Welsh Death Omens and Apparitions: Unveiling the Haunting Legends With Dr. Delyth Badder

Speaker A: Hi, everyone, and welcome back to Haunted History Chronicles. First of all, thank you for taking a listen to this episode. Before we begin, I just want to throw out a few ways you can get involved and help support the show. We have a patreon page as well as an Amazon link, so hopefully if you're interested in supporting, you can find a way that best suits you. All of the links for those can either be found in the show notes or over on the website. Of course, just continuing to help spread the word of the show on social media, leaving reviews and sharing with friends and family is also a huge help. So thank you for all that you do. So now let's get started by introducing today's podcast or guest.

Speaker B: Dr. Delyth Badder is a folklorist author and antiquarian book collector who has channelled a lifetime's interest in Welsh folklore into academic study. She has expertise in Welsh death, omens and apparitions, with a particular academic interest in the appearance of spirits within the Welsh tradition. Delyth has co authored the book The Folklore of Wales Ghosts with researcher and podcaster Mark Norman. Due out later this year, it's an exciting new study of Welsh ghost law through the ages, examined through a contemporary lens using rare, unpublished and never before translated material, wales is a land with a vast wealth of unique ghost stories and folklore, including fantastical animals, flickering death, omens and unseen things that go bump in the night. deleteth is here to share her knowledge and expertise on the subject of death, omens and apparitions, key themes and motifs, running through them, and at the same time giving insights into the history and culture of Wales's varied regions and communities. You're in for a real treat as Delith takes us through tales of death, omens and apparitions, shining a spotlight on the unique qualities of folkloric beliefs in Wales. So let's say hello to our special guest and find out a little more about her.

Speaker A: Hi, there. Thank you so much for joining me this evening.

Speaker C: Oh, thanks ever so much for having me.

Speaker A: Do you want to just start by telling us a little bit about yourself and your.

Speaker C: Well, I initially trained as a medical doctor and I still work part time as a consultant paediatric pathologist and as a medical examiner for the NHS. But I'm also lucky enough now to work as a Welsh Folklorist, so I've just recently been appointed as an Honorary Research Fellow in Folklore with Museum Wales, based in St Fagan's National Museum of History, where most of the Welsh Folk archive is kept, where I'll be researching the appearance of ghosts in Wales, which is my particular area of academic interest. And I've just written a book about this too, so I'm now quite unbelievably an author as well, which is still a very odd feeling for me. The book's called The Folklore of Wales Ghosts, which I co authored with Mark Norman, which is due out in September this year, so imminently with Callum Books, who are an imprint of the University of Wales Press. And I'm also completing a Master's degree in Welsh and Celtic studies, again researching Welsh ghost law at Cardiff University. I also have an interest in the 19th century neo druidic movement in Pontypridd, and in particular the infamous arch druid and surgeon Dr William Price. I happen to live in one of the roundhouse cottages he commissioned in Pontypridd, and also in my spare time, I collect Welsh antiquarian books. So I think it's probably safe to say that life is never dull here.

Speaker A: I'm very jealous, kind of nosing around these dusty archives and looking over these incredible old documents. I mean, I know for most people they would possibly think that that's not something you would want to do with your time, but I can't think of anything better, to be honest.

Speaker C: Yeah, it's fantastic. I've had a sort of lifelong interest in Welsh folklore, to be honest. Fairy tales, and ghost stories in particular, have featured very prominently throughout my life. From the stories my parents used to tell me when I was a child to sort of the horror films, the black and white creaky horror. Films that I grew up watching and the books I used to read. And then to starting to collect antiquarium books myself a few years back. And from there, developing a database of Wales's ghost accounts in particular. And I also happen to be married to someone, Elidir, who also collects Welsh folklore and reimagines them for children in the books that he writes. So it's always been there. It's just that now I'm sort of lucky enough to be making a living from it.

Speaker A: We're going to be talking about Welsh folklore tonight. Before we kind of dive into some of that conversation, do you want to just help set the context of why death folklore and death omens in particular, not just in Wales, but pretty much in every culture across the globe, was so prevalent across so many different time periods as well? Why it was so, I mean, death.

