About seventy years ago a young French sailor at Aberystwyth in Cardiganshire, had fallen in love with a servant maid in that town, and she with him. One evening, when this young woman was preparing to go to bed she heard her lover calling to her by her name. It was a bright moonlight night, and when she went to the door there she saw the young man approaching and offering his hand to her; but to her great surprise he disappeared again without speaking a single word. Soon after this, news came to the town that a ship from Aberystwyth got lost on the coast of Spain, and that amongst others of the crew, who were drowned, was the young Frenchman. The young woman discovered that her lover was drowned on the Spanish Coast in the very same hour that she saw his apparition at Aberystwyth!
The young Earl of Lisburne ten years ago saw a wraith at Havod, on the night his father was dying at Crosswood Park. Of this I was informed by Mr. Inglis-Jones, Derry Ormond, and by his Lordship himself.
It is well-known that the great Lord Brougham saw an apparition of this kind when a friend of his was dying in India, about one hundred years ago.
TANWEDD.
Another death portent was the “tanwedd,” so called because it appeared as a fiery light. The Rev. Edmund Jones says in his “Apparitions”.—“When it falls to the ground it sparkleth and lightens. The freeholders and landlords upon whose ground it falls, will certainly die in a short time after.”
GWRACH Y RHIBYN.
Gwrach y Rhibyn was an ugly old hag with long flowing hair, glaring eyes and face as gloomy as death itself. The shriek of the old hag was supposed to foretell a death or some misfortune. She appeared, as a rule, only before the death of a person who had lived a wicked life; at least this is the saying in West Wales, especially in Carmarthenshire and Cardiganshire.