THE CORPSE BIRD.
The most common death prognosticator throughout Wales in the present day is a peculiar bird known as “Deryn Corph” (Corpse Bird)—a bird flapping its wings against the window of the room in which there is a sick person. This was considered an omen of death. Even in the present day most people dread to see or hear a bird flapping its wings against the window when there is a sick person in the house; but every bird is not a corpse bird.
An old woman in Pembrokeshire, Miss Griffiths, Henllan, near Eglwyswrw, told me this bird is a little grey one and that it came flapping against her own window before the death of her father, and also before the death of each of her three uncles.
I have met with people in almost every district throughout the country who have heard the flappings of this mysterious bird before a death.