Speaker C: Omens are common in all sorts of different cultures across the whole world. During a time in particular where medical knowledge was rudimentary and unexpected, sudden death was very common. It's probably quite easy to appreciate how any sign, whether that's ghostly materializations or just the innocuous behaviour of wildlife, it might all have been used to prognosticate somebody's fate. In Wales in particular, I think it's safe to say that we have a certain unique propensity for death omens within our folklore. In most folkloric texts written during the 17th to the 20th centuries, you'll find numerous excerpts detailing how natural phenomena such as, I don't know, an owl screeching or a dog howling or seeing a robin hop over the threshold. Or a fruit tree blossoming out of season. Any of these would mean that you, or somebody close to you potentially was going to die. But they were most prevalent among those communities whose life expectancy was notably shorter than average. So in the book, for instance, I've delved into the experiences reported by the mining towns and villages in the South Wales Valleys as one of the most prominent examples within Welsh folklore. So aim to give you an example. In Glen Corog Colliery in Carnarvon in I think it was 1902, there was a report of some 300 miners just refusing to enter the mine one morning because some of them had reported seeing the apparition of a woman carrying a lamp and seeing flashes of light. Others saying that they'd heard a woman screaming and the sound of earth falling. They'd also spotted a dove hovering above the colliery, which is a very common omen of disaster reported in association with the mining community. Anything from doves, crows to robins, other examples being before the colliery explosions in Senghenydd in 1901 and then the Morfa disaster in 1890 as well, was a particularly well known one. A commonly reported phenomena that we tend to see in association with the collieries is hearing or seeing a death act out before it occurs, something which is occasionally referred to as a Tolaeth in Welsh folklore, although that term is usually reserved for hearing the sounds of a phantom corpse or furniture or a coffin being moved. So death wrapping or death knocking, which mirrors the sound of the preparations to come. It's also sometimes used interchangeably to describe phantom funerals, which are most commonly known as a Toili. In any case, these accounts of sort of spooky bangs and shuffles are probably the least strange of Wales's collection of phantasmal portents. And in that regard, we're quite a creative nation with plenty of examples under our hats.

Speaker A: I'm kind of glad that you mentioned the folklore surrounding the mining community, because it's a fascinating aspect of Welsh folklore. And when you look at so much of the evidence that survives, you've got newspaper articles that these are things that feature in the investigation reports, post the accident, post the event documented by those going in, trying to ascertain what happened in the run up to it. And so you've got huge swathes of evidence from people being interviewed that is there to kind of signal precisely what happened, but also the belief system around death omens and how prevalent it was amongst its community. And it's fascinating to kind of see that so well documented the way that it is. And I think it really is kind of unique to Wales in that regard and speaks volumes to how prolific it was, really.

Speaker C: Yeah, I completely agree. It's interesting that we've obviously, as you were saying, there's hundreds of different accounts of these omens being seen. And before every mining disaster, more or less, you will find a swathe of newspaper reports or you'll find records within parish history accounts, and even in sort of the broader folkloric texts. But it's interesting doing the research into this. There are notably less Welsh language newspaper reports on the omens, and I think it's probably because of the sort of heavier use of English in the south of the country at the time with the influx of people that moved to the area during the Industrial Revolution. But certainly in the English language newspaper reports, as you say, hundreds and hundreds of different examples to be found.

Speaker A: So what would you say are some of the most common phantasmal premonitions and death omens?

