I AM to give you the best satisfaction I can touching those fiery
apparitions* (Corps Candles) which do as it were mark out the way for
corpses to their {Greek text: Koimeterion} and sometimes before the
parties themselves fall sick, and sometimes in their sickness. I could
never hear in England of these, they are common in these three
counties, viz. Cardigan, Carmarthen, and Pembroke, and as I hear in
some other parts of Wales.**
* Mr. Baxter's Certainty of the Worlds of Spirits, p. 137.
** And Radnor.
These {Greek text: Phantasmata} in our language, we call Canhwyllan
Cyrph, (i.e.) Corps Candles; and candles we call them, not that we
see any thing besides the light; but because that light doth as much
resemble a material candle-light as eggs do eggs, saving, that in
their journey these candles be "modo apparentes, modo disparentes",
especially, when one comes near them; and if one come in the way
against them, unto whom they vanish; but presently appear behind and
hold on their course. If it be a little candle pale or bluish, then
follows the corps either of an abortive or some infant; if a big one,
then the corps of some one come to age: if there be seen two, or
three, or more, some big, some small together, then so many and such
corpses together. If two candles come from divers places, and be seen
to meet, the corpses will the like; if any of these candles are seen
to turn, sometimes a little out of the way, or path, that leadeth to
the church, the following corps will be forced to turn in that very
place, for the avoiding some dirty lane or plash, &c. Now let us fall
to evidence. Being about the age of fifteen, dwelling at Lanylar, late
at night, some neighbour saw one of these candles hovering up and down
along the river bank, until they were weary in beholding it, at last
they left it so, and went to bed. A few weeks after came a proper
damsel from Montgomeryshire, to see her friends, who dwelt on the
other side of that river Istwith, and thought to ford the river at
that very place where the light was seen; being dissuaded by some
lookers on (some it is most likely of those that saw the light) to
adventure on the water, which was high by reason of a flood: she
walked up and down along the river bank, even where, and even as the
aforesaid candle did, waiting for the falling of the water; which at
last she took, but too soon for her, for she was drowned therein. Of
late my sexton's wife, an aged understanding woman, saw from her bed,
a little bluish candle on her tables-end; within two or three days
after, came a fellow enquiring for her husband, and taking something
from under his cloak, claped it down upon the tables-end; it was a
dead born child.
Another time, the same woman saw such another candle upon the end of
the self same table; within a few days after a weak child newly
christened by me, was brought to the sexton's house, where presently
he died: and when the sexton's wife, who was then abroad, came home,
she found the child on the other end of the table, where she had seen
the candle.
Some thirty or forty years since, my wife's sister, being nurse to
Baronet Rudd's three eldest children, and (the Lady mistress being
dead) the Lady comptroller of the house going late into the chamber
where the maid servants lay, saw no less than five of these lights
together. It happened a while after, that the chamber being newly
plaistered, and a grate of coal fire therein kindled to hasten the
drying of the plaister, that five of the maid servants went to bed as
they were wont (but as it fell out) too soon; for in the morning they
were all dead, being suffocated in their sleep with the steam of the
new tempered lime and coal. This was at Langathen in Carmarthenshire.
--- Jo. Davis. See more.---
Generglyn, March 1656.
To this account of Mr. Davis, I will subjoin what my worthy friend and
neighbour Randal Caldicot, D.D. hath affirmed to me many years since,
viz. When any Christian is drowned in the river Dee, there will
appear over the water where the corps is, a light, by which means they
do find the body: and it is therefore called the Holy Dee. The
doctor's father was Mr. Caldicot, of Caldicot in Cheshire, which lies
on the river.