IX.
The Coblynau are always given the form of dwarfs, in the popular fancy; wherever seen or heard, they are believed to have escaped from the mines or the secret regions of the mountains. Their homes are hidden from mortal vision. When encountered, either in the mines or on the mountains, they have strayed from their special abodes, which are as spectral as themselves. There is at least one account extant of their secret territory having been revealed to mortal eyes. I find it in a quaint volume (of which I shall have more to say), printed at Newport, Monmouthshire, in 1813 ['A Relation of Apparitions of Spirits in the
County of Monmouth and the Principality of Wales' By Rev. Edmund
Jones of the Tranch. (Newport, 1813.)] It relates that one WiIliam Evans, of Hafodafel, while crossing t