Speaker C: Yeah, so I'd argue that of all the phantasmal death omens that Wales has to offer, that the Canwyll Corph, the corpse candle, sometimes called dead men's candles or corpse tapers, in parts of North Wales that's probably the most universally recognized across Wales. It's certainly not unique to Wales. But the earliest written record of this particular apparition actually comes from Ceredigion in 1656 by a chap called John Lewis, who happened to be the justice of the peace in Lampathanvaur, and whose letter was then published by the antiquarian Richard Baxter in The Certainty of the World of Spirits in 1691. So there's a second letter also from the same year, in 1656 by a John Davis from Ganerglin, which is also in Ceredigion, where he states that there was no record of these corpse candles existing outside Wales during that time. So then we shoot forward a century and we have the Reverend Edmund Jones Yr Hen Broffwyd, the old prophet from Transh in Pontypool, one of arguably the most important and influential accidental folklorists in Wales. He was an independent minister who recorded hundreds of supernatural encounters by what he perceived to be God fearing Christians of all social classes while he was travelling through Wales on horseback, something which he did for 70 years, which sounds pretty awful. But he records a not entirely unsurprising Christian origin story for the Canwyll Corph, saying that it was the effect of St David's prayer, so asking for a sign of immortality for his careless parishioners. And this is often the origin story that's presented today in folklore writing, so that it's a Christian superstition, although that idea is, to all intents and purposes, actually an 18th century invention. But in any case, it's essentially a supernatural light or flame which foretells death. It's usually seen in association with corpse roads, showing the route that the coffin would take from the home to the church or wherever the body was going to be buried. And that's exactly what happens in that very first account from 1656, where Lewis's wife says that she sees a Canwyll Corph passing under the house towards the church, and then sometime later, a neighbour passed that same way to be buried. And in reality, I mean, those accounts change very little from the 17th century, which is probably a testament to the enduring strength of belief in that particular entity in Wales over the centuries. It was generally said that every person had their own candle, and that if you saw one, the death of whichever person that candle belonged to in the parish would sort of, generally speaking, happen within the year. There are some communities in Wales who believed you had to have second sight to be able to see them. But more commonly, the Canwyll Corph could be seen by anyone who just, I mean, sort of happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time. It was also believed that you might be able to guess who that particular candle might represent by the appearance of the flame. So, for instance, a red flame would be seen if it was a boy, light grey for girls, small flame, for instance, or if the person was very elderly or very unwell, and then a large, bright flame for those who were in the prime of life. Sometimes it didn't appear as an isolated light, but was instead seen carried by the apparition of somebody who was recently buried, or even, in some accounts, by spectral skull. Sometimes it was seen about a person's body before death or emanating from the mouths of a person who was close to death with the Canwyll Corph. I think it's important to remember that it's a distinct apparition to the more widely recognized will of the Wisp, these sort of ethereal lights that are seen floating up the marshy areas which also exist within Welsh folklore and are known as tarnesis, mastan, or hidlewin, even sort of. By the end of the 19th century, the will of the Wisp was sort of generally accepted to be a natural phenomenon, whereas the Canwyll Corph remained very much a supernatural entity. If we then sort of move on to talk about another significant omen, a Toili leaps to mind, or the phantom funeral, sometimes known as a tolithe, which I mentioned earlier, sometimes a kavriskin, a durhiolith in parts of Pois or even Khurith in parts of Caernarvonshire. As far as I can see. The oldest surviving text to describe this particular apparition is in a geographical, historical and religious account of the parish of Aberystruth, which was written in 1779 by the very same Reverend Edmund Jones that I mentioned earlier. So he describes it initially as an omen of the Tylwyth Teg with fairies, which, him being a good Christian chap, the reverend believes these to be evil spirits who had this unfailing knack to be able to tell somebody's death. The term itself is likely a vernacular corruption of the word Teulu, or family. And depending on the region these were spotted in, the word Teulu itself is sometimes used to denote this particular omen. But that etymology, the link with family, could well explain its early association with the fairies, because Tylwyth from Tylwyth Teg is also synonymous with family. By the time we get to the sort of 19th century, though, that link had sort of largely fallen to the wayside. And what we had instead was much like the description of the Canwyll Corph it was an apparition of a funeral procession that started from the house of the person who was going to die and then made its way along to the church and then to the grave. Sometimes witnesses were said to recognize individual members of the congregation, and other times it was made up of strangers. So linking back to the theme of the fairies I mentioned earlier, and usually it could happen at any time of day, so it didn't just happen at night and it could be witnessed by more than one person at once. Often there was this element of accompanying auditory phenomena, or sometimes you would just feel pushing and shoving of a ghostly procession without any auditory or visual components. The accounts of the Toili sort of generally died out quite a bit before the corpse candles, although you still find examples. I mean, I have an example from my database which was collected as recently as the 1960s in Ceredigion, so it still forms very much part of the sort of collective consciousness within Welsh folklore. And then if we move on then to a