Folk-Lore of West and Mid-WalesDavies, Jonathan Ceredig
History
Folk-Lore of West and Mid-Wales
Davies, Jonathan Ceredig
Folklore -- Wales; Wales -- Social life and customs
I obtained the following account from an old man in North
Pembrokeshire:--
About seven o'clock one winter evening, David Thomas, Henllan,
Eglwyswrw, went to the village shop to get some medicine for a sick
animal. When he was returning home, it was a fine moonlight night. All
of a sudden, however, he found himself in utter darkness, being
carried back to Eglwyswrw almost unknown to himself by a "Crefishgyn"
as such an apparition is called in North Pembrokeshire; and when he
got his feet on the ground once more, he discovered himself taking
hold of the iron bars of the Churchyard Gate. In his adventure with
the apparition he had passed a blacksmith's shop, where several men
were working, without seeing or noticing anything.
A farm servant, named David Evans in the parish of Llandyssul,
Cardiganshire, had visited his brother who was ill one night, but
whilst going home at two o'clock in the morning, a "toili" carried
him all the way to Llandyssul Churchyard. My informant was Rees,
Maesymeillion.
I have also heard of an old woman at Cilcennin, near Aberaeron, who
was also carried by force to the churchyard by a "toili," and there
are such tales all over the country.
AN OLD WOMAN WHO SAW THE APPARITION OF HER OWN FUNERAL.
Miss Martha Davies, a housemaid, at Fishguard, Pembrokeshire,
informed me that her family possessed the peculiar gift of second
sight, and that her mother had seen the phantom of her own funeral
before she died.
When she was out walking one night, the old woman was terrified by
seeing a funeral procession meeting her on the road and which passed on
towards Caersalem, a Nonconformist Chapel close by. The Rev. Jenkin
Evans, Vicar of Pontfaen, was walking behind the procession, and
she even took notice of his dress and what kind of hat he had on his
head. She was taken ill the very next day, and in a very short time
died, and every one in the neighbourhood believed that she had seen an
apparition of her own funeral. The deceased was buried at Caersalem;
and as her daughter, Martha, was at the time a maid-servant at Pontfaen
Vicarage, the Vicar accompanied the girl to her mother's funeral in
his carriage. When he arrived in the neighbourhood where the funeral
was to take place, he left his horse and trap at a public house,
and proceeded to the house of mourning on foot, as the distance the
funeral procession had to go from Melin Cilgwm to Caersalem burial
place was very short. Strange to say, when the funeral did proceed, it
so happened that the Vicar of Pontfaen walked behind the procession,
and his clothes, and even his very hat were in exact accordance with
the description which had been given by the dead woman of the vision.
A PHANTOM TRAIN.
A few years ago an old man named James, 75 years of age, living at
Nantgaredig, in Carmarthenshire, told me that he had seen a phantom
train on one occasion.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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