ALLEGED COUNTERPARTS OF THE BANSHEE
No country besides Ireland possesses a Banshee, though some countries
possess a family or national ghost somewhat resembling it. In Germany, for
example, popular tradition is full of rumours of white ladies who haunt
castles, woods, rivers, and mountains, where they may be seen combing
their yellow hair, or playing on harps or spinning. They usually, as their
name would suggest, wear white dresses, and not infrequently yellow or
green shoes of a most dainty and artistic design. Sometimes they are sad,
sometimes gay; sometimes they warn people of approaching death or
disaster, and sometimes, by their beauty, they blind men to an impending
peril, and thus lure them on to their death. When beautiful, they are
often very beautiful, though nearly always of the same type--golden hair
and long blue eyes; they are rarely dark, and their hair is never of that
peculiar copper and golden hue that is so common among Banshees. When
ugly, they are generally ugly indeed--either repulsive old crones, not
unlike the witches in Grimm's Fairy Tales, or death-heads mockingly
arrayed in the paraphernalia of the young; but their ugliness does not
seem to embrace that ghastly satanic mockery, that diabolical malevolence
that is inseparable from the malignant form of Banshee, and which inspires
in the beholders such a peculiar and unparalleled horror.
It is not my intention in this work to do more than briefly refer to a few
of the most famous of the German hauntings in their relation to the
Banshee; and, since it is the best known, I would first of all call
attention to the White Lady, that restricts its unwelcome attentions to
Royalty, and more especially, perhaps, to that branch of it known as the
House of Hohenzollern. Between this White Lady family phantasm and the
Banshee there is undoubtedly something in common. They are both
exclusively associated with families of really ancient lineage, which they
follow about from town to town, province to province, and country to
country; and the purpose of their respective missions is generally the
same, namely, to give warning of some approaching death or calamity, which
in the case of the White Lady is usually of a national order.
Occasionally, too, the German family ghost, like the Banshee, is heard
playing on a harp, but here I think the likeness ends. There are no very
striking characteristics in the appearance of the White Lady of the
Hohenzollerns, she would seem to be neither very beautiful nor the
reverse; nor does she convey the impression of belonging to any very
remote age; on the contrary, she might well be the earth-bound spirit of
someone who died in the Middle Ages or even later.
In December, 1628, she was seen in the Royal Palace in Berlin, and was
heard to say, "_Veni, judica vivos et mortuos; judicum mihi adhuc
superest_"--that is to say, "Come judge the quick and the dead--I wait for
judgment." She also manifested herself to one of the Fredericks of
Prussia, who regarded her advent as a sure sign of his approaching death,
which it was, for he died shortly afterwards. We next read of her
appearing in Bohemia at the Castle of Neuhaus. One of the princesses of
the royal house was trying on a new head-gear before a mirror, and,
thinking her waiting-maid was near at hand, she inquired of her the time.
To the Princess's horror, however, instead of the maid answering her, a
strange figure all in white, which her instincts told her was the famous
national ghost, stepped out from behind a screen and exclaimed, "_Zehn uhr
ist es irh Liebden!_" "It is ten o'clock, your love"; the last two words
being the mode of address usually adopted in Germany and Austria by
Royalties when speaking to one another. The Princess was soon afterwards
taken ill and died.
A faithful account of the appearance of the White Lady was published in
_The Iris_, a Frankfort journal, in 1829, and was vouched for by the
editor, George Doring. Doring's mother, who was companion to one of the
ladies at the Prussian Court, had two daughters, aged fourteen and
fifteen, who were in the habit of visiting her at the Palace. On one
occasion, when the two girls were alone in their mother's sitting-room,
doing some needlework, they were immeasurably surprised to hear the sounds
of music, proceeding, so it seemed to them, from behind a big stove that
occupied one corner of the apartment. One girl got up, and, taking a yard
measure, struck the spot where she fancied the music was coming from;
whereupon the measure was instantly snatched from her hand, the music, at
the same time, ceasing. She was so badly frightened that she ran out of
the room and took refuge in someone else's apartment.
