II.

Among the accounts of the Corpse Candle which have come under my notice none are more interesting than those given me by a good dame whom I encountered at Caerau, near Cardiff. Caerau is a little village of perhaps one hundred souls, crouched at the foot of a steep hill on whose summit are the ancient earthworks of a Roman camp. On this summit also stands the parish church, distinctly visible from Cardiff streets, so ponderous is its square tower against the sky. To walk there is a pleasant stroll from the late Marquis of Bute's statue in the centre of the seaport town. I am thus particular merely for emphasis of the fact that this superstition is not confined to remote and out-of-the-way districts. Caerau is rural, and its people are all poor people, perhaps; but its church is barely three miles from the heart of a busy seaport. In this church I met the voluble Welshwoman who gave me the accounts referred to. One was to this effect: One night her sister was lying very ill at the narrator's house, and she was alone with her children, her husband being in the lunatic asylum at Cardiff. She had just put the children to bed, and had set her candle on the floor preparatory to going to bed herself, when there came a 'swish' along the floor, like the rustling of grave-clothes, and the candle was blown out. The room, however, to her surprise, remained glowing with a feeble light as from a very small taper, and looking behind her she beheld 'old John Richards,' who had been dead ten years. He held a Corpse Candle in his hand, and he looked at her in a chill and steadfast manner which caused the blood to run cold in her veins. She turned and woke her eldest boy, and said to him, 'Don't you see old John Richards?' The boy asked 'Where?' rubbing his eyes. She pointed out the ghost, and the boy was so frightened at sight of it that he cried out 'O wi! O Dduw! I wish I may die!' The ghost then disappeared, the Corpse Candle in its hand; the candle on the floor burned again with a clear light, and the next day the sick sister died.

Another account ran somewhat thus: The narrator's mother-in-law was ill with a cancer of the breast. 'Jenny fach,' she said to the narrator one night, 'sleep by me--I feel afraid.' 'Hach!' said Jenny, thinking the old woman was foolishly nervous; but she stayed. As she was lying in bed by the side of her mother-in-law, she saw at the foot of the bed the faint flame of a Corpse Candle, which shed no light at all about the room; the place remained as dark as it was before. She looked at it in a sort of stupor for a short time, and then raised herself slowly up in bed and reached out to see if she could grasp the candle. Her fingers touched it, but it immediately went out in a little shower of pale sparkles that fell downward. At that moment her mother-in-law uttered a groan, and expired.

'Do you know Thomas Mathews, sir?' she asked me; 'he lives at Crwys now, but he used to live here at Caerau.' 'Crwys?' I repeated, not at once comprehending. 'Oh, you must know Crwys, sir; it's just the other side of Cardiff, towards Newport.' 'Can you spell it for me?'[108] The woman blushed. ''Deed, sir,' said she, 'I ought to be a scholar, but I've had so much trouble with my old man that I've quite forgot my spellin'.' However, the story of Thomas Mathews was to the effect that he saw a Corpse Candle come out of his father's mouth and go to his feet, and away a bit, then back again to the mouth, which it did not exactly enter, but blended as it were with the sick man's body. I asked if the candle was tallow at any point in its excursion, to which I was gravely answered that it was the spirit of tallow. The man died not long after, in the presence of my informant, who described the incident with a dramatic force and fervour peculiarly Celtic, concluding with the remark: 'Well, well, there's only one way to come into the world, but there's a many ways to go out of it.'

The light issuing from the mouth is a fancy frequently encountered. In the 'Liber Landavensis' it is mentioned that one day as St. Samson was celebrating the holy mysteries, St. Dubricius with two monks saw a stream of fire to proceed glittering from his mouth.[109] In old woodcuts, the souls of the dying are represented as issuing from the mouth in the form of small human figures; and the Tyrolese peasants still fancy the soul is seen coming out of the mouth of a dying man like a little white cloud.[110] From the mouth of a patient in a London hospital some time since the nurses observed issuing a pale bluish flame, and soon after the man died. The frightened nurses--not being acquainted with the corpse-candle theory of such things--imagined the torments of hell had already begun in the still living body. A scientific explanation of the phenomenon ascribed it to phosphuretted hydrogen, a result of incipient decomposition.[111]

FOOTNOTES:

[108] It is pronounced Croo-iss.

[109] 'Liber Landavensis,' 299.

[110] Tylor, 'Primitive Culture,' 391.

[111] 'Transactions Cardiff Nat. Soc.,' iv. 5.