Note 34 — Chapter III · Fairy Ways and Words

Such, in brief, is the story so charmingly told by Silvan Evans, which he got from the mouths of the farmer and his wife, whom he considered highly honest and truthful persons, as well as comparatively free from superstition. The last time they talked to him about the incident they were very advanced in years, and both died within a few weeks of one another early in the year 1852. Their remains, he adds, lie in the churchyard towards which they had seen the toeli slowly making its way. For toeli is the phonetic spelling in Ystên Sioned of the word which is teulu in North Cardiganshire and in North Wales, for Old Welsh toulu. The word now means ‘family,’ though literally it should mean ‘house-army’ or ‘house-troops,’ and it is practically a synonym for tylwyth, ‘family or household,’ literally ‘house-tribe.’ Now the toeli or toulu is such an important institution in Demetian Cardiganshire and some parts of Dyfed proper, that the word has been confined to the phantom, and for the word family in its ordinary significations one has there to have recourse to the non-dialect form teulu34. In North Cardiganshire and North Wales the toeli is called simply a clađedigaeth, ‘burial,’ or anglađ, ‘funeral’; in the latter also cynhebrwng is a funeral. I may add that when I was a child in the neighbourhood of Ponterwyd, on the upper course of the Rheidol, hardly a year used to pass without somebody or other meeting a phantom funeral. Sometimes one got entangled in the procession, and ran the risk of being carried off one’s feet by the throng. There is, however, one serious difference between our phantom funerals and the Demetian toeli, namely, that we recognize our neighbours’ ghosts as making up the processions, and we have no trouble in understanding their talk. At this point a question of some difficulty presents itself as to the toeli, namely, what family does it mean?—is it the family and friends of the departed on his way to the grave, or does it mean the family in the sense of Tylwyth Teg, ‘Fair Family,’ as applied to the fairies? I am inclined to the latter view, but I prefer thinking that the distinction itself does not penetrate very deeply, seeing that a certain species of the Tylwyth Teg, or fairies, may, in point of origin, be regarded as deceased friends and ancestors of the tylwyth, in the ordinary sense of the word. In fact all this kind of rehearsal of events seems to have been once looked at as friendly to the men and women whom it concerned. This will be seen, for instance, in the Demetian account of the canwyỻ gorff, or corpse candle, as granted through the intercession of St. David to the people of his special care, as a means of warning each to get ready in time for his death; that is to say, to prevent death finding him unprepared. It is hard to guess why it was assumed that the canwyỻ gorff was unknown in other parts of Wales. One or two instances in point occur in Owen’s Welsh Folklore, pp. 298–301; and I have myself heard of them being seen in Anglesey, while they were quite well known to members of Mrs. Rhys’ mother’s family, who lived in the parish of Waen Fawr, in the neighbourhood of Carnarvon. Nor does it appear that phantom funerals were at all confined to South Wales. Proof to the contrary is supplied to some extent in Owen’s Folklore, p. 301; but there is no doubt that in recent times the belief in them, as well as in the canwyỻ gorff, has been more general and more vivid in South Wales than in North Wales, especially Gwyneđ.