On her return some minutes later, she found her sister lying on the floor
in a dead faint. On coming to, this sister stated that directly the other
had quitted the apartment, the music had begun again and, not only that,
but the figure of a woman, all in white, had suddenly risen from behind
the stove and began to advance towards her, causing her instantly to faint
with fright.
The lady in whose house the occurrence took place, on being acquainted
with what had happened, had the flooring near the stove taken up; but,
instead of discovering the treasure which she had hoped might be there, a
quantity of quick-lime only was found; and the affair eventually getting
to the King's ears, he displayed no surprise, but merely expressed his
belief that the apparition the girl had seen was that of the Countess
Agnes of Orlamunde, who had been bricked up alive in that room.
She had been the mistress of a former Margrave of Brandenburg, by whom she
had had two children, and when the Margrave's legitimate wife died the
Countess hoped he would marry her. This, however, he declined to do on the
plea that her offspring, at his death, would very probably dispute the
heirship to the property with the children of his lawful marriage. The
Countess then, in order to remove this obstacle to her union, poisoned her
two children, which act so disgusted the Margrave that he had her walled
up alive in the room where she had committed the crimes. The King went on
to explain that the phantasm appeared about every seven years, but more
often to children, to whom it was believed to be very much attached, than
to adults.
Against this explanation, however, is the more recent one that the White
Lady is Princess Bertha or Perchta von Rosenberg. This theory is founded
on the discovery of a portrait of Princess Bertha, which was identified by
someone as the portrait of the White Lady whom they had just seen.
In support of this theory it was pointed out that once when certain
charities which the Princess had stated in her will should be doled out
annually to the poor were neglected, not only was the White Lady seen, but
music and all kinds of other sounds were heard in the house where the
Princess had died. Very possibly, however, in neither of these theories is
there any truth, and the secret of the White Lady's activity lies in some
subtle and, perhaps, entirely unsuspected fact. It is, I think, quite
conceivable that she is no earth-bound soul, but some impersonating
elemental, which--like the Banshee--has, for some strange and wholly
inexplicable reason, attached itself to the unfortunate Hohenzollerns, and
their relatives and kinsmen.
Ballinus and Erasmus Francisci, in their published works, give numerous
accounts of the appearance of this same apparition; whilst Mrs Crowe
asserts that it was seen shortly before the publication of her "Night Side
of Nature." It would be interesting to know whether it appeared to the
ex-Kaiser Wilhelm, or to any of his family, before this last greatest and
most signally disastrous of all wars.
William Brereton in his "Travels" (i. 33) gives rather a different
description of this ghost. He says that the Queen of Bohemia told him
"that at Berlin--the Elector of Brandenberg's house--before the death of
anyone related in blood to that house, there appears and walks up and down
that house like unto a ghost in a white sheet, which walks during the time
of their sickness until their death."
In this account it will be noticed that there is no mention of sex, so
that the reader can only speculate as to whether the apparition was the
ghost of a man or a woman. Its appearance, however, according to this
account, strongly suggests a ghost of the sepulchral and death-head
type--an ordinary species of elemental--which suggestion is not apparent
in any other description of it that we have hitherto come across. Other
ancient German and Austrian families, besides those of the ruling houses,
possess their family ghosts, and here again, as in the parallel case of
the Irish and their Banshee, the family ghost of the Germans or Austrians
is by no means confined to the "White Lady." In some cases of German
family haunting, for example, the phenomenon is a roaring lion, in others
a howling dog; and in others a bell or gong, or sepulchral toned clock
striking at some unusual hour, and generally thirteen times. In all
instances, however, no matter whether the family ghost be German, Irish,
or Austrian, the purpose of its manifestations is the same--to predict
death or some very grave calamity.[12]
In the notes to the 1844 edition of Thomas Crofton Croker's "Fairy Legends
and Traditions of the South of Ireland," we find this paragraph taken from
the works of the Brothers Grimm and manuscript communications from Dr
Wilhelm Grimm:
"In the Tyrol they believe in a spirit which looks in at the window of a
house in which a person is to die (Deutsche Sagen, No. 266), the White
Woman with a veil over her head answers to the Banshee, but the tradition
of the Klage-weib (mourning woman) in the Luenchurger Heath (Spiels Archiv.
ii. 297) resembles it more. On stormy nights, when the moon shines faintly
through the fleeting clouds, she stalks of gigantic stature with
death-like aspect, and black, hollow eyes, wrapt in grave clothes which
float in the wind, and stretches her immense arm over the solitary hut,
uttering lamentable cries in the tempestuous darkness. Beneath the roof
over which the Klage-weib has leaned, one of the inmates must die in the
course of a month."
