Caerwys is a small town on the hills above the Vale of Clwyd, once famous for its fairs and for the eisteddfodau held there under royal commission in 1523 and 1568. Farmers walked their animals there from miles around.
Richard Jones of Ty'n-y-wern, Bryneglwys, who gave Elias Owen many stories, remembered one such trip. When he was a boy, he and his mother set off from the Vale of Clwyd to Caerwys fair with a cow to sell. They had not gone far when a big hare crossed the road in front of them. It did not run like an ordinary hare. It hopped and halted, stopping to look round at them.
His mother was annoyed. "We may as well go home, Dick," she said, "for no good will come of our journey since that old witch crosses our path." They went on regardless and reached Caerwys safely. But nobody made an offer for the cow, though they stood with her all day.
Owen told the story to show how the hare and the witch had become confused in people's minds: nobody could tell whether a hare on the road was a hare or a witch in its shape, so a hare was bad luck either way. The Curious Clwyd website preserves a separate Caerwys tradition about a solitary woman called Sarah, who lived in a cottage in Coed Trefraith near a well called Ffynnon Deg, now under a fish pond, and who was remembered as the witch of Caerwys. It gives no date or source beyond oral tradition.
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