Goblins of Electricity: Magical Creatures, A Weiser Books Collection

By William Wirt Sikes and Varla Ventura

Varla Ventura, fan favorite on Huffington Post’s Weird News, frequent guest on Coast to Coast, and bestselling author of The Book of the Bizarre and Beyond Bizarre, introduces a new Weiser Books Collection of forgotten crypto-classics. Magical Creatures is a hair-raising herd of affordable digital editions, curated with Varla’s affectionate and unerring eye for the fantastic.

Historian and U.S. Ambassador to Wales during the Victorian era William Wirt Sikes brings us another startling collection of lore from the fairy kingdom. Enchanted monoliths,wells full of milk, caves of treasure protected by crows (if you're lucky) or dragons (if you're not) and the lightening magic of the goblins of electricity are but a few of the unique stories in this collection.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Red Wheel Weiser
• Release date: Feb 10, 2012
• ISBN: 9781619400382

William Wirt Sikes

Henry Jackson van Dyke (November 10, 1852 – April 10, 1933) was an American author, educator, and clergyman.

Book preview

CHAPTER I

Mystic Wells—Their Good and Bad Dispositions—St. Winifred's Well—The Legend of St. Winifred—Miracles—St. Tecla's Well—St. Dwynwen's—Curing Love-sickness—St. Cynfran's—St. Cynhafal's—Throwing Pins in Wells—Warts—Barry Island and its Legends—Ffynon Gwynwy—Propitiatory Gifts to Wells—The Dreadful Cursing Well of St. Elian's—Wells Flowing with Milk—St. Illtyd's—Taff's Well—Sanford's Well—Origins of Superstitions of this Class.

The waters of mystery which flow at Lourdes, in France, are paralleled in numberless Welsh parishes. In every corner of Cambria may be found wells which possess definite attributes, malicious or beneficent, which they are popularly supposed to actively exert toward mankind. In almost every instance, the name of the tutelary saint to whom the well is consecrated is known to the peasantry, and generally they can tell you something about him, or her. Unnumbered centuries have elapsed since the saint lived; nay, generation upon generation has perished since any complete knowledge of his life or character existed, save in mouldering manuscripts left by monks, themselves long turned to dust; yet the tradition of the saint as regards the well is there, a living thing beside its waters. However lightly some forms of superstition may at times be treated by the vulgar, they are seldom capable of irreverent remark concerning the well. In many cases this respect amounts to awe.

These wells are of varying power and disposition. Some are healing wells; others are cursing wells; still others combine the power alike to curse and to cure. Some are sovereign in their influence over all the diseases from which men suffer, mental and moral as well as physical; others can cure but one disease, or one specific class of diseases; and others remedy all the misfortunes of the race, make the poor rich, the unhappy happy, and the unlucky lucky. That these various reputations arose in some wells from medicinal qualities found by experience to dwell in the waters, is clear at a glance; but in many cases the character of the patron saint gives character to the well. In parishes dedicated to the Virgin Mary there will almost inevitably be found a Ffynon Mair, (Well of Mary,) the waters of which are supposed to be purer than the waters of other wells. Sometimes the people will take the trouble to go a long distance for water from the Ffynon Mair, though a good well may be nearer, in whose water chemical analysis can find no difference. Formerly, and indeed until within a few years past, no water would do for baptizing but that fetched from the Ffynon Mair, though it were a mile or more from the church. That the water flowed southward was in some cases held to be a secret of its virtue. In other instances, wells which opened and flowed eastward were thought to afford the purest water.

Most renowned and most frequented of Welsh wells is St. Winifred's, at Holywell. By the testimony of tradition it has been flowing for eleven hundred and eighty years, or since the year 700, and during all this time has been constantly visited by throngs of invalids; and that it will continue to be so frequented for a thousand years to come is not doubted, apparently, by the members of the Holywell Local Board, who have just taken a lease of the well from the Duke of Westminster for 999 years more, at an annual rental of £1. The town of Holywell probably owes not only name but existence to this well. Its miraculous powers are extensively believed in by the Welsh, and by people from all parts of Great Britain and the United States; but Drayton's assertion that no dog could be drowned in its waters, on account of their beneficent disposition, is not an article of the existing faith. The most prodigious fact in connection with this wonderful fountain, when its legendary origin is contemplated, is its size, its abounding life, the great volume of its waters. A well which discharges twenty-one tons of water per minute, which feeds an artificial lake and runs a mill, and has cured unnumbered thousands of human beings of their ills for hundreds of years, is surely one of the wonders of the world, to which even mystic legend can only add one marvel more.

The legend of St. Winifred, or Gwenfrewi, as she is called in Welsh, was related by the British monk Elerius in the year