Years ago, when Elias Owen was young, word went round the district that Craig Wen, a farm at Llawr-y-glyn in the hills west of Trefeglwys, was haunted. Owen remembered the rumour well, though he does not say what form the haunting took, only that there was mischief.
What he did record was how it was thought to have started. The servant girl told her mistress, the tenant of the farm, that one day she was crossing the cornfield when a mouse ran out in front of her. She chased it, meaning to catch it. When they got level with the barn the mouse stopped, turned, and laughed at her. Then it ran into a hole.
That settled it for everyone. The mouse was the evil spirit, and it was the cause of all the trouble that followed. Owen puts the story in his section on animal superstitions, noting that a mouse nibbling clothes was a sign of death and that the evil one was believed sometimes to take the form of a mouse.
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