THE TOLAETH.
The Tolaeth is also a sound heard before death or a funeral.
It is represented as superstitious rappings, or knockings, strange noises, or sounds of footsteps or of carriages, etc.
This superstition is common in all parts of the country at the present day; and I have met and heard of many carpenters who always know when they are to have an order for a coffin, as they hear strange knockings in their workshops resembling the noise or knockings made by a carpenter when engaged in coffin-making. An old lady who lives at Pontshan, Llandyssul, told me three years ago, that when she was a young woman, she and two other young women were on one occasion sitting near the fire all night watching and nursing a sick old woman of 80 years of age. About four o’clock in the morning, to their great surprise, they heard the door open, and the sound of someone or something entering the house and going about the room, but nothing was visible, nor did the door open as a matter of fact. The aged patient also heard the sound and enquired who had come in. At four o’clock next morning the old woman died. The same woman also told me that before the death of a prominent Esquire in Carmarthenshire, she remembered hearing the sound of a carriage before the front entrance of the mansion, when no carriage was near.
Sound of carriages before the death of one of the gentry is a thing that we often hear of even at the present day everywhere in West and Mid-Wales.
Sir Edward W. P. Pryse, Gogerddan, informed me that he was told that people had heard the sound of carriages before the death of his grandfather, who died in 1855, and was a member of Parliament for Cardigan. Nanteos, another ancient family in the same county, has, or had, not only a phantom coach, but even a tutelary guardian; but whether this Welsh “Banshi” was a woman under enchantment, or a fairy, is not known.
It was formerly believed that the church bell was tolled by a spirit or some other supernatural agency, before a death in certain families. I wonder if the word “Tolaeth” is derived from toll?
THE TOLLING OF BLAENPORTH CHURCH BELL BEFORE A DEATH.
Several old persons living in the parish of Blaenporth, South Cardiganshire, informed me that it is a fact that in former times a death in certain families in that parish was always foretold by the church-bell in the steeple tolling three times at the hour of midnight unrung by human hands. One old woman gave me the following tradition concerning the origin of this tolling:—