In Italy there are several families of distinction possessing a family
ghost that somewhat resembles the Banshee. According to Cardau and
Henningius Grosius the ancient Venetian family of Donati possess a ghost
in the form of a man's head, which is seen looking through a doorway
whenever any member of the family is doomed to die. The following extract
from their joint work serves as an illustration of it:
"Jacopo Donati, one of the most important families in Venice, had a child,
the heir to the family, very ill. At night, when in bed, Donati saw the
door of his chamber opened and the head of a man thrust in. Knowing that
it was not one of his servants, he roused the house, drew his sword, went
over the whole palace, all the servants declaring that they had seen such
a head thrust in at the doors of their several chambers at the same hour;
the fastenings were found all secure, so that no one could have come in
from without. The next day the child died."
Other families in Italy, a branch of the Paoli, for example, is haunted by
very sweet music, the voice of a woman singing to the accompaniment of a
harp or guitar, and invariably before a death.
Of the family ghost in Spain I have been able to gather but little
information. There, too, some of the oldest families seem to possess
ghosts that follow the fortunes, both at home and abroad, of the families
to which they are attached, but with the exception of this one point of
resemblance there seems to be in them little similarity to the Banshee.
In Denmark and Sweden the likeness between the family ghost and the
Banshee is decidedly pronounced. Quite a number of old Scandinavian
families possess attendant spirits very much after the style of the
Banshee; some very beautiful and sympathetic, and some quite the reverse;
the most notable difference being that in the Scandinavian apparition
there is none of that ghastly mixture of the grave, antiquity, and hell
that is so characteristic of the baleful type of Banshee, and which would
seem to distinguish it from the ghosts of all other countries. The
beautiful Scandinavian phantasms more closely resemble fairies or angels
than any women of this earth, whilst the hideous ones have all the
grotesqueness and crude horror of the witches of Andersen or Grimm. There
is nothing about them, as there so often is in the Banshee, to make one
wonder if they can be the phantasms of any long extinct race, or people,
for example, that might have hailed from the missing continent of
Atlantis, or have been in Ireland prior to the coming of the Celts.
The Scandinavian family ghosts are frankly either elementals or the
earth-bound spirits of the much more recent dead. Yet, as I have said,
they have certain points in common with the Banshee. They prognosticate
death or disaster; they scream and wail like women in the throes of some
great mental or physical agony; they sob or laugh; they occasionally tap
on the window-panes, or play on the harp; they sometimes haunt in pairs, a
kind spirit and an evilly disposed one attending the fortunes of the same
family; and they keep exclusively to the very oldest families. Oddly
enough at times the Finnish family ghost assumes the guise of a man.
Burton, for example, in his "Anatomy of Melancholy," tells us "that near
Rufus Nova, in Finland, there is a lake in which, when the governor of the
castle dies, a spectrum is seen in the habit of Orion, with a harp, and
makes excellent music, like those clocks in Cheshire which (they say)
presage death to the masters of the family; or that oak in Lanthadran Park
in Cornwall, which foreshadows so much."
I will not dwell any longer, however, on Scandinavian ghosts, as I purpose
later on to publish a volume on the same, but will pass on to the family
apparitions of Scotland, England, and Wales.
