Collectanea. 195
other all unbeknown. He will not go hisself, no, they would see him ; he will send a boy, anybody willing. He will disfigure (disguise) hisself, putting on the coat of another, so as if he shall be seen they shall say, ' Oh, some stranger on a message ! ' and no more thought about it. He will not go in by the gate ; no, he will hop over the fence and creep through the standing corn, lay his wrach on the breid, and off for dear life. If they catches him they will take him to their farm and shut him in the room under the stairs, that is dark always, and there he shall stop till they get together all the boots and shoes and clogs in the house, and he shall have clen every one afore he shall come out. Does he lay the wrach on the cut breid ? No, in front, where the foreman shall come to it by cutting. The second wrach, yes, that is to go up to its own farm. Maybe the foreman will send it, but mostly he will take it hisself, and watch his time and pop in and lay it down and nobody see. They had a room in the big farms, not the kitchen, where they was used all to dine, with a long table in, and benches. Mostly he would lay it on the table there ; but if he seen his chance and nobody about, he would tie it to a crook over the table, and that was the grandest ; but should they catch him afore he laid it down, they would dash water upon him. Why for ? Well, it was just a custom. But if a foreman could make his wrachs and get them both laid safe, that was great honour."
My informant is a woman of about fifty, the daughter of a cooper. She lived in her youth on the borders of the Welsh- speaking district, but her name, Watkins, is unquestionably English. She has been in farm-service. I have seen the corn ivrach that is brought home. It is a tightly tied bunch with the stalks twelve or fourteen inches long.
The names of the places given me by B. Watkins as those where she has herself known the " wrach" to be laid are all Welsh ones : Brydeth, near Solvach, not far from St. David's ; then, nearer to the mountains, Penllan, Gellyole (pronounced Gethly-olly), and Llandicefn. Her mother had told her of a successful laying of the wrach at the last-named farm.
" 'Twas a woman as done it. ' I'll do it,' she says. So when she comes to go into the field she strips off her gownd, and there she was, look you, all in white — white petticoat, white bodice, and over her head, I cannot tell was it an apern, but something white.
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