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Folk-Lore of West and Mid-Wales cover

Folk-Lore of West and Mid-Wales

Chapter 107: THE SPIRIT OF A DEAD MOTHER APPEARING TO HER BOY-SON AT LLANGYNOG, CARMARTHENSHIRE.
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About This Book

A compilation of folk beliefs, tales, and customs gathered across western and mid-Wales from elderly informants and local tradition. It presents translated Welsh narratives and organized material on fairies, mermaids and water‑horses, ghosts, witches and wizards, omens, animal superstitions, and popular spells, alongside accounts of wedding, birth, funeral, inheritance and sheep‑shearing customs, divination practices, augury, and prophecies. The emphasis is on literal fidelity to oral testimony and on preserving vanishing traditions rather than offering theoretical interpretation.

THE SPIRIT OF A DEAD MOTHER APPEARING TO HER BOY-SON AT LLANGYNOG, CARMARTHENSHIRE.

A very old man named Thomas Ticker, who lives at the small village of Llanybri, gave me the following remarkable account:—

Many years ago when one William Thomas, Pengelly Isaf, Llangynog, was a little boy of ten or twelve years of age, his mother died. One day the boy in great sorrow went out into a field which was quite close to the house, and wept bitterly, almost breaking his heart. Suddenly, the spirit of his dead mother appeared to him in a white dress, telling him not to cry, “because” saith she, “your crying gives me pain, and you need not be in trouble about the future, as there is plenty of food for thee.” The child was on the ground when she spoke, and when he looked up he beheld his mother vanishing suddenly.

This W. Thomas who saw his mother’s spirit, died when a comparatively young man, but his son, from whom my informant obtained the account of the vision, lived till eighty years of age, and died about sixty years ago.