Gwrach y Rhibyn
Claire asked me to write about Gwrach y Rhibyn.
About the only thing I knew about this character was that she might be connected in some vague way with the hag of
Cors Fochno (
Borth Bog north of Aberystwyth). The reading I’ve been able to do in the time I’ve allowed myself seems to confirm this, at least in part.
Gwrach y Rhibyn is described as an ugly woman of about seven feet tall, with long, wild hair down to her ankles. Her eyes glowed bright but her face was “as gloomy as death itself”
[1]. Her fearsome teeth (one in each corner of her mouth) are said to be similar in size to those of an old boar, and in colour to resemble those of a lifelong smoker and chewer of tobacco.
[2] Some sources say she has “withered arms with leathery wings”,
[3] but Evan Isaac
[4], who grew up around Cors Fochno, makes no mention of this.
Isaac relates the following story about a woman named Betsen, who saw the Gwrach one night:
Clywais i Fetsen, Llain Fanadl, ei gweled unwaith. Preswyliai Betsen fwthyn bregus ar fin y gors, ac un nos lwyd-olau, a hi’n dychwelyd i’w thŷ o gasglu bonion eithin i achub tân trannoeth, gwelai ar ei chyfyl, yn eistedd ar dwmpath hesg, wraig hen â phen anferth ei faint, a’i gwallt cyn ddued â muchudd yn disgyn yn don fawr a thrwchus tros ei chefn ac yn ymgasglu yn glwstwr ar y ddaear.
Swpera yr oedd ar ffa’r gors a bwyd llyffaint. Ar ei gwaith yn myned heibio, cyfarchodd Betsan hi â “Nos da”. Neidiodd y Wrach ar ei thraed—yr oedd yn llawn saith droedfedd o daldra, ac yn denau ac esgyrnog a melyngroen—a throi at Fetsen ac ysgyrnygu arni ddannedd cyn ddued ag Afagddu, chwythu i’w hwyneb fel y chwyth sarff, a diflannu yn y gors. Dywedir na fu Betsen byth yr un ar ôl y noson honno[5].
He describes the symptoms of an attack by the Witch in detail (pp 46-47):
Ar nos dywyll creai’r wrach darth tew a llaith a ymdaenai fel mantell a chyrraedd i odre’r Graig Fawr, ac yn y tywyllwch pygddu hwnnw âi i fyny i’r pentref, ac er pob dyfais a gofal i’w chau allan, mynnai ei ffordd yn llechwraidd i’r tŷ a ddewisai, a chyniwair yn y tŷ hyd oni ddelai i ystafell gysgu, ac yno chwythu ei melltith ar y sawl a gysgai. Deffroai’r truan hwnnw drannoeth o gwsg anniddig, llawn o ysbrydion mileinig, a’i gael ei hun yn llesg a chlaf a digalon. Ymhellach ymlaen yn y dydd deuai’r crynu, ac am awr gyfan crynai’r claf oni chrynai’r gwely yntau—awr gron o grynu heb na hamdden na gallu i siarad na chwyno na dim ond crynu.[6]
Isaac suggests that the rational explanation for the Gwrach owed more to low cloud and thick fog preventing dispersal of smoke from the peat fires. He notes (p. 49) that:
Deugain mlynedd yn ôl peidiodd y cryd, ac ni flinwyd ganddo neb o’r pentrefwyr byth wedyn, a chredwyd yn sicr farw o’r Hen Wrach yng ngaeaf y flwyddyn y diflannodd yr afiechyd. Yn gyfamserol â’i marw hi bu llawer o gyfnewidiadau ym mywyd yr ardal, ac yn eu plith roddi heibio llosgi mawn, a defnyddio glo yn eu lle. Eithr y mae’r Hen Wrach yn fyw o hyd. Cysgu y mae yn y gors, a phan dderfydd glo Morgannwg a Mynwy deffry hithau, a bwrw ei melltith fel cynt, a gwelir y pentref yn crynu gan y cryd eto. Cysgu y mae’r Hen Wrach.[7]
His claim (p. 45) that the tradition was endemic to Llangynfelyn parish doesn’t necessarily bear examination, since as far back as 1753 Thomas Richards
[8] recorded that “They call an ague
Gwrach in some parts of Caermarthenshire,” and Richard Fenton
[9] in 1696 suggests that ‘cryd y wrach’ (the witch’s ague) was common throughout the South.
Unlike Evan Isaac, Wirt Sikes
[10] and the authors of peregrine-net.com
[11] both describe Gwrach y Rhibyn as a kind of banshee, foretelling the death either of someone close by or a family member who might be far away. Sikes reports an incident from Ystum Taf (Llandaf North, now in Cardiff) which his informant dates to November 1877, where she appeared apparently to take the soul of the keeper of the Cow and Snuffers pub.