Beginning with Scotland, Sir Walter Scott was strong in his belief in the
Banshee, which he described as one of the most beautiful superstitions of
Europe. In his "Letters on Demonology" he says: "Several families of the
Highlands of Scotland anciently laid claim to the distinction of an
attendant spirit, who performed the office of the Irish Banshee," and he
particularly referred to the ghostly cries and lamentations which
foreboded death to members of the Clan of MacLean of Lochbery. But though
many of the Highland families do possess such a ghost, unlike the Banshee,
it is not restricted to the feminine sex, nor does its origin, as a rule,
date back to anything like such remote times. It would seem, indeed, to
belong to a much more ordinary species of phantasm, a species which is
seldom accompanied by music or any other sound, and which by no means
always prognosticates death, although on many occasions it has done so.
In addition to the MacLean, some of the best known cases of Scottish
family ghosts are as follows:
The Bodach au Dun, or Ghost of the Hills, which haunts the family of Grant
Rothiemurcus, and the Llam-dearg, or spectre of the Bloody Hand, which
pursues the fortunes of the Clan Kinchardine. According to Sir Walter
Scott in the Macfarlane MSS. this spirit was chiefly to be seen in the
Glenmore, where it took the form of a soldier with one hand perpetually
dripping with blood. At one time it invariably signalled its advent in the
manner which, I think, has no parallel among ghosts--it challenged members
of the Kinchardine Clan to fight a duel with it, and whether they accepted
or not they always died soon afterwards. As lately as 1669, says Sir
Walter Scott, it fought with three brothers, one after another, who
immediately died therefrom.
Then there is the Clan of Gurlinbeg which is haunted by Garlin Bodacher;
the Turloch Gorms who, according to Scott, are haunted by Mary Moulach, or
the girl with the hairy left hand;[13] and the Airlie family, whose seat
at Cortachy is haunted by the famous drummer, whose ghostly tattoos must
be taken as a sure sign that a member of the Ogilvie Clan--of which the
Earl of Airlie is the recognised head--will die very shortly.
Mr Ingram, in his "Haunted Houses and Family Legends," quotes several
well authenticated instances of manifestations by this apparition, the
last occurring, according to him, in the year 1899, though I have heard
from other reliable sources that it has been heard at a much more recent
date. The origin of this haunting is generally thought to be comparatively
modern, and not to date further back than two or three hundred years, if
as far, which, of course, puts it on quite a different category from that
of the Banshee, though its mission is, without doubt, the same. According
to Mr Ingram, a former Lord Airlie, becoming jealous of one of his
retainers or emissaries who was a drummer, had him thrust in his drum and
hurled from a top window of the castle into the courtyard beneath, where
he was dashed to pieces. With his dying breath the drummer cursed not only
Lord Airlie, but his descendants, too, and ever since that event his
apparition has persistently haunted the family.
Other Highland families that possess special ghosts are a branch of the
Macdonnells, that have a phantom piper, whose mournful piping invariably
means that some member or other of the clan is shortly doomed to die; and
the Stanleys who have a female apparition that signalises her advent by
shrieking, weeping, and moaning before the death of any of the family.
Perhaps of all Scottish ghosts this last one most closely resembles the
Banshee, though there are distinct differences, chiefly with regard to the
appearance of the phantoms--the Scottish one differing essentially in her
looks and attire from the Irish ghost--and their respective origins, that
of the Stanley apparition being, in all probability, of much later date
than the Banshee.
Then, again, there is the Bodach Glas, or dark grey man, in reference to
which Mr Henderson, in his "Folk-lore of Northern Countries," p. 344,
says: "Its appearance foretold death in the Clan of ----, and I have been
informed on the most credible testimony of its appearance in our own day.
The Earl of E----, a nobleman alike beloved and respected in Scotland, was
playing on the day of his decease on the links of St Andrew's at golf.
Suddenly he stopped in the middle of the game, saying, 'I can play no
longer, there is the Bodach Glas. I have seen it for the third time;
something fearful is going to befall me.' That night he fell down dead as
he was giving a lady her candlestick on her way up to bed."
Another instance, still, of a Scottish family ghost is that of the willow
tree at Gordon Castle, which is referred to by Sir Bernard Bourke in his
"Anecdotes of the Aristocracy." Sir Bernard asserts that whenever any
accident happens to this tree, if, for example, a branch is blown down in
a storm, or any part of it is struck by lightning, then some dire
misfortune is sure to happen to some member of the family.
