Welsh UFO sightings from 1813. For sightings from other years please click HERE.
PRESS
1811
Interesting letter in the April 11th 1811 edition of the North Wales Gazette concerning the prevalence of supernatural belief in Wales:
To the Editor of the North Wales Gazette. SIR, Most of the English Tourists (who bave been very numerous of late years) in their travels through Wales, accuse the inhabitants of being uncommonly superstitious, but having had the opportunity of observing the manners, and customs of different ranks of people in England as well as Wales; I am convinced it is only a prejudice formed without foundation, allowing a little for the fondness of travellers to relate the marvellous, and their desire to amuse their readers, with something more strange than is commonly seen in their own country not that I deny but there are many in Wales of the lower order that would believe tales of ghosts, and fairies to be true, yet this credulity is not more predominant here than in England and ought not to continue a national reproach.
This weakness has heen noticed by the most eminent writers, the Spectator, No. 7 observes, that a strange dream portended some misfortune, spilling of salt, and a knife and fork laid across, are thought good sign; the author continues in his humoursome style, "I have known the shooting of a star spoil a night's rest, and have seen a man in love grow pale, and lose his appetite upon the plucking of a merry thought, a screech owl at midnight has alarmed a family more than a band of robbers nay the voice of a cricket, has struck more terror than the roaring of a lion.
I know a maiden aunt, of a great family, who is one of those antiquated sibyls, that forebodes, and prophecies from one end of the year to the other. She is always seeing apparitions, and hearing death-watches and was the other day almost fright-ed out of her wits, by the great house-dug in the stables, at a time she lay iil of the tooth ach." In the same work No. 419 it is said more seriously "our forefathers looked-upon nature with more reverence and horror, before the worid was enlightened by learning and philosophy, and loved to astonish themselves with the apprehensions of witchcraft, prodigies charms and inchantments. There was not a village in England that had not a ghost in it, the churchyards were all haunted, every large common had a circle of fairies belonging to it, and there was scarce a shepherd to be met with, who had not seen a spirit." In that lively publication the Connoisseur No. 55 it is observed "the idle superstitions of the vulgar are no were so conspicuous as in the affairs of love." It enumerates the different tricks, and the necessary rites to he performed in this amourous sorcery. Gay, the pastoral poet, sings thus,
When Blouzelind expired, the wethers fell
Before the drooping flock toll'd forth her knell;
The solemn death-watch click'd the hour she dy'd,
And shrilling crickets in the chimney cry'd.
The boding raven, on her cottage sate
And with hoarse croacking warned us of her fate,
The lambkin, which her wonted tendance bred,
Dropp'd on the plains, that fatal instant dead;
Swarmed on a rotten stick, the bees I spy'd,
Which erst I saw when goody Dobson dy'd.
the above gives a forcible idea of rustic superstition, it may he partly local to the Poet's native country Devonshire-; in Yorkshire they have a hobgoblin called Barguest, one of the highest order, terrible in aspect, and loaded with chains of tremendous rattle; another of an inferior order called Boggle and very frightful. Mark-een, the eve of St. Mark, when the apparitions of those, who shall die in the ensuing year, are seen to walk to the church where they shall be buried; certain persons "watching the kirk" to know the fate of their fellow parishioners. If the watcher go to sleep, at the critical moment (the stroke of twelve) he himself is doomed to die, within the year. While witches are superior beings in human shape who formerly inhabited this quarter of the island with power and will (when properly applied to) of counteracting the wicked intentions of the magic art; they are still said to inhabit the more extreme parts of the west of England. Marshall 's Economy of Yorkshire, see provincialisms.
It would be endless for me to fill your valuable publication, and also troublesome to you and readers to enter more fully on the subject. But it appears from history that the English were grossly addicted to superstition; we have an account of Owain Glyndyordwy, being an adept in the magic art; yet an English historian gravely asserts. "That he through art magike (as was thought) caused such foule weather of winds, tempest, raine, snow, and haile to be raised for the annoiance of the king's armie, that the like had not beene heard of."
Pennant's Wales I. p. 3-35, this makes it very probable that it was universally credited at the time; it was not in any remote corner of the kingdom that sorcery was believed to exist, but even at court, and it would he unpardonable in me to suppose they were not the most enlighten'd and intelligent of the nation, that frequented and resided there. In the reign of Henry 6th the consort of good Duke Humphrey was banished to the Isle of Man for the crime, and the frail Jane Shore suffered partly for the same offence; it continued to be a kind of court creed to the reign of James the 1st yet in the history of Wales concluding in A. D. 1280, there is no mention made of such absurdity. Witchcraft by the laws of England (and the act has not been long ago repealed) was punishable with death, and some suffered for the offence; but in the code of laws formed by good prince Howe! in the beginning of the lOth century we cannot find any mention of such an improbable crime; but our modern historians and Turists say, and perhaps persist, that it was an age of gothic ignorance. Shakespeare was well aware of the failing of taste of his countrymen, for in his most celebrated Tragedies he employ'd a supernatural agency, and it ig probably owing to that, that some of his plays continue still to be so popular; whilst no such absurdity has been at any time admitted into welsh poetry on any subject.
Superstition is evidently very prevailing in the metropolis, what numerous dreamers for lucky numbers in the Lottery! What numbers defrauded by fortune-tellers ? It is publicly to be seen in the streets; I have often observed very delicate and well dressed young ladies that would prefer wading through a dirty kennel, sooner than walk under a ladder! The cock-lane and Stamford ghosts, and the bottle conjuror are too recent a date, that I need not mention the deluding effect they had a on a credulous public. CYMRO.
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