particularly unpleasant hag like spectre called Gwrach y Rhibyn, which very loosely translates into hag of the mist or wailing witch, depending on whose work you choose to read. Similarly, some folklore texts record her as being an omen that's only found in the Count of Glamorgan, but Gwrach y Rhibyn is in several different locations across the whole country, so isn't isolated by any means. She's most often sighted in the vicinity of water or sometimes at a crossroads. So those sort of very well known supernatural boundaries and was generally thought to stay concealed in fog until an unwary traveller happened to come upon her, where you could then hear her screaming horribly, either calling for her husband, wife, or child, depending on which of the travellers relations were going to die, and beating the water with her hands. And if she wasn't screaming any words in particular, then unfortunately, your own luck was very much about to run out. So there were some authors of the 18th and 19th centuries that sort of touted this notion that she represented Andras, the mother of evil at one time thought to represent an old Welsh goddess figure. But I think the link there is extremely tenuous and smacks of the antiquarian habit of goddess hunting. There are also some more obvious links which you could probably obviously draw with the banshee. And in reality, within Welsh folklore we have a load of other haglike creatures which you could draw similar links with. The Gwrach y Rhibyn often seems to have been conflated with another death omen within Welsh folklore texts called the cyhyraeth. So Welsh folklorists like John Tries describe them as being one and the same. It's probably not surprising because the word cyhyraeth itself can be used to describe a skeletal corporeal figure sort of made of skin and bones. So, not unlike the appearance of Gwrach y Rhibyn, as well as its other meaning, which is the better known wailing wraith found within Welsh folklore and in fact, accounts of the cyhyraeth precede Gwrach y Rhibyn and it's described as an auditory phenomenon only. So a little bit like the toll ice. The first probable account that I've been able to find of the Kurais being specifically described as an omen is again recorded by the Reverend Edmund Jones in 1780 in his book A Relation Of Apparitions Of Spirits In The Principality of Wales. In this account, he describes how it predominantly haunts along the River Towy in Ceredigion through to Gamardenshire, as well as being strongly associated with Pembrokeshire as well, he describes it as being heard more frequently before bad weather, and that its howl was said to resemble the groaning of a sick person who was close to death. So at first it would shriek from a distance in a very, very loud voice, then it would come nearer to you, but its second cry would be lower, and then it would wail right next to you, but this time sounding as if it was just on the cusp of death. So in Glamorgan in particular, it was said to foretell shipwrecks along the coast. And there's a similar entity then, in the old county of Miriones known as the Wauch, which was also said to shriek to warn fishermen and sailors of coming storms. We have another shrieking death omen one, which is called the Aderyn y corph, the beautifully named corpse bird. Traditionally a bird that was said to cry within earshot of a sick bed or more commonly, to beat its wings against the window panes of the sick person's bedroom. So with this definition in mind, the owl was often seen as the main culprit. And actually, as with lots of other cultures, the owl was considered sort of the luckiest, the unluckiest bird in Wales. So hearing the owl cry was in itself a well recognised death omen. But having said that, there is a very clear distinction between the Aderyn y corph and the pretentious behaviour of other birds. So the Aderyn y corph was very much a phantasmal creature, often described without wings or feathers, sometimes crying out in Welsh “Come, come.” It's sometimes said to be capable of shooting out ice cold beams from its eyes, and in other places has got balls of fire instead of eyes. Sometimes it lacks feathers, sometimes it's got fur instead, sometimes it's got flappers instead of wings. So, quite variable depending on which region in Wales you're at. And then lastly, but I guess by no means least, out of this sort of group of phantasmal death omens, you have the Cwn Annwn, the hounds of Annwn, whose howling was believed to foretell death. They probably represent one of the oldest omens within Welsh tradition. So they were first recorded in the first branch of the Mabinogi as the hunting dogs of Aron, king of the welsh otherworld Annwn while he was out hunting in Narberth. They're often in the Mabinogi. They're described as being gleaming, shining white with equally shiny red ears, those colours being particularly indicative of their supernatural origins. By the 18th century, though, the cornanon are being described in all manner of sizes and coat colours within Welsh folklore accounts. So you have black dogs, red dogs, spotted dogs, dogs dripping in Gaul, and then even fire breathing dogs in Mirioniv. They're also not exclusively known as Cwn Annwn, and the terminology is generally quite interchangeable, depending largely on the area they were sighted or heard. So they're sometimes known as corn witbir or korn awer, which means sky dogs, Gwyllgi, which means wild dogs, and even sometimes korn deer. The sort of more universally recognized black dogs and bendith y mamau, the hounds of the blessings of the mothers or the hounds of the fairies, the latter of which was sometimes associated with the toily by virtue of that association with the fairies. Generally speaking, Cwn Annwn are often connected with the wild hunt. The leader in Wales tends to appear as Aron, or his psychopompic counterpart Gwyn ap Nudd who's the king of the fairies. One of their early 18th century attributes is that the howls were said to be louder at a distance, and then they were said to fade as they came nearer. A peculiarity which again seems to have originated in 1780 in the works of the Reverend Edmund Jones, and then repeated so many times by later antiquarians and folklorists that it's now sort of embedded itself as canon. So that is a quick whistle stop tour through all of our well, most of our phantasmal death omens in Wales.

