Читать книгу The Pedestrian's Guide through North Wales. A tour performed in 1837 онлайн

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The view from the highlands of the park is very extensive, commanding a prospect of seventeen different counties. “The ground upon which we now stand,” said my companion, “is remarkable for a melancholy circumstance, which caused much grief and sorrow in the castle and its neighbourhood. The story of Owen-ap-Mylton and Mary Fuller will perhaps interest you, as it gave a name to this part of the estate, which it still retains, ‘The Black Park.’”

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In a poor hut, which formerly stood upon the site of a few cottages, upon the right of the lane leading to the castle from the high road, lived an aged woman, who kept no society, and was considered, from her reserved habits, drooping gait, and smoke-dried visage, to have strange dealings with the Evil One; and upon whom the neighbours looked with fear and trembling, whenever they met her in the evening twilight, or when

“— the morn in russet mantle clad,

Walk’d o’er the dew of yon high eastern hill.”

Her patch of ground she cultivated without help from any; and no one knew by what means she obtained clothing, as her garden stock only consisted of a few eatables, which she could ill afford to part with for wool to supply her spinning wheel; and yet her hose were good and clean, and her woollen petticoat and russet gown well fitted to endure the weather’s extremes. Strange stories were, however, reported respecting her, as it was said she had come from the Devil’s Peak in Derbyshire, where she had the credit of being a witch, and was nearly apprehended, upon a special order from King James himself, by the officers of justice, who, when they would have laid hands upon her, were astonished to find that they had seized each other, she having vanished suddenly from betwixt them, and, on the same day, it was said, appeared at Chirk Castle, offering to pay a half year’s rent in advance for the little hut, which was then to let, by the hedge-side in the lane, and which the steward accepted. She regularly, afterwards paid in advance; but none could tell how she came by the money, and the gossips reviled her as a limb of the Devil. This absurd notion obtained for her the odium of having performed a principal part in the following simple and melancholy tale.