V.
There is hardly a goblin in the world more widely known than this spectre of the forest. Her story appears in the legends of very many lands, including China. Its ancient Grecian prototype is found in the Odyssey.[82]
When it is the Diawl himself who appears in the role of the familiar spirit, his majesty is usually in some other form than that of a man, with hoofs, horns, and tail. The orthodox form of Satan has indeed been seen in many parts of Wales, but not when doing duty as a familiar spirit. A Welsh poet of the thirteenth century mentions this form:
And the horned devil,
With sharp hoofs
On his heels.[83]
He is variously called cythraul, dera, diafol, all euphemisms for devil, equivalent to our destroyer, evil one, adversary—as well as plain diawl, devil. In his character of a familiar spirit he assumes the shape of a fiery ball, a donkey, a black calf, a round bowl, a dog, a roaring flame, a bull, a goose, and numberless others, including the imp that goes into a book. In all this he bears out the character given him in old mythology, where he grows big or little at pleasure, and roars in a gale as Hermes, the wind-god, howls as a dog, enters a walnut as in the Norse Tale, or is confined in a bottle as the genie of the ‘Arabian Nights.’
To that eminent nonconformist preacher, Vavasor Powell, the devil once appeared in shape like a house. ‘Satan ... appeared several times, and in several wayes, to me: as once like a house, stood directly in my way, with which sight I fell on my face as dead.... Another time, being alone in my chamber ... I perceived a strong cold wind to blow ... it made the hair of my flesh to stand up, and caused all my bones to shake; and on the suddain, I heard one walk about me, tramping upon the chamber floor, as if it had been some heavie big man ... but it proved in the end to be no other than ... Satan.’[84]
A black calf, which haunted a Pembrokeshire brook early in the present century, was believed to be the devil in familiar guise. It appeared at a certain spot near the village of Narberth—a village which has figured actively in mythic story since the earliest ages of which there is any record. One night two peasants caught the terrible calf and took it home, locking it up safely in a stable with some other cattle, but it had vanished when morning came.
Henry Llewelyn, of Ystrad Defoc parish, Glamorganshire, was beset by the devil in the shape of a round bowl. He had been sent by his minister (Methodist) to fetch from another parish a load of religious books—Bibles, Testaments, Watts’ ‘Psalms, Hymns and Songs for Children’—and was coming home with the same, on horseback, by night, when he saw a living thing, round like a bowl, moving to and fro across the lane. The bold Llewelyn having concluded it was the devil, resolved to speak to it. ‘What seekest thou, thou foul thing?’ he demanded, adding, ‘In the name of the Lord Jesus go away!’ And to prove that it was the adversary, at these words it vanished into the ground, leaving a sulphurous smell behind.
To William Jones, a sabbath-breaker, of Risca village, the devil appeared as an enormous mastiff dog, which transformed itself into a great fire and made a roaring noise like burning gorse. And to two men at Merthyr Tydfil, in Glamorganshire, the fiend appeared in the shape of a gosling. These men were one night drinking together at the Black Lion Inn, when one dared the other to go to conjure. The challenge was accepted, and they went, but conducted their emprise with such drunken recklessness, that the devil put out the eyes of one of them, so that he was blind the rest of his days.
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