Thanks to you all. Don Llewellyn of the Pentyrch History Group says, : Mari Ann Cabbage
One of the most mysterious names connected with the Garth is that of Mari Ann Cabbaits (Mari Ann Cabitsian), or, if you will, Mari Ann Cabbage. A stone marks her supposed spot on the eastern end of the Garth alongside one of the sheep-tracks leading to ‘The Peak’. The most repeated theory is that Mari was a sixteenth century witch to whom terrible punishment was meted out for her alleged misdeeds. Other anecdotes place her in a later period. The inscription has completely worn away by now and no-one alive can remember it being fully legible. Both Ellis Davies and myself recall trying to decipher something from some fading marks which were still visible during our youth but were unable to reach a conclusion. I almost convinced myself that I could detect the letters ‘c’ and ‘h’ preceded by what might have been an ‘a’. I was tempted to assume that it was part of the word ‘gwrach’ - the Welsh for ‘witch’! Unfortunately I neglected to seek information from the older generations who might have known more about the stone. Later enquiries provided no conclusive explanation but there has, of course been no shortage of conjecture (the chief enemy of the historian!) I have heard that Mari was a wayward girl who fell victim to the repressive policies of the Puritans in the 1600s. Ellis tells me that he was told several times that poor Mari had been hanged in the barn of Ffrwd Meurig and then unceremoniously dragged to that unconsecrated spot on the mountain for her burial. Another story claims no-ne is buried there in fact but that the stone was placed in memory of a young simpleton called Mari who was lost on the mountain and never found. I have even heard that the stone marks the spot where a child had a sacred vision; another tale claims it is where an infant called Mari was seen half a century after her death. From another source I heard she was a girl who had walked to Merthyr to buy a Bible and perished on the mountain in a snowstorm, a tale obviously borrowed in part from the true story of Mari Jones’s famous walk to Bala for her Bible. Not all theories see Mari as a girl. The Atkins family who in our own time were closely associated with the Garth always thought that Mari had been someone’s favourite horse! Who knows!
Don Llewellyn
