That it was formerly believed that the devil could be out-witted or deceived is evident from the fact that in the Middle Ages it was often customary to bury an ungodly rich man in the garb of a Monk. This could be done by paying the Monks a certain sum of money.
There is a story very much like the one I have just given, to be found in the South-Western part of Montgomeryshire. In the Montgomeryshire version, however, the wizard is not Sir Dafydd Llwyd, but Dafydd Hiraddug, who had charged his friends, that on his death, the liver and lights were to be taken out of his body and thrown on the dunghill. They were then to take notice whether a raven or a dove got possession of them; if a dove got possession of them, he was to be buried like any other man in the churchyard; but if a raven, then he was to be buried under the wall, and under the wall he was buried, as a raven got possession of the liver and lights.
"Dafydd Hiraddug ei ryw, Ffals yn farw, ffals yn fyw."
(Dafydd Hiraddug, ill-bred False when living, false when dead.)
The dove and the raven play their part in many of the wizards tales. An old man from Llandilo, named David Evans, informed me that the wizard of Cwrtycadno asked his friends to throw his heart on the dunghill. If a dove came for it first, he had been a good man; but a raven, a sign that he had been a bad man.
The appearance of a dove at the time of a death or a funeral was regarded as a sure sign that the deceased had been a good man. The Rev. Edmund Jones in his "Apparitions," referring to the death of a certain godly man, says that "Before the body was brought forth, a white dove came and alighted upon the bier."
In the present day we hear a great deal about airships; but if we are to believe some of the old folk-stories, magicians travelled through the air in days long before anyone had ever dreamt of a balloon. In former times it was believed by the ignorant that a wizard with his magic book could, and did, summon a demon in the shape of a horse, and travelled on the back of the fiend through the air. It is said that Sir Dafydd Llwyd of Ysbytty Ystwyth, employed a demon for that purpose; and one night when he was riding home from Montgomeryshire on a demon in the shape of a horse, a boy who rode behind him on the same horse lost one of his garters on the journey. After this the boy went to search for his garter, and to his great surprise saw it on the very top of a tree near the church, which convinced him that the wizard and himself had been riding home through the air!