SPIRIT FUNERALS CARRYING PEOPLE TO CHURCHYARDS.
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.