CORPSE-CANDLES AND THE TOILI[10] (continued)
"O that's a meteor sent us, a message dumb, portentous,
An undeciphered solemn signal of help or hurt."
The stories and experiences contained in this chapter consist of material relating to the "Canwyll Corph," the "Toili," and other beliefs, which were collected by the late Lledrod Davies, an inhabitant of the village of Swyddffynon, near Ystrad Meurig, in Cardiganshire.
He was a young man of delicate constitution, but gifted with that intelligence and zest for knowledge which distinguish so many of our Welsh people, and which, when joined to ambition and steadiness of character, are apt to carry them far in worldly progress. And this love of knowledge, and a native shrewdness untrammelled by any smattering of modern education, combined to form many a delightful character amongst our old-fashioned peasants, a few of whom still survive, though the type is fast dying out. If we may believe the descriptions in "Wild Wales," George Borrow met many such people in his travels through the Principality, but that was nearly sixty years ago, before the flower of our rural population had begun to migrate to "the Works"—as they call the mines and iron foundries of Glamorganshire.
However, we are digressing from Lledrod Davies, who it seems had intended to enter the Church, but died before he could be ordained. Apparently he was always much interested in the legendary lore and superstitions of his native county, and for a long time had made a point of collecting all the curious tales and experiences he could glean on these subjects; and as the district to which he belonged happens to be remarkable for all kinds of uncanny occurrences in the way of "corpse-candles," fairy legends and the like, he had no doubt a wide field for research. His object in collecting all this information seems to have been exactly the same as my own in a similar pursuit; namely, that he thought it too quaint and interesting to be allowed to die with the old generation, to whom a firm belief in these occult happenings was a matter of course. Also, in the spirit of the true folklorist, he had intended if he had lived to endeavour to trace a connection between these old Welsh beliefs and the folk-legends of other countries. But he died before he could accomplish this object, and after his death (which took place in 1890, at the age of thirty-three) his MSS. relating to these subjects were collected by friends, and published locally in a little pamphlet entitled "Ystraeon y Gwyll"—in English, "Stories of the Dark." This pamphlet, now out of print, was lent to me a short time ago, and partly because its contents concerned my own county and several districts that I know, it interested me so much that I asked and obtained permission to translate and republish the tales contained therein. As folk-lore these are really valuable, for they were noted down exactly as Mr. Davies heard them from the lips of the country people, free from all self-consciousness, and with no idea that they were relating anything but what were fairly common experiences amongst themselves and their friends.
In my translation I have occasionally made use of abbreviation, and I have sometimes slightly paraphrased the original text, here and there rather weighted by repetition, a trait which, however quaint and characteristic in the vernacular, is apt to sound tedious in our more precise and reserved English language. But with these small limitations, I have kept as nearly as possible to Mr. Davies' narrative, which, he tells us, he wrote down as well as he could in the words used by his informants. I will pass over his general description of "corpse-candles," because most of it would only be a recapitulation of what I have already told in the last chapter. But he mentions an interesting item connected with the superstition of which I had never heard before; to the effect that people who saw the candles were able to judge how soon the death which they prognosticated would occur. If the light were seen in the evening, death would follow quickly; if in the depths of night, the fatal event would be delayed a while. And it is said that there was scarcely ever a mistake made in this calculation of time.
I will now proceed in Mr. Davies' words, heading each incident with the title given it in the collection, and the first is called