Welsh Journals

118 BYE-GONES. Sept., 1882. impossible to compute how much of the rich stream our country has contributed to the lyric wealth of the modern world, is due to the Celtic element within us, but the fact that the creative impulse in this direction has been so strong and so abiding in our particular branch of the Anglo-Saxon race, should be sufficient to make us pause in our endeavours to dam up any quick spring of poetry that may still be left to us. The languages sheltered from the main currents of practical civilization harbour growths of sentiment and powers of vision peculiar to themselves. They may p jrish in c jurse of time, may become dead, and perhaps forgotten tongues, and their genius with its occult influence upon our thought may perish with them. Let it once be gone, and it is gone past praying for; but until the end has come, the unique services of these forms of speech, if not the tender filial love borne to them by those of whom they are the mother tongues, should be allowed due weight in the petition for fair play in the struggle for life.—I am, Sir, yours truly, Emily Pfeiffer. May field, West-hill, Putney, S.W., Aug. 31. A monument has been placed by the Princess of Wales in Brompton Cemetery in memory of Elizabeth Jones, a native of Newcastle Emlyn, Carmarthenshire, who "for fourteen years was a faithful servant and friend of Alexandra, Princess of Wales— Life's race well run, Life's work well done, Life's crown well won, Now comes rest." The Rev. Newman Hall's Visit to Llandysilio.— The visit of one who for so long a period was the pastor of Surrey Chapel has reminded some of our elders of the visit, in 1803 or 1804, of the "original" minister of that famous place of worship. Probably there is not to be found in the parish any one who heard Rowland Hill preach on the occasion referred to, but there are several whose fathers and mothers were amongst a congregation that was estimated at three thou¬ sand, who gathered in a field near the road to hear the well-known preacher. Mr. Hill, we are told, was driving from Welshpool to Oswestry, and he stopped by the way and preached from his carriage. Mocking the Welsh.—The Athenceum, in a notice of Mr. Ashton's " Chap-Books of the 18th Century," says— " The custom of mocking the Welsh is one of those curious vagaries of the popular mind which this and similar col¬ lections _re veal. The King's Tracts in the British Museum abound in chap-books and flying sheets which seem to show that this vein of mockery attained its greatest development before and during the Civil War, when Welsh troops were defeated at Edgehill, and their local magnates espoused the Royalist side in considerable numbers. Thomas Lam¬ bert's issue, called ' The Welch-man's Life, Teath, and Periall,' and ' The Welch Man's Inventory,' both published in 1641, showed which way the vanes of popular opinion pointed. The provincial manners and poverty of the sons of St. David were the staple subject of all these satires; and it is noteworthy that the typical native of the Princi¬ pality of 1641 wears a long gown trimmed with fur, like those used in England in the fifteenth and sixteenth cen¬ turies. The custom of attaching him is older than that of abusing the Scotch. The Welsh are always made to speak a ' mountainous language' and display astounding ignorance. For instance, ' The Life and Death of Sheffery Morgan ' relates with grotesque humour how that worthy, going into a shop in Lombard-street, not to spend but to change a shilling, saw ' an old jackanapes' chained upon the counter, and took the beast for the shopkeeper's father." SEPTEMBER 6, 1882, NOTES. WITCHCRAFT IN MONMOUTHSHIRE, 1827.- Looking over a collection of newspaper scraps the other day I came across the report of a remarkable trial which took place at the assizes at Monmouth in April, 1827, which I transcribe. D.J. " William Watkins, a respectable farmer, John Prosser, a constable, Thomas Jenkins and Henry Evans, farm servants, were charged with a riot and with assaulting Mary Nicholas. '' Mr. Maule said he was truly surprised and sorry to have to lay a case of this kind before a Jury in this en¬ lightened age. The prosecutrix was a very aged female, upwards of 90 years of age, whom the prisoners had moat absurdly fancied to be a witch, and the prisoner Watkins having had several of his cattle die suddenly fancied that she had bewitched them. Under this notion the four prisoners came up to this unfortunate old woman on the road and dragged her by force to the fold-yard of the prisoner Watkins. By this a great concourse of persons was attracted, as the scene of the outrage was only one mile from Abergavenny. When they got her there they placed her behind a colt and obliged her to kneel on the ground, and take the animal's tail in her hand and repeat some form of prayer, which was to protect the cattle against her spells. This she did, and the prisoners under the stupid notion that if you draw a witch's blood she cannot hurt you, took a bough of a wild rose out of a hedge and drew this across her arm, so as to make it bleed. They then proceeded to strip the upper part of her person for the purpose of finding a supposed mark where she suckled imps, or some sort of beings of another world, and when they had cut off some of the unfortunate creature's hair they found a wart, which they said was it. Upon this they proposed to duck her ; but at the earnest en¬ treaties of her daughter they let her go. It was most fortunate for the prisoners that they did not carry out their intention of ducking, as if death had ensued they would have been every one of them most seriously answerable for that offence. '' Mr. Russell, for the defendants, said he could not deny the assault, and that he was much surprised to find that so much superstition could exist either in England or Wales. It should, however, be recollected that one of the most eminent judges that ever sat in this country (Sir Matthew flale) believed in all this absurdity as implicitly as the prisoners did. That the prisoners had acted in a firm belief that the poor woman was a witch was quite clear, as they drew her blood,which was understood to dis¬ arm the power of a witch.' They cut off her hair, because it was said that a witch's hair would not burn, and the ducking her was not for the purpose of drowning her, but because one of the tests of a witch was that she would float on the water. The prisoners had offered'every com¬ pensation in their power since they had been convinced of the delusion under which they had laboured, but that had not been acceded to by the prosecutors. " Mr. Baron Vaughan said that he thought the riot was not proved, but that beyond all question a most brutal assault had been committed. That the prisoners had acted under a delusion founded on superstition was quite clear; and he regretted that there was anyone in the kingdom, who should have been so deplorably ignorant as to have fallen into such an error. " Verdict: Guilty of assault only. '• Mr. Baron Vaughan said that from the extreme sin¬ gularity of the case, he must take time to consider of the sentence."