“I was on a visit to an old friend, [when] I saw and heard the Gwrach y Rhibyn. I was sleeping in my bed, and was woke at midnight by a frightful screeching and a shaking of my window. It was a loud and clear screech, and the shaking of the window was very plain, but it seemed to go by like the wind. […] I jumped out of bed and rushed to the window and flung it open. Then I saw the Gwrach y Rhibyn, […,] a horrible old woman with long red hair and a face like chalk, and great teeth like tusks, looking back over her shoulder at me as she went through the air with a long black gown trailing along the ground below her arms, for body I could make out none. She gave another unearthly screech while I looked at her; then I heard her flapping her wings against the window of a house just below the one I was in, and she vanished from my sight. But I kept on staring into the darkness, and […] I saw her go in at the door of the Cow and Snuffers Inn, and return no more. I watched the door of the inn a long time, but she did not come out. The next day […] they told me the man who kept the Cow and Snuffers Inn was dead—had died in the night. His name was Llewellyn [and] he had kept the inn there for seventy years, and his family before him for three hundred years, just at that very spot. It’s not these new families that the Gwrach y Rhibyn ever troubles, sir, it’s the old stock.
Williams,
[12] on the other hand, specifically say that she very rarely showed herself to foretell a funeral: “Peth eithriadol yw iddi ddod allan fel rhagredegydd angladd. Ond os daw bydd yn ragargoel o farwolaeth rhywun tra
annuwiol.”
[13]It seems fitting to end with some advice from Sikes for any readers who fancy themselves as studs:
There is a frightful story of a dissipated peasant who met this goblin on the road one night, and thought it was a living woman; he therefore made wicked and improper overtures to it, with the result of having his soul nearly frightened out of his body in the horror of discovering his mistake. As he emphatically exclaimed, ‘Och, Dduw! it was the Gwrach y Rhibyn, and not a woman at all.’[14]
[1] J. Ceredig Davies,
Folk-lore of West and Mid-Wales (Llannerch, 1992); 213
[2] D.G. Williams,
Casgliad o Lên Gwerin Sir Gaerfyrddin (Carms. CC Cultural Services Department, 1996); 38
[3] Sikes, p. 219 (cited on en.WIkipedia.org/wiki/drychiolaeth, accessed 25/01/17)
[4] Evan Isaac,
Coelion Cymru (Cambrian News, Aberystwyth, 1938); 46
[5] I heard that Betsen, Llain Fanadl, saw her once. Betsen lived in a ramshackle cottage on the edge of the bog, and one evening at twilight as she was returning home from gathering bracken stalks to rekindle the fire the next morning, she saw the figure of a woman sitting on a clump of rushes. The woman was old and had an enormous head with hair as black as jet falling in a great thick wave over her back and gathering in a heap on the floor.
She was eating a supper of bog-beans and toadstools. As she passed by, Betsen greeted her with “Good night”. The Witch leaped to her feet—she was fully seven feet tall, thin and bony with yellow skin—and turned to Betsen, snarled at her with teeth as black as the pit of Hell, hissed in her face just like a serpent, and disappeared in the bog. It is said that Betsen was never the same after that night.
[6] On dark evenings, the witch would create a thick, damp fog which spread like a cloak and reached to the bottom of Graig Fawr, and in that darkness she would go up to the village, and despite any device and care that might be taken to keep her out, she would insinuate herself into the selected house until she came to a sleeping chamber, and there she would spit out her curse on the sleepers. Those affected would wake the following morning from an uneasy sleep filled with cruel spirits, and find themselves enfeebled, sick and dispirited. Later in the day would come the shaking, and for fully an hour the patient would shake until the very bed was shaking—a whole hour of shaking with no respite, unable to speak or complain or do anything but shake.
[7] Forty years ago the fever stopped, and not one of the villagers has ever been afflicted since. It was taken as fact that the Old Witch had died in the winter of the year the illness disappeared. Coincidentally with her death, there were many changes in the life of the area, including changing from burning peat to burning coal instead. But the Old Witch is still alive. She is sleeping in the bog, and when the coal from Morgannwg (Glamorgan) and Monmouthshire runs out, she will wake once more and her curse will return as before, and we will again see the village shaking with the fever. The Old Witch is merely asleep
. [8] Thomas Richards (ed.),
Antiquæ Linguæ Britannicæ; (Dolgellau; 1753) cited in
Geiriadur Prifysgol Cymru (Aberystwyth, University of Wales Centre for Advanced Welsh & Celtic Studies; 1975); ‘gwrach
1c’ p. 1696
[9] Richard Fenton,
Tours in Wales (ibid (1956); ‘cryd y wrach’ under ‘cryd’ p. 620)
[13] For her to come out as a harbinger of a funeral is the exception. But if she does, it is an omen of the death of somebody very
ungodly [his emphasis]
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