Celtic Lore & Legend (20 page)

The Ankou stands in the coach.

He is escorted by two companions, both of whom walk. One of them leads the first horse by the bridle. The other has the job of opening the field gates and the doors of the houses. He is also the one who piles the dead up in the coach; the dead whom the Ankou has harvested.

When the Ankou sets out on his tour, they say his coach is filled with pebbles that it will go more heavily, making more noise.

When he reaches the house where there is someone that he must harvest, he abruptly discharges his load, to make room for his new ‘ballast.’

That is the cause of the sound of pebbles which is heard so often in home where they are watching over a dying person, just at the time of that person’s last breath.

“It was a night in June, at a time when they leave the horses out all night.

A young man had taken his horses to the fields. He was whistling on his way back, for the night was clear and the moon was shining. He heard a coach coming towards him, a coach whose badly greased axle went ‘squeak-squeak.’

But he was sure it was the coach of death.

‘At least I’ll be able to see that coach with my own eyes’ he thought.

And he crossed the ditch and hid himself in a clump of hazels so that he could see without being seen.

The coach came into view.

It was drawn by three white horses harnessed one behind the other. Two men accompanied it, each dressed in black and wearing
wide-brimmed felt hats. One of them led the first horse by the bridle; the other was standing up in the front of the coach.

As the coach came opposite the hazel clump where the young man was hiding, the axle went ‘crack.’

‘Stop’ said the man on the coach to the one who was leading the horses.

The man cried ‘woa’ and the team came to a halt.

‘The axle pin’s just broken’, said the Ankou. ‘Go and cut what you need to make a new one from that hazel clump over there.’

‘I’m lost’ thought the young man, who right then regretted his indiscreet curiosity very much.

However, he was not punished there and then. The coachman cut off a branch, shaped it, inserted it into the axle and then the horses went on their way.

The young man was able to return home safe and sound, but towards morning, he was taken with an unknown fever and they buried him the next day.”

[
Editor’s Note
: Told by Francoise, daughter of Jean Le Gac, 1890]

“Gab Lucas worked at Rune-Riou. He went back every night to Kerdrenkenn where he lived with his wife Madelaine and five children in the most wretched thatched cottage of the poor village. For Gab Lucas had only the ten pennies that he earned by very hard work each day. This did not prevent him from having a happy nature and being a good worker. The owners of Rune-Riou valued him. At the end of the week, they often invited him to spend Saturday evening with them, drinking flip (rum and cider) and eating roast chestnuts. At the stroke of ten the farmer would give Gab his weekly wage and his wife would always add some present for the household at Kerdrenkenn.

One Saturday night she said to him

‘Gab, I’ve put a sack of potatoes aside for you. Give them to Madelaine on my behalf’.

Gab Lucas thanked her, threw the sack on his back and set off home, after having wished everyone good night.

It is a good three quarters of a league from Rune-Riou to Kerdrenkenn. Gab walked sprightly at first. The moon was shining and the good flip he had drunk warmed his stomach. He whistled a Breton air to keep himself company, happy that Madelaine would be pleased when she saw him return with a good sack of potatoes. They would cook a large potful for the next day; they would add a slice of pork belly to it, and they would all enjoy themselves.

All went well for a quarter of a league.

But then the virtue of the flip wore off in the coolness of the night. Gab felt all the tiredness of the day’s work come back to him. The sack of potatoes began to weigh heavy on his shoulders. Soon he no longer felt like whistling.

‘If only a wagon would come by’ he thought…. ‘But I’ll have no such luck.’

But just then he reached the cross where the track from the farm at Nizilzi joins the road.

‘Well,’ said Gab ‘I can always sit on the steps of the cross for a moment whilst I catch my breath.’

He set his load down, sat beside it, and lit his pipe.

The countryside was silent all around.

Suddenly the dogs at Nizilzi began to howl pitifully.

‘Why on earth are they making such a din?’ wondered Gab.

