Interim - 1854-1874#
Following the publication of Moggridge’s comments in 1852, and the immediate response to it, I have found few mentions of the tradition until the 1870s.
In Thomas Roscoe’s Wanderings and excursions in South Wales, with the scenery of the River Wye of 1854, we find at p48-51 a reference to the tradition of corpse candles (Canwyll Corph), the Cwn Annwn and the Cyoewraeth:
Corpse Candles (Roscoe, 1854)
We are apt to marvel at accounts of odd ceremonies and customs in other lands, without knowing half the peculiar habits and ancient rites still practised within the boundaries of our own country ; many of which, especially among the Welsh, may be traced to the highest antiquity.
The familiar superstitions of Wales are becoming gradually fainter and fainter ; but it is notorious that in this county they were more rife than in almost any other in Wales, and that not only amongst the uneducated portion of its inhabitants, but including those who, from their rank in society, might have been considered superior to the delusions of their age. John Lewis, Esq., a magistrate, residing near Aberystwith, writing, in the year 1656, to a clergyman, relates several stories of apparitions, and the Canwyll Corph, or corpse candles, with a minuteness and simplicity which show his entire belief in his narratives. The Rev. John Davis, a minister, in Cardiganshire, has written down the order which seems to regulate this superstition : — “We call them” saith he, “corpse candles, not that we see anything besides the light, but yet it resembles a material candlelight, as much as eggs do eggs, only they sometimes appear and instantly disappear : for, if one comes near them, or on the way against them, unto him they vanish ; but presently appear behind him, and hold on their course. If it be a little candle, pale and bluish, then follows the corpse of an abortive, or some infant. If a big one, then the corpse of some one come to age. If two, three, or more, great and little, be seen together, then so many and such corpse will follow together. If two candles come from divers places, and be seen to meet, the corpse will do the like. If any of these candles seem to turn out of the way or path that leads to the church, the following corpse will be found to turn in some place, for the avoiding some dirty lane, plash, &c.”
Cwn Annwn (Roscoe citing Mountain Decameron)
The author of the Mountain Decameron gives some graphic descriptions of several other popular superstitions, which I shall transcribe. “The superstitions of Wales form no part of the popular poetry of our age; yet there exist many grandly imaginative. How few know anything about our Cwn Annwn, [Annwn— the bottomless abyss ; Hell, in the ancient sense, as the “bourn” of all spirits.] that is, ‘Dogs of the sky,’ but which their office, as assigned, would warrant us to call the Bloodhounds of Souls! by earthly analogy. Sudden fires trail along the heavens at the moment of a dying person’s body and soul taking leave, and that light is no other than that fire which each of that terrible pack always has following after like a chain ; and sounds, like the yellings of an earthly hunt, may be heard in the dumbness of midnight, and which hunting is no less than the chase of the parting soul by these fiends of the sky, as it flies towards heaven’s gate before them, — the flight for nothing less than eternal life or death! What superstition affecting mortal life and its brevity, and its briefer pains, can compare in terror, in wildness, or sublimity with this ? With these howlings and huntings for immortal souls, these wildfires trailed by demon bloodhounds, across all the deep-blue chase of the midnight heavens, and the issue of this dread hunting never revealed to the mourner, upgazing from the gate of the house of mourning ?
Cyoewraeth (Roscoe citing Mountain Decameron)
“More terrible and forcible in mournful conception is the strange being that crosses the twilight path of the Welsh mountaineer, and which warns him by its mere presence, of a death in his house near at hand. The Cyoewraeth is the likeness of a woman, frightfully cadaverous of visage, bringing all the festering horror of a three weeks’ burial, in its grim yet not utterly disfeatured loathsomeness, abroad into the world of life, divulging the foulest secrets of the grave ! This form stands direct in some lonesome path of the startled person, tossing her long grisly arms in the air, and wringing her earthy lengths of wasted hand, and, shaking down her already worm-beset hair over her eye-holes, and their sunken dead-lights fixed upon his, steady as the basilisk’s on its prey, but gloomy, — sets up such a cry of wild weeping, and utters two words only, so terrible in their power, that they for the moment arrest the moving blood in the veins of the hearer — the Welsh words signifying ‘Oh, my wife !’ or, ‘Oh, my husband !’ according to the sex of the short-lived object of its fatal forewarning.
At page 52-4, Roscoe also quotes the description of the sin-eater.
