ELAN LAKES WILD SOUTH WALES 



had hitherto been, and subsided into a mere local road 

 for the thin line of scattered homesteads on its trail, 

 east of the Steddfa pass. A dozen years ago it had 

 still here and there a gate across it ! Motors, however, 

 have changed all that, though they have spoiled the 

 road bed. Otherwise they have done nothing more 

 than raise dust and wake the echoes of the hills with 

 desecrating and excrutiatingly inharmonious sounds. 

 After all, you can't do much towards exploiting a 

 country in thirty-five minutes within the limits of a 

 twenty-foot road, and that is all the motor folk have to 

 do with this wild region. 



A faith in conjurers, sorcerers, and charmers, all 

 different professions, please to note, is not even yet 

 quite extinct. Three or four years ago the last of a 

 race of Gwtserwr (possessors of the evil eye) was held 

 in genuine awe by some, at least, of the farmers, and 

 his performances were seriously recounted in the 

 vernacular by one of them to a Welsh friend and 

 myself over the cheerful glass and a bright fire in the 

 parlour of the Black Lion at Llangurig. Something 

 inspiring is now required to extract such confessions 

 from the Welsh peasant, who is a bit shame- 

 faced about his lingering faith in the supernatural. 

 The Canwyll corph (corpse candle) flickered realisti- 

 cally for only the last generation. The Cyhywraeth 

 a grisly female who, with uplifted bony arms and 

 the horrors of the grave upon her person, appeared 

 to the trembling rustic as the herald of impending 

 woe might be looked for at any time, and the howl 

 of the Cwn Annwn (the dogs of the sky), who hunt 

 departing souls across the midnight heavens, was still 



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