were
'sniving,' swarming, all about the house, and were often to be seen
outside the house, or at least heard, and some of them perched on the
wicket to the garden; but all at once they left the place, and very soon
afterwards the son died. The crickets, she said, knew that a death was
about to take place, and they all left that house, going no one knew
where."

It was not thought right to look at the cricket, much less to hurt it.
The warm fireplace, with its misplaced or displaced stones, was not to be
repaired, lest the crickets should be disturbed, and forsake the place,
and take with them good luck. They had, therefore, many snug, warm holes
in and about the chimneys. Crickets are not so plentiful in Wales as
they once were.

_Hare_.

_Caesar_, bk. v., ch. xii., states that the Celts "do not regard it
lawful to eat the _hare_, the cock, and the goose; they, however, breed
them for amusement and pleasure." This gives a respectable age to the
superstitions respecting these animals.

Mention has already been made of witches turning themselves into hares.
This superstition was common in all parts of North Wales. The Rev. Lewis
Williams, rector of Prion, near Denbigh, told me the following tales of
this belief:--A witch that troubled a farmer in the shape of a hare, was
shot by him. She then transformed herself into her natural form, but
ever afterwards retained the marks of the shot in her nose.

Another tale which the same gentleman told me was the following:--A
farmer was troubled by a hare that greatly annoyed him, and seemed to
make sport of him. He suspected it was no hare, but a witch, so he
determined to rid himself of her repeated visits. One day, spying his
opportunity, he fired at her. She made a terrible noise, and jumped
about in a frightful manner, and then lay as if dead. The man went up to
her, but instead of a dead hare, he saw something on the ground as big as
a donkey. He dug a hole, and buried the thing, and was never afterwards
troubled by hare or witch.

In Llanerfyl parish there is a story of a cottager who had only one cow,
but she took to Llanfair market more butter than the biggest farmer in
the parish. She was suspected of being a witch, and was watched. At
last the watcher saw a hare with a tin-milk-can hanging from its neck,
and it was moving among the cows, milking them into her tin-can. The man
shot it, and it made for the abode of the suspected witch. When he