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Folk-Lore of West and Mid-Wales

Chapter 226: A WITCH WHO APPEARED IN THE FORM OF AN HARE EVERY MORNING TO A SERVANT MAID AT MILKING TIME.
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About This Book

A compilation of folk beliefs, tales, and customs gathered across western and mid-Wales from elderly informants and local tradition. It presents translated Welsh narratives and organized material on fairies, mermaids and water‑horses, ghosts, witches and wizards, omens, animal superstitions, and popular spells, alongside accounts of wedding, birth, funeral, inheritance and sheep‑shearing customs, divination practices, augury, and prophecies. The emphasis is on literal fidelity to oral testimony and on preserving vanishing traditions rather than offering theoretical interpretation.

A WITCH WHO APPEARED IN THE FORM OF AN HARE EVERY MORNING TO A SERVANT MAID AT MILKING TIME.

Griffiths informed me that when his mother was young, she was engaged as a servant maid at a small gentleman’s seat, called Pontfaen, in the Vale of Gwaun. But whenever she went out early in the morning to milk the cows, an old witch who lived in the neighbourhood always made her appearance in the form of an hare, annoying the girl very much. At last she informed her master of it, and at once the gentleman took his gun and shot the hare; but somehow, the animal escaped, though he succeeded in wounding and drawing blood from her. After this, the young woman went to see the old hag who was supposed to be a witch, Maggie by name, and found her in bed with a sore leg.