Folk-Lore of West and Mid-Wales

by Jonathan Ceredig Davies

I found that in Pembrokeshire in the present day, it is customary to place the coffin on chairs before the door outside before placing it on a bier. In most districts of West Wales, hearses have been until a few years ago, almost unknown, and such is the case even at the present day with few exceptions, except in those places adjoining the towns, but no doubt they are continually becoming more general every day. It is still the custom, especially in out of the way places where the funeral procession wends its way graveward on foot, to bear the corpse alternately, four men at the time, and sometimes even women carry as well as men.

In the old times when the roads were bad, especially in the mountainous parts of the country, it was customary to make use of a what was known as “elorfarch” (horse-bier). The elorfarch was carried by horses, and it consisted of two long arms or shafts into which the horses were placed, with transverse pieces of wood in the centre, on which the coffin was placed.

Before the funeral procession leaves the house, a hymn is sung, and in former times it was customary to sing on the way, especially when passing a house, and sometimes the singing continued all the way from the house to the churchyard without ceasing; and this singing along the lanes was undoubtedly one of the most beautiful of all the old Welsh funeral customs, and it is a pity that it has been discontinued.

During my recent visit to St. David’s, an old gentleman named Evans informed me that he well remembered the funeral processions singing on the way to the churchyard of St. David’s Cathedral; and that it was also the custom to march round the old stone cross, which I noticed in the centre of the town, before entering the churchyard.

The old stone cross at St. David’s, around which funeral processions marched in former times.

When a funeral takes place at Aberystwyth, in Cardiganshire, it is customary for the Town Crier to go through the streets tolling a small hand-bell, a short time before the funeral procession. This is a survival of a very ancient custom which was once very general throughout Wales, and in pre-Reformation times this corpse-bell which was known as “bangu,” was kept in all the Welsh Churches, and when a funeral was to take place, the bellman took it to the house of the deceased. When the procession began, a psalm was sung, and then the sexton sounded his bell in a solemn manner for some time, and again at intervals, till the funeral arrived at the Church.

Giraldus Cambrensis, writing 700 years ago, mentions of such bell at “Elevein, in the Church of Glascwm, in Radnorshire; a portable bell endowed with great virtue, called Bangu, and said to have belonged to St. David. A certain woman secretly conveyed this bell to her husband who was confined in his Castle of Raidergwy (Rhaiadyrgwy) near Warthreinion (which Rhys, son of Gruffyth, had lately built), for the purpose of his deliverance.

“The keepers of the Castle not only refused to liberate him for this consideration, but seized and detained the bell; and in the same night, by divine vengeance, the whole town, except the wall on which the bell hung, was consumed by fire.”

Formerly, in all parts of Wales, the Passing Bell was tolled for the dying, just as the spirit left the body. In ancient times there was a superstition among the Welsh people that the evil spirits were hovering about the sick man’s chamber, waiting to pounce upon the soul as it left the body, but that the sound of a bell frightened away the fiends.