Speaker A: But they really are intriguing. And some of the aspects of folklore that are particularly fascinating, I think, are when you look at these subtle variations that sometimes are very slight, that speak to that particular community, the people that live there, and then you have these very unique folkloric death omens that are specific to the type of trade you mentioned, those along the coastal region where you've got ones very specific to mariners, people, sailing, fishermen. And so it really does act as this testimony, I think, to the life of the everyday person, their experiences, what they were going through, the difficulties and the struggles, and death being a big part of that. But one of the things that I wanted to ask you is whether there's a particular regional variation, that thread of something that seems to run across many communities.

Speaker C: Yes, I mean, the Cwn Annwn is a brilliant example of that. So whether you call them Cwn Annwn or cornanon will literally change depending on which sort of boundary lines you're stepping over. But then, even in those stories, you'll always find a common thread. So there's a brilliant example in Flangeler, in Carmarthenshire in Sierra Gae Verde, where the Cwn Annwn in that particular region was thought to be able to take on different forms, so they would sometimes appear as mice or pigs. And in sort of more general Welsh ghost law, we have abundant animal apparitions compared to the rest of Britain, certainly compared to England, and shapeshifting amongst animal apparitions is an extremely common motif, but in this instance, it directly relates to the Cwn Annwn. So they have an account of a man in the late 19th century being chased down a mountain by mice, which, by the time he got to the pub and told everybody, they were very much under the impression that it was the corn anon that had been chasing him. So whereas the sort of significance of hounds shapeshifting into mice and pigs and such like is quite a common motif within Welsh ghost law, the motif of pig in particular is very significant in Welsh folklore. It's found throughout the country, frequently associated with the supernatural in Wales, even within the earliest prose text. So pigs appear repeatedly throughout the Mabinogi, for instance. So even though you have these regional differences, and sometimes they're quite marked regional differences, you often find that sort of common thread running through all of them. So something that is distinctly Welsh that you can pick out.

Speaker A: Yeah, I was going to say, I can't recall at kind of the tip of my fingertips and the tip of my tongue, mice and pigs as part of death omens across the British Isles. I think that is very unique to Wales, so I can't think of any other examples of that.

Speaker C: We are a creative bunch, remember?

Speaker A: It is I mean, it's a bit like something like Cinderella, isn't it, with the coach? And it feels very kind of creative and unusual and unique. Where does that come from? You wouldn't associate it with death, something so small and so innocuous, really, that's chasing you to be so frightened of. But it works and it's part of, as you said, it's there. It's very rich in these threads, animals being prevalent as part of this aspect of this folklore, really.

Speaker C: Yeah. I suppose there's a lot of motifs that run through, especially early Welsh ghost law, lots of differences, really, between what's reported in Wales and then what's reported in the rest of Britain and Ireland. So, as I said, sort of ghosts in animal form in Wales are abundant, literally hundreds and hundreds of cases of ghostly beasts. Whereas if you look towards England at the research conducted by the Society of Psychical Research, there's not very many cases at all. So lots of accounts of wraiths, as well as in the classical sense of the meaning, so apparitions of living people just on the cusp of death, something which is so commonly recorded in Wales that it's almost presented as a sort of matter of fact occurrence in a lot of the parish history. Accounts, as I said, sort of looking towards the very early accounts of Welsh ghost law, a lot of our phantoms are described in very abstract terms. So we have these ghosts of animals, but we also have ghosts appearing as pyramids and as spheres and as balls or wheels of fire, or these humanoid figures with sort of missing limbs or missing items of clothing. So it's probably more a commentary on the religious iconography, or the lack, really, of religious imagery that existed after the destruction of the monasteries and the increasing Puritanical influence during the 16th century for the illiterate lower classes, really to depend on when they were telling their ghost stories. So instead of describing these sort of monstrosities that you sometimes see across the border, that can easily be traced back to surviving religious iconography, instead they sort of had to rely on the things that they already knew. So that's, I think, where a lot of these animal apparitions come from was obviously they would obviously be scared of dogs or large animals. And so these often appear in some form within our folklore. So it's abstractions, really, rather than sort of overactive imaginations, if you like. But I think it's really important to appreciate this because it sort of proves that Wales has got its own folklore separate from the rest of Britain and Ireland. It largely exists independently, a large proportion of that originates independently. And then, even more importantly, I think, it continues to survive independently of any influence from over the border, certainly up until sort of the late 20th century at least.

Speaker A: We are about to celebrate hitting our 100th episode of Haunted History Chronicles on the last Friday of April 2023 to say thank you for the months of May, June and July. There are going to be daily paranormal podcasts available to enjoy on all tiers over on Patreon, as well as the usual additional items available over there. Signing up now will gain you access to these, as well as all previous archived content. For as little as one pound, you could be getting hundreds of podcasts to enjoy and more, and know that you're contributing and helping the podcast to put out another 100 episodes. You can find the link in the episode Description Notes as well as on the Haunted History Chronicles website, along with other simple and great ways to support the podcast directly. It's all truly very much appreciated. And now let's head back to the podcast. I think it's one of the sad parts of it, really, that it all kind of gets lumped together. And even if you look at Britain, if you look at Cornish folklore, for example, it is so unique, so very much original in terms of that region, but yet it does get lumped in with everything else in the same way. And you almost have to be a bit more discerning than that and a bit more thorough, I think, in looking at these and teasing them apart to see, yes, what some of the commonalities and the features are similar or not. So similar are. But at the same time, I think you also have to appreciate them for these particular areas in these particular regions. And in the case of Wales, having them stand alone for what they signify for Wales, it then results in misinterpretation and things blending and bleeding together. I mean, you mentioned the banshee. I think that's a classic example where that element of folklore, how when you see it spread across places like Scotland and into England and elsewhere, etc. How the lines between the differences become merged somehow because they don't get treated as separate and looking at how they are different and how they are very much important for the aspect of the region, be it Scotland, be it Ireland and what they say in those areas first and foremost, if that makes sense.

