I.

The majority of stories of this class turn on the subject of hidden treasures. The popular belief is that if a person die while any hoarded money--or indeed metal of any kind, were it nothing more than old iron--is still hidden secretly, the spirit of that person cannot rest. Its perturbation can only be relieved by finding a human hand to take the hidden metal, and throw it down the stream of a river. To throw it up the stream, will not do. The Ogmore is the favourite river for this purpose in lower Glamorganshire. The spirit selects a

## particular person as the subject of its attentions, and haunts that

person till asked what it wants, when it prefers its request. Some say it is only ill-gotten treasure which creates this disturbance of the grave's repose. A tailor's wife at Llantwit Major, who had been a stout and jolly dame, was thus haunted until she was worn to the semblance of a skeleton, 'for not choosing to take a hoard honestly to the Ogmore.' But flesh and blood could not resist for ever, and so--this is her story: 'I at last consented, for the sake of quiet, to take the treasure to the river; and the spirit wafted me through the air so high that I saw below me the church loft, and all the houses, as if I leaned out of a balloon. When I took the treasure to throw it into the river, in my flurry I flung it up stream instead of down: and on this the spirit, with a savage look, tossed me into a whirlwind, and however I got back to my home I know not.' The bell-ringers found her lying insensible in the church lane, as they were going home from church late in the evening.