Sin-eater (Roscoe citing Mountain Decameron)
“So late as the earlier part of the last century, that strange character of a stranger superstition, known by the name of ‘The Sin-Eater,’ was not unknown in Wales. This was some desperate being, who (unless we suppose him an unbeliever), being past redemption, lost to all hope of salvation, did, for a slight reward, or to gratify the relatives of one lying dead, take on his own soul all the sins of the deceased by a formal act, sometimes receiving confession during life, and bargaining for the burthens thus to be imposed on his already laden soul.
“Mr. Fosbroke, in an account of the town of Ross, quotes a letter which speaks of a ‘Sin-Eater,’ who ‘lived by Ross highway,’ and is described as a ‘gaunt, ghastly, lean, miserable, poor rascal.’
“A gentleman, who lived a little before the time of this dark superstition becoming obsolete, gives us this brief account of what is believed to have been the last ‘Sin-Eater of Wales’.
“‘I got lost,’ says he, ‘near nightfall, after being landed by the ferry-boat from the Aber of Dovey, on the Cardiganshire side of that estuary. A black turbary of great extent divided me from the road. I was cautioned to ride far round this pitchy bog, for no horse ever ventured among the peat-pits — the whole being a quaking morass. In truth, its look was enough, under a black evening, to keep me off, even without peril of being swallowed, man and horse.
“‘At last, thanks to my stars, the good hard rock of a rough road rung to my horse’s hoof, and I saw a cottage taper, as ghastly as the Canwyll Corph, at a distance. The house was on a high point and turn of road, overlooking all those many acres of hollow ground. Just as I came up, hoping lodging, I heard sounds of wailing within, and soon a woman came out into the dead night, late as it was, and cried a name to the top pitch of her wild voice, that seemed one I had heard weeping indoors. When I looked in, there lay a corpse of a man, with a plate of salt holding a bit of bread, placed on its breast. The woman was shouting to the Sin-Eater to come and do his office; that is, to eat the bread, lay his hand on the dead breast, place the dead man’s on his own, after making a sign of the cross, and then praying for a transfer of all pains or penances from that pardoned dead man for ever, to him that more than dead alive, himself in his death of soul, but not of its pains, for ever and for ever.’
“This is the traveller’s account of this incident. He had the curiosity to wait, and saw at last the motion of what seemed a foggy meteor moving toward their standing-point. After waiting long, he caught a far-out shout in reply to the woman’s long unanswered, till she kindled on the high road’s point the straw of her husband’s late bed — the usual signal of a death in the house.
“‘The Sin-Eater,’ he was told, ‘lived alone in a hovel made of sea-wreck, and nails of such, between sea-marsh and that dim bog, where few could approach by day, none dare by night; whether for the footing, or the great fear, or at least awe, which all felt of that recluse.’”
In John Murray’s A handbook for travellers in South Wales and its borders, including the river Wye. With a travelling map of 1860, we see prefatory comments on pp. xxvi-xxvii describing old traditions that appear to come from the Archaeologia Cambrensis report of the 1852 meeting at Ludlow:
Many old customs and superstitions have become obsolete within the last ten or twenty years, in consequence of increased education and facilities of intercommunication with the rest of the country. Some of them may be mentioned as both interesting and curious. The superstition of the Sin-Eater is said to linger even now in the secluded vale of Cwm Amman in Carmarthenshire. When a person died, the friends sent for the sin-eater of the district, who on his arrival placed a plate of salt on the breast of the deceased, and on the salt a piece of bread. He then muttered an incantation over the bread, which he finally eat, thereby eating the sins of the dead person. This done, he received the fee of 2s. 6d., and vanished as quickly as he could, the friends helping his departure by the aid of sundry blows and kicks, if they could catch him ; for as it was believed that he took upon himself the sins of the defunct, he was looked upon as a social Pariah for whom nothing was too bad. The custom of placing bread or a plate of salt on the breast of the corpse is by no means uncommon in many parts of Wales.
This is the first mention of “the friends helping his departure by the aid of sundry blows and kicks, if they could catch him “ that I can recall. Was the author here adding a bit of their own colour to the story, imagining that if the sin-eater were a pariah, he would surely be chased out of the house after performing that soul-destroying (for him) rite?
Another curious custom is still in existence — that of the Cefyl Pren, which occurs in cases where popular indignation is excited by any gross infringement of domestic rights or proprieties. A large crowd, one of whom is dressed up with a horse’s head, assembles before the door of the delinquent, who, after undergoing an immense amount of vituperation and a hideous noise of old kettles and cleavers, is at length burnt in effigy, by which the sacred wrath of the people is at length appeased.