Speaker C: Yeah, I completely agree. I think we've also got this problem in Welsh folklore within a sort of more contemporary context as well. So I've certainly found that there's been this sort of growing tendency to erase regional variation within our folklore. So often you'll see social media posts claiming that a custom took place in this sort of nebulous Wales, most likely reflecting a combination of character limits and possibly an unwillingness on the part of broadcasters to attempt some of the difficult pronunciations. So it becomes Wales rather than the more correct specific region within Wales. So you have that sort of element of overgeneralization, but we also suffer from a lot of over embellishment as well. So there are several issues when it comes to studying Welsh folklore that you have to deal with. You need to bear in mind, first off, how these accounts were collected. So the earliest accounts in Welsh hauntings were predominantly collected by English gentry. So people like Aubrey Glanville and Pennant, the wealthy, educated, upper class men. So while the records that they've collected are definitely invaluable to our understanding of the folklore of that particular time, it's very important to remember that these men had very little experience of the Welsh lower classes and their customs. And they also had this tendency to present their own sort of societal or religious biases within their work. So we do have that one exception, which I mentioned several times already, the collected works of the Reverend Edmund Jones. So, as I mentioned before, he collected accounts from all walks of life, so from servants the whole way through to the gentry. His work is far from unbiased, but at least it paints a fairly accurate picture of folk belief and supernatural belief during the 18th century. And then when you move on later to collections in the 19th and 20th century in Wales, this was often sort of the life's work of various clergymen, scholars, really, who often had a vested interest in, I guess, preserving and amplifying Welsh culture and were more often than not local to the area that they were writing about. So they were at least usually able to provide more accurate and reflective accounts of the folklore of that particular region. It's these people that frequently wrote parish history accounts, more often than not, published in Welsh. And so it's these texts that are, unfortunately, notably absent from English language works on the supernatural in Wales. And these are therefore exactly the sort of texts I've sort of tried to include in my book. But we also have this problem of over romanticization, so the more embellished the post on social media, then the more likes you might expect from it. But it's also not a phenomenon that's new to Welsh folklore. So you had folklorists of the late 19th and early 20th centuries that were also really fond of enhancing their tales. So people like Wirt Sykes and Marie Trebellian just probably as a response to the time in which they were writing sort of at the tail end of the Industrial Revolution, with parts of Wales, especially the South Wales Valleys, here having been rapidly transformed beyond recognition. Marie Trevellian's Folklore and Folk Stories of Wales, which I think she wrote in 1909, is delightful and she's an extremely interesting character. But part of me dies every time I see someone quoting Welsh folklore from that book. Given that a lot of it is unreferenced and unsubstantiated, lots of the stories have been embellished beyond recognition, and quite a lot of it is simply just made up for effect, so that there's perhaps a sort of slight lack of quality control, perhaps, when it comes to presenting our folklore to a wider audience.

Speaker A: Yeah, I mean, I think there's something about that moment, isn't there, between almost one world and stepping into another and trying to cling to the old world. And so this need of overegging the pudding and romanticising it, I think, is something that you see elsewhere as well. But I think it is something to be mindful of, because for me, actually, when you get to that little snippet, that sentence or two, that paragraph, that story that's unique to a particular area, that's the magical stuff, actually. You don't need the rest. That's the amazing bit, isn't it? And so it's just something, I think, to be aware of. Like most elements of history, whoever the narrator is, whoever is telling it, you have to be mindful of their reference, the time that they're doing it, their biases and all those other things, really.

