Welsh Journals

something I have to tell you." "Yes, Child, what is it?" "When I went to bed last night I never said my prayers." "Well, say them now." And the Colonel walked on, leaving Flora kneeling among the laurels. The girls are said to have had a happy childhood, riding their ponies, sketching, arguing, and on Sunday mornings setting off through the park to Reynoldston Church in a straggling procession. Catherine always remembered how impossible it was to keep your skirt clean on Easter Sunday morning when the villagers, not content with whitewashing the Church, had whitewashed the stiles as well. Catherine tells us how the two ancient Gower customs of The Play of St George and the Mari Lwyd were observed at Stouthall when she was a child. "The village youths used to dress up as Mummers at Christmas time and go round to the neighbouring houses acting. There was one play entitled 'The Play of St George' in which there were four characters; St George; a Turkish Knight; Father Christmas (a lean figure with a long beard very different from the jolly impersonation today); and lastly the Doctor attired in a black coat and rusty top hat! St George and the Turkish Knight fight with wooden swords; the Turk falls grievously wounded; but on the Doctor applying a bottle to his nose, arises and walks away. The drama is concluded. Then there was the Horse's Head, a most ghastly apparition! It consisted of a horse's skull bedecked with gay ribbons; one lad, covered in a white sheet, forming its body, and the other leading it with an halter. How they manipulated its jaws I do not know but it snapped them in a most terrifying manner; and although we were rather afraid of it, yet its arrival was always hailed with delight." Ghost stories were I think considered to be topics more suitable for the servants' hall than for the nursery. Flora, when in later life she was asked about an old Lucas ghost, replied rather loftily "There were many ideas abroad among the villagers as to ladies with powdered hair to be seen in the Upper Park and I believe someone saw a lady in black of strange appearance once in the kitchen passage, who disappeared into the coal cupboard. There was also a wheel of fire in a tree which an old man (who climbed it to get rooks' eggs) fell from and was killed. There is a headless horseman seen sometimes on Cefn Bryn, but I was not aware before that we were possessed of anything so respectable as a family bogey." I have mentioned that Minnie Wood was a painter. In 1861 she completed her 'Book of Gower'. This is a series of paintings of Gower scenery and buildings, mainly churches, surrounded by complex illuminations in rich enamel paint. It is skilfully done in a strong romantic