Part 10 (2/2)
Next morning, when breakfasting, she asked the waiter whether he knew if any Irish person in the house or street had died. The man looked rather surprised at the question, and said ”No.” Presently, however, he came hurrying back to Miss W---- and said ”Colonel F.,” mentioning a well-known name, ”a gentleman from Ireland, who has been staying here very ill for some time, died last night.”
Miss W---- was always firmly convinced that what she heard and saw that night at Bangor were the shadow and the warning cry of the Colonel's family banshee.
The other instance was told me by a friend, who declared that being awakened one night when staying in the town of Cardigan by an extraordinary and startling noise at his window, he jumped up, threw open the window and looked out. And there, _flying_ down the street he saw what he called ”a banshee”-like spectre ”of horror indescribable, which beat its way slowly past the silent houses till it disappeared in the gloom beyond.” It returned no more, and the rest of the night pa.s.sed undisturbed; but on receiving unexpected news next day of the death of a great friend, my informant could not help thinking of the extraordinary incident, and wondering if the ”banshee” had brought a warning.
It is a common belief in Wales that the screeching of barn-owls close to a house is a very bad sign, betokening the approach of death, and certainly it requires no great effort of the imagination to produce a shudder of foreboding as the gloom of an autumn evening is suddenly rent by the weird cry. And though I am no believer in what is of course a mere superst.i.tion, yet the recollection of it came to my mind on an occasion when I happened to be staying at a country house where a death occurred somewhat unexpectedly. I well remember the incessant and extraordinary noise made by the owls during a few evenings immediately before and after the event, shriek following shriek, often appearing to be just outside the windows; and though every one knew it was only the owls, yet it would be difficult to describe the uncanny, disturbing effect produced on one's mind by such an unearthly-sounding clamour.
This was only coincidence; but whether regarded as prophetic or not, the ”gloom-bird's hated screech,” as Keats calls it, is not a cheerful sound, and seems a fitting accompaniment to that hour
”In the dead vast and middle of the night When churchyards yawn.”
Mysterious knockings and taps, or the sound of an invisible horse's hoofs stopping at the door, are also thought in Wales to be death omens.
It is said that in the old days of lead-mining in Cardigans.h.i.+re, the miners always used to declare that to hear ”the knockers” at work was ”a sure sign” of an accident coming.
I once heard a story about a woman belonging to a parish not far from my own home, who went with her husband to live in Glamorgans.h.i.+re, where he heard of work at Pontypridd, to which town he betook himself, leaving his wife at Dowlais. But a terrible accident happened in the mine where the man worked, and he was killed. His body was brought back to his wife's house at Dowlais, and as the coffin was carried into one of the upstairs rooms, it was carelessly allowed to knock noisily against the door. The widow afterwards told her friends that two nights before the accident happened she had been awakened in that very room, by a loud sound exactly like that caused by the b.u.mping of the coffin, and could not imagine what had made such an odd noise. She was thenceforward convinced that a premonitory sound of the coffin being carried into the room had been sent her as a ”warning.”
There is a house I know very well in South Wales where a curious sound, always supposed to be of ”ghostly” origin, used to be heard occasionally by a lady who lived there for a few years. She described it as the noise ”of a person digging a grave,” or using a pick-axe for that purpose, and said it was most horrible and gruesome to hear. It appeared to come from just outside the drawing-room windows, yet nothing was to be seen if one looked out. Other tenants have come and gone since that lady's time, and I have never heard again of the ghostly grave-digger. But mysterious footsteps have been heard in that house quite lately, and by three people who say they do not ”believe in ghosts”; one of them, however, admitted to me that in spite of close investigation he was utterly unable to account for the soft footfalls he most certainly heard. But it may well be that invisible presences still linger about a place which in olden times was the site of a little settlement of monks, though nothing now remains but the name to remind us of the fact.[20]
[Footnote 20: There is a tradition connected with this house concerning a former owner who was a miser and died about a century ago, to the effect that his spirit is imprisoned within a certain rock on the coast about two miles away, where he is doomed to stay until he has picked his way out with a pin!]
While on the subject of warnings and death omens, I may mention a curious tradition connected with an old church I know in Pembrokes.h.i.+re.
In a corner of the building is kept the bier used at funerals; and it is reported that always just before any death occurs in the parish, this bier is heard to creak loudly, as though a heavy burden had been laid upon it. The churchyard adjoining has also a haunted reputation, and I have been told that not even a tramp would willingly pa.s.s its gates after dark.
