Brandy Cove is a small smugglers' bay on the eastern Gower Peninsula, tucked under limestone cliffs that once served as cover for contraband runs. In local folklore, the caves there became associated with Old Moll, a witch regarded as both cursed and cursing: wherever she walked, misfortune followed in her wake. Children in her vicinity suffered night terrors, animals went lame, and crops rotted in the ground. She was feared rather than pitied, and in some versions of the tradition she was active during the height of the smuggling era, her presence providing a ready explanation for accidents and losses that could not otherwise be accounted for.
The story
The community eventually organised against her. A vigilante group gathered silver coins and had them melted down and cast into bullets, since standard lead was held to have no power against a witch. They hunted her to the cave, and the volley of silver struck her in the leg. She escaped — wounded but alive — and left the Gower Peninsula entirely, travelling inland and reportedly carrying her ill-luck with her wherever she went. The tradition does not record her death or ultimate fate, only her expulsion.
The Old Moll legend is documented in Jane Aaron's academic study Welsh Gothic (University of Wales Press) as part of the broader tradition of female supernatural figures on the Gower coast, alongside Gwrach-y-Rhibyn sightings at Pennard Castle and the wider use of caves as liminal spaces in south Welsh folk narrative. The name 'Brandy Cove' itself derives from the smuggling trade that made the bay famous, and local storytelling has long intertwined the supernatural with the criminal at this site.