There are other old Scottish family ghosts, all very distinct from the
Banshee, though a few bear some slight resemblance to it, but as my space
is restricted, I will pass on to family ghosts of a more or less similar
type that are to be met with in England.
To begin with, the Oxenhams of Devonshire the heiress of Sir James
Oxenham, and the bride that is invariably seen before the death of any
member of the family. According to a well-known Devonshire ballad, a bird
answering to this description flew over the guests at the wedding of the
heiress of Sir James Oxenham, and the bride was killed the following day
by a suitor she had unceremoniously jilted.
The Arundels of Wardour have a ghost in the form of two white owls, it
being alleged that whenever two birds of this species are seen perched on
the house where any of this family are living, some one member of them is
doomed to die very shortly.
Equally famous is the ghost of the Cliftons of Nottinghamshire, which
takes the shape of a sturgeon that is seen swimming in the river Trent,
opposite Clifton Hall, the chief seat of the family, whenever one of the
Cliftons is on the eve of dying.
Then, again, there is the white hand of the Squires of Worcestershire, a
family that is now practically extinct. According to local tradition this
family was for many generations haunted by the very beautiful hand of a
woman, that was always seen protruding through the wall of the room
containing that member of the family who was fated to die soon. Most ghost
hands are said to be grey and filmy, but this one, according to some
eye-witnesses, appears to have borne an extraordinary resemblance to that
of a living person. It was slender and perfectly proportioned, with very
tapering fingers and very long and beautifully kept filbert nails--the
sort of hand one sees in portraits of women of bygone ages, but which one
very rarely meets with in the present generation.
Other families that possess ghosts are the Yorkshire Middletons, who are
always apprised of the death of one of their members by the appearance of
a nun; and the Byrons of Newstead Abbey, who, according to the great poet
of that name, were haunted by a black Friar that used to be seen wandering
about the cloisters and other parts of the monasterial building before
the death of any member of the family.
In England, there seems to be quite a number of White Lady phantoms, most
of them, however, haunting houses and not families, and none of them
bearing any resemblance to the Banshee. Indeed, there is a far greater
dissimilarity between the English and Irish types of family ghosts than
there is between the Irish and those of any of the nations I have hitherto
discussed.
Lastly, with regard to the Welsh family ghosts, Mr Wirt Sikes, in his
"British Goblins," quite erroneously, I think, likens the Banshee in
appearance to the Gwrach y Rhibyn, or Hag of the Dribble, which he
describes as hideous, with long, black teeth, long, lank, withered arms,
leathern wings, and cadaverous cheeks, a description that is certainly not
in the least degree like that of any Banshee I have ever heard of. He goes
on to add that it comes in the stillness of the night, utters a
blood-curdling howl, and calls on the person doomed to die thus:
"Da-a-a-vy! De-i-i-o-o-ba-a-a-ch." If it is in the guise of a male it
says, in addition, "Fy mlentyn, fy mlentyn bach!" which rendered into
English is, "My child, my little child"; but if in the form of a woman,
"Oh! Oh! fy ngwr, fy ngwr"--"My husband! my husband!" As a rule it flaps
its wings against the window of the room in which the person who is
doomed is sleeping, whilst occasionally it appears either to the ill-fated
one himself or to some member of his family in a mist on the mountainside.
Mr Sikes gives a very graphic description of the appearance of this
apparition to a peasant farmer near Cardiff, a little over forty years
ago. To be precise, it was on the evening of the 14th November, 1877. The
farmer was on a visit to an old friend at the time, and was awakened at
midnight by the most ghastly screaming and a violent shaking of the
window-frame. The noise continued for some seconds, and then terminated in
one final screech that far surpassed all the others in intensity and sheer
horror. Greatly excited--though Mr Sikes affirms he was not
frightened--the old man leaped out of bed, and, throwing open the window,
saw a figure like a frightful old woman, with long, dishevelled, red hair,
and tusk-like teeth, and a startling white complexion, floating in
mid-air. She was enveloped in a long, loose, flowing kind of black robe
that entirely concealed her body. As he gazed at her, completely
dumbfounded with astonishment, she peered down at him and, throwing back
her dreadful head, emitted another of the very wildest and most harrowing
of screams. He then heard her flap her wings against a window immediately
underneath his, after which he saw her fly over to an inn almost directly
opposite him, called the "Cow and Snuffers," and pass right through the
closed doorway.
