Most Glamorgan treasure-ghost stories are anonymous. This one gives the witness a name, a nickname and a rough date of birth, which makes it stand out.
Elspeth John, whom people called Effy'r Gwecrydd, was born about 1795. Somewhere between the ages of ten and fourteen she went to work as a servant for a farmer at Prisk, near Cowbridge. When she was well into her teens, a shadowy man in dark clothes began to meet her again and again. He was blurred, as if not quite there. At first he only stared at her and she took little notice, but later he began to torment her, and she was pinched and interfered with and could get no rest.
She became very low. Her master and mistress, whom Trevelyan describes as kind and godly people, asked her what was troubling her, and she told them. Her master urged her to speak to the apparition, but she could not bring herself to. The family learned to tell when it was near: in the middle of her housework her face would suddenly show terror, and at night they heard her cry out in bed. They tried the usual ways of "laying" a spirit, but none worked, and she said she was being treated worse than ever.
At last, at her master's urging, she put her trust in God and questioned it. The spirit said it was glad she had spoken, because until she did it had been under a spell and had been "waiting for her before she was born." It told her to trust herself to it and it would not harm her. Then it beckoned her upstairs into a room and told her to lift a board. The board was firmly fixed, but she raised it easily. She took up what she found underneath, put the board back and followed the spirit downstairs.
She went through the living room so fast that the family and neighbours who tried to hold her could not, and once outside she "went like the wind." Several people saw her carried up into the air in the faint starlight. When she came back she said the flight had ended at the fish-pond at Hensol Castle, or somewhere on the River Ely; Trevelyan thinks the river more likely, because such hoards had to go into running water. There she was told to drop what she carried, and it fell from her hands with a splash. Then she was flown home, and the spirit said, "Now I shall have peace."
Comments