Another death warning is the tolling--by unseen hands--of the bell of Blaenporth Church (in Cardigans.h.i.+re). This eerie sound was said to be always heard at midday and midnight just before the death of any paris.h.i.+oner of importance. But as far as I can gather, the Blaenporth bell has ceased to toll its warnings; for an inhabitant of the parish, who knows the country people and their ideas very well, told me she had never heard of the mysterious tolling, and thought it must be a dead tradition. But it is a picturesque one, and so characteristic of Celtic ideas, ever interpreting as signs and portents the slightest incident that happens to break the ordinary routine of life, that I thought it worth recording here.
Another superst.i.tion (certainly not picturesque), which I have never heard of but in Cardigans.h.i.+re, was that it was very unlucky to bury the bodies of any cattle that happened to be found dead in the fields! What idea can have been connected with such an unsanitary prejudice I cannot imagine.
When reading a paper at a local antiquarian meeting some few weeks ago, the Vicar of Lledrod,[21] Mr. H. M. Williams, referred to the origin of the Welsh word ”Croesaw,” which means ”welcome”; and in explanation he related how he came to realise that the word was derived from the noun _croes_ (a cross). He said: ”A farmer's wife, whenever I visited her house, as soon as she saw me at the door, would take some instrument of iron, such as a poker or knitting-needle, and ceremoniously describe a cross on the hearth, and would afterwards address me with the words 'Croesaw i' chwi, syr.' ('Welcome to you, sir.') This custom existed at Llanddeusant, Carmarthens.h.i.+re, where I lived twenty years ago.”
[Footnote 21: A Cardigans.h.i.+re parish.]
This strikes me as one of the most curious survivals of an ancient superst.i.tion that I have heard of in Wales. Of course there can be no doubt as to the word ”croesaw” being derived from the ”croes” made as described above; but the question is, why was that cross made at all?
The Vicar, who is a scholar and learned antiquary, and whose views should therefore be regarded with respect, seemed to think that the cross was a sort of sign and seal of welcome, as a man in old days would set his mark--a cross--to anything as a signification of approval and affirmation. Perhaps that is so; but my own idea (advanced with all diffidence) is that the cross had a far different meaning, and that it had its origin in the mediaeval dread of the ”evil eye.” A stranger coming to the house must ever be welcomed according to the laws of Welsh hospitality, and he might very likely be quite guiltless of the uncanny power to ”ill-wish” or ”overlook.” But to avoid risks, it was better to use some simple charm, before bidding the visitor enter, and what could be more powerful against malign influences than the holy symbol of the cross quickly made in the ashes, where it could be as easily obliterated the next moment, and so wound n.o.body's feelings. Again, the use of the poker or knitting-needle for the rite seems to be a remnant of the old universal belief that witches, evil spirits, and ghosts hated iron, and cannot harm a person protected by that metal. Such at least is my explanation of a most interesting local custom, which has become mechanical nowadays--just as many of us cross ourselves when we see a magpie, without knowing why--and perhaps by this time has disappeared altogether.
Mr. Williams tells me he has never met with this custom in Cardigans.h.i.+re, but says that a curious little ceremony used to be performed, about fifty years ago, by the children of the parish of Verwig, near Cardigan. ”As the children were going home from school, at a cross-road before parting, one of the elder ones would describe a cross on the road and solemnly utter the following holy wish:
”Gris Groes, Myn Un, ie, Myn Un, aed mys moes.”
Rendered in English this is:
”Christ's Cross By the Holy One, yea by the Holy One, may gentle manners prevail.”
What the quaint little ceremony meant it is hard to say, and no doubt the children themselves could have given no reason for its performance, except that ”they always did it.” But it was a pretty idea, whatever its esoteric meaning, which would probably lead us back to the days when Wales was Roman Catholic, and nearly all instruction, both as regards book-learning and manners, in the hands of priests and monks. Then it is not difficult to imagine some such simple charm or invocation taught his wild scholars by the gentle schoolmaster-monk of the local monastery, to help carry the peace of the cloister home with them, and as a safeguard against the emissaries of Satan, in whose active power to work ill our forefathers so firmly believed. And it may be that the slight element of mystery--always attractive to childish minds--connected with the making of the cross may have helped to preserve the little custom, when one dependent on words alone would more readily have been forgotten.
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