84 Collectanea,
" Well, you may believe that made me feel bad, but when we got 'ome the lamp was gone out of the window, an' I rushed upstairs, there was the boys fast asleep. Next mornin' they told me how they'd got so tired an' gone to sleep in the road, an' woken up when it was dark an' come on home. But that day a telegram come to say as my brother 'ad been killed by a railway truck. So, you see, it was an omen, seeing that there dog."
There is a funny old house on the way to Penallt called the " Potash " ; it is said to be haunted, but Mrs. Briton is the only person I have met who has seen anything there. This is her account :
" One night about twelve o'clock I was goin' along the road down to Mitchel Troy, where we used to live ; I was just nearin' the ' Potash ' when I heard like a lot of people talkin' in the air. First I thought 'twas the gypsies, but as I was comin' by the hedge in the field I saw a sort of a black cloud comin' thro' the gap, an' I heard a sound of clankin' chains, but all at once I knowed it wasn't gypsies 'cos they weren't there, an' I heard voices all around. I ran, an' ran, I was so frightened, till at last I fell right into a sand pit at the bottom of the hill."
Some other members of Mrs. Briton's family have seen visions too. Her son, Samuel, told me that one night, goin' up through Troy Woods, he had seen a great black beast with flaming eyes, and when he turned his lantern on it, it vanished with a sort of screech into a ditch.
Mr. Briton is said by his wife to have seen a black dog going nine times round a tree ; I don't know if that is true, but after much cross-questioning, and with additions from Mrs. Briton, I made out that he really had seen something one night, when going to see his wife, who was nursing a sick woman in a farm some way off. By the side of the road he saw a lady, dressed in a very old- fashioned way, holding her skirt up ; her hair, of a sandy colour, was divided and arranged in two knots on the top of her head. Though it was a pitch-dark night he saw her plamly, and said " Good night;" but she passed him without speaking, and vanished up the road. Mr. Briton rushed into the farm where his wife was, and told her he had seen the devil.
" Had 'e got a tail ? " said she, laughing.
" No, but 'a had horns," he said ; for he thought she had, from the way her hair was arranged.
