Apparitions; Dreams; Occultism -- Early works to 1900; Parapsychology -- Early works to 1900
Among the gloomy gorges of Preselle, in Pembrokeshire, comes dancing on
that blue wild-fire the “Canwyl y Cyrph,” or “Corpse-candle.” As the
shades of evening are approaching, the spectre of the doomed comes
flitting before us, with a lighted taper in its hand, and with a solemn
step halts not until it rests on its destined grave, in the church-yard
ground. If dignities and fortune have been the earthly lot of this
doomed mortal, then is there shadowed forth an awful pageantry of hearse
and ghostly steeds, and mute mourners, all gliding away to the place of
the tomb, and, like the phantoms of the Aensprecker, in Holland, (a
funeral procession of no less fatality,) they foretell the doom of some
ill-fated friend.
Among the dingles of the Bachwy, in Radnorshire, amid scenery of wild
and lonely beauty, a few rugged stones denote the site of an ancient
castle of a Welsh prince; it is the ruin of the “Black Rock.” The
opposing masses of this eternal rock, tapestried with deep green moss
and lichen, fold in upon the stream directly over its matchless
cataract, which falls abruptly from the upper to the lower valley into
this gloomy gorge; the sunbeam playing on the upper ledge of the
waterfall, while its deep basin is shrouded in Stygian darkness. Into
this gulph it was the pleasure of the prince to hurl from his castle
walls, those whom fate had made his prisoners. Often since the era of
these cruelties, (as I learned from the oral legends of the peasants,)
before a death, a strange unearthly groaning is heard, the “Kyhirraeth,”
becoming fainter and fainter until the last gasp of the mortal whose
doom it forebodes.
There is the dead-bell, which the Scottish peasants believe to foretell
the death of a friend; and the death-cart of Lancashire, which is heard
rattling along the streets like a whirlwind; and the Owke Mouraske, a
demon of Norway, which never enters a house but some one of the family
dies within the year. We are assured also by the Saxon, Cranmer, that
ere one of the electoral house of Brandenburgh dies, a woman in white
appears to many throughout the dominions of Prussia.
The wild mountains that surround us are prolific in the “Anderyn y
Corff,” or “Corpse-bird,” and the “Cwm Amon,” or “Dogs of Hell,” which
are believed to be demons of death, in the shape of hounds, and, like
the mongrel of Faust, marked by a train of fire. These howl forth their
awful warning, while the death-peal rings in the ears of the nearest kin
of one about to die.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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