All along the Welsh coast, Trevelyan says, there were men and women who sold winds and weather to sailors. Jack o' Sheer-Gôr plied his trade in Swansea "in the days of old". Shoni Hoi frequented the Gower coast, and received many gifts from the wreckers and smugglers of the eighteenth century, who had their own reasons for wanting a storm at the right moment. Uncle Dewi of Barry Island used to travel down to Swansea to sell winds before Cardiff and Barry grew into great ports.
The method was simple: whichever way the wind-seller turned his hat, that way the wind would blow. But Trevelyan records something more elaborate on the Gower peninsula, where "whole families were adepts in the art of storm-raising". They tied up foul wind and weather inside an eggshell, first making a small hole and sucking out the white and yolk, then sealing it with shoemaker's wax. At the chosen moment the cunning man or woman dashed the shell on a stone, the storm rushed out, and it played havoc on land and sea. In other places bags were used instead of eggs.
With Gower's long record of wrecks and the Llangennith villagers' reputation for being first to any wreck on Rhossili sands, it is easy to see why storm-raising became attached to this coast.
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