To leave the Mery Talys and come back to the instances mentioned, all of them may be said to illustrate the way in which a part, or an adjunct, answered for the whole of a person or thing. In fact, having due regard to magic as an exact science, an exceedingly exact science, one may say that according to the wisdom of our ancestors the leading axiom of that science practically amounted to this: the part is quite equal to the whole. Now the name, as a part of the man, was once probably identified with the breath of life or with the soul, as we shall see later; and the latter must have been regarded as a kind of matter; for I well remember that when a person was dying in a house, it was the custom about Ponterwyd, in North Cardiganshire, to open the windows. And a farmer near Ystrad Meurig, more towards the south of the county, told me some years ago that he remembered his mother dying when he was a boy: a neighbour's wife who had been acting as nurse tried to open the window of the room, and as it would not open she deliberately smashed a pane of it. This was doubtless originally meant to facilitate the escape of the soul; and the same idea has been attested for Gloucestershire, Devon, and other parts of the country [201]. This way of looking at the soul reminds one of Professor Tylor's words when he wrote in his work on Primitive Culture, i. 440: 'and he who says that his spirit goes forth to meet a friend, can still realize in the phrase a meaning deeper than metaphor.'
Then if the soul was material, you may ask what its shape was; and even this I have a story which will answer: it comes from the same Modryb Mari who set her face against caws pobi, and cherished a good many superstitions. Therein she differed greatly from her sister, my mother, who had a far more logical mind and a clearer conception of things. Well, my aunt's story was to the following effect:--A party of reapers on a farm not far from Ponterwyd--I have forgotten the name--sat down in the field to their midday meal. Afterwards they rested awhile, when one of their number fell fast asleep. The others got up and began reaping again, glancing every now and then at the sleeping man, who had his mouth wide open and breathed very loudly. Presently they saw a little black man, or something like a monkey, coming out of his mouth and starting on a walk round the field: they watched this little fellow walking on and on till he came to a spot near a stream. There he stopped and turned back: then he disappeared into the open mouth of the sleeper, who at once woke up. He told his comrades that he had just been dreaming of his walking round the field as far as the very spot where they had seen the little black fellow stop. I am sorry to say that Modryb Mari had wholly forgotten this story when, years afterwards, I asked her to repeat it to me; but the other day I found a Welshman who still remembers it. I happened to complain, at a meeting of kindred spirits, how I had neglected making careful notes of bits of folklore which I had heard years ago from informants whom I had since been unable to cross-examine: I instanced the story of the sleeping reaper, when my friend Professor Sayce at once said that he had heard it. He spent part of his childhood near Llanover in Monmouthshire; and in those days he spoke Welsh, which he learned from his nurse. He added that he well remembered the late Lady Llanover rebuking his father for having his child, a Welsh boy, dressed like a little Highlander; and he remembered also hearing the story here in question told him by his nurse. So far as he could recall it, the version was the same as my aunt's, except that he does not recollect hearing anything about the stream of water.