His mother told me of this, and she stated further, that she had herself on three different occasions previously to her eldest daughter’s death, in the middle of the night, distinctly heard singing of the most lovely kind, coming, as she thought, from the other side of the river. She went to the window and opened it, but the singing immediately ceased, and she failed to see anyone on the spot where she had imagined the singing came from. My informant also told me that she was not the only person who heard lovely singing before the death of a friend. She gave me the name of a nurse, who before the death of a person, whose name was also given me, heard three times the most beautiful singing just outside the sick house. She looked out into the night, but failed to see anyone. Singing of this kind is expected before the death of every good person, and it is a happy omen that the dying is going to heaven.
In the Life of Tegid, which is given in his Gwaith Barddonawl, p. 20, it is stated:—
“Yn ei absenoldeb o’r Eglwys, pan ar wely angeu, ar fore dydd yr Arglwydd, tra yr oedd offeiriad cymmydogaethol yn darllen yn ei le yn Llan Nanhyfer, boddwyd llais y darllenydd gan fwyalchen a darawai drwy yr Eglwys accen uchel a pherseiniol yn ddisymwth iawn. . . . Ar ol dyfod o’r Eglwys cafwyd allan mai ar yr amser hwnw yn gywir yr ehedodd enaid mawr Tegid o’i gorph i fyd yr ysprydoedd.”
Which translated is as follows:—
In his absence from Church, when lying on his deathbed, in the morning of the Lord’s Day, whilst a
neighbouring clergyman was taking the service for him in Nanhyfer Church, the voice of the reader was suddenly drowned by the beautiful song of a thrush, that filled the whole Church. . . . It was ascertained on leaving the church that at that very moment the soul of Tegid left his body for the world of spirits.
In the Myths of the Middle Ages, p. 426, an account is given of “The Piper of Hamelin,” and there we have a description of this spirit song:—
Sweet angels are calling to me from yon shore,
Come over, come over, and wander no more.
Miners believe that some of their friends have the gift of seeing fatal accidents before they occur. A miner in the East of Denbighshire told me of instances of this belief and he gave circumstantial proof of the truth of his assertion. Akin to this faith is the belief that people have seen coffins or spectral beings enter houses, both of which augur a coming death.
In The Lives of the Cambro-British Saints, p. 444, it is stated that previously to the death of St. David “the whole city was filled with the music of angels.”