[76] ‘Deutsche Sagen,’ i. 103.
[77] Dennys, ‘Folk-Lore of China,’ 86.
CHAPTER V.
Familiar Spirits—The Famous Sprite of Trwyn Farm—Was it a Fairy?—The Familiar Spirits of Magicians—Sir David Llwyd’s Demon—Familiar Spirits in Female Form—The Legend of the Lady of the Wood—The Devil as a Familiar Spirit—His Disguises in this Character—Summoning and Exorcising Familiars—Jenkin the Pembrokeshire Schoolmaster—The Terrible Tailor of Glanbran.
I.
Innumerable are the Welsh stories of familiar spirits. Sometimes these are spectres of the sort whose antics we have just been observing. More often they are confessedly demons, things of evil. In numberless cases it is no less a personage than the diawl himself who makes his appearance in the guise of a familiar spirit. The familiar spirit which takes up its abode in the household is, as we have seen, a pranksome goblin. Its personal appearance—or rather its invisibility—is the saving circumstance which prevents it from being deemed a fairy. The familiar spirit which haunted the house of Job John Harry, at the Trwyn Farm, in the parish of Mynyddyslwyn, was a stone-thrower, a stroker of persons, etc., but could not be seen. It is famous in Wales under the cognomen of Pwca’r Trwyn, and is referred to in my account of the Ellylldan.[78] The tenants at present residing on the Trwyn Farm are strangers who have recently invaded the home of this ancestral spook, but I was able to glean abundant information concerning it from people thereabout. It made a home of Mr. Harry’s house some time in the last century, for a period beginning some days before Christmas, and ending with Easter Wednesday, on which day it departed. During this time it spoke, and did many remarkable things, but was always invisible. It began at first to make its presence known by knocking at the outer door in the night; but when persons went to open the door there was no one there. This continued for some time, much to the perplexity of the door-openers. At last one night it spoke to the one who opened the door, and the family were in consequence much terrified. Some of the neighbours, hearing these tales, came to watch with the family; and Thomas Evans foolishly brought a gun with him, ‘to shoot the spirit,’ as he said. But as Job John Harry was coming home that night from a journey, the familiar spirit met him in the lane and said, ‘There is a man come to your house to shoot me, but thou shalt see how I will beat him.’ So Job went on to the house, and immediately stones were thrown at the unbelieving Thomas who had brought the gun, stones from which he received severe blows. The company tried to defend him from the stones, which did strike and hurt him, and no other person; but their efforts were in vain. The result was, that Thomas Evans took his gun and ran home as fast as his legs would carry him, and never again engaged in an enterprise of that sort.
As this familiar spirit got better acquainted with its quarters, it became more talkative, and used often to speak from out of an oven by the hearth’s side. It also took to making music o’ nights with Job’s fiddle. One night as Job was going to bed, the familiar spirit gave him a gentle stroke on the toe. ‘Thou art curious in smiting,’ said Job. ‘I can smite thee where I please,’ replied the spirit. As time passed on the family became accustomed to their ghostly visitor, and seeing it never did them any harm, but on the contrary was a source of recreation to them, they used to boldly speak to it, and indulge in entertaining conversation. One old man, a neighbour, more bold than wise, hearing the spirit just by his side, but being unable to see it, threatened to stick it with his knife. ‘Thou fool,’ quoth the spirit, ‘how canst thou stick what thou canst not see with thine eyes?’ When questioned about its antecedents, the spirit said, ‘I came from Pwll y Gasseg’ (Mare’s Pit, a place in the adjacent mountain), ‘and I knew ye all before I came hither.’ The wife of Morris Roberts desired one of the family to ask the spirit who it was that killed William Reilly the Scotchman; which being done, the spirit said, ‘It was Blanch y Byd who bade thee ask that question;’ and Blanch y Byd (Worldly Blanche) was Morris Roberts’ wife ever after called. On Easter Wednesday the spirit departed, saying, ‘Dos yn iach, Job,’ (fare thee well, Job,) and Job asked the spirit, ‘Where goest thou?’ The reply was, ‘Where God pleases.’[79]
There are other accounts of this Trwyn sprite which credit it to a time long anterior to last century; but all are consistent in this, that the goblin is always invisible. The sole exception to this rule is the legend about its having once shown a white hand to some girls in the kitchen, thrusting it through the floor of its room overhead for that purpose. Now invisibility is a violation of fairy traditions, while ghosts are very often invisible—these rapping and stone-throwing ghosts, always. It might be urged that this spirit was a Bwbach, if a fairy at all, seeing that it kept pretty closely to the house; but on the whole I choose to class it among the inhabitants of the spirit-world; and really, the student of folk-lore must classify his materials distinctly in some understandable fashion, or go daft.