Then he heard the sound of a cart coming from Nizilzi. Its badly greased axle went squeak, squeak.

‘It looks as though my wish is about to come true; they must be going for a load of sand, they’ll take my sack right to my door,’ said Gab to himself.

He saw the horses come into view, and then the cart. They were terribly thin and emaciated those horses. They were certainly not from Nizilzi, because their horses always looked so fat and shiny. As for the cart, its base was made of a few loosely fitted planks,
two rude hurdles served as sides. A great gawk of a man, who was just as scraggy as his beasts, led this pitiful team. A large felt hat shaded his face. Gab could not recognise him. He greeted him all the same.

‘Comrade would you have room for this sack in your cart? My back’s aching. I’m only going as far as Kerdrenkenn.’

The carter did not reply.

‘He must not have heard me,’ said Gab to himself. ‘That awful cart makes such a noise.’

The opportunity was too good to be missed. Gab hurriedly put his pipe out, stuffed it into his jacket pocket, grabbed the sack of potatoes, and ran after the cart, which was going fast enough. He ended by catching up with it and dropped his sack inside, letting out a sigh of relief.

But how do you explain this? The sack went through the old planks and landed on the ground.

‘What sort of a cart is this?’ said Gab to himself.

He picked up the sack and once more put it in the cart, but this time further forward.

But the base of the cart had no solidity, for the sack and Gab went through it. Both of them rolled on the ground.

The strange team wound on its way. Its mysterious leader had not even turned his head.

Gab let them move away from him. When they had disappeared, he took his own turn to go up to Kerdrenkenn, where he arrived half-dead from fright.

‘What’s wrong’ asked Madeaine, seeing him so upset.

Gab told her of his adventure.

‘It’s quite simple.’ said his wife to him, ‘You’ve met the coach of the dead.’

Gab almost had a fit. The next day, they heard the church bell ringing. The Master of Nizilzi had died on the previous night, towards half-past ten.”

[
Editor’s Note
: Told by Marie-Yvonne, Port Blanc]

Throughout the Celtic world, prognostication, particularly the foretelling of death, was widespread. In their earliest times, the Celts were a war-like people, and it was advantageous to local leaders to know in advance what the outcome of a particular battle might be or if they would return alive from it. For this reason, both soothsayers and supernatural warnings were of the utmost importance. One of the best-known Celtic death warnings is, of course, the Irish banshee. The “woman of the fairy” is usually portrayed as a wailing specter whose unearthly keen heralds the death of the hearer or of some close relative. She was said to appear only to those with ancient Irish blood in their veins or who had some family connection to them. Although now considered to be a ghost, it is thought that the banshee was originally a living person, a woman who served as a soothsayer to the ancient royal houses of Ireland, warning kings and chieftains of death or approaching danger. There are, in fact, references in certain stories to a living banshee named Aoibheall who is described as the Banshee of the
Royal House of Munster and who is said to have foretold the death of Brian Boru, High King of Ireland, at the battle of Clontarf in 1014. The banshee has become
the
most celebrated death-warning worldwide.

However, she is not the only such portent. Other Celtic countries have their own harbingers of death and doom. At one time, the Welsh canwyll corph, or corpse candle, was as central to the Celtic mind as the banshee—even in Ireland. Everywhere across the Gaelic world, there are tales of flickering lights, signaling a demise or even guiding people to their final resting places. This exposition concerning this particular supernatural phenomenon comes from the Reverend Edmund Jones’s (1702–1793) “A Relation of Ghosts and Apparitions” (published in 1840), with a commentary added in 1896 by Welsh folklorist Reverend Elias Owen.

by Reverend Edmund Jones

“The corpse candle or
canwyll corph
was a light like that of a candle which was said to issue from the house where a death was about to occur and to take the course of the funeral procession to the burial place. This was the usual way of proceeding but this mysterious light was also thought to wend its way to the abode of a person about to die. Instances could be given of both kinds of apparitions.

