IV.

So prevalent are superstitions of this class even in the present day that cases get into the newspapers now and then. The 'Herald Cymraeg' of September 25, 1874, gave an account of some excavations made at Pant-y-Saer cromlech, Anglesea, by the instigation of John Jones of Llandudno, 'a brother of Isaac Jones, the present tenant of Pant-y-Saer,' at the time on a visit to the latter. The immediately exciting cause of the digging was a dream in which the dreamer was told that there was a pot of treasure buried within the cromlech's precincts. The result was the revelation of a large number of human bones, among them five lower jaws with the teeth sound; but no crochan aur (pitcher of gold) turned up, and the digging was abandoned in disgust. Is it credible that between this account and the following yawns the gulf of seven hundred years? Thus Giraldus: In the province of Kemeys, one of the seven cantrefs of Pembrokeshire, 'during the reign of King Henry I., a rich man who had a residence on the northern side of the Preseleu mountains was warned for three successive nights by dreams that if he put his hand under a stone which hung over the spring of a neighbouring well called the Fountain of St. Bernacus, he should find there a golden chain; obeying the admonition, on the third day he received from a viper a deadly wound in his finger; but as it appears that many treasures have been discovered through dreams, it seems to me probable that some ought and some ought not to be believed.'[185]

FOOTNOTE:

[185] Sir R. C. Hoare's Giraldus, 'Itin. Camb.' ii., 37.