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Welsh Folk-Lore a Collection of the Folk-Tales and Legends of North Wales

4.  The Llanfair Dyffryn Clwyd Version.

Mr. Evan Davies, carpenter, Bryn Llan, Efenechtyd, told the writer that Robert Jones, innkeeper, in the same parish, told him the following tale, mentioning at the same time the man who figures in the narrative, whose name, however, I have forgotten.  The story runs thus:—

A man, wishing to catch a fox, laid a bag with its mouth open, but well secured, at the entrance to a fox’s den in Coed Cochion, Llanfair Dyffryn Clwyd parish, and hid himself to await the result.  He had seen the fox enter its lair, and he calculated that it would ere long emerge therefrom.  By and by, he observed that something had entered the bag, and going up to it, he immediately secured its mouth, and, throwing the bag over his shoulder, proceeded homewards, but he had not gone far on his way before he heard someone say, “Where is my son John?”  The man, however, though it was dark, was not frightened, for he thought that possibly some one was in search of a lad who had wandered from home.  He was rather troubled to find that the question was repeated time after time by some one who apparently was following him.  But what was his terror when, ere long, he heard a small voice issue from the bag he was carrying, saying “There is dear father calling me.”  The man in a terrible fright threw the bag down, and ran away as fast as his feet could carry him, and never stopped until he reached his home, and when he came to himself he related the story of his adventure in the wood to his wife.