VI.

Few Cambrian spirits are devoid of a didactic purpose. Some teach reverence for the dead,--a lesson in great request among the rising generation in Wales and elsewhere. The church at Tregaron, Cardiganshire, was being rebuilt in 1877, and certain skulls were turned up by the diggers in making new foundations. The boys of Tregaron amused themselves playing ball with the skulls, picking out their teeth, banging them against the wall to see if they would break, and the like.[65] They probably never heard the story told by Mrs. Morgan of Newport to the Prophet Jones: of some people who were drinking at an inn there, 'two of them officers of excise,' when one of the men, to show his courage, declared he was afraid of no ghosts, and dared go to the charnel house and fetch a skull from that ghastly place. This bold and dangerous thing he did, and the men debated, over their beer, whether it was a male or a female skull, and concluded it was a woman's, 'though the grave nearly destroys the difference between male and female before the bones are turned to dust, and the difference then quite destroyed and known only to God.' After a jolly hour over the skull, the bold one carried it back and left it where he got it; but as he was leaving the church, suddenly a tremendous blast like a whirlwind seized him, and so mauled and hauled him that his teeth chattered in his head and his knees knocked together, and he ever after swore that nothing should tempt him to such a deed again. He was still more convinced that the ghost of the original owner of the skull had been after him, when he got home, and his wife told him that his cane, which hung in the room, had been beating against the wall in a dreadful manner.

FOOTNOTE:

[65] 'Western Mail,' Dec. 14, 1877.