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Your Story: Ghosts and Superstitions in Llangattock |
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There is a field above Llangattock Park on the hillside bank of the canal known as Cae Cefn Cythraul “The field of the Devil’s Ridge”. It was believed that the Devil used to haunt a clump of trees growing in the centre of the field and that he used to come out on Mid-Summers Eve to dance with the fairies. This clump of trees is still there.
Welsh fairies (Tylwyth Teg) did not have gossamer wings and acorn hats, but resembled the human race, being miniature people with miniature horses and dogs. They were well disposed towards humans and lived in remote places and under hills. Time became irrelevant to those who went away with the Tylwyth Teg and danced in Fairy Circles, such a circle was said to exist in the Black turf, a flat area near Craig Ciliau Nature Reserve. A human being beguiled by the sweetness of their music and stepped into the circle was lost for days maybe years unless someone had the presence of mind to throw them a bunch of Rowan and pull them out.
Superstition has always associated Mid-Summer’s Eve with the appearance of witches, fairies and ghosts. Ghostly footsteps were heard some 70 years ago by a local practitioner when he was called to attend a patient at Llangattock Park House. He was invited to stay until mid-night and claimed he distinctly heard footsteps walking from the bottom to the trop of the house. A number of older residents remembered being told of the ghost choir that sang in the caves on Mid-Summer’s Eve. One of the best known landmarks in the district is The Lonely Shepherd, also known as The Peaky Stone standing on the Hillside boundary between the parishes of Llangattock and Llanelly. Legend has it that this needle of limestone was once a man who was so cruel to his wife that she drowned herself in the River Usk. The man for his sins was turned into stone but at midnight on Mid-Summer’s Eve he walks down to the river his wife’s name and trying to persuade her to come back to him. The dawn finds him back on top of the hill.. An older generation of locals recalled that women on the Hillside visited the stone once a year to give it a coat of whitewash. Is it possible the stone was left as a memorial to men who lost their lives in a quarry accident?
A ghost horse walked along the road between the present canal bridge and the Hillside road at the bottom of the Prisk Pitch. A one time resident of the Dardy returning home from Glanusk one night claimed he heard the rattling of the chains of the ghost that haunted the stretch of road between Glanusk and Llanwysk. He was not a nervous man but the sound of the chains following him left him very frightened.
Words: John Short
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