Brian John introduces us to some local folk tales and legends… 

The area around Roch, Brandy Brook, Brawdy and Newgale has its fair share of Pembrokeshire folk tales and legends, featuring strange happenings, peculiar individuals and quirky beliefs. A few years ago I embarked upon the “Pembrokeshire Folk Tales Project” — designed to gather together local myths, legends and tales and to write them down before they were lost for ever.

I expected to unearth sufficient tales to fill one book; in the event I uncovered more than 500 tales, many of which were still in verbal circulation. Most of them are included in the four volumes of the Pembrokeshire Folk Tales Trilogy. Yes, I know that sounds as if I have been out with the fairies for too long.  Maybe I have…

I discovered quite early on in my project that the tales discovered in old tomes and given to me orally by local families could conveniently be classified in eight groups: Tales of the Saints; Heroic Deeds; Strange Happenings; Fairy Tales; Witchcraft and Magic; Signs, Omens and Portents; Ghostly Tales; and finally Folk Heroes Great and Small.

In this area we find a rich mixture of tales from all of these categories, probably because we are very close to the Landsker, the traditional divide between the Welsh-speaking northern part of Pembrokeshire and the “Englishry” of the south which was created as a result of the Norman colonisation of the Early Middle Ages. So Welsh tales are mixed with English ones, nurtured maybe by suspicions harboured by each community about the foibles of the other.  “Strange people, they are, over on the other side of the Landsker…”

And if we are to believe the folk tales from the area, there were indeed some very strange people around in the dim and distant days when stories were told and absorbed in front of the fire on cold winter evenings, but seldom written down. At last they were written down, thanks mainly to assorted Victorian clergymen and travelers who loved Pembrokeshire both for its glorious landscape and for its multi-faceted folklore.

And so to a few of the notable characters who appear, in greater and lesser detail, in these  folk tale collections. One of the earliest was St Caradoc, who died in 1124 in his hermit’s cell near Haverfordwest. According to his wishes (and after some very complicated politics) his body was taken to St David’s for burial, and while it was being carried on Newgale Sands the bearers were overtaken by a deluge of rain the like of which nobody had seen before.

The poor fellows fled for cover, leaving the bier and the body on the beach.  When the rain stopped, they returned to collect their valuable burden, and were amazed to find that it was completely dry although the sands round about were still streaming with water. This miracle was later commemorated by the building of a small chapel not far away, on the other side of the great Newgale pebble beach.

Then there is the strange tale of Adam de la Roche, the builder of Roch Castle.  He was cursed by a witch, who said that within a year he would die from the bite of an adder.  He became so fearful for his life that he shut himself into the castle, counting down the days until the curse should run out.

With one day to go before the end of the curse, it was bitterly cold, and Adam ordered an old servant woman to bring up a bundle of wood for his fire. This she did, not realizing that an adder was hibernating in the middle of the bundle. As the warmth spread, the adder woke from its hibernation – and you can guess the rest of the story…

Then there are various stories of Wil Tiriet, who could see into the future; and the tale of the tolaeth or death omen in Solva; and the tale of Edward Callican and the donkeys; and the tale of the eagle, the owl and the wren.

And there was the VERY weird history of William Scourfield of Castle Villa in Brawdy Parish… and if we come down to the sea again we discover tales of the lost land of Cantre’r Gwaelod, and gruesome events on the Smalls Lighthouse, and farcical events connected with the Last Invasion in 1797.  But those tales will keep for another day…