After waiting some minutes to see if she came out again, he at length got
back into bed, and on the morrow learned that Mr Llewellyn, the landlord
of the "Cow and Snuffers," had died in the night about the same time as
the apparition, which he, the old farmer, now concluded must have been the
Gwrach y Rhibyn, had appeared.
There is, of course, this much in common between the Gwrach y Rhibyn and
the Banshee: both are harbingers of death; both signalise their advent by
shrieks, and both confine their hauntings to really ancient Celtic
families; but here, it seems to me, the likeness ends. The Gwrach y Rhibyn
is more grotesque than horrible, and would seem to belong rather to the
order of witches in fairy lore than to the denizens of the ghost world.
Another ghostly phenomenon of the death-warning type that is, I believe,
to be met with in Wales, is the Canhywllah Cyrth, or corpse candle, so
called because the apparition resembles a material candlelight, saving for
the fact that it vanishes directly it is approached, and reforms speedily
again afterwards. The following descriptions of the Canhywllah Cyrth are
taken from Mr T. C. Charley's "News from the Invisible World," pp. 121-4.
The first extract is the account of the corpse candles given by the Rev.
Mr Davis.
"If it be a little candle," he writes, "pale or bluish, then follows the
corpse either of an abortive, or some infant; if a big one, then the
corpse either of someone come of age; if there be seen two or three or
more, some big, some small, together, then so many such corpses together.
If two candles come from divers places, and be seen to meet, the corpses
will do the like; if any of these candles be seen to turn, sometimes a
little out of the way that leadeth unto the church, the following corpse
will be found to turn into that very place, for the avoiding of some dirty
lane, etc. When I was about fifteen years of age, dwelling at Llanglar,
late at night, some neighbours saw one of these candles hovering up and
down along the bank of the river, until they were weary in beholding; at
last they left it so, and went to bed. A few weeks after, a damsel from
Montgomeryshire came to see her friends, who dwelt on the other side of
the Istwyth, and thought to ford it at the place where the light was seen;
but being dissuaded by some lookers-on (by reason of a flood) she walked
up and down along the bank, where the aforesaid candle did, waiting for
the falling of the waters, which at last she took, and was drowned
therein."
Continuing, he says: "Of late, my sexton's wife, an aged understanding
woman, saw from her bed a little bluish candle upon her table; within two
or three days after comes a fellow in, inquiring for her husband, and
taking something from under his cloak, clapped it down directly upon the
table end, where she had seen the candle; and what was it but a dead-born
child?"
In another case the same gentleman relates a number of these candles were
seen together. "About thirty-four or thirty-five years since," he says,
"one Jane Wyat, my wife's sister, being nurse to Baronet Reid's three
eldest children, and (the lady being deceased) the lady controller of that
house, going late into a chamber where the maidservants lay, saw there no
less than five of these lights together. It happened a while after, the
chamber being newly plastered and a great grate of coal-fire thereon
kindled to hasten the drying up of the plastering, that five of the
maidservants went there to bed, as they were wont, but in the morning they
were all dead, being suffocated in their sleep with the steam of the newly
tempered lime and coal. This was at Llangathen in Carmarthenshire."
Occasionally a figure is seen with the lights, but nearly always that of a
woman. A propos of this the same writer says: "William John of the County
of Carmarthen, a smith, on going home one night, saw one of the corpse
candles; he went out of his way to meet with it, and when he came near it,
he saw it was a burying; and the corpse upon the bier, the perfect
resemblance of a woman in the neighbourhood whom he knew, holding the
candle between her forefingers, who dreadfully grinned at him, and
presently he was struck down from his horse, where he remained a while,
and was ill a long time after before he recovered. This was before the
real burying of the woman. His fault, and therefore his danger, was his
coming presumptuously against the candle."
