Welsh Ghost Stories circa 1988
Oct. 23rd, 2004 11:33 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
shadowkatIn 1988, I won a college grant to go to Wales and collect mythology. My idea had been to compare the current oral narrative with the old Welsh Mythology of the Mabinogi. Great plan. Didn't work quite the way I expected. Once I got there, I had to sort of revise my plan a bit and ended up collecting over a hundred ghost stories, jokes, and cultural superstitions. Where did I collect them? From the Western Coast of Wales - or the area of the UK that considers English a second language, and most of the signs are in Welsh. I collected from people who spoke Welsh and English both, and ranged in age from 20-85. Most of my tales came from the older set, who is most likely dead now.
As a Halloween Treat, I've decided to post a couple of these stories in my livejournal. Comments as always are appreciated, but please do not repost these anywhere or cut and past them. You can link to me, but do not put them anywhere else. Thanks. Also these will be told in the dialect and exactly as I heard them in 1988 - I transcribed from audio tapes. They aren't really scarey, more anecdotes in a way.
"Well we lived quite ways from the village, right in the country. And in those days, you, the farming communities, they had quite of people coming to the house, telling different tales. And we had this Mr. Robers, he was called, he was a friend of my father's and he believed in ghosts, he could see them. He said that he could see them any time. He was a railway signal man. And he sometimes worked early and sometimes he worked late. He saw some ghosts on the way by the bridge that crosses the River Dee... I don't remember a lot about those stories, but was telling them quite lightly, quite light...
I remember one story very well and this story was when his father was on his death bed and they were all around the bed one evening.
"Who's coming up?"
"I don't know"
But they could hear somebody coming up the stairs as if he was dragging a chain behind him. And everyone was spellbound and they were waiting to see who it was. It was a little man with a beard, yes, and around his waiste he had this chain. He came into the bedroom and he bored down like that (stared down at them)...And then he turned back. And they noticed that the chain had a cross. And he started going down the stairs. And they could hear the chain tapping on each step (tap, tap, tap, tap) until he reached the bottom.
And the man that was on his death bed was quite death. He couldn't hear a word. And he said, "Who was that now?" At the end of the night he passed away. The old gentleman passed away."
Major features were a pipe and a goatee beard. Thin man. He told me this story in a small booklined room. I collected 7 stories from him.
"They held wakes back in the Gwaun Valley when I was a boy, don't anymore. You know what a wake is? Yes? ( A wake is held during the day and night before the funeral and is held around an open coffin to give people mourning a chance to say goodbye.) And they were celebrating finely that night, I may tell you.
Well as they were celebrating they heard these hoofs coming. Slowly at first then faster - coming towards the cottage where they were holding the wake. Came right through the cottage rushed something so fast that they only felt it like the wind and heard the thundering of the hooves. Nothing else. Pretty terrified as well they might be.
As soon as the hooves were gone and the feeling was past, they looked in the coffin......wouldn't you know......the coffin....was empty. Whether or not it's true I don't know but it's been told many a time in the Valley."
The Gaun Valley is in Southwest Wales, before you reach St. David's Head. You can't take a bus through it, have to either walk or get a car. Since I didn't have a car - I walked into it and found a bed and breakfast and an old pub.
Where we chatted about politics, and stared at an old picture of Prince Edward, Prince of Wales on the wall. A small one room pub, that had a couch and fireplace and was more a living room than pub. In the Gaun, I collected many tales, before hitching a ride to St. David's with fellow travelers who had a car. (I was 21 at the time.)
Here's one I collected there:
"I was very young then, about sixteen I was. I was walking from the village about half past nine, dark night, December something. I was going up home, you know, through the lanes and as I was going along I felt it, my body going cold all over like ice. There was a light. A bright light right up front, there was funeral, there was a coffin passing, and there was three black hats on the coffin, pointed, and there was one coming behind it and you could see the faces of the people. I heard their footsteps and everything. It was a funeral and when they just passed me I could feel the heat coming back to my body and a light came back on in the street. Carpet light we had in those days, you know. And I came back and told my mother and she said, 'Served you right, since you were out late.'"
The interesting thing about the tales I collected, was the teller likes to end with a joke or a moral. He likes to make light of it. Much different than the urban horror tales I've seen collected in the US.
Okay must run errands. Work is busy, tedious, frustrating, fascinating, scarey, boring, and pays my bills. It is a completely different field than the one I was in. At times I feel over-my-head, while at others over-qualified. Yet this may be the best boss I've had and the work environment is a friendly one. Not overly so. No going out for drinks or lunch or recreation with my colleagues, like I occassionally did when working for evil publishing company. And I miss that a bit. On the other hand, maybe it's a good thing. Also didn't always do with the other company, sort of sporadic over 6 year period. New jobs, whatever they may be, are tough. Oh found out an interesting tid-bit - the person who was offered the job before me (ie. the reason I got the chance), lost it because he lied. He told the company he graduated from law school. He hadn't. And that he worked for a year somewhere, when it was only a month. Morale? Don't lie. You will get caught. Weird chain of events though.