I have met with persons in various parts of Wales who told me that they had seen a corpse candle. They described it as a pale bluish light moving slowly along a short distance above the ground. Strange tales are told of the course the light has taken. Once it was seen to go over hedges and to make straight for the churchyard wall. This was not then understood, but
when the funeral actually took place the ground was covered with snow, and the drift caused the procession to proceed along the fields and over the hedges and churchyard wall as indicated by the corpse candle.

It was ill jesting with the corpse candle. The Rev. J. Jenkins, Vicar of Hirnant told me that a drunken sailor at Borth said he went up to a corpse candle and attempted to light his pipe at it but he was whisked away and when he came to himself he discovered that he was well off the road in the bog.

Some have seen the resemblance of a skull carrying the candle, others the shape of the person that is to die carrying the candle between his fore-fingers, holding the light before his face. Some said that they saw the shape of those who were to be at the burying.

Those who have followed the light state that it proceeded to the church, lit up the building, emerged therefrom, and then hovered awhile over a certain spot in the churchyard, and then sank into the earth at the place where the deceased was to be buried.

There is a tradition that St. David, by prayer, obtained the corpse candle as a sign to the living of the reality of another world and that originally it was confined to his diocese. This tradition finds no place in the Life of the Saint, as given in the
Cambro-British Saints
, and there are many wonderful things recorded of that saint.

It was thought possible for a man to meet his own Candle. There is a tale of a person who met a candle and struck it with his walking-stick, when it became sparks which, however, reunited. The man was greatly frightened, became sick and died. At the spot where he had struck the Candle, the bier broke and the coffin fell to the ground, thus corroborating the man’s tale.”

I will now record one tale, not of the usual kind, which was told me by a person who is alive:

My informant told me that one John Roberts, Felin-y-Wig, was in the habit of sitting up a short time, after his family had retired to rest to smoke a quiet pipe, and the last thing he usually did before retiring for the night was to take a peep into the night. One evening, whilst peering around, he saw in the distance a light, where he knew there was no house and on further notice he observed that it was slowly going along the road from Bettws-Gwerfil-Goch to Felin-y-Wig. Where the road dipped, the light disappeared only, however, to appear again in such parts of the road as were visible from John Roberts’ house. At first Roberts thought that the light proceeded from a lantern but this was so unusual an occurrence in those parts that he gave up this idea and intently followed the motions of the light. It approached Roberts house and evidently this was its destination. He endeavoured to ascertain whether the light was carried by a man or woman, but he could see nothing save the light. When therefore, it turned into the lane approaching Roberts’s house, in considerable fear he entered the house and closed the door awaiting with fear the approach of the light. To his horror, he perceived the light passing through the shut door and it played in a quivering way underneath the roof, and thus vanished. That very night, the servant man died and his bed was right above the spot where the light had disappeared.

This was a kind of shadowy funeral which foretold the real one. In South Wales it goes by the name
toilu, toila
or
teulu
(the family)
anghladd
(unburied); in Montogomeryshire it is called
Drychiolaeth
(spectre)

I cannot do better than quote from Mr. Hamer’s
Parochial Account of Llanidloes
(
Montgomeryshire Collections
vol x., p.256) a description of one of these phantom funerals. He writes:

“It is only a few years ago that some excitement was caused amongst the superstitious portion of the inhabitants by the statement of a certain miner, who at the time was working in Brynpostig mine. On his way to the mine one dark night, he said that he was thoroughly frightened in China Street in seeing a spectral funeral leaving the house of one Hoskiss who was then very ill in bed. In his fright the miner turned his back on the house with the intention of going home, but almost fainting he could scarcely moved out of the way of the advancing procession, which gradually approached and at last surrounded him and then passed down Longbridge Street in the direction of the church. The frightened man managed with difficulty to drag himself home, but he was so ill that he was unable to go to work for several days.”