In the press, the story continued to appear in various articles recalling customs and traditions. For example, the December 12th, 1862 edition of Eddowes’s Journal, and General Advertiser for Shropshire, and the Principality of Wales describes the following:
A Welsh Superstition.— While on the subject of deaths, I must mention singular superstitious custom which lingered, not very long ago, in some of the secluded mountain-vales of Carmarthenshire. When person died his friends sent for the sin-eater of the district, who, for the small sum of half a crown, actually took upon himself the sins of the deceased, by the simple process of eating them. The plan of operation was this :— A loaf of bread was provided, which the sin-eater first placed upon the dead person’s chest, then muttered some incantations over it, finally eating it. Will it be credited that he was believed to have taken from the defunct the heavy weight of his sins, and to appropriate them to himself, for which act of kindness he was regarded by everybody as a tabooed outcast? Indeed, immediately after the ceremony was finished, and had received his pay, he vanished in double quick time, it being usual custom for the friends to belabour him with sticks-if they could catch him.— Once a Week.
Again, we have the mention of that one the sin-eater had received his pay, he vanished in double quick time, it being usual custom for the friends to belabour him with sticks-if they could catch him.
We also note the appearance for the first time of the phrase “A loaf of bread was provided” and *”muttered some incantations”( which appear in several later reports.
The excerpt was from a much longer piece on traditions that appeared in the November 29, 1862 edition of *Once a Week, pp639-41, of which the following is a also an excerpt, albeit a more significant one.
We beging with a discussion of how traditional, folk culture, appears to be being lost even in the remotest parts of Wales:
WELSH CUSTOMS AND SUPERSTITIONS.
Alas for the old world stories and customt of our country side ! They are fast being driven out by railways, steamboats, telegraphs, and such like innovations ; so fast, that in a few years the very tradition of them will be gone out, and their place know them no more. Even Wales, so mountainous and difficult of enterprise, is gradually yielding to the pick and shovel of the navvy, while rustics and shepherds in out-of-the-way valleys and moory uplands are becoming cognisant of excursion trains and timetables, instead of the former once-a-year visit to the nearest town on fair-day. Can nothing be left alone ? and must we always be vexing and fretting over experiments and inventions until every spot is changed, every nook and cranny laid open to the world ?
That said, the author is hopeful there are still some areas that remain untouched:
As yet, however, I know of some charming dells and villages, guarded by hills from the inquisitive eyes of tourists, which have remained stationary for very many years, and will continue to remain so, I imagine, for a few years longer, preserving; their ancient usages of dress, their old superstitions, and perhaps their old simple ways, though these are generally the first to go, the more’s the pity. Many Welsh customs and traditions are interesting enough to be worth keeping, and at all events may serve to show my readers to what manner of people they belonged.
The author reflects on the order in which customs, superstitions and legends are likely to ie out:
I think that customs are apt to die out sooner than superstitions or legends, for the reason that they are more dependent on the circumstances of the time for their being performed ; a tradition may lie dormant and undisturbed in the minds of people for a long time, but a custom requires a state of action to prevent its lapsing into a thing of the past.
A Christmas custom called Plygain is then described, “which consisted in holding an early service on Christmas morning in the church, illuminated for the occasion. At four o’clock, a.m., the bells rang out merrily, and the singers proceeded to the par- sonage to escort the vicar to the church porch, lighting up the road with their torches, and singing carols lustily,” followed by New Year’s, May Day and Easter Monday customs. Social customs such as weddings are then described, with the observation that “[s]ocial customs kept their footing longer than others, though, as civilisation was brought more into the heart of the country by intercourse with the ‘Sassenach,’ they lost ground in a corresponding ratio”, before the consideration moves on to funeral customs.
While on the subject of deaths, I must mention a singular superstitious custom which lingered, not very long ago, in some of the secluded mountain-vales of Carmarthenshire.
When a person died, his friends sent for the sin- eater of the district, who, for the small sum of half-a-crown, actually took upon himself the sins of the deceased, by the simple process of eating then. The plan of operations was this : A loaf of bread was provided, which the sin-eater first placed upon the dead person’s chest, then muttered some incantations over it, finally eating it. Will it be credited that he was believed to have taken from the defunct the heavy weight of his sins, and to appropriate them to himself, for which act of kindness he was regarded by everybody as a tabooed outcast? Indeed, immediately after the ceremony was finished, and he had received his pay, he vanished in double quick time, it being the usual custom for the friends to belabour him with sticks — if they could catch him.
