POTS OF GOLD

Evening Post, Volume CII, Issue 151, 23 December 1921, Page 14

POTS OF GOLD

QUAINT WELSH STORIES FAITH IN HIDDEN TREASURE DREAMS SAID TO/HAVE COME TRUE. The tradition of tho Elders among the Welsh is a tradition full pf illuminating anecdoto of this past. Stories of battles, lof shipwrecks, of robbers, and of fairies | are still told vvith that convincing mastery !in wliioh the Celtic race excels. The oldtime farm hand, who''had neither reading, ' writing, nor arithmetic, was very often a prince of story-tellers. But his stories are never delivered as mere hearsay. Nor, like those of the club anecdotist, does one feel that the narrator is using them as a j means of ingratiating himself. However trivial or absurd the matter may be, it,is rehearsed as a solemn confidence and as a favour conferred. A peculiar thing is the preponderance- of stories .concerning treasure-trpve. Edmund Vale, writing in the Manchester Guardian, remarks.- —I have generally observed, moreover, that the telling of thjs kind of story gives its .expositor more hearty pleasure than any other sort. I ,will cite three examples that are typical:

At a farm hi Anglesey called,, .Clwch Dprnog a ypung couple .were in bed. For several flights they had been disturbed by an unseen, h'jm.d snatching"off all the bedclothes..' *''' "Next time this happens," says the youijg man, "I shpUcafl' put pn'fiim to reveal hirpself \yhat he is. No sense in humbugging with a bogey at any time." So the "riext time' that the bedclothes were pulled off lip shputed out, and immediately the ghost revealed himself. "Go to the youngest man/in the house,", said the glioet, "arid take him outside and* he shaft get the wealth that'properly'belongs'tp him."' "" ' ' Now the' youngest man in the house was a two-yea'r-pfd baby.' Sp the young man instantly'sought out the room, where the" farmer arid pis 'wife slept "and' told them "what the apparitipri had "said "to him. Then,, seeing'the tjvo-ye'^r-old babe, he : started '{ to 'carry him dpwnsiairs. "Hal"' cackled an' o|d "woman servant who was sleeping in the sapie room, "No doubt there - will'be w.ealth for hie'"also." "Yoii hold your fopiish," old tongue!" cried the young man, arid put his ' hand up against her face. She was immediately strtipk blind.

By this time it was noticed that a little flanie bad begun tp gjqw in % an;, and it was starting to move slowly away. Led by it, they came through the house to tho well. The little blue light hovered here a moment, and then, unquenched by the water, it sank into the calm, clear depths, rested for _a ipb'mept on the gravel below'; pnld, then' went put. - Next (lay they Bippjied the ' well, and, ' digging in the gravel, they found "a""cauldron "full of gold./ Another is of an old man who lived in a farm called Tyddyn Gwaes. He kept on having,a dream that if he went to London Bridge he would find treasure. At last he made up his'mind to go. So he jvent up to London and stood on Lqndbn Bridge, "wondering, what to' do next: As he was (ooking at all thp horses apd carts and'fine carriages, going this ■ way arid that way, quite bewildered, another man caiqe/'iip to him and said, "What are ypu standing here like a madman for?'! "Ever since I was a young man," replied he, ''I have been having "a dream that if I came to London Bridge I ?,h.puld find a treasure." "Pooh," exclaimed the other, "tha't'is nothing! . Ever since I was a boy J. have been having a dream that in the corner of a garden at a place'called Tyddyn Gwaes I should got a treasure.'" "Wjiiph corner of the garden?" asked the ojcl map, ' v'The corner near the road," rpplied the stranger. "Do you know where*Tyddyn Gwaes'is?" "Never heard pf s^ch, a puice," said the old man) I}ut as soon as'tn'ey parted the. old man went pack to Tyddyn Gwaes and dug Up a pot of money in the place the "stranger" had mentjqnpd "; A more modern instance is the circumstance of Mary Bostock, who Ijyed at Be,tH? eda and was married tp a-, slateqUarrymari. !' During the long strike 'of the' Penrhyn' slate quarries there, .was! great distress among the miners' families. Mary Bostock .had a persistent dream. It seemed always that she was digging in a little fjeld on the hillside'above'Llahfftirffichan. The strike had made the Ijostbcks' very poor. Mary at "last followed up her dream. She soon unearthed a pot of gold in the place where the drpani told rier"'to' dig. The field is still called' after her, Ffrith tyl'ary Bostock. '"So the stories all run. The rainbow always stands still for the V/e'shnipn, and he finds -his treasure-trove without much trouble.'; The scientific antiquary "and'the fpjk-jorp experts, who explore the radiant realms of' Fancy with the pale larop'bf Reason and with the icy touchstone of cold Fact, would tell us that there is no need to be surprised at all-these stories. They would give us a hundred clues to a prevalent '■ belief in buried treasure, and point out slyly that t||e mint} pf ipan }ias ltievifcablvia warp towards the greedy and the sordid,' which perforce prompts his inventive genius. But is that all ? Does there not. appear some deep psychologic truth in all this business of looking for a treasure, in. the depths of the earth, and in'the'sure faith' "that" it "is "to ( be"f6'urid? ,Is. it'not rathpr a state of idpalism than one of materialistic sqiialbr ?'. : 1 Let us be bold and call it optimism. It would seem, then, that the Wq|shtn'an\ is not made as we Saxon's are;'• th^t for limi "youth's gweot niaiiuscript" doe? riqt irrevocably close, that "really and truly .lie does believe that sopie day, whoever. hp be, he will find his pot of shining gold waiting for hiiri in the dark earth j 6ven/jf it remains for'the pick of the gravediggei'to disclose it. ■ • "■