218 MY LIFE 



moving along about three feet from the ground from the foot of the 

 stairs, across the room towards her, that it came close up to her apron 

 and then vanished, and that it was as distinct and plainly visible as the 

 other candles which were in the room. 



Another case is of a collier who, going one morning into the pit 

 before any of the other men were at work, heard the coal waggons 

 coming along, although he knew there could be no one then at work. 

 He stood still at the side of the passage, the waggons came along drawn 

 by horses as usual, a man he knew walking in front and another at the 

 side, and the dead body of one of his fellow" workmen was in one of the 

 waggons. In the course of the day he related what he had seen to some 

 of the workmen (one of whom told me the story), declaring his belief 

 that the man whose body he had seen would meet with an accident 

 before long. About a year afterwards the man was killed by an accident 

 in the pit. The two men seen were near him, and brought him out in 

 the waggon, and their being obliged to stop at the particular place and 

 every other circumstance happened exactly as had been described. This 

 is as the story was told me by a man who declares he heard the prophecy 

 and saw the fulfilment a year afterwards. When such stories are told 

 and believed, it is, of course, useless arguing against the absurdity of it. 

 They naturally say they must believe their own senses, and they are not 

 sufficiently educated to appreciate any general argument you may put to 

 them. There seems to be no fixed time within which the death should 

 follow the "candle" (as all these appearances are called), and there- 

 fore when a. person sees or thinks he sees anything at night, he sets it 

 down as corpse candle, and by the time he gets home the fright has 

 enlarged it into something marvellously supernatural, and the first 

 corpse that happens to be carried that way is considered to be the fulfil- 

 ment of it. 



There is a general belief that if the person who meets a candle im- 

 mediately lies down on his back, he will see the funeral procession with 

 every person that will be present, and the corpse with the candle in his 

 hand. There are many strongly authenticated instances of this. One 

 man, on lying down in this manner, saw that it was himself who carried 

 the candle in his hand. He went home, went to bed, never rose from it, 

 but died in a week. These and numberless other stories of a similar 

 character foster the belief in these uneducated people ; indeed, it is so 

 general that you can hardly meet a person but can tell you of several 

 marvellous things he has seen himself, besides hundreds vouched for by 

 his neighbours. 



They have an account of the origin of this warning in the story of an 

 ancient Welsh bishop, who, while being burnt to death by the Catholics, 

 declared that if his religion was true, a candle should precede every 

 death in the Diocese of St. Davids, going along the exact road the 

 coffin would be carried. They are very incredulous when you tell 



