"Where hast thou been!" "In Kent, in Gwent, in the wood, in Monmouth, In Maenol, Gorwenydd; And in the valley of Gwyn, the son of Nudd; See, the bright gold is the token."
"Look not on the whitened hue of my hair, Where once my aspect was spirited and bold; Now gray, without disguise, where once it was yellow. Never was Angharad out of my remembrance, But Einion was by thee forgotten."'
But Angharad 'could not bring him to her recollection. Then said he to the guests:
"If I have lost her whom I loved, the fair one of polished mind, The daughter of Ednyved Vychan, I have not lost (so get you out!) Either my bed, or my house, or my fire."
'And upon that he placed the white staff in Angharad's hand, and instantly the goblin which she had hitherto seen as a handsome and honourable nobleman, appeared to her as a monster, inconceivably hideous; and she fainted from fear, and Einion supported her until she revived. And when she opened her eyes, she saw there neither the goblin, nor any of the guests, nor of the minstrels, nor anything whatever except Einion, and her son, and the harp, and the house in its domestic arrangement, and the dinner on the table, casting its savoury odour around. And they sat down to eat ... and exceeding great was their enjoyment. And they saw the illusion which the demoniacal goblin had cast over them.... And thus it ends.'[81]
There is hardly a goblin in the world more widely known than this spectre of the forest. Her story appears in the legends of very many lands, including China. Its ancient Grecian prototype is found in the Odyssey.[82]
When it is the Diawl himself who appears in the role of the familiar spirit, his majesty is usually in some other form than that of a man, with hoofs, horns, and tail. The orthodox form of Satan has indeed been seen in many parts of Wales, but not when doing duty as a familiar spirit. A Welsh poet of the thirteenth century mentions this form:
And the horned devil, With sharp hoofs On his heels.[83]
He is variously called cythraul, dera, diafol, all euphemisms for devil, equivalent to our destroyer, evil one, adversary--as well as plain diawl, devil. In his character of a familiar spirit he assumes the shape of a fiery ball, a donkey, a black calf, a round bowl, a dog, a roaring flame, a bull, a goose, and numberless others, including the imp that goes into a book. In all this he bears out the character given him in old mythology, where he grows big or little at pleasure, and roars in a gale as Hermes, the wind-god, howls as a dog, enters a walnut as in the Norse Tale, or is confined in a bottle as the genie of the 'Arabian Nights.'