Deaths are common subjects of superstitious lore in almost every county. Wales, not less than other places, rejoices in the belief of corpse candles, which, when seen by parties in good health, betoken, like the Banshee of the west, the death of one of the members of the family. In some cases, indeed, not only a corpse candle, but a whole spectral funeral has appeared to persons coming home late at night, in which they have been able to foretell, from seeing the name on the coflin plate, which of their friends or acquaintance would be the next subject. Of similar ominous import, though extending more to localities than persons, was the Cyhiraeth, which appears to have been a sound more than a sight. It was generally heard at night in degrees varying from a low murmur to the most piercing scream, which petrified with horror the villagers in their beds as it swept past. As the Cyhiraeth was most frequently heard in sea-side places, it was considered to portend a wreck, which, however, in those days, was anything but a dispiriting prospect to the dwellers on the coast, who hoped to obtain good plunder thereby.
“Once a Week”
The reference to Once a Week, a weekly literarary magazine published from 1859 to 1880.
The same tale, similarly credited, also appears on page 3 of The Welshman of December 12th, 1862, and in the Hereford Journal on the same date as the Eddowes’ Journal piece.
Introducing Bye-Gones, October 4th, 1871#
A new column, which we might reasonably turn to in search of for further stories, appeared in the Oswestry Advertiser, as well as under its own banner, Bye-Gones, on October 4th, 1871. It was initially edited by one John Askew Roberts.
We purpose devoting a column, more or less, each week to the publication of NOTES, QUERIES, and REPLIES, of bye-gone events, interesting to North Wales and its Borders. To enable us to make the column interesting – as well as valuable to future historians, we respectfully invite the co-operation of our readers, in the supply of queries and of replies – in the loan of old pamphlets, fly-sheets, and newpapers; and where practicable, in files of old letters or other M.S.S.
We need scarcely say that all documents submitted to the editor of this column will be most carefully treated, and promptly returned. All communications for the column must be addressed ‘Bye-gones, Caxton Works, Oswestry.’
Correspondents are reminded that the space at our disposal is limited, so they must not be disappointed if their communications are sometimes withheld a week or two. Correspondents are also requested to send their real names and addresses, not necessarily for publication but as a guarantee of good faith.
In its coverage of folklore, we might reasonably expect such a publication, a “hyper-local” version of Notes & Queries to make passing mention, at least, of the sin-eater tradition; but there are no mentions in its early editions.
There is, however, an early tale remembering an encounter with a corpse candle, in the February, 1872 edition, p. 36:
I never heard of ‘Grwn’ death token mentioned by edromo, but I remember, some years ago, a highly intelligent inhabitant of Criggion, Montgomeryshire, telling me that when he was a bot, upon one occasion, during a vey heavy snow, his mother called him to her as she went up the stars one night to bed, and pointed out to him a light proceeding slowly from a neighbouring farmhouse in the direction of the church. A servant coming up the stairs at the time was also witness to it. The light traversed a line where there was no road or gate into the churchyard, and in a moment or two all the windows of the church were lighted up, and then gradually the light went back by the course it had come, and vanished in the neighbouring farmhouse. They knew, I believe, that their neighbour the farmer was unwell, but the snow was so deep that it was not until the second day that they heard he had died at the very time they saw the light. The snow continued, and the roads became more and more blocked, so that on the day of the funeral it was found to be impossible to take the procession by the ordinary course; so a portion of the churchyard wall was taken down, and the bier was carried through the opening. That portion was the very spot at which my friend saw the light cross on the evening of the death. –Jarco.
A few years later, in The Cambrian News and Merionethshire Standard of 22nd May, 1874, on p. 9, we have the following mention, citing Hone’s Year Book:
The superstition of the Sin Eater, a poor half starved wretch, bribed by a dole of bread, beer, and a sixpence, to attend at a funeral, and by accepting such a tender to take upon him the sins of the defunct, is noticed in the same volume [“the Year Book”], and referred to certain counties in North and South Wales, where we have reason to believe it still exists.”
A question is also opened in the May 20th, 1874 edition of Bye-gones, p58, regarding the tradition:
CURRENT NOTES. … The Saturday Review, in a notice of Mr Tegg’s new edition of Hone’s Calanders, says :— “There is scarcely an odd or obsolescent usage in regard to which Hone has not been before us with curious observation. The divination by Bible and Key, which crops up just now in an amusing story in the Cornhill is described in the Year Book. The superstition of the Sin Eater, a poor half-starved wretch, bribed by a dole of bread, beer, and a sixpence, to attend at a funeral, and by accepting such a tender to take upon him the sins of the defunct, is noticed in the same volume, and referred to certain counties in North and South Wales, where we have reason to believe it still exists.” Can any of our readers tell us anything about this curious custom ? … Any notes on either of these subjects would be acceptable in our Bye-gones column.