V.

Ghosts of this sort are vague and purposeless in character, beyond a general blood-curdling office which in all ghosts doth dwell. They haunt not only castles and family mansions, but bridges, rocks, and roads, objectless but frightful. The ghost of Pont Cwnca Bach, near Yscanhir, in Carmarthenshire, frightens people off the bridge into the rivulet. Many belated peasants have had this dire experience at the little bridge, afterwards wandering away in a dazed condition, and finding themselves on recovering at some distance from home, often in the middle of a bog. In crossing this bridge people were seized with 'a kind of _cold dread_,' and felt 'a peculiar sensation' which they could not describe, but which the poorest fancy can no doubt imagine. Another purposeless spectre exists in the legend of Catrin Gwyn, told in Cardiganshire. The ruin of a shepherd's cottage, standing on a mountain waste near the river Rheidol, is the haunt of this spectre. A peasant who was asked to escort a stranger up the narrow defile of rocks by the ruin, in horror exclaimed, 'Yn enw y daioni, peidiwch,' (in the name of heaven, sir, don't go!) 'or you'll meet White Catti of the Grove Cave.' 'And what's that?' 'An evil spirit, sir.' And the superstitious peasant would neither be laughed nor reasoned out of his fears. Catrin was the bride of a young shepherd living near Machynlleth in 1705. One day she went to market with a party of other peasants, who separated from her on the return way at a point two miles from Gelli Gogo. She was never more seen alive. A violent storm arose in the night, and next day a scrap of her red cloak was found on the edge of a frightful bog, in which she is believed to have disappeared in the darkness and storm. The husband went mad; their cottage fell to decay; and to this day the shepherds declare that Catti's ghost haunts the spot. It is most often seen, and in its most terrific shape, during howling storms, when it rides on the gale, shrieking as it goes.[64]

FOOTNOTE:

[64] 'Camb. Quarterly,' i., 452.