Folk-Lore of West and Mid-Wales

by Jonathan Ceredig Davies

Owen Evans, Maesydderwen, near Llansawel, Carmarthenshire, who is over 90 years of age, gave me the following account of a Corpse Candle which had been seen at Silian, near Lampeter.

When Evans was a boy, his father lived in an old house close to the churchyard walls, and kept the key of the church door. At that time singing practice was often conducted in the church, especially during the long winter evenings. One evening a certain young man entered the churchyard with the intention of going to the church to attend this singing-class, though it was a little too early; but he could see light in the church through one of the windows. So on he went to the church door thinking that the singing had commenced, or at least that some one was in the church. But to his great surprise he found the door closed and locked, and when he looked in through the key-hole there was not a soul to be seen inside the church. The young man then went to the house of Owen Evans’s father and informed the old man that there was light in the church, but that he did not see anyone inside. “You must be making a mistake,” said my informant’s father to the young man, “there cannot possibly be any light in the church; no one could have entered the building to light it, for the door is locked, and I have the key here in the house.” “But I am positively certain,” said the young man again, “that there is light in the church, for I took particular notice of it.” Both of the two men now went to the church together, and as they approached, they noticed a light coming out from the church. This light moved slowly towards a certain part of the churchyard, and the two men followed it and watched it until it suddenly disappeared into the ground. That it was a corpse candle they had no doubt in their minds. The young man had a walking stick in his hand with which he made a mark or a hole in the ground on the spot where the light had sunk. Soon after this a death took place in the neighbourhood, and the dead was buried in the very spot where the corpse candle had sunk into the ground.

My informant told me also that he had seen a corpse candle himself before the death of an adopted son of one Mr. John Evans, who lived at Glandenis, in the same neighbourhood.

A CORPSE CANDLE SEEN TWO HUNDRED AND FIFTY YEARS AGO.

There is a tradition at Llanilar that a young woman got drowned long ago in attempting to cross the river Ystwyth during a flood; and that a short time before the melancholy event took place, people in the neighbourhood had seen a corpse candle hovering up and down the river. According to the Rev. Edmund Jones, the young woman had come from Montgomeryshire to see her friends at Llanilar.

There is also a tradition in Carmarthenshire of a three-flamed corpse candle which had been seen on the surface of the water near Golden Grove a short time before three persons were drowned near the spot.

A CORPSE CANDLE SEEN NEAR CONWIL.

An old man named James, living at Nantgaredig in Carmarthenshire, gave me an account of how he himself and his father and others had seen a Corpse Candle in the parish of Conwil Elvet.