British Goblins by Wirt Sikes

Author:Wirt Sikes
Language: eng
Format: epub, azw3

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CHAPTER IX.

The Corpse Candle--Its Peculiarities--The Woman of Caerau--Grasping a Corpse Candle--The Crwys Candle--Lights issuing from the Mouth--Jesting with the Canwyll Corph--The Candle at Pontfaen--The Three Candles at Golden Grove--Origin of Death-Portents in Wales--Degree of Belief prevalent at the Present Day--Origin of Spirits in General--The Supernatural--The Question of a Future Life.

I.

Perhaps the most picturesque of the several death-omens popular in Wales is the Canwyll Corph, or Corpse Candle. It is also, according to my observation, the most extensively believed in at the present day. Its details are varied and extremely interesting. The idea of a goblin in the form of a lighted tallow candle is ludicrous enough, at first sight; and indeed I know several learned Welsh gentlemen who venture to laugh at it; but the superstition grows more and more grim and less risible the better one becomes acquainted with it. It is worth noting here that the canwyll, or candle, is a more poetic thing among the Welsh--has a higher literary place, so to speak--than among English-speaking peoples. In the works of their ancient poets the candle is mentioned in passages where we should use the word light or lamp--as in this verse, which is attributed to Aneurin (sixth century):

The best candle for man is prudence.

The candle is the favourite figure for mental guidance among the Welsh;[107] there is no book in the Welsh language so popular as a certain work of religious counsel by a former Vicar of Llandovery, called 'The Candle of the Cymry.' The Corpse Candle is always and invariably a death-warning. It sometimes appears as a stately flambeau, stalking along unsupported, burning with a ghastly blue flame. Sometimes it is a plain tallow 'dip' in the hand of a ghost, and when the ghost is seen distinctly it is recognised as the ghost of some person yet living, who will now soon die. This, it will be noticed, is a variation upon the wraith, or Lledrith. Sometimes the goblin is a light which issues from a person's mouth or nostrils. According to the belief of some sections, the size of the candle indicates the age of the person who is about to die, being large when it is a full-grown person whose death is foretold, small when it is a child, still smaller when an infant. Where two candles together are seen, one of which is large and the other small, it is a mother and child who are to die. When the flame is white, the doomed person is a woman; when red, a man.

FOOTNOTE:

[107] Stephens, 'Lit. of the Kymry,' 287. (New Ed., 1876.)

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.

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