A Strange Tale

IN my Tradition and Folk Life (1972), p. I i, I referred to certain strange events relating to a carpenter's workshop in Montgomeryshire parish. Several friends have pressed me to record in full, since I can vouch personally for the truth of all the details, the story of these happenings. My grandfather, David Peate (1831-1896), was a country carpenter and wheelwright, living at Glan-llyn, Llanbryn-Mair, Montgomeryshire (see Montgomeryshire Collections, LVII, 1962, I19-24). Glan-llyn consisted of two semi-detached houses, my grandfather, who owned both, and his wife and family living in in the northern house. This house was built partly over the workshop which had a bedroom above it. In the i88os my father and his eldest brother used to sleep in this bedroom (they were apprenticed to my grandfather). One night, when all the family had retired about 9.0 p.m., the two brothers were awakened by the sound of sawing, planing and hammering in the workshop below. This they could not understand since they knew that their father had gone to bed early the previous evening; after considerable disquiet, they went back to sleep. Next morning, about 7.0 a.m., going down to breakfast, they found a local farmer conversing with their father: he had come to order a coffin for his wife who had died in the early hours of the morning at the exact time that the two young men had heard the noises in the workshop. [The above facts were related to me by my father and my uncle. The details which follow are of my own observation and from information given to me at the time by my mother.] When my parents married (1897), they went to live in the southern house adjoining the other where my grandmother lived until her death in 1907. My father then let the northern house to various tenants in turn. About 1918-I9 it became vacant. One summer afternoon, a widowed lady (a Mrs James), from a neighbouring parish, called to enquire about the tenancy. My father was not at home and Mrs James was met by my mother to whom she was a

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