Lastly, an account of these death candles appeared some years ago in
_Fraser's Magazine_. It ran as follows:
"In a wild and retired district in North Wales, the following occurrence
took place to the great astonishment of the mountaineers. We can vouch for
the truth of the statement, as many members of our own teutu, or clan,
were witnesses of the fact. On a dark evening, a few winters ago, some
persons, with whom we are well acquainted, were returning to Barmouth, on
the south or opposite side of the river. As they approached the
ferryhouse at Penthryn, which is directly opposite Barmouth, they
observed a light near the house, which they conjectured to be produced by
a bonfire, and greatly puzzled they were to discover the reason why it
should have been lighted. As they came nearer, however, it vanished; and
when they inquired at the house respecting it, they were surprised to
learn that not only had the people there displayed no light, but they had
not even seen one; nor could they perceive any signs of it on the sands.
On reaching Barmouth, the circumstance was mentioned, and the fact
corroborated by some of the people there, who had also plainly and
distinctly seen the light. It was settled, therefore, by some of the old
fisherman, that this was a "death-token"; and, sure enough, the man who
kept the ferry at that time was drowned at high-water a few nights
afterwards, on the very spot where the light was seen. He was landing from
the boat, when he fell into the water, and so perished."
"The same winter the Barmouth people, as well as the inhabitants of the
opposite banks, were struck by the appearance of a number of small lights
which were seen dancing in the air at a place called Borthwyn, about half
a mile from the town. A great number of people came out to see these
lights; and after a while they all but one disappeared, and this one
proceeded slowly towards the water's edge, to a small bay where some boats
were moored. The men in a sloop which was anchored near the spot saw the
light advancing--they saw it also hover for a few seconds over one
particular boat, and then totally disappear. Two or three days afterwards,
the man to whom that particular boat belonged was drowned in the river,
where he was sailing about Barmouth harbour in that very boat. We have
narrated these facts just as they occurred."
Another well-known Welsh haunting that may be relegated to the same class
of phenomena as the corpse candles is that of the Stradling Ghost. This
phantasm, which is supposed to be that of a former Lady Stradling, who was
murdered by one of her own relatives, haunts St Donart's Castle, on the
southern coast of Glamorganshire, appearing whenever a death or some very
grievous calamity is about to overtake a member of the family. Writing of
her, Mr Wirt Sikes, in his "British Goblins," p. 143-4, says: "She appears
when any mishap is about to befall a member of the house of Stradling, the
direct line, however, of which is extinct. She wears high-heeled shoes,
and a long trailing gown of the finest silk." According to local reports,
her advent is always known in the neighbourhood by the behaviour of the
dogs, which, taking their cue from their canine representatives in the
Castle, begin to howl and whine, and keep on making a noise and showing
every indication of terror and resentment so long as the earth-bound
spirit of the lady continues to roam about. Of course the Stradling Ghost
cannot be said to be characteristically Welsh, because its prototype is to
be found in so many other countries, but it at least comes under the
category of family apparitions.
The Gwyllgi, or dog of darkness, which Mr Wirt Sikes asserts has often
inspired terror among the Welsh peasants, does not appear to be confined
to any one family, any more than do the corpse candles, though, like the
latter, it would seem to manifest itself principally to really Welsh
people. Its advent is not, however, predicative of any special happening.
The Cwn Annwn, or dogs of hell, that are chiefly to be met with in the
south of Wales, on the contrary, rarely, if ever, appear, saving to warn
those who see them of some approaching death or disaster. Neither they,
nor the Gwyllgi, nor the corpse candles, since they do not haunt one
family exclusively, can be called family ghosts. And only inasmuch as they
are racial have they anything in common with the Banshee. Indeed, there is
a world of difference between the Banshee and even its nearest
counterpart in other countries, and the difference is, perhaps, one which
only those who have actually experienced it could ever understand.