disinterred. There is also an Arthur’s Round Table in Denbighshire, a flat-topped hill thus called, and in Anglesea another, near the village of Llanfihangel. Arthur’s Seat, Arthur’s Bed, Arthur’s Castle, Arthur’s Stone, Arthur’s Hill, Arthur’s Quoit, Arthur’s Board, Arthur’s Carn, Arthur’s Pot—these are but a few of the well-known cromlechs, rocking-stones, or natural objects to be found in various neighbourhoods. They are often in duplicates, under these names, but they never bear such titles by other authority than traditions reaching back into the dark ages. Some of the stories and superstitions which attach to them are striking, and of the most fascinating interest to the student of folk-lore; others are merely grotesque, as in the case of Arthur’s Pot. This is under a cromlech at Dolwillim, on the banks of the Tawe, and in the stream itself when the water is high; it is a circular hole of considerable depth, accurately bored in the stone by the action of the water. This hole is called Arthur’s Pot, and according to local belief was made by Merlin for the hero king to cook his dinner in. Arthur’s Quoits are found in many parts of the country. A large rock in the bed of the Sawdde river, on the Llangadock side of Mynydd Du, (the Black Mountain,) is one of these quoits. The story is that the king one day flung it from the summit of Pen Arthur, a mile away. There is another large rock beside it, which was similarly flung down by a lady of Arthur’s acquaintance, whose gigantic proportions may be guessed from the fact that this boulder was a pebble in her shoe, which annoyed her.