As a Halloween Treat, I've decided to post a couple of these stories in my livejournal. Comments as always are appreciated, but please do not repost these anywhere or cut and past them. You can link to me, but do not put them anywhere else. Thanks. Also these will be told in the dialect and exactly as I heard them in 1988 - I transcribed from audio tapes. They aren't really scarey, more anecdotes in a way.
"Well we lived quite ways from the village, right in the country. And in those days, you, the farming communities, they had quite of people coming to the house, telling different tales. And we had this Mr. Robers, he was called, he was a friend of my father's and he believed in ghosts, he could see them. He said that he could see them any time. He was a railway signal man. And he sometimes worked early and sometimes he worked late. He saw some ghosts on the way by the bridge that crosses the River Dee... I don't remember a lot about those stories, but was telling them quite lightly, quite light...
I remember one story very well and this story was when his father was on his death bed and they were all around the bed one evening.
"Who's coming up?"
"I don't know"
But they could hear somebody coming up the stairs as if he was dragging a chain behind him. And everyone was spellbound and they were waiting to see who it was. It was a little man with a beard, yes, and around his waiste he had this chain. He came into the bedroom and he bored down like that (stared down at them)...And then he turned back. And they noticed that the chain had a cross. And he started going down the stairs. And they could hear the chain tapping on each step (tap, tap, tap, tap) until he reached the bottom.
And the man that was on his death bed was quite death. He couldn't hear a word. And he said, "Who was that now?" At the end of the night he passed away. The old gentleman passed away."
Major features were a pipe and a goatee beard. Thin man. He told me this story in a small booklined room. I collected 7 stories from him.
"They held wakes back in the Gwaun Valley when I was a boy, don't anymore. You know what a wake is? Yes? ( A wake is held during the day and night before the funeral and is held around an open coffin to give people mourning a chance to say goodbye.) And they were celebrating finely that night, I may tell you.
Well as they were celebrating they heard these hoofs coming. Slowly at first then faster - coming towards the cottage where they were holding the wake. Came right through the cottage rushed something so fast that they only felt it like the wind and heard the thundering of the hooves. Nothing else. Pretty terrified as well they might be.
As soon as the hooves were gone and the feeling was past, they looked in the coffin......wouldn't you know......the coffin....was empty. Whether or not it's true I don't know but it's been told many a time in the Valley."
The Gaun Valley is in Southwest Wales, before you reach St. David's Head. You can't take a bus through it, have to either walk or get a car. Since I didn't have a car - I walked into it and found a bed and breakfast and an old pub.
Where we chatted about politics, and stared at an old picture of Prince Edward, Prince of Wales on the wall. A small one room pub, that had a couch and fireplace and was more a living room than pub. In the Gaun, I collected many tales, before hitching a ride to St. David's with fellow travelers who had a car. (I was 21 at the time.)
Here's one I collected there:
"I was very young then, about sixteen I was. I was walking from the village about half past nine, dark night, December something. I was going up home, you know, through the lanes and as I was going along I felt it, my body going cold all over like ice. There was a light. A bright light right up front, there was funeral, there was a coffin passing, and there was three black hats on the coffin, pointed, and there was one coming behind it and you could see the faces of the people. I heard their footsteps and everything. It was a funeral and when they just passed me I could feel the heat coming back to my body and a light came back on in the street. Carpet light we had in those days, you know. And I came back and told my mother and she said, 'Served you right, since you were out late.'"
The interesting thing about the tales I collected, was the teller likes to end with a joke or a moral. He likes to make light of it. Much different than the urban horror tales I've seen collected in the US.
Okay must run errands. Work is busy, tedious, frustrating, fascinating, scarey, boring, and pays my bills. It is a completely different field than the one I was in. At times I feel over-my-head, while at others over-qualified. Yet this may be the best boss I've had and the work environment is a friendly one. Not overly so. No going out for drinks or lunch or recreation with my colleagues, like I occassionally did when working for evil publishing company. And I miss that a bit. On the other hand, maybe it's a good thing. Also didn't always do with the other company, sort of sporadic over 6 year period. New jobs, whatever they may be, are tough. Oh found out an interesting tid-bit - the person who was offered the job before me (ie. the reason I got the chance), lost it because he lied. He told the company he graduated from law school. He hadn't. And that he worked for a year somewhere, when it was only a month. Morale? Don't lie. You will get caught. Weird chain of events though.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2004-10-23 09:54 am (UTC)It's an interesting view of the Welsh countryside and the subject of the "fair folk".
Glad to hear that work is going well and you are settling in.
no subject
Date: 2004-10-23 08:04 pm (UTC)It is a lovely countryside - I fell a bit in love with it at the time and the people were very kind and warm to me. Of course it helped a bit that my last name is Welsh and I'm roughly 1/4 Welsh heritage wise.