Welsh Journals

"S'Nellie's Welsh Fairy Tales." By Eleanor Boniface, Author of Some People of Hogg's Hollow." THE OLD CONJURER. A MAN could be a dewin, too, only he was called a Conjurer mostly. Look at that old blew sea out there, with its face all crinkled into puffs and crosses by the little winds blowing over it! Hundreds of little winds there are on the sea. Long, long ago, there was an old man living in a pretty little cottage near to the sea at Port Madoc. Old man he was, with white hair, and the cottage was nice iawn, and outside it was done with pink whitewash and blue slates, and the garden paths had borders of lovely sea shells to keep the flowers back from the paths, for the flowers were growing beautiful all over the place. Inside it was all as comfortable as a cabin, and all the furniture was sol-id mahogany. The old man had been a sailor, and he had his compass and his sexton and a lots of ship's things by him still. He seemed to have plenty of money, and thought nothing of spending golden guineas at the market at Port Madoc, and people were wondering where he got all his gold from, and were saying" Duwch, but this man he must have been a pirate, and he is still living on his murders! But at sunset, or when it was getting a bit dark-like, sailors would be seen going deceitful and quiet to that cottage, one at a time, very lonely and mysterious, and pretending not to be going there at all. They would be there for 'bout p'raps half an hour, and then would be coming away quick and happy. And what was that old man doing with them sailors? Whv! he was selling them fair winds! A good little breeze going the way they wanted it to. Friends he was with the Prince of the Powers of the Air and making mock of Yr Arglwydd, and snapping his fingers! He had sold his soul to the Diawl to be able to do such things, for he did do them, and the sailors were paying handsome. And then one day a young sailor that he didn't like, who he was having grudge against, came, and he pretended to sell him a fair wind, but instead he managed to make it a bad one, and the ship was wrecked, and the young sailor was drownded in the sea. Well, one evening soon after, there was an awful sunset over Port Madoc, the sky was black and red, red as blood it was, and there were clouds flying across the sea looking like long black manes of hair, and the winds began to go howling and screaming, and the people of Port Madoc all went crowding to the Church, and began praying Lord have mercy upon us," but a most tremendous storm came on, and the sea came in all over the land roaring mountains high, and round the old man's cottage all the winds of the 'orld seemed thundering and shriek- nig at once, and some people said they heard a loud voice calling-" I have come for my own to take my own," and then night came, and the storms dropped, and there was silence. Next morning the people were going and looking for the old man's cottage, but there was no cottage there, nothing! nothing! nothing at all, only a little sandhill with grass growing, and where the garden and lovely flowers had been, sand again, with just a few dead old star fish tossed about. UNCLE AND AUNT. A visit to S'Nellie's home I did not care about. All seemed so hard and bleak there; the very light was different, it shone coldly upon a high bare looking farm house situated upon rising ground, with hardly a tree for miles, while even the hedges had a scraped appearance, as if the grasping, niggardly mistress who ruled all, had scratched with angry claws a miser's harvest out of them. S'Nellie's father, Edward Edwards, had married a second time in haste, and continued to repent at leisure. A tall fair shy man-whose very soul was evidently not his own-he roamed about the land and was never found indoors during the day time. Mrs. Edwards, with her long, fat face and tiny eyes, reminded me of an angry pig, and I was never happy in her presence. S'Nellie was ill at ease also, and when after a very poor tea the time came to leave, she would joyfully grasp the um-ber-ella and set forth, murmuring under her breath-" This day is past and over, and thanks, oh Lord, to Thee." A very different thing was a tea party at Uncle and Ant's," who lived in a tiny house in a lane just off the village street. 44 Goine there," as S'Nellie said, well, it is like milk and honey in the throat, and all is peace and plenty, love and happiness." There was a tiny square full of St. John's Wort, with a tiny path leading to the door, over which was inscribed the notice, "Robert Ed- wards, Crydd (shoemaker). Uncle Robart was lame, with a twisted foot, and earned his living by making shoes. He sat in the dim shop behind a counter piled high with large pieces of roughly tanned leather and half made boots and shoes, and with the same things hanging from the ceiling over his head and blocking out nearly all the light that tried to enter through the queer little window. He had an aureole of red hair growing all round his head and face, and a pair of piercing blue eyes that gleamed out from behind steel- rimmed spectacles. At meal times he would drop from his stool and hobble painfully into the room at the back, where reigned in spotless orderliness Ant Jane," his sister.