Speaker C: Yeah. I mean, there was a fantastic example that I found whilst researching the book, and I sort of said that when we were doing this, we weren't going to include the stories that appeared in most of the coffee table books about ghosts in Wales. But there's a very well known ghost story about a man shaped monster that haunts Sinkenoh, which is the reservoir in Dolgesha in Guinev, and it's said to drag itself out of the water crying, the hour is come, but not the man. And then legend has it that, of course, if you stand too close to it, you'll be dragged in with it. So, as this story is found in the vast majority of coffee table books about Welsh ghosts. Now, the person who first suggested that the lake in question was the eminent folklorist Teagwin Jones in the sort of seminal text on Welsh folklore, which is called Welsh Folklore and Folk Customs, which he wrote in 1930. But that assumption of his was based on an earlier 1928 report from the Folklore Journal of an Otherwise Unnamed Pool in Dolgetla, where this was said to occur. But I actually found the earliest account of that story having gone down what can only be described as the mother of all rabbit holes. The earliest account is actually recorded in 1863 by the poet and the Welsh folk song collector Kiriog. That's his bardic name. The story instead involves a nearby lake, so a different lake altogether, Linguernan. And instead it tells the tale of how local folk notice that on their way home from Dogesa Fair one evening, a stranger was seen lurking around the shores of Guernan, shouting, the hour has come and the man has not passed. And he was shouting this around the lake until the early hours of the morning, and then the following day was unfortunately found face down on the lake. So it's presumably a story of how local folk were wary of welcoming strangers into the community. And this poor chap has presumably spent the day enjoying himself a bit too much, probably at the fair. But it's only taken one author to misinterpret or assume the facts of that story, for it suddenly to have changed location altogether and is now this much more sinister ghost story that involves a separate location. I mean, albeit it's probably a much more enjoyable story as well than the original sort of quite sad tale, to be honest. But it's sort of been quite fascinating to watch that happen from one account to the next and just see how that snowballs and becomes its own separate legend, if you liked. And sort of folklore. Folklore, by its very nature evolves, doesn't it have to evolve in order to be able to survive? So I don't necessarily think it's a bad thing, but it is interesting to see how many of those tales have evolved based on people not being able to understand the original Welsh language sources and so misinterpreting and mistranslating. And that's how those stories evolve compared to how they've evolved within those local communities who've kept those Welsh language stories alive. And there are definitely examples of stories that you get in these coffee table books which are completely different to the stories that are still held by those communities. So I think it's also important to acknowledge that as well.

Speaker A: So, do you have a favourite example of a death apparition? A death omen?

Speaker C: I quite like the Canwyll Corph. The corpse candle. It sort of does what it says on the tin, doesn't it? It's fairly no nonsense. Turns up, shows you that you're going to die within the year, gives you a good year to put your affairs in order. No nonsense. So I quite like the Canwyll Corph, I have to say.

Speaker A: I think there's something very visual about it. The idea as well that you can have a sense of who it is that's affected by the length of the candle and how many are there, and then the colour. It really kind of plays a part in the community, I think, in kind of bringing people together in a very strange way.

Speaker C: Yeah. And you do get I mean, I say it's fairly straightforward, you do get regional variations in the corpse candle as well. So there's an example from Neath Port Talbot of a chap being beaten to death by a corpse candle because he came into contact with it, he blocked its path when the corpse candle was sort of marking out its route to the church. And there's another account of the corpse candle sort of traversing water, going into a river and coming out the other end in the form of a pig. So, again, you've got that motif of the pig in Welsh folklore, so it all ties in together, doesn't it?

Speaker A: It does. It's rather strange. One of the things that I wanted to kind of pick your brain, because I know you love the supernatural, you love ghosts or as well. And I was wondering if there are particular aspects of death omens where there is this kind of crossover into ghost reportings and people returning as part of apparitions, appearing basically to foretell death, if there are aspects of that that come through as well. This crossover between these two kinds of branches, if you like, of ghost reportings, ghost sightings, and specifically death omens. Yeah.

Speaker C: So I think I mentioned quite early on that there's lots of reports in Wales about sort of wraiths in the classical sense, so apparitions of people who are just about to die. And these are frequently reported within focal texts, but also just in parish history accounts. So there's innumerable examples across the entirety of Wales of people out walking in the evening and coming face to face with their neighbour, but they know that their neighbour is in bed because they've just passed their window or they know that their neighbour is know is on a journey somewhere else, so wouldn't be in the village anyway. So there's lots of those sorts of examples where people have written that they're essentially seeing sort of spirits, they're seeing ghosts, but they are in of themselves, death omens as well.

Speaker A: Again, I think it speaks of community, doesn't it? And it shows that connectedness. And around the world, when it comes to ghost law, you have these similarities that defy time, that defy regions, that defy countries, and yet you see them coming up time and time again. And why is it possible that they can be in so many places in different parts of the world when that element of being able to have that communication spread just wasn't there for that to happen? But yet we see it recurring over and over again. It's a fascinating aspect that I think is something to definitely look into and to kind of think about and to be fascinated by, because I know it's something that interests me.

Speaker C: Yeah, I think you've hit the nail on the head there, really, with the sense of community being very integral to those sorts of apparitions. I mean, in Welsh ghost law in general, that pervasive sense of close knit communities is sort of present throughout, regardless of the type of apparition. There's a really poignant example. It sort of really hit me when I read it from slangeler in Gwyneth of a mother who'd recently lost her son. And the son's spirit was said to have been seen wandering the village at night by one of the other parishioners. And then, for the next however many weeks, this elderly mother spends all night just traversing the road between her house and the church over and over and over again, because the belief is that if somebody's seen a spirit, then there is some message that they need to relay. And if they can't relay that message, then that spirit will never rest. So she spends all of her time looking for her son so that she can help lay her son's spirit to rest. I just thought that was heartbreaking when I read it.

Speaker A: Well, it speaks to grief, doesn't it? To loss and to that profound need to make sure that their loved one is at peace. And again, it comes back to what people believed at the time, and certainly perceptions around life after death and what they believed needed to happen for those souls to be at rest. And it's, again, I think, really important to preserve these stories for what they do tell us about our past and where we've been, what we've believed, and how that changes over time, or doesn't change over time, depending on what aspect it's looking at, really.

Speaker C: Yeah, I completely agree. That's sort of what I've been trying to do with the book, because I think that comes out much more prominently in the Welsh language texts, the ones that have been written by the parishioners in the sort of parish history accounts. As we mentioned earlier, sort of even with the more academic contemporary texts, sort of the original Welsh sources aren't really used to inform opinion. So what I've been doing instead is to focus directly on those Welsh sources, many of them sort of extremely rare, mostly unrecorded since the time of their initial publication, which in itself is a travesty. I mean, even if these stories are being kept alive within communities, the fact that they've not been republished again is quite sad. And then some of them sort of were publishing really for the first time ever. So having spent the best part of a year translating the hundreds of accounts that I've collected over the years from various different sources, the hope is really that the new ideas we've been able to put forward and then some of those misconceptions that I've been able to address on the back of my research will sort of help to improve that collective understanding of ghost law in Wales. And with things like that sense of community that will just come as part of that new understanding, I think it's important to realise that in Wales, these aren't, for the most part, they're not lost or forgotten, they are stories that are being currently told over and over again within communities. It's just that perhaps those stories then aren't travelling beyond those communities and they're not reaching a wider audience. And so that hopefully, with the research that I'm doing, it'll sort of bring those stories to a wider audience and be something that people can celebrate regional differences. It's so important within folklore. And I often in Wales that is lost for the reasons that I've mentioned earlier. So, yeah, really excited to be doing this sort of work, to be honest.

Speaker A: And you have your book that you mentioned earlier coming out in September. Do you want to just tell people, listening briefly, what they can expect from this book that you've coauthored with Mark Norman?

Speaker C: If you've ever visited Wales, and lots.

Speaker A: Of times into any of the bookshops.

Speaker C: There, you'll usually find a load of those coffee table books written about Welsh ghosts. They're predominantly aimed at tourists and they often provide a fairly broad overview of some of our most well known stories and legends. And they're brilliant and I own the vast majority of them myself. But as I mentioned earlier, they do tend to rehash the same old stories. And sort of wonderful as those stories are, for a first language Welsh speaker, it's often a bone of contention that the use of Welsh language sources are notably absent from these books. So that is essentially what we've set out to do with this book. So it predominantly uses unpublished, untranslated material, or material that's extremely rare. So even the most seasoned Welsh folklorist hopefully will find something in there that they've not heard of before. So, as I said, hours and hours of my time translating hundreds of these stories to English for the first time. So hopefully that will just help improve the understanding of Welsh ghost law, I mean, both inside and outside the country, I think, importantly.

Speaker A: So, yeah, I can't wait for it to come out. Seriously, I'm literally wait for it to come out. That is incredible to do that. I can't imagine the amount of work that you've done to do all of that and put it together. And like you said, the amount of hours translating the original source material. But to be able to then have that for imprint, to see that and to have it collated is an incredible body of work. And like you said, I think it will really help showcase the uniqueness and the beauty of Welsh folklore and ghost law, et cetera, for anybody to enjoy. Anyone.

Speaker C: Yeah, I mean, that's the hope. And the beauty is obviously with the work I'm doing now as an honorary research fellow, it's essentially the tip of the iceberg. So I probably got enough within my own database to write the exact same book with completely different accounts all over again. But then I've got an entire archive now of cases that I can just delve into at my leisure. And the plan is to digitise and to translate all of those cases as well, so they should all be available for the public to enjoy in the next few years.

Speaker A: That is incredible, honestly. You know when you're just waiting for Christmas, that feeling of as a kid, when you're just marking it off, that's how I feel, because I just think things like that are so exciting and knowing that that's all to come, not only with the book, but obviously what you're working on behind the scenes is just incredible. And I'm so excited and I'm sure people listening are going to feel the same way. So I will make sure to put all of your details onto the website and into the podcast description notes so that people can easily find you, find out what you're up to, get news of other things that you're up to when the book's out, so that they don't miss anything, really. And I will say goodbye to everybody listening.

Speaker C: Bye, everybody.