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
"It happened not many miles from Tenby where a certain young school
mistress lodged at a farm house where she was very happy in every
respect. One night after retiring to rest, the light having been put
out, and she was lying awake, she suddenly noticed a peculiar greyish
light like a little star moving towards the foot of her bed from
the doorway. The light came to a stand-still by her bed and gently
lowered to her feet. Almost paralysed with fear, she called with all
her strength for help, and in a few minutes the whole of the household
were together in the room listening in amazement to the frightened
girl's story, and all sorts of means were used to pacify her and
to induce her to go to sleep, but without avail. She would not stay
in that room for the world, and her bed had to be removed and fixed
on a temporary bedstead in the room where the mistress slept. Time
passed, and the story spread abroad; some made light of it, and some
looked serious, and all tried to get the young lady to shake off all
thoughts of it. But to no purpose--let them laugh or chaff, she bore
the same sad expression, and said something would certainly follow
to clear up the mystery. About six weeks or so had passed, and one
night the mistress, who was a strong healthy woman, suddenly took
ill, and quite unexpectedly died. The young schoolmistress happened
at the time to be away on her holidays, and on hearing of the sad
news she hurried back to attend the funeral. When she arrived at the
house she was taken upstairs to see the body, she again became almost
paralysed on finding that the corpse had been laid out on the spare
bedstead on the very spot where she had six weeks previously pointed
out where the light had lowered and disappeared. No one had thought of
the incident until reminded of it. The body had been laid out there
for convenience at the time; no one ever thought of the young lady's
fright until she now pointed it out herself.
"So after that it can be easily imagined the whole neighbourhood
became convinced that there was something in it after all, and the
old superstition got strengthened in the minds of the young people
that it remains to a great extent to the present time."
A LLANGATHEN TALE.
The following appeared in "Apparitions in Wales" by Rev. Edmund Jones,
and it is a story of long ago:
"Some years ago one Jane Wyat, my wife's sister, being nurse to Baronet
Rudd's three children, and his Lady being dead, his house-keeper
going late into a chamber where the maid servants lay, saw five of
these lights together: while after that chamber being newly plastered,
a great grate of coal fire was kindled therein to hasten the drying
of it. At night five of the maid servants went there to bed as these
were wont, and in the morning were all found dead, and suffocated
with the steam of the new tempered lime and coal."
This was at Llangathen, in Carmarthenshire.
THE CORPSE BIRD.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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