Robert Williams of Llangattock was, in the words of the minister who wrote his story down, a substantial man and of undoubted veracity. One night he was crossing part of the mountain on foot and realised that he had lost his way. At almost the same moment he saw an old woman walking ahead of him.
He did not think she was anything but an old woman. He called out to her to wait for him. She did not answer, and he supposed she was deaf. So he walked faster, meaning to catch her up and ask the way. But however fast he went, she stayed the same distance ahead, and when he ran she seemed to draw further away, though she never hurried and never looked back. He could not understand it.
Then his feet went from under him and he found he was floundering in a bog. As he struggled he heard the old woman laughing at him: an old, crackling, uncanny laugh. That set him thinking. He happened to take out his knife for some reason, and as soon as the blade was out the old woman vanished. After that he was quite sure what she had been.
The Old Woman of the Mountain was well known in the uplands of South Wales. In Monmouthshire she was said to be the ghost of a woman called Juan White, thought to have been a witch. Welsh ghosts and fairies were believed to be afraid of iron and of a bare knife in particular, which is why Robert Williams's knife worked where his shouting had not.
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