Corpse Candles
I'm currently reading The Folklore of the Welsh Border (Jacqueline Simpson, 1976), and I've just read the section on death omens. Hence, here's a post on my favourite Welsh death omens.
General: Corpse candles (also called corpse lights) are hovering blue lights that are omens of death; a small flame for a child, a large flame for an adult, one for each person whose death is imminent (with them indicating if the people will meet by doing the same) [1]. The light is sometimes seen held by shadowy figures between their fingers or in skulls and moves from the deathbed towards the local churchyard [2] or from the churchyard towards the deathbed, and is often only visible to one member of a group [3]. They stun anyone who stands in their path [4]; for example, a Carmarthenshire blacksmith who tried to stop a corpse candle was struck down and became ill for weeks, and a clergyman’s son from the same county who was struck by one was doubled up in pain on the road all night. They could also come for the unborn; in the Pembrokeshire town of Tenby in the 17th century, a pair of stillborn twins were omened by the pregnant mother seeing a pair of corpse lights [5].
Association with Water: If a corpse candle passes over water, the light on the water will form the shape of the person it is for; a Carmarthenshire blacksmith thus identified the local gamekeeper as the man about to die, a man from Cwmystwyth, Cardiganshire saw the face of a mine captain in the water beneath the candle, who died three weeks later, and another Cardiganshire man saw his own corpse candle, went to bed and died shortly. In Llanilar, Cardiganshire in the 17th century, many people saw corpse lights over the local river a few weeks before a girl drowned in it, in Carmarthenshire at an unspecified time and place three corpse candles were seen over a river a few weeks before three men drowned in it and the River Dee has a corpse light that hovers over any Christian who drowns in it so their body can be found for burial [6]. Which leads onto...
Origins: Corpse lights and other Welsh death omens are said to originate because St. David, the patron saint of Wales, prayed for Wales to have death omens so that people would be reminded of their mortality [7].
Geographic Range: Corpse candles were common in southwest Wales (the counties of Cardiganshire, Carmarthenshire and Pembrokeshire) [8], the island of Anglesey in the northwest, the Vale of Clwyd in the northeast and the county of Montgomeryshire on the English border [9]. They are also found in a few parts of England - in the parts of the county of Herefordshire directly bordering Wales, where they went from the dying person's house to the churchyard, and in Cheshire, where the went from the dying person's house towards the churchyard [10].
Temporal Range: As mentioned above, they were believed in at least since the 17th century, and belief in them was still strong in the Montgomeryshire community of Machynlleth in the 1880s [11]. In 1897, they were among the many omens of an explosion at the Morfa colliery in Talbot, Glamorgan, which killed 87 people [12].
Bibliography
Marc Alexander, 2002, A Companion to the Folklore, Legends and Customs of Britain, Sutton Publishing Ltd., p.54
M. J. Walhouse, 1894, “Ghostly Lights”, Folklore, volume 5, number 4, pp.293-299
T. F. Gwynn-Jones, 1970, 1979 (first edition 1930), Welsh folklore and folk-custom, Redwood Burn Ltd., p.209
Walhouse 1894
Gwynn-Jones 1970 pp.207-208
ibid pp.208-209
ibid p.206
Alexander 2002 p.54
Gwynn-Jones 1970 p.209
Jacqueline Simpson, 1976, The Folklore of the Welsh Border, Batsford, p.120
W. Y. Evans-Wentz, 1911, The Fairy-Faith in Celtic Countries, Oxford University Press, p.145
Jo Bourne et al., 2009, The Most Amazing Haunted and Mysterious Places in Britain, The Reader's Digest Association, p.211
