There is a tradition that St. David, by prayer, obtained the corpse candle as a sign to the living of the reality of another world, and that originally it was confined to his diocese. This tradition finds no place in the Life of the Saint, as given in the Cambro-British Saints, and there are there many wonderful things recorded of that saint.
It was thought possible for a man to meet his own Candle. There is a tale of a person who met a Candle and struck it with his walking-stick, when it became sparks, which, however, re-united. The man was greatly frightened, became sick, and died. At the spot where he had struck the candle the bier broke and the coffin fell to the ground, thus corroborating the man’s tale.
I will now record one tale not of the usual kind, which was told me by a person who is alive.
Tale of a Corpse Candle.
My informant told me that one John Roberts, Felin-y-Wig, was in the habit of sitting up a short time after his family had retired to rest to smoke a quiet pipe, and the last thing he usually did before retiring for the night was to take a peep into the night. One evening, whilst peering around, he saw in the distance a light, where he knew there was no house, and on further notice he observed that it was slowly going along the road from Bettws-Gwerfil-Goch towards Felin-y-Wig. Where the road dipped the light disappeared, only, however, to appear again in such parts of the road as were visible from John Roberts’s house. At first Roberts thought that the light proceeded from a lantern, but this was so unusual an occurrence in those parts that he gave up this idea, and intently followed the motions of the light. It approached Roberts’s house, and evidently this was its destination. He endeavoured to ascertain whether the light was carried by a man or woman, but he could see nothing save the light. When, therefore, it turned into the lane approaching Roberts’s house, in considerable fear he entered the house and closed the door, awaiting, with fear, the approach of the light. To his horror, he perceived the light passing through the shut door, and it played in a quivering way underneath the roof,
and then vanished. That very night the servant man died, and his bed was right above the spot where the light had disappeared.
Spectral Funerals, or Drychiolaeth.
This was a kind of shadowy funeral which foretold the real one. In South Wales it goes by the name toilu, toili, or y teulu (the family) anghladd, unburied; in Montgomeryshire it is called Drychiolaeth, spectre.
I cannot do better than quote from Mr. Hamer’s Parochial Account of Llanidloes (Montgomeryshire Collections, vol. x., p. 256), a description of one of these phantom funerals. All were much alike. He writes:—
“It is only a few years ago that some excitement was caused amongst the superstitious portion of the inhabitants by the statement of a certain miner, who at the time was working at the Brynpostig mine. On his way to the mine one dark night, he said that he was thoroughly frightened in China Street on seeing a spectral funeral leaving the house of one Hoskiss, who was then very ill in bed. In his fright the miner turned his back on the house, with the intention of going home, but almost fainting he could scarcely move out of the way of the advancing procession, which gradually approached, at last surrounded him, and then passed on down Longbridge Street, in the direction of the church. The frightened man managed with difficulty to drag himself home, but he was so